Epilogue

Comparing contemporary poets of Spenser’s and Shakespeare’s stature is not just useful but necessary, for their disparate kinds of prowess underscores the acute diversity of this period of English literature and culture. The old labels, ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Reformation’, well suit Spenser’s focus on recalling and refining the written authority of the past; his formalist lyrics and allegorical epic masterfully draw classical and medieval wisdom into the combative hegemony of reformed Christianity. The period’s new moniker, ‘Early Modern Era’,...

End-songs: final vistas of Spenser and Shakespeare

Does Spenser’s Mutabilitie Songcomplete his epic,or point to a more transcendent scope in its final half?It derogates the pagan gods; itreforms the titan Mutability (unlike the discarded demon-titans in books 1-6); and its grand pastoral pageantfalls short of the symbolic city toward which the poem moves. Spenser’s holistic design is more clearly implied in his ordering of deadly sins (FQ 1.4). Compared with Dante’s pattern of sins, of purgations, and of ascensions in the Commedia, it offers a vital clue to The Faerie Queene’s format–based on the Christian-Platonismthat informs all its figures and sequences. Much evidence suggests Elizabeth I would admire a mystic structuring of this epic that so honors her. As for Shakespeare’s attentiveness to last things, we explore the theme of ‘summoning’ in Hamlet and King Lear, both concerned–as in The Summoning of Everyman–with ‘readiness’ and ’ripeness’ in the face of death and judgment. In The Tempest’s deft collocation of all social levels and artistic genres, and its odd convergence with Spenserian allegory, we debate the insistence on Shakespeare’s secularism by examining the range of meaning in Prospero’s ‘Art’.

Introduction

All things from thence doe their first being fetch, And borrow matter, whereof they are made, Which whenas forme and feature it does ketch, Becomes a body, and doth then inuade The state of life, out of the grisly shade. … For euery substaunce is conditioned...

Shakespeare’s plays as passional cycles: revealing the unconscious in chiastic symmetry

Shakespearean dramaturgyhighlightsapprehending a wondrous other:intense epiphanic encounters arefulcrums ofpassional cycles. Each play forms a chiastic symmetry, beginning with a two-act cycle (act 2 reversing/completing act 1) and ending with a two-act cycle (act 5 reversing/completing act 4); between them an intense one-act cycle (with no known source). These encounters recall biblical epiphanies: nativity, baptism, transfiguration, resurrection, crucifixion. Meaningful epiphany evolvesgradually: in early plays it is sensational farce or horror; in mature plays the epiphanies systematically illuminate the soul’s powers.Macbeth’s chiastic sequence neatly divides into three murders–progressively blinding anti-epiphanies: killing a king centers the opening two-act cycle, killing a best friend centers act 3, killing a mother and children centers the final two-act cycle. The three murders suggest a Freudian ‘repetition compulsion’, but the regicide is not just Oedipal, nor the only important slaying. The murders are psychically conjoined, diminishing the Macbeths by travestyingeachpsychic cathexis–sublimation, projection, introjection–annihilating all bonding. King Lear’s complementary sequence of three shamings again forms a chiastic 2-1-2 cycle of acts, but Lear’s strippings paradoxically bring psychic recovery through his epiphanal encounters with Goneril, Poor Tom, andCordelia at the center of each cycle.

Hierarchic architecture in The Faerie Queene

Christian Platonic hierarchy shapes Spenser’s epic: a hierarchic family triad, three stages of fall and of recovery. Spenser radically revises this allegory, blamingman, whomwoman lovingly seeks to cure. Books 3-5 show Britomart’s chaste power defeating all males, freeing woman from mastery and self-induced suffering. Theintellective allegory of books 1 and 2reform higher reason, then lower reason, each intripartite form:a triadic family, triple temptings, three-phasetraining of the spiritual and then natural bodies, ending withatriadic Eden.The passional allegory of books 3 and 4 is again transcendent, then immanent. Britomart brings female ascendancy by chaste skill with arms and providential goals. Sheunfolds in three heroic Graces (Florimell, Belphoebe, Amoret). In these passional books the male counterparts (Artegall, Marinell, Timias, Scudamour) are paralyzed;virtuous reunion comes by female prowess and endurance, aided by mothers and female deities. A female theologyrests on virginity and marriage, immaculate conception, Trinitarian identity, epiphanic unveilings, female endurance of a Passion. The sensate allegory of books 5 and 6 subject even Gloriana/Mercilla and Arthur toconfusing materialism. Does the ontological ‘dilation’ of books 1-6 (narrowing images of Duessa, Timias, and satyrs-salvages)show despondency about Irish terrors, or prepare for reversal in books 7-12?

The charismatic queen and the centrality of self-love

Two distinct portraits of a ‘fairy queen’imply contrary views of human natureand contrary aesthetics.In Spenser’s epic a mystic Glorianadrawsnoble heroes to realise the twelve virtues, perfecting the soul in Godlikeness. In Shakespeare’s comic stage-play asensually potent Titania evokes a different fairy realm. Directly experienced, her bodily splendor and witty combative speeches arouse desire not justinthe privilegedbut in rude commoners, who commandeer the play’s most engaging scenes. Instead of vying with Spenser’s elitequests for morality in an intellectual heaven-based allegory, Shakespeare views morality inall social classes, the humbler earthy sort matching the more pretentious. Both are ego-drivenyet communally civil. This ironic engagement with Spenser’s ‘supreme fiction’ wondrously expands Shakespeare’s own artistry.Equally polarized are the poets’ views of self-love as a touchstone of human psychology. Like Calvin and Luther, Spenser discredits self-love as shameful, both in monarchs like Lucifera and in louts like Braggadocchio, causing Redcrosse’s wretched fall and Guyon’s helpless faint. In contrast, Shakespeare’s characters, noble and vulgar, show a positive form of self-love if carefully managed, as observed by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Primaudaye.

Depicting soul and spirit: Spenser and Shakespeare

The most comprehensive divergence of Spenserian and Shakespearean psychology concerns ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’, the human essence made in God’s image. Spenser situates each soul-maiden in a hierarchic house made with Plato’s ideal geometric forms. No such structure assists Shakespearean protagonists like Hamlet, Timon, Antony, and Prospero as they assess their identity amid changeable clouds or,like Juliet and Cleopatra, amid fancies of a noble but discredited beloved. In Shakespeare’s darkest play, references to ‘soul’ nearly vanish; though Hamlet and Othello refer endlessly to their soul (a word used 40 times in each play), in King Lear the word appears only twice. Equally definitive is the poets’ contrary use of ‘spirit’. For Spenser this wordusually betokens transcendence (soul, supernatural spirits), only rarely referring to bodily spirits; but Shakespeare stresses its embodiment, staging the multilevel meanings of spirit as a continual warfare between bodily and heavenly referents: ‘the expense of spirit in a waste of shame. …’

Depicting intellect: ‘Experience, though noon auctoritee’

Spenser and Shakespeare also diverge in portraying intellect. Alma’s stately tour strikingly contrasts Lear’s impassioned self-stripping, shedding housing, clothing, and sanity with a shivering fool and demon-haunted beggar on a stormy waste. Alma shows the hierarchic harmony of belly, heart, and brain. Lear distraughtly reacts to raw nature, wounded self-love, anguished severance of bonds. The contrary depiction of intellect is evident in temptings. Spenser’s patterned sinning recaps Eden’s triple tempting, a doctrinal trope so awkwardly used by Shakespeare in Macbeth 4.3 that the scene is often cut. Spenser’s temptings(the Sansboys, Despair, Mammon, Acrasia) learnedly allude to most epic temptings. In striking contrast is theexperientialsubjectivity and psychic complexity of Shakespeare’s temptations.Divergent use of intellect also appears in moral counsel. Spenserian heroesareeducated to achieve virtue, but in books 1-6 moral advice schematically shrinks in scope–intellective authorities in 1 and 2, equivocal passional advisors in 3 and 4, problematic sensatecounsel in 5 and 6. (Would this development reverse in books 7-12?) Shakespeare’s moral authorities show a contrary development: early farces of parents and friars (notably Polonius), counselors who grow by suffering in the tragedies, artfully effective counselors in the romances.

Depicting passion

The poets also differ in portraying the four humors and their passional offshoots. The diverse humoralism of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Jonson is missed if weassume humoral consistency and ignore the role of intellect and providence in managing it. Spenser controls the humors partly by figurative houses: passion is spiritualised in the House of Holiness, it issimply moderated in Alma’s Castle. Spenser views humoral passions (and the body) negatively, needing moral guidance and Christlike rescue. In contrast tohis restrictive allegory of humor figures (fiery Pyrochles, watery Cymochles, airy Phaedria, earthy Mammon and Maleger), the humor-types in Shakespeare’s Henriad (melancholic Henry IV, choleric Hotspur, phlegmatic Falstaff, sanguine Hal) are spacious and flexible, gifted with self-conscious speech and witty mimicry of the others. Shakespeare’s view of humoral passions evolves intodazzlingly complex nuances and paradoxes in the tragedies and romances.