In the opening Tale of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales the Knight uses the Romance vehicle to distance himself, the acme of Christian knight errantry, from the pagan (and blighted) flowers of chivalry--Theseus, Palamon and Arcite--he pictures forth . Chaucer by this means can explore the nuances of a European chivalric code anachronistically endowed upon the remove of an anterior world . In Shakespeare's Last Plays--save in Henry the Eighth , which here shall be dealt with as coda to the others--that Romance formula is similarly utilised . Where Chaucer's is a testing-ground for knightly proving, Shakespeare's is one for kingly proving--and often by way of reproving . The tonic idea of the Last Plays is the Divine Right of Kings---a concept maintained in Shakespeare's England and on through and after its temporary quietus during the Commonwealth . The Court, as place and concept, and the idea of exploring its parameters--these are too close to home . Distance in time and location is achieved by the Romance formula, so that Shakespeare's multi-faceted essay in kingly proving is beyond reproof, yet stands, in the exemplars depicted, as composite cautionary Tale .
Pericles
The pelagian dispersal of Tyre's prince, Pericles, and then of his family, entails encounters by choice or perforce with a scale --which is in proof a moral scale-- of fellow maritime states . Tharsus's royal leadership is nothing but name : Dionyza ignobly promotes the attempted clandestine murder of a king's daughter ; Cleon sanctions the deed by omission of public condemnation . And when Tharsus is reduced from repletion to stark penury, its leaders are feckless, gloomy, fatalistic . Tharsus's royal Worthies are unworthy of office, however much Kings are earth's gods(I,1:103), as the young Pericles has it . Mytilene by contrast evinces a cheery vivacity perhaps coextensive with mercantile prosperity . Yet it is but a different moral sink : openly marketing in slavery, maidenheads and child prostitutes ; freely (but at a price) dispensing poxy death ; its fulcrum a brothel, with the Governor among its polyglot clientele .
Both Tharsus and Mytilene are seen as recipients from the sea--from those who come there by sea-- of succour, goods, people, wealth, prosperity, repletion--at which point inversion, self-indulgence, the cultivation of pleasures admit decadence and a moral turpitude permeating high-born and low . Neither Tharsus nor Mytilene actively engage with the sea, whether through trade to foster a resurgence of prosperity or, in times of repletion, to dispense surfeit--as does Pericles--to the needy abroad . Antioch similarly is a recipient maritime state, and here we find its king promoting Pericles' regicide, as well as a royally conceived riddle which encodes deception . Antioch as state shares name with, and the morals of, its King . Its inversion, of some duration, is refined to the nicety of incest . Meanwhile, famous princes like thyself are drawn by report(I,1: 34-5) here and die for want of the fruit of yon celestial tree(I,1:21), and want of wisdom .
In Pentapolis and Ephesus, there is the embryo of social corruption and moral lassitude : rich misers(II,1:29) are voracious, simonical and prosperous ; gentlemen not keen on our husbandry marvel that Cerimon, Rich 'tire about and not compelled(III,2:20-26), should be . But these negative elements are greatly outnumbered by positive ones, which stem from a will to use one's existential endowment, natural or material, and dispense it altruistically : the impoverished Fisherman readily succours Pericles with their homely fare(II,1: 81-3), and provide him for the tourney ; Simonide provides wise government to a consequently happy state ; Cerimon gives his knowledge, personal pain and purse(III,1:46-7) to restore fellow human beings ; Marina preaches divinity(IV,5:4) and wins high and low over from decadence to more cultured ways ; Tyreans spend their adventurous worth(II,4:51) at high expense(III,Prol.20) to find and restore Pericles to the throne . In all of these, the altruistic utilisation of one's personal endowment is coextensive with an eclipse of material wealth by the radiating wave-effect of moral wealth . In all, too, that altruist actively engages with the sea--the fishermen, the Tyreans--or is recipient--Simonides, Cerimon, Marina--from it , only to restore the sea's endowment to physical or moral health .
Pericles, as Prince of a Tyre [its sound summons up the notion of 'tire',belongings] capable of succouring impoverished Tharsus, has an existential material endowment . His natural endowment is wisdom, sufficient to read Antiochus's riddle, but flawed in that he would risk Tyre's kingship on his capacity to read a riddle, solely to know curious pleasures and satisfy enflamed desire(I,1:16-20) . Here in Tyre's leader are the beginnings of the self-seeking, voluptuousness and decadence already established in Antioch, Tharsus and Mytilene . Further, this leader of a maritime trading state unwisely ascribes the earth as source of my riches(I,1:51) . And, before his pelagian experiences instruct him otherwise, Pericles opines that Kings are earth's gods(I,1:103), with Antiochus a something Jove : Great king(I,1:91), great Antiochus...so great...so huge(I,2:17) . Lastly, Pericles has a fine notion of himself--For he's no man on whom perfections wait(I,1:79)--and at I,1:122ff. he both expands on what he has already shown---his ascertainment of the riddle-solution---and describes his own wisdom : he portrays their sin, but cannot see his own sin of pride .
This early characterisation of Pericles is internal ideate to the external idea concerning Tyrus and its Prince in the OT book of Ezekiel,26-28 . There the doom laid on Tyre will be effected militarily and by a destructive sea, as it in Pericles is the conjecture of military invasion and exactions on his people which send Pericles into exile and into the power of an apparently destructive sea . Pericles, like his Biblical counterpart, is 'wiser than Daniel ; there is no secret that they can hide from me' . He has 'riches'. But he is also 'a man, and not a God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God' .
Shakespeare's Prince of Tyre has, however, for all his early demerits, the saving grace of thinking on and effecting the relief of stricken Tharsus while trammelled with concerns for his own country . And, duly chastised by the sea and thrown up bereft of Tire on Pentapolis's shore , he is prompt now to change from his earlier notions of royal divinity and of Antiochus's greatness in power to an awed humility before Nature, the angry stars of heaven, the greatness of your powers(II,1:1-8), and to an acknowledgment that Time's the king of men(II,3:45) . The Pentapolis episode, in which Pericles is consistently humble--in demeanour and apparel--before royals, knights and commoners, is replete with Christian analogues . Simonides, the Fishermen, their complaint of simonical practice in Pentapolis, Simonides' accusation of Traitor(II,5:54), Pericles's genuflection (II,5:43) and persistent self-abasement--all evoke Simon Peter the 'Rock'[Matthew,16-18, and 'Tyre', from Hebrew 'tzor', rock], the 'fishers of men'[Matthew,4:19], the betrayal by Judas, Simon's son[='Simonides'] set forth in John,13, and there, too, Christ's notable act of self-abasement in washing his disciples' feet . The effect of this correlation is that Simonides and Pericles interchangeably are identified with a conflation of Christ and Simon Peter, of divine and human, of Redeemer and mortal, in token that they redeem and be redeemed .
So far on his odyssey, Pericles has only seen, felt and been humbled by the sea's destructive power, yet it throws him up on Pentapolis, where he is restored by king and commoner, and where he meets and wins Thaisa . Again, the raging sea appears to kill the parturient Thaisa, yet it delivers her comatose into the restoring hands of Cerimon, whereas the 'wise' Pericles delivers Marina into the care of Tharsus's royal regicides . The sea debouches the Pirates who snatch Marina from an untimely death, and it is natural forces--driven before the winds(V,Prol.14)--that convey Pericles to restoration of his family while he broods in his pelagian tent . From first to last the sea, natural forces and the gods have him and his in hand, while other altruists people the stage, restoring and redeeming this Romance world by dispensing their existential endowment . Cosmic caretakers and human altruists are made to converge in that concluding, definitively restorative Dispensation made to Pericles, Prince of Tyre, in token, now that Simonides is dead, of Pericles being redeemed Redeemer, primus inter pares among an established spectrum of human Redeemers dispensing moral Tire to a Tyre-touched world : the king's evil, once virtually pandemic, has been cured .
Cymbeline
The external idea for a correlation in Cymbeline concerns the science of optics, and Galileo's Starry Messenger of 1610 . Its internal ideate is diffuse, its organicity come by collation . First, one notes the numerous instances of contrived appearance belying reality : Posthumus's letter ordering Imogen's murder is a fedary for this act, and look'st so virginlike without(III,2:20-22) ; Lucius's dream is soothsaid . Then there is the disservice done to, and the limitations shown of, scientific empiricism by the success of Iachimo's rigorously gathered true data . At I,3: 14-22 we find Imogen's imaginative fancy conceiving a 'literary telescope' : a stretching out in words, section by section, its content ironically reflecting the form because it stresses the limitations of human vision and what Imogen lacks--a telescope . The object so fancifully viewed is Posthumus, banished from the British court circle and roaming to Rome . In Rome(I,4), the opening talk about Posthumus couches him as viewed object--from I have seen him in Britain to I have seen him in France to him coming into sight before them--and the terminology of astronomy--He was then of a crescent note(I,4:2)) ; We had very many there could behold the sun with as firm eyes as he(I,4:11-13)--is used figuratively to characterise Posthumus and his social rise. In sum, Posthumus's form and progress are 'considered' in its etymological sense : tracked, with the differing data compared and collated at this street-side European conference on Posthumus as planet [=wanderer] tangentially wandering from court circle to Rome . Further, there is the purposedly jarring idiosyncrasy of I,5 :58-60 : To be depender on a thing that leans...but to prop him ?[ Dropping the box ; PISANIO picks it up]--which by that surname and the rest allude to the 'legend' that Galileo used the Leaning Tower of Pisa for dynamical demonstrations . And finally, one notes an emphasis on the number '5', as simple numeral--With five times so much conversation(I,4 :98) ; Five times redeem'd from death(I,5 :63) ; a mole cinq-spotted(III, :38)--or as group, in the form '1+4' : Philario, the Leonati's friend, plus four strangers of differing nationalities(I,4) ; Cymbeline, plus his four children, step-son Cloten,Imogen,Guiderius and Arviragus ; Cymbeline in battle, and his four saviours, Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus and Posthumus ; Posthumus, circled round by the four dead Leonati .
This collation, in sum and particulars, forms the play's internal ideate to Galileo's revelation in his Starry Messenger in 1610 of his discovery by telescopic viewing of 'four satellites circling about Jupiter, like the Moon about the Earth, while the whole system travels over a mighty orbit about the Sun...' . Galileo noted too that the frequent eclipses of these satellites 'provided a good method of determining standard time at different places' . In this regard, one finds now significance beyond stock love-phrase--however ironically placed here--in Imogen's At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, T'encounter me with orisons, for then I am in heaven for him(I,3 :31-33), as well as one finds point to Imogen's curious precision concerning Time (I,1 :176) ; III,2:49-51) ;III,2 :65-72) ; iv,2 :10) . Imogen is wife and loved one to Posthumus . When he is away from the court circle, she eschews it . When he is at Milford Haven, she is attracted there. And after she discovers his murder-plans, his hatred, his loss of attraction she directs herself to service to Lucius, who by name [Latin, 'lux', light] symbolically represents the light of the sun . Her relation to Posthumus is as satellite to planet . And when Guiderius and Arviragus are revealed as her brothers, she says I have got two worlds by't . O my gentle brothers(IV,5 :374)---making three satellites , Posthumus's 'celestial' identity is intimated by Imogen--his Jovial face(IV,2 :312)--and is written more than large by Jupiter's theophany to render service to a Posthumus under his special care : Posthumus is Shakespeare's correlative of Galileo's Jupiter, with, as satellites, Imogen, Guiderius, Arviragus and the Cymbeline who will learn our freeness of a son-in-law(V,5 :421) . Then, to consolidate the sense of union between Posthumus and Imogen, Cymbeline endows Imogen with Jove-like qualities--she like harmless lightning throw her eye on...with a joy(V,5 :394-6) . This is a gentle Jove . By qualifying Imogen so, Cymbeline displaces her as satellite, unifies her with her Jove, and then immediately restores the 1+4 pattern by installing Belarius as my brother(V,5: 399) : the new court circle is Cymbeline, Belarius and their two sons circling Jovian Posthumus-Imogen .
Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites confirmed Copernicus's theory that double-centredness---moon round earth, now satellites round Jupiter, and all going round the sun---pertains in the planetary system . The discovery confounded the geocentrists and doubters who saw untidiness in Copernicus's theory . In Cymbeline, Caesar at Rome has political hegemony, but Pannonians and Dalmatians For their liberties are now in arms, a precedent Which not to read would show the Britons cold(III,1:73-5)--'cold', an ironic choice of word, for Rome is political heliocentre, with Lux-Lucius its emissary. In Britain, nationalist fervour is seen in good and evil : in Cymbeline's four saviours in battle as well as in Cloten, in the Queen, in a Cymbeline dissuaded by our wicked queen(V,5 :463), and in the Lords who flee in battle . The latter group's nationalism, however, is linked to a declaration of independence from Roman heliocentre : Britain is A world by itself(III,1:12-13) . As Copernicus and Galileo show that double-centredness--in Cymbeline a nationalist attachment to a British court-circle--can pertain within the sun's ambit and hegemony, and this is acknowledged in Cymbeline in the conclusion's restoration of tribute to Rome . It is no accident that the advocates of independence--Cloten, Queen and British Lords in battle--are associated with deviousness, malice, ignobleness, rape, regicide and a cowardice--pointedly marked by retrogradation--in duel (Cloten) and battle (Lords), which link them with the notion of retrograde motion advanced by geocentrists to explain planets' divagations within the geocentric planetary system . Cymbeline is a Britain-centrist too, out of a misplaced attraction to and love for the Queen--she never loved you...Abhorred your person(V,5 :37-40) . His saving grace is a well-placed love of Imogen : The great part of my comfort(Iv,3 :5) .
Serving the main theme of appearance belying reality is the fact, but not obvious fact that Galileo's discovered four satellites were and are, immanently, but that telescopic powers are needed to see them . The correlative in Cymbeline is that special perspicacity is required to see one's real, natural geopolitical status, to see one's true friends, to see one's truly-loving 'loved ones' . Rome is there as hegemonic heliocentre, immanently . Posthumus's and Imogen's more mutually endearing true selves underlie the stock-courtly distancing postures, immanently . The nobility and belligerence of Arviragus and Guiderius are immanent in however rustic demeanour . Cymbeline's four saviours in battle are immanent, however much they are outside the falsely geocentric court-circle . Within this human counterpart of the heavens posited by Shakespeare, effective change, change into clear perspicacity, must come from humans, done for other humans : good will out, and out from the good . Galileo named his Jupiter satellites the 'Medicean planets', in honour of the Medici, the ruling house of Florence, and in honour of medicine, the care of and restoration of natural health to another . And this care and restoration are the particular functions of the key satellite groupings in Cymbeline . 'Satellite' means 'guard', and in the battle it is Cymbeline's four unknown satellite-guards who intervene and save the king's person, and retrieve the day, restoring national honour . Also, when Posthumus is at a nadir of spiritual despair, his four unknown satellite-guards, the spirit-Leonati, intervene from an eternal immanence to effect a spiritual restoration . And the final court-circle grouping of four around a fused Jovian Posthumus-Imogen celebrates the restoration of true worth and natural order to a healthy British court-circle, and that within the circle of Rome . The early, unloving Cymbeline court, which vaunted its independence and belligerence, had not charity, and was as 'sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal'. With its faulty vision, it saw through a glass, darkly, and could not discern Posthumus's Jovian worth . By the conclusion the Cymbeline court 'sees face to face' (I, Corinthians,13), because now there is charity, love, because Cymbeline is not now a hollow 'cymbal', because now appearance is reality .
The Winter's Tale
In The Winter's Tale , a scale of health is drawn in reference to differing loci : Delphos, Bohemia and Sicilia . First we have Delphos, the name a byword for divine immanence, and with a climate delicate... the air most sweet(III,1 :1) . Then there is Bohemia, which exudes rustic vivacity, which permits, cultivates and celebrates natural growth, whether in sheepskins, flowers or Perdita's beauty and intrinsic nobility. But it is also an unweeded garden, permitting Autolycus's roguery [a 'rogue'(from C16 cant) is 'an inferior or intrusive plant among seedlings], and with Perdita as its singular growth, drawing Florizel from court and princely exercises (IV,2:32) and into both deception of his father and a resolve to reject lineage and right to succession . Florizel's departure from court draws the king into 'Bohemian' imposture--the use of spies (IV,2 :34ff.) and false identity--and itineracy from court . Bohemia holds mid-point on the scale of health, for it fosters both natural growth and the growth of artifice . Last, there is Sicilia, the name of which--the 'diagnosis' is 'Sick-Ill'--declares its unsalubrious low-point on the scale, furthest from divinity and Nature's perfection in Delphos .
Delphos has its human artifact--the temple much surpassing The common praise it bears(III,1:2-3)--but Man's importance in the cosmic scale is registered in Cleomenes' experience before the ear-deaf'ning voice o' th'oracle . I was nothing(III,1 :9-11). In Bohemia, Nature shares place with Man's imprint : artifice, used towards celebratory--the festival--or designing ends . Sicilia, as court and court-locked, is Man's artificial Garden, sown with the artifice of rhetoric, with an infected ambience, and where legitimate Nature's phenomenal emblems---Hermione's pregnancy ; Mamillius's and the babe Perdita's lineage writ in physiognomy---are to various degrees under question or attack, or threat of expulsion from the Garden .
This scale of health, with, as polarities, Man and perfected Artifice in Sicilia opposing Divinity and perfect Nature in Delphos, is Shakespeare's internal ideate of the external idea current in fifth and fourth century B.C. Greek thought : the Nomos-Physis antithesis . 'Physis' can safely be translated 'nature', though when it occurs in conjunction with 'nomos', the word 'reality' will sometimes make the contrast more immediately clear . 'Nomos' for classical Greeks is something that is 'nomizetai', is believed in, practised or held to be right, originally something that 'nemetai', is apportioned, dispensed or distributed . That is to say, it presupposes an acting subject--believer, practitioner or apportioner--a mind from which the 'nomos' emanates . Naturally therefore, different people and different 'nomoi'/beliefs, but so long as religion remained an effective force, the devising mind could be the god's, and so there could be 'nomoi' that were applicable to all mankind . 'Human laws are sustained by the one divine law,' said Heraclitus,'...But when belief in gods is undermined...this universal authority for 'nomos' no longer exists ' .
In The Winter's Tale , Leontes is a minority of one, who believes the plain phenomenal--paddling palms...practis'd smiles(I,2 :115-6) ; meeting noses...Kissing with inside lip(I,2 :285-6)--are evidence of treasonable adultery . His court, heedless to these phenomena adhere to noumenal cognition : that the reality behind these appearances is that Hermione is honourable . Their convention, their 'nomos', is corroborated by the unusually clearly-stated judgment from the Delphic oracle, and Mamillius's subsequent death seems a divine punishment of Leontes for his heterodox rejection of Delphic authority . Yet, there is Polixenes' peremptory haste to leave, and his pre-Freudian slips : Nine changes of the watery star...our throne Without a burden(I,2: 1-3). And also, supporting Leontes' method of phenomenal cognition is I,2 :128-137, where Leontes' paternal affection for Mamillius is tested against physiognomic evidence of legitimacy, so as to confirm his belief as fact which, objectively, is fact .
'Bohemian' ways and itineracy--in festival, Autolycus's roguery and progresses on the open road--are natural to Bohemia . In court-locked Sicilia we find 'Bohemian' impostures, rhetoric and a court-lexis replete with literal or figurative references to mobility, itineracy (I,2 :279 ; I,1 :2 ; I,2 :76 ; I,2 :20 ; II,1 :116 ; II,1 :121 ; II,2 :43-73 ; II,2 :111 ; I, :121-131) . Further, in the opening two scenes in Sicilia, there is a curious emphasis on payment : he justly owes him(I,1 :47) ; You pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely(I,1 :17) ; Go hence in debt(I,2 :6) ; pay them when you part(I,2 :10) ; my stay, to you a charge and a trouble(I,2 :25-6) ; The borrow of a week(I,2 :39) ; you shall pay your fees(I,2 :53)-- the bulk of these employed in a skilful exercise of the art of persuasion to ensure Polixenes' stay . Rhetoric, fees and itineracy converge in the Sophists, but in a Sicilia which saw the birth of Rhetoric, and now resounds with rhetoric . Hermione persuades Polixenes to stay . Paulina artfully persuades the Jailer (II,2) to release Perdita, by advocating the primacy of natural law (physis) over societal law (nomos) . Hermione's appeal--measure me(II,1 :114)--to the Lord echoes Protagoras's maxim, 'Man is the measure of all things' . Further, with Leontes, one may compare his conversational tone when addressing his son (I,2 :120ff.) with that masterful crescendo of rhetoric, the Nothing speech (I,2 :284-296) . The latter precisely echoes the tenor of a work by a fellow Sicilian, the Rhetorician and Sophist, Gorgias of Leontini, entitled On Nature, or the Nonexistent, wherein Gorgias sets out to prove three things :
(1) that nothing exists ;
(2) that if anything did exist, we could not know it ;
(3) that if we could know anything, we could not communicate it to our neighbour .
It is this measure of rhetoric's pervasiveness that we see sullying the ambience of Shakespeare's court-locked Sicilia, however much the sickness is ascribed to Leontes alone, for a wrong can be rhetorically fashioned into a right, and in Leontes' case he cannot 'communicate' his phenomenal recognition of wrong to the majority adherents of noumenal recognition of their right . In this scenario, Man is truly the measure, and the successful advocacy of one's 'nomos' hinges on one's 'arete', skill, in persuasion .
Leontes is rhetorician, but no persuader . He cannot persuade Polixenes to stay . He took three crabbed months(I,2 :102) to win Hermione's hand . This rigidity on Hermione's part points forward to the statue-scene, and it bears out the meaning of her name : 'pillar-queen' . When considering her, Leontes' figuration is architectural : shake the fabric...foundation is piled ; those foundations which I build upon, The centre is not big enough to bear A schoolboy's top(II,1 :101-3) . But for Hermione, 'pillar' refers to the world of horse-training and the pillar in the manege : you may ride's With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere With spur we heat an acre(I,2 :94-6)--this to Leontes, who later hears Antigonus's defence of spotless Hermione run over into references to stables...go in couples...geld(II,1 :134-147), an Antigonus who uses 'horsey' terms about his wife--When she will take the rein, I let her run(II,3 :51) . Hermione and Leontes nurture differing interpretations of 'Hermione' : the one with which Hermione identifies, and so may be described as natural (physis), the other felt apt by Leontes, but which is necessarily other-ascribed and thereby may be artificial (nomos) . Hermione identifies with 'horses', and these in the play are associated with lewdness and animal sexuality, so her choice tends towards corroborating the charge of adultery that Leontes brings . But then there is the authority of Apollo's judgment, which, in an ambience where man is the measure, is rejected by Leontes because it does not suit, and conversely, could be said to have been accepted by court and queen simply because it suits .
Both Paulina and Hermione have been seen as successful artificers of argument, and the closing statue-scene is stagey artifice, the product of their collusion . It celebrates Nature surpassing Art, but it renders natural Hermione at their behest and sixteen wasted years on . And the later Leontes who has performed A saint-like sorrow(V,1 :1-2) comes to this staged reunion still talking of physiognomic proofs of legitimate lineage (V,1 :124-8), at which same point he notably does not mark the print of Hermione in Perdita .
In sum, the older generation of royals and courtiers, who in a noumenal Garden sow artifice in word and deed, are by that very token a flawed, Fallen generation . Autolycus the rogue plant thrives because this Garden from first to last remains unweeded . Mamillius is too tender a seedling to survive in it . Perdita survives because she is trained up away from it, in Nature's garden . Florizel is a survivor because of his resolve, in particular his resolve not to brook the violation of my faith(IV,4 :469), attached to the singular 'common-or-garden' Perdita, come what adverse circumstance or royal prohibition . His faith thrives away from court, in Nature's garden . And the one who thrives best in The Winter's Tale is the Shepherd, a commoner who, among blockheads, uses his wits, who plays host to great creating Nature, and who trains Perdita up to florescence . The young royal pair--one trained up in and both united within Nature's garden--promise better . But the burden of the matter and emphases of The Winter's Tale , from first to concluding statue-scene, falls on the noumenal Garden, its noble and royal cultivators, and their unceasing artifice . Their continuing Fallen state demands that this play be entitled ' The Winter's Tale', told by a man who has their measure .
The Tempest
The external idea for the internal ideate of this play is the substance of the OT Book of Isaiah,29, concerning the city of Ariel : its voice as of one that hath a familiar spirit (s.4) ; an impending storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire (s.6) ; a distress which shall be as a dream (s.7) ; wonder (s.7) ; they stagger, but not with strong drink (s.7) ; for the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep (s.10) ; the words of a book that is sealed (s.11) ; to do...among this people...a marvellous work and a wonder (s.14) .
The keynote of Isaiah 29 is empathy : the Lord is distressed at distressing the city . He both is Ariel and its all-powerful Lord, apart, overseeing, manipulating, holding ultra-phenomenal power over the phenomenal world, with which to effect character-change from flawed to restored existential and moral state . In The Tempest the correlative--in terms of power and status of the Lord in Isaiah--was Sycorax, but lacking the external human referent . It is that of Prospero, but now with an external referent : the troops (I,2 :220)/ troupes of Court , commoner and mariner whom he 'distresses' into playing a remedial part towards a restoration, because he is Milan as well as being apart from it . It is , similarly, that of Shakespeare, who as existential dramatist stands apart from Court and commoner, yet as Creator is these characters, in his work .
The spectator too is the dramatist's referent, who is such stuff as [this dramatist's] dreams are made on . Ariel in The Tempest , ever treading the ultra-phenomenal, represents by proxy the spectator's imagination and suspension of disbelief . Without such a sanction, the dramatist's artifice would be plainly so . And a mutually restorative inter-relationship is integral between spectator or dramatist ( Prospero or Shakespeare)--a relationship emphasised in the Epilogue of The Tempest , where the final instructions enjoined on Ariel, being co-temporal with an imminent curtain-fall, are extended to the spectator, to be effectuated beyond the artifice of stage, garment and Unities . Ariel is something within, and by it the spectator is both within the play and apart, a continuing referent and referee, by way of empathy .
Henry the Eighth
Dealt here as coda to the Late Romances, Henry the Eighth has the semblance of historicity, but yet proves to be vehicle for further elaborating the tonic idea of Divine Right of Kings . The play's central subject, Henry, and his subjects are themselves all subject to dramatic irony from the drama of life, because Henry, with his subject-consuming drive to have a male heir, and those who fall within the play, and those--Henry, More, Cranmer--who survive the play : all duly fall as historical adherents of Folly : Elizabeth, the mere female heir, succeeds and reigns supremely .
Henry the Eighth's Prologue and Epilogue are the play's internal correlates of the opening and closing sections of Erasmus's Praise of Folly . The matter between, in both cases, is a panorama on Folly's adherents, with Henry the Eighth's Folly--the opening and closing I--exuding seriousness that is mock, in the light of history's proofs .
A co-external to the play is More's Utopia, against which's parameters the play's Cloth of Gold pageant would be categorised as a parade of the basest criminals . More specifically, Henry the Eighth places curious emphasis on Henry's continuously used interjection Ha...Ha(III,2 :61-2) . Also, the play is replete with third-person pronominal forms--he, him, his--and one finds frequent collocations like he-I mean(I4 :175-6) ; Ha! I have...(V,1 :86) ; I'll have more(V,1 :174-5) . More's utopian alphabet translates it all, for there 'he' means 'I', 'ha' means 'me' . That is, in these the play's linguistic idiosyncrasies, we find substantiation of the central theme : that all other persons, words, actions and lives outside of Henry are subordinated to, in service of, the central He/I , Henry, the centre-piece of a literary reverse-Silenus : Folly without, adherents within .
