Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599-1609

by Bernard Beckerman

III. THE NATURE AND FORM OF THE “CLIMAX” IN THE GLOBE PLAYS

The impulse to complete the story is satisfied in the finale, as we have seen. The impulse to dilate upon the story achieves maximum expansion in the center of the play. The presence of scenes of extreme complication and intense emotion at this point in the Shakespearean plays has led to the development of the theory of a third act climax. It has been expressed in various ways by various scholars. Knight merely notes this grouping of intensifications. Lawrence, anticipating Baldwin’s thesis of the five-act structure, assumes a third act climax. Baldwin would call it the imitation of the Terentian epitasis, and Moulton speaks of it as the center piece at the point of a regular arch.[19]

Certainly there is marked emotional intensification at the center of a Shakespearean play. However, if we are to call it a climax, we must redefine our term, taking care that it not be confused with the climax in classical or modern drama. There the climax is taken to be a single point of extreme intensity where the conflicting forces come to a final, irreconcilable opposition. At that point a dramatic explosion, leading to the denouement, is the direct outcome of the climactic release. Hedda Gabler has schemed to accomplish the glorious ruination of Lövborg. At the very moment when she expects to exult, she discovers that she has failed. The climax occurs when she learns that instead of controlling others, she herself is controlled. The denouement, her death, is a direct consequence. Causally-linked drama, by its very nature, drives to a “highest” point. In Greek drama it is usually a moment of recognition and/or reversal. That is why we must be cautious of speaking of a climax in Shakespearean drama.

If we endeavor to isolate such a climax in Elizabethan tragedy, we run into many difficulties. For example, is the play-within-the-play scene, the prayer scene, or the closet scene the climax of Hamlet? All contain some reversal; all are highly intense; we are emotionally swept along by them, caught up in the melodrama of Hamlet’s device, in his mad exultation at its effect upon Claudius, in the pathos of Claudius’ contrition, and in the tortured uncertainty of Gertrude. But none of these scenes alone reveals a point of climax. If there is either recognition or reversal, it arises from accumulation of effect.

A more extended example of this diffusion of climax can be found in Lear. Commencing with the famous “Blow, winds” speech, there are four painfully intense scenes: three of Lear on the heath, one of the blinding of Gloucester, interspersed by two brief scenes leading to that cruel act. The Lear and Gloucester scenes alternate. In some ways the emotional hysteria of Lear’s

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples,

drown’d the cocks!

[III, ii, 1-3]

is the most intense moment, and yet the dramatic intensification brought about by weaving together the trials of Lear and those of poor Tom has yet to occur. Moulton regards the meeting of those two as the climax.[20] But in which scene? The first outside the hovel, or the second in the shelter, where Lear arraigns his false daughters? Granville-Barker selects an exact moment for the climax, in the second of the storm scenes “when the proud old king kneels humbly and alone in his wretchedness to pray. This is the argument’s absolute height.”[21] Must, as Granville-Barker goes on to suggest, the tension relax then during the two scenes Lear plays with mad Tom? The reading of the storm scenes should make it obvious that instead of a point of intensity with subsequent slackening, we have a succession of states of intense emotional experience: Lear’s self-identification with raging nature, Lear’s pathetic lucidity and new-forged humility, Lear’s ultimate madness during a fantastic trial. Each high point subsides before the next bursts forth, not like a solitary cannon shot but like the ebb and flow of the pounding sea. The truth seems to be that we find not a climactic point in the center of a Shakespearean play, but a climactic plateau, a “coordination of intense moments” sustained for a surprisingly extended period.

Othello alone of the tragedies does not have that complete relaxation of intensity after the central “plateau.” But here it is a matter of degree, for though the wringing of Othello’s heart by Iago effects the maximum reversal of attitude, Othello continues to oscillate between doubt of and belief in Desdemona’s guilt. Thereafter, while intensity mounts to Desdemona’s death, the tone changes. Instead of the struggle of the giant to break the bonds of his strangling jealousy, we find a painful pathos arising from the gap between Othello’s misconception and Desdemona’s innocence.

Those plays in which the climactic plateau is most easily perceived, in addition to Lear and Hamlet, are Twelfth Night, III, i-iv; Troilus and Cressida, IV, iv, v; V, i;[22] Macbeth, III, iv; IV, i; and Antony and Cleopatra, III, xi-xiii. Both Julius Caesar and Coriolanus have intense centers of action in the third act. In these plays, however, the crucial scenes seem to take on the nature of a climax in the Greek sense. Antony’s speech and the banishment of Coriolanus are points of reversal. A closer examination, however, reveals that these peaks are blunted. Antony does not seem to wish to let the mob depart. There are several moments when he rouses them to action, only to pull them back for further inspiration. The climax of Coriolanus is muted even more because Coriolanus and his friends struggle with the tribunes over the same issues twice (III, i, iii). The final banishment merely brings to an end a conclusion already foregone. In each scene Coriolanus’ patrician pride causes him to defy both friend and enemy. These last two plays contract the plateau only in degree, Julius Caesar moving furthest toward a single moment of intensity. Generally in Shakespeare we will find the centers of action dispersed rather than concentrated, sustained rather than released.

As we might expect, a change in the duration and level of the climax produces a change in its nature. Lines of action leading to crisis are foreshortened, thereby throwing fuller emphasis on the response of the character, often expressed in lyrical ecstasy.

The center of intensity in Lear demonstrates this qualitative change. The impellent occasion for the storm scenes occurs in Act II, scene iv. Goneril and Regan’s determination to divest him of his royal position is brought home to Lear. He rushes into the raging storm after the words:

You think I’ll weep:

No, I’ll not weep.

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws

Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

[II, iv, 285-289]

His heart and mind have been shaken by rejection, but this is only the prelude to madness. The succeeding scenes on the heath (III, ii, iv, vi) are a prolonged reaction to the rejection. Lear does not mount steadily to another stage of madness, but reveals multiple effects of this madness: rage, bewilderment, fantasy, vengefulness, helplessness. Instead of self-realization at the climax, we find passionate release. Lear exceeds the limit of emotional endurance; he can go no further in anguish. That is the reason why he disappears from the play for the succeeding six scenes (III, vii; IV, i-v).[23] During this absence Gloucester loses his sight, the disguised Edgar comes to nurse his father, Goneril and Regan separately conspire to satisfy their passions for Edmund, and the British and French armies prepare to do battle. After the climactic plateau comes story progression.

The distinctness of this central climactic grouping is less clear in the non-Shakespearean plays, but the elements are there, if only in rudimentary form. Even where the “plateau” is not sustained, the intensification of action and the change of direction in the middle of a play are present. Perhaps the clearest and most consistent evidence of this is the split structure of many plays, that is, the progression of the story in one direction, followed by a full or partial shift of direction after the first half. A Larum for London, a not particularly well constructed play, is composed of such interlocked halves. The first half deals with the Spanish conquest of Antwerp through the improvidence and selfishness of the city’s burghers (scenes i-vii). At this climactic point the Spaniards revel in their triumph as the Duke d’Alva parcels the town among the conquering leaders. The second half concerns the hopeless, yet valiant struggle of a lame soldier to fight for the town (scenes viii-xv). This same type of division is reflected in The London Prodigal. Scenes i-viii relate the trick by which Flowerdale gains the hand of Luce; scenes ix-xii depict his descent into the depths of prodigality before he is finally redeemed. Here, however, the climactic scene (scene viii) involves more anticipation than response though there are three relatively equal heights of intensity: the father’s rejection of the daughter who remains faithful to her husband the prodigal, the daughter’s plea for her husband’s freedom from arrest, and the prodigal’s abuse of his wife. Among the other plays which display the split structure are Thomas Lord Cromwell and, in part, The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Of all the non-Shakespearean plays, Jonson’s Sejanus comes closest to duplicating Shakespeare’s use of the climactic plateau. The rise of Sejanus is steady. He encompasses the death of Drusus, he effects the destruction of his opponents, and finally he attempts the conquest of Tiberius himself by seeking permission to marry Livia of the imperial house. Blocked in this, he urges Tiberius’ departure from Rome, and in a closing soliloquy, seeing himself conqueror of those who hate him, exults:

For when they see me arbiter of all,

They must observe: or else, with Caesar fall.

[III, 621-622]

Sejanus shows excessive pride in his own power, a joyous release of self-esteem. After this speech he disappears from the play until the opening of the fifth act. Meanwhile, Tiberius secretly turns to Marco as a supplementary and independent agent, thus effecting a change of direction in the play. Just when Sejanus expects to “draw all dispatches through my private hands,” Tiberius crosses him. Jonson, following the classical models more closely than Shakespeare, has his greatest climax fall during the last scene. Nevertheless, clear traces of a “center of action” can be found.

The architectonic superiority of Shakespeare can be seen in the way he raises his entire center of action to a markedly intensified level. Potential climactic “plateaus” can be found in all the Globe plays cited, but some are underdeveloped and do not reach the rich florescence that makes the center of a Shakespearean play such an overwhelming dramatic experience. Perhaps the absence of superior poetic powers prevented the minor playwrights from realizing the full possibilities of this form. Nevertheless, despite the gap between the levels of their achievements, Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights of the Globe generally built their plays along the same structural lines.