Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599-1609

by Bernard Beckerman

II. FORM AND FUNCTION IN THE FINALES OF THE GLOBE PLAYS

We find a surprising similarity in the finales. Almost every one of the Globe plays contains a public resolution. Seldom is the conclusion private. The final scene of Every Man Out of His Humour containing the last of Macilente’s purgations is one of the exceptions, as are the conclusions of A Larum for London and in some respects of The Devil’s Charter. In the latter play a spectacular conclusion representing the damnation of Pope Alexander is appended to a grand finale. All the other eleven non-Shakespearean plays terminate in a finale that is ceremonious and public. Of the fifteen Shakespearean plays produced between 1599 and 1609 only Troilus and Cressida clearly dispenses with this type of finale. Thus, of the twenty-nine plays presented by the Globe company, twenty-five have a public accounting for the preceding action.

The importance of ending a play with a public exhibition is demonstrated by the amount of contrivance effected in some plays to ensure a grand finale. In the Fair Maid of Bristow, King Richard suddenly grants Anabell the right to produce a champion for Vallenger. By doing so, however, he permits a last, grand discovery and sacrifice scene to be played. Other examples can be found in Shakespeare’s plays. One of the objections to Measure for Measure has been the forced manner in which the Duke succeeds in bringing the conclusion to public trial. This may equally well be the charge against All’s Well. Yet, whether or not it evolves logically from the preceding action, the great closing scene is a marked formal characteristic of this drama.

Several things may happen in the finale, either separately or jointly. In romance and comedy love triumphs. Any punishment that deserves to be meted out is usually tempered. Angelo “perceives he’s safe” in Measure for Measure and Malvolio will be entreated to a peace. In tragedy justice prevails, even though the hero may die in the process. In comedy, the substance of the finale is the working out of the complications or confusions which impede love, in tragedy, the overcoming of evil forces that destroy a just order. In some instances, notably Measure for Measure, both love and justice triumph.

Common to all the Globe plays are:

(1) a means for bringing about justice or of winning love: the most frequent means are discovery of the identity of disguised persons, trial, execution, repentance, single combat, suicide;

(2) a judge-figure who pronounces judgment: he may either deliver the verdict and/or grant mercy or, after the action has occurred, declare the purport of the action; in finales of combat he may serve as the avenging arm of justice;

(3) a ranking figure who reasserts order: invariably the person of highest authority, in many plays he is identical with the judge-figure. It is a convention of Elizabethan drama that the last lines of a play, excluding epilogues and songs, be spoken by the ranking figure.

In the non-Shakespearean plays, discovery, trial and/or execution, and repentance appear most often. Fair Maid of Bristow employs both discovery and execution, The London Prodigal, discovery and repentance. Excluding Every Man Out of His Humour, all the non-Shakespearean plays have judge-figures. In the Merry Devil it is the father, in Volpone the justices, in Fair Maid of Bristow King Richard, in Miseries of Enforced Marriage, Scarborrow himself.[15]

This figure, sometimes central to the story, sometimes not, usually referees the conflict and, at the conclusion, either passes judgment or grants mercy. In two plays the formal agency for bringing judgment about is indirect. In the brilliant reversal scene in Sejanus judgment is exercised through the absent figure of the Emperor Tiberius. His letter read to the convocation of senators provides the means. In turn, his judgment illustrates the caprice of fortune and the descent of nemesis. The other play, Thomas Lord Cromwell, likewise makes use of an indirect agency as a substitute for the judge: King Henry’s delayed reprieve for Cromwell.

Each of Shakespeare’s plays, excluding Troilus and Cressida, also employs a final scene in which judgment is meted out and/or love is won. The content of the finale may be one or a combination of discovery, single combat, preparation for suicide, trial, and siege.[16] In seven of his Globe plays discovery untangles the knot of error which separated the lovers. Usually reserved for comedy, it is employed to make Othello comprehend the horror of his act. Discovery is also combined with repentance in All’s Well and with trial in Measure for Measure. In Timon the framework of the siege contains a trial.

In his use of formal agents Shakespeare is more subtle than his fellow playwrights. Only six plays contain judge-figures central to the action: the King in All’s Well, the “lords o’ the city” in Coriolanus, Alcibiades in Timon and, in an ingenious use of this device, Hymen in As You Like It, and finally the Dukes in Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night. In describing Shakespeare’s use of the Duke as a type figure, C. B. Watson points out that “at the end of a play the role of the Duke is threefold: he acts to resolve the conflict in the interests of justice; he grants mercy to the offenders; and finally he plays the host at the festivities which are presumably to follow on the successful resolution of the dramatic conflict.”[17]

Into the other eight plays Shakespeare introduced more subtle methods of passing judgment. Two of them show a common pattern. Although a judge-figure is present, the true judgment is made by the hero. Antony is the judge-figure in Julius Caesar, and Octavius in Antony and Cleopatra, but in each case the hero by committing suicide substitutes his or her own judgment for that of other authority. Both Brutus and Cleopatra prepare for self-death elaborately. It becomes a means of warding off ignominy and gaining glory. In Othello suicide serves the same purpose with only this difference, that Othello’s own strong sense of justice makes it unnecessary to have a judge-figure. The ranking figure, in each of these plays, is handled differently. In Julius Caesar, Octavius has this role, in Othello, Lodovico, and in Antony and Cleopatra, Octavius is both judge and ranking figure.

In each of three other plays, Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet, true judgment is rendered through a fateful single combat in which one combatant represents the forces of light, the other of darkness. In Merry Wives we find a double judgment. Mockery is the judgment passed on Falstaff and forgiveness that awarded Fenton and Ann. Like Othello, Pericles lacks a judge-figure during the finale. Instead, the goddess Diana (V, i) has played that role in the act of directing Pericles to the discovery of Thaisa. Thus, in both the Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean plays the same kind of formal conclusion rounds out the story. This particular kind of conclusion reflects the moral ideals of Elizabethan society, the achievement of salvation or order or love through judgment.

Another characteristic of the concluding scene is that it is a narrative conclusion in which the initial situation is brought to a complete close rather than a thematic conclusion in which the implications of the theme are ultimately dramatized. Several elements of the narrative are introduced early in As You Like It. They are Oliver’s alienation of Orlando’s heritage, Duke Frederick’s usurpation of his brother’s throne, and the love of Rosalind and Orlando. The thematic elements are indirectly related to the plot. They make themselves felt obliquely. But they are not embodied in the main action of the finale, nor, being contrasting expressions of the quality of love rather than moral injunctions, can they be so embodied. In fact, the thematic elements are absent from the finale, which is concerned with the tying of many a lover’s knot and the appropriate resignation of Duke Frederick. The same holds true for Hamlet. The true issue, Hamlet’s inability to “set things right,” is resolved when Hamlet comes to a tranquil peace with his soul and accepts the guidance of providence in the scene with Horatio immediately preceding the duel (V, ii). However, the story has to be completed, and ironically Hamlet achieves by chance what he could not gain by design. In only a few plays do the thematic and narrative issues merge in the final moments of the action. Othello of all Shakespeare’s plays offers the finest example of this concurrence, and perhaps because of this fact many critics regard Othello as Shakespeare’s finest piece of dramatic construction. Such regard, however, is founded upon Aristotelian premises. For an Elizabethan the concurrence was incidental.

Particularly vital to our understanding of the conclusion is the place that climax or catastrophe occupies in the last scenes. The finales of Shakespeare’s Globe plays often fail to produce a climactic effect because the completion of the narrative does not arise from the conflicting forces of the theme or action. Instead ceremony frequently serves as a substitute for climax. By the time the last scene began, the Elizabethan audience knew how the story would end. But it satisfied the Elizabethan sense of ritual to see the pageant of the conclusion acted out. The appeal of this pageant is clearly illustrated in Measure for Measure, Macbeth, and As You Like It. In these plays the rendition of judgment through trial or combat or revelation respectively supplied the excitement that a dramatic climax would have afforded. Nor should we underestimate the interest such conclusions held for an Elizabethan audience. Knight, in pointing out that the tragedies reach a climax in Act III, suggests that the “military conflicts [at the end] were probably far more important to an Elizabethan” than to us.[18] But this statement has a wider applicability. Ceremony, such as Orsino’s visit to Olivia or trial-by-combat in Lear or a parley in Timon, is often the frame for the finale. Because ceremony played so vital a role in Elizabethan life, it had an unusually strong appeal for the audience who saw it represented on the stage.