shakespeare the contradictions of honour anita pacheco d. phil. the university of york department of

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SHAKESPEARE
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF HONOUR
ANITA PACHECO
D. PHIL.
THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE
AUGUST,1990
This thesis is dedicated
to Prof. J.A. Berthoud
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract v
Abbreviations vii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 The Concept of Honour from Antiquity
to the Renaissance 25
CHAPTER 2 Through History Towards Tragedy:
Chivalric Honour in Henry V and
Troilus and Cressida 95
CHAPTER 3 The Tragedy of the Individual:
Revenge Honour in Hamlet 194
CHAPTER 4 ,Julius Caesar and CQriolanus:
The Social Tragedy of Public
Service 279
iii
CONCLUSION 353
BIBLIOGRAPHY 360
iv
ABSTRACT
This study explores the concept of honour as it enters
into several Shakespearean plays. It presents an historical
definition of honour in the light of which Shakespeare's
treatment of the concept can be seen as a response to the
complex ethical inheritance of the sixteenth century.
Chapter 1 studies the main classical and medieval
traditions of honour and the reception by the Renaissance of
this plurality of ideas. The first section explores honour in
the context of the pagan concept of social virtue and
identifies it as an unstable secular formulation of virtue
which defines the aristocratic public function. The second
section examines the two principal medieval responses to this
secular ethic: the Augustinian denial of the human capacity
for virtue and the scholastic compromise tradition. which
grants man a limited power for well-doing and. in integrating
secular virtue into the structure of creation. provides the
framework for chivalric honour. The third section presents
honour in the Renaissance as an expression of this diverse
classical and Christian heritage. It identifies three
traditions - the chivalric. the humanist and the Calvinist -
that reflect an age of divided ethical allegiances in which
Shakespeare was led to explore honour as a problematic and
ultimately tragic concept.
v
Chapter 4 discusses Shakespeare's treatment of the
chivalric tradition in Henry Y and Troilus and Cressida. It
argues that both plays. though in very different ways.
interrogate that tradition and its claim to incorporate honour
within the system of natural law - Henry Y by exposing its
weakness as an historical model. Trojlus and Cressjda by
showing its connection to an individualistic honour.
Chapter 5 examines honour in Hamlet in the context of
the revenge ethic. It suggests that the protagonist's
contradictory task - the virtuous cause that is a mandate to
exact private vengeance - enacts the self-defeating tensions
in honour. and that this tragic conflict is played out within
a Christian universe which offers the possibility of the
transcendence of honour.
Chapter 6 explores Shakespeare's treatment of the pagan
concept of public service in Juljus Caesar and Corjolanus.
It attempts to show that Shakespeare portrays this concept
as tragically flawed because reliant for social order on an
aristocratic honour which makes individual excellence
inseparable from self-assertion.
vi
ABBREVIATIONS
The Centennial Review of
Arts and Sciences
Essays in Criticjsm
A Journal pf Enilish
Literary History
Renaissance
Hudson Review
The Journal of the History
of Ideas
The Journal of Medjeval
and Renajssance Studies
Journal of the Warburi
and Court auld Instjtutes
Modern Laniuaie Review
vii
Modern Philolo~y
Publicauon.s of the Modern
Lanauaae A_ssociat i0n of
America
BES.. ns Rev~.ew o_f E_.nolish Studies.
new series
Studies inniE lish
Literature 1500-1900
Shakespeare Survey
Stud~.es 1..n PhiloloiY
Shakespeare Quarterly
UniverSlt.y Review
University of Toronto
Yale Review
viii
INTRODUCTION
The Oxford English Dictionary offers two main definitions
of the word 'honour': 1) High respect, esteem, or reverence,
accorded to exalted worth or rank; deferential admiration or
approbation; 2) Personal title to high respect or esteem;
honourableness; 'nobleness of mind, scorn of meanness,
magnanimity' (J); a fine sense of and strict allegiance to
what is due or right (also, to what is due according to some
conventional or fashionable standard of conduct). Honour, it
would seem, has a double sense, one internal and one external
to the self. It involves both the way one is seen by others
and the way one sees oneself; both the esteem in which one is
held and the moral (or conventional) principles on which one
bases one's actions. The wording of the two definitions
establishes an integral link between them: high respect
rewards exalted worth which in turn is the title to high
respect. The semantic duality of honour. which one might
designate in the simplest terms as 'virtue' and 'reputation'.
appears with varying emphases in many critical studies of the
concept in the plays of Shakespeare. Alice Shalvi. in her
essay '"Honor" in Trojlus and Cressjda'. sets up a distinction
between the Renaissance concept of honour as virtuous activity
in accordance with the rational principles of moral law and
a rival code of honour which was focussed on reputation to the
detriment of moral dictates.1 According to Shalvi. it is this
1.Alice Shalvi. '"Honor" in Troilus and Cressida'. S!L. V
(1965). 283-302.
2