Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 106

The Existential Themes in the Drama of

William Shakespeare
by
Qazi Ubaid Ullah
M. A. (English) Final
National Institute of Modern Languages
Quaid-e-Azam University
Islamabad, PAKISTAN.
May, 2000.
The Existential Themes in the Drama of
William Shakespeare
by
Qazi Ubaid Ullah
M. A. (English) Final
National Institute of Modern Languages
Quaid-e-Azam University
Islamabad, PAKISTAN.
May, 2000.
Researchers Submission
A thesis submitted through the
National Institute of Modern Languages
Islamabad
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements of
The MA (English) Degree of
The Quaid-e-Azam University
Islamabad, Pakistan.
The Author.
May, 2000.
The NIML Certification
The National Institute of Modern Languages
Islamabad, Pakistan
An Academic Affiliate of
the Quaid-e-Azam University
Islamabad, Pakistan
Certifies
The Existential Themes in the Drama of
William Shakespeare
by
Qazi Ubaid Ullah Abid
A Thesis submitted to the Quaid-e-Azam University
through the NIML in partial fulfillment for the requirements of
the degree of M.A. (English)
1. __________________ 2. __________________
Brig. Aziz Ahmad Khan Mrs. Rubina Kamran
Director, The NIML. (Head, Department of English)
3. __________________ 4. __________________
Mr. Riaz Hassan Dr. Ikram Azam
Mrs. Ferzana Raoof (Course Teacher)
(Thesis Supervisors)
Declaration
I, Qazi Ubaidullah Abid, do hereby solemnly declare that the work presented in
this thesis is my own, and has not been presented previously to any other
institution or university for a degree.
This work was carried out and completed at the National Institute of Modern
Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan, an academic affiliate of the Quaid-e-Azam
University, Islamabad.
Qazi Ubaid Ullah Abid
(Researcher)
Certified:
1. Mrs. Rubina Kamran 2. Mr. Riaz Hassan
Head, Department of English Mrs. Ferzana Raoof
(Research Supervisors)
3. Dr. Ikram Azam
(Course Teacher)
Acknowledgment
The researcher is deeply thankful to all those who helped him to be what he is.
Special thanks are due to Mrs. Ferzana Raoof and Mr. Riaz Hassan, who
considered the researcher worthy enough to be taken under their kind supervision,
and helped him in every area, whether related or not related to the thesis. The
loving personality of Dr. Ikram Azam has always been there as a source of
permanent inspiration and continuous encouragement. Besides these, the
researcher is also thankful to all his class fellows who helped or at least tried to
help him.
Dedication
This humble work is
dedicated to nobody,
since everybody is nobody
and nobody is everybody.
Bio-data Brief
A wandering soul, Ubaidullah Qazi, after graduating from the Govt. College,
Haripur, with English Literature as an elective subject, decided to join the NIML
in order to quench the thirst of his inquisitive and searching soul. Though
belonging to an orthodox religious family, he holds liberal ideas. Perfection in the
form of idealism has always been his target. Living most of the time in a dream
existence, he has started viewing the world with a demand for idealism. Universal
brotherhood and mutual tolerance is what he advocates and thinks necessary for a
peaceful, perfect and ideal world. Primarily a pessimist and purposeless soul, he is
searching for some source of optimism and purpose in existence.
Subject: Interpretive Criticism
Topic: The Existential Themes in some Selected
Plays of William Shakespeare.
Thesis Statement
The proposed thesis is an attempt to trace the existential element and themes
in selected plays of William Shakespeare. It also attempts to study early
Existentialism in the works of William Shakespeare.
Delimitation
The proposed thesis is not a study of pure philosophy, i.e., Existentialism, in the
works of William Shakespeare. It is focused, rather, only on some existential
themes which have often been a point of interest for almost every thinking human
being. Shakespeare, though primarily a dramatist and not philosopher, shows
himself to be not only aware of these existential questions, but seems also to have
a definite personal view in this area. The researchers main focus is to find out
this view and to see what for Shakespeare are the springs of human grace and
human creation, and what are the forces available for the repair of tragic ruin and
for the renewal of human life. The thesis will also attempt to interpolate some
existentialist themes in the works of Shakespeare.
The thesis is not concerned with all the plays of Shakespeare. It deals in detail
with the four great tragedies, and the last play The Tempest.
Rationale
William Shakespeare possessed perhaps one of the best literary minds in the
history of world literature. Almost four centuries of Shakespearean criticism have
not been able to show the true and versatile nature of his genius. This criticism,
day by day, unfolds the layers of versatility which lie in the work of Shakespeare.
If nothing else, it has enhanced the value of the true greatness of Shakespeare.
The main purpose behind this thesis on Shakespeare and existence, is to bring into
the forefront one more tantalizing feature of the multi-faceted genius of
Shakespeare. Personal interest in the works of William Shakespeare and curiosity
about the nature and purpose of existence in this world, motivated the researcher
to combine his interest and curiosity, in order to trace the views that William
Shakespeare held on this area.
Abstract
Since all human beings in their capacity of being human, are equal, they face
almost similar problems and go through like mental processes while living in this
world and interpreting human life. Shakespeare is no exception. His plays
represent the world in miniature, showing all its absurdity and purposelessness.
Shakespearean tragedy is nothing, but a picture of the futility of human life and
action. His plot revolve around the elite grand human being (kings, queens,
princes, courtiers, etc.) and their high and low actions. He shows the ultimate
worthlessness of both human action and life. His plays show that man is nothing,
not only in himself but also before the all-powerful and incomprehensible
workings of Nature. Here Shakespeare appears to be echoing some of the modern
existentialist themes in their nebulous form. Shakespeare may not be the
propounder of modern Existentialism, but he certainly falls in the rank of those
writers and philosophers whose works or ideas inspired modern Existentialism.
The present thesis, while discussing the existential element, will try to establish a
relationship between Shakespearean existential views and 20th century
existentialist philosophy.
Introduction
a. About Subject and Topic:
The Renaissance period represents a time of great shift and change not only in the
social setup of western society but equally in the literary and philosophical
scenario. It challenged the old established authoritative doctrines which had
hidden the face of reality, being ideas which were consulted for consolation when
it was unbearable to face the truth. The new learning questioned the authenticity
of such doctrines and beliefs. It challenged the validity of everything whether it
be a moral convention or a religious or a social law. The individual questioned
societys hold upon him. This gave birth to a spirit of freedom, which later on
became inevitable for the assertion of ones self in the realization of the inner and
outer worlds. Thus the advent of humanism caused a gradual loosening of the
authoritative hold of social values and beliefs upon the individual, and enabled
him to tear down the veils from the face of reality, and to see and realize his
individual position in relation to others, and to the universe. Instead of collective
society or humanity, the individual became the focus of attention.
The general iconoclasm obviously created a vacuum. With the rejection of
venerable values, and no commonly acceptable ones to replace them, sensible
thinkers started feeling a kind of negativity in thought and belief. Nothing now
was accepted as indisputable. Critical thinking corroded faith.
In this atmosphere most intellectuals started doubting the possibility of any
absolute value. They pointed to the nothingness of every thing, and when
Descartes said Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), he categorically
showed his distrust of the existence of any thing else but the individual. This
concept of the isolated individual enabled him to see mans forlorn and wretched
position in the universe. The sufferings of life challenged the age-old idea that life
is a gift of divinity.
Writers of great genius and acute perception realized all this and gave at least a
hint of this in their works. Shakespeare though one of them, differed from the
others, as he was not only ahead of the rest in representing such themes, but he
also posed many new questions regarding the nature of existence, of universe, and
of man in it. He discussed the part of fate in determining human life, the life-
before-birth and life-after-death, and so on. He not only challenged the established
religious or moral views in such matters but tried also to provide answers with his
own profound genius. The main concern of the present thesis is to find out the
views of Shakespeare on fundamental existential questions, as presented in his
plays.
Jean Paul Sartre says that Man has a human nature; this human nature, which is
the concept of the human, is found in all men, which means that each man is a
particular example of a universal concept, man. In Kant, the result of this
universality is that the wild-man, the natural man, as well as the bourgeois, are
circumscribed by the same definition and have the same basic qualities. In other
words all men are equal in their nature of being human as their conceptual
formation is the same. One the basis of this one can say that some basic qualities
of Shakespeare from the sixteenth century Renaissance age are similar to , if not
the same as, those of a twentieth century Existentialist. In simple words the
questions which Shakespeare raised or the problems that he faced are almost same
with which the Existentialism of the twentieth century deals. This idea is further
supported by Sartres remark that Existentialism was never invented, it has always
existed as the ultimate foundation.
The secondary concern of this thesis is to establish a sort of relationship between
Shakespeares existential views and the modern philosophy of Existentialism. A
clarification between existential and existentialist must be made here. Apparently
both these terms seem to have similar meanings. However the researcher will take
them as slightly different from each other. Here the word existential means only
of or relating to existence, the nature or purpose of existence etc. Under the topic
existential views of Shakespeare subjects such as life, death, free will or choice,
fate, nature of cosmos, dual nature of being, etc., will be discussed. Whereas
existentialist is a more specific term which denotes the treatment of the same ideas
in a systematized philosophical form i.e., the Existentialist philosophy of the
twentieth century.
b. Research Methodology
The present thesis focuses on two inter-related areas of research in the selected
plays of William Shakespeare. These are:
1. Tracing the Existential element in Shakespeare
2. Relating it with the philosophy of Existentialism.
To accomplish these aims the researcher has divided his chapters according to
Shakespeares views on the main existential themes, e.g., Shakespeare on
existence, on fate etc. Each chapter gives an interpretation of the dramatists
views on that one topic. These chapters, wherever possible, relate Existentialism
with the existential ideas of Shakespeare but a final comparison and contrast is
made in the fifth chapter, where some major themes of Existentialism are also
interpolated in the works of Shakespeare. The last part of the thesis is comprised
of a summary and a conclusion.
Table of Contents
Researchers Submission iii
Acknowledgment vi
Dedication vii
Bio-data Brief viii
Thesis Statement x
Delimitation xi
Rationale xii
Abstract xiii
Introduction xiv
a. About Subject and Topic: xiv
b. Research Methodology xvi
Table of Contents
xvi
i
CHAPTER ONE 1
Introducing Existentialism and Shakespeare 1
Introduction: 1
Introducing Existentialism 3
a. Brief Introduction 3
b. Brief History of Existentialism 5
c. Basic Themes of Existentialism: 7
d. Major Exponents of Existentialism 13
Introduction to Shakespeare and Elizabethan Society. 20
a. Shakespeare: The Man 20
b. Shakespeares Reading 23
c. Social, Religious, Political and Intellectual Background 25
End Notes 29
CHAPTER TWO 31
Shakespeare on Existence: 31
Nature of Existence 31
Futility of Existence 39
Purposelessness 44
Self-Created Purpose: 45
Death 49
End Notes 51
CHAPTER THREE 52
Shakespeare on Fate and Free will 52
End Notes 65
CHAPTER FOUR 66
Shakespeare on Other Existential Themes 66
Dual Nature of being 66
Limitations of Human beings 73
Pains of Knowing 75
Unmerited Sufferings 76
End Notes 80
CHAPTER FIVE 81
Studying Existentialist Themes in Shakespeare 81
Alienation 81
Anxiety or Anguish: 86
Nausea 87
Bad Faith 89
End Notes 91
CHAPTER SIX 92
Conclusion 92
Summation of All Existential & Existentialist Ideas. 92
a. A Summary of Existential Themes: 92
b. Summing Existentialist Themes. 97
Conclusion and recommendation. 99
Select Bibliography
10
1
Chapter One
Introducing Existentialism and Shakespeare
Introduction:
Human life is in itself one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. What it is, how
it started, what is its exact nature, nobody can ever know. Almost the same is the
case of the outer environment and the objects that human beings face in their lives.
The question of existence is one of the basic questions in all human thinking.
Mankinds desire of being perfect is only possible when one knows the answers
to questions which are normally, and unfortunately, limited to metaphysics. The
very title metaphysics seems to suggest that the subject matter does not have any
relation to the real, ordinary and everyday life. But this is not the case. Seeking
answers to such questions is the problem of almost all human beings and not of
just some specially trained or learned scholars.
Human endeavors to reach the ultimate reality can be conducted on more than
one level. The most common and important of these are scientific and
philosophic.

Both of these work in almost totally different directions but their


ultimate goal and objective are the same. A scientist, studying to understand the
nature and reality of everything that exists, is trying to reach or grasp the final and
ultimate reality that lies behind the apparent existence. For this purpose he
conducts a lot of experiments. A philosophers method is different, and more
difficult than that of a scientists. He tries to grasp the ultimate truth and reality
by combining and analyzing his own observations and knowledge with the
knowledge imparted by previous philosophers or scholars. A scientists method
is often going from part to the whole whereas a philosopher is not bound to any
such process. He may move from whole to parts and from parts to whole.
Nevertheless there is no doubt that all endeavours of all scientists and
philosophers are directed to know ultimate reality, and whatever reality is known,
to bring it within the comprehension of the human brain.
What, then, was Shakespeare? He was certainly not a scientist and rest assured
not a systematic philosopher either. But, are the questions about existence the
concern of only philosophers, scientist, spiritualists, etc? Surely not. Since
everyone has a life, he is bound to think about it, its nature, requirements, etc. As
life is mostly a subjective experience, ones understanding and defining of it may
not be similar to that of another. That is why one finds that different and
contrasting, even opposite, views about one object or thing are not uncommon
among human beings, and their ideas keep on changing with the passage of time.
Existence being mostly a subjective experience (at least in human beings) its
understanding depends upon the individual. So obviously it (understanding) will
be different for each person. Men of great genius and potential might come close
to the true and exact nature of existence in their comprehension, understanding
and defining of it than the unthinking crowd. And there is no doubt that
Shakespeare was a man of great genius, intellect and potential. It will be unjust to
assume that Shakespeares views about the nature of life, existence and purpose of
existence, the events of birth and death, fate, limitations, time and space,
knowledge, etc., merely reflect what most of the Elizabethan society believed. In
fact his thoughts were strikingly original. One thing that emerges strongly after
analyzing his works is this that he was sure of nothing and uncertain of everything.
This is why we find a lot of questioning of the established ideas and beliefs in his
plays. Why is it so? On the one hand Shakespeare is showing his distrust of these
established pet ideals and on the other hand he is inviting others to think about
such matters so that the belief in the false should be abandoned and search for the
true should be encouraged.
it is evident that (Shakespearean )plays raise many questions
than they expect (or can be expected) to answer. But these
questions are not primarily raised to be answered. Nor are the
simply rhetorical. They serve, rather, an attempt to evoke the special
multiple quality of human experience, when produced by an
ontological point of view.
The abundance of lines and themes where ideas of existence are manipulated,
forces one to presume that Shakespeare was preoccupied with the problem of the
nature of existence. The change and gradual development in his view shows that
he was constantly thinking and pondering on these issues and whenever he found
opportunity he expressed his views in his plays. These existential themes, as
found in his plays, will be discussed in the subsequent chapters.
Since an important part of this thesis relates Shakespeares existential views with
the philosophy of Existentialism, it would be suitable to define and explain
Existentialism before studying its relation with Shakespeare.
Introducing Existentialism
a. Brief Introduction
What is meant by the term existentialism?
Most people who use the word would be rather embarrassed if they
had to explain it, since, now that the word is all the rage, even the
work of a musician, or painter is being called existentialist.
These are the opening lines of the essay Existentialism is Humanism by Jean-
Paul Sartre, the most systematic and organized Existentialist philosopher. There
are no clear boundaries of Existentialism, so definitions that are found are not only
different but also occasionally opposite, with the result that one confuses where to
start from in defining and explaining the term. Collins Encyclopaedia writes that
in a broad sense this term is used to indicate a comprehensive contrast to academic
philosophy. It stresses on two features: a preoccupation with human existence,
especially with its most dramatic and tragic aspects; and an emphasis on the
limitations of reason and the irreducibility of experience to any system.
According to this Existentialism has been traced back to ancient and classic times
and can also be associated by this definition with religion as most religious
thought are existentialist.
However the above definition is no longer widely accepted as Existentialism has
normally come to be associated with the ideas and philosophy of few highly
individualistic thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
According to Encyclopaedia Birtannica, Existentialism is :
a family of philosophies devoted to an interpretation of human
existence in the world that stresses its concreteness and its
problematic character. As a self-conscious movement it is primarily a
20
th
century phenomenon, embracing Martin Heidegger, Karl
Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, and Maurice Merleau
Ponty, but its characteristic features occur earlier, especially in the
19
th
century thinkers Friedrich Neitzsche and Soren Kierkegaard.
Existentialism as a philosophy rejects epistemology and the attempt to ground
human knowledge, for the reasons that (a) human beings are not solely or even
primarily knowers; they also care, desire, manipulate and, above all, choose and
act. (b) The Cartesian formula that existence depends upon ones knowledge of it
is not acceptable since, according to Existentialism, self or ego is not the basic
feature of prereflective experience. It (self or ego) emerges from ones experience
of other people. (c) Man is not a detached observer of the world, his existence is
conditioned with his presence in the world. Further, he exists in a special sense in
which objects such as stones and trees do not exist. He is open to the world and to
objects in it.
The following is an outline list of themes that are often found in existential work.
Not all existentialists are concerned with all of these issues, and certainly they do
not deal with the issues in the same way. Rather, these themes bear a family
resemblance that existentialists tend to share with each other.
an emphasis upon the individual
a critique of current society and its goal of a comfortable existence for
individuals as merely part of the herd
an emphasis upon human freedom and choice
an anti-Hegelian, anti-Enlightenment attitude: human existence cannot
be adequately or fully captured by reason, objectivity, or the system,
and thus an account of human existence must include passion, emotion,
and the subjective understanding
a focus on death and its role in human life
an emphasis on anxiety and its role in human life
Human nature is problematic and ambiguous, not fixed or constant
Human beings are alone. The universe is indifferent to their
expectations and needs
There is no purpose in this universe and the life in it
There is no hope that a purpose for life can be found
b. Brief History of Existentialism
As has been stated above that primary focus of Existentialism is Man: his
existence, position in the universe, purpose of life, etc. All this is not and has not
been the concern of Existentialism only. Existentialism as it is now known and
formally defined is solely the product of the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries. But to say
that the above mentioned themes have not been discussed earlier would not be
true. In fact since ancient times, the existential questions have always been there.
The Socrates imperative Know thyself deals with the primary existential
question of what man is. To say that Existentialism emerged out of nothing and it
is something totally new will not be correct. The history of mankind shows a
number of instances where existential themes were mooted and individuals
attempted to define them within the limits of their own comprehension and
understanding. Regarding what a man is, Montaigne, a French essayist of the
Renaissance age, said:
If my mind could gain a foothold, I would not write essays, I would
make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
Pascal, a religious philosopher and a mathematician, had insisted on the precarious
position of man situated between being and nothingness:
We burn with the desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure
foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our
whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.
Sartre and Marcels propositions for a mans withdrawal into his own spiritual
interior belong to St. Augustine. In 19
th
century French philosophy, this idea was
defended by a reformed Ideologue, Marie Maine de Biran, wrote:
Even from infancy I remember that I marveled at the sense of my
existence. I was already led by instinct to look within myself in order
to know how it was possible that I could be alive and be myself.
The theme of irreducibility of existence to reason, common to many
Existentialists, was also defended by a leading German idealist, F.W. J. von
Schelling. His ideas, later on, inspired Soren Kierkegaard, the father of
existentialism.
These, along with many others, were the precursors of Existentialism in the
previous centuries. However the theses of Existentialism found a particular
relevance and importance during World War II, when Europe was being
threatened by material and spiritual destruction. In that atmosphere of uncertainty
the optimism of Romantic inspiration appeared untenable. At this time
Existentialism moved in to insist on the instability and the risk of all human
reality, to acknowledge that man is thrown into the world, i.e., abandoned to a
determinism that could render his initiatives impossible, and to hold that his very
freedom is conditioned and hampered by limitations that could at any moment
render it empty. Unlike the Romantic emphasis on hope (though fake)
Existentialism claimed to present the true picture of humanity with all its negative
aspects, such as pain, sufferings, frustrations, sickness, and death. Its major claim
was this that it attempts to bring man out of the illusions with which he is living
since ages and to direct his attention to more basic and serious problems such as
existence, its purpose or purposelessness. The thinkers and scholars who rejected
the 19
th
century Romanticism and wrote against it, thus became the acknowledged
masters of Existentialism. Against Hegelian necessitarianism, Kierkegaard
interpreted existence in terms of possibility. Dread, which dominates the
existentialist thought, is the sentiment of the possible. It is the feeling of what
can happen to a man even when he has made all of his calculations and taken
every precaution. Other people talked about Despair, and Alienation.
Contemporary Existentialism reproduces these ideas and combines them in more
or less coherent ways. Human existence is, for all the forms of Existentialism, the
projection of the future on the basis of the possibilities that constitute it. For some
Existentialists (the Germans Heidegger and Jaspers, for example), the existential
possibilities, inasmuch as they are rooted in the past, merely lead every project for
the future back to the past, so that only what has already been chosen can be
chosen. For others (such as Sartre), the possibilities that are offered to existential
choice are infinite and equivalent, such that the choice between them is
indifferent; and for still others (Abbagnano and Merleau-Ponty), the existential
possibilities are limited by the situation, but they neither determine the choice nor
render it indifferent. For all the Existentialists, however, the choice among
possibilities i.e., the projection of existence implies risks, renunciation, and
limitation. Among the risks, the most serious is mans descent into inauthenticity
or into alienation, his degradation from a person into a thing.
Existentialism has had ramifications in various areas of contemporary culture. In
literature, Franz Kafka, author of haunting novels, walking in Kierkegaard's
footsteps, described human existence as the quest for a stable, secure, and radiant
reality that continually eludes it; or he described it as threatened by a guilty verdict
about which it knows neither the reason nor the circumstances but against which it
can do nothing a verdict that ends with death.
The theses of contemporary Existentialism were then diffused and popularized by
the novels and plays of Sartre, by the writings of the French novelists and
dramatists Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, and of Irish born Samuel
Beckett. In L'Homme rvolt , Camus described the "metaphysical rebellion" as
"the movement by which a man protests against his condition and against the
whole of creation." Samuel Beckett discussed the forlorn situation of man in the
world, waiting for salvation which is never to come. Purposelessness and the
futility of existence are the major themes depicted in his plays.
c. Basic Themes of Existentialism:
The most fundamental and basic theme of Existentialism is existence . It focuses
on HOW we exist? and WHY we exist? Flowers, animals, and stones all exist, but
people exist in a different way. Individuals are unique able to think about
themselves and the world in which they find themselves and to make choices.
They can choose because they are free, and the choices they make establish the
future into which they project themselves. Another major theme is the world itself
specifically what can be known and not known about it. A pre-existentialist
writer, the novelist Dostoevski, said that the universe does not make any sense.
There are no underlying patterns that can be perceived by everyone, on the basis
of which everyone agrees: This is what the world is all about. Life, and the
world itself, are often unpredictable and capricious.
All attempts to find or impose an order on the world must fail because no single
human mind nor all human minds together can adequately perceive all
possible facts, make sense of them, and put them into an ordered scheme. This
inability to comprehend the world is compounded by the inability of individuals to
gain a thorough understanding of other people or even of themselves. The
meanings of their own mental processes, emotions, and motivations are never
entirely clear to them as they try to make sense of themselves and the larger and
smaller worlds in which they live. If there is a standard of truth outside
themselves, they must select it and commit themselves to it, but they are unable to
prove the certainty of such a truth.
Another theme is that of limitation. Individuals are thrust into existence for a short
time only. They are caught in what existentialist theologian Karl Barth called the
boundary situation. They come into the world at a specific time, and they leave it
at another specific time. About this there is no choice. Because the time is limited,
there are urgent decisions to be made. People are free to make them on the basis of
whatever facts they have available. But the facts themselves are a matter of choice.
Individuals select the criteria by which they decide the course of their lives or
particular undertakings.
The Realm Of Existentialism, a web site on this philosophy describes six basic
themes of Existentialism.
First, there is the basic existentialist standpoint, that existence precedes essence, it
has primacy over essence. Man is a conscious subject, rather than a thing to be
predicted or manipulated; he exists as a conscious being, and not in accordance
with any definition, essence, generalization, or system. Existentialism says I am
nothing else but my own conscious existence.
A second existentialist theme is that of anxiety, or the sense of anguish (German
angst), a generalized uneasiness, a fear or dread which is not directed to any
specific object. Anguish is the dread of the nothingness of human existence. This
theme is as old as Kierkegaard within existentialism; it is the claim that anguish is
the underlying, all-pervasive, universal condition of human existence.
Existentialism agrees with certain streams of thought in Judaism and Christianity
which see human existence as fallen, and human life as lived in suffering and sin,
guilt and anxiety. This dark and foreboding picture of human life leads
existentialists to reject ideas such as happiness, enlightenment, optimism, a sense
of well-being, the serenity of Stoicism, since these can only reflect a superficial
understanding of life, or a naive and foolish way of denying the despairing, tragic
aspect of human existence.
Similar to anxiety is the feeling of nausea. In this regard Albert Camus, a french
existentialist writer, says:
"In the best ordered of lives, there always comes a moment when the
structures collapse. Why this and that, this woman, that job or
appetite for the future? To put it all in a nutshell, why this eagerness
to live in limbs that are destined to rot?
The feeling is common to all of us. For most men the approach of
dinner, the arrival of a letter, or a smile from a passing girl are
enough to help them get around it. But the man who likes to dig into
ideas finds that being face to face with this particular one makes his
life impossible. And to live with the feeling that life is pointless gives
rise to anguish. From sheer living against the stream, the whole of
one's being can be overcome with disgust and revulsion, and this
revolt of the body is what is called nausea."
A third existentialist theme is that of absurdity. Granted, says the existentialist, I
am my own existence, but this existence is absurd. To exist as a human being is
inexplicable, and wholly absurd. Each of us is simply here, thrown into this time
and place---but why now? Why here? Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and
philosopher of Descartess time, who is also an early forerunner of existentialism,
says:
"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the
eternity before and after, and the little space I fill, and even can see,
engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant,
and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at
being here rather than there, why now rather than then."
The fourth theme which pervades existentialism is that of nothingness or the void.
If no essence defines human beings, if being human is inexplicable and wholly
absurd and if there is no purpose of existence then there is nothing that can be
done in order to achieve essence, to come out of absurdity, and to get a purpose.
Related to the theme of nothingness is the existentialist theme of death.
Nothingness, in the form of death, which is final nothingness, hangs over an
individual like a sword of Damocles at each moment of ones life. One is filled
with anxiety at times when one permits ones self to be aware of this. At those
moments, says Martin Heidegger, the most influential of the German existentialist
philosophers, the whole of my being seems to drift away into nothing. The
unaware person tries to live as if death is not actual, he tries to escape its reality.
But Heidegger says my death is my most authentic, significant moment, my
personal potentiality, which I alone must suffer. And if I take death into my life,
acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death
and the pettiness of life and only then will I be free to become myself. But here
the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre begs to differ. What is death? he asks.
Death is my total nonexistence. Death is as absurd as birth it is no ultimate,
authentic moment of my life, it is nothing but the wiping out of my existence as
conscious being. Death is only another witness to the absurdity of human
existence.
The sixth theme which characterizes existentialism is Alienation or estrangement.
By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences
himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He
does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own
acts but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he
obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with
himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, is
experienced as things are experienced. Alienation can be of many types. There is
alienation that exists in society. There is the alienation of individual human
beings who pursue their own desires in estrangement from the actual institutional
workings of their society, which are controlled by the cunning of Reason.
Alienated from the social system, they do not know that their desires are system-
determined and system-determining. And there is the alienation of those who do
not identify with the institutions of their own society, who find their society empty
and meaningless. To Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, alienation resulted
from the split between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind.
According to Hegel the alienation develops in civil society between the small class
of the wealthy and the growing discontent of the large class of impoverished
workers. The most profound alienation of all, in Hegel's view, is the alienation or
estrangement between ones consciousness and its objects, in which one is aware
of the otherness of the object and seeks in a variety of ways to overcome its
alienation by mastering it, by bringing it back into ones self in some way.
About the major themes of Existentialism, Encarta Encyclopaedia writes that
because of the diversity of positions associated with Existentialism, the term is
impossible to define precisely. Certain themes common to virtually all
existentialist writers can, however, be identified.. It discusses the four most
important themes which are: Moral Individualism, Subjectivity, Choice and
commitment, and Dread and Anxiety.
Moral Individualism implies that truth is something totally subjective and is not
same for everybody. Soren Kierkegaard reacted against the traditional Platonic
view, which said that the highest ethical good is the same for everyone; insofar as
one advances towards moral perfection, one resembles other morally perfect
individuals. He insisted that the highest good for the individual is to find his or
her own unique vocation. He wrote in his journal, I must find a truth that is true
for me the idea for which I can live or die. Other Existentialists have argued
that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral decisions.
Kierkegaards stress on the importance of passionate individual action in deciding
questions of both morality and truth was followed by almost all the existentialists.
They have insisted, accordingly, that personal experience and acting on one's own
convictions are essential in arriving at the truth. That is why the understanding of a
situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached,
objective observer. It is perhaps because of this reason that we see that
existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the exposition of their
philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables,
and other literary forms. They have held that rational clarity is desirable
wherever possible, but that the most important questions in life are not accessible
to reason or science.
Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist writing is that of choice or free
will. Humanitys primary distinction, in the view of most existentialists, is the
freedom to choose. As mentioned earlier, Existentialism states that human beings
do not have a fixed nature, or essence, as other animals and plants do; each human
being makes choices that create his or her own nature. If, as according to Sartre,
existence precedes essence then choice is central to human existence, and it is
inescapable; even the refusal to choose is a choice. If one is free to choose then
one is not only responsible for this choice but is also committed to it, so one must
accept the risk and responsibility of following ones commitment wherever it
leads. Regarding this matter of freedom and choice, Sartre remarks:
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world,
he is responsible for everything he does.
It will be suitable to discuss an interesting paradox that underlies the philosophy of
Existentialism. Earlier it has been said that human beings are free, to choose, and
to act accordingly. According to them one is presented with many choices and
one has to make his future by choosing one or some of them. They further say
that not to choose is also a choice. Now, If not to choose is also a choice then one
is not free to choose, rather he is forced to choose. One is not free not to choose.
In other words one is condemned to choose as he does not have any alternative.
The theme of dread and anxiety has been discussed earlier. Existentialist say that
a common fear or sense of anxiety or dread without any specific cause prevails
among human beings. They insist that it is because of the freedom to choose and
act, and the consequent responsibility for ones actions.
d. Major Exponents of Existentialism
Discussion about the existentialist philosophers will become too large if one
includes all those who contributed to this philosophy. Keeping aside personalities
such as Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, as their contribution in
Existentialism is not great, the focus will be on the three main and the most
important existentialist writers. These include, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin
Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Instead of discussing their life, brief attention
will be given to their works and ideas.
Soren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard, Soren, in full SOREN AABYE KIERKEGAARD (b. May 5, 1813,
Copenhagen, Denmark. d. Nov. 11, 1855, Copenhagen), was a Danish religious
philosopher and critic of rationalism, and is regarded as the father of existentialist
philosophy. His critique of systematic rational philosophy, specially Hegalianism,
won him fame. He insisted that actual life cannot be contained with in an abstract
conceptual system. He went against he age old view that highest good is same for
every individual by insisting that the individuals highest good is to find his or her
own unique vocation. He stressed the importance of passionate individual action
in deciding questions of both morality and truth. He further rejected a total rational
understanding of humanity and history stressing the ambiguity and absurdity of
human situation in the world.
Kierkegaard also distinguished three stages of existence between which there is
neither development nor continuity but gaps and jumps: the aesthetic stage is the
one in which one lives for the pleasure of the moment; the ethical stage is the one
based on the stability and continuity of life in work and in matrimony; and the
religious stage is the one characterized by faith, which is always a "dreadful
certainty" i.e., a dread that becomes certain of a hidden relationship with God.
Martin Heidegger
Heidegger, Martin (b. Sept. 26, 1889, Messkirch, Schwarzwald, Germany. d.
May 26, 1976, Messkirch, West Germany.), was a German philosopher, and is
counted among the main exponents of 20th-century Existentialism. He was an
original thinker, a critic of technological society, a leading ontologist of his time,
and an influence on a younger generation of continental European cultural
personalities. Heidegger was a student of, and anassistant to, Edmund Husserl,
whom he succeeded as professor of philosophy at Freiburg. One of Heidegger's
students was Jean-Paul Sartre, who later became the most prominent French
Existentialist. Many students of philosophy have difficulty separating Martin
Heidegger's brilliance and use of curiously-mystic language from his support of
Adolph Hitler and the National Socialists from 1933 through 1945.
Martin Heidegger began as a recognized authority in the phenomenological
movement and became an existentialist with theistic leanings. He did not believe
in Kierkegaards view that actual life can not be reduced to reason and so can not
be comprehended fully. He used the scientific method of phenomenological
reduction, and based his philosophy upon the hermeneutics of existence or the
science of existence. Kierkegaard accepted the paradox of being defining itself. As
a scientist, Heidegger could not accept this paradox. According to Heidegger, a
concept must be defined without using itself as reference. The main ideas of
Heidegger are as follows.
According to Heidegger's writings, human being as opposed to human beings
is comprised of four components: concern, being-toward-death, existence, and
moods. Dasein is the act of "being there" in essence. Without being something,
there is no existence. Concern, or Sorge, is the ability to care about the self, in
relation to phenomena. Being-toward-death, or Sein zum Tode, represents the
finite nature of life. This belief that death defines life complements Soren
Kierkegaards thought that God does not exist, but is real. Existence, or Existenz,
represents knowing one is and is changing. Finally, moods, or Stimmungen, are
reactions to other beings, further allowing one to define the self.
As with Kierkegaard and Sartre, Heidegger believed the existence of a physical
body preceded the essence of self. At some point in the development process, a
being becomes aware that it exists. This pivotal point in time is when essence
begins to form; the individual decides to acknowledge and embrace an essence at
this moment.
Dasien Sorge was Heidegger's term for concern and caring about the self and its
existence. When confronted with the world and other beings, the individual feels
anxiety and dread. The world appears complex and unsafe which it is. As a
result, the human being, Dasien, must care for itself as no one else can or will.
Taking care of the self is a sign that the individual recognizes dangers in the
universe. Recognizing threats demonstrates an understanding of the physical self.
It is reasonable to conclude that concern with the physical self precedes the
awareness of concern for the emotional self.
Being-there, Dasein, can be expressed in several fashions. The five modes of
Dasein described by Heidegger are: authenticity, inauthenticity, everydayness,
averageness, and publicness. Authentic being represents a choice of self and
achievement. Inauthenticity results from business, preoccupation, excitement, and
other external forces. An inauthentic being is working to fit the definitions of
others. Averageness takes hold when the individual no longer attempts to achieve
and accepts a loss of differentiation. Everydayness represents a person no longer
changing or making choices, but the individual might still be different from others.
Publicness is the complete loss of self for a public image. The individual conforms
to preconceptions and opinions. Unlike the celebrity with one achievement, this
individual repeats the same achievement over and over, thereby withdrawing from
independence. An example would be an artist with one style of expression,
repeated with minor variations to please others. By avoiding the new, the different,
the individual ceases to create and define a self.
For Heidegger the only proof that an individual understands existence is the
understanding and acceptance of death. While a child can understand the physical
need for food, the known consequences of not eating are limited to hunger and
illness. Death is a complex concept, beyond the grasp of an immature existence.
The moment one accepts death is the point when essence is brought into focus.
Knowing that life is finite reinforces the importance of all further decisions. Poor
choices result in the "Existential Guilt" of failure. For the existentialist, the worst
of natural sins is a failure to define the self using free will. Guilt cannot be
avoided, however, because all individuals fail to take some action, to make some
choices.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre, Jean-Paul French novelist, playwright, and a major exponent of
Existentialism was born on 21
st
June, 1905 in Paris, France and died on April15,
1980 in Paris. He lost his father at an early age and grew up in the home of his
maternal grandfather. As a boy, who wandered in the Luxembourg Gardens of
Paris in search of playmates, he was small in stature and cross-eyed. His brilliant
autobiography, Les Mots (1963; Words, 1964), narrates the adventures of the
mother and child in the park as they went from group to group in the vain hope
of being accepted then finally retreated to the sixth floor of their apartment on
the heights where (the) dreams dwell.
After graduating in 1929 from prestigious cole Normale Suprieure, Sartre
started teaching in the lyces of Le Havre, Laon, and, finally, in Paris. During his
studies he met several persons who were destined to be writers of great fame, such
as Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Mounier,
Jean Hippolyte, and Claude Levi-Strauss. During his years of teaching Sartre
published La Nause (1938; Nausea, 1949), his first claim to fame. This novel,
written in the form of a diary, narrates the feeling of revulsion that a certain
Roquentin undergoes when confronted with the world of matter not merely the
world of other people but the very awareness of his own body. Later, Sartre took
over the phenomenological method, which proposes careful, unprejudiced
description rather than deduction, from the German philosopher Edmund Husserl
and used it with great skill in three successive publications: L'Imagination (1936;
Imagination: A Psychological Critique, 1962), Esquisse d'une thorie des
motions (1939; Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 1962), and L'Imaginaire:
Psychologie phnomnologique de l'imagination (1940; The Psychology of
Imagination, 1950). But it was above all in L'tre et le nant (1943; Being and
Nothingness, 1956) that Sartre revealed himself as a master of outstanding talent.
Sartre places human consciousness, or no-thingness (nant), in opposition to
being, or thingness (tre). Consciousness is not-matter and by the same token
escapes all determinism. The message, with all the implications it contains, is a
hopeful one; yet the incessant reminder that human endeavour is and remains
useless makes the book tragic as well.
After World War II Sartre exhibited his attention towards the concept of social
responsibility. For many years he had shown great concern for the poor and the
disinherited of all kinds. Freedom itself, which at times in his previous writings
appeared to be a gratuitous activity that needed no particular aim or purpose to be
of value, became a tool for human struggle in his brochure L'Existentialisme est un
humanisme (1946; Existentialism and Humanism, 1948). Freedom now implied
social responsibility. In his novels and plays Sartre began to bring his ethical
message to the world at large. Initially Sartre expressed his views in novels but
later on turned to plays, as he thought that communication is more direct in the
genre of drama. He produced a number of plays during 1943-60. All of the plays,
in their emphasis upon the raw hostility of man towards man, seem to be
predominantly pessimistic; yet, according to Sartres own confession, their content
does not exclude the possibility of a morality of salvation.
Sartre in his philosophy focused on four main subjects which are: Subjectivity,
Freedom, Bad Faith, and Other People.
Sartre held that one awareness of the world is always accompanied by a kind of
vestigial awareness of ones self, and that therefore consciousness of any kind is
essentially a personal matter.
I am conscious of the world and of myselfwhich amounts, together,
to my world; you are conscious of the world and yourself your
world.
Sartre in his book Being and Nothingness differentiates between two types of
beings being-in-themselves and being-for-themselves. Beings-in-themselves
are ordinary things and are essentially what they are. Rules can be given which
govern their behaviour. This behaviour is invariable, and can in principle be
predicted. Being-for-themselves are self-conscious creatures. They have
consciousness. What is this consciousness:
Consciousness consists in the power to be aware not only how
things are, but how they are not. The possibility of conceiving a
situation negatively, either as not what it was, or as not what one
would like, or as not what one could make it, Consciousness is
said to be a gap or space between in the conscious being and the
world.
According to Sartres theory consciousness and freedom are in essence the same.
If we are conscious beings, in his sense, then we are also free. We
fill our lives by freely choosing not only what to do, but also what to
feel and think, what to believe, and how to describe things Each of
us, naturally, has to make these choices for himself. As his
consciousness is his alone, so are his choices.
This standpoint promises unlimited and unbounded freedom to the human beings.
According to Sartre, the first important truth about a mans freedom is that it is
unbearable. It is the agony of knowing that everything is up to us. There is no one
whom to shuffle off responsibility. However most people do not experience this
anguish because they cannot bear it; and they devise ways of escaping it. The most
common way is by lapsing into Bad Faith.
Bad Faith consists in pretending that we are not free, that we are
somehow determined, that we cannot help doing what we do, or
having the role that we have.
The Realm of Existentialism, a web site on Existentialism defines Bad Faith as:
(French mauvaise foi) in the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul
Sartre, a type of moral self-deception, involving our behaving as a
mere thing rather than choosing authentically. In bad faith, we evade
responsibility and anxiety by not noticing possibilities of choice, or by
behaving in a role others expect of us.
Sartre derives the concept from his metaphysical analysis of being.
Humans must strive to escape mere being-in-itself and to achieve
their true being, being-for-itself.
For Sartre the existence of others is, metaphysically speaking, a constitutive part
of the life of each one. He says that there is a constant struggle between their
freedoms. In his essay Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes:
While I attempt to free myself from the hold of the Other, the Other is
trying to free himself from mine; while I seek to enslave the other, the
other seeks to enslave me. We are by no means dealing with
unilateral relations with an object-in-itself, but reciprocal and moving
relations description of concrete behaviour must there be
envisaged within the perspective of conflict.
Sartres main work, Being and Nothingness, tries to present this view that,
contrary to popular opinions, existentialism is a basically an optimistic
philosophy. According to him:
it (Existentialism) encourages men to action by teaching them that
their destiny is in their own hands, and that there is no possibility of
living except by acting. There is no despair, he suggests, in a theory
according to which we have to decide for ourselves how to live, and
we create ourselves, become whatever we are, by making decisions.
Introduction to Shakespeare and Elizabethan Society.
a. Shakespeare: The Man
When William Shakespeare died in 1616, the great contemporary Ben Jonson in a
poem entitled To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William
Shakespeare, wrote that He was not of an age, but for all time!, suggesting that
his words would live on beyond his own time, and that Shakespeare would attain a
kind of immortality because of his works. Jonsons instinct and prophecy was
right: The international and lasting fame that Shakespeare enjoyed and is enjoying
is matchless. However, it is strange to find that the personal life of the dramatist,
an eminent literary personality of his time, is hidden in the haze and clouds of
history. Not much is known about his early life and whatever is know is based on
the official documents of that time which have survived the flux of time and
mention or give some hints about the personal life of the man called William
Shakespeare. So apart from some handful of dates it is all a matter of conjecture
and surmise.
The register of the church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, shows that he
was baptized on April 26, 1564. This means that he must have been born not long
before that date, and there is more or less general agreement that he was born on
or about 23 April. He was the third son of John and Mary Shakespeare, whose
first two children died in infancy. His father, John Shakespeare was a prosperous
glover and wool merchant, and his mother Mary Arden, was a daughter of a well
to do farmer. For a number of years John Shakespeare played an important role in
the municipal life of the town and was chosen an alderman (one of the counsellors
of the town) in 1565 and in 1568 he was elected bailiff (the equivalent of Mayor).
It is not certain where Shakespeare received his early education, but most scholars
agree that he was sent by his father to the local free school where children went
after learning to read and write. In this regard Encyclopedia Britannica writes:
Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the
education there was free, the schoolmaster's salary being paid by the
borough. No lists of the pupils who were at the school in the 16th
century have survived, but it would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of
the town did not send his son there. The boy's education would
consist mostly of Latin studies--learning to read, write, and speak the
language fairly well and studying some of the classical historians,
moralists, and poets.
Regarding the subjects that were taught at that time, M. M. Badawi writes:
There (at the grammar school) they would study the Bible and mainly
Latin work by Cato, Cicero, Caesar, especially Ovid and perhaps
Virgil, Horace or Terence. The school syllabus would perhaps
contain very little or no Greek.
There is no evidence that Shakespeare ever went to the university and it is now
commonly accepted that he did not have any higher education.
The next date after his baptism that is found in official document is of his marriage
in 1582, with Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior. She bore him three
children: Susanna born in 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith born in 1585.
After that date no records have been found relating to Shakespeare until in 1592
when he appeared as a promising young dramatist doing well in London. What
Shakespeare did during this period (1585-1592) is unknown, although several
guesses have been made which portray him as a schoolmaster, a student of law
and of medicine and, sometimes, a soldier fighting abroad, but none of these is
supported with substantial evidence.
The first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes in 1592
when Robert Greene, one of the university wits, declared Shakespeare in a
pamphlet as an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers who thought he was as
good as the best of them (university wits), and who seemed to have constituted a
real danger to them. For a number of reasons it is established beyond any doubt
that upstart Crow was Shakespeare. Meanwhile, Shakespeare developed a
friendship with Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton, who later on
became his patron and to whom he dedicated his two long narrative poems, Venus
and the Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrees (1594) which were produced
during the time when theatre was closed because of the plague.
About his career Encyclopedia Britannica writes:
It is not clear how his career in the theatre began; but from about
1594 onward he was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain's
Company of players (called the King's Men after the accession of
James I in 1603). They had the best actor, Richard Burbage; they
had the best theatre, the Globe; they had the best dramatist,
Shakespeare. It is no wonder that the company prospered.
Shakespeare became a full-time professional man of his own theatre,
sharing in a cooperative enterprise and intimately concerned with the
financial success of the plays he wrote. Unfortunately, written records
give little indication of the way in which Shakespeare's professional
life molded his marvellous artistry. All that can be deduced is that for
20 years Shakespeare devoted himself assiduously to his art, writing
more than a million words of poetic drama of the highest quality.
Shakespeare gained prosperity rapidly. In 1595 he became a sharer in the
company of The Lord Chamberlains Men. In 1597 he had saved enough money
to buy the second largest mansion in Startford, The New Place. In 1602
Shakespeare bought a large piece of land near Stratford for the sum of 320 (a
huge amount at that time) and in 1605 invested there a further sum of 440.
Shakespeare spent the last years of his life in retirement in Stratford, where he
seemed to have moved in 1610. But he did not lose all ties with his company in
London. It seems that he led a very quiet life at Stratford. He did not participate in
the municipal life of the town. He died on 23 April 1616, having made his final
will on 25 March. His body was buried in the Church at Stratford-upon-Avon,
which has now become the Mecca of all Shakespeare admirers. On his epitaph the
following lines are written:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
What type of character did Shakespeare possess? His contemporary, Ben Jonson,
refers to him more than once as gentle and the word is also used by his fellow
actors. He seems to have worked with his colleagues for twenty years without
any serious quarrel. He generally avoided getting involved in dangerous political
issues and taking sides in the endless quarrels that raged between the contending
theatrical companies and the playwrights of that time. Upon the fact that
Shakespeare made a large fortune M. M. Badawi writes:
the greatest English poet, it seems, was also a sober and shrewd
business man. His will shows that he was a man faithful to his
friends Although his plays were well received at the Court he did
not stoop to flatter the reigning monarch. Nor did he waste his
creative gift in writing occasional verses. Shakespeare must have
been a modest man to an astonishing degree his plays, no less
than his sonnets, show that he had greater respect for his art and
that he fully realized the dignity of the poets calling.
b. Shakespeares Reading
Since not much is known about the formal education of Shakespeare, and the ideas
and concepts that he renders in his plays are so huge in number and varied in
greatness that inquiry into the reading and learning of Shakespeare has held an
important place in Shakespearean studies. Most of what that has been said, and is
going to be said in the present chapter, is based on guesses, conjectures built on
the historical records available. Encyclopedia Britannica writes that during his
career in the theatre Shakespeare was probably too busy for prolonged study. He
had to read what books he could, when he needed them. His enormous vocabulary
could be derived only from a mind of great celerity, responding to the literary as
well as the spoken language.
The scholars who agree that Shakespeare did attend the grammar school are not
sure how much Latin and Greek he studied. Possibly at early stage of his life
Shakespeare was familiar with the classic writers and had some knowledge of
Latin and a little bit of Greek. Ben Jonson referred to Shakespeare as a man with
little Latin and less Greek. Mr. Badawi has an interesting point here. He says:
Ben Jonson, however, was a highly learned man and what he
considered to be little might not be very little after all.
On the basis of this and various other arguments it has been claimed that
Shakespeares knowledge of Latin was not negligible. His allusions to the works
which had not then been translated into English show that he had not only the
ability to read Latin but also had access to Latin material(s). In this regard F. P.
Wilson writes:
Few will have the strength to deny that Shakespeare acquired the
grammar school training of his day in grammar, logic, and rhetoric;
that he could and did read in the originals some Terence, Plautus,
some Ovid and Virgil;
There is no doubt that Shakespeare read Boccaccio, Plutarch's Lives of the Noble
Grecians and Romans, and the chronicles of Edward Hall and Ralph Holinshed.
He based most of his plays on these sources, although it is beyond question that he
was original in his `dramatic art. He achieved compression and economy by the
exclusion of undramatic material; developed characters from brief suggestions in
the source material; created entirely new characters; rearranged the plots with a
view to more effective contrasts of character, climaxes, and conclusions.
Occasionally he introduced a wider philosophical outlook. His intensification of
the dialogue and a higher level of imaginative writing transformed the original
work.
About Shakespeares reading of his contemporary works, Encyclopedia Britannica
writes:
apart from evidence of the sources of his plays, it is not difficult to
get a fair impression of Shakespeare as a reader, feeding his own
imagination by a moderate acquaintance with the literary
achievements of other men and of other ages. He quotes his
contemporary Christopher Marlowe. He casually refers to the
Aethiopica ("Ethiopian History") of Heliodorus (which had been
translated by Thomas Underdown in 1569). He read the translation of
Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding. Chapman's vigorous
translation of Homer's Iliad impressed him. He derived the ironical
account of an ideal republic in The Tempest from one of Montaigne's
essays. He read (in part, at least) Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of
egregious popish impostors and remembered lively passages from it
when he was writing King Lear. The beginning lines of one sonnet
(106) indicate that he had read Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie
Queene or comparable romantic literature.
References from Bible show that Shakespeare was well grounded in the Bible as
well. His works show a pervasive familiarity with the passages appointed to be
read in church on each Sunday throughout the year, and a large number of
allusions to passages in Ecclesiasticus show a personal interest in one of the
uncanonical books.
K. J. Spalding is of the view that Shakespeare engendered a love of knowledge.
He writes:
It may have been his thirst for knowledge that led Shakespeare in his
youth to seek his fortunes further than at home. He might find in
London, like Socrates in Athens, a place more likely to satisfy his
carvings than one where small experience grows.
Whatever may have been the reading of Shakespeare, Shakespeare greatness is not
due to the above mentioned lofty sources but because he was an outstandingly
"natural" writer, which makes his intellectual background comparatively of little
significance: He was naturally learnd; he needed not the spectacles of books to
read nature, said John Dryden. It is nevertheless obvious that the intellectual
quality of Shakespeares writings is high and reveals a remarkably perceptive
mind.
c. Social, Religious, Political and Intellectual Background
Shakespeare lived at a time when the previous world, i.e., the medieval world, was
transforming into a new one the modern one. The generations that lived during
the 15
th
and 16
th
centuries witnessed great changes not only in the social setup of
societies but also in the intellectual build-up of its members. The Renaissance was
the age of learning whose fruits were so marvellous that they changed the taste of
the people. The new learning, after the advent of the printing press, opened the
eyes of the common masses, and their previous view of themselves, their society,
religion and the world around them started to be questioned and doubted. All this
resulted in great change a change which constituted a new vision, a new set-up,
and a new world. The marking difference between the two worlds is the attitude of
questioning the established ideals. About this attitude Encyclopedia Britannica
writes:
The order of things did not go unquestioned. Atheism was still
considered a challenge to the beliefs and way of life of a majority of
Elizabethans, but the Christian faith was no longer single--Rome's
authority had been challenged by Martin Luther, John Calvin, a
multitude of small religious sects, and, indeed, the English church
itself. Royal prerogative was challenged in Parliament; the economic
and social orders were disturbed by the rise of capitalism, by the
redistribution of monastic lands under Henry VIII, by the expansion of
education, and by the influx of new wealth from discovery of new
lands.
Sixteenth century England is also full of religious controversies. At the outset of
the century the country was affiliated with the Pope in Rome. A sudden breach
came when Henry VIII decided to put down the papacy. He founded the Church
of England and became it first head while assigning its ultimate powers to the king
of England. After him when his daughter Mary succeeded to the throne she
reunited with the Pope and during her reign of about five years, executed
thousands of people who owed their fidelities to the Anglican Church, i.e., the
Church of England. However after the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, the order
of the Anglican Church was restored and the Queen became the sovereign head of
state as well as of the Church. But the tussle between the Catholics, Christians
whose loyalties were with the Pope, and the Protestants, followers of the Anglican
Church, remained there for a long time. These Catholics plotted against the Queen
but were captured, prosecuted and finally executed. In order to satisfy Catholics
Queen Elizabeth made a number of reforms in the Anglican Church. She altered
the book of prayers in some respects to satisfy the Catholics, and made it
compulsory for people to go to Church (Shakespeares father, for instance, was
fined for failing to go to church). To say that at the time of Shakespeare English
society was radically different from the medieval society in matters of religion is
not true. In fact a number of views pertaining to religion and cosmology, were the
same as those in medieval England. As far as the position of monarch was
concerned, Queen Elizabeth I was considered to be God's deputy on earth, and
lords and commons had their due places in society under her, with responsibilities
through her up to God and down to those of more humble rank.
On the political and social scenario the Elizabethan reign presents the best of
England at that time. It was a period of relative endurance, serenity, and
development. Her grandfather, King Henry VII, by being successful, ended the
War of Roses and succeeded in founding the Tudor Dynasty. As compared to
Henry VIIIs period which marks religious turmoil and unrest and Queen Marys
period which marks prosecution and persecution of religious opponents, Queen
Elizabeths period is of much political stability, peace and economic progress.
The defeat of the Spanish fleet in the English Channel on one hand gave courage
to the English nation and on the other hand engendered love for the Queen among
the masses. The long reign of Queen Elizabeth (from 1557 to 1603) gave the
people the chance to indulge in other healthy progressive activities such as
learning, business or trade etc. The progress in trade led to the formation of the
middle class which mostly resided in the major cities and unlike, the working
peasants who earned their living by working on the lands of their lords they fed
themselves through trade and were gaining more and more importance in society.
Shakespeare can also be regarded as one such tradesman as his investments in The
Lord Chamberlains Company, and his shares in the Globe Theatre are examples
of good business sense. Perhaps most of the earning that Shakespeare made was
through these sources and not through his words.
Much need not be said about the intellectual background of Elizabethan society as
the spirit of renaissance was still there with all its desire for knowledge.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:
An interplay of new and old ideas was typical of the time: official
homilies exhorted the people to obedience, the Italian political
theorist Niccol Machiavelli was expounding a new practical code of
politics that caused Englishmen to fear the Italian "Machiavillain" and
yet prompted them to ask what men do, rather than what they should
do. In Hamlet, disquisitions--on man, belief, a "rotten" state, and
times "out of joint"--clearly reflect a growing disquiet and skepticism.
The translation of Montaigne's Essays in 1603 gave further currency,
range, and finesse to such thought In philosophical inquiry the
question "how?" became the impulse for advance, rather than the
traditional "why?" of Aristotle. Shakespeare's plays written between
1603 and 1606 unmistakably reflect a new, Jacobean distrust.
The end of the 16
th
century and the dawn of the 17
th
century also marks great
philosophical awakening in Europe. In this regard David Horowitz writes:
There is a steady progress, during the Reformation, from the
beneficent, reasonable, harmonious order envisioned by the Middle
Ages, to the Hobbesian view of Nature as malignant and hostile, a
perpetual war of appetites, bellum omnium contra omnes.
In England Franis Bacon came up with the concept of empiricism and gave the
scientific inductive method of research and philosophical inquiry. On the
continent Rene Descartess philosophy gave importance to the individual with his
formula of Cogito Ergo Sum which showed his skepticism of everything else but
the individual.

Shakespeare, it can be said, being a product of this age, was


aware of all such growing philosophical ideas and problems. It must have been
impossible for him, as a man of great intellect and genius, to keep himself away
from these matters. This is why we find certain philosophical strains in his plays
born out of the questions and controversies he found all around him.
End Notes
Chapter TWO
Shakespeare on Existence:
Nature of Existence
Shakespeare lived at a time when peoples view of the world around them was
changing. Geographical explorations, scientific discoveries and philosophic
inquiries, all principally geared by the Renaissance, were bringing tremendous
change not only in the outer settings of life but also in an individuals way of
thinking about and looking at the world. The same spirit of inquiry questioned the
inherited, universally accepted, Christian view of man and his supremacy in the
universe. This led to a basic conflict between mans dignity and his wretched
position in the world. Elizabethans would have agreed with Sir John Davies:
I know my bodys of so frail a kind,
As force without, fevers within can kill;
I know the heavenly nature of my mind,
But this corrupted both in wit and will

I know my lifes a pain and but a span,


I know my Sense is mockd with everything:
And to conclude, I know myself a Man,
Which is proud, and yet a wretched thing.
From Nosco Teipsum (1599)
Related to this conflict between mans dignity and his wretchedness there was
another conflict. The belief in each one of the interrelated orders cosmological,
natural and political which were the frame, the basic pattern of all Elizabethan
thinking was being punctured by a doubt.
Copernicus had questioned the cosmological order, Montaigne had
questioned the natural order, Machiavelli had questioned the political
order. The consequences were great.
There is no certainty that Shakespeare was aware of the Copernican theory but it is
with out doubt that he was skeptical of the order of the universe as it was proposed
by Christian theology and classical philosophy. His eye did not have the sight of
Copernicus who was guided by science, but it certainly had the vastness of a
philosopher, which made him question the established norms. Mr. Clyde Curry
writes that:
Shakespeare was no systematic philosopher. In (his) works he is
revealed as a dramatic artist, who was capable of profound thought
and feeling in philosophical terms Like other men of his time he
must, however, have been acutely sensitive to the materials of
philosophical traditions inherited from the past. And, if he sought
truth in this direction at all his concepts of man and the world were
probably fashioned out of principals furnished him earlier or
contemporary thinkers.
Whether Shakespeare was a learned, erudite scholar or not, it is evident from his
plays that he was a profound thinker, whose intellectual eye could transcend the
horizons of time and space. In this regard Hamlets remark:
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet (I, v)
does not merely refer to the Ghost, and it would be wrong to study these lines only
in the immediate context where the issue of the ghost is being discussed. In fact
on a wider plane Shakespeare here shows his skepticism about the contemporary
views which are no longer acceptable to his mature intellect. To say that
Shakespeare believed in ghosts will also not be true. He was not a superstitious
person who believed in the existence of the supernatural; rather he used it as a
dramatic convention which was helpful to him as most of his audience believed in
ghosts.

The emphasis in these lines is not on the ghost but on more things in
Heaven and Earth which are not yet known and are not within the
comprehension of the human brain. Shakespeare shows his distrust of beliefs
which are accepted before reason can analyze them. In the play Hamlet first
Hamlet considers the ghost as one of the things in Heaven and Earth and later on
he tests its authenticity through the mouse trap. Why does Shakespeare do all this?
He wants that before blindly accepting something as truth, one should analyze it
on the touchstone of human reason and only then should it be accepted as truth.
So, in other words, most prevalent Christian and classical doctrines about the
existence and the nature of universe would need to be tested before being accepted
as valid universal truth(s). Secondly more things in Heaven and Earth refer, on
one hand to Copernicuss discoveries and on the other hand to exploration of the
earth the discovery of new lands and the possibility of new discoveries in all
fields. Shakespeare could transcend the normal values with his intellectual eye
which allowed him to see beyond the horizons of sky and earth.
Later in the play Hamlet talks about the grandeur of the universe and yet
decadence that this goodly frame the earth, this most excellent firmament, this
majestical rood fretted with fire seems to him a sterile promontory and a foul
and pestilent congregation of vapours. The lines are uttered when Hamlet is in
the midst of a crisis. Interpreting on the subjective plane of Hamlet these lines
show that the outer goodness and beauty of the universe and the world around,
depend upon ones own relation to them. For Hamlet, whose only motive in living
is to take revenge, the beauty and grandeur of the universe are useless because
these are not of his immediate concern. Interpreting these lines from a
contemporary point of view, these show Hamlets as well as Shakespeares doubt,
and question the purpose and use of the whole universe.
Shakespeare gives very few references to religion and God. This suggests that he
does not believe much in the Christian doctrines which say that the whole universe
was created for man, and the Elizabethan view that man is the centre of the
universe. Is it possible to be the centre of the universe by being a prisoner in it?
Hamlet: Let me question more in particular: what have you my
good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you
to prison hither?
Guildenstern: Prison, my lord?
Hamlet: Denmarks a prison.
Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.
Hamlet: A goodly one, in which there are many confines,
wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one o th worst.
Hamlet (II, ii)
Hamlets view that the world is a prison should not be taken lightly. A prison
implies confinement where one does not any freedom of action and where one is
often bound to act as others command him; where certain limits are imposed and
one is not allowed to cross them. For Hamlet, who is a student of philosophy,
Denmark rather the whole world is a prison which imposes certain limitations
upon his action. Shakespeare is in fact talking of human limitations which can not
be overcome. Just as Hamlet is not sure of his purpose of existence i.e., revenge,
similar is the case of man who does not seem to have any purpose of existence.
Secondly just as Hamlet is incapable of action because of certain reasons beyond
explanation same is the case of man whose limitations are a great barrier upon his
actions. Similar to this is the idea expressed by King Lear:
Lear: When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
King Lear (IV, vi)
where earth is compared to a great stage of fools whose actions and ideas have no
rationale or reason. Why is this crying? Certainly because one does not want to
come to this prison of sufferings and torments. This crying is crying for the mercy
that one should not be sent to this world and later crying in life is crying of pain
and sufferings which one faces while living in the world. Comparable to Lears
views are the ideas of Pascal who said:
"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the
eternity before and after, and the little space I fill, and even can see,
engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant,
and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at
being here rather than there, why now rather than then."
Hamlet, Lear, and above all Shakespeare all are ignorant (in the above mentioned
sense). Their little life is rounded with a sleep. Lear and Hamlet are ignorant of
the laws that govern the universe and they have made themselves unable to
understand the laws that govern human life in the world. Their sufferings are not
due to the thought beyond the reaches of our soul, but more because of their own
fault in not understanding the world around them. Shakespeare is also ignorant
of the laws governing the universe but, perhaps, he knows sufficient about the
other i.e., the human life and the laws governing it in the society. But there is in
him a search of the universal laws as well. This search is shown through the
questions raised by his characters. Hamlet and Lear are two of many such
characters. Since there is not much which can be said as the subjective views of
Shakespeare there is a strong possibility that whatever objective appears in his
work carries the overtone of subjectivism. Regarding Shakespeares objectivity
William Hazlitt writes:
He (Shakespeare) was nothing in himself, but he was all that
others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself
the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by
anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications,
through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of
thought
Was Shakespeare nothing in himself or he created such detached characters which
give no hint of his own personality and thinking? Perhaps the second stance is
more true. This objectivity of Shakespeare is in fact his subjectivity which he
hides with the help of his craft. King Lear, Hamlet and others are not mere
characters but are also a part of his own individual personality as they are his
creation. The distrust of the established views as expressed in his plays through
situations, actions, and characters is (can be / may be) in fact his personal
distrust. So to say that such and such views are not of Shakespeare but of Hamlet,
or Lear or anybody else will not be very much true. In fact on a wider plane such
views are proposed or even directed by Shakespeare who is the sole creator of all
these. The time when Shakespeare lived was of great upheavals. So, is it possible
for a man of this much genius and intellect to keep himself reserve and quite, by
not giving any hint of/to contemporary society. Was Shakespeare not of his age?
To say that he was not influenced by contemporary environment is, perhaps, not
true.
Coming back to Shakespeares views about existence, a very important speech
occurs in The Tempest which is so profound and subtle that one feels as if it has
come from the mouth of a pure philosopher. In fact Prosperos remarks sum up
the whole view of Shakespeare regarding existence.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest (IV, i)
At the last stage of his life when Shakespeare was about forty-six and he had
observed most of his life with all its absurdities and uncertainties. Every thing
appeared to him just the product of human brain and not having any absolute,
intrinsic value. The we of the speech includes not only the human beings but
also everything that exists in the universe. The whole speech can be interpreted in
two ways. One that conscious life is similar to the nocturnal life but the ordinary
people do not feel the dreamy nature of their existence. However men of genius
like Prospero (who has great metaphysical powers) and Shakespeare (who has
great intellectual powers) do understand it. Second that everything that exists is
not real but the product of the human brain just as the visual and auditory images
in a dream are produced by the brain. So everything that appears to exist and
seems to be real does not, in fact, exist. Ones mind makes it appear real. Similar
theme of dreams and shadows is expressed in Hamlet:
Hamlet: A dream itself is but a shadow.
Rosencrantz: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality,
that it is but a shadows shadow.
Hamlet (II, ii)
A dream is just a shadow of something whose own existence is not sure. To
Hamlet a dream itself is but a shadow. A shadow of what? The reply comes
from Rosencrantz, that it is a shadow of another shadow. What is this second
shadow? Human beings or their respective brains. If it represents human beings
than it resemble Prosperos stuff which makes dreams as well as it makes we.
So to Shakespeare whole human existence is but a shadowy existence whose real
is, at least, no known, if it does exist. This shadow of shadow resembles Platos
theory of double imitation. Plato held that reality exists in heavens and what
appears real according to five senses is fake and imitation of the real in heaven.
So in order to achieve ones own reality one must transcend these five senses and
reach the real which lies in heaven. For this one must first realize that one is
living a fake, shadowy and imitated life. In the above speech Hamlet and
Rosencrants have realized their dreamy, shadowy rather double shadowy existence
and have come to know that this is not real and that they must strive for achieving
the real self.
It is interesting to note that Prospero does not say that things appear as if they
appear in dreams, i.e., he includes human beings also in it. In other words human
beings are also made of similar stuff which is used in the making of dreams. Like
as the existence of dreams is bound with a brain and its visualizing and
understanding of it similar is the case of human beings whose existence is bound
with another persons understanding of it. Developing Descartes formula of
Cogito Ergo Sum Aldous Huxley said:
Cogitatur ergu est(Latin)
Something is thought about therefore something is (i.e., exists).
Similar is the case here. If human beings and other things are like dreams then
their existence depend upon their understanding which ultimately depends, just as
dreams existence and understanding depends upon the same individual, upon a
thinking brain somewhere. e.g., to say that Hamlet exists, somebody other than
Hamlet should say that his brain is signaling an appearance of what he calls
Hamlet. It is a very existentialist stance as existentialist say that to exist is to be
understood by others as existing. Sartre in his Being and Nothingness gives an
interesting example in order to explain this point. An eavesdropper comes to
know about the existence of another person when she finds that someone is
observing her. The element of fear that is produced in her mind or brain is the
guarantee, according to Sartre, that the other fellow (the observer) exists. Similar
is the case in Prosperos speech, thinking that other exists is the guarantee of
his/her/its existence.
The second part of Prosperos speech our little life is rounded with a sleep is also
very profound. What does Prospero (or Shakespeare) mean by sleep. This sleep is
the sleep of death (non-existence) and ignorance (knowledge of nothing). The
non-existence is infinite on both sides. This sleep is perhaps the sleep of eternity.
To Pascal (mentioned earlier) life is swallowed up in the eternity before and
after. Similar idea is expressed in Troilus and Cressida:
Whats past and whats to come is strewd with husks
And formless ruin of oblivision.
(IV, v)
King Lears cries when he has come to this stage of fools suggest that he had a
pre-existence, and the following remark of Queen Gertrude
Thou knowst tis common, all that lives must die,
Passing through nature, to eternity.
Hamlet (I, ii)
suggests that there is also eternity after death. The very word passing suggest
that there is some voyage (of life or existence) from which man comes. Secondly
it also suggests that, similar to the eternity where man goes after death, there is
eternity from where man comes before birth. So man is caught up between two
infinities. The infinity of life-before-birth and the infinity of life-after-death. But
this infinity is of nothingness of sleep.
Montainge in one of his essays writes:
The frailest and most vulnerable of all creatures is man, and at the
same time the most arrogant. He sees and feels himself lodged here
in the mud and filth of the world, nailed and riveted to the worst, the
deadest and most stagnant part of universe, at the lowest story of the
house and most remote from the vault of heaven, with the animals of
the worst condition and he goes and sets himself in imagination
above the circle of the moon, and brings heaven under his feet.
Shakespeare reflects the same idea in the speech of Hamlet where he say:
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercise; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my
disposition; that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory; this most excellent firmament, this majestical roof,
fretted with golden fire: why, it appears no other thing to me, then a
foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
Hamlet (II, ii)
It will be interesting to compare and contrast Prosperos speech that we are such
stuff as dreams are made on with Hamlets. Prospero reaches this conclusion that
we are such stuff as dreams are made on through deep meditation, observation of
the universe around him and through intensive studies. But how did Hamlet reach
the conclusion that everything is a foul pestilent congregation of vapours. Even
if he did find out that everything is a congregation of vapours, why is it pestilent
and foul to him and not so for Prospero. Is there any intuition through which
Hamlet discovers that all is vapours? One is not sure. But, despite the similarities
in their conclusion, there is vast difference between Prospero and Hamlet. To
Hamlet it is pestilent and foul because of his own subjective life which is a
torment for him. He is purely subjective in drawing this result, while Prosperos
view is more mature, profound and objective. He does not attach any negative
attributes with this dreamy nature of existence. He remains neutral. To him,
perhaps, life or existence is what one himself makes it to be because he started a
new life, after coming on the island, with the help of his own will, and conquered
everything in the island. To him nature or things around are not foul but for
Hamlet they are, perhaps because:
Hamlet: there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it
so:
Hamlet (II, ii)
It is his personal thinking and understanding, and his own subjective response to
the universe around him which is reason for the appearance of universe as foul and
pestilent to him. In other words, in the earlier mentioned existentialist sense, his
mind is making something foul and pestilent whose reality nobody knows. For
him just the idea or thinking that universe is foul and pestilent is sufficient to make
him believe in it, and he does so. His totally subjective stance brings him in
comparison with the modern man.
Here the subjectivism of Hamlet is signally betrayed, and
subjectivism is his intellectual sin. Thereby he proclaims himself the
archetype of modern man.
Futility of Existence
there is no permanent existence, either of our being or that of the
objects. And we, and our judgment, and all mortal things, incessantly
go flowing and rolling on.
Related to the idea that human beings are living a dreamy life in a universe which
is a congregation of vapours is the idea, in the Shakespearean plays, of the futility
of existence. Futility of existence carries three important notions under it
worthlessness of everything, futility of life, and futility of action. If all existence
is dream-like and shadowy and the exact nature of existence is not known and is
not in the comprehension of human beings than it is futile to exist in such a
universe and suffer such a purposeless life. In a universe, where the position of
man is not exactly known and whatever is known is full of torments and suffering,
to live is to suffer. Reflecting upon the worthlessness of everything these are the
views of Hamlet:
Oh, that this too too sold flesh, would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew:
Or that the Everlasting had not fixd
His cannon gainst self-slaughter. O God, O God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world!
Fie ont! Oh fie, fie, tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed: things rank, and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
Hamlet (I, ii)
To him all the uses of this world appear to be weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.
For him it is an unweeded garden as whatever he does, does not bring any fruit.
All his actions are futile as they do not serve the purpose. These lines reflect more
upon the worthlessness of everything in its universal context and not just the
human flesh, life or actions. Everything in the world is subject to decay. Things
rot before their purpose is comprehended. Man is nothing before the all
incomprehensible power of universal forces. Hamlet is right in his views where he
compares the (supposed) grandeur of man with this power of nature. He says:
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in
faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action,
how like angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this
quintessence of dust?
Hamlet (II, ii)
It is not, in fact, to him only that man is the quintessence of dust. In truth man is
so. He is nothing before incomprehensible Nature. Hamlet is unable to
understand the relation between mans greatness and his depressed position in the
world.
The tensions between antithetic images of man, between divinity
and dust, are not unique concerns of Hamlet, but form a focal theme
of the Shakespearean world experience.
Here Hamlet is caught in a conflict between mans grandeur and his wretched
position.
He (Hamlet) is caught between the sight of human potential, a
potential, that may come to realization in supreme moments and
supreme individuals and, on the other side, the reality of mans
condition, his corporeality and corruption, his domination by flesh and
by time in the flesh, the inescapable decay that undermines and
makes meaningless his project.
No doubt man is noble in reason, infinite in faculty, admirable in form, like angels
in actions, the beauty of the world and the paragon of animals yet he is nothing
before the mighty universe about which Hooker, a medieval scholar, said:
If the celestial spheres, should forget their wonted motions, and by
irregular volubility turn themselves away what would become of
man himself, whom all these things do not serve.
Man is not the centre of the universe and a very tiny part of universe is under his
control, so if the remaining huge part sets on a revolt against man, he will perish
like a bubble. An important point in Hamlets speech is this that he considers man
the paragon of animals, in other words he does not believe in the religious
doctrine which consider man the best of all creation, and the classical views that
man is the centre of universe. By calling man the best of animals Shakespeare
implies that, no matter he is best, he is still an animal. King Lears description of
Edgar is in fact a true description of man in the world. He says:
Lear: Thou wert better in a grave, than to answer with thy uncoverd
body, this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider
him well. Thou owst the worm no silk; the beast, no hide; the sheep,
no wool; the cat, no perfume. Ha? Heres three ons are
sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man, is no
more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art
King Lear (III, iv)
In fact this is the exact position of man, and he is no more than this. World is the
place where by suffering and torture he is made to rot and pine. A very
pessimistic view though, but for those who are pessimistic about the whole
universe, world as a place for rotting and suffering is not difficult to conceive. For
those who know that life is to suffer, that the world hath not a sweeter creature
and that there are no stones in heaven but what serves for the thunder, suffering
and pining is everywhere so why not now, at this very time and here at this very
place.
Gloucester: No further sir, a man may rot even here.
King Lear (V, ii)
Both Hamlet and Lear give references to prison. Hamlets view is a mature one
where he thinks this world as a prison as it imposes so many limitations on ones
freedom. However when Lear is sent to the prison, after Cordelia has lost the
battle, these are his remarks:
Lear: come lets away to prison,
We two alone will sing like birds i th cage:

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies: and hear (Poor rogues)
Talk of Court news, and well talk with them too,
Who loses, and who wins; whos in, whos out;
And take upons the mystery of things,
As if we were Gods spies: and well wear out
In a walld prison, packs and sects of great ones,
The ebb and flow by th moon.
King Lear (V, iii)
In his insanity Lear represents the common masses. In the cage of this world these
are what most human beings (ordinary, common) indulge in. Not realizing that
they are in prison they sing, pray, tell old tales, laugh, make merry and, greatest of
all, they try to forget that they are in prison and so, do not strive for their freedom.
The do not understand the nature of the world as a prison, and think that they have
freedom in it. Most people do not try to even think about the world as a prison, as
they find consolation in the pet ideas that their society and/or religion provides to
them.
Just as Shakespeare talks and questions much about the nature of the whole
universe and its worthlessness, similar is the case of human life. In fact it is quite
difficult to separate certain ideas and treat worthlessness of existence and of life as
two separate subjects. Hamlet initially calls man the quintessence of dust dust
which is useless, dirty and the product of decay. This theme is further elaborated
in the grave diggers scene, where Hamlet, while examining the skeletons and
skulls delivers a fine speech:
Theres another (skull): why might not that the skull of a lawyer?
Where be his quiddits now? His quillets? His tenures, and his tricks?
Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the
sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of
battery? Hum. This fellow might be ins time a great buyer of land,
with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his
recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers
vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the
length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of
his lands will hardly lie in this box, and must the inheritor himself
have no more? Ha?
Hamlet (V, I)
While Hamlet is pondering over the skull and skeletons, the basic question behind
all his speech is of worthlessness and impermanence of human action. Whatever
a man does in his life is useless to the individual once he is dead. He himself is
transformed into nothing and all his deeds and actions are of no use to him.
Another underlying theme in Hamlets speech is that of the ceaseless flow of time.
Nothing is permanent in the world or universe of time and every thing is bound to
change except change itself which is the only constant thing in this universe.
When the flux of time sways, men pass into the next world which Sartre calls
complete non-existence, and which for Shakespeare is eternity. On another
occasion Hamlet also considers mans life with that of a beast.
Hamlet: What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more:
Hamlet (IV, iv)
An animal is not conscious of its existence in the sense human beings are. Most of
the animals behaviour is innate, so predetermined, but in the case of man, perhaps
this is not the case. When Lear and Hamlet compare Human life with that of
animals in fact they mean that just as animals do not have any sublime purpose of
existence and have no great faculties the same is the case of man, who despite
having large discourse, noble reason, is base and cheap like animals. He can not
escape the set course of his existence and is forced to live like animals are forced
to live without any knowledge of their existence.
Perhaps the most tragic and profound are the views of Macbeth about life. When
he has lost everything in his struggle for keeping his throne, he comes to realize
the true nature of life. Had he realized this earlier his catastrophe would not have
happened. Now he has relaized the pettiness, futility and worthlessness of life.
Macbeth endures an awareness of nothing, a death-consciousness,
and we see a positive and active symbolism of his experience in his
acts of destruction. An awareness of essential nothingness produces
acts of nihilism.
His little speech covers all the aspects of futile life the role of time in the decay,
shadowy nature of existence, pettiness of human action even pre-determinism in
human action, confinement in the world, limitation of action and many more. One
marvells how profound, deep and true is his description of life.
Macbeth: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in the petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth (IV, ii)
All this, i.e., calling man the quintessence of dust, a beast, useless; considering life
as a prison, a stage for fools, a tale told by an idiot etc., are ideas which carry the
meaning of the futility of life. Just as the purpose of the whole universe is not
known, and all appears to be worthless, similar is the case of life which appears to
be futile. It is futile because it is purposeless. All this relates to the idea that
human being are living a dreamy life in a universe which is a congregation of
vapours.
Purposelessness
The above mentioned arguments lead to the formation of view that Shakespearean
characters certainly lack purpose in their existence. By purposelessness it does not
mean in its modern sense where it refers to a sort of alienation and lack of
direction in ordinary life, here it refers to the purpose on a wider level the
purpose of the existence of universe, and mans living in this world.
Shakespeares characters do not live for a divine purpose. Perhaps, they do not
much believe in divinity and have realized that they have a dreamy and shadowy
existence and live in a congregation of vapours. The hostile nature of the world
around them has made them aggressive towards life. They have realized its
worthlessness and futility, so there is no great desire to live after knowing that life
is nothing but sufferings and torments. This desire not to live and the idea of
purposelessness is best expressed in Hamlets soliloquy.
To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die to sleep,
Hamlet (III, i)
Hamlet is weary of this world and the pains in it. He has come to know that life is
futile and there is no sublime or divine purpose of existence. He seriously
considers about committing suicide which he thinks will end all his ailments. He
knows (or thinks) that the task assigned to him is greater than his capacity and
ability. This is why, like an escapist, he looks for other ways. His very
procrastination in revenge is, perhaps, due to his escapist nature. He realizes that
there is no way through which he can accomplish his task easily and this is why he
thinks about death. Similar to Hamlets blindness (from facts and reality) is the
blindness of the Earl of Gloucester who says:
Gloucester: I have no way, and therefore want no eyes:
I stumbled when I saw.
King Lear (IV, i)
Life has become, also, a torment for Gloucester, so he has also lost his desire to
live. He has also realized that reason is not something which can save him
against incomprehensible Nature. When he had eyes, i.e., reason, he committed
mistakes, and now when he has lost his eyes he knows that now there is nothing
which can save him. He has accepted that now he has no way i.e., purpose.
Self-Created Purpose:
Human existence is not enacted on a timeless stage, but in a
mutable world, where time alters the appearance of all and,
therefore, where, in order to attain the coherence and substance of
an identity, an imaginative realization must be rooted in something
more than the particularity of things and the changeable wills that
fasten on them. It must shape itself along lines that withstand the
shifts of time, and it must accord with commitments and values that
remain firm; for it is their constancy, their failure to dissolve and
vaporize, that distinguishes imagined life-shapes from real.
Most of Shakespeares characters live life without a divine or sublime purpose.
They create a purpose to live in this purposeless universe. Hamlet creates the
purpose of revenge, Macbeth creates the purpose of getting the throne and then
retaining it, Prosperos purpose is multi-folded to exist; to bring up his
daughter, Miranda; to take revenge from his brother who usurped his dukedom;
and perhaps to gain knowledge and power as well. Othellos purpose is to love
Desdemona and for him there is chaos without Desdemona. King Lear is a
different case in this regard. However Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Prospero
have self-created purposes for their existence and their accomplishment of success
or losing in the case of failure is the point where their purpose of existence finish
and they cease to exist. Among these characters one (Hamlet) dies after
accomplishing his purpose, the other (Macbeth) dies after semi-accomplishment,
semi-failure, and Prospero succeeds in fully achieving his purpose but he no
longer wishes to live. Their purpose is the only truth for them and they try their
best to reach it.
All this, i.e., realizing purposelessness and then creating a purpose for ones
existence in this world, is like modern Existentialism which talks of choice,
commitment finding the raison detre. Kierkegaard held such views about the
self-created purpose for existence. The web site The Realm of Existentialism
writes:
Kierkegaard once remarked that "I must find a truth that is true for me
... the idea for which I can live or die." Other existentialist writers
have echoed Kierkegaard's belief that one must choose one's own
way without the aid of universal, objective standards.
For Hamlet the only truth in the world is this that his father was murdered by his
uncle, Claudius, and the only course of action that is left for him and which he
must adopt as his ultimate purpose of existence is to take revenge. This, in fact, he
does. He devotes his whole life to this one purpose. His own nature is the biggest
hurdle in the easy and quick accomplishment of this purpose and thus it is his own
nature which is the root cause of the catastrophe. At the outset of the play Hamlet
does not have this purpose, rather he is aimless and is thinking about what to do
after his father has died and his mother remarried. The visit of the ghost defines
the path of his action. He initially devotedly tries to establish the veracity of the
ghosts message. When he is sure of its truth, revenge of the most foul murder
becomes his only purpose in life. He never thinks what will happen after the death
or assassination of King Caludius, he never imagines himself to be a king except
once when in rage and anger against Claudius he mentions his lawful inheritance
of throne after the death of his father. The greatness of Hamlet lies in his pursuit of
this purpose and his subsequent failure because of the lack of potential, courage
and abilities.
In the case of Macbeth, he is incited, initially by the witches. At the start of the
play he is satisfied with the way his life is going, but the germs that the three
witches implant in his mind set a new course for him. In his calm and steady life
there comes a desire of change. The built in morality and ethics try to subdue
these desires for some time but when reinforced by Lady Macbeth they form the
new purpose of life for Macbeth. He does everything possible to get the throne
and then keep it. To him King Duncan, other generals, dignitaries and their
respective families are simple impediments to be eliminated on his way towards
his purpose. He achieves his aim ultimately, but at great cost, where the whole of
life appears to him as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.
Out of the self created purposes Prosperos purpose is most apparent and clear.
His whole life is in a sense devoted to his daughter, Miranda. Initially it was she
who was the root cause of Prosperos existence as he lived to nourish her, to bring
her up, and it was she who, in a sense, encouraged him by being a source of
permanent motivation. Prosperos replay to the Mirandas question, that in his
early days on the island she might have been a trouble for him, reflects his true
purpose. He said:
O, a cherubin
Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have decked the sea with drops full salt
Under my burden groaned; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue.
The Tempest (I, ii)
But, to say that Mirandas upbringing was the only purpose of Prosperos life
might not be true. To get restitution was the other main purpose of his existence.
Since his brother had usurped his throne and made him almost die, he could not
forget all this. His whole study of magic conducted at the island is to attain such
power as to make him invulnerable. At last he succeed in getting this much
power. When Ariel on his command raises a storm in the sea, it is the final point
of Prosperos these self-created purposes. His brother appologises and returns his
dukedom to him and Miranda finds an excellent match in the person of
Ferdinanad. So Prosperos two main purposes are accomplished. What next?
And here Prospero is again faced with the problem of purposelessness. The last
part of the Epilogue which ends the play requests freedom by final death. He has
realized that the purpose he has created for his life has been fully fulfilled. Now
he wants to die with peace.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so, that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be
Let your indulgence set me free.
The Tempest. (Epilogue)
Hamlet and Macbeth die in their struggle for accomplishing or retaining the
position which was, in other words, their purpose of existence. Prosperos case is
strange. After he has accomplished all he wants, he no longer attempts to create
fake purposes for existence. Rather by realizing the ephemeral nature of
existence, he wants to embrace death and end his dream.
Othello loves Desdemona because he wants to avoid the chaos which he may face
when she is no longer there.
Othello: But I do love thee; and when I love thee not Chaos is
come again
(III.iii)
This is his self-created purpose of existence. To exist implies coming out of
chaos and this is what Othello is trying to do. By loving Desdemona he is trying
to overcome the chaos that one feels when one is out of his existence.
Death
Last of all there is the theme of death. For most Shakespearean characters death is
an escape from the torment and sufferings of life. Hamlet reflects upon this theme
in his main soliloquy.
to die to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to? tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressors wrong, the proud mans contumely,
The pangs of dispizd love, the Laws delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make,
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
Hamlet (III, I)
Similar to Hamlets views are the views of Roderigo, who considers death as a
physician when life is nothing but torments and sufferings. To him:
It is silliness to live when to live is torment and then have we
prescription to die when death our physician.
Othello (I, i)
For Hamlet and Roderigo, death is something which will end their pains but they
cant embrace it because
the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Hamlet (III, I)
To some extent Hamlet and Roderigos views about death resemble Sartres
definition of it. He calls death as the complete negation or turning into nothing as
complete nihilism.
What is death, he asks? Death is my total nonexistence. Death is as
absurd as birth-- it is no ultimate, authentic moment of my life, it is
nothing but the wiping out of my existence as conscious being. Death
is only another witness to the absurdity of human existence.
This non-existence implies that there wont be any sufferings after death as one
will cease to exist.
So, to conclude one may say that although Shakespeare was not a philosopher he
certainly had the dimensions of one. The philosophical overtones that his plays
carry suggest that his view of the world was not an ordinary or nave one. In fact
his thinking is more profound than that of many philosophers. In outline his
views about the existence of the universe are as under. First of all there is the
basic stance that nothing is certain, i.e., whatever is known, its reality can not be
verified. Secondly human existence is dream-like in which man is not fully aware
of his position and his subsequent actions. Thirdly whatever is, appears to be
purposeless as its true nature is not known and, perhaps, can not be known.
Fourthly since everything is purposeless so living life is futile. Fifthly since there
is no known or divine purpose for existence one must create a purpose for oneself
in order to live in the world. Finally the event of death is mostly considered as a
point where one ceases to exist as most characters agree that after death their
torments and sufferings will finish. What there will be after death, no body knows
or talks about. Whether there will be nothingness or non-existence, or something
like Heaven or Hell, Shakespeare has little to say. These are some of the basic
themes which relate to existence that have been treated in this chapter. Numerous
other themes will be discussed in the coming chapters.
End Notes
Chapter THREE
Shakespeare on Fate and Free will
The study of the role of fate in determining human life as depicted in the tragedies
of Shakespeare, and its contrast with the theme of free will in the same plays is an
interesting one. No doubt Fate plays a vital part in bringing the catastrophe of the
hero, yet to say that in Shakespearean tragedies a hero suffers because he was
fated to suffer would be subject to controversy. Even when it appears that this
particular hero is fated to suffer, he does not accept this and decides to follow his
own course of action. In fact his greatness lies in not accepting what is fated for
him and choosing what he thinks best for himself. They are, in a sense,
challenging the destiny unshunnable, and their courage to challenge it is one
main reason of their magnanimity. This courage is the thing which distinguishes
them from other characters who consider what fruits or ills fate brings for them as
their wretched fortune.
There appears to be two types of fate as presented in the plays of William
Shakespeare. Before coming to them it would be suitable to discuss what is
normally meant by fate. It is an ancient mythological concept which says that
human destinies, the span of a persons life and his allotment of misery and
suffering is determined before hand, i.e., all this is decided in advance. The main
point behind the concept of fate is the pre-determinism of everything: behaviour,
action, events etc. How is this pre-determinism implemented? In Shakespearean
tragedies two ways are proposed. Though both agree on the point that theres a
Divinity that shapes our ends, according to one view the pre-determinism is
instantaneous as the gods in the heavens are deciding what should be (the) next
move in a particular persons life. The other view says that when a child is born, it
carries certain features which determine his future course of action and his
behaviour. This view resembles Ben Jonsons theory of humours. Before
discussing these two types in detail, it is interesting to note a striking point that a
character comes to the realization of the part played by fate only when he suffers a
lot. It happens very seldom, in the plays, that a success is regarded as the will of
the gods, whereas sufferings, specially unmerited, are always considered to be sent
by the gods. Why it is so? Shakespeare here touches a very basic instinct of man,
who (it is perhaps a psychological problem [or predicament] with him) considers
his success as his right because of his personal merits, and the sufferings as sent by
mighty gods who treat men as pawns for their own fun. A very important feature
of Shakespeares treatment of fate is his doubt and criticism of the established
view about it. Perhaps it was hard for Shakespeare to believe that the life of a
creature which is noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in action like angels, the
beauty of the world, does not have free will. But since there was no evidence
through which Shakespeare could prove that there is nothing like fate, he restricted
himself in showing his doubt and skepticism about it. It can also be said that he
wanted his audience to think about the role and nature of fate in determining ones
life, that is why he gave this much importance to fate in his plays. Nothing can be
said with certainty but it is sure that Shakespeare presents multiple and contrasting
views about fate. His purpose is perhaps to find its truth and exact reality by
analyzing the concept through various angles and to invite his audience to think
about it.
Hamlet: Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When, our deep plots do pall, and that should teach us,
Theres a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will
Hamlet (V, ii)
Hamlets realization that there is a divinity that shapes our ends is pretty much
different from other heroes. Hamlet is relatively polite in his mentioning of fate.
The reason is that he is going to describe the good effects of a bad action: he has
recently, and almost accidentally, escaped the death plot of King Claudius by
sending Rosencrantz and Gulidenstern to the death prepared for him in England
instead of going himself. Before this realization in the final scene of the play,
Hamlet does not remark much about the part of fate in determining his or anybody
elses life. Hamlet, it seems, is not conscious of the worth of the words he is
speaking. It is certain that your indiscretion will not always serve you well and
leaving this matter aside, Hamlet is blind to the fact that if there is divinity which
shapes ones ends, how can one be called responsible for ones actions; how does
one have freedom of action? Hamlet is not conscious that by believing in a
divinity who is shaping ones end he surrenders his individual freedom which is
the last thing the Prince of Denmark would like to do. Why is Hamlet not
considering it a mere chance that he escaped death and why is he relating it with
divinity? This is a question most difficult to answer. Hamlet is a person who does
not regard the murder of his father, the incestuous and hasty marriage of his
mother and the crowing of his uncle instead of himself who was the rightful heir to
the throne as determined by fate. He never scolded divinity for deciding all this.
And now when he has realized that there is something like fate, why is he still
wanting revenge. Why does not he simply accept that his fathers murder, his
mothers marriage and his uncles crowning is all that divinity has shaped and
there is nothing which anybody can do in this regard. As stated earlier the
greatness of Shakespeares tragic heroes lies in their challenge to fate. They know
that their destiny is unshunnable yet they strive to change it. The consequent
catastrophe is not the result of their blindness or overambitiousness but their
courage to challenge what is pre-decided and their desire to have freedom. It is
their challenge and desire which lends them greatness.
In the four great tragedies of William Shakespeare, two heroes accept their fate as
they find it and do not sritve to change it perhaps because of the nature of the
tragedy it is difficult to have that sort of action, the other two heroes, even after
realizing that there is something known as fate, do not accept it and strive to have
their own course of action and try to have their own choices. One such case,
Hamlet is mentioned above. The other is of Macbeth who resembles Hamlet quite
a lot. He also challenges what is fated for him. At the final stage of the play, he
has realized that fate is against him, that he is on the wrong side, yet he does not
accept it and fights desperately to choose what he himself wants and not to follow
what fate has written for him. His greatness lies in his fall like that of Hamlet. At
the final stage of the play Hamlet has realized that theres a divinity which shapes
our ends, but in Macbeth in the first act Lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to get
the crown because
Lady Macbeth: fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
Macbeth (I, v)
It is ironical that in the first half of the play Macbeth strives to get what is fated for
him. Initially he murders Duncan and other lords just to get the throne and to
sustain it. In the second part he does his best to avoid what is written for him in
the book of fate. In the first part he succeeds but in the second he fails simply
because first fate wished him success and later it had failure for him. Macbeth
overcomes all the hurdles that he faces in the first part and fails to overcome the
difficulties in the second part because the book of fate willed only this and nothing
more than this. When he succeeds initially he does not say that his success is due
to his fate, (rather he considers it his right) but in the second part, where the
prophesies of the witches prove to be opposite what they apparently meant he
realizes the inevitability of fate. He realizes the pettiness of life where everything
is determined and nothing is in mans hands.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player


That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth (IV, ii)
The main message regarding the part of fate is conveyed in line six and seven
where life is compared with a stage-actor. It will be more suitable to explain the
analogy of stage actor with the help of a few lines from As You Like It.
All the worlds a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
As You Like It (II, vii)
Macbeth realizes very late in his life that life is of this nature. The actor analogy
is a very profound one. An actor is supposed to behave, speak, enter and exit the
stage in exact accordance with the lines written by the playwright. In his case, his
life on the stage is written and controlled by the writer or the director and not by
the actor himself. Similar is the case of man, according to Macbeth, whose
actions, behaviour, birth (entrance in the world) and death (exit from the stage of
the world) is decided by the divinity which resides in heaven. Both Hamlet and
Macbeth realize their actor-like existence whose role is determined by something
up in the heavens, to whom they do not have any access and to whom they can
never know and can not control. This realization is no doubt very late in their lives
but they meet their end knowingly and not unknowingly as King Lear and Othello
meet. It is perhaps because of this realization that in Hamlet and Macbeth one
does not find much about fate as being cursed, whereas in the other tragedies,
King Lear and Othello, fate is cursed with almost every possible detestable word.
However the treatment of fate in King Lear is unique in the sense that almost all
possible and diverse types of views regarding fate are expressed. No doubt most
of the characters in King Lear consider fate as destiny unshunnable and the bearer
of sufferings there is one character which does not believe so. He analyses human
behaviour in its response to the sufferings supposedly sent by the mighty gods in
heaven. Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester says:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in
fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our
disasters, the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on
necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and
treachers by spherical predominance. Drunkards, liars, and
adulterers by an inforcd obedience of planetary influence; and all
that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of
whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a
star...
King Lear (I, ii)
He, perhaps, believe in the freedom of action and in free will where everyone is
free to choose or decide and is responsible for his actions and words. His views
are in direct contrast with his fathers views who thinks:
Gloucester: These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no
good to us: though the wisdom of Nature can reason it thus, and
thus, yet Nature finds itself scourgd by the sequent effects. Love
cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in
countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crackd, twixt
son and father
King Lear (I, ii)
Gloucester has lived most part of his life and knows life more and deeply than his
son, Edmund, who is young and ambitious and thinks that with the cunning of his
brain and with the power of his muscles he can choose, will, act and perform what
he wants. Whether he is right in his judgment or not is a different matter, but his
views resemble with most young men who think that they have a control over life.
However Gloucesters views are more profound one. He expresses his
apprehensions about fate in the initial part of the play, but whatever he is saying
he is not sure about them. Later on in his life, when he suffers a lot because of, to
some extent, his own folly, his views about lifes determination by the gods in
heavens becomes very sever. His personal unmerited sufferings along with those
of his legitimate son, Edgar, force him to say:
Gloucester: As flies to wanton boys, are we to th Gods,
They kill us for their sport.
King Lear (IV, i)
The sufferings that the body of Gloucester faces are too great for his soul. He has
accepted that he did not and does not have much control of his life. He has
succumbed fully and now instead of trying to get himself out of this sea of
torments and sufferings he is crying for mercy. He has totally given up and is
preparing to rot even here. A few scenes later he pleads before the mighty gods
in the following words.
Gloucester: O you mighty Gods!
This world I do renounce, and in your sights
Shake patiently my great affliction off:
If I could bear it longer, and not fall
To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,
My snuff, and loathed part of Nature should
Burn itself out.
King Lear (IV, vi)
It is also interesting to study the influence of the sufferings and torments inflicted
by fate upon certain characters. Gloucester after his sufferings becomes very
humble in nature. Similar is the case of King Lear who has, in the last part of his
life, realized the inevitableness of his fate. Another case is that of Edgar, the
legitimate son of Gloucester. After his fall, when Lear thinks he would be better
in grave than on earth in this beggar-like condition, he defines himself as a most
poor man.
Gloucester: Now good sir, what are you?
Edgar: A most poor man, made tame to Fortunes blows
Who, by the art of known, and feeling sorrows,
Am pregnant to good pity.
King Lear (IV, vi)
His words are crucial in the analysis of his character. He has been made pregnant
to good by fortunes blows. There is no other way for Edgar to accept, after this
much of sufferings and torments, that his unmerited sufferings and pain have been
fated for him in the book of fate and that he could not avoid them. He is not
begging like his father, but his words show his wretchedness which lies behind the
words which give the impression that he has realized his humble existence and
nature and his distressed position in the world and has accepted that he cant
change it. Gloucester, Edgar and Lear are those who has suffered a lot
unmeritedly, hence their belief in fate is, to some extent, justifiable. However a
very sensible person like Earl of Kent is of the same views.
Kent: It is the stars
The stars above us govern our conditions,
Else one self mate and mate could not beget,
Such different issues.
King Lear (IV, iii)
He is discussing the issue of two opposite natured sons from one father,
Gloucester. He does not find any reason how two sons of the same father can be
so different: one very humble and kind, i.e., Edgar, and the other so vile and full of
deceit, i.e., Edmund the bastard. Certainly he does not find any physiological
differences in their birth. He has nothing to answer this question but to name (or
blame) stars in the heavens.
In Othello not much challenge is given to fate, and it is also, like in King Lear,
considered as the bearer of torments and sufferings and no good. Many characters
have accepted that they can not change whatever is written for them and that their
efforts will be useless in this regard just as Macbeths effort were useless. Othello
has accepted that:
Othello: Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.
Even then this forked plague is fated to us
When we do quicken.
Othello (III, iii)
He knows that the things which are fated for him are inevitable and whatever he
does he can never avoid them. He has also accepted that no one can control his
fate, in other words none of the human beings have freedom or free-will.
Othello: ... Who can control his fate?
Othello (V, ii)
Similar is the case of Desdemona who accepts to be called a whore because it is
her wretched fortune.
Emilia: To be called a whore? Would it not make one weep?
Desdemona: It is my wretched fortune.
Othello (IV, ii)
When Cordelia says that:
Cordelia: We are not the first,
Who with best meaning have incurrd the worst:
King Lear (V, iii)
she is also conforming to the view expressed by Desdemona. By saying that they
are not the first who are suffering unjustly she is accepting that this is ordinary in
human life. Her lines do not directly reflect that she believes in the pre-
determinism of human life but for her it is certain from we are not the first that
she does not think unmerited sufferings as something new and novel. In fact, this
view, in a sense implies that she is also going to accept these sufferings as others
did.
All the above presented views about fate as found in the plays of Shakespeare
maintain that life is determined by the gods and that they play with human lives
for their amusement. The second type of fate, as it is mentioned earlier,
resembles Ben Jonsons theory of humours which says that the excess of a body
fluid is reason for some specific type of character. It further says that this excess
of fluids is determined before the birth of a child, so a child, later in his life, can
not cast away the type of behaviour which the specific fluid in his body represents.
A speech of Hamlet presents a view which, to a large extent, resembles this theory
of humours. Hamlet says:
So oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth wherein they are not guilty,
(since nature cannot choose his origin)
By their oergrowth of some complexion
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit, that too much over-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying I say the stamp of one defect,
Being natures livery, fortunes star,
Their virtues else be as pure as grace
Hamlet (I, iv)
This view is slightly different from the other. It focuses more on saying that men
are born with such a character which is determined, hence all their life and future
actions are subject to be influenced or directly directed by that specific character
with which a child is born. A child can not escape his own self and a man has to
accept that whatever he is doing is because he has been made to do so. The two
types of fate, as found in the plays are no doubt slightly different but their ultimate
meaning is the same. Both maintain that life is predetermined and that one can not
escape what is written for him in the book of fate, that man does not have
freedom; that most sufferings that men face are not because of their own fault,
however these sufferings are inevitable and constitute a major part of the whole
theory of fate. In other words, in the book of fate mostly there are more sufferings
written for a person than what he actually deserves.
In his great tragedies Shakespeare is preoccupied with the idea of fate and its role
in determining human life. However to say that Shakespeare believes in the
inevitablness of fate or even in the very reality of a thing called fate, would be,
more probably, not true. No doubt fate is given a lot of importance and references
in his tragedies, yet to say that a heros actions are determined by fate, certainly
will not be true. In fact there are certain character who, challenge the age-old
established view of fate by implying that they have some control of their life and
that their future depends upon their own will and not on stupid forces in heaven.
In this regard the views of Iago and Edmund, the bastard, are most important.
These are the two characters which carry the notion of human freedom and free
will with them. Lets first analyze the views of Iago.
Iago: Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are
our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will
plant nettle and sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply
with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it
sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why, the power and
corrigible authority this lies in our wills. If the beam of our lives have
not one scale of reason to peise another of sensuality the blood and
baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous
conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our
carnal stings, or unbitted lusts;
Othello (I, iii)
Apparently in the play Iago is trying to exploit Roderigo and all that he says does
not come from his heart yet the idea (which is no doubt sent by Shakespeare) is
great. It on one hand promises free-will to human beings and on the other hand
demands courage to face the consequences of whatever one has done. Yet the
basic theme is the theme of free-will. Another basic theme of the whole speech is
of the greatness of man whose one constituent part is free-will. The reason of
Iago can not accept the idea of pre-determinism and he proposes that how can the
reason of others accept this idea. His views resemble with those of Edmund
whose response to his fathers belief in fate was more severe than Iagos response
to Roderigo. He said:
Bastard: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when
we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we
make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we
were villains on necessity, An admirable evasion of whoremaster
man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star...
King Lear (I, ii)
The message of both the speeches is the same. Both condemn the common
practice of blaming fate, gods in heaven or stars for anything wrong committed by
an individual or anybody else. They claim that man is what he makes himself to
be, and nobody other than the individual is responsible for being what he is. They
also try to give courage to individuals to accept the results of their respective
actions. Both Iago and Edmund, though basically ill-nature and evil characters
believe in the greatness of man and do not accept that the crown of creation which
is noble in reason, infinite in faculty does not have free-will or freedom and his all
actions or even whole life is already determined by the mighty gods up in the
heavens. It is interesting to note, as it has been mentioned earlier that a love of
free-will or freedom also lies in the two heroes Hamlet and Macbeth who
strive hard to change what is fated for them. They are two exceptional human
beings who even after realizing that there is a divinity which shapes their ends,
strive for their own ends. How far they succeed in it is a different matter but their
mere desire for freedom and the attempt to change their fate is what which adds
greatness to their fall.
After all this it has become evident that fate plays an important part in the four
great tragedies of Shakespeare. However it is quite interesting to note that in his
final play, The Tempest, the heros treatment and acceptance of fate changes. In
the four great tragedies, the protagonist sets against what fate has fated for him.
He, even after realizing that he cant avoid it, tries to have his own way, not
waiting for the right time but rushing towards whatever comes before. This leads
to their catastrophe. However in The Tempest, Prospero accepts that theres is a
providence, a divinity which is shaping their end. He also realizes that the wheel
of fortune does not necessarily bring bad rather it also brings good in ones life.
This is what Prospero, after his initial fall (from dukedom) waits for. He is
waiting for the right time when the wheel of fire will bring what he wants. At the
outset of the play this time has come and now providence is in his favour. He has
waited for his turn for a long time and now it is his turn to be a god-like
commanding and powerful figure having authority to write the fate of others.
Here, in a sense, it is he who writes the fate of Ferdinand and Miranda, and the rest
of the persons on the ship. Prospero is solely responsible for what he has
achieved. But to say that there is no power outside Prospero will not be true. In
fact Prosper realizes this power and makes some sort of harmony with it. This is
how he becomes so powerful.
In the four tragedies where Shakespeare presents all sorts of views regarding fate
and pre-determinism, it appears that Shakespeare has some apprehensions of the
validity of this concept. It is very difficult to assert that Shakespeare believes in
fate or the pre-determinism of human life. However it appears that Shakespeare
believes that anything can happen the next moment whether this be the result of
something predetermined or the sheer product of chance. This view is supported
by Shakespeares numerous remarks that one should always be ready to face what
nature has kept for him as a surprise. In this regard Hamlet says:
Theres special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis
not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it
will come; the readiness is all, since no man has aught of what he
leaves. What ist to leave betimes?
Hamlet (V, ii)
Hamlet has come to know that it is uncertain what will happen when anything can
occur at anytime. It is not necessary that it will be something bad for one, it can
also be good just as his indiscretion once served him well. So his remedy to this
uncertainty of events is readiness that one should be ready all the time to face
all that comes or can come in his way. It also implies that despite the fact that one
has made all preparations to perform something, still he should not feel contented
that everything will go smoothly rather he should also be ready for any sort of
uncertainty which will be, by no means, smooth. Similar to this is the message
sent by Shakespeare and conveyed through the mouth of the fool in King Lear.
He says:
Fool: He that has a little tiny wit,
With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortune fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day.
King Lear (III, ii)
The fool is conveying the same message of readiness is all. He is a bit more
clear and practical in his approach and message whereas Hamlets speech appears
to be more philosophical. Nevertheless the message behind both of them is almost
the same. The fool is also talking about preparation for the future. One should
prepare before hand for the future no matter that there is a strong possibility that in
the future one will get some extra aid. No matter that circumstances seem to be in
ones favour in the future still one should not take any chance and be ready for
anything that can happen under the sun, and should decide his future course of
action keeping in account all the possible and probable factors. The concept of
readiness which Hamlet and the fool propose is more a readiness of mind and less
a physical readiness. They want that one should be mentally prepared or ready to
face whatever extraordinary or shocking thing may happen in the future.
After discussing all the issues related to fate as found in the plays of Shakespeare
one may draw the conclusion that: many contrasting views about the concept of
fate are presented that Theres a Divinity that shapes our ends; to say that
stars or gods in heaven are responsible for one sufferings is wrong; human life is
not pre-determined and one has free-will which gives every man a right to choose
whatever he wants; nothing other than the respective individual is responsible for
his actions; the future is uncertain and anything can occur at any time; one should
be ready for any extraordinary or shocking event that may occur in the very next
moment. It is not certain that Shakespeare believed in the concept of fate but the
predominance of themes relating to fate and a lot of discussion about it in the
plays suggests that Shakespeare was seriously thinking (during the time when he
was writing his four great tragedies) about its role in human life. Certain strains in
the plays suggest that Shakespeare had certain apprehensions about the validity of
the fate concept. However this view is not found in his last play where the
concept of fate is given secondary importance. Though personal views of
Shakespeare regarding fate are not clearly known, it is certain that he believes that
anything can turn out at any moment of life and that nothing can be said with
surety about future. The element of chance plays an important role here. This
chance or uncertainty about the future mostly results in something bad for which,
Shakespeare proposes, one should be ready all the time both mentally and
physically. So, in order to face the world:
Men must therefore awake their faith.
End Notes
Chapter FOUR
Shakespeare on Other Existential Themes
Dual Nature of being
Know thyself.
Socrates
Human nature is one of the very complex and uncertain fields of knowledge.
Nothing is known with surety that man is this or that. They all live a cloudy
existence where their actions apparently originate from them, but they themselves
are not conscious of the fact that they have different levels of being within
themselves. Modern psychology defines man as a collection of four beings:
Animal, Rational, Intellectual and Spiritual. Just as, like all other animals, man is
considered a pleasure seeking animal, such instincts are controlled by the animal
being in him. The same is the case with the rest of beings in him who gratify their
impulses by indulging in their respective actions or behaviour. All these beings
resides simultaneously in Man, but few men are conscious of their existence.
Exceptional men, like Shakespeare, are aware of this, fact and great characters,
like Hamlet, do have their doubts. Now, there is a continuous struggle between
these beings to get control of Man, but a perfect and complete man is only
possible when one is aware of the existence of these four impulses in him and he
consciously attempts to gratify all such impulses in such a way that no clash
comes between them. However this is not easily possible and for most common
men simply impossible. The struggle between these beings within man generates
conflicts. In this regard Collin Wilson writes:
and the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the apes
desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by
the man, who is disgusted with the apes appetites.
Similar are the views of Bertrand Russell according to whom about ninety-eight
percent of the human being is irrational and around two percent of his nature
makes him a man. Accordingly most human actions are determined or
predetermined by this irrational part of him. There is a continuous struggle
between this rational and irrational part of human beings and history of mankind
shows that rational part of the human brain is increasing with the passage of time.
But it is an established fact, which modern psychology admits, that man has a
dual nature: the rational and the irrational, and that there is a continuous struggle
between the two.
Numerous instances in the plays of William Shakespeare suggest that he was not
unaware of this dual nature of man where one part of the individual does not
recognize the other. Shakespeare is also conscious of the fact that to be successful
in life one must know himself. For this purpose, it appears from his plays that, he
fully agrees with the Socratic imperative: know thyself. But this thing is not that
much evident as much is Shakespeares doubt or discussion about the dual nature
of man. Hamlet defends his murder of Polonius in the following words.
Hamlet: What I have done
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madnes:
Wast Hamlet wrongd Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be taen away:
And when hes not himself, does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it:
Who does it then? His madness. Ift be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrongd,
His madness is poor Hamlets enemy.
Hamlet (V, i)
In the Queens room scene where Hamlet kills Polonius, who is hidden behind
the arras, it is not clear whether Hamlet kills him in his feigned madness or in
his foolish rashness. If it is his feigned madness in which he kills Polonius than in
the above speech he is lying and exploiting words to deceive Laertes. However if
it is his foolish rashness, which seems more appropriate, than he is true in his
words. Whatever be Hamlets reason for killing Polonius and the rationale of
saying all this, the playwright behind, i.e., Shakespeare, is expressing a very
important idea. Hamlet differentiates between his rational being and his mad
being. He asserts that one (rational being) is not responsible for the actions of
other (irrational being). Here he is blaming his virulent action on his madness
which he calls the enemy of the rational Hamlet. At this time the time is out of
joint, i.e., in other words, Hamlets psyche is out of joint and has no control over
his actions. His acknowledgment that he was taken away from himself shows that
he is not only aware of this division of his psyche, but also the existence of an
irrational, savage or mad being in himself which sometimes takes control of his
self. He accepts that he was not the man which he is now. In other words Hamlet
the rational and Hamlet the mad are two different beings who though inimical
toward each other, nevertheless reside in the same physical body. So, in other
words, Hamlets dismemberment of his whole being (into rational or conscious
and mad being) is related to his mind only and not to his physique. Now, before
Laertes, by calling his mad and irrational part responsible for the murder of
Polonius, he is himself trying to evade the blame. To say that Hamlet is
presenting a fake argument wont be true. What he is saying is not untrue. In
daily life such things do happen but, as it is said earlier, not everybody is aware of
their nature or existence. However Hamlet is not everybody. It is also evident
from this speech that Hamlet is aware of the dangerous harms that his irrational
and mad part can cause to his rational or conscious part or his whole being.
Hamlets realization of his dual nature of being and then its acknowledgment is a
crucial point in his self-realization. One must notice that this realization comes
just before the final catastrophe. Hamlets case is similar to that of Othello, but in
his realization Hamlet is quite clear, whereas Othello seems to be a little vague
about it. Another point of difference is this that Othello realizes this when he is
already doomed.
Lodovico: Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?
Othello: Thats he that was Othello. Here I am.
Othello (V, ii)
It is too late in his life where he is helpless. In fact it is his catastrophe and fall
which make him realize his dual nature. Othellos dual nature is slightly different
from that of Hamlet. He denies that he is Othello any more. This denial makes
his previous existence, in which he killed Desdemona, as the existence of a mad or
irrational Othello (he that was Othello). This will now onward be called
Othello1. Whereas the existence which he is living now, after her death and his
realization, is the existence of rational, sensible and knowing Othello. This will
now onward be called Othello 2. It is interesting to note that in the case of
Hamlet two beings reside in one body simultaneously whereas in the case of
Othello two beings reside in one body one after another. Initially his body is
controlled by Othello1, which makes him trust Iago, and consider Desdemona and
Cassio as false. Later when Othello2 takes charge of his body his views change:
Desdemona becomes chaste, Cassio an honest friend, and Iago a demi-devil.
Here, in the final part of the play where Othello has lost everything his wife,
honour and state he denies that this Othello, which is Othello2 is the same as
Othello1. In fact, for him the previous Othello, i.e, Othello1 which was wrong, is
the real Othello, and this Othello2 has no relation with the previous one. To him
the real Othello ceases to exist after his murder of Desdemona and his realization
that he was wrong and all this is because of Iago, who ensnared his soul and
body against Cassio and Desdemona. Othellos denial that he is not Othello any
more is a crucial point in his understanding of himself. His mind can not accept
that the bloody action that he committed issued from his own brain. For him the
acceptance that both entities (Othello1 and Othello2) reside in one being (Othello)
is very painful, and this is why he does not accept it and denies that he is the same
rash and most unfortunate man who had committed those deadly acts. At this
stage of life, Othello has, in a sense, lost his belief in himself. This loss of belief
in ones-self also come in the life of King Lear where he loses his identity and can
not relate his wretched position with that which he enjoyed a few months before.
The shock is so great for his poor soul that he touches the verge of insanity.
Lear: Does any here know me? This is not Lear:
Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied. Ha! Waking? Tis not so?
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
King Lear (I, iv)
Lears case is not much different from that of Othello. It is quite hard for him to
believe that he is that same persona who, just a few months before, was the king of
France. The wheel of fortune had been so heavy on him that, like Othello, he has
lost everything his honour, kingdom, fatherhood, daughters, etc. mostly
because of his own foolishness. The position in which Lear is now, is not
acceptable to his mind, so it does not accept it. The rashness and the wrath of the
dragon which he once had is nowhere. He has lost his original self and is now
unable to live, sensibly, a being which is new for him and is also much different
from his real but previous being. For him Lear the king and Lear the poor are
two different beings and not one. The change of fortune is so great that his
wretched brain can not admit it now that Lear the king has fallen to such a
condition. In a sense, for him the existence of Lear the king is bound with the
power and the bounty which goes with the kingship. So when there is no kingship
there is no Lear the king. For this matter, Lear the king is not the same person
who is now Lear the poor and that both are separate beings. Here, the position
of Lear resembles that of Othello. Just as two Othellos reside in one being one
after another, so King and poor reside sequentially in King Lear. The point of
difference between Othello and Lear is this that one accepts the dual nature of his
being whereas the other does not. By saying that is he who was Othello, Othello
is accepting that he is the same person who once was Othello, and that now he is
no more that Othello. In the case of Lear this is not the case and he does not
accept that Lear the king and Lear the poor are the same person. Instead he
insists on calling Lear the poor another person.
Lear has precipitated into his abyss because he fails to distinguish
shadow from substance, flattery from love, false from true, and hence
because he embraces and empowers an order that is no order at all,
this is a chaos.
He sees that the way of walking and speaking of 'Lear the poor' is not similar to
that of 'Lear the king'. So he rejects the idea that 'Lear the poor' is that same 'Lear
the king'. Instead he tries to know who 'Lear the poor' is. For this purpose he asks
others about his identity. Does any of you know me? and Who is it that can tell
me who I am? are the questions which have double layers of meaning. On a
simple plane they are questions about the identity of ones-self, whereas on the
deeper level they deny that 'Lear the poor' is the same as 'Lear the King'.
Similar to King Lears fall which makes him doubt his new being having no
relation with his previous being, is the fall of Stefano in The Tempest. After his
failure in his plan, which Caliban insinuated in his mind, of usurping the kingdom
of Prospero, and going through the torments which Ariel inflicted upon him and
his fellow he has lost his conscious contact with his previous existence where he
was Stefano, the sailor.
Trinculo: I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I
fear me, will never out of my bones. I shall not fear fly-blowing.
Sebastian: Why, how now, Stefano?
Stefano: O, touch me not! I am not Stefano, but a cramp.
Prospero: Youd be king othe isle, sirrah?
Stefano: I should have been a sore on, then.
IV, i.
Now he has become a cramp, and his mind is not in a position to accept that this
cramp is the same Stefano who was once a sailor on the dukes ship. This
realization, like that of Lear and Othello, comes after his fall. His sufferings
compel him to think of himself as a cramp.
More direct evidence about the dual nature of human beings comes in the speech
of Iago in which he says:
Iago: Men should be what they seem,
Or those that be not, would they might seem none.
Othello (III, iii)
The line Men should be what they seem implies that the reverse is not
impossible, i.e., a man may seem what he is not. In other words, the line is
accepting the dual nature of being where one may not be that which one seems to
be. It supports the idea of the dual nature of being by implying that inner part of a
being is different from the outer manifestation of it. The real self is the inner part
whereas the outer self, which other people see and observe and deal with, is the
outer part of human beings which they present before others. Iago insists that
there should be some congruence between the two that the outer being should
be in accord with the inner being. A man must not appear in a guise which he in
reality is not and he should not hide what he in reality is. This is necessary for the
attainment of a perfect self. But this is not easily possible because one is never
sure what he in fact is. Men mostly live on their outer beings and seldom try to
find their inner being and to accord their outer being with their inner one. Iago is
a character who is well aware of his inner being but it is ironical that his outer
being is totally opposite to his inner being. Whereas he is giving the message that
it should not be so. The master villain, the honest Iago is conscious that to achieve
the motives of his inner self he has to change his outer self in order to deceive
others. And in this he succeeds. To say that the outer self of Iago is in accord
with his inner self will not be wrong. He knows his inner purposes, and also
knows that in order to accomplish them he must appear in a guise which is
acceptable to others. To say that he is a hypocrite here will not also be true. He
may be a hypocrite to others but to himself and to his inner self he is most sincere
and devoted. And it is because of this sincerity and devotion that he achieves
what he wants.
In the first scene of the play he admits that he is (in his reality) not what he is (in
his appearance).
Iago: I follow him to serve my turn upon him.
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly followed

Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.


In following him I follow but myself.

I am not what I am.


Othello (I, i)
This acceptance of the fact that he has a dual nature and that he does not appear to
be what he in fact is, is the prime cause of his success. One is not sure that why he
wants to ruin Othello, but it is certain that he wants to do this, and his sincere (at
least to his own self) endeavours lend him success. By presenting a guise of
honest Iago he is fulfilling his own purpose, and he admits that In following
him (i.e., Othello) I follow but myself. In other words his outer appearance is
because of the demand of, and is in accord with, his inner being. And he is
conscious that his dual nature is the key of his success.
Similar to Iago is the case of Lady Macbeth who advises Macbeth that he should
hide his inner self and appear like what the time requires. She says:
Lady Macbet: To beguile the time,
Look like the time,
look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent undert.
Macbeth (I, vii)
Macbeth accepts what she demands from him and decides to guile the time.
Macbeth: False face must hide what the false heart must know.
Macbeth (I, vii)
Macbeth, like Iago, also wants that in order to fulfill the purpose of the inner self,
the outer self may appear different from the inner one because it is necessary if
one wants to complete his false task. For this purpose Macbeth wears a cloth of
sincerity on his face and hence hides the false heart which is murderous and
bloody.
Limitations of Human beings
Iago: But men are men. The best sometimes forget.
Othello (II, iii)
No matter what one does, one will remain a man only and can not transcend this.
Iagos standpoint is very important. The desire of perfection which lies in almost
all actions of human beings and which is the feature of God only, will remain a
desire only, in human beings. They can not achieve this and hence can not be
perfect. There is a limit imposed by nature upon man, which forces him to remain
in the boundaries of man. At the time when the whole society believed in a
universal hierarchy in which man had his unique place, the idea of transcending
this was considered an act of demons. Faustus in Marlows tragedy tries to
transcend his human limitations and to get a higher place in the hierarchy of
beings . His attempt and efforts to accomplish all this were against the norms and
customs of his society. His subsequent fall was considered as the punishment for
his over-ambitious desires. However the greatness of Faustus, lies in his attempt
to achieve what is beyond his approach. His greatness is like that of Miltons
Satan who sets himself against God. In the above presented lines Iago is, on
behalf of Shakespeare, presenting his views about the limitations of human
beings limitations which they can not overcome and hence can not transcend.
These limitations can be physical, rational or intellectual. Man can not have the
power or wisdom of gods. Leaving their comparison aside lets come back to
Iagos speech. In the structure of the line but men are men there lies some sort
of regret or sorrow in these words as if Iago is lamenting why men are only men
and can not transcend this or become what they want to. Related to this there is a
limit imposed on mans knowledge. They can know up to certain limit and not
beyond that. Mans reason can not accept what is out of its range. It is perhaps
because of this reason that even after his meeting with the Ghost, Hamlet is not
sure whether his uncle really killed his father or not. For this matter he conducts
the play mouse trap which provides him a rationale which his reason can believe
and accept. All this is in a sense a limitation imposed on human understanding.
One such instance comes in Othello.
Desdemona: Upon my knees, what doth your speech import?
I understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.
Othello: Why, what art thou?
Othello (Iv, ii)
The poor soul Desdemona who has left her father for the Moor, can not understand
why her husband is treating her in this way. Her position is comparable with
mans position in the world where one faces the whips and scorns of time without
any fault. She is suffering unknowingly just as man suffers from the hands of
nature. And just as powerful nature is incomprehensible for man, the same is the
case of Desdemona who can not understand the motive of Othello who is treating
her in a ruthless way.
Another very interesting speech about the limitations of human knowledge comes
in Hamlet where Ophelia says:
Ophelia: Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we
may be.
Hamlet (IV, v)
The poison of deep grief that sprang all from her fathers death has made
Ophelia almost mad. However her speech is not out of sense, rather it carries
some remarkable and profound wisdom in it. Human beings are conscious of their
existence but they do not know when they started to exist consciously (Daisen).
Both in human history and in an individuals life history the origin is not known.
Human beings do not know when they started living as human beings and an
individual does not know when he started to exist. There is no clear point in a
persons life about which can he claim that he started to exist consciously.
Knowledge of history and an individuals memory do not tell one anything in this
regard. Whatever man knows is mostly about his current state and not much about
his previous life. Similar is the case of the future. No one knows what he may be
in the future. It is a limit imposed upon man the limit of time which he can
not overcome or transcend. Man may know about his present and may remember
something of his past but the future is out of his reach. He can not know it before
it comes.
Pains of Knowing
Related to the idea of the inability of man to comprehend all knowledge is the idea
that knowing brings pains with it. Ignorance is peace and happiness, whereas
knowledge of something often carries with it pains which are unbearable. There
comes a time where to know become equal to to suffer, no matter this to
know is true knowledge or false. There comes a tremendous increase in Hamlets
mental agony when he comes to know that his uncle, Claudius, murdered his
father to usurp the throne. A similar case is that of Othello, who after his (false)
discovery about Desdemonas disloyalty utters the following words:
Othello: I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known. O, now for ever
Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content,
Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell, ...
Othello (III, iii)
The pains that Othello feels after this mistaken discovery that Desdemona has
been disloyal to him are enormous. He prefers ignorance over this knowledge.
For him ignorance of this would have been a blessing. After making this
discovery which is no doubt false and the product of the intrigue of noble Iago,
Othello bids farewell to the tranquil mind, content and all comforts of the world.
He admits that her disloyalty is not important but its knowledge is the last thing he
wants. He would have been happy if the general camp, pioneers and all, had
tasted her sweet body, provided he had known nothing about it.
When the witches in Macbeth ask Macbeth
Seek to know no more
(IV, i)
their purpose is the same. They know that to know is to suffer. But Macbeth
insists on knowing more and is eventually given the knowledge of future
happenings. For him pain of this knowing does not come immediately. Rather it
results in the inflicting of pain and sufferings upon others, such as Macduffs
family and other generals. However Macbeth feels the pain when he realizes the
true meanings of these prophesies of witches.
Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cowed my better part of man;
And these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense,
That keep the word of promise to our ear
And break it to our hope.
(IV, x)
Here he comes to know more. He realizes the true nature of those prophesies and
this shatters all his hopes and the idea of invulnerability. He can see his doom
now and starts cursing the witches whose ambiguous statements led him to do all
the bloody deeds that he did in order to get the throne and then to maintain it. His
pains start with the true realization of their meanings. These are almost unbearable
for him.
Unmerited Sufferings
Lear: I am a man,
More sinnd against, than sinning.
King Lear (III, ii)
After going through Shakespeares plays, specially his grim tragedies, one
wonders why Shakespeare was so pessimistic in considering Nature hostile against
man. It is not Lear only who is more sinned against, than sinning, rather it is the
case of most of the characters as they all suffer more than what they deserve. Why
is it so? Whether Shakespeare was pessimistic about life in general, or wanted to
achieve a special dramatic effect is a question whose answer the present discussion
will try to find. As discussed in the earlier chapters, the world is, for many
characters, a place of sufferings and torments. For this matter they take it for
granted that in this world of flesh and blood suffering is inevitable. But their
reason does question why there should be all this suffering with out any or little
offence. The offence of Lear is nothing before the great torments which he
suffers. He is sincere in his love for his three daughters. He disowns Cordelia in
his rashness. He was unjust with her, but she remained the most loyal daughter of
Lear, whereas the elder two daughters, who got the whole kingdom, later on
spurned him. In fact Lear is punished for his virtue and rewarded for his offence.
All this leads Lear to draw the conclusion that mans life is cheap as beasts.
Hamlet realizes all this much earlier in his life and starts thinking of suicide just
because he finds no reason for these pains that are being inflicted upon him in this
world.
Hamlet: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressors wrong, the proud mans contumely,
The pangs of dispizd love, the Laws delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

Hamlet (III, ii)


It is perhaps the law of nature that one has to suffer for things which are not in his
control. There is no fault of Hamlet that he suffers the murder of his loving father
and the over-hasty plus incestuous marriage of his mother. All this is painful for
him, yet he is not responsible for this. This leads him to think of renouncing life
and seeking consolation in death. But his humble nature does not have enough
courage to face the fear of the unknown which will be revealed after his death so
he goes on suffering the pangs of the worldly life.
Similar to Hamlet is the case of Desdemona, who suffers and knows not why she
is being treated thus.
Othello: ... O thou weed,
Who art so lovely fair, and smellst so sweet,
That the sense aches at thee- would thou hadst neer been born!
Desedmona: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
Othello (IV, ii)
At this time she does not know what Othello is talking about. He abuses her with
bad words and she can not understand all this. He calls her a whore and she
accepts it as her wretched fortune. She does not know, yet, why Othello has
turned so cruel and rash toward her. When she tells this to Emila her response is
more general and not just related to the immediate context:
Emilia: The worlds a huge thing. It is a great price for a small vice.
Othello (V, i)
Her words are not related only with the immediate context where the issue of
Desdemona being called a whore is concerned. Her idea is, in fact, more general
and true as this world is really heavy for small vices. It may not be huge in its
rewards but it certainly is a huge thing as far as infliction of pains, sufferings and
torments is concerned. Later in the play the spell of honest Iago is so marvellous
that Othello kills his loyal wife without allowing her to defend herself. She dies
for an uncommitted sin. Lear suffers more than his fault but Desdemona suffers
without fault. This is totally unjust on the part of incomprehensible Nature. Now
who is responsible for her death? No matter it is Othello or Iago, she has suffered
for the faults of others. It was Othellos fault that he unquestionably believed
what Iago said and did not trust her and paid no heed to what she said in her
defence just before her death. Instead, he in his foolish rashness kills her. She
dies because of the fault of Othello and not her own.
Othello suffers for his defect which is his over-trust on Iago. In fact this over-trust
can not be called a defect which leads to his doom, the main reason for his
catastrophe is this that he has the master villain of all times before him. It is
honest Iago who is mainly responsible for Desdemonas death and his fall. At
this time he also comes to realize that his fault is not greater than the torments that
he is facing now. He finds that Nature is not hostile to those who commit bloody
deeds rather its thunders are for those who are weak, humble and fair.
Othello: Are there no stones in heaven
But what serves for the thunder?
Othello (V, ii)
His acceptance that Nature is hostile to man, is his realization of the fact that The
worlds a huge thing. It is a great price for a small vice.
End Notes
Chapter FIVE
Studying Existentialist Themes in Shakespeare
Alienation
As discussed in the first chapter alienation or estrangement is one of the six basic
themes of existentialism. By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the
person experiences himself as an alien, estranged or separated form ones
environment or himself. Encyclopedia Britannica describes some most common
variants of this ambiguous concept in the following words:
(1) powerlessness, the feeling that one's destiny is not under one's
own control but is determined by external agents, fate, luck, or
institutional arrangements; (2) meaninglessness, referring either to
the lack of comprehensibility or consistent meaning in any domain of
action (such as world affairs or interpersonal relations) or to a
generalized sense of purposelessness in life; (3) normlessness, the
lack of commitment to shared social prescriptions for behaviour
(hence widespread deviance, distrust, and the like); (4) cultural
estrangement, the sense of removal from established values in
society (as, for example, in the rebellions against conventional
institutions); (5) social isolation, the sense of dfghjkl;loneliness or
exclusion in social relations; and (6) self-estrangement, perhaps the
most difficult to define and in a sense the master theme, the
understanding that in one way or another the individual is out of
touch with himself.
Although Encyclopedia regards it a totally modern concept having its roots in
classical sociological works of the 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, the concept seems
to be as old as man. It is perhaps one of the basic defence mechanisms which a
human brain employs with the process of losing identity, social as well as
individual. It is one of the primary problems of human beings and it will be there
wherever human beings are found. Numerous instances situations, dialogues
and actions in the Shakespearean plays suggest that the idea of alienation is not
confined to the modern age only. If the above mentioned six points are the
constituents parts of alienation than Shakespearean drama is full of them.
The character of Hamlet has a sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness and
normlessness. The characters of Macbeth and partially Lady Macbeth and Hamlet
embody the concept of self-estrangement. After his fall life for Lear also becomes
meaningless. The strains of social isolation can also be detected in Hamlet.
Hamlet after losing his father has also lost his throne which was his legal right.
Instead, it was usurped by his uncle, Claudius. As a young man of about twenty-
nine or thirty years of age

he can feel power in his muscles but since he is a


student of philosophy his mind is a humble and kind one. At the outset of the
plays he is totally purposeless or life for him is meaningless and in order to live he
creates purpose for it a purpose of revenge. However his humble and soft
nature is not capable of doing an act of murder on the grounds that an apparition
asked him to do so. He again drowns in the sea of purposelessness. Everything
appears to him meaningless. The universe seems to him sterile and a congregation
of vapours, the human life nothing more than the quintessence of dust. He loses
interest in everything and is estranged from himself.
Hamlet: I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my
mirth, that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory;. this most excellent firmament, this majestical roof,
appears no other thing to me, then a foul and pestilent congregation
of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not
me; no, nor woman neither;
Hamlet (II, ii)
When man delights him not nor women, he has become socially estranged. He
becomes self-centered and keeps his aims to himself and much later in the play
tells Horatio something about them. He socially alienates himself from the rest of
the court and his family and decides to appear in a feigned madness. This is in
fact a cover which he uses in order to hide his alienation. He wants to be alone, so
he becomes mad and then nobody disturbs him anymore. An important point to
notice in the above speech is that all this is his subjective experience. and yet to
me what is He does not conform to contemporary morality about right and
wrong rather he presents his own formula of judging good or bad.
Hamlet: for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so:
Hamlet II, ii.
He has made a cocoon for himself and observes the world from inside it. He is not
concerned what others think of him but is worried only about his own motive
which is, for him, the only cause of living the revenge of the most foul murder
of his father.
He is quite unconcerned with what other people may think.
But his personal inability to take revenge, which is mainly due to his noble mind,
creates a sense of powerlessness in him. This sense of powerlessness when
combined with his view of the world as sterile and a congregation of vapours and
man as quintessence of dust lead him to think of suicide. He starts seriously
thinking about suicide because the whole worlds appears to him purposeless.
Then why should one suffer?
Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is the question:
For who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

Hamlet (III, ii)


Normlessness, another characteristic feature of alienation, is also evident in the
case of Hamlet. He does not conform to the normal Christian view which regards
mans life having a purpose of salvation rather he thinks it purposeless. Man,
which according to the Elizabethan and Classical traditions is the centre of the
universe, to Hamlet appears as the quintessence of dust and no more. Earth seems
to him a prison because his standpoint is unique. He knows not why he is here,
why he is suffering, who controlled the time of his birth and who will decide about
the type and time of his death. He has discovered that his position in the world is
the same as a prisoners position in the prison.
The sense of powerlessness, which is a part of alienation, implies the feelings that
one's destiny is not under one's own control but is determined by external agents
such as fate, luck, or institutional arrangements. Hamlet clearly observes that he
does not have control over his life, nor does anybody else. After his initial
realization of the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life he has come to
know about the pre-determinism about life. He realizes that
Theres a Divinity that shapes our ends,
(V, ii)
All this develops in him the idea that he has no control upon himself let alone the
rest of the world. He knows that he can not change what is predetermined. When
he feels his powerlessness he starts cursing himself.
Hamlet: The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.
Hamlet (I, v)
The madness of King Lear is the extreme form of the sense of alienation from
ones own self. After his fall from kingship to beastliness he has almost lost his
real self. He has become alienated to his real self, the outer environment, people
and to the sufferings imposed upon him. He has so deeply alienated himself from
his own being that now he is asking others to tell him who he is.
Lear: Does any here know me?

Who is it that can tell me who I am?


King Lear (I, iv)
Most important alienation comes in between the conscious and unconscious part
of the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth, who commits the murder
of Duncan, the king of Scotland, in order to get the throne, later on realizes the
horrible effects of this bloody action. His unconscious regrets the murder and
scolds the conscious part which did it. However the conscious part goes on
committing the bloody actions by killing generals, their families and other lords.
Its purpose is to retain the throne and to subside the unconscious goading. This
subsequently results in a breach between his conscious part of being and his
unconscious part. A time comes that he becomes totally alienated from his
unconscious. At an early part in the play, when he is going to murder Duncan,
with a dagger in his hand, he sees a dagger moving in front of him in the air. This
is the product of his unconscious which is not in congruence with his conscious.
Macbeth: Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee,
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still,
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

Macbeth (II, i)
From this point onward Macbeths unconscious has started being alienated from
the conscious part. The hallucinations that Macbeth suffers are all products of his
alienated unconscious. Later in the play, when Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo
in the banquet scene (III, iv) it is again his unconscious which is reproaching the
conscious part on it bloody and murderous actions. Here what Macbeth sees in
the air is the product of this distant unconscious which has lost its relation with the
conscious. The case of Lady Macbeth is not much different. It was she who
instigated Macbeth to kill Duncan and become the king himself. Her part in the
murder of King Duncan is great for her unconscious which later on works against
the conscious part. There also comes a split between her conscious and
unconscious. When she sees a damned spot of blood on her hand, it is her
unconscious that reminds her of her deadly deed.
Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two, why then tis time to dot.

The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these
hands neer be clean? No more o that, my lord, no more o that.

Heres the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!

Wash your hand, put on you nightgown, Look not so pale


To bed, to bed. Theres knocking at the gate. Come, come, come,
come, give me your hand. Whats done cannot be undone. TO bed,
to bed, to bed.
She is not aware of the breach in her mind. What the unconscious part of her brain
conjectures she thinks it real. As compared to Lady Macbeth, Macbeth is a person
of strong nerves. He goes on tolerating the break in his own being. But Lady
Macbeth does not posses such strong nerves and her eventual death comes because
the break in her conscious and unconscious is too great for her small soul.
Anxiety or Anguish:
As it has been discussed in the first chapter anxiety, or the sense of anguish
(German angst) is one of the basic themes of Existentialism. It means a
generalized uneasiness, a fear or dread which is not directed to any specific object.
Anguish is the dread of the nothingness of human existence that there is no
purpose of not only mans existence on earth but also of whole universe. It is the
claim that anguish is the underlying, all-pervasive, universal condition of human
existence. The dark and foreboding picture of human life leads existentialists to
reject ideas such as happiness, enlightenment, optimism, a sense of well-being, the
serenity of Stoicism
While analyzing the character of Hamlet it appears that he is also a victim of
anxiety. The causes for this are many: his understanding that life is purposeless
and meaningless; that nothing is in his control as theres a divinity that shapes our
ends; that universe is a congregation of vapours and man is the quintessence of
dust; that to be or not to be is basically a subjective problem and there is no divine
or sublime purpose for suffering a life.
Hamlet: ... What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more:
Sure he that made us with such large discourse
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unusd...
IV, iv.
Another main reason of his anxiety is his failure in accomplishing the only task
which is, for him, the only purpose of living. His lack of action which results in
his inability to take revenge mounts up his sense of anxiety. His catastrophe
results when this anxiety becomes unbearable for him.
The character of Lady Macbeth is also a victim of anxiety or dread. At one
occasion, after her lapse in madness, in her reply to Macbeths Nothing is but
what is, she says:
It may be; but yet my inward soul
Persuades me it is otherwise: howeer it be,
I cannot but be sad: so heavy sad
As, though on thinking on no thought I think,
Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.

nothing hath begot my something grief;


Or something hath the nothing that I grieve.
Macbeth (II, ii)
In her speech there is an undercurrent of fear, about which Wilson Knight writes:
In this speech we should note that it represents a state of fear,
nameless, associated with the parallel concept of nothing and soul,
which are, indeed, almost interchangeable in Shakespeare.
Here nothing and soul are interchangeable because they are one. Lady
Macbeth has realized the nothingness of her soul and is now suffering the anxiety
which this knowledge of nothingness has caused.
Nausea
Related to anxiety or anguish is the feeling of nausea.
In the best ordered of lives, there always comes a moment when the
structures collapse. Why this and that, this woman, that job or
appetite for the future? To put it all in a nutshell, why this eagerness
to live in limbs that are destined to rot? Albert Camus
If nausea is what is defined above than at least two speeches of Hamlet are nothing
more but the expression of such feelings. In the second Act of the play he realizes
that there is nothing of his interest in this world.
Hamlet: I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my
mirth, Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither;
Hamlet (II, ii)
For Hamlet the moment has come and all his structure has collapsed. The loss of
his father, then over-hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother and then his
realization that it was his uncle who had killed his father, are all events which
bring his structure of the world and life to the ground. A little later, after he has
lost all interest in the world, he starts thinking about the futility of existence and
ponders to finish this futile existence by committing suicide.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arm against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die to sleep;
.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus native hue of resolution
Is sicklied over, with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action
Hamlet (III, ii)
This one is the most profound soliloquy of Hamlet in which he discusses all major
themes of existence and Existentialism. He starts with the general sense of
purposelessness in existence and eventually starts thinking about suicide which to
him appears an escape from the sufferings and torments of living. Initially it
appears as a consummation devoutly to be wished. But then the dread of death
overcomes and due to the fear of unknown he drops the idea of committing
suicide. Although he is weary of unmerited suffering of life, he can not commit
suicide because his conscious has sicklied over the native hue of resolution. The
speech ends on a tone of despair despair because one can not act what one
wants to.
Bad Faith
Existentialism says that two possible ways of avoiding anxiety are indulging in
alienation and bad faith. According to Jean Paul Sartre ones anxiety can result in
a sense of alienation or one may avoid it by indulging in Bad Faith. Most people
do not experience anxiety or anguish because they cannot bear it; and they devise
ways of escaping it. The most common way is by lapsing into Bad Faith. What
does Bad Faith mean:
Bad Faith consists in pretending that we are not free, that we are
somehow determined, that we cannot help doing what we do, or
having the role that we have.
It is a type of moral self-deception, where one evades responsibility and anxiety
by not noticing possibilities of choice, or by behaving in a role others expect of
him. This is what Hamlet does. He spares Claudius when he is praying in his
chamber and later on blames Fate that there is a divinity that shapes his ends. He
was initially told by the ghost that Claudius is the murderer of his father, later this
was confirmed in the mouse trap and supported by Horatio, but he still does not
kill him. He thinks of religion, whereas initially he says that everything is futile
and there is no purpose of existence. If there is no purpose of existence than why
is he worried about religion. He is certainly indulging in bad faith. He has the
desire to take revenge, to kill his uncle, but it is his humble nature which is the
biggest hurdle between this desire and action. He tries to evade this responsibility
by saying that: existence is purposeless; and theres a divinity which shapes our
ends.
Another instance of bad faith comes in Othello, where Iago fools Roderigo by
making him believe that Cassio is going to replace Othello, the husband of his
beloved, Desdemona, and that both of them will later on move to Mauritania. The
only way for him to keep Desdemona in Venice is to make Cassio unable to
replace Othello. The plot of Iago is great but the foolishness and stupidity of
Roderigo is greater. He believes in the words of Iago even when he does not have
great devotion to the act.
Roderigo: I have no great devotion to the deed,
And yet he hath given me satisfying reasons.
Tis but a man gone.
Othello (V, i)
The bad faith of Roderigo is opposite to that of Hamlet. Hamlets bad faith
restrains him from action whereas Roderigo believes in something false in order to
have his purpose accomplished. Hamlet indulges in it to evade his responsibility.
There is no satisfying reason but Roderigos acceptance makes it a satisfying
reason. He agrees to knocking out the brains of Cassio, just because his own
purpose is attached to it. He avoids the truth that he has no great devotion to the
cause, still he goes for it mainly because he thinks that a reward is waiting for him.
End Notes
Chapter SIX
Conclusion
Summation of All Existential & Existentialist Ideas.
a. A Summary of Existential Themes:
At the outset of first chapter of the present thesis it was said that Shakespeare was
certainly not a scientist and rest assured not a systematic philosopher as well. His
eye did not have the sight of Copernicus who was guided by science, but it
certainly had the vastness of a philosopher which made him think about the
universe, man and his life in the universe, and question the established norms and
traditions in which most of the Elizabethan society believed. The philosophical
overtones that his plays carry, suggest that his view of the world was not an
ordinary or nave one. It will be unjust to say that Shakespeares vision of
existence the nature of the universe, life, purpose of life, the events of birth and
death, fate, limitations of human beings, etc., is in common with the one in
which Elizabethans believed. He was not just a good psychologist who
understood the human psyche very well, he was also a profound thinker whose
existential views are very deep and penetrating. His existential (as the word is
defined in the introduction of Thesis-Proposal) views are as under.
After going through his plays, specially the four great tragedies, it becomes
evident that nothing is certain or predictable in the world of Shakespeare. When
King Lear opens, nobody can guess that it will end on the insanity and the
eventual death of not only Lear but all his daughters as well. At the start of
Hamlet, who can predict the great mental torture through which Hamlet goes, and
the sequence of events which lead to his final catastrophe. Can anybody guess
that Macbeth for whom foul and fair are confusing in the beginning, will commit
such a treacherous deed of killing his king who is his guest at his home. Perhaps
nobody can predict in Shakespearean drama what will be the future course of
action in a characters life. No doubt that life in reality is also unpredictable, but
what prevails everywhere in Shakespearean tragedy is not merely a reflection of
real life, rather, it appears, it is, what Shakespeare thinks it to be, wholly
uncertain, unpredictable, where whatever one does is not necessarily sufficient to
bring a desired result in the future. Hamlet is caught up in a situation from which
he can not escape. Whatever he does in order to escape, serves to hold him back
in the same mire. His actions are futile as far as his purpose is concerned.
Macbeth after his initial fault, tries his best to avoid the final catastrophe and to
live in peace and harmony but all his efforts lead him away from them. The case
of King Lear is more perverse. He could never have thought that his affectionate
decision of distributing his kingdom among his daughters and his mere desire of
knowing the love that his daughter bear for him, would result in such a disaster.
Why is it that he suffers greatly for a small mistake? Why is his position made
more adverse with the storm? Initially his daughters set against him and later on
the outer environment, incomprehensible nature, starts inflicting more miseries
and suffering on his poor and wretched soul. One wonders why in the four great
tragedies the hero is doomed and whatever efforts he does, or tries to do, are all
vain and futile. It is Shakespeares vision of human life that men, once caught in a
trouble, are doomed to suffer, because incomprehensible nature, once set against
man, can not be defeated. So, here, all human endeavor is futile as nothing can
save them.
As far as the existence of the cosmos, man or other objects in the universe is
concerned, Shakespeares views are same as above that nothing is certain in this
regard as well. Multiple and diverse ideas about mans existence that are found in
Shakespeares plays suggest that he was uncertain about them. However it
appears that he is certain that whatever is known about the universe is not
necessarily true. For him: There are more things in heaven / Than are dreamt of in
our philosophy. Next to this, whatever exists and is known, its reality is not
authentic and sure. The universe, in Shakespearean plays, appears to be a
congregation of vapours, and human beings are such stuff as dreams are made on.
Like the existence of dreams depends on a brain which dreams them, similar is the
case of human beings where ones existence is bound with others perception and
understanding of it. Similarly if the universe is a congregation of vapours than it
is also fake and unreal as vapours are not something substantial. Human beings
are caught up in this vaporous and dream-like existence. This situation makes the
world a prison for them, where they enter and leave with out their will and in
which they do not have much freedom, rather they have to act and behave in the
way other forces demand from them. The characters are sent to this prison without
having done a crime. They do not know why they are there, where they were
before, and where they will move after their death in this world. This shadowy,
dreamy existence where nothing is real but fake, makes them start thinking the
world a useless, futile and purposeless place. They accept the grandeur of
universe, and man; but, since no sublime purpose is known to them, they consider
it worthless, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours and nothing more. They
also realize that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So if
everything depends upon thinking or ideation then nothing is real or certain
outside human beings and it is said earlier that human beings are such stuff as
dreams are made on. This is a very important view point presented in the plays
of Shakespeare. It resembles what Huxley said, after developing the idea of
Descartes (I think, therefore, I am) that something thinks therefore something is.
In other words Shakespeare was either aware of or anticipated the strain of thought
which a little later resulted in this Cartesian formula.
Another major theme that lies in Shakespeares plays is lack of purpose, specially
the divine or sublime purpose. His characters do not live for something sublime
or great to achieve. This purposelessness creates in them some sort of anxiety. In
order to avoid this they create or devise purposes for their existence and then
devote their whole lives to them. Hamlet, after the death of his father and over-
hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother, suffers from anxiety due to
purposelessness and lack of direction in his life. In order to avoid this he accepts
what the ghost says to him and makes revenge of the most foul murder his only
purpose of life. His future course of action is for the achievement of this purpose
only. He loses his life in the same cause. Similar is the case of Macbeth. He first
tries to get the throne and once he has got it, all his endevours and efforts are to
retain it and to live in some sort of peace and harmony.
The event or concept of Death, as presented Shakespearean plays, is also mostly
different from contemporary Elizabethan and Christian views of death. Most of
the characters consider death a blessing as they are tired of the sufferings that they
face in this world. For Hamlet Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, in
Othellos sense tis happiness to die, to Roderigo it is our physician. This view
is basically due to the sufferings and pains inflicted on men at the hands of nature
and other men. These sufferings me them weary of the world and they start
thinking of death a sort of escape. The fear of the unknown, which might be
revealed after death, is also important. Some characters fear death because they
are afraid of the unknown which may be some sort of punishment for their sins.
Some do not commit suicide because their religioun forbids them. They go on
suffering the pains of this world and do not fly to the pains they know not of.
There is very little evidence what for Shakespeare thinks about life-before-birth
and life-after-death. Prosperos speech that our little life is rounded with sleep
suggests that nothingness in the form of ignorance (of sleep) lies before and after
human existence in this world.
The concept of fate is another important theme that goes in Shakespeares plays
specially in his four great tragedies. In the concerned five plays many contrasting
and diverse types of ideas regarding fate are given, which say that Theres a
Divinity that shapes our ends; stars or gods in heaven are responsible for one
sufferings; human life is not pre-determined and one has free-will which gives
every man a right to choose whatever he wants; nothing other than the respective
individual is responsible for his actions; future course of events is uncertain and
anything can occur at any time; one should be ready for any extraordinary or
shocking event that may occur in the very next moment. It is not fairly sure that
Shakespeare believed in fate. The predominance of themes relating to fate and the
quantity of discussion about it in the plays suggests that Shakespeare was
seriously concerned with its role in human life. Certain strains in the plays suggest
that Shakespeare had certain apprehensions about the validity of this concept,
however this view is not found in his last play where fate is given secondary
importance. Whether it is fate which creates trouble in mans way or this is mere
incidental, it is certain that Shakespeare believes that anything can turn out at any
moment of life and that nothing can be said with surety about the future. The
element of chance plays an important role here. This chance or uncertainty about
the future mostly results in something bad, for which, Shakespeare proposes, one
should be ready all the time both mentally and physically.
Unmerited Sufferings constitute another theme of Shakespearean plays. Who is
responsible for these fate or something else Shakespeare does not give us
answers. Characters are made to suffer without any fault. They are more sinned
against than sinning. First of all they are thrown into this world without their will.
Hamlets questions what have you my good friends, deserved at the hands of
Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? is very important. Being in prison
means bearing sufferings, torments and pains, and this is what most of the
characters are made to bear. They know not what their fault is. According to Lear
When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools. This is
certainly due to the fact that nobody wants to come to this world, because The
worlds a huge thing. It is a great price for a small vice.
The Dual Nature of Being is another major theme that goes in the plays of
Shakespeare. Shakespeare seems to be aware of the fact that most people do not
know themselves. Hence they are not solely the creators of their respective
actions. There is nothing outside them (like fate or gods in heaven) which controls
them rather it is their own unconscious part which has become alienated from their
conscious part. On occasions their unconscious part takes control of their
conscious part and they act in a total different way than what is normally expected
from them. Their conscious part does not accept any action of the unconscious
and repels this. Many character which are above the level of ordinary, normal
character realize this dual nature of being. In them their conscious part is aware of
the existence of the unconscious part. They know that man and ape both reside in
their mind and one has to gratify both of them in such a way that no conflict arises
between them. This is the only way through which they can overcome their dual
nature.
These are some of the major existential ideas that are found in the five plays
concerned. Their importance and implications in the plays suggest that for
Shakespeare they are very important in ones comprehension and understanding of
the world around him. They also show that Shakespeares view in these matters
was not, in any sense, ordinary or nave. Rather he was a profound thinker in such
matters. He realized in the sixteenth century what many have not realized yet.
b. Summing Existentialist Themes.
It has been stated quite often in the present thesis that Shakespeare was not a
professional philosopher. But to say that he did not have the vastness of eye
which is the hallmark of philosophers will not be true. His vision of the universe
and existence in it is so profound that one gets an impression that this is the
outcome of deep philosophical inquiry. There are certain strains of ideas in him
which link him with the modern philosophy of Existentialism. Sartre is said to
have remarked that Existentialism was never invented, it has always existed as the
ultimate foundation. So there is nothing strange that certain formulations of
modern Existentialism are found in Shakespeare. After all he was basically a man,
had deep thinking and lived in the same world in which all the modern
existentialist philosophers live.
Just as Existentialism says that there is no divinity and hence no God similar ideas
are sometimes asserted in Shakespeares plays. The sense of divine or sublime
purposelessness that prevails everywhere in Shakespeares plays suggest that his
views are similar to those of Existentialism which says that there is no purpose in
living. Similar is the case of sufferings and torments that one faces in life.
Existentialism agrees that life is full of sufferings and torments and to live is to
suffer. They further say that ones destiny is in ones own hands and they
categorically reject the idea of pre-determinism asserting that one can make of
ones future what one likes. At this point Shakespeare seems to differ. In his plays
there are many characters who can not do what they want. All their efforts to
devise a required end or to avoid the determined future are futile. They suffer
because they are made to suffer. In their case, it seems, that a force acts against
them which neutralizes their efforts. However there are many other ideas where
Shakespeare resembles modern Existentialism. Some such themes lack of
purpose in life, futility of life, and to live is to suffer have been mentioned
above. Other such themes include alienation, etc.
Alienation means a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself
as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not
experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts but
his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or
whom he may even worship. The six characteristic features of alienation
powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, cultural estrangement, social
isolation, and self-estrangement are all found in Shakespeares plays here and
there. Hamlet succumbs to alienation because of his powerlessness and
meaninglessness. There are also some kinds of normlessness and social
estrangement in him as well. However the most important isolation in him is that
of self-estrangement where he does not think his actions are his own, he thinks
that a greater power is shaping his ends. The madness of King Lear is an extreme
form of his alienation from himself. After his fall from kingship to beastliness he
almost loses his real self. He becomes alienated from his real self, the outer
environment, people, and from the sufferings imposed upon him. He has so
deeply alienated himself from his own being that now he asks others to tell him
who he is. Does any here know me? Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Here at this stage, in order to get rid of alienation, he needs the help of others to
make him realize his own being.
Anxiety or anguish as it is defined in Existentialism a generalized uneasiness, a
fear or dread which is not directed to any specific object, it is the dread of the
nothingness of human existence that there is no purpose of not only mans
existence on earth but also of the whole universe. The dark and foreboding picture
of human life leads existentialists to reject ideas such as happiness, enlightenment,
optimism, a sense of well-being, the serenity of Stoicism. The character of Hamlet
is victim of anxiety as well. When men delight him not, nor no women, he is
under the influence of this anxiety. Similarly he finds no purpose for his
existence, everything appears to him futile (How weary, stale, flat and
unprofitable / seems to me all the uses of this world) and the picture of man that he
sees before himself (where man is the quintessence of dust, and a beast, no more:
) Related to anxiety or anguish there is a feeling of nausea where everything
and all efforts seem to be useless. Camus, a French existentialist writer once said:
In the best ordered of lives, there always comes a moment when the structures
collapse. Why this and that, this woman, that job or appetite for the future? To put
it all in a nutshell, why this eagerness to live in limbs that are destined to rot? For
Hamlet the time has come where all his structure collapses. This is best expressed
in his speech: What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! and yet to
me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman
neither.
The theme of bad faith which, according to Sartre, is a sort of moral deception in
which one avoids anxiety or evades alienation by believing in something which is
not true but serves the purpose for the time being i.e., saves one from anxiety,
anguish and alienation. In order to evade the responsibility of taking revenge,
Hamlet lapses into bad faith where he starts thinking that all the world, men in it
and all human actions are useless and that man does not have free will and all his
actions are predetermined. Another instance of bad faith comes in the character of
Roderigo, in Othello, where he believes in the words of Iago even when he does
not have a great devotion to the deed. He accepts what Iago has said because it
serves his own purpose and it helps him to avoid the anxiety he may face when
Desdemona is no more in Venice.
Conclusion and recommendation.
To conclude one may say again that the basic themes of Existentialism are not
alien to Shakespeare. The lone, foreboding picture of man and his position in the
universe, that Existentialism conceived in 20
th
century, Shakespeare apprehended
in the 16
th
. If one goes by Sartres remark that Existentialism was never invented,
it has always been there in history, then Shakespeare falls in the short line of those
philosophers, thinkers or scholars whose works or ideas not only led to the
foundation of modern Existentialism but also helped it to reach its peak form in
the 20
th
century where it became a systematized philosophy. Before this
existentialist ideas were scattered here and there in the works of several writers
dating backward to Socrates. Shakespeare is a significant one of them who helped
Existentialism to be what it is now.
Since completing the present which thesis has focused mainly on only five plays
of Shakespeare, and on the study of central existential themes, the researcher has
realized that there in much in Shakespeare which can be treated purely in terms of
modern Existentialism. It is, therefore, recommended that further research be
done in studying modern Existentialism in the works of Shakespeare should be
conducted, because there is such a vastness of ideas found in Shakespeares plays
that one really wonders as if these are not the production of a commercial
dramatist, rather the outcome of a very learned, erudite, and profound scholar.
Select Bibliography
Books on Shakespeare
David Horowitz, Shakespeare: An Existential View
Tavistock Publications (1965)
Walter Clyde Curry, Shakespeares Philosophical Patterns
Louisiana State University Press (1959)
K. J. Spalding, The Philosophy of Shakespeare
George Ronald, Oxford (1953)
Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man
The Macmillan Company (1961)
Robert Speaight, Nature in Shakespearean Tragedy
Hollis & Carter, London (1995)
Elmer Edgar Stoll, Shakespeare Studies: Historical and Comparative in
Method
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.
Michael Mangan, A Preface to Shakespeares Tragedies
Longman, UK (1991)
M. M. Badawi, Background to Shakespeare
Macmillan Press (1981)
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire
Routledge, London (1955)
Frank Kermode (Ed.), Four Centuries of Shakespearian Criticism
Avon Books, U.S.A. (1965)
Books on Existentialism
Mary Warnock, Existentialist Ethics
Macmillan (1967)
William Barret, The Irrational Man
Doubleday Anchor Books (1962)
Reinhardt Grossmann, The Existence of the World: An Introduction to
Ontology
Routledge, London. (1992)
Colin Wilson, The Outsider
Victor Gollancz Ltd, London (1956)
David E. Roberts, Existentialism and Religious Belief
A Galaxy Book (1959)
Miscellaneous
George & Portia Kernodle, Invitation to the Theatre
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (1971)
E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World
Vintage Books
Martin O. Vaske, S. J., An Introduction to Metaphysics
McGraw-Hill Book Company (1963)
Michael D. Montaigne, Essays
(trans. E. J. Trechmann)
Oxford (1928)
Encyclopedias
Encyclopedia Britannica 99, CD-Version, Multimedia Edition.
Encyclopedia Americana
Collins Encyclopedia
Works of Shakespeare
Hamlet (Penguin Popular Classics)
Othello (Penguin Popular Classics)
King Lear (Penguin Popular Classics)
Macbeth (Penguin Popular Classics)
The Tempest (Penguin Popular Classics)

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi