Thesis: Here is Whitaker's statement of the "fundamental thesis" of his study: It is, quite simply, that Shakespeare was at one with his dramatic contemporaries. Even in his greatest plays their habits of workmanship appear, and we will understand him better if we first recognize the implications of this fact and then ask why, and in what ways, he differed from his fellows and surpassed them. I believe, as do many of my colleagues, that Shakespeare was a profoundly thoughtful man, familiar with the standard learning of his day; but I have discovered, as I have lectured throughout the country on viewpoints I was developing, that this view of Shakespeare and especially the attempt to interpret his works in traditional Christian terms still need to be argued to an extent I would not have anticipated. I am also convinced that Shakespeare believed ideas have consequences and that he felt obliged, more than any of his contemporaries, to square his plays with his moral and philosophic assumptions. How he did so becomes one approach to a study of his technique as a writer of tragedies. (vii)Whitaker's first two chapters survey the background of Elizabethan tragic practice and theory. The third chapter makes the point that although Shakespeare's early tragedies "exemplified standard forms of tragedy," they "had in common two characteristics that set them apart from contemporary plays: their much superior dramatic structure and their tending systematically to relate the particular action to a larger background, whether the designs of Providence or the nature of kingship" (133). In his fourth chapter, Whitaker presents his ideas about the characteristics of Shakespeare's later tragedies. Whitaker says that Shakespeare found his path to great tragedy when he wrote Julius Caesar, in which Brutus appears as Shakespeare's first true tragic hero, one "whose hamartia was a moral error grounded in pride that made him responsible for the collapse of his party and his own death" (134). In Whitaker's opinion, "Moral error" is the key to everything. He says that in Shakespeare's best tragedies "the hero is confronted with a crucial temptation to choose a lesser or apparent good, which is being urged upon him by his own appetite, by one or more human beings who have their own reasons for wishing him to choose falsely" (141). This plot pattern, Whitaker says, is "essentially a way of dramatizing in terms of a specific exemplum and realistic characters the psychomachia of Christian tradition that had also been basic to the morality plays" (142). The medieval morality plays were lessons in sin and salvation, featuring allegorical characters such as Everyman, Death, Good Deeds, and Repentance. Whitaker asserts that Shakespeare's characters are also meant to teach lessons. The protagonist has the greatest "capacity for good or evil," and his "fatal moral act [is] central to the action of the play" (157). The other characters represent forces that push the protagonist towards sin or salvation. In addition, Shakespeare's characters provide commentary of the kind that we might expect from the Chorus in a Greek tragedy. Whitaker writes, "All the main characters and all the supporting expository characters are endowed with an understanding of moral principles, an ability to analyze action, and an extraordinary insight into the hero's nature" (158). Thus Shakespeare is able to write exciting, realistic drama while at the same time teaching the lessons of Christianity. Hamlet as the Black Sheep: Whitaker finds a way to make his theory fit all of Shakespeare's great tragedies -- except for Hamlet. His disdain for the play is so great that he treats it as mere warm-up for King Lear. He says that King Lear contains better characterization, more pointed exposition, and fewer loose ends. Above all, King Lear is superior in the realm of ideas: Both plays devote a large amount of space to intellectual concepts. In Hamlet these passages tend to be outright philosophizing, and they are often attached to the surface of the play. That is, they neither interpret events in progress nor motivate actions to come. In King Lear, on the other hand, the philosophy not only interprets and motivates action but is basic to the entire structure of the play. (184)The climax of Whitaker's denunciation of Hamlet occurs in the following: The most spectacular example of dramatically irrelevant learning is, of course, the closet scene. Elizabethans, as everyone knows, held eloquence in great respect; they were convinced that, among its other powers, it might move the guilty to repent. A considerable list of scenes could be collected from Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in which a powerful exhortation moves a guilty soul to fear of God and repentance. In the old King Leir, the murderer sent by Gonorill and Ragan is so moved by the eloquence of Leir and Perillus (Kent) that, at an opportune clap of thunder, he lets fall his daggers at their feet (IV.vii.254-294). The scenes that most closely rival Shakespeare's are those between Melantius and Evadne in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maides Tragedy and between Hippolito and Bellafront in Dekker's The Honest Whore. Both date from some years later than Hamlet. The closet scene in the old Hamlet play may have been the first of these sensational dramatic exhortations. Shakespeare's closet scene, in which a grief-stricken son confronts an adulterous and incestuous mother, remains among the most effective of them all theatrically. Hamlet's exhortation is not only among the most theatrical; it is indubitably the most learned. If we may infer from elements in Belleforest that carry through into Shakespeare, he found a great deal of passion psychology in his source play. This he retained (cf. III.iv.65-88), providing for the traditional view of sin a brilliant summary in the phrase "reason panders will" He added moral theology, particularly the discussion of repentance (ll. 144-159) and of habit (ll. 161-169). He was apparently at great pains to back up, or perhaps atone for, the theatrical effectiveness of the scene with a maximum of sound moral instruction. He produced a dramatic sensation. But it is almost pointless! In earlier versions of the story Gertrude had allied herself with Hamlet, although it is doubtful how much her aid amounted to. I am convinced myself that she became his supporter in Shakespeare's first version. But in our present play they arrive at no genuine understanding; Gertrude, though acknowledging her guilt, makes no promises except not to betray Hamlet, nor do we see any evidence later that she has actually taken the steps that Hamlet prescribes. The killing of Polonius is, of course, necessary to future action. Otherwise the scene provides us with a chance to see the ghost once more and to watch Hamlet round upon his mother in language offensively specific. But that is all, and lecturing Gertrude gets the play nowhere. Bottom Line: Whitaker doesn't like it that he can't make Hamlet fit his theory. |