Brennan Anthony S.

389 Pages·2014·19.6 MB·English

THE
THE IDOLS OF TRIBE
THE IDOLS ~'t" T.\!.; '!.~Hf:E~
A STUDY OF 'l'!-1~ HC' £ 8? '..~rn:
COMMENTATOR :;1 SHAl~.BSPEAiIB1 3
TRAGiIDIES
By

Anthony Stuart Brennan, M.A.

A 'I'hesis

Submitted to the Facd ty cf ;raduate Studies

in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements

for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

McMaster University

(October) 1967
Doctor of Philosophy (1967) McMaster Unbersity
(English) Hamilton, Ontario
Title: The Idols of the Tribe: A Study of the Role of the Commentator
in Shakespeare's Tragedies.
Author: Anthony Stuart Brennan, B.A. (Oxford University)
M.A. (McMaster University)
Supervisor: Professor B. W. Jackson
Number of Pages: vii, 382
Scope and Contents: General problems concerning Shakespeare's ethical
stance are related to the role of the commentator
in his drama. A survey of Elizabethan and Jacobean
drama indicates that there was a development from
formal choric devices toward commentating
characte~s
who are absorbed into the dramatic structure. Factors
which may have influenced Shakespeare's use of the
commentating figure are suggested. After a preliminary
study of Shakespeare's methods of presentine commentnry
in his history plays, the thesis concentrates on the
varied ways in which Shakespeare develops the role of
the commentator in his major tragedies. The conclusion
relates the problems which Shakespeare examines by
means of this distinctive feature of his tragic vision
to the work of other major Renaissance writers.
v
There arc and can be only two ways of searching into and di.scovering
truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most
general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it
takes for settled and immovable, proceed::> to judemcnt and to the
discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. 'l'he
other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by
a general and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most eirneral
axioms last of all.· This is the true way, but as yet untried.
The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself,
and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that
the sense of man is the measure of all things. On the contrary, all
perceptions as well or' the sense as of the mind are according to the
measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the
universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which
receiving rays irregularly, and discolors the nature of thingc
distort~
by mingling its own nature with it.
1
Francis Bacon, The New Organon and Related Writings, ed., by
F. H. Anderson (New York, 1960), XIX, p. 43.
2 .
Ibid., XLI, p. 48.
ii
TO MY PARENTS

iv
PREFACE
I have used the Tudor Edition of Shakespeare's Complete Workf:',
edited by Peter Alexander, throughout this study.
The Bibliography contains a selective list of the works which
I have found useful in conducting this study. Complete references for the
footnotes are supplied. I have also included references for the minor
drnmatjc works whi.ch I have discussed. I have not, however, included
references to the works of the major dramatists which I examined since
such works are generally available and my discussion does not involve
reference to any specific edition.
I would like to acknowledge help from several sources in the
preparation of this thesis. First and foremost I wish to thank Dr. B. W.
Jackson who has supervised my work. His patient criticism, perceptive
suggestions and constant encouragement have helped me immeasurably in
shapine this thesis into its final form. He has, indeed, given the imprcssior.
of being "As one, in suff'ring all, that suffers nothing". My thanks are
due also to the trustees of the Queen Elizabeth II Ontario Scholarship
whose grant enabled me to undertake this research. I am grateful to the
Graduate Studies Office at McMaster for the travel grants which enabled
me to make indispensable visits to the Folger Shakespeare Library. I
owe a debt of ·gratitude to Maurice James who first aroused my interest
in Shakespeare and helped to shape my ideas with his own profound enthusi~sm
ann scholarship. Finally, I would like to thank my wife whose sympathy and
encouragement have helped me throughout the writing of thio thesis. Her
criticisms and suggestions have been a constant resource for me in clarifyjng
my ideas.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page
PREFACE vi
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. CHORUSES AND COMMENTATORS 28
III. SHAKESPEARE'S COMMENTATQRS - POSSIBLE INFLUENCES 58
IV. COMMENTARY IN THE HISTORY PLAYS 98
v.
-'CYNICAL COMMENTATORS 143
VI. ROMEO AND JULIET 193
VII. MENENIUS 211
VIII. .IENOBARBUS 234
IX. HORATIO 259
x.
KING LEAR 279
XI. CONCLUSION 349
BIBLIOGRAPHY 372
vii
I
INTRODUCTION
l
I am concerned in this study with a group of secondary characters
in Shakespeare's tragedies whose dramatic functions have been too readily
taken for granted. Characters such as Enobarbus, Horatio, Apemantus and
Lear's Fool are often regarded as comfortingly straightforward, known entities
that can be labelled "choric11 , base camps from which to begin the desperate
struggle of scaling the major peaks - the tragic heroes. Far from being
simple and obvious, the function of such characters is of the very essence
of the complicated process of tragedy. It is through the views of
characte~s
such as Mercutio, Friar Laurence, .Kent and Menenius that the problems of
the tragic hero are re-examined from a different perspective. There is no way
of fitting such characters into a rigid pattern. They are not used
unvaryir.~ly
in a conventional way to serve a simple dramatic function. They respond in
distinctly individual ways to the particular circumstances of the tragic world
in which they find themselves. Often friend to the hero, they are as liY:ely
to turn up in _Fool's motley, as servant, as cynic, or trusted counsellor.
There is no epithet which will adequately cover all of them. I shall call them
generally and most frequently 'commentators', though some of them fit more
comfortably into that role than others, some maintaining a role of detached
observation, others becoming embroiled in action. They are commentators in
the sense that they usually offer an independent viewpoint which we car.. iistin­
guish from that of the hero, a version of events based usually on a
see~ingly
detached evaluation wiich contrasts with the versions of those enmeshed in the
action. I shall also call some of the characters 'plain-dealers', 'truth­
2

tellers•, 'blunt, honest men', 'worldly-wise observers' when a
sue~ de8cri~tion
seems to pinpoint more clearly a particular aspect of their commentary.
Obviously each tragic world in Shakespeare is isolated, with separate problems
which demand different solutions. Yet all of these characters seem to have
certain broad-based functions in common. Many of them attempt to draw the
hero away from the dizzying heights of tragic involvement to a more fartiliar
and established world, or they try to interpret the world in which they find
themselves in what, in more normal conditions, might be seen to be a realistic
way. Almost all of them are, in their various ways, blessed with the belief
that they can see the world through clear eyes, and that in a reasonable,
common-sensical way they can perceive truths about the nature of their world
which seem to be obscured from those around them. I think that Shakespeare
was constantly aware that certain of the secondary characters must be used to
bridge the gap which the development of tragic situations interposes between hero
and audience. The unifying factor in a study of such characters is that they
seem to be used in a distinctive way to communicate effectively the impact of
tragedy to an audience.
The tragic heroes are remarkable and unusual characters and it is
not to be thought that we can easily have traffic with such men. They have
to be interpreted to us, translated or transmitted through a variety of mediums ­
our representatives in the tragic world who find themselves far from the normal
world which we, the audience, inhabit. It is generally recognized that we
would be unable to comprehend fully the tragedy of Liar if we did not see it
set against the more 'normal' preoccupations of the Fool, Kent and Poor Tom.
In face of Lear's titanic anger on the heath, his vagabond entourage bend their
entire efforts to the accomplishment of one seemingly very simple and normal
task - they struggle to find shelter for Lear, to get him in out of the rain.
3

This normal reaction to the weather tests the will and wit of all· charocters
around Lear for the entire central section of the play. It is the
interposit~on
of these characters, whose endeavours in contrast to Lear's preoccupations
seem ludicrous, which enables an audience to understand more 'clearly the
extraordinary nature of Lear's struggle with the gods and his need for divine
retribution to punish his daughters.
It has long been a critical commonplace that Lear's world is much
more appallingly tragic by virtue of its contrast with the world of Gloucester.
Because Gloucester is both bewildered by his situation and seeks consolation
in commonplace sentiments that are the coin of a much more general attitude
to grief and distress, Lear's world is distanced by contrast but also made
more apprehensible because of the careful gradation of tragic forces. A
.. ­
younger brother abusing his ear against an elder brother is closer to
fathe~'s
normal experience than a king carving up his realm on the basis of a competition
in rhetoric. We are not at home in any part of the Lear world but we can bear
to be in it and can' open ourselves to its terrible meanings more successfully
because Gloucester's family shares the same world. Shakespeare's tragic world
is above and beyond us but it reaches us and affects us deeply because of its
complex portrayal of secondary characters sucked into the trigic whirlpool,
characters who can relate easily to an audience because they, too, are bewildered
and appalled by the magnitude of events around them.
I take it that the whole world of the tragi~ro as a literary fiction,
as an intensification of even abnormal experience, was beyond the experience
of every member of the Elizabethan audience. The term 'normal', then, as referring
to the commentators, is used relatively. These characters in Shakespeare's
tragedies operate on assumptions which are more nearly in conformity with those
of the real world with which the Elizabethans, in their vast multiplicity of