IMAGERY IN SHAKESPEARE

IMAGERY IN SHAKESPEARE

Dr. S. Sreekumar

Imagery

Merriam-Webster defines imagery as the “language that causes people to imagine pictures in their minds”. Mental images created in the mind of the reader/listener are products of imagination. For example, when we come across a sentence like the following—

            ‘It was dark and dim in the forest’ —the words ‘dark’ and ‘dim’ create visual images in our mind. This is imagery at its simplest form. However, master craftsmen like Shakespeare had created complicated mental images through the clever use of language. Romeo praises Juliet thus in Act I Scene V—

            O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

            It seems she hangs upon the cheeks of night

            Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear

Rich mental images are employed here to convey the beauty of Juliet. Juliet teaches the torches to burn bright by her example. Torches dispel darkness in the night. [In Shakespeare’s England they were the only means to drive away darkness.] The poet goes on to compare Juliet to a rich jewel that hangs upon the cheeks of night, as in the ears of an African woman. Here the comparisons get multi-dimensional. The night is as black as the African woman. Her face is brightened because of the bright jewel she is wearing. Similarly Juliet brightens the dark night. Then there is a subtle implication that Juliet is unaware of her beauty as the African woman is unaware of the price of the rich jewel she is wearing. These explanations do not exhaust the meaning. Thus we can see that the use of imagery aids the reader’s imagination by enlarging his senses.

Iterative imagery— the repetition of an idea or a picture— is a marked feature of Shakespeare’s art. It is a habit of mind to have before him, some picture or symbol, which recurs again and again in the form of images throughout a play. Thus in Romeo and Juliet the beauty and ardour of young love is seen by Shakespeare as the irradiating glory of sunlight and starlight in a dark world. The idea of a tumour or hidden corruption, needing the surgeon’s knife to release it, is the ‘leading motive’ in Hamlet. In Macbeth, the image of a dwarfish and ignoble creature, clad in robes too large for him recurs again and again.

The term ‘image’ is used by leading specialists like Caroline Spurgeon with the widest possible connotations. She writes,  “When I say ‘images’ I mean every kind of picture, drawn in every kind of way, in the form of simile or metaphor, in their widest sense,  to be found in Shakespeare’s work”.  Such a picture, she further adds, “can be so extended as to take up a large part of a scene, as does the symbol of the untended garden in Richard II, or it can be suggested by a single expression—‘Ripeness is all’”.

The image may be a simple analogy from every day life—‘They will take suggestion as cat laps milk’ or it may be flashed on us in one vivid verb, ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep’. It may be every kind of Metaphor—Duncan, after life’s fitful fever, sleeping well or Macbeth supping full with horrors’.

The study of imagery provides not only a new method of approach to Shakespeare, but also throws light upon Shakespeare’s imaginative and pictorial vision. Further it also serves as an absolute beacon with regard to the vexed question of authorship.

Two major groups of Images

Images in Shakespeare can be practically divided into two groups— those from nature and those from indoor life and customs.

1. Nature

The great bulk of Shakespeare’s metaphor and similes are drawn from the simplest everyday things seen and observed in Nature. The life of English country side,  the weather and its changes, the seasons, sunrise, and dawn, the garden, flowers, trees,  growth and decay,  the sea and ships, the river and its banks, weeds and grasses, animals, birds and insects, sport and games especially snaring of birds, hunting and hacking— these are things which chiefly occupy him and remain in his mind.

Of all images of nature and outdoor life, the greatest number is devoted to one aspect of nature, what one night call the gardener’s point of view, showing intimate knowledge and observation of growth, propagation, grafting, pruning, manuring, weeding, ripeness and decay. All through his plays he thinks most easily and readily of human life and action in the terms of a gardener. This tendency expresses itself in fullest detail in the central gardening scene in Richard II, but it is ever present in Shakespeare’s thought and imagination. Thus Malcolm cries ‘Macbeth is ripe for shaking’.

In moment of stress and emotion, Shakespeare always goes back to tress and plants. Thus the most moving moment in Cymbeline is when Imogen throws herself into the arms of Posthumus and he mutters,

             ‘Hang there like a Fruit, My soul, tell the tree dies’.

Again, Othello planting the final kiss on Desdemona’s cheek soliloquizes:

            When I have plucked the rose,

 I cannot give it vital growth again,

 It must needs wither:

 I’II smell’ it on the tree”.

            Again like a gardener, Shakespeare was aware of the disastrous effects of snow on tender buds and flowers. ‘Rough winds do shake up the darling buds of May’ (sonnet XVIII) and Juliet lies ‘like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of the entire field’.

Shakespeare also has a number of images on diseases in plants- especially canker in roses. Viola in Twelfth Night ‘lets concealment, like a warm feed on her damask cheek. ‘.

Animal Imagery

Of the large animal group, the outstanding point is the great number drawn from birds. He describes their flight and their swift, accurate, easy movements.  The fell swoop of the kite, the swift flight of swallow, the confident flight of the falcon, ‘towering in her pride of place’, the hungry eagle shaking her wings’, the tiny wren fighting the owl to protect her young, the swan with bootless labour swimming against the tide— all these and many more are the quick, graceful, characteristic movements of bird life which attract Shakespeare supremely.

Out door life

Hunting and other outdoor sports provide Shakespeare with a number of images but when we look closely at the images, we get the picture of an extremely sensitive man whose sympathy was never with the hunters but consistently and obviously on the side of the hunted or stricken animal.   Mrs. Spurgeon claims that out of thirty-nine hunting images in Shakespeare, the hunt is pictured as a gay and joyous pastime only on one occasion. In all the other cases,  the dramatist’s heart goes out to the wounded animal, to the poor frightened deer that stares wildly determining which way to fly and to the deer mortally wounded ‘staying in the park, seeking to hide herself’.  From bear-baiting too, Shakespeare draws a number of images. His most vivid and effective use of it is in Macbeth’s despairing cry at the end:

                        “They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,

                         But bear like I must fight the course’

Shakespeare also mentions tennis, football, bowls, fencing, tilting, and wrestling; but there can be no doubt that bowls was the one he himself played and loved best. He has nineteen images from bowls.

2. Indoor life and Customs

Daily indoor life comes next, especially the simple indoor occupations and routine— eating, drinking and cooking, the body and its movement, sleep and dreams, clothes and materials, common handicrafts, sickness and medicine, parents and children, birth, death and marriage.

By far the largest number of images in this group is taken from the body and its movements.  He has numerous images drawn from quick nimble action such as jumping, leaping, diving, running, climbing and dancing. It is the life of things which appeals to him, stimulates him and enchants him, rather than beauty of colour or form. The epithet he uses for moon is not wan, silvery, watery, or inconstant but:

And there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon

Omitted Images

The most marked omission in this range of images is from town life and scenes – taverns, shops, streets, pageants and crowds.  Of these there are scarcely any references other than classical or biblical.  Exploration, travel and adventure in other countries, and what one may call philosophical or reflective— of each of these there are comparatively very few indeed.

Dominant Images in Histories, Comedies and Tragedies

The Most constant running metaphor and picture in the historical plays is that of growth as seen in a garden and orchard, with the deterioration, decay and destruction brought about by ignorance and carelessness on the part of the gardener.

The function of imagery in the comedies is to give atmosphere and background as well as to emphasise or re-echo certain qualities in the plays.  The most noticeable and continuous idea is that of country sports of bird – snaring and angling: both lovers being thought of as birds limed and caught in net.

The part played by imagery in tragedies is ‘analogous to the action of a recurrent theme or motif’ in a musical fugue or sonata or in one of Wagner’s operas. In Hamlet we have a number of images of sickness, disease, and blemish of the body. The idea of an ulcer or tumour, as descriptive of the unwholesome condition of Denmark is, on the whole, the dominating one. The imagery in Macbeth is more highly imaginative. A constantly recurring idea is that Macbeth’s new honours sit upon him, like a loose and badly fitting garment, belonging to someone else. Macbeth himself first expresses it when Ross greets him as thane of Cawdor.

            The thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me in borrow’d robes.

Towards the end of the play Angus vividly sums up the essence of what they all have been thinking:

            ‘Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief’?

In King Lear the dominating image is that of physical strain and strife, of bodily tension to the point of agency. Metaphors picture a human body wrenched, beaten, and scalded. People tearing one another’s flesh like monsters of the deep’, or like wolves and tigers is also constantly before us. The large number of animal images has often been noticed (notably by Bradley).  The feeling they give us is that of humanity reeling back into the beast’.  They also very distinctly augment the sensation of horror and bodily pain.

Dr. S. Sreekumar