Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick,
Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury
Do I take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance. (5.1.21–28)
Like the Duke in Measure for Measure, Prospero is resolved to forgive everyone. He also resolves to give up his noble art of magic: “My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore, / And they shall be themselves” (5.1.31–32).
In the long soliloquy that follows, Prospero reviews examples of his “so potent art” (5.1.50), but he is determined to surrender his omnipotent role of magician:
But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper that did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book. (5.1.50–57)
We should note that Prospero engages in forgiveness somewhat hesitantly. To his own brother, Antonio, who has usurped the dukedom of Milan, he seems to offer only a grudging reconciliation:
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault—all of them; and require
My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know
Thou must restore. (5.1.130–34)
Antonio doesn’t have much choice on what to do, and we never hear him apologizing to the brother he has wronged. This is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable insults: “whom to call brother / Would even infect my mouth.” Not very forgiving on Prospero’s part.
Chapter 33
The Tragedy of Cardinal Wolsey
in Henry VIII
The fall of Cardinal Wolsey is presented in terms we have come to expect from Aristotle’s Poetics. His arrogance and graspingness has made him many enemies, but when he loses power, we tend to sympathize with him in his adversity. Wolsey’s tragedy progresses inevitably like a separate action within the play. There is a certain ambiguity about his role. Is he acting primarily as the king’s agent, or is he acting on his own behalf? He does the king’s bidding to get rid of his wife Katherine, and he does nothing to hinder the king’s marriage to Anne Bullen, although he would much prefer someone else. He always acts as the loyal servant of the king.
In the first scene of the play, Wolsey’s enemies, the Duke of Buckingham and the Duke of Norfolk, speak strongly against him. Buckingham complains that “No man’s pie is freed / From his ambitious finger” (1.1.52–53). But what really irks both dukes is Wolsey’s plebeian ancestry: he is spoken of as a butcher’s son. Buckingham calls him contemptuously a “keech,” a rolled up lump of animal fat, who “can with his very bulk / Take up the rays o’ th’ beneficial sun” (1.1.55–56)—in other words, win the king’s favor (the king symbolized by the sun). It is implied that Wolsey is a “bulky,” fat man. Later in the scene, Buckingham makes the same accusation:
This butcher’s cur is venomed-mouthed, and I
Have not the power to muzzle him. Therefore best
Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar’s book
Outworths a noble’s blood. (1.1.120–23)
Wolsey’s learning (“A beggar’s book”) outclasses (“Outworths”) nobility of descent.
There is a certain envy of Wolsey, the commoner, in both of the noble dukes. Norfolk is more specific in his declaiming against the cardinal:
For, being not propped by ancestry, whose grace
Chalks successors their way, nor called upon
For high feats done to th’ crown, neither allied
To eminent assistants, but spiderlike,
Out of his self-drawing web, ’a gives us note,
The force of his own merit makes his way—
A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys
A place next to the King. (1.1.59–66)
It seems strange that Norfolk should complain that Wolsey has gotten ahead by “The force of his own merit,” which is God’s gift, and not through noble birth (“ancestry”), nor triumphs in battle (“feats done to th’ crown”), nor by powerful friends at court (“eminent assistants”). This seems like pure snobbery on Norfolk’s part.
Buckingham cannot abide “This Ipswich fellow’s insolence,” who seems to “proclaim / There’s difference in no persons” (1.1.138–39); in other words, it is insolent to believe that distinctions of noble birth no longer matter. Wolsey is a plebeian upstart. Buckingham cannot contain his vituperation for the cardinal:
This holy fox,
Or wolf, or both (for he is equal rav’nous
As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief
As able to perform’t, his mind and place
Infecting one another, yea, reciprocally)
Only to show his pomp as well in France
As here at home (1.1.158–64)
Before the end of act 1, Buckingham is arrested and sent to the Tower, presumably at Wolsey’s behest, and he is shortly to be executed (2.1).
Wolsey is hated by almost everyone in the first acts of the play. In act 1, scene 1, for example, an anonymous Second Gentleman complains: “All the commons / Hate him perniciously, and, o’ my conscience, / Wish him ten fathoms deep” (2.1.49–51). In act 2, scene 2, Wolsey is seen as engineering the king’s divorce from Katherine. Norfolk calls him “the king-cardinal, / That blind priest, like the eldest son of Fortune, / Turns what he list” (2.2.19–21). All the court fervently wish that the king “will know him one day” (2.2.21). As the Lord Chamberlain says: “Heaven will one day open / The king’s eyes, that so long have slept upon / This bold, bad man” (2.2.41–43). So we are ready for this revelation, which will certainly come soon.
At her trial in act 2, scene 4, the queen clearly recognizes Wolsey as her enemy:
I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul
Refuse you for my judge, whom, yet once more,
I hold my most malicious foe, and think not
At all a friend to truth. (2.4.79–82)
But do we excuse Wolsey as an agent merely acting on the king’s behalf, or is he personally responsible for the removal of the queen? The answer to this question remains ambiguous.
Wolsey and Cardinal Campeius visit the queen in act 3, scene 1, presumably to get her consent to the divorce, but Katherine is on to their duplicity: “Ye tell me what ye wish for both—my ruin” (3.1.98). She accuses them of unfeeling, unchristian conduct:
Holy men I thought ye,
Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.
Mend ’em, for shame, my lords. (3.1.102–5)
But Wolsey and Campeius seem incapable of feeling much empathy for the suffering queen.
By act 3, scene 2, Wolsey has incurred the displeasure of the king. First of all, Wolsey opposes the king’s marriage to Anne Bullen, whom he calls “A spleeny [splenetic] Lutheran, and not wholesome to / Our cause that she should lie i’ th’ bosom of / Our hard-ruled [hard to advise] king.” (3.1.100–102). Then Wolsey is also worried about the sudden rise of Cranmer: “An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer, one / Hath crawled into the favor of the King, / And is his oracle” (3.2.102–4).
But the king has stronger reasons for his disappointment with Wolsey. An inventory of Wolsey’s possessions, sent to the king by mistake, signals his downfall. The king is deeply disturbed:
The several parcels of his plate, his treasure,
Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household, which
I find at such proud rate that it outspeaks
Possession of a subject. (3.2.126–29)
The king understands that Wolsey is not as spiritual as he seems, but, of course, he has always advised the king in secular matters. He reminds the king of “the part of business which / I bear i’ th’ state” (3.2.146–47), but it is too late, and the king has other
ideas in mind. He exits “frowning upon the Cardinal” (3.2.203 s.d.).
Right afterward, Wolsey’s soliloquy acknowledges his imminent fall, and we begin to commiserate with his fate: “I shall fall / Like a bright exhalation in the evening, / And no man see me more” (3.2.226–28). On the authority of the king, the Duke of Norfolk forces him to surrender the Great Seal, which confirms his high position as lord chancellor.
In another soliloquy he bemoans his downfall in eloquent and sorrowful images:
I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride
At length broke under me and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream that must forever hide me. (3.2.359–65)
We feel with the cardinal in his adversity, partly because he is so ready to acknowledge his own pride.
He doesn’t blame the king but accepts his current situation: “And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, / Never to hope again” (3.2.372–73). He feels within himself “A peace above all earthly dignities, / A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me” (3.2.380–81). With a new humility, he releases Cromwell from his service: “I am a poor fall’n man, unworthy now / To be thy lord and master” (3.2.414–15). His final advice to Cromwell sums up his own career: “Had I but served my God with half the zeal / I served my king, he would not in mine age / Have left me naked to mine enemies” (3.2.456–58). Wolsey’s words acknowledge that, in his secular commitment to the king, he has neglected his own spiritual role.
We learn about the death of Wolsey in act 4, scene 2, and it is significant that we have two very different character sketches of him by the queen and by Griffith, her Gentleman Usher. Katherine speaks of him as her inveterate enemy:
He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach [pride, arrogance], ever ranking
Himself with princes; one that by suggestion
Tied all the kingdom. Simony was fair play;
His own opinion was his law. I’ th’ presence
He would say untruths and be ever double
Both in his words and meaning. He was never,
But where he meant to ruin, pitiful.
His promises were, as he then was, mighty,
But his performance, as he is now, nothing. (4.2.33–42)
Griffith strongly disagrees and presents a contrary portrait of Wolsey’s inherent virtues:
Though from a humble stock, undoubtedly
Was fashioned to much honor from his cradle.
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;
Lofty and sour to them that loved him not,
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.
And though he were unsatisfied in getting,
Which was a sin, yet in bestowing, madam,
He was most princely. (4.2.49–57)
Why does Shakespeare present these two different impressions of Wolsey side by side? I think he wants to be fair to the essential ambiguity of his character. Many of Wolsey’s faults come from his devotion to the king, for which he was forced to neglect his spiritual role.
Chapter 34
The Pretty Madness of the Jailer’s Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen
There is a sharp contrast in this play between the high-born characters in the main plot and the low-born characters in the subplot. The Jailer’s Daughter, who is never named (nor is the Jailer, the Wooer, or the Doctor), is a hearty lass, direct and outspoken, who falls in love with Palamon, the nephew of Creon, in the main plot. Otherwise, the two actions never cross. Although the play is probably a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher, I am treating it without any mention of what may have been Fletcher’s share.
The Jailer’s Daughter appears in nine scenes and has more lines than Emilia in the main plot. We first see her in act 2, scene 1, where she comments admiringly on the new prisoners, Palamon and Arcite: “the prison itself is proud of ’em” (2.1.26–27), and “It is a holiday to look on them” (2.1.56). By act 2, scene 3, the Jailer’s Daughter has already fallen in love with Palamon and expresses her affection in soliloquy:
Why should I love this gentleman? ‘Tis odds
He never will affect me; I am base,
My father the mean keeper of his prison,
And he a prince; to marry him is hopeless,
To be his whore is witless. Out upon’t,
What pushes are we wenches driven to
When fifteen once has found us! (2.3.1–7)
Later in the play, the Wooer says she is 18 (5.2.29). It is interesting how many soliloquies she has, which stress her importance in the action. Her soliloquy in act 2, scene 3 is already strongly sexual—“What should I do to make him know I love him, / For I would fain enjoy him? Say I ventured / To set him free?” (2.3.29–31)—which is just what she does without any thought of the consequences for herself and her father. She says she doesn’t want to be Palamon’s whore, but she wants to enjoy him nevertheless. Marriage is, of course, impossible.
By act 2, scene 5, she has already provided for Palamon’s escape and, in another soliloquy, declares her undying love for him. She speaks with romantic intensity:
O Love,
What a stout-hearted child thou art! My father
Durst better have endured cold iron than done it.
I love him, beyond love and beyond reason,
Or wit, or safety: I have made him know it.
I care not, I am desperate. (2.5.8–13)
Remember Imogen’s love for Posthumus in Cymbeline, which is “beyond beyond” (3.2.56). But the Jailer’s Daughter’s love is more sexual:
Let him do
What he will with me, so he use me kindly,
For use me so he shall, or I’ll proclaim him,
And to his face, no man. (2.5.28–31)
“No man” means literally that Palamon will be proclaimed impotent.
In another long soliloquy in act 3, scene 2, the Jailer’s Daughter is charmingly personal in her grief at not finding Palamon where she left him:
In me hath grief slain fear, and but for one thing
I care for nothing, and that’s Palamon.
I reck not if the wolves would jaw me, so
He had this file. (3.2.5–8)
She is becoming desperate, and there is a fear that she will go mad:
I am moped:
Food took I none these two days,
Sipped some water. I have not closed my eyes
Save when my lids scoured off their brine. Alas,
Dissolve my life, let not my sense unsettle,
Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself. (3.2.25–30)
This is the only use of “moped,” meaning bewildered, in Shakespeare, and the whole speech expresses not only the Jailer’s Daughter’s fears but also her innocence. This is the last we see of her before she goes mad in act 3, scene 4. She considers herself a martyr to love.
The presentation of her madness is clearly derived from that of Ophelia in Hamlet, but the Jailer’s Daughter’s madness is more fully developed, and she sings more songs. Both she and Ophelia express a strong sexual innuendo, now that they are freed from the proprieties of civil life. The Jailer’s Daughter is lyrical, if not actually pretty, in her expression of wonder at the reality mixed with fantasy that surrounds her. In this she is clearly allied with other heroines of Shakespeare’s late romances, like Perdita, Miranda, and Imogen. In another soliloquy in act 3, scene 4, she is still looking for Palamon (as Imogen seeks Posthumus in Cymbeline):
Alas, no, he’s in heaven. Where am I now?
Yonder’s the sea, and there’s a ship: how’t tumbles,
And there’s a rock lies watching under water;
Now, now, it beats upon it [the ship]; now, now!
There’s a leak sp
rung, a sound one; how they cry! (3.2.4–8)
This sounds like the shipwreck in The Tempest. The Jailer’s Daughter is deep into fantasy as she seeks “a fine frog” who “would tell me / News from all parts o’ th’ world” (3.2.12–13). She ends the scene with a charming, folktale allusion (with strong double entendre): “O for a prick now like a nightingale, / To put my breast against!” (3.2.25–26). To sing, the nightingale was supposed to press against a thorn to stay awake. In the next scene, she participates, as “a dainty mad woman” (3.5.73), in the interlude that the Schoolmaster is putting on for the court. Her speech is still interlarded with covert sexual allusions: “I know you, y’ are a tinker: sirrah tinker, / Stop no more holes but what you should” (3.2.83–84).
By act 4, scene 3, the Doctor has appeared to counsel her father and the Wooer. He resembles the doctor in Macbeth, who asserts about the mad Lady Macbeth: “More needs she the divine than the physician” (5.1.78). In The Two Noble Kinsmen, however, the Doctor empathizes with the Jailer’s Daughter: “How prettily she’s amiss!” and “How her brain coins!” (4.3.28, 39), but he also has a credible diagnosis: “’Tis not an engraffed madness, but a most thick and profound melancholy” (4.3.47–49). Although he confesses that she has “a perturbed mind, which I cannot minister to” (4.3.58–59), he does have a practical, sexual solution: the Wooer should pretend that he is Palamon, woo the Jailer’s Daughter, promise her marriage, and, eventually, sleep with her. Shakespeare devotes careful attention to the Doctor’s psychological cure: “It is a falsehood she is in, which is with falsehoods to be combated. This may bring her to eat, to sleep, and reduce what’s now out of square in her into their former law and regiment” (4.3.93–95). The Doctor knows from experience that the sexual cure will work.
The Doctor continues his role as therapist in act 5, scene 2, where he has practical sexual advice for the Wooer, who is now dressed in Palamon’s clothes. It is all summed up in “And when your fit comes, fit her home, and presently” (5.2.11)—in other words, lie with her and be vigorous about it. The Wooer seems to need encouragement, so that the Doctor is forced to become more and more explicit: “Please her appetite / And do it home: it cures her ipso facto / The melancholy humor that infects her” (5.2.35–37). After a number of lyrical exchanges, the Jailer’s Daughter seems to be on the way to recovering her sanity. But, of course, it all depends on the love and sexual participation of the Wooer, who still plays the role of Palamon. The scene ends on an upbeat of romantic harmony:
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