Shakespeare's Style Page 4

  I am determinèd to prove a villain

  And hate the idle pleasures of these days. (1.1.28–31)

  Richard is resolved to make a firm dichotomy between being a lover and being a villain.

  His successful wooing of Lady Anne in the next scene does not at all contradict this assumption, but it only proves how powerful and calculating a villain Richard is. He is impervious to Anne’s insults—“thou lump of foul deformity” (1.2.57), “diffused [shapeless] infection of a man” (1.2.78), “hedgehog” (1.2.102), and “toad” (1.2.147)—and relentlessly pursues his wooing. When Anne exits, Richard is contemptuous at her being won so easily: “Was ever woman in this humor wooed? / Was ever woman in this humor won? / I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long” (1.2.227–29). The last sentence means that he plans to have her murdered when she no longer serves his turn. Richard’s “Ha!” (1.2.238), like Iago’s “Ha” in Othello (3.3.35), is an expression of astonishment, and also a word vindicating his triumphant role-playing. He congratulates himself that he has maneuvered Anne into loving him, “whose all not equals Edward’s moi’ty? / On me, that halts and am misshapen thus?” (1.2.249–50).

  The absurdity of the present situation launches Richard into his best sardonic style:

  My dukedom to a beggarly denier,

  I do mistake my person all this while.

  Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,

  Myself to be a marv’lous proper man.

  I’ll be at charges for a looking glass

  And entertain a score or two of tailors

  To study fashions to adorn my body.

  Since I am crept in favor with myself,

  I will maintain it with some little cost. (1.2.251–59)

  Richard is thoroughly enjoying his triumph over Anne. He does not for a moment believe that he has suddenly become “a marv’lous proper man” or wondrously handsome, or that he has mistaken his “person,” or appearance. His glee is based on the credulousness and blindness of Anne. He feels fully justified in gloating over his conquest.

  In addition to his own keen dwelling on his deformity, Richard is seen by others throughout these two plays as spectacularly ugly, misshapen, and monstrous. This repeated imagery should certainly figure into the way Richard is represented on stage. He is most frequently referred to in animal images: of the boar, which is his heraldic crest, and of the hedgehog, toad, and spider.

  Already at the end of 2 Henry VI, Young Clifford calls him “Foul stigmatic” (5.1.215). This is an unusual word in Shakespeare, used only in this play and in 3 Henry VI, when Queen Margaret curses Richard and calls him “a foul misshapen stigmatic, / Marked by the Destinies to be avoided, / As venom toads, or lizards’ dreadful stings” (2.2.136–38). “Stigmatic” refers to a criminal “stigmatized” or branded with a hot iron, as Richard is branded or stamped with various deformities, including a hunchback. In many places he is called “crookback.” There are various references in these plays to Richard’s having been born with teeth. As King Henry says in 3 Henry VI before Richard stabs him: “Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, / To signify thou cam’st to bite the world” (5.6.53–54). And in Richard III, the young Duke of York, King Edward’s son—soon to be murdered in the Tower—says of Richard: “Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast / That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old” (2.4.27–28).

  For a more continuous representation of Richard as a monster or prodigy, we should look at the scene in Richard III in which he is cursed by Queen Margaret. Speaking aside at the back of the stage, she calls him a “cacodemon” (1.3.143), or evil spirit, a word used only this once in Shakespeare. When she speaks with Richard, she addresses him as “dog” (1.3.215) and lashes out against him: “Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog! / Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity / The slave of nature and the son of hell!” (1.3.227–29). She warns Queen Elizabeth:

  Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled [swollen] spider

  Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?

  Fool, fool, thou whet’st a knife to kill thyself.

  The day will come that thou shalt wish for me

  To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-backed toad. (1.3.241–45)

  Admittedly, Margaret is bitter against everyone, but she can only conceive of Richard, who slew her husband, as a diabolical force.

  Chapter 4

  The Sardonic Aaron in

  Titus Andronicus

  Titus Andronicus may be Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy, which makes the figure of Aaron the Moor especially important. He provides a model for Shakespeare’s later villains, especially for such figures as Richard III and Iago. I am thinking particularly of how these villains resemble the Vice in medieval morality plays. Aaron is sportive, merry, and ingenious in his evil-doing. He takes pride in the cleverness of his plotting, as if he were an artist of malevolence. “Sardonic” is a good word for Aaron and for other villains because it implies that they are not satanic or devilish in their ill deeds but mocking and cynical. For the most part, they seem deprived of a conscience—although Aaron genuinely loves his black baby. It is hard to explain how much satisfaction they take from being laughing villains.

  We begin act 2 with Aaron’s long, vaunting, Marlovian soliloquy, in which he lays claim to being a heroic figure:

  Then, Aaron, arm thy heart, and fit thy thoughts

  To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress,

  And mount her pitch, whom thou in triumph long

  Hast prisoner held, fettered in amorous chains. (2.1.12–15)

  Like Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Aaron is prepared for great exploits.

  His first action is to manipulate Demetrius and Chiron, Tamora’s sons, into killing Bassianus and raping and disfiguring Lavinia, his wife and Titus’s daughter. Aaron goes about his work with grossly sexual puns, reminding us of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies:

  Aaron. Why, then, it seems, some certain snatch or so

  Would serve your turns.

  Chiron. Ay, so the turn were served.

  Demetrius. Aaron, thou hast hit it.

  Aaron. Would you had hit it too,

  Then should not we be tired with this ado. (2.1.95–98)

  “Snatch” probably has its modern slang meaning, “turn” refers to the turn in bed, and “hit it” is a jesting term from archery. Aaron’s intervention in Demetrius and Chiron’s quarrel is an act of “policy and stratagem” (2.1.104). His digging a hole for the murdered body of Bassianus; his trapping Titus’s sons, Quintus and Martius, in that hole; and his burying a bag of gold nearby to implicate them in that murder is all a successful and cunning plot, and, in Aaron’s words, “A very excellent piece of villainy” (2.3.7).

  Aaron’s most ingenious piece of villainy is to persuade Titus to chop off his hand and to send it to the king to save his two sons from execution. Titus is even grateful to Aaron for his intervention: “With all my heart, I’ll send the Emperor my hand. / Good Aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off?” (3.l.160–61). We see Aaron cutting off Titus’s hand right on stage, and he has an informative aside:

  If that be called deceit, I will be honest,

  And never whilst I live deceive men so:

  But I’ll deceive you in another sort,

  And that you’ll say, ere half an hour pass. (3.1.188–91)

  Titus never sees his sons alive again, and he receives only their severed heads and his own hand back. Aaron is delighted in the extreme with his clever plot:

  O, how this villainy

  Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it!

  Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace,

  Aaron will have his soul black like his face. (3.1.202–5)

  “Fat,” meaning to nourish, is unusual as a verb in Shakespeare. Aaron feeds on his own malice.

  Aaron’s black baby provides a redeeming feature for him, and he defends it with great vigor. The Nurse presents the child as “A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue! / Here is the ba
be, as loathsome as a toad / Amongst the fair-faced breeders of our clime” (4.2.66–68). Aaron is resounding in his rejection of the Nurse’s argument: “Zounds, ye whore! Is black so base a hue? / Sweet blowse [ruddy, fat-faced wench], you are a beauteous blossom, sure” (4.2.71–72). Aaron’s ironic alliteration does not bode well for the Nurse—and this is surely an early expression of the black-is-beautiful theme. With Tamora’s sons, Aaron is brutally slangy:

  Demetrius. Villain, what hast thou done?

  Aaron. That which thou canst not undo.

  Chiron. Thou hast undone our mother.

  Aaron. Villain, I have done thy mother. (4.2.73–76)

  This is the only use in Shakespeare of “done” as a sexual term. Aaron waxes eloquent with references to Enceladus (a Titan), to Alcides (Hercules), and to Mars, the god of war, to put down Tamora’s sons and to cow them into submission:

  What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!

  Ye white-limed walls! Ye alehouse painted signs!

  Coal black is better than another hue,

  In that it scorns to bear another hue,

  For all the water in the ocean

  Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,

  Although she lave them hourly in the flood. (4.2.97–103)

  Aaron continues to expatiate on the black-is-beautiful theme, and his vigor of speech is notable in this early tragedy. It looks forward to Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

  Aaron’s plotting at this point silences Demetrius and Chiron. He suddenly kills the Nurse, with colloquial and jokey exclamations: “Wheak, wheak! / So cries a pig preparèd to the spit” (4.2.146–47). Is that the sound a pig makes when it is slaughtered? It hardly matters, since Aaron is now riding high on an energetic climax. His explanations to Tamora’s sons seem hardly necessary: “O, lord, sir, ‘tis a deed of policy! / Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours? / A long-tongued babbling gossip? No, lords, no” (4.2.149–51). “Policy” is the villain’s word par excellence in Shakespeare. It is interesting how vividly Aaron’s words define the Nurse’s brief role in the play.

  When Aaron is captured by Lucius and the army of the Goths, his final confessions are full of a bizarre glee at his extraordinary success as a villain. Although he is a confirmed atheist, Aaron insists on Lucius’s oath that he will promise to bring up his black baby before he will say anything about his exploits. Again, Aaron’s speech is vigorously colloquial and slangy to express his enjoyment at all the mischief he has done. He reports what actually happened with Lavinia. Demetrius and Chiron “cut thy sister’s tongue and ravished her, / And cut her hands, and trimmed her as thou sawest” (5.l.92–93). “Trimmed” is an unusual word, a grossly comic word, and Lucius is shocked: “O detestable villain! Call’st thou that trimming?” (5.1.94). Aaron is obviously enjoying his confession, especially the sense of horror it provokes in Lucius: “Why, she was washed, and cut, and trimmed, and ’twas / Trim sport for them which had the doing of it” (5.1.95–96). Aaron is punning on the word “trim,” which usually means nice or pretty. He is reveling in his heavy irony.

  Aaron’s final triumph is in his report of how Titus Andronicus asked him to cut off his hand in order to free his two sons from execution. It was all so supremely pointless that Aaron cannot control his mirth: “I played the cheater [escheator] for thy father’s hand, / And when I had it drew myself apart, / And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter” (5.1.111–13). And, again, when Titus got his hand back with the heads of his two sons, Aaron could hardly restrain himself:

  I pried me through the crevice of a wall,

  When for his hand he had his two sons’ heads;

  Beheld his tears and laughed so heartily

  That both mine eyes were rainy like to his. (5.1.114–17)

  This is Aaron’s “sport” (5.1.118), a word much used by Iago.

  Aaron is unrepentant. His recital of his deeds is a bravura piece for him, and these are certainly his most important speeches in the play. His gleeful villainy is boundless and unquenchable:

  But, I have done a thousand dreadful things

  As willingly as one would kill a fly,

  And nothing grieves me heartily indeed,

  But that I cannot do ten thousand more. (5.1.141–44)

  The mention of killing a fly recalls the strange mad scene of act 3, scene 2. Aside from his devotion to his black baby, Aaron is thoroughly diabolical, in a way that is different from Shakespeare’s subsequent villains. He delights in tormenting Lucius:

  If there be devils, would I were a devil,

  To live and burn in everlasting fire,

  So I might have your company in hell,

  But to torment you with my bitter tongue! (5.1.147–50)

  But remember that Aaron is an atheist who doesn’t believe in hell or devils. This is, therefore, a purely speculative projection of Aaron’s diabolical nature.

  Chapter 5

  Who Tames Whom in

  The Taming of the Shrew?

  Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is an early comedy that raises paradoxical questions. It is ostensibly a “shrew” play following in the tradition of other “shrew” plays with heroines that are “froward,” “curst,” and “shrewish,” favorite words for Kate in Shakespeare’s play. But we must also think of this play in its context, written around the time of The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet. It is wrong, I think, to believe that Shakespeare is suddenly a confirmed misogynist in The Taming of the Shrew, whereas in other plays of this period his women are intelligent, sprightly, witty, as well as forceful and independent. It’s a real question, I believe, to ask who tames whom in this play or what taming is all about. Already in act 3, scene 2, Gremio is claiming that “Petruchio is Kated” (3.2.244), meaning he has met his match.

  Petruchio is identified as a fortune-hunter from the beginning of the play. He tells his friend Hortensio that “wealth is burthen of my wooing dance” (1.2.67). He means to “wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua” (1.2.74–75). It doesn’t matter if his bride is “foul” (ugly), “old,” “curst and shrewd,” and “rough,” so long as she has an attractive dowry. He has a specific plan to win Kate by contradicting everything she says and insisting on her sweetness and obedience—in other words, he plans to tame her. The word is used to refer to Petruchio’s intention to reeducate Kate, to reform her to the conventional expectations of a good wife.

  As he tells us in a soliloquy in act 4, scene 1, the taming process is based on falconry, the way a wild hawk, or “haggard,” is meticulously trained to hunt game. Petruchio is confident of his ability to transform Kate into an obedient wife. He is “politic,” a word closely associated with politicians like Polonius in Hamlet, and he thinks of himself as a kind of king when he says: “Thus have I politicly begun my reign, / And ’tis my hope to end successfully” (4.1.177–78). He refers to Kate as his “falcon” (4.1.179), who is now hungry (“sharp and passing empty”), but she will not be fed until she “stoop” (4.1.180), or swoop down onto the lure.

  That is not all that Petruchio intends to do; he will also prevent Kate from sleeping until she is properly trained:

  Another way I have to man my haggard,

  To make her come and know her keeper’s call,

  That is, to watch her [keep her awake] as we watch these kites

  That bate and beat and will not be obedient.

  She eat no meat today, nor none shall eat.

  Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not. (4.1.182–87)

  This animal taming seems cruel, but we know that Petruchio is engaging in macho, boasting about his skill: “This is a way to kill a wife with kindness” (4.1.197). We need to remember that he suffers all of the privations of Kate. He is as deeply embedded in the taming process as Kate is.

  To return to Petruchio and Kate’s initial encounter in act 2, scene 1: Kate shows herself to be witty and boldly sexual in her dia
logue with Petruchio. She is no pushover as Petruchio imagined. Their give-and-take is laced with overt sexual references:

  Kate. What is your crest? A coxcomb [a fool’s cap]?

  Petruchio. A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.

  Kate. No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven [coward].

  Petruchio. Nay, come, Kate, come, you must not look so sour.

  Kate. It is my fashion when I see a crab [crab apple]. (2.1.223–27)

  Kate is not to be put down, despite Petruchio’s bravado and his clearly stated intent: “For I am born to tame you, Kate, / And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate / Conformable as other household Kates” (2.1.269–71). Kate’s interest is engaged in this wooing scene. Although she may be offended by Petruchio’s male posturing, she is attracted by no one else in the play.

  After her marriage, Kate suffers grievously in Petruchio’s country house, in what should be her honeymoon, but Petruchio suffers with her, going without food and sleep. The marriage is not yet consummated. We sense that Kate is becoming more polite and kind in act 4, scene 1. When Petruchio strikes a servant without much cause, Kate apologizes for him: “Patience, I pray you. ’Twas a fault unwilling” (4.1.145). Her choleric testiness is being reduced, and, in this respect, Petruchio’s taming has an educational function. By act 4, scene 3, Kate is becoming humble:

  What, did he marry me to famish me?

  Beggars that come unto my father’s door,

  Upon entreaty have a present alms;

  If not, elsewhere they meet with charity.

  But I, who never knew how to entreat

  Nor never needed that I should entreat,

  Am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep,

  With oaths kept waking and with brawling fed.

  And that which spites me more than all these wants,