The Myth of Deliverance: Reflections on Shakespeare's Problem Comedies

115 Pages·1993·4.43 MB·English

by  Northrop Frye

THE MYTH OF DELIVERANCE
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NORTHROP FRYE
The Myth
of Deliverance
REFLECTIONS ON SHAKESPEARE'S
PROBLEM COMEDIES
Introduction by A.C. Hamilton
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
©University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1983, 1993
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-7781-1
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Frye, Northrop, 1912-1991.
The myth of deliverance
Based on the Tamblyn lectures, given at the
University of Western Ontario on 25-27 March 1981.
Reprint of 1983 ed. with new introduction.
ISBN 0-8020-7781-1
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 - Comedies.
I. Title.
PR2981.F78 1993 822.3'3 C93-094993-5
The first edition was published with the help of a grant from the
University of Western Ontario, as administrator of the Tamblyn
funds, and a grant from the Ontario Arts Council under its block
grant program.
Contents
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION ix
1
The Reversal of Action 3
2
The Reversal of Energy 35
3
The Reversal of Reality 61
The Tamblyn Lectures, devoted to the cultivation of the humane
arts and sciences, were established by John and Helen Tamblyn in
memory of their parents, Dr and Mrs W.F. Tamblyn and Dr and
Mrs F.K. Hughes. Their gift demonstrates the continuing commit-
ment of the Tamblyn family to the welfare of the University of
Western Ontario. The series was inaugurated in 1981 with the
lectures upon which this book is based.
Preface
THIS BOOK is based on the Tamblyn lectures, given at the Uni-
versity of Western Ontario on 25, 26, and 27 March 1981, as
the inaugural series. I am grateful to many at that university for
the honour of inviting me to give the lectures and for their hospi-
tality during my visit. I think particularly of Dean John Rowe,
Professor James Reaney, and Professor John Graham, along with
so many of my friends and former students who made the occa-
sion festive.
I have written about these plays of Shakespeare before, and con-
sequently some repetition of earlier work is inevitable; but the
main course of the argument is different, and I hope the little book
will suggest something of what the study of Shakespeare has
invariably been for me. One begins by reading or seeing a play like
other plays, subject to the conditions and limitations of its own age
and to our corresponding limitations in receiving it. One ends with
the sense of an exploding force in the mind that keeps destroying
all the barriers of cultural prejudice that limit the response to it. In
other words, we begin with a notion of what the play might
viii Preface
reasonably be assumed to mean, and end with realizing that what
the play actually does mean is so far beyond this as to be in a
different world of understanding altogether.
N.F.
November 1981
Introduction
Frye wrote this book during the time he had become totally
committed to fulfilling what he always held would be his
canonical work, a book on the Bible and literature. By De-
cember 1980, the manuscript of the first volume, The Great
Code: The Bible and Literature, had been sent to his publisher,-
and while planning its sequel, Words with Power, he spent the
first three months of 1981 setting down his reflections on
Shakespeare's three problem comedies, and then until Novem-
ber turning the lectures into a book. These circumstances help
to explain the argument he shaped out of his reflections, as
summed up in the book's title. The central myth of the Bible,
from whatever point of view one reads it/ he writes in The
Great Code, 'is also a myth of deliverance' (50); and since, as
he writes here, the climax of most forms of comedy is 'a vision
of deliverance or expanded energy and freedom' (14), the three
problem comedies present a myth or story of deliverance.
Deliverance, being synonymous with 'expanded energy and
freedom,' implies a heightened consciousness by which one
may actively - that is, imaginatively - shape reality rather than
remain passively dominated by it. Instead of salvation from the