MAE603_British Drama-I

King Lear 145 4.4 Antagonist Main Ideas Antagonist Edmund, Goneril, and Regan all act as antagonists in King Lear, but the real antagonist may be the idea of power itself. In the beginning of the play, when they have relatively little power, Goneril and Regan flatter Lear to stay in his favor and beguile him into surrendering his power. Goneril and Regan use their new power to plot against Lear and thwart his hopes for a peaceful retirement. Similarly, Edmund uses the power he has over Gloucester to thwart his brother, Edgar’s, chances of becoming king. Briefly, Edmund is the most powerful character in the play, and during that moment he gives orders for Cordelia’s execution, thwarting Lear’s hopes for their reunion. Most of all, Lear himself is antagonized by power. At the beginning of the play, Lear fails to see his situation clearly because of his own political power. Once he loses his power to Goneril and Regan and is cast out into the storm, Lear is humbled by his own insignificance in the world and realizes he cannot defeat his antagonist. Setting King Lear is set in ancient Britain, several centuries before the arrival of Christianity. In Shakespeare’s day, historians believed pre-Christian Britain had been a single united kingdom that was later divided into Britain and Scotland. When Shakespeare wrote the play, King James I ruled both England and Scotland and wanted to reunite his two kingdoms. James’s plan was vigorously opposed by both the English and the Scots. When King Lear was performed at James’s court, the King would have been pleased to see that Lear’s decision to separate the kingdom of Britain ends in disaster, implicitly suggesting the two kingdoms belong together. Even though Shakespeare’s play supports the King’s cause, the play doesn’t explicitly address the topic of reunifying contemporary Britain directly. Playwrights could be imprisoned for writing anything too political. By setting his story in the distant past, Shakespeare freed himself to tackle this important topic. Without its pre-Christian setting, the nihilistic and despairing tone of King Lear might have been unacceptable to Shakespeare’s audience. In Shakespeare’s England, Christianity was the state religion. Most people believed that the world had been made by God. Life was meaningful

146 British Drama - I and worthwhile because it was an opportunity to serve God. To publicly express the belief that life is meaningless and miserable would have turned away a vast majority of Shakespeare’s audience. King Lear is set before the arrival of Christianity in England. Its characters talk about the pagan “gods” instead of the Christian “God.” This means they can openly express the view that life is not only meaningless but cruel: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods / They kill us for their sport” (IV.i.). The play seems to endorse this point of view, by making its characters suffer horribly for no obvious reason. King Lear’s pre-Christian setting allows Shakespeare to present a bleak vision of a world devoid of meaning while avoiding religious offense. The first half of King Lear is set in the safe, comfortable palaces of Lear, Gloucester and Lear’s daughters. However, as the play progresses, an increasing number of its scenes take place in dirty, unsafe surroundings: the heath in a violent storm, a hovel in the middle of nowhere, the fields and beaches near Dover during a military invasion. This shift from safe, interior spaces to threatening, outdoor locations reflects Lear’s gradual loss of his wealth and status. The movement from indoors to outdoors also reminds the audience that shelter and security are privileges one can lose. When Lear gives up his power, he is certain he will spend the rest of his life in comfort. Instead, he ends up in a position of less comfort and safety than he has ever experienced before. Lear’s mistake is believing that comfort and safety are guaranteed. King Lear shows that it’s all too easy for people to lose everything. Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. Madness Insanity occupies a central place in the play and is associated with both disorder and hidden wisdom. The Fool, who offers Lear insight in the early sections of the play, offers his counsel in a seemingly mad babble. Later, when Lear himself goes mad, the turmoil in his mind mirrors the chaos that has descended upon his kingdom. At the same time, however, it also provides him with important wisdom by reducing him to his bare humanity, stripped of all royal pretensions. Lear thus learns humility. He is joined in his real madness by Edgar’s feigned insanity, which also CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 147 contains nuggets of wisdom for the king to mine. Meanwhile, Edgar’s time as a supposedly insane beggar hardens him and prepares him to defeat Edmund at the close of the play. Betrayal Betrayals play a critical role in the play and show the workings of wickedness in both the familial and political realms — here, brothers betray brothers and children betray fathers. Goneril and Regan’s betrayal of Lear raises them to power in Britain, where Edmund, who has betrayed both Edgar and Gloucester, joins them. However, the play suggests that betrayers inevitably turn on one another, showing how Goneril and Regan fall out when they both become attracted to Edmund, and how their jealousies of one another ultimately lead to mutual destruction. Additionally, it is important to remember that the entire play is set in motion by Lear’s blind, foolish betrayal of Cordelia’s love for him, which reinforces that at the heart of every betrayal lies a skewed set of values. 4.5 Symbols Main Ideas Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. The Storm As Lear wanders about a desolate heath in Act 3, a terrible storm, strongly but ambiguously symbolic, rages overhead. In part, the storm echoes Lear’s inner turmoil and mounting madness: it is a physical, turbulent natural reflection of Lear’s internal confusion. At the same time, the storm embodies the awesome power of nature, which forces the powerless king to recognize his own mortality and human frailty and to cultivate a sense of humility for the first time. The storm may also symbolize some kind of divine justice, as if nature itself is angry about the events in the play. Finally, the meteorological chaos also symbolizes the political disarray that has engulfed Lear’s Britain.

148 British Drama - I Blindness Gloucester’s physical blindness symbolizes the metaphorical blindness that grips both Gloucester and the play’s other father figure, Lear. The parallels between the two men are clear: both have loyal children and disloyal children, both are blind to the truth, and both end up banishing the loyal children and making the wicked one(s) their heir(s). Only when Gloucester has lost the use of his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realize his tremendous error. It is appropriate that the play brings them together near Dover in Act 4 to commiserate about how their blindness to the truth about their children has cost them dearly. 4.6 Genre Main Ideas Tragedy Like Shakespeare’s other famous tragedies, King Lear features a noble-born protagonist who makes a fatal mistake that leads to widespread suffering and, eventually, the death of himself and several others. Lear makes his fatal mistake in the play’s opening scene, when he divides his kingdom among his daughters according to the degree of love they profess for him. Failing to see that Regan and Goneril have lied about their love, he bequeaths all his land to them and condemns Cordelia, the only daughter who truly loves him. Lear therefore remains blind to who his daughters really are, and this metaphorical blindness results in him making a decision that causes enormous suffering—including the literal blinding of Gloucester. Notably, just as Lear fails to see who his daughters are, over the course of the play he loses touch with his own identity. He cries out painfully in Act I, “Does any here know me? This is not Lear . . . . Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (I.iv.197–201). Blind even to himself, Lear slowly goes mad and falls into psychological isolation. One aspect of King Lear that makes it an unusual tragedy is that Lear, though certainly a tragic figure, is a relatively benign protagonist who realizes his mistakes and repents for them. To be sure, Lear often speaks in an abrasive and caustic way, displaying arrogance and peremptoriness toward other characters (notably Kent and Cordelia). But unlike some tragic protagonists he himself never becomes evil or directly commits any evil acts, even if he unleashes CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 149 evil in the form of his daughters. Ironically, Lear’s madness is what enables him, at last, to overcome his blindness and see things clearly. His first moment of clarity arises in Act III, at the height of the storm. Lear hesitates before entering the hovel and expresses empathy for his subjects, whom he’s literally and figuratively left out in the cold: Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta’en Too little care of this! (III.iv.28–33) Lear regains clarity at other crucial moments as well, like when he recognizes Cordelia at the end of Act IV and acknowledges that he has wronged her. He repents for his failure and hopes, as he tells Cordelia in Act V, for a chance to “ask of thee forgiveness” (V.iii.11). Despite Lear’s moments of clarity, the play moves inescapably toward a tragic conclusion that, unlike other tragedies, does not feel very cathartic. Catharsis is the moment of release an audience feels after experiencing strong emotions. King Lear certainly engages the audience’s emotions, but whereas cathartic experiences lead to a feeling of renewal, Shakespeare’s play does not. For one thing, punishment in the play often outweighs the crime. Even though Regan, Goneril, and Edmund all deserve their fates, Lear, Gloucester, and Cordelia all die despite their innocence. Moreover, no one learns valuable lessons through their suffering. Lear realizes his mistakes as a king and as a father, and his brief reunion with Cordelia offers a partial redemption. Yet the pain of Cordelia’s undeserved death sends him back into madness and suffering, and he literally dies of a broken heart. Finally, with everyone from Lear’s family dead, there is no good candidate to assume the throne. Albany will continue to rule Britain, but his role in the play’s disastrous ending leads the audience to question whether the social order can really be repaired. By leaving the audience profoundly sad and virtually hopeless, King Lear ranks among Shakespeare’s bleakest tragedies.

150 British Drama - I Style Shakespeare uses language in King Lear to express a range of mostly negative emotions, including loss, deprivation, anger, and misery. Lear’s own speech undergoes a transformation in style over the course of the play. In the beginning, Lear speaks grandly and with confidence. He calls on cosmic imagery and alludes to figures in Greek myth to inflate his own sense of power and influence: For by the sacred radiance of the sun The mysteries of Hecate and the night By all the operation of the orbs From whom we do exist and cease to be, Here I disclaim all my paternal care. (I.i.107–11) After abdicating the throne, Lear’s speech reflects a weakening grip on reality, as well as an inability to come to terms with his diminished status. Despite no longer being king, he continues to issue orders, and he even commands the storm: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!” (III.ii.1). As madness takes hold, Lear’s speech is reduced to mere strings of disconnected nouns, as when Gloucester tells him that the Duke of Cornwall will not see him and he screams, “Vengeance! Plague! Death! Confusion!” (II.iv.90). All of these examples are characterized by violence. Even in the first and most grandiloquent passage quoted above, Lear is in the midst of disowning Cordelia. The persistent violence in Lear’s language marks an overriding sense of loss and anger. At several points in King Lear the play’s language becomes austere. This austerity sometimes indicates preoccupation, as when Edmund asks, “Why brand they us/With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?” (I.ii). His repetition of the word “base” demonstrates an obsession with his low social status, the very same obsession that inspires his nefarious scheming. More frequently the play’s stylistic austerity reflects the bleakness of the events that are playing out and the characters’ desperate responses to those events. This austerity often takes the form of repetition. When Edgar utters, “World, world, O world!” (IV.i.10), he does so in response to the CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 151 misery of seeing his father, Gloucester, with his eyes gouged out. Lear cries out many similarly austere lines, particularly as the play nears its dreadful conclusion. When he enters carrying Cordelia’s dead body, his first words are “Howl, howl, howl” (V.iii.231), and just before he dies he utters a line of pure misery: “Never, never, never, never, never!” (V.iii.283). In these moments, the style becomes so austere it’s as if language has broken down, giving way to expressions of inexpressible anguish. But the style of King Lear is not all “cheerless, dark, and deadly,” as Kent puts it in Act V. The Fool also brings a riddling element to the play with his topsy-turvy style of speech that proves whimsical, obscure, and prophetic — often all at once. Take a simple example from the Fool’s first scene, where he sings: Fools had ne’er less grace in a year For wise men are grown foppish And know not how their wits to wear, Their manners are so apish. (I.iv.139–42) The basic sense of these lines is that professional fools (like the Fool himself) have become unpopular because wise men (like Lear) have become foolish. Although cast in the form of an entertaining song, the Fool’s words also criticize the king in a way that foreshadows Lear’s spell of madness. Elsewhere the Fool’s language engages in confusing inversions that make him more difficult to understand. Earlier in this same scene, the Fool says of Lear: “Why, this/fellow has banished two on ‘s daughters and did the/third a blessing against his will” (I.iv.94–96). Even though Cordelia is the one he actually banished, Lear did her a favor by forcing her out of an increasingly violent kingdom. In the Fool’s idiom, then, it’s Goneril and Regan who have been banished by being forced to stay and preside over Britain. Prose And Verse King Lear is written mostly in verse, but nearly one third of its lines are in prose, reflecting Lear’s descent into madness. As in Hamlet, the only tragedy with a greater proportion of prose, Shakespeare uses prose to mark that the protagonist is speaking in a confused or disordered way.

152 British Drama - I Lear begins the play speaking verse. He has thought carefully about how he will divide his kingdom, so he expresses his intentions in a careful, ordered way. When Cordelia declares that she has “nothing” to say about her love for her father, Lear switches abruptly to prose. This switch shows us that he is no longer thinking clearly, and we understand that Cordelia has upset him. As Lear goes mad, his thinking becomes more and more confused, so he speaks more often in prose. Lear often boasts of being in control of both his kingdom and himself, but his abandonment of verse in favor of prose indicates the opposite. As he loses authority over his people, his family, and finally his mind, his speech reflects this loss of control. In King Lear, Shakespeare switches between prose and verse to mark the difference between truthful speech and flattery. In all of Shakespeare’s plays, lower class characters speak prose while higher status characters speak verse, but here verse also seems to be the language of deception, while prose is the language of honesty. When Lear is talking to the Fool, Lear also uses prose, which shows that he is comfortable with the Fool and doesn’t feel the need to assert his noble status. Lear’s use of prose also shows that he trusts the fool enough to be honest with him. In the play’s opening scene, Goneril and Regan use verse to flatter Lear by telling him how much they love him. Once Lear has left, the sisters use prose to reveal their real opinion of Lear, which is much less complimentary. Kent uses verse to make fun of Oswald’s dishonest flattery, before switching into prose to explain that he refuses to speak in a flattering way himself. The more Lear’s status is reduced, the more often he speaks in prose. Prose shows us that Lear is going mad, but also that in his madness Lear is being more honest with himself. Point of View By not having Lear himself deliver any soliloquies, King Lear subtly distances us from the point of view of the characters who suffer (like Lear, Cordelia, Gloucester, and Kent) while bringing us closer to evil characters. Lear is the only one of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes to have no soliloquies at all, which, along with the unflattering conversations other characters have about him, make it hard for the audience to sympathise with him. Shakespeare typically uses soliloquies to reveal the interior lives of his characters, but Lear is never revealed to us in this way. Instead, in the first half of the play, Lear’s most revealing speeches are his angry outbursts, which show us only the tyrannical and egotistical side of his character. The play’s other characters present Lear CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 153 in an unsympathetic way as well. Kent accuses him of “hideous rashness” (I.i), Regan says that “he hath ever but slenderly known himself” (I.i) and the Fool says that Lear would “make a good fool,” (I.v) implying Lear is a bad king. Lear suffers terribly during the play, so the audience’s distance from his point of view forces us to think about how easily we can fail to empathise with even the worst suffering. While denying us insight into the protagonist, King Lear encourages us to share the point of view of its most evil character, Edmund. He is the character who reveals the most about his motives through soliloquy. His obsession with his social status—“why brand they us/With base?” (I.ii) — helps us to understand why he wants to betray his father and brother. The way Gloucester treats Edmund also encourages us to sympathise with Edmund. When Edmund is introduced at the play’s opening, his father calls him a “knave” and a “whoreson” (I.i) right in front of him. Edmund is one of the play’s most active characters: he sets goals and makes plans, which invests the audience in wanting to see the outcome of his plans, even though his goals are evil. Although Edmund is the play’s most morally troubling character, he is also the character who is easiest to sympathise with, which suggests that in the world of King Lear, evil is ordinary, human and understandable. While Lear is the main character of the play and gives his name to the title, King Lear has the most fully developed subplot of all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, which weakens the audience’s involvement in Lear’s suffering. Shakespeare’s subplots often develop the themes of the main plot, but the subplot of King Lear mirrors the main plot unusually closely. In both plots, an aging father banishes a child who loves him. In both plots the aging father is reduced to the status of a wandering beggar as a result. Because Gloucester is deliberately betrayed by his son Edmund, and loses his eyesight as well as his status, his suffering is actually in some ways worse than Lear’s. The fact that we first see Gloucester explaining himself to Kent onstage – and declaring that he loves Edmund as much as Edward, even though Edmund is illegitimate – makes him initially more sympathetic than Lear, who openly admits to loving Cordelia more than her sisters. The close mirroring of plots suggests that Lear’s suffering, far from being the unique fate of a tragic hero, is commonplace, and reinforces the idea that Lear is responsible for much of it.

154 British Drama - I Tone The tone of King Lear is bitter and hopeless, reflecting the pessimistic outlook of the play and the relentlessly tragic ending in which innocent characters die needlessly. While there are moments of hope when Lear and Cordelia are reunited at the end and Lear repents of his past mistakes, this hope is not rewarded. Cordelia dies despite Lear’s attempts to save her, and Lear dies essentially of grief. Violence and cruelty are everywhere in King Lear, and they are taken for granted by the characters, which creates a tone of resignation to the worst aspects of life. Characters make violent threats against one another: Lear tells Kent that “the bow is drawn, make from the shaft” (I.i). Kent is put in the stocks. Oswald is beaten up twice. The blinding of Gloucester is the most shockingly violent scene in any of Shakespeare’s plays. Violence happens even when the characters try to avoid it: Cordelia dies after Edmund repeals the order to kill her, implying that human attempts to avoid suffering are pointless. Gloucester captures this aspect of the play’s mood: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,/They kill us for their sport.” (IV.i). After a courtly and dignified opening, the tone of King Lear becomes progressively less controlled as the action progresses, underscoring the illusory nature of Lear’s perception of power. Kent begins the play as a senior courtier, giving Lear wise advice. When he returns in disguise from his banishment, Kent hurls insults and makes rude jokes. In the play’s opening scene, Lear’s anger is impressive and regal — “Come not between the dragon and his wrath” (I.i) — but as he begins losing power, Lear’s outbursts become more like desperate tantrums: “I will do such things —/What they are I know not, but they shall be/The terrors of the earth!” (II.ii). While the first half of the play takes place in palaces and noblemen’s homes, the second half of the play takes place in rough settings like a heath, a shack, a tent and the fields near Dover. This shift in tone creates the sense that the dignity and order of the play’s opening scenes is a temporary illusion. The power and authority Lear is desperate to hold onto are essentially meaningless. The one bright aspect of this overwhelmingly bleak play is Cordelia’s enduring love for her father, a natural emotion underscored by the tone’s shift away from civilization toward nature. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 155 4.6 Foreshadowing Main Ideas Foreshadowing Many of the tragic events of King Lear are foreshadowed from the beginning of the play, which creates a sense that the characters’ suffering is inevitable, and reflects Lear’s blindness to the consequences of his actions by helping the audience to foresee events which Lear himself cannot. Just as significant are the events which are not foreshadowed. The death of Cordelia is the play’s most terrible event, but to the audience it comes as a surprise: in the world of King Lear, the reality of suffering exceeds our worst expectations. Gloucester’s Blinding Gloucester’s blinding is foreshadowed from the play’s opening scene. Goneril declares that her father’s love is “dearer than eyesight,” (I.i) a turn of phrase which asks us to think about how terrible it would be to lose the power of sight. Kent underlines the foreshadowing later in the scene when he begs Lear to “let me still be the true blank of thine eye” (I.i). A “blank” is the centre of a target, so Kent’s metaphor invites us to picture a weapon aimed at an eye. Immediately before his blinding, Gloucester himself tells Regan: “I would not see your cruel nails/Pluck out [Lear’s] poor old eyes” (III.vii). The heavy foreshadowing of Gloucester’s blinding underlines the central theme of blindness in King Lear. Lear’s Downfall In an instance of especially cruel ironic foreshadowing, Lear predicts the results of dividing his kingdom will bring him peace and happiness, not understanding he is creating the exact opposite effect by making his daughters declare their love. “tis our fast intent/To shake all cares and business from our age/… while we/Unburdened crawl toward death,” (I.i) he says, in revealing his plans, adding that he’s dividing the kingdom so “that future strife/May be prevented now.” The early establishment of Lear’s expectations for his actions make the actual outcome ironic, as we are aware of the stark disparity between the serenity he hoped to foster and the havoc he created. Lear’s decision to divide his kingdom incites everything he is trying to prevent – his daughters are divided by strife and all end up dead, and the last days of his life are heavily burdened by care and unhappiness.

156 British Drama - I Lear’s Madness The Fool tells Lear that “thou wouldst make a good fool” (I.v) and to “take my coxcomb” (I.iv) (a “coxcomb” is the hat worn by a professional fool). These jokes point out that Lear has behaved foolishly in giving his kingdom away, but they also foreshadow that Lear will take the Fool’s place by losing his wits. Lear himself suspects that he might go mad: “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!” (I.v), and shortly before his madness begins he foresees it: “I shall go mad” (II.ii). His daughters also suspect he is not well: Goneril says they should look out for “the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.” (I.i) The foreshadowing of Lear’s madness increases the tension of the scenes in which Lear confronts his daughters. As Lear gets angrier, we anticipate that at any moment he will crack and lose his mind altogether. This foreshadowing also increases our sense of Lear’s vulnerability, which helps us to pity him and to side with him against his daughters. Lear’s Homelessness The Fool warns Lear that his decision to give his kingdom to his daughters will end in his being left without a home: “I can tell why a snail has a house…to put’s head in, not to give it away to his daughters” (I.v). Lear himself fails to foresee his homelessness, even though it is foreshadowed in some of his own lines. He advises the banished Kent to gather “Provision/To shield thee from disasters of the world” (I.i), a line which invites the audience to imagine everything that might happen to someone left without a home. The audience learns in the play’s opening scene that Goneril and Regan are plotting against their father — “We must do something, and i’the heat” (I.i) — so we are not surprised when they shut the gates on Lear. The fact that Lear cannot see what Goneril and Regan are going to do, even though the audience can, emphasises Lear’s blindness to the truth about his daughters. 4.8 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Types Questions 1. Is Lear's demand of an expression of love from each daughter likely to bring honest answers? 2. How are we to account for Cordelia's answer? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 157 3. How would you describe the character of Kent? 4. Can you foresee, at the conclusion of this scene, anything of the course of the play? 5. Does Gloucester's treatment of his two sons at all account for their attitude? 6. How far has Lear a just right to think himself ungratefully treated? 7. What true friends has he, and how do they show their friendship? 8. Is Kent in any respects like Lear himself? 9. Trace the growing cruelty of Regan and Goneril. 10. How has the kingdom prospered under Albany and Cornwall? 11. What is the dramatic effect of the storm? 12. Is Edgar really mad? If not, how do you account for his actions and words? 13. How is the King's mind affected? 14. By what steps has Gloucester been led to his betrayal? 15. What is the dramatic effect of the meeting of Gloucester and Edgar? 16. What is the effect on Goneril and her husband of the news of Gloucester's fate? 17. Describe the Dover Cliff incident. 18. Describe the restoration of Lear's sanity. 19. Why should not the play go on from this point to a happy ending? 20. How does Albany learn of the treachery of his wife and Edmund? 21. Do you find any difference in character between Regan and Goneril? 22. Account for the fate of Cordelia. 23. In what form does Poetic Justice manifest itself in the cases of Lear and Gloucester? B. Multiple Choice/Objective Type Questions 1. Lear is King of What country/ (a) France (b) Britain (c) East Anglia (d) Scotland

158 British Drama - I 2. Which one of Lear’s daughter is sent into exile? (a) Goneril (b) Regan (c) Cordelia (d) Juliet 3. When Lear visits Goneril, What does she demand of him? (a) That he acknowledge her as the sole quen of the realm (b) That he send away some of his Knights (c) That he execute Cordelia (d) That he send away the Fool 4. Why is Gloucestor accused of treason? (a) Because he attempts to assassinate Goneril and regan (b) because he throws Lear in Prison (c) because he exiles Edgar (d) Because Edmund reveals letters showing that he knows of a French invasion 5. What happens to Lear at the end of the play/ (a) His kingdom is restored (b) He kills himself (c) He orders Regan and Goneril executed (d) He dies while weeping over Cordelia’s body Answers: 1. (b), 2. (c), 3. (b), 4. (d), 5. (d). 4.9 References 1. Crowther, John, ed. “No Fear King Lear.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 11 Jan. 2020. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

King Lear 159 2. Lunt, Forrest. Shakespeare Explained. New York: Hearst's International Library, 1915. Shakespeare Online. 10 Jan. 2020.< http://www.shakespeare- online.com/plays/kinglear/examq/sceneq.html >. 3. Foakes, R. A., ed. (1997). King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare, third series. Bloomsbury Publishing. doi:10.5040/9781408160268 (inactive 22 January 2020). ISBN 978-1- 903436-59-2. 4. Hadfield, Andrew, ed. (2007). King Lear. The Barnes & Noble Shakespeare. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 978-1-4114-0079-5. 5. Hunter, G. K., ed. (1972). King Lear. The New Penguin Shakespeare. Penguin Books. 6. Kermode, Frank (1974). \"Introduction to King Lear\". In Evans, G. Blakemore (ed.). The Riverside Shakespeare. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-04402-5. 7. Pierce, Joseph, ed. (2008). King Lear. Ignatius Critical Editions. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-1-58617-137-7.

160 British Drama - I UNIT 5 LITERARY TERMS Structure: 5.0 Learning Objective 5.1 Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy and Tragic Hero 5.2 An Ideal Tragic Hero 5.3 An Introduction to Restoration Comedy 5.4 The Theatre of the Absurd 5.5 Problem Play 5.6 Kitchen Sink Drama 5.7 History 5.8 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 5.9 References 5.0 Learning Objective In this unit the students will learn about different literary terms like the Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy and An Ideal Tragic Hero, They will understand what a restoration comedy is, what does The theatre of the Absurd means and what does the Problem Play consist of. 5.1 Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy and Tragic Hero Aristotle on Tragedy In the Poetics, Aristotle's famous study of Greek dramatic art, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) compares tragedy to such other metrical forms as comedy and epic. He determines that tragedy, like all poetry, is a kind of imitation (mimesis), but adds that it has a serious purpose and uses CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 161 direct action rather than narrative to achieve its ends. He says that poetic mimesis is imitation of things as they could be, not as they are — for example, of universals and ideals — thus poetry is a more philosophical and exalted medium than history, which merely records what has actually happened. The aim of tragedy, Aristotle writes, is to bring about a \"catharsis\" of the spectators — to arouse in them sensations of pity and fear, and to purge them of these emotions so that they leave the theater feeling cleansed and uplifted, with a heightened understanding of the ways of gods and men. This catharsis is brought about by witnessing some disastrous and moving change in the fortunes of the drama's protagonist (Aristotle recognized that the change might not be disastrous, but felt this was the kind shown in the best tragedies — Oedipus at Colonus, for example, was considered a tragedy by the Greeks but does not have an unhappy ending). According to Aristotle, tragedy has six main elements: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle (scenic effect), and song (music), of which the first two are primary. Most of the Poetics is devoted to analysis of the scope and proper use of these elements, with illustrative examples selected from many tragic dramas, especially those of Sophocles, although Aeschylus, Euripides, and some playwrights whose works no longer survive are also cited. Several of Aristotle's main points are of great value for an understanding of Greek tragic drama. Particularly significant is his statement that the plot is the most important element of tragedy: Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of action and life, of happiness and misery. And life consists of action, and its end is a mode of activity, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is their action that makes them happy or wretched. The purpose of action in the tragedy, therefore, is not the representation of character: character comes in as contributing to the action. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of the tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be one without character. The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: character holds the second place. Aristotle goes on to discuss the structure of the ideal tragic plot and spends several chapters on its requirements. He says that the plot must be a complete whole — with a definite beginning,

162 British Drama - I middle, and end — and its length should be such that the spectators can comprehend without difficulty both its separate parts and its overall unity. Moreover, the plot requires a single central theme in which all the elements are logically related to demonstrate the change in the protagonist's fortunes, with emphasis on the dramatic causation and probability of the events. Aristotle has relatively less to say about the tragic hero because the incidents of tragedy are often beyond the hero's control or not closely related to his personality. The plot is intended to illustrate matters of cosmic rather than individual significance, and the protagonist is viewed primarily as the character who experiences the changes that take place. This stress placed by the Greek tragedians on the development of plot and action at the expense of character, and their general lack of interest in exploring psychological motivation, is one of the major differences between ancient and modern drama. Since the aim of a tragedy is to arouse pity and fear through an alteration in the status of the central character, he must be a figure with whom the audience can identify and whose fate can trigger these emotions. Aristotle says that \"pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.\" He surveys various possible types of characters on the basis of these premises, then defines the ideal protagonist as ….a man who is highly renowned and prosperous, but one who is not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or depravity but by some error of judgment or frailty; a personage like Oedipus. In addition, the hero should not offend the moral sensibilities of the spectators, and as a character he must be true to type, true to life, and consistent. The hero's error or frailty (harmartia) is often misleadingly explained as his \"tragic flaw,\" in the sense of that personal quality which inevitably causes his downfall or subjects him to retribution. However, overemphasis on a search for the decisive flaw in the protagonist as the key factor for understanding the tragedy can lead to superficial or false interpretations. It gives more attention to personality than the dramatists intended and ignores the broader philosophical implications of the typical plot's denouement. It is true that the hero frequently takes a step that initiates the events of the tragedy and, owing to his own ignorance or poor judgment, acts in such CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 163 a way as to bring about his own downfall. In a more sophisticated philosophical sense though, the hero's fate, despite its immediate cause in his finite act, comes about because of the nature of the cosmic moral order and the role played by chance or destiny in human affairs. Unless the conclusions of most tragedies are interpreted on this level, the reader is forced to credit the Greeks with the most primitive of moral systems. It is worth noting that some scholars believe the \"flaw\" was intended by Aristotle as a necessary corollary of his requirement that the hero should not be a completely admirable man. Harmartia would thus be the factor that delimits the protagonist's imperfection and keeps him on a human plane, making it possible for the audience to sympathize with him. This view tends to give the \"flaw\" an ethical definition but relates it only to the spectators' reactions to the hero and does not increase its importance for interpreting the tragedies. The remainder of the Poetics is given over to examination of the other elements of tragedy and to discussion of various techniques, devices, and stylistic principles. Aristotle mentions two features of the plot, both of which are related to the concept of harmartia, as crucial components of any well-made tragedy. These are \"reversal\" (peripeteia), where the opposite of what was planned or hoped for by the protagonist takes place, as when Oedipus' investigation of the murder of Laius leads to a catastrophic and unexpected conclusion; and \"recognition\" (anagnorisis), the point when the protagonist recognizes the truth of a situation, discovers another character's identity, or comes to a realization about himself. This sudden acquisition of knowledge or insight by the hero arouses the desired intense emotional reaction in the spectators, as when Oedipus finds out his true parentage and realizes what crimes he has been responsible for. Aristotle wrote the Poetics nearly a century after the greatest Greek tragedians had already died, in a period when there had been radical transformations in nearly all aspects of Athenian society and culture. The tragic drama of his day was not the same as that of the fifth century, and to a certain extent his work must be construed as a historical study of a genre that no longer existed rather than as a description of a living art form. In the Poetics, Aristotle used the same analytical methods that he had successfully applied in studies of politics, ethics, and the natural sciences in order to determine tragedy's fundamental

164 British Drama - I principles of composition and content. This approach is not completely suited to a literary study and is sometimes too artificial or formula-prone in its conclusions. Nonetheless, the Poetics is the only critical study of Greek drama to have been made by a near-contemporary. It contains much valuable information about the origins, methods, and purposes of tragedy, and to a degree shows us how the Greeks themselves reacted to their theater. In addition, Aristotle's work had an overwhelming influence on the development of drama long after it was compiled. The ideas and principles of the Poetics are reflected in the drama of the Roman Empire and dominated the composition of tragedy in western Europe during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Introduction: Idealized Imitation of Objects in Tragedy Poetry is a form of imitation. The objects of poetic imitation may be either better than real life, worse than real life, or the same as they are in actual life. Aristotle thus distinguishes between comedy and tragedy, for tragedy involves the imitation of men better than they are in actual life. Hence tragedy presents a character in an idealised form. The tragic poet represents life as it might be, not as it necessarily is. The characters are better than we are. It is, however,, important to understand that the idealisation does not mean that the characters are good in a strictly moral sense. It merely means that the characters live a more complete and intense life than the real men and women dare to in the real world. This is what makes the characters in a tragedy awesome1, as they are on a higher plane than ordinary men and women. Aristotle in his Poetics puts forward a number of characteristics for the ideal tragic hero, which, however, have proved to be quite controversial. Different critics have interpreted them in different manner. The Main Features of the Tragic Character In chapter 15, Aristotle speaks of dramatic characters and the four points to aim at in the treatment of these characters. The four points are : (i) that the characters should be good; • . (ii) that they should be appropriate; (iii) that they should be close to reality or true to life; CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 165 1. inspiring a mixed feeling of fear, wonder, and reverence (usually caused by something majestic). (iv) that they should be consistent. (i) Goodness: The first characteristic demanded by Aristotle has struck many critics as somewhat strange and extraordinary. But it is essential to Aristotle’s theory because it is the very foundation for the basic sympathy in the reader or audience, without which tragic emotions cannot be evoked, or the tragic pleasure conveyed. A character is assumed ‘good’ if his words and actions reveal a good purpose behind them. This is irrespective of the class to which he belongs. Aristotle held woman to be inferior (and classified them with slaves), but even women, if introduced in tragedy, should be shown to have some good in them. Aristotle based his statements on an assumption that his spectators have a ‘normally balanced moral attitude’, as Humphry House says. As such, they cannot be sympathetic towards one who is depraved or odious1. Sympathy is necessary’as it is the very basis of the whole tragic pleasure. The bad man does to arouse pity in us if he falls from happiness to misery. Entirely wicked persons have no place in tragedy, according to Aristotle. But we must remember that, by implication, we can see that Aristotle allows the “bad’ or wicked man in a tragedy if he is indispensable to the plot. He says that he would not allow for “depravity of character” when it is not necessary and no use is made of it. Thus Aristotle realises that 1)ad’ characters may be necessary in some tragedies. But this badness may occur only in so far as the main action requires it. And the action of the play as a whole should be a ‘good’ one; in other words, it should portray efforts to bring about a ‘good’ result. The characters initiating the main action are, therefore, good. Yet, bad characters may occur in the process of realising this action. It is thus that a wicked character like lago is not necessarily ruled out in the context of the Aristotelian concept. Aristotle’s dictum of ‘goodness’ in the tragic character has given rise to a great deal of controversy and contradictory interpretations. To Corneille, the French playwright and critic, the term ‘good’ meant magnificent. Dacier and Metastasio interpreted ‘good’ to mean Veil-marked’. Telford considers the term to signify, ‘dramatically effective’. F.L Lucas is of the firm opinion

166 British Drama - I that the term implies being ‘fine’ or ‘noble’: The real point is, however, that Aristotle is clearly insisting that the dramatis personae of tragedy shall be as fine a character as the plot permits.” However, what Humphry House says in this context is clear and the most acceptable of the interpretations. He points out that the term ‘good’ and ‘goodness’ in Greek meant something different from what it has come to mean in terms of Christian ethics. The insistence on goodness is not coloured with direct didacticism. It does not have significant ‘moralistic’ implications, for in the Greek sense of the term, it means the “habitual possession of one or more of the separate virtues, such as courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, gentleness, truthfulness, friendliness, and even witness.” Thus the moralistic interpretation of “goodness” implying the effort to do one’s duty, should not be read into what Aristotle says. Aristotle’s good man is good in so far as he desires specific, positive good ends, and works towards attaining those ends, Aristotle’s use of the term ‘good’ implies something necessarily different -from what we mean by it today. If we remember that the “pagan idea of virtue,... (Demands) strength and intensity of character rather than purity of soul, Aristotle’s words ‘are not without force. Greek ethics had a larger element of aesthetics,” says F.L., Lucas. The characters need not be virtuous in the Christian sense of the term. Indeed this would lead to the play being rather undramatic as humility and modesty and meekness are perhaps the most undramatic human qualities. By implication, what is required is a sense of ‘grandeur’. (ii) Appropriateness: The next essential as far as character is concerned is that of “appropriateness”. This term has also been interpreted variously. Once set of critics take it to mean true to type. Yet this does not mean the Aristotle meant characters to be mere types and not individuals. What he meant is that the characters should be true to their particular age, profession, class, sex, or status.’ But they are^ individuals at the same time, for they are ‘men in action’ as represented in tragedy. The actions of people of the same type can, and do differ : in this lies their individuality. The choice made .by them in the crucial situation indicates their particular individuality. Aristotle, with his insistence that practice is the source of character, would have maintained that one who CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 167 has been brought up in slavery would not suddenly develop nobility and heroism. He would, through the constant habit of doing the acts of a slave, become slave like. A woman, similarly , must be shown as ‘womanly’ and not manly. Each character should be given a character appropriate to his ‘status’ or situation. Within each status; there remains the greatest freedom for individuality in characterisation. In spite of restrictions and limitation, the individual may rise above the tendency to run true to type. This involves dramatic treatment too. Another aspect of appropriateness has been pointed o’ut by critics. Aristotle has not made it clear as to what exactly the character is to be appropriate. It has been remarked th’at Aristotle could have also meant that the character should be appropriate to the historical or traditional portrait of him. For instance, Ulysses must be characterised as he has been historically presented. Any character taken from myth or traditional story must be true to what he has been presented as in that myth or story Apparently, if Aristotle meant this, he had the practice of the Greek dramatists in mind who took their characters from traditional sources like myth and history. It is thus that Clytemnestra cannot be represented as gentle, or Ulysses as foolish. (iii) Likeness: The third essential .is that of likeness. Aristotle gives no example to illustrate his meaning in this context. Thus it is slightly difficult to assess what exactly he means by the term. If one interprets the term as likeness to the ‘original* in the sense of how the painter is true to the original, it would mean being true to the personage in history, or legend. This would curtail1 the freedom of the creative artist. It would be more acceptable to interpret the term as “true to life” — that the character must be true to life. The likeness to life as we know of it is necessary, for it is only then that we can identify ourselves with the characters. If we do not see the character as we see ourselves, the tragic emotions of pity and fear become irrelevant. We see that this likeness to life precludes the characters from being either too good or utterly depraved. The tragic character has thus to be a normal person, or “of an intermediate sort”. Only then will he be convincing. One might argue here that Aristotle is contradicting himself, for he also says that tragedy represents characters better than our selves. But this is not necessarily a contradiction. The action of tragedy, we have been told, is a complete whole, has a coherent, well-knit, patterned unity — and thus, has a more clearly defined end than a piece of real life or a slice of history. To fit such

168 British Drama - I an action, character must also be modified from the commonplace norm2 of real life. So, the character is at one, true to life and different from reality as well. It is the balance on one hand between our desire for reality and life like ‘imitation’ and on the other our desire for something better than that found in real life. (iv) Consistency: The fourth essential with regard to character is that it must be consistent. This is a valid point which cannot be disputed. The character must be seen as a whole, and consistent to what he is presented as from beginning to end. There is to be uniformity in behaviour unless there is a proper motivation for any deviation. Any development in character has to take place according to intelligible principles, i.e., logically. There has to be probability or necessity in the character’s actions and words. Aristotle allows for waywardness by saying that if the character is to be show as being an inconsistent one, he should be consistently inconsistent. The character, in other words, should act and seem to think in a manner which we can logically expect from that particular individual. This is similar to Aristotle’s contention of the plot being a causally related whole. The character’s actions and words should be appropriate to what he is represented to be, as well as to the situation in which he is placed. 5.2 An Ideal Tragic Hero The passage in the Poetics which deals with the ideal tragic hero, has attracted a great deal of critical attention. Aristotle says : “It follows plainly, in the first place that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity; for it moves the audience to neither fear nor pity : it simply shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity, for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of tragedy . Nor, again should the downfall of an utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless,, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of man like ourselves.” We see that Aristotle has no place in tragedy for two types of characters — the perfectly virtuous and the thoroughly depraved or bad. Thus the tragic character is one who is not CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 169 eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice and depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must also be one who is highly renowned and prosperous. The Perfectly Good: Not Fit for a Tragic Hero Aristotle’s concept of the effect of tragedy is that is arouses pity and fear in the spectator. But a perfectly good man, if he suffers the fall from prosperity to misery, will not arouse pity or fear; he would simply shock the spectator’s sense of justice. The shock arises from the fact that a completely virtuous man is suffering; the suffering is wholly undeserved. It is an irrational suffering. The concept of the tragic hero not being perfect is related to the insistence on goodness in character. For, a perfect person would be one who had his desires under control, and whose intellect is able to form the right calculations and the right practical inferences, so that he would formulate to himself ends more immediately within his power. Right action would become more and more spontaneous and immediate, and the sphere of deliberation more and more limited. And ultimately the scope for the dramatic display of action would not exist. A blameless, virtuous character cannot be dramatically effective.. Furthermore, we cannot identify ourselves with such a saintly character. It is true that in recent times Shaw and Eliot have made successful drama with saints as their tragic heroes. But then Aristotle was speaking about the drama he knew, i.e., the Greek drama. And generally speaking saints have been excluded from the sphere of drama. Yet Antigone in Greek drama itself was quite blameless. She had to choose and chose as well as possible in the circumstances; she sacrificed the lower duty to the higher. One might say that blameless goodness is not the proper stuff for drama. Perfect goodness- is apt to be immobile1 and uncombative2; it tends to bring action to a standstill. Yet it would not be 1- not moving or changing. 2. not ready to fight or struggle. It is completely right to say that the spectacle of a perfect man suffering shocks rather than arouses pity. Desdemona, Cordelia, and Antigone surely arouse pity. It would not be correct to say that terror, here, outweighs pity. The sense of outraged justice is there but it does not exclude pity.

170 British Drama - I The Thoroughly Depraved Character : Not Suited for Tragedy Another type of character excluded by Aristotle from the sphere of tragedy is that of the utter villain. The completely bad man falling from prosperity to adversity1, says Aristotle, would merely satisfy our sense of justice. There would be no pity or fear. The suffering is deserved, and we cannot feel pity for the one who suffers . Furthermore, the sense of identification is absent, just as it is in the case of the perfectly good man. Nor can we tolerate the idea of bad man rising from adversity to prosperity. This would be entirely alien to tragedy, says Aristotle. This is quite aceeptable. It would indeed offend our sense of justice. Even the aesthetic2 effect would be one tinged with disquiet. However, the exclusion of the villain from the sphere of tragedy is somewhat debatable. In this Aristotle seems to show a limited vision. True, crime as crime has no place in dramatic art. But presented in another light it becomes valid in drama. Macbeth outrages hospitality as well as loyalty by killing his guest and king, Duncan, under his own roof. Webster’s Vittoria is a “white devil’. But these peQple arouse pity. Vittoria standing undaunted before her enemies; Lady Macbeth, alone, and broken by her sorrow and guilt; Macbeth courageously drawing his sword in the face of certain defeat at Dunsidane, — all of them arouse pity though they are such Villains’. Pity, as Lucas remarks, is not so narrow. It needs, however, the genius of Shakespeare to evolve tragic villains of this type. Only he could perhaps create a Macbeth, or a Richard III. There is something grand about these villains. It is wickedness on a grand level; the wickedness is intellectual and resolute, and it raises the criminal above the commonplace and gives to him a sort of dignity. There is something terrible in the spectacle of a will power working out its evil course, dominating its surroundings. The fall and breakdown of such a power evokes a certain tragic feeling in us, or a tragic sympathy. It is not the pity one feels for the unmerited sufferer. But is a sense of loss and regret over the waste or misuse of such splendid gifts. “Provided a person has some redeeming quality — courage, intellect, beauty, wit, passionate devotion; provided they show some sort* of magnificence — then it is astonishing how much their fellow-men can sometimes forgive them.” One might, perhaps, offer a defence’ of Aristotle,-here too. After all, he says that a completely depraved person is not fit to be a tragic hero. Macbeth, one could argue, is not completely depraved, for he shows inordinate1 courage. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 171 The Tragic Hero: An Intermediate Sort of Person The person who stands between complete villainy and complete goodness, according to Aristotle, is the ideal tragic hero. He is a. man like a ourselves, yet has a moral elevation. He is a more intense person; his feelings are deeper, he has heightened powers of intellect and will. But he is essentially human, so that it is easy for us to identify ourselves with him and sympathise with him. Thus the tragic hero “must be an intermediate sort of person, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought on him not be vice or depravity but by some error of judgement, or Hamartia.” Hamartia’: Not A Moral Falling but an Error of Judgement Hamartia has been interpreted variously. It has come to be rather loosely interpreted as “tragic flaw’ by Bradley. This interpretation has stuck and has tended to confuse the true meaning of the term. Hamartia is not a moral failing, as the term, tragic flaw implies. Aristotle makes it clear that Hamartia is some error of judgement—that the fall of the hero comes about not because of some depravity, but from some error on bis part. Critics like Butcher, Bywater, Rostangi and Lucas agree that Hamartia is not a moral drawback. It may be connected with moral drawback but it is not itself a moral imperfection. Hamartia can Arise in Three Ways The Hamartia is an error or miscalculation. It may arise in three ways. Firstly, it may be derived from an ignorance of some material fact or circumstance. Secondly, the error of judgement may arise from a hasty or careless view of a given situation. The case is illustrated by Othello. In this case the error was avoidable but the hero does not avoid it. Thirdly, the error may be voluntary, though not deliberate. This happens in an act of anger or passion. Lear commits such an error when he banishes Cordelia. In the case of Oedipus all three errors are included. The defect of Oedipus lies in his proud self-assertion. But the ruin brought upon him is through the force of circumstance. The Hamartia in his case includes a defect of character, a passionate act, and ignorance. The tragic irony lies in the fact that the hero commits this error in blindness and in innocence, without any evil intention. But the result is disastrous. This is closely connected with Peripitea, or the production of a result opposed to the one intended. Then comes the discovery of truth. In this connection Butcher

172 British Drama - I remarks : “Othello in the modern drama, Oedipus in the ancient, are the two most conspicuous examples of ruin wrought by characters, noble indeed, but not without defects, acting in the dark and, as it seemed, for the best.” The Eminence of the Tragic Hero: Not Relevant in the Modern Context Greek drama had for its heroes men of eminence and nobility. They held a position on exaltation in society. When such a man falls from greatness to misery, a nation as a whole is affected. The fall seems all the more striking because of the hero’s eminence. The concept was acceptable and relevant in a situation in which prominent men of the nobility were held to be representatives of the society. The concept is, however, outdated today. Modern tragedy has shown that tragedy is possible all its effectiveness even when the hero is ordinary and commonplace. Rank and nobility of birth are now irrelevant. But the man who is the tragic hero should, nevertheless be a man of eminence, not of rank and position, as far as quality goes. There has got to be some sort of dignity which makes the fall from prosperity arouse sympathy in the spectator. Conclusion On the whole, we see that Aristotle’s concept of the tragic hero is not unacceptable. In some ways he has a limited vision. Tragedy is possible .with saints, as Shaw and Eliot have shown. But this is not a -generally found fact. That tragedy is also much possible with a villainous hero, has been remarkably shown by the Renaissance dramatists, especially Shakespeare. Further, the tragedy arises from Hamartia. This, too, is proved by many of our best tragedies, for these are indeed what Lucas calls tragedies of error. It is the most effective of tragedies. However, the chief limitation of Aristotle’s concept is that it is based on one section of world drama. 5.3 An Introduction to Restoration Comedy A comic vision that ridiculed what it most admired Restoration comedy was written and performed from about 1660 to 1700, flourishing in the period after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Some 500 plays survive, though only a CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 173 handful of them are performed today, and few playwrights have achieved lasting fame. Leading names include William Wycherley (The Country Wife, 1675), George Etherege (The Man of Mode, 1676), Aphra Behn (The Rover, 1677), John Vanbrugh (The Relapse, 1696) and William Congreve (The Way of the World, 1700). Although scholars have identified these particular plays as worthy of study, they were not necessarily the most popular choices among audiences at the turn of the 18th century. Within this select group there is much variety. The obscure and impoverished Aphra Behn was the only woman and the first to ‘write for bread’. Wycherley, Etherege and Vanbrugh were aristocrats with close links to the Stuart court, and where men who saw writing plays as a gentleman’s pastime. Congreve was an intellectual and a Whig supporter, whose writing celebrates the values of the powerful new elite that had forced the Stuarts into exile in 1688. Restoration comedy tends to be overshadowed by the achievements of the Elizabethan era, but it merits our attention just the same. Although it may follow a prescribed set of conventions, within these rules it explores a range of challenging ideas that were highly topical in late 17th- century society. In terms of their gender politics, in particular, the plays remain fresh and relevant today. The Historical Context Despite its name this comedy was not a restorative to a nation wounded and divided by civil war, religious upheaval and anxiety about the future of the monarchy. The plays may celebrate court life in all its gorgeous material pomp, but they were written against a backdrop of far- reaching change in governance, the law, the Church and the family. A deep unease lies beneath the wit and sexual escapades. In 1660 Charles Stuart was invited to take up the English Crown by a nation that had beheaded his father and fought a deeply painful civil war (1642–51). He returned from exile in France and began to rebuild a royal court in which theatre was to play a big part. Faced with the rampant hypocrisy and cynicism on display in the comedies, critics have looked into England’s history to find explanations. Some have pointed to the loss of a sense of social and natural order caused by years of fighting neighbours, friends and kin. Such prolonged

174 British Drama - I trauma can rob people of their faith in personal relationships. Some see the influence of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. His major work Leviathan (1651) was widely debated at the time. Hobbes believed that appetite is the strongest driving force in human behaviour, and that left to ourselves we will destroy what we most value because of our overwhelming competitive greed. New theatres, new plays and women playing women’s parts Considered ungodly by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans, London’s theatres had been closed since 1642. Within three months of his return, Charles had granted ‘letters patent’ (legal documents) to his veteran Cavaliers, Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, giving them exclusive rights to each establish a theatre. The patents stipulated that women (rather than adolescent boys) should play women’s parts. The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (1663) and the Dorset Garden Theatre in Whitefriars (1671) became the focus for a resurgent interest in writing and staging a new kind of comedy. Playwrights were inspired by exciting advances in theatre design and technology, such as moveable scenery, candlelit chandeliers and footlights. Audiences came to see themselves reflected in the plays, but such was the disreputable nature of the profession, especially for women, that actors were mainly recruited from the poorest social groups. Intensive training was required to mimic upper-class speech and adopt the correct etiquette with swords, hats, fans and greetings. Everyone knew that they were watching an illusion of high society, and this gave the plays’ themes of masking, gulling and deceit an additional edge. The Restoration also saw the rise of the celebrity actor, such as Elizabeth Barry. Who were the audience? The aristocratic upper classes may have laid claim to Restoration comedy, but by the end of the century the audience had diversified considerably. Graded seat prices and seating zones resulted in a sense of class ownership of parts of the playhouse auditorium. Actors enjoyed exploiting the divisions by ‘playing’ to different parts of the house. City merchants, their wives and servants, a growing middle class and a vocal group of fops and critics made up the regulars. In his diary, Samuel Pepys refers to frequent scenes of disorder, which he blamed on the large numbers of ‘cits’ (lower-class citizens), apprentices and ‘mean types’ seated in the gallery. Only CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 175 Puritans, now on the losing side, stayed away. On stage they were ridiculed, portrayed as mercenary hypocrites bent upon spoiling innocent fleshly pleasures. There was no concept of a ‘fourth wall’, which made the relationship between players and audience electrifying at times. Audiences adored the simple technique of the ‘aside’, where characters addressed them directly, taking them into their confidence. They preferred predictable plots and exaggerated stereotypes. When disgruntled with a particular play, audiences sometimes became so rowdy that they could close a production down. The comedy of manners The comedy of manners was Restoration comedy’s most popular subgenre. Although they ultimately uphold the status quo, these plays scrutinise and ridicule upper-class society’s manners and rules of behaviour, providing an up-to-the-minute commentary on class, desire and the marriage market. The tone is cynical and satirical, while the language and actions are sexually explicit. Characters are driven by lust, greed and revenge, and their goals are limited: fraud, courtship, gulling, cuckoldry. The intricate plots add much to the atmosphere of deceit and moral confusion. A particularly appealing feature is the contrast between two pairs of lovers. The ‘gay couple’ are witty and independent, with time to banter and tease their way to choosing a marriage partner. Through them, the complexities of commitment could be explored. Nell Gwyn, mistress to Charles II, was the first actor to play one half of a ‘gay couple’, helping to establish the type as an enduring favourite. The second couple are constant and unexciting. Their path to true love is thwarted by outside forces, usually in the shape of a blocking character – Don Pedro in The Rover or Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World. The comedy of manners, also called anti sentimental comedy, is a form of comedy that satirizes the manners and affectations of contemporary society and questions societal standards. Social class stereotypes are often represented through stock characters such as the miles gloriosus (\"boastful soldier\") in ancient Greek comedy or the fop and rake of English Restoration comedy, which is sometimes used as a synonym for \"comedy of manners\". A comedy of manners often sacrifices the plot, which usually centers on some scandal, to witty dialogue and sharp social

176 British Drama - I commentary. Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), which satirized the Victorian morality of the time, is one of the best-known plays of this genre. The comedy of manners was first developed in the New Comedy period of ancient Greek comedy and is known today primarily from fragments of writings by the Greek playwright Menander. Menander's style, elaborate plots, and stock characters were imitated by the ancient Roman playwrights, such as Plautus and Terence, whose comedies were in turn widely known and reproduced during the Renaissance. Some of the best-known comedies of manners are those by the 17th century French playwright Molière, who satirized the hypocrisy and pretension of the ancien régime in plays such as L'École des femmes ([The School for Wives], 1662), Tartuffe ([The Imposter], 1664), and Le Misanthrope ([The Misanthrope], 1666). Wit Versus Humour Restoration comedy kept all sections of its audience happy by blending wit with ‘low’ humour such as farce and burlesque. In the 17th century, wit meant more than the ability to make people laugh. Wit was governed by a serious playfulness with words and ideas, where language was used in an intellectually stimulating and surprising way. Such language was elegant, structured and subtle. The style in which an original thought was expressed was as worthy of attention as the idea itself. Playwrights would sacrifice pace to allow time for displays of wit between rivals aiming to cut each other down to size, or, more popular still, for the sparring, flirtatious wit between would-be lovers. The language of wit incorporated a full armoury of linguistic devices: double entendre, pun, antithesis, paradox, aphorism, similitude, raillery, repartee, quibble, irony, epigram and conceit. ‘True wits’ were deeply respected for their skilful ability with these techniques. The rake and his rivals The rake was an invention of Restoration comedy. Seductive, witty and arrogant, he represented a flattering type of male prowess and drive, much admired in court circles. Through the rake, the plays explore the possibility of a sexual freedom which was simply not possible in London society at large, but was more than tolerated at court. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 177 The rake has many enemies to defeat on his journey to possess and control the female body. Intelligent, manipulative women out for revenge pose a particular threat. Since they have already lost their honour to the rake, they are dangerous free agents. Newly enriched middle-class pretenders and foolish fops such as Sir Fopling Flutter (The Man of Mode) present the rake with serious competition for rich heiresses. The pretenders are always exposed as out of their depth in the courtship game. The fops are more of a concern; they understand women and can get close to them with their shared interests in fashion, gossip and faro (a gambling card game). The rake reminds us that there were real anxieties concerning male authority in an uncertain age. Women had run estates and businesses very capably while men fought in the Civil Wars. Old assumptions about the family, based on a belief in religious and national hierarchies, were being challenged. The king’s sexual prowess was legendary, yet his wife was childless and he had no Protestant heir to continue the Stuart line. Audiences thronged the theatres to laugh at impotence jokes, applaud serial seducers such as Horner (The Country Wife) and laugh at the energetic intrigues of Lady Fidget (The Country Wife) and other sexually frustrated wives. What women say and do Allowing women to act was a mixed blessing. At best, it meant playwrights such as Aphra Behn could write great parts for them, giving them more agency and longer speeches. (Behn was the first to pay serious attention to the life and mind of a courtesan in her portrayal of Angellica Bianca in The Rover.) At worst, allowing women to act meant that new plays were more likely to feature scenes containing sexual harassment and rape threats, which were largely intended to titillate audiences. Somewhere in this complex territory lies the breeches part. Plots which involved women cross-dressing were in high demand throughout the period. Although we can point to many plots that feature a young woman for whom putting on a pair of breeches means the freedom to leave the parental home and test the loyalty and calibre of the man she seeks to marry, some critics have argued that these roles were simply another way to sexualise actresses and entertain male spectators.

178 British Drama - I The business of courtship and marriage In Restoration comedy the finest couples make the best financial deal for themselves in the marriage market. Mutual attraction, if it exists, is a bonus. In the real world things were not so certain. Some returning Cavaliers had failed to recoup their lands and fortunes and were having to widen their search for a wife to include the daughters of the middle class. This sharpened competition for wives and placed an extra premium on women’s honour and reputation. Towards the end of the century, new ideas emerged about the position of women in marriage. Their subservience to their husbands, though fully endorsed in law, was no longer seen as a natural rather than a social circumstance. As the number of women in the audience grew, Congreve (The Way of the World) and other playwrights explored concerns of particular interest to them. Proviso scenes became increasingly common. These are scenes in which couples debate how best to enjoy or endure the married state. Usually, each gives up some power over the other and forfeits individual rights in order to put unity in marriage first. This writing put forward fresh thinking; perhaps marriage could be an alliance of like-minded, consenting men and women? Marriage is always the proper end of Restoration comedy. Women may roam freely, engage in repartee and intrigue, but in the end they consent to marry and confirm the value of patriarchy. Although the plays may ask probing questions about the ‘natural’ hierarchies underpinning the family and society, their endings are ultimately reassuring to audiences who have, after all, come to the theatre to be entertained. 1688 and After Towards the end of Charles II’s reign the atmosphere in London was rife with conspiracies, and theatres emptied, killing off the demand for new plays. When Charles died without a Protestant heir in 1685, three years of intense unrest followed as his Catholic brother James II tussled with Parliament for control of the country. James was deposed in a bloodless coup in 1688 (the so-called Glorious Revolution), and the nation welcomed William and Mary to reign as constitutional monarchs with greatly reduced powers. The royal couple had no interest in the theatre, and there followed a succession of legislative acts that severely curtailed playwrights’ freedoms. In 1692 the Society for the Reformation of CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 179 Manners was founded, and it quickly started to bring lawsuits against playwrights deemed to have offended public decency. From 1696 the Lord Chamberlain reserved the right to censor plays before granting them a licence. In 1698 theologian Jeremy Collier published A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, a highly misleading but influential text. Collier damned all Restoration comedy outright, with Vanbrugh and Congreve singled out as being particularly offensive. The prevailing mood by 1700 was for plays with a clear moral and emotional purpose. The public indifference, even hostility, that greeted the premiere of Congreve’s masterpiece The Way of the World, showed that Restoration comedy was out of step with a new age which was at last asserting its identity 12 years after the Glorious Revolution. By 1700 England’s mercantile class was creating most of the nation’s wealth and driving radical ideas. Among these was the call for a stronger parliamentary voice to reflect the importance of trade and banking to the economy and England’s standing in the world as a trading nation. Comedy’s unruly voices of libertine disorder were replaced by sound Whig values: restraint, common sense and judgement informed by law. Good order in political and family life could banish Hobbesian appetite after all, by the power of plain speaking, safeguarding women’s freedoms and a respect for property rights. Comedy required a profound rethink. Critical debates from the 18th century to the present day Restoration comedies have faced many obstacles in their 350-year journey to the modern stage. Throughout the 18th century scripts were subject to heavy revisions and bowdlerisation. By the 19th century the plays were considered highly immoral, artificial or just plain old-fashioned. The early 20th century saw a revival of interest, and a determination amongst some directors to restore the play scripts to their original form. The productions mounted by the Mermaid Society and the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, were welcome, but they led to an unfortunate trend that dogged productions throughout most of the century. They presented Restoration comedy as a bizarre world, with fantastical, over-fussy sets, extravagantly detailed costumes and ridiculous wigs. This concentration on the visual effect of the plays detracted from their real strengths, which lay in characterisation, wit and dialogue.

180 British Drama - I Later 20th century critics shed new light on the plays through the lens of literary theories such as feminism and New Historicism. They have been notably successful in their reappraisal of Aphra Behn, introducing a new generation of students and audiences to her work. Any modern production has to find a way of delivering the dialogue to appeal to a contemporary ear, while remaining faithful to the original. Equally challenging is the search for the right gestures and mannerisms. Little can be gained from removing the plays from their historical settings, yet approaching them as heritage theatre will fail to enliven them for today’s audiences. The best approach is to relish the sparkling wit and brilliant dialogue, while engaging with the sexual politics that are at play in every scene. 5.4 The Theatre of the Absurd The West and The East I. The West 'The Theatre of the Absurd' is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work of a number of playwrights, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s. The term is derived from an essay by the French philosopher Albert Camus. In his 'Myth of Sisyphus', written in 1942, he first defined the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd. The 'absurd' plays by Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and others all share the view that man is inhabiting a universe with which he is out of key. Its meaning is indecipherable and his place within it is without purpose. He is bewildered, troubled and obscurely threatened. The origins of the Theatre of the Absurd are rooted in the avant-garde experiments in art of the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, it was undoubtedly strongly influenced by the traumatic experience of the horrors of the Second World War, which showed the total impermanence of any values, shook the validity of any conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness. The trauma of living from 1945 under threat of nuclear annihilation also seems to have been an important factor in the rise of the new theatre. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 181 At the same time, the Theatre of the Absurd also seems to have been a reaction to the disappearance of the religious dimension form contemporary life. The Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical experience in confronting the limits of human condition. As a result, absurd plays assumed a highly unusual, innovative form, directly aiming to startle the viewer, shaking him out of this comfortable, conventional life of everyday concerns. In the meaningless and Godless post-Second-World-War world, it was no longer possible to keep using such traditional art forms and standards that had ceased being convincing and lost their validity. The Theatre of the Absurd openly rebelled against conventional theatre. Indeed, it was anti-theatre. It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. The dialogue seemed total gobbledygook. Not unexpectedly, the Theatre of the Absurd first met with incomprehension and rejection. One of the most important aspects of absurd drama was its distrust of language as a means of communication. Language had become a vehicle of conventionalised, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which is distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically. Conventionalised speech acts as a barrier between ourselves and what the world is really about: in order to come into direct contact with natural reality, it is necessary to discredit and discard the false crutches of conventionalised language. Objects are much more important than language in absurd theatre: what happens transcends what is being said about it. It is the hidden, implied meaning of words that assume primary importance in absurd theatre, over an above what is being actually said. The Theatre of

182 British Drama - I the Absurd strove to communicate an undissolved totality of perception - hence it had to go beyond language. Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to abandon the straitjacket of logic. In trying to burst the bounds of logic and language the absurd theatre is trying to shatter the enclosing walls of the human condition itself. Our individual identity is defined by language, having a name is the source of our separateness - the loss of logical language brings us towards a unity with living things. In being illogical, the absurd theatre is anti-rationalist: it negates rationalism because it feels that rationalist thought, like language, only deals with the superficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse of the infinite. It offers intoxicating freedom, brings one into contact with the essence of life and is a source of marvellous comedy. There is no dramatic conflict in the absurd plays. Dramatic conflicts, clashes of personalities and powers belong to a world where a rigid, accepted hierarchy of values forms a permanent establishment. Such conflicts, however, lose their meaning in a situation where the establishment and outward reality have become meaningless. However frantically characters perform, this only underlines the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. Absurd dramas are lyrical statements, very much like music: they communicate an atmosphere, an experience of archetypal human situations. The Absurd Theatre is a theatre of situation, as against the more conventional theatre of sequential events. It presents a pattern of poetic images. In doing this, it uses visual elements, movement, light. Unlike conventional theatre, where language rules supreme, in the Absurd Theatre language is only one of many components of its multidimensional poetic imagery. The Theatre of the Absurd is totally lyrical theatre which uses abstract scenic effects, many of which have been taken over and modified from the popular theatre arts: mime, ballet, acrobatics, conjuring, music-hall clowning. Much of its inspiration comes from silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in early sound film (Laurel and Hardy, W C Fields, the Marx Brothers). It emphasises the importance of objects and visual experience: the role of language is relatively secondary. It owes a debt to European pre-war surrealism: its literary CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 183 influences include the work of Franz Kafka. The Theatre of the Absurd is aiming to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams. Some of the predecessors of absurd drama:  In the realm of verbal nonsense: François Rabelais, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Many serious poets occasionally wrote nonsense poetry (Johnson, Charles Lamb, Keats, Hugo, Byron, Thomas Hood). One of the greatest masters of nonsense poetry was the German poet Christian Morgernstern (1871-1914). Ionesco found the work of S J Perelman (i.e., the dialogues of the Marx Brothers' films) a great inspiration for his work.  The world of allegory, myth and dream: The tradition of the world as a stage and life as a dream goes back to Elizabethan times. Baroque allegorical drama shows the world in terms of mythological archetypes: John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Calderon, Jakob Biederman. With the decline of allegory, the element of fantasy prevails (Swift, Hugh Walpole).  In some 18th and 19th Century works of literature we find sudden transformation of characters and nightmarish shifts of time and place (E T A Hoffman, Nerval, Aurevilly). Dreams are featured in many theatrical pieces, but it had to wait for Strindberg to produce the masterly transcriptions of dreams and obsessions that have become a direct source of the Absurd Theatre. Strindberg, Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Kafka created archetypes: by delving into their own subconscious, they discovered the universal, collective significance of their own private obsessions. In the view of Mircea Eliade, myth has never completely disappeared on the level of individual experience. The Absurd Theatre sought to express the individual's longing for a single myth of general validity. The above-mentioned authors anticipated this. Alfred Jarry is an important predecessor of the Absurd Theatre. His UBU ROI (1896) is a mythical figure, set amidst a world of grotesque archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal nature of man and his cruelty. (Ubu Roi makes himself King of Poland and kills and tortures all and sundry. The work is a puppet play and its décor of childish naivety underlines the horror.) Jarry expressed man's psychological states by objectifying them on the stage. Similarly, Franz Kafka's short

184 British Drama - I stories and novels are meticulously exact descriptions of archetypal nightmares and obsessions in a world of convention and routine.  20th Century European avant-garde: For the French avant-garde, myth and dream was of utmost importance: the surrealists based much of their artistic theory on the teachings of Freud and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious. The aim of the avant-garde was to do away with art as a mere imitation of appearances. Apollinaire demanded that art should be more real than reality and deal with essences rather than appearances. One of the more extreme manifestations of the avant-garde was the Dadaist movement, which took the desire to do away with obsolete artistic conventions to the extreme. Some Dadaist plays were written, but these were mostly nonsense poems in dialogue form, the aim of which was primarily to 'shock the bourgeois audience'. After the First World War, German Expressionism attempted to project inner realities and to objectify thought and feeling. Some of Brecht's plays are close to Absurd Drama, both in their clowning and their music-hall humour and the preoccupation with the problem of identity of the self and its fluidity. French surrealism acknowledged the subconscious mind as a great, positive healing force. However, its contribution to the sphere of drama was meagre: indeed it can be said that the Absurd Theatre of the 1950s and 1960s was a Belated practical realisation of the principles formulated by the Surrealists as early as the 1930s. In this connection, of particular importance were the theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud. Artaud fully rejected realism in the theatre, cherishing a vision of a stage of magical beauty and mythical power. He called for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce collective archetypes, thus creating a new mythology. In his view, theatre should pursue the aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered metaphorically in a wordless language of shapes, light, movement and gesture. Theatre should aim at expressing what language is incapable of putting into words. Artaud forms a bridge between the inter-war avant-garde and the post-Second-World-War Theatre of the Absurd. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 185 II. The East At the time when the first absurd plays were being written and staged in Western Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, people in the East European countries suddenly found themselves thrown into a world where absurdity was a integral part of everyday living. Suddenly, you did not need to be an abstract thinker in order to be able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience of absurdity became part and parcel of everybody's existence. Hitler's attempt to conquer Russia during the Second World War gave Russia a unique opportunity to extend its sphere of influence and at the same time to 'further the cause of [the Soviet brand of] socialism'. In the final years of the war, Stalin turned the war of the defeat of Nazism into the war of conquest of Central Europe and the war of the division of Europe. In pursuing Hitler's retreating troops, the Russian Army managed to enter the territory of the Central European countries and to remain there, with very few exceptions, until now. The might of the Russian Army made it possible for Stalin to establish rigidly ideological pro-Soviet regimes, hermetically sealed from the rest of Europe. The Central European countries, whose pre-war political systems ranged from feudal monarchies (Rumania), semi-authoritarian states (Poland) through to a parliamentary Western-type democracy (Czechoslovakia) were now subjected to a militant Sovietisation. The countries were forced to undergo a major traumatic political and economic transformation. The Western Theatre of the Absurd highlighted man's fundamental bewilderment and confusion, stemming from the fact that man has no answers to the basic existential questions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering. East European Soviet-type socialism proudly proclaimed that it had answers to all these questions and, moreover, that it was capable of eliminating suffering and setting all injustices right. To doubt this was subversive. Officially, it was sufficient to implement a grossly simplified formula of Marxism to all spheres of life and Paradise on Earth would ensue. It became clear very soon that this simplified formula offered even fewer real answers than various esoteric and complex Western philosophical systems and that its implementation by force brought enormous suffering. From the beginning it was clear that the simplified idea was absurd: yet it was made to dominate all spheres of life. People were expected to shape their lives according to its dictates and

186 British Drama - I to enjoy it. It was, and still is, an offence to be sceptical about Soviet-type socialism if you are a citizen of an East-European country. The sheer fact that the arbitrary formula of simplified Marxism was made to dominate the lives of millions of people, forcing them to behave against their own nature, brought the absurdity of the formula into sharp focus for these millions. Thus the Soviet-type system managed to bring the experience of what was initially a matter of concern for only a small number of sensitive individuals in the West to whole nations in the East. This is not to say that the absurdity of life as experienced in the East differs in any way from the absurdity of life as it is experienced in the West. In both parts of the world it stems from the ambiguity of man's position in the universe, from his fear of death and from his instinctive yearning for the Absolute. It is just that official East-European practices, based on a contempt for the fundamental existential questions and on a primitive and arrogant faith in the power of a simplified idea, have created a reality which makes absurdity a primary and deeply-felt, intrinsic experience for anybody who comes in contact with that reality. To put it another way: the western Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as the expression of frustration and anger of a handful of intellectuals over the fact that people seem to lead uninspired, second-rate and stereotyped existences, either by deliberate choice or because they do not know any better and have no idea how or ability by which to help themselves. Although such anger may sound smug and condescending, it is really mixed with despair. And when we look at Eastern Europe, we realise that these intellectuals are justified in condemning lives of mediocrity, even though many people in the West seem to lead such lives quite happily and without any awareness of the absurdity. In Eastern Europe, second-rateness has been elevated to a single, sacred, governing principle. There, mediocrity rules with a rod of iron. Thus it can be seen clearly what it can achieve. As a result, unlike in the West, may people in the East seem to have discovered that it is very uncomfortable to live under the command of second-rateness. (The fact that mediocrity is harmful to life comes across so clearly in Eastern Europe either because East-European second-rateness is much harsher than the mild, West-European, consumerist mediocrity, or simply because it is a single, totalitarian second-rateness, obligatory for all. A single version of a simple creed cannot suit all, its insufficiencies immediately show. This is not the case if everybody is allowed to choose their own simplified models and prejudices CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 187 which suit their individual needs, the way it is in the West - thus their insufficiencies are not immediately noticeable.) The rise of the Theatre of the Absurd in the East is connected with the period of relative relaxation of the East European regimes after Stalin's death. In the first decade after the communist take-over of power, it would have been impossible for anyone to write anything even distantly based on his experiences of life after the take-over without endangering his personal safety. The arts, as indeed all other spheres of life, were subject to rigid political control and reduced to serving blatant ideological and propagandistic aims. This was the period when feature films were made about happy workers in a steelworks, or about a village tractor driver who after falling in love with his tractor becomes a member of the communist party, etc. All the arts assumed rigidly conservative, 19th Century realist forms, to which a strong political bias was added. 20th Century developments, in particular the inter-war experiments with structure and form in painting and poetry were outlawed as bourgeois decadence. In the years after Stalin's death in 1953, the situation slowly improved. The year 1956 saw two major attempts at liberalisation within the Soviet Bloc: the Hungarian revolution was defeated, while the Polish autumn managed to introduce a measure of normalcy into the country which lasted for several years. Czechoslovakia did not see the first thaw until towards the end of the 1950s: genuine liberalisation did not start gaining momentum until 1962-63. Hence it was only in the 1960s that the first absurdist plays could be written and staged in Eastern Europe. Even so, the Theatre of the Absurd remained limited to only two East European countries, those that were the most liberal at the time: Poland and Czechoslovakia. The East European Absurd Theatre was undoubtedly inspired by Western absurd drama, yet it differed from it considerably in form, meaning and impact. Although East European authors and theatre producers were quite well acquainted with many West-European absurd plays from the mid to late 1950s onwards, nevertheless (with very few exceptions) these plays were not performed or even translated in Eastern Europe until the mid-1960s. The reasons for this were several. First, West-European absurd drama was regarded by East-European officialdom as the epitome of West-European bourgeois capitalist decadence and, as a result, East European theatrical producers would be wary of trying to stage a condemned play - such an act would blight

188 British Drama - I their career once and for all, ensuring that they would never work in theatre again. The western absurdist plays were regarded a nihilistic and anti-realistic, especially after Kenneth Tynan had attacked Ionesco as the apostle of anti-realism: this attach was frequently used by the East European officialdom for condemning Western absurd plays. Secondly, after a decade or more of staple conservative realistic bias, there were fears among theatrical producers that the West European absurd plays might be regarded as far too avantgarde and esoteric by the general public. Thirdly, there was an atmosphere of relative optimism in Eastern Europe in the late 1950s and the 1960s. It was felt that although life under Stalin's domination had been terrible, the bad times were now past after the dictator's death and full liberalisation was only a matter of time. The injustices and deficiencies of the East European systems were seen as due to human frailty rather than being a perennial metaphysical condition: it was felt that sincere and concerted human effort was in the long run going to be able to put all wrongs right. In a way, this was a continuation of the simplistic Stalinist faith in man's total power over his predicament. From this point of view, it was felt that most Western absurdist plays were too pessimistic, negative and destructive. It was argued (perhaps partially for official consumption) that the East European absurdist plays, unlike their Western counterparts, constituted constructive criticism. The line of argument of reformist, pro-liberalisation Marxists in Czechoslovakia in the early 1960s ran as follows: The Western Theatre of the Absurd recorded the absurdity of human existence as an immutable condition. It was a by-product of the continuing disintegration of capitalism. Western absurd plays were irrelevant in Eastern Europe, since socialist society had already found all answers concerning man's conduct and the meaning of life in general. Unlike its Western counterpart, East European absurd drama was communicating constructive criticism of the deformation of Marxism by the Stalinists. All that the East-European absurdist plays were trying to do was to remove minor blemishes on the face of the Marxist model - and that was easily done. It was only later that some critics were able to point out that West European absurd dram was not in fact nihilistic and destructive and that it played the same constructive roles as East European drama attempted to play. At this stage, it was realised that the liberal Marxist analysis CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 189 of East European absurd drama was incorrect: just as with its Western counterpart, the East European absurdist theatre could be seen as a comment on the human condition in general - hence its relevance also for the West. On the few occasions that Western absurdist plays were actually staged in Eastern Europe, the East European audiences found the plays highly relevant. A production of Waiting for Godot in Poland in 1956 and in Slovakia in 1969, for instance, both became something nearing a political demonstration. Both the Polish and Slovak audiences stressed that for them, this was a play about hope - hope against hope. The tremendous impact of these productions in Eastern Europe can be perhaps compared with the impact of Waiting for Godot on the inmates of a Californian penitentiary, when it was staged there in 1957. Like the inmates of a gaol, people in Eastern Europe are possibly also freer of the numbing concerns of everyday living than the average Western man in the street. Since they live under pressure, this somehow brings them closer to the bare essentials of life and they are therefore more receptive to the works that deal with archetypal existential situations than is the case with an ordinary Wes-European citizen. On the whole, East European absurd drama has been far less abstract and esoteric than its West European counterpart. Moreover, while the West European drama is usually considered as having spent itself by the end of the 1960s, several East European authors have been writing highly original plays in the absurdisy mould, well into the 1970s. The main difference between the West European and the East European plays is that while the West European plays deal with a predicament of an individual or a group of individuals in a situation stripped to the bare, and often fairly abstract and metaphysical essentials, the East European plays mostly show and individual trapped within the cogwheels of a social system. The social context of the West European absurd plays is usually subdued and theoretical: in the East European plays it is concrete, menacing and fairly realistic: it is usually covered by very transparent metaphors. The social context is shown as a kind of Catch-22 system - it is a set of circumstances whose joint impact crushes the individual. The absurdity of the social system is highlighted and frequently shown as the result of the actions of stupid, misguided or evil people -

190 British Drama - I this condemnation is of course merely implicit. Although the fundamental absurdity of the life feature in these plays is not intended to be metaphysically conditioned - these are primarily pieces of social satire - on reflection, the viewer will realise that there is fundamentally no difference between the 'messages' of the West European and the East European plays - except that the East European plays may be able to communicate these ideas more pressingly and more vividly to their audiences, because of their first-hand everyday experience of the absurdity that surrounds them. At the end of the 1960s, the situation in Eastern Europe changed for the worse. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, it became apparent that Russia would not tolerate a fuller liberalisation of the East European countries. Czechoslovakia was thrown into a harsh, neo- Stalinist mould, entering the time capsule of stagnating immobility, in which it has remained ever since. Since it had been primarily artists and intellectuals that were spearheading the liberalising reforms of the 1960s, the arts were now subjected to a vicious purge. Many well-known artists and intellectuals were turned into non-persons practically overnight: some left or were later forced to lea the country. All the Czechoslovak absurdist playwrights fell into the non-person category. It is perhaps quite convincing evidence of the social relevance of their plays that the establishment feared them so much it felt the need to outlaw them. Several of the banned authors have continued writing, regardless of the fact that their plays cannot be staged in Czechoslovakia at present. They have been published and produced in the West. As in the 1960s, these authors are still deeply socially conscious: for instance, Václav Havel, in the words of Martin Esslin, 'one of the most promising European playwrights of today', is a courageous defender of basic human values and one of the most important (and most thoughtful) spokespersons of the non-establishment groupings in Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the Polish absurdist playwrights have been able to continue working in Poland undisturbed since the early 1960s, their plays having been normally published and produced within the country even throughout he 1970s. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 191 It is perhaps quite interesting that even the Western absurd dramatists have gradually developed a need to defend basic human values. They have been showing solidarity with their East European colleagues. Ionesco was always deeply distrustful of politics and the clichéd language of the political establishment. Harold Pinter, who took part in a radio production of one of Václav Havel's plays from the 1970s several years ago, has frequently spoken in support of the East European writers and playwrights. Samuel Beckett has written a short play dedicated to Havel, which was staged in France in 1984 during a ceremony at the University of Toulouse, which awarded Havel an honorary doctorate. 5.5 Problem Play The problem play is a form of drama that emerged during the 19th century as part of the wider movement of realism in the arts, especially following the innovations of Henrik Ibsen. It deals with contentious social issues through debates between the characters on stage, who typically represent conflicting points of view within a realistic social context. Critic Chris Baldick writes that the genre emerged \"from the ferment of the 1890s... for the most part inspired by the example of Ibsen's realistic stage representations of serious familial and social conflicts.\" He summarises it as follows: Rejecting the frivolity of intricately plotted romantic intrigues in the nineteenth-century French tradition of the 'well-made play', it favoured instead the form of the 'problem play', which would bring to life some contemporary controversy of public importance — women's rights, unemployment, penal reform, class privilege — in a vivid but responsibly accurate presentation.[2] The critic F. S. Boas adapted the term to characterise certain plays by William Shakespeare that he considered to have characteristics similar to Ibsen's 19th-century problem plays. As a result, the term is also used more broadly and retrospectively to describe any tragicomic dramas that do not fit easily into the classical generic distinction between comedy and tragedy

192 British Drama - I Early “Problem Plays” While plays in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, mystery plays, and Elizabethan plays are clearly classified as tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays, there are some plays that exhibit the characteristics of problem plays, such as Alcestis. Shakespeare F. S. Boas used the term to refer to a group of Shakespeare's play, which seem to contain both comic and tragic elements. For Boas the 'problem' plays were Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida. He wrote that \"throughout these plays we move along dim untrodden paths, and at the close our feeling is neither of simple joy nor pain; we are excited, fascinated, perplexed, for the issues raised preclude a completely satisfactory outcome\".[3] Later critics have used the term for other plays, including Timon of Athens and The Merchant of Venice. 19th Century Drama While social debates in drama were nothing new, the problem play of the 19th century was distinguished by its intent to confront the spectator with the dilemmas experienced by the characters. The earliest forms of the problem play are to be found in the work of French writers such as Alexandre Dumas, fils, who dealt with the subject of prostitution in The Lady of the Camellias (1852). Other French playwrights followed suit with dramas about a range of social issues, sometimes approaching the subject in a moralistic, sometimes in a sentimental manner. Critic Thomas H. Dickinson, writing in 1927, argued that these early problem plays were hampered by the dramatic conventions of the day, \"No play written in the problem form was significant beyond the value of the idea that was its underlying motive for existence. No problem play had achieved absolute beauty, or a living contribution to truth.\" The most important exponent of the problem play, however, was the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen, whose work combined penetrating characterisation with emphasis on topical social issues, usually concentrated on the moral dilemmas of a central character. In a series of plays Ibsen addressed a range of problems, most notably the restriction of women's lives in A Doll's House (1879), sexually-transmitted disease in Ghosts (1882) and provincial greed in An Enemy of CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 193 the People (1882). Ibsen's dramas proved immensely influential, spawning variants of the problem play in works by George Bernard Shaw and other later dramatists. 20th Century The genre was especially influential in the early 20th century. In Britain plays such as Houghton's Hindle Wakes (1912), developed the genre to shift the nature of the 'problem'. This \"resolutely realistic problem play set in domestic interiors of the mill town Hindle\" starts with the 'problem' of an apparently seduced woman, but ends with the woman herself rejected her status as a victim of seduction \"the 'problem' is not, after all, the redemption of a betrayed maiden's tarnished honour, but the readiness of her respectable elders to determine a young woman's future for her without regard to her rights — including here her right to erotic holiday enjoyment.\" In America the problem play was associated with the emergence of debates over civil rights issues. Racial issues were tackled in plays such as Angelina Weld Grimké's, Rachel.[5] It was a tool of the socialist theatre in the 1920s and 30s, and overlapped with forms of documentary theatre in works such as Carl Crede's Paragraph 218 (1930), which concerns the issue of abortion, and which was directed by Erwin Piscator. 5.6 Kitchen Sink Drama A Taste of Honey is an influential \"kitchen sink drama\". In this photo of the 1960 Broadway production, Joan Plowright plays the role of Jo, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who has a love affair with a black sailor (played by Billy Dee Williams). Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film, and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as \"angry young men\" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism, which depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called \"well-made plays\".

194 British Drama - I The films, plays and novels employing this style are often set in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the genre. The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. Shelagh Delaney's 1958 play A Taste of Honey (which was made into a film of the same name in 1961), is about a teenage schoolgirl who has an affair with a black sailor, gets pregnant, and then moves in with a gay male acquaintance; it raises issues such as class, race, gender and sexual orientation. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders. In art, \"Kitchen Sink School\" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist–type scenes of domestic life. 5.7 History Antecedents and Influences The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of social realism, an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts working class activities. Many artists who subscribed to social realism were painters with socialist political views. While the movement has some commonalities with Socialist Realism, another style of realism which was the \"official art\" advocated by the governments of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, the two had several differences. While social realism is a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern, Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of socialist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner. Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced by, or under the supervision of the government. The leading characters are often 'anti-heroes' rather than part of a class to be admired, as in Socialist realism. Typically, protagonists in social realism are dissatisfied with their working class lives and the world, rather than being idealised workers who are part of a Socialist utopia in the process of creation. As such, social realism allows more space for the subjectivity of the author to be displayed. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)