SHAKESPEARE’S FINAL PLAYS

SHAKESPEARE’S FINAL PLAYS

DRAMATIC ROMANCES

TRAGI-COMEDIES

LAST PLAYS

[Lecture notes given to graduate students—S. Sreekumar]

After the tragedies, Shakespeare, perhaps working from Stratford, seems to have discovered a new vein; and it is widely agreed that the Last Plays—the Romances, as they may with some accuracy be labeled—form a distinct group, being, in the words of Philip Edwards ‘more closely related than any other group of Shakespeare’s plays’. The dates of their composition are conjectural, but reasonably secure for all except the first: Pericles (1607), Cymbeline ( 1609), The Winter’s Tale (1610) and The Tempest (1611).

The Romances resemble each other in many ways——

1. They seem to be affected by a new disregard for psychological and narrative plausibility. They show a metrical freedom which goes beyond anything in earlier plays.  Lytton Stratchey points out that they suffer from a failure of ‘concentrated artistic determination and purpose’. 

2. There are some positive resemblances also.  All the Romances treat the recovery of lost royal children. They bring important characters near to death and feature miraculous resurrections.

3. All of them end with a final reconciliation which is usually brought about by beautiful young people.

4. Moreover all of them contain materials of a pastoral nature. They also celebrate natural beauty.

Different Explanations about their resemblances

1. It is argued that the implausibility and looseness of the plays are evidence that the author was feeling serene or rather bored or merely playful. There may be a grain of truth in this as there is an element of play in the Dramatic Romances, as of a master examining his medium in an unusually detached, experimental way.

2. Another group of critics provide allegorical interpretations assuming that Shakespeare had, like Yeats in his last years,

“…a marvellous thing to say

A certain marvellous thing—”

and he expressed it through his last plays.

3. There is a long tradition of allegorical interpretations especially with The Tempest. The Romances are called ‘myths of immortality’ by Wilson Knight whereas D.G. James calls them failed myths.

4. However, less ambitious and more empirical approaches like that of E.M.W. Tillyard—the plays work out a scheme ‘of prosperity, destruction and reconciliation’—have more staying power. This partly accounts for the tragicomic aspect of the plays, and for their general similarity, without demanding of the reader the suspension of his common sense.

5. Another explanation of an entirely different sort is that which offers theatrical reasons for the characteristic features of the Romances. The period in which they were written saw a revival of theatrical interest in Romance. Sidney’s Arcadia, and Spenser’s Faerie Queene were highly serious works with ethical and political ideas. Shakespeare did not think it improper to mix romantic plots with improbabilities for he had profound intentions. In heroic romances, characterization is not governed by psychological verisimilitude—the wicked will be very wicked, the good very good. In The Tempest the noble are beautiful and the base ugly. The Gods themselves may intervene in the action, or a noble magician may use invisible spirits to serve the ends of justice. The sea that surrenders lovers and royal families is providence; time is not the destroyer but the redeemer.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

A fundamental difficulty with the play is that a great change comes over it at the end of the second act. Acts I and II are mostly very poor stuff but Shakespeare is clearly audible from Act III.

In Acts I & II we read the story of Pericles till his marriage with the princess of Thaisa. Act III begins with a storm at sea; Thaisa seems to die in childbirth and is thrown overboard in a chest.  Washed ashore, she is revived by the priest magician Cerimon. Pericles names his daughter Mariana and leaves her with Cleon and Dionyza to be brought up. Mariana is so accomplished that Dionyza plots to kill her. But she is carried off by pirates and sold into a brothel where she successfully resists corruption and is reunited with her father when his ship arrives at Mytilene. Prompted by a vision they are reunited with Thaisa.

In Pericles we see a familiar pattern. A queen apparently dies, a princess is betrayed, a king moves endlessly over the sea from grief to grief, and finally to reunion and a restoration of harmony. The restoration of harmony dominates the whole play; after the first two acts.

The suffering king and the princess of virtue are the prototypes of the Romances. Mariana like Perdita and Miranda has that ‘better nature’ that defies corruption, however harsh the world is. Pericles himself feels a ‘great sea of joy’ rushing upon him’, then he hears the music of the spheres, token of the harmony which will be restored to humanity at the happy end.

Cymbeline

Herminge and Condell placed Cymbeline with the tragedies. Perhaps they were puzzled as to the category of so strange a play, by the unprecedented mixture of ancient Britain and modern Italy, comedy and tragedy, history and romance.

Cymbeline is in one respect a history play and for the story of Cymbeline’s disagreement with the Romans over the payment of tribute, and the subsequent war and peace, Shakespeare referred to Holinshed. But for the wager between Posthumus and Iachimo, Shakespeare drew, more directly on Boccaccio. The ancient and implausible tale goes well enough in romance, and Shakespeare stirs it up with the pseudo history, the pastoral tale of the king’s lost sons, the wanderings of Imogen in the deserts of Wales and the fairy-tale plot of the Queen’s drugs.

The opening scenes show us the anger of Cymbeline towards his only child Imogen for marrying Posthumus instead of Cloten, the Queen’s son. ‘I chose an eagle’ says Imogen, ‘and did avoid a puttock’. However the noble Posthumus is banished; the base Cloten is exposed as a braggart and a coward.

We next see Posthumus in Italy contracting his wager with Iachimo and all our attention is directed to Imogen. Then follows Iachimo’s arrival at the British court and his expression of disgust at the loose life of Posthumus in Italy. Imogen does not understand him. Even when she does, she is not equal to his Italian cunning, and allows him to send his chest to her room. The scene of Iachimo’s intrusion into Imogen’s chamber is a set piece. Its power quite disarms the criticism that it is ridiculous. Iachimo departs to Italy and Cloten returns to the suit of Imogen.

Imogen clearly tells Cloten that even the ‘meanest garment’ of Posthumus is superior to him. This rankling insult makes Cloten put on the suit of Posthumus when following Imogen to Milford Haven. His aim is to kill Posthumus and ravish Imogen.

Imogen, meanwhile, dressed as a boy (Fidele) reaches Wales and meets her lost brothers who live with their guardian Belarius. Cloten is killed by the brothers while Imogen is sleeping in the cave. On waking up she mistakes the headless body to be that of Posthumus and weeps over it.

The introduction of the royal brothers living without knowledge of their destiny is appropriate to romance. Brought up as hunters, they are nevertheless bursting with natural nobility. The boys are necessary to the massive family reunion at the end. In these pastoral scenes Shakespeare apparently presents them with the simplicity of the noble savage in The Faerie Queene.

The last act of Cymbeline is a ‘twenty-four-fold ‘denouement’ as Frank Kermode points out.  Here is the untying of all knots, a fierce abridgement of the plot. The queen dies; Imogen turns up and wins the life of Posthumus; identities are established by ring or by mole; condemnations, pardons, exposures, further condemnations and general forgiveness follow.

The last scene is hard to bring off on the stage because the too rapid untying of all those knots awakens farcical associations. Yet this scene is the focus of the play. All the separate plots and themes are brought together in a multiple recognition which is a virtuoso exercise.

The Winter’s Tale

For the story of The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare depended entirely on Robert Greene’s novel Pandosto: the Triumph of Time. Here also, he gives us the story of a divided royal family but the storm that divides the family is jealousy. Leontes, the king, suspects his wife Hermione without any cause. Fearing his jealous anger Polixenes runs away. Hermione is treated cruelly by the king and her son Mamillius dies. Soon we are told that Hermione is also dead. Her daughter Perdita is thrown away into the forest where she lives protected by shepherds.

Leontes, after Hermione’s ‘death’, is repentant. Sixteen years pass away thus. Florizel, the son of Polixenes falls in love with Perdita who is now a beautiful maiden. They run away to Sicily where Polixenes follows them. The whole business of the last act is recognition. It was presumably Shakespeare’s motive in choosing a story of prosperity broken and restored, through repentance and reunion. We have the genuine nature of Leontes’ repentance. Perdita’s identity is discovered. However the climatic scene is reserved for the scene in which the statue of Hermione is found out to be no statue at all but Hermione herself: the improbable is treated with reverence.

The Winter’s Tale has in it various elements of the tragicomic romance; in the long pastoral episode, the satyr dance, the grave, and the masque-like discovery of Hermione. Behind Perdita stand the lost princesses of higher romance and especially the Pastorella of The Faerie Queene.

The Tempest

The Tempest may be the last complete play written by Shakespeare. It is accepted to be the most mature work of Shakespeare.

In Pericles and The Winter’s Tale, the tragic consequence is the loss of family harmony and the actual loss of a daughter. In Cymbeline, there is not merely loss but also political consequences.

 In The Tempest both the political theme and the personal theme are taken together in a fresh way. In these plays the action of the play covers a number of years—long enough for the infant (that was lost) to grow up. Critics have pointed out that The Tempest is the only play where the classical unities are followed.

The over-all pattern of presenting a discord, reconciliation, and the hope for continuity is seen in The Tempest also.

One chief characteristic that is found in the play is that one character is able to control all the three planes of reality through his magical powers. Prospero is human, yet super-human in his ability to call to his aid the spirit Ariel, who is his agent to bring about the action that the poet intends.

The Tempest is also unique in that there is no direct or obvious source for the story. The play is often remarked as a creation out of nothing. Though the play has no literary sources, the reports of many travelers might have given the playwright adequate materials.  

Dr. S. Sreekumar