THE REFORMATION BACKGROUND
See the Essay on this subject on this blog, under the title “Shakespeare and.the Reformation, or the Great National Nervous Breakdown.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays analyse the chaotic and brutal politics of his times by looking at historical parallels, but he also analyses human relationships, giving people a guide to living with each other during the Protestant Reformation, a period of history when many traditional values had been overturned. This section of his work - both tragedy and comedy - centres around love. Given that today we have 24-hour cable channels bombarding us with popular music devoted to love, this should not come as a surprise, but what exactly did love mean to Shakespeare?
WHAT IS LOVE?
We owe the codification of the western view of love to the Gallego-Portuguese and Southern French troubadours. Their poetry took the neo-platonic concept of a perfection of feeling beyond that of the merely physical, and married it to the cult of the Virgin in the Catholic Church. The result was, in the cruel and male-dominated world of the Middle Ages, a school of lyric poetry that elevated the female into an ideal figure to whom homage should be paid.
Shakespeare inherited the hierarchical world-view of the mediaeval world. The objects of the visible and spiritual world were ordered in chains that descended from God. So we have the Christ figure linking God to man, with kings and popes at the top of the religious and secular worlds. Then come bishops and nobles, right down to the ‘villeins’ (note the moral overtone of the modern use of the word) and the unbaptised blacks and indians who could be enslaved and killed with a clear conscience because they were outside the system.
Linked to this concept of personal hierarchy is a cosmic one. In order to try to make sense of the movement of the heavenly objects, a theory was proposed that they were embedded in a series of spheres whose centre was the earth. These spheres moved to a heavenly music controlled by God and this explains why Shakespeare so often refers to harmony, to music and to the power of fate, which is written in the stars. A child born in Shakespeare’s day had its time of birth precisely noted because future readings of its fortune would be based on this information. From this we see how love and harmony are interconnected in Shakespeare - at the centre of a harmonious universe is God, and God is love. Therefore, as a more modern song has it - Love made the world go round.
Song is where Man can imitate the divine harmony and when he adds dance to song, the kind of highly formalised dancing of the Renaissance, in which groups of dancers moved in intricate formations, we have earthly bodies interpreting in allegorical form the movement of heavenly bodies. It is significant that 12th Night opens with references to music, love and the hierarchical nature of life:
music, love mixing of senses: sound and smell Spirit - non-physical aspect of love hierarchy of size | If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more: 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe'er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical. |
We see from the start that Orsino’s view of love is false, as he considers its spirit as a place into which things fall and decay. Orsino has chosen to put himself in this situation, but when we see Viola for the first time, she is also in chaos, but through no fault of her own.
Viola What country, friends, is this?
Captain This is Illyria, lady.
Viola And what should I do in Illyria?
My brother he is in Elysium.
Perchance he is not drown'd:
what think you, sailors?
In contrast to Orsino, who lies on banks of flowers feeling sorry for himself, Viola takes action, she disguises herself and goes off to make the best of this unknown land. Contrasting with Orsino’s self-pity we have her optimism that perhaps her brother may not be dead.
TRADITIONAL LOVE AND A NEW UNIVERSE
This transcendental vision that fuses the concepts of fate, harmony and love presents us with two problems. The first is, how do you relate an earth-centred set of neo-Platonist values to a world that is rapidly being proved to be sun-centred? To that question I would suggest that today most of us can only conceive of a Newtonian universe, despite our knowledge that an Einsteinian vision of the universe exists. Shakespeare knew that mathematicians had developed new models of the skies that conflicted with the mediaeval view, but for him the emotional truth of the old vision remained more powerful than scientific truth.
LOVE AND FATE
The second problem was a more serious one for a world where witches were still being burned. If astrologers are right, and our ways are directed by a fate which can be read in the stars, where does the Christian concept of free will come in? If my fate says that I shall be a criminal, what is the point in trying to be virtuous? Equally, where is the virtue in being good if your fate makes you unable to be wicked? Shakespeare puts this question most graphically in Macbeth. The prophecies about Macbeth’s future are made at the start of the play. Certain things will happen to this man. There is no religious problem with this - an all-powerful deity presumably controls what will happen to His creatures. These things having been revealed to Macbeth, it is his handling of the situation - his practice of free will - that is at fault. He pushes his fate forward and becomes king too early by committing the greatest of sins by killing the acting king, one of the closest creatures to God in the hierarchical system.
And, of course, one of the reasons that drives Macbeth to anticipating the outcome of his fate is the relationship with his wife. Is it love? It is a type of love, and that is what Shakespeare examines much more closely in 12th Night. One of the great themes of the Renaissance is paradox and within that area, the paradox of the destructive power of love is paramount because it contradicts the troubadour ideal. A much more obvious love than that of the Macbeths is that of Othello and Desdemona and yet it is the very strength of that love that allows Iago to turn it into the agent that destroys the lovers.
THE NEED FOR AN ANALYSIS
The major point that I have tried to make so far is that Shakespeare’s society was in crisis, and I do not mean to say that this situation applied only to the elite, to the thinkers and the politicians. The religious break affected everyone: in Elizabeth’s England it was compulsory to attend church on Sundays, and one could be fined for non-attendance. The changes from Catholic to Protestant and back again affected everyone and must have forced a re-thinking of the individual’s relationship with God.
A paradox that was perhaps more evident to the elite was that of Man’s position in the order of things. With Galileo’s discoveries, three things became apparent:
· first, Man could no longer regard himself as being the supreme being under God on a planet at the centre of the universe;
· second, it was man’s powers of reasoning and invention that developed the intellectual and mechanical tools to make this discovery, so in this sense man is not so inferior after all;
· thirdly, rational exploration of the surrounding world and universe reveals that things are not what they seem. At first sight, our senses tell us that the sun is no bigger than our hand, but mathematics tells us that it is powerful enough to dominate our solar system, and the telescope tells us that it is a whirling mass of flame with occasional dark spots on it.
So, man moves from being the centre of the physical universe to being the centre of the intellectual universe. It was unthinkable for 17th century man to abandon God, but his relationship with God had changed. Galileo’s own experiences with the Inquisition illustrate this. When he publicised the results of his rational inquiries, he was questioned by the Inquisition. When he defended his position, he was taken through the next stage of correction - being shown the instruments of torture that would be applied if he continued to maintain his views. Being a sensible as well as a rational man, Galileo agreed to sign a confession of error, but as he did so he said under his breath: “Eppur si muove” - It [the earth] still does move.
THE TYPES OF LOVE IN 12TH NIGHT
So where does this leave Shakespeare? One of the first things to say about him is that he is a perfect example of the social changes that were occurring in the general disturbance of mediaeval values. Instead of remaining in his station in life, as the son of a Stratford glove-maker, he moves to London, mixes with the disreputable actors and finds himself presenting plays (like 12th Night) for the Queen. If we were to look for Shakespeare in the play, we would find him in the character of Feste, the clown who stands back from the action and comments on it, while moving easily between all the social classes and feeling free to criticise them as he does so. There is no thought of deference to his social betters in Shakespeare (although his plays show that he had little time for those whom he considered socially inferior to him).
Just as Descartes scientifically observes and records his observations of the ball of wax changing its properties under the effect of heat and draws an analogy with human development, so Shakespeare exposes human beings to the effects of the actions of other men, the events of history, the actions of fate or simply, the faults (and qualities) of their own characters. In the case of 12th Night, we are shown fate throwing new actors (by means of the shipwreck) into the scene that has been established in Illyria (Orsino’s unrequited love, and Olivia’s household arrangements). This situation provides the heat to be applied to the beeswax of the characters, who are all changed under its effect.
Shakespeare’s analysis of the experiment is clinically divided into showing us eight different types of love
Orsino-Olivia
Olivia-Viola
Viola-Orsino
Malvolio-Olivia
Toby-Maria
Andrew-Olivia
Sebastian-Olivia
Antonio-Sebastian
The love of Orsino for Olivia is purely mediaeval - the troubadour ideal of the gentleman languishing for love of an untouchable lady. It shows the paradoxical nature of love: Orsino is rejected, but cannot do as Olivia commands, i.e. leave her alone, because to do so would prove that he does not love her as much as he says he does. Although it may be spiritually uplifting, this type of love is essentially sterile as it is unrequited.
Olivia loves the appearance of Viola. The dichotomy between appearance and reality is a major theme of the Renaissance and is related to the neo-Platonic view of the world, which says that the world we inhabit is an imperfect copy of an ideal world closer to God. (Orsino’s type of ‘platonic’ love was praised for its non-physical quality, for the same reason.) Olivia’s love may be considered to be less than perfect because its sudden and passionate nature has not left her the time and opportunity to see the truth behind Viola’s disguise.
Viola’s love for Orsino may be seen as an example of a sensible, intelligent person developing feelings for another after having observed and lived with that person. The tragedy is that the appearance Viola has chosen to adopt prevents her, like her ‘father’s daughter’, from telling of her love. Given the ugly and violent side of his nature that Orsino shows when he thinks that ‘Cesario’ has betrayed him with Olivia, we may wonder whether Viola has indeed made the right choice. We notice that both to Olivia and to Orsino, Viola makes a point of her noble birth, so that her giving and receiving of love from these two aristocrats may be legitimised.
Can we say that Malvolio loves Olivia? He certainly thinks he does, in his way. The mercenary side of affection was much more open in Shakespeare’s day. No-one criticised people for marrying for money if they belonged to the same social class. Malvolio’s crime is to try to jump out of his class. To Shakespeare’s conservative mind this would be to upset the social order of the state which, as we have seen, was hierarchically ordered by divine will. We see again, how Malvolio is deceived by appearances and how his counterfeit love is displayed by his appearance - the cross-gartering and the yellow stockings. He is referred to more than once as a puritan, that sect whose unreasonable strictness in sexual matters was as unnatural as Orsino’s, or Olivia’s before she met ‘Cesario’.
Sit Toby and Maria are an interesting case. Clearly there is here another case of marrying out of one’s class, but in a way Sir Toby has disqualified himself from his class in two ways. First of all, he is a throwback to another age. He is not a Renaissance Man, as is shown by his antics in trying to dance with Sir Andrew. When pushed into a corner, he fights, sword in hand and does not complain when he loses. His second disqualification is a result of his drinking, which deprives him of his sense of reason - a serious offence in the age of Sir Francis Bacon. We may also feel that Shakespeare’s approval of Maria’s wit and intelligence justifies her marrying above her station.
Sir Andrew’s love for Olivia is a clear-cut example of a poor knight (not an aristocrat) looking to improve his fortune by courting a rich young heiress. Clearly he has no chance of achieving this, but Sir Toby has convinced him that he has, in order that he (Sir Toby) may get money off Sir Andrew. Sir Andrew, in contrast to Sir Toby, is trying to enter the new age by learning languages and dancing, as stipulated in Baltasare Castiglione’s Il Corteggiano, the bible of courtly behaviour at the time. Nevertheless, like Sir Toby he has not found a way to earn money in a society that no longer needs knights to fight its battles when it can pay mercenaries to do it.
Sebastian’s love for Olivia is, really, no more than part of Shakespeare’s structure in restoring order to the micro-universe he has created on stage. Nevertheless, now that the outward appearance of ‘Cesario’ has been filled with the body of a pleasant, well-bred young man, there is a distinct possibility that Sebastian will be happier in his marriage than his sister will be in hers.
We cannot end without drawing attention to the over-intense affection shown to Sebastian by Antonio. Antonio’s actions, giving his friend half his money, accompanying him to territory in which Antonio’s life is in danger, go well beyond the duties of any friendship between two men who have recently met and been shipwrecked. Whether Shakespeare intended us to see it as merely an intense friendship, or as sublimated homosexual passion on the part of Antonio we cannot know, but it is shown in the play as another form of attachment between people. What is perhaps significant, in the light of accusations of homosexuality made against Shakespeare himself, is that when order is restored to the universe, Sebastian is left happily with Olivia while Antonio is left to go his own way.
THE LESSONS
What does Shakespeare want us to understand by this play? First of all, we must not forget that it is a light-hearted entertainment, but the theatre has always had a didactic and moralistic purpose in Western Europe. Plays began as depictions of biblical scenes displayed for an illiterate public, in the spaces outside churches. In England they developed into significantly named ‘morality’ plays and moved away from the churches into public squares of towns.
What I have tried to point out here is that Shakespeare is trying to help his audience make sense of a world turned upside down: the previous submission of men and women to the authority of Greek and Roman authors on the one hand, and the Catholic church on the other, had been questioned by respectively, rational inquiry into natural phenomena, and the Reformation. The idea of God as a prime mover placed outside the universe and controlling it with His love will change over the centuries to one of God being within men and women who can choose whether to allow His presence to be revealed through their daily actions.
Shakespeare is at the point in history where this change of emphasis is taking place. The old certainties have gone and the playwrights of the time, especially Shakespeare, his contemporary Ben Jonson and the slightly later Webster, help ordinary people to find their way in a world in which reality and illusion are now confused. They do this by warning with satire and by encouraging with romance. In this play Shakespeare is saying: look at the different types of love that can exist - where do you fit in? Are you an ignorant, drunken buffoon like Sir Toby, whose historical period has passed, or are you an ineffectual fool like Sir Andrew? Do you see how surface reality can delude those who fall in love? Is your own love for another person based on thoughts of material gain, like Malvolio’s, or are you in love with love itself, like Orsino?
At the end of the day, the lessons of love that Shakespeare is giving us in this play are, as Viola says, “O time! thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me to untie!” The lesson of comedy here, just like the lesson of tragedy in Macbeth, is that we must submit ourselves to our destiny while acting within the common code of morality shared by Protestant and Catholic in Queen Elizabeth’s England. God is still love and even though He may confuse us by the ways in which he allows love to appear here on earth, it is the only guiding light we have in a confused world.
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