Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599-1609

by Bernard Beckerman

IV. ACTING AND THE ELIZABETHAN VIEW OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

The dramatic tradition, however, affected the general type of character rather than its specific form. In evolving this form the actor was guided by two influences: his own understanding of behavior and thought and the poet’s image of behavior and thought. In the first instance we must deduce the actor’s understanding from the outlook of Elizabethan society as a whole. In the second we can analyze the poet’s image in his plays. The poet’s unique outlook, infused in his image, is still a part of society’s conception of behavior and thought, and in the case of Shakespeare has come to represent the larger conception of the age. Together, age and poet present the psychological and philosophical foundation which the actors and audience took for granted and thus upon which the actors built their roles.

Study of characterization is complicated by the absence of decisive evidence. The literary practice of the time does not encourage a ready formulation of a poet’s idea of character. As Hardin Craig says:

One sees no evidence in the field of knowledge of the art of characterization as it is known in modern criticism. The art of characterization, as distinguished from simple biographical narrative, was there, but often not as a conscious factor.

Craig goes on to relate this lack of development to the Elizabethan idea of personality:

Indeed, the conception of human character as set down in formal psychology, and often evident in literature, taught instability in the natures of men, taught that there was no such thing as consistency of character, except in so far as it might result from “complexion” or be super-induced by training.[24]

It is in the works of “formal psychology” that the most explicit statements of the Elizabethan conception of human character can be found. But in offering a detailed exposition of how Elizabethans thought man functioned, the works are inconsistent. Miss Louise Forest has pointed out the contradictions in the theories and definitions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Instead of a scientific system with which the dramatists were familiar, we find that “Elizabethan popular psychology was simply every man’s private synthesis of observations of human behavior understood in the light of whatever selections from whatever authorities appealed to him.”[25] Although her criticism has won general approbation as a healthy corrective for facile and mechanistic application of “psychological” theory to literature, it has not undermined the conviction of scholars that the evidence of Elizabethan psychology can prove illuminating in revealing not necessarily what the Elizabethans thought, but how they thought.

Mr. R. A. Foakes admits that although the disagreement in detail hinders the application of Elizabethan psychology to literature, it does not hinder an understanding of “the general habit of thought from which the detail springs.”[26] The exposition of this “general habit of thought” has been set forth in part by Theodore Spencer, Lily B. Campbell, E. M. W. Tillyard, and John W. Draper, and most fully by Hardin Craig in The Enchanted Glass.[27] Against the broad and deep background painted by them, I shall consider the “general habit of thought” as it affected three aspects of character: decorum, motivation, and passion.

a. Decorum

Classical decorum in literature sought to reflect a broader decorum in life. As it came down to the playwrights of the Renaissance, however, it implied little more than a trite correspondence between character type and nature. Edwardes in The Prologue to Damon and Pithias (1565–1571) refers the audience to Horace as his model in the observance of “decorum”:

In Commedies, the greatest Skyll is this, rightly to touche

All thynges to the quicke: and eke to frame eche person so,

That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know:

A Royster ought not preache, that were to straunge to heare,

But as from vertue he doth swerve, so ought his woordes appeare:

The olde man is sober, the yonge man rashe, the Lover triumphyng in ioyes,

The Matron grave, the Harlot wilde and full of wanton toyes.

[Prologue, 14-20]

George Whetstone seconds this propriety in his Epistle to William Fleetwood, prefixed to Promos and Cassandra:

For to worke a Commedie kindly, grave olde men, should instruct: yonge men, should showe the imperfections of youth: Strumpets should be lascivious: Boyes unhappy: and Clownes, should be disorderlye.

Both statements of the principle of decorum rigidly match character type with nature or behavior. By simplification of character, consistency could be assured. It is obvious that this view of dramatic character did not prevail in Elizabethan drama, but not because it was completely out of harmony with Elizabethan thought. When Timothy Bright approvingly noted that “butchers acquainted with slaughter, are accepted therby to be of a more cruell disposition: and therefore amongst us are discharged from iuries of life & death,”[28] he was reflecting a type of thinking in keeping with the principle of decorum.

It is against such Idols of the Tribe that Bacon inveighs. But even when he attacks such habits of thought, he gives us a clear concept of them.

The spirit of man (being of an equal and uniform substance) pre-supposes and feigns in nature a greater equality and uniformity than really is. Hence the fancy of the mathematicians that the heavenly bodies move in perfect circles, rejecting spiral lines. Hence also it happens, that whereas there are many things in nature unique and full of dissimilarity, yet the cogitation of man still invents for them relatives, parallels, and conjugates. Hence sprang the introduction of an element of fire, to keep square with earth, water, and air. Hence the chemists have marshalled the universe in phalanx; conceiving, upon a most groundless fancy, that in those four elements of theirs (heaven, air, water, and earth,) each species in one has parallel and corresponding species in the others.... Man is as it were the common measure and mirror of nature. For it is not credible (if all particulars be gone through and noted) what a troop of fictions and idols the reduction of the operations of nature to the similitude of human actions has brought into natural philosophy; I mean, the fancy that nature acts as man does.[29]

For the Elizabethans, as Bacon laments, external and internal experiences were manifestations of a single spirit which had parallels in the natural and moral universe. Consequently, in depicting and understanding character, the Elizabethans looked for similarities, not differences. What made one man like another and like the macrocosm was a habitual way of estimating character.

However, instead of the simple formulae of “decorum,” the Elizabethans employed a complex system of correspondences. For them, man was volatile. Potentially he was capable of absorbing concepts shared by other men. This reduced the possibility of matching thought and character. He was also capable of experiencing passions common to all mankind. This made it impossible to match nature and character. In so dynamic a philosophy the meaning of decorum had to change. Professor Lily B. Campbell has rightly pointed out that decorum in Elizabethan drama was “not a law of aesthetic theory but a law of moral philosophy.” To extend her definition, it was also a law of social organization and political life.

In the highly stratified Elizabethan society, precepts and models of behavior were strictly developed. Bearing, speech, and dress reflected class status. Ceremony was not only appropriate but necessary, for, as Sir Thomas Elyot admonished:

Lette it be also consydered, that wee bee men and not Aungelles: wherefore we know nothyng but by outwarde signification. [Honor is not everywhere perceived] but by some exterior signe, and that is eyther by lawdable reporte, or excellency in vesture, or other thing semblable.[30]

In this context ceremony is not unnatural, and in fact, to the Elizabethan, ceremony signified the natural order of the universe. Man constantly saw his corresponding reflections in the “outward signification” of society, nature, and morality.

That this central habit of thought was deeply ingrained in Elizabethan nature is reflected in Bacon himself. Despite his recognition of the fallacy of such thought, he still finds general similitude between feature and nature. He still thinks that the deformed person must be evil, although he tries to provide a scientific explanation of the causes of this correspondence. It is true that this form of logic was falling before the development of inductive thought, particularly in the sciences. Nevertheless, through most of the Renaissance and certainly in the period with which we are dealing, it prevailed.

Its effect on the decorum of character was twofold. First, character fitted into a group. Whatever his individuality might be, a man was a member of a class and his behavior conformed to the behavior of the class. Second, external features implied internal qualities. Man carried the mark of his class and his nature, in his walk, talk, features, and costume. The outer man was the inner man; therefore, the inner man tended the form and bearing of the outer man carefully. In these ways decorum still functioned in Elizabethan thought and served as a basis for the portrayal of character by the actor.

b. Motivation

The habit of generalized thinking operated also in the explanation of human motivation. Thinkers and writers were not concerned with the unique impulse that drove a man to certain ends but with the broad desires that all men experienced. This aspect of personality was understood in terms of the struggle between passion and reason which went on in each man.

It was an Elizabethan commonplace that reason allied man with God, passion with the beasts. Imagination, which receives images of experience and relays them, should be subordinate to reason. Unfortunately, since it is often allied with the affections, the affections rule man. As Bacon explained it:

The affections themselves carry ever an appetite to apparent good, and have this in common with reason; but the difference is that affection beholds principally the good which is present: reason looks beyond and beholds likewise the future and sum of all. And therefore the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly vanquished and overcome.[31]

This “good which is present” is often the satisfaction of the senses or passions without concern for the consequences. When the affections, like the imagination, are under the control of reason, all is well. When the passions lead man, they often lead to disaster.

Man, therefore, was moved either by his reason or his affection. If he were learned in or persuaded by a moral or politic course, he could measure the particular good in terms of the enduring good. Thus reason, moved by consideration of ethics or policy, obeyed objective and rational motivations which, individual though they might have been in particular circumstances, had in common with all cases the attainment of goodness or power. But if affection ruled, then man was moved to satisfy it. Although his personality might make him liable to certain passions more readily than to others, he could give way to any of them. His past life did not accumulate motivations which impelled him or influenced his reception of new motivations. Instead, immediate and direct contact was effected between the object of desire and the governing passion.

Functioning in such a way, man was moved by generalized ends. The habit of seeing motivations in general terms is reflected in the titles of essays by such men as Bacon, Charron, and Sir William Cornwallis: “Of Ambition,” “Of Envy,” “Of Affections,” etc. Although a physio-psychological theory in part replaced temptation by the devil as an explanation of motivation, entities such as pride, lust, ambition, and envy, among others, continued to be regarded as genuine temptations by the Elizabethan. By and large the motives for man’s actions were taken for granted or symbolized. Often in the drama they are never made explicit. Here too correspondence was observed. Women were easily given to lust, unpromoted men to envy, young men to prodigality, Italians to revenge. An Elizabethan audience would assume or ignore the reasons for Iago’s or Antony’s or Bertram’s actions. They would be interested in what they did and how they felt.

c. Passion

In concentrating on what happened to the characters, the audience found its attention directed toward the passions that the characters experienced. Passions were divided in kind and number. They were either concupiscible or irascible, that is, arose either from coveting or desiring some end, such as Love, or from accomplishing or thwarting some end, such as Anger. However, there was disagreement over the number of passions. Coeffeteau lists more than fifteen, Bright only six, some writers even fewer.[32] In the matter of detail there is no concurrence, but the difference arises from the degree of subordination observed by the different writers. Behind all their thinking is the habit of regarding a passion as an autonomous quality which is either operative or not. An inclination toward or a repulsion from an object induces physiological changes in the bodily humors. These changes feed the passion so that it dominates the individual entirely. But the passion is a fixed thing. It betrays external symptoms; for example, fear leads to trembling and love to sighing. It affects internal operation, such as the contraction of the heart and the acceleration of breathing. It alters the view of reality, for passions are like “greene spectacles, which make all thinges resemble the colour of greene; even so, hee that loveth, hateth, or by anie other passion is vehemently possessed, iudgeth all things that occure in favor of that passion, to bee good and agreeable with reason.”[33]

Moreover, a particular passion was the same for all persons affected by it. Fear in one was the same as fear in another. Love in one man was not very much different from love in another. One man was not distinguished from another by the quality of a passion, but by his propensity toward it. Man was thought to have a dominant temperament or complexion. It might fall into one of four principal categories: the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, or the melancholic. The Elizabethan physiologists developed a series of correspondences, of course disagreeing among themselves, between temperament and physique, intellect and passion. Supposedly each type was liable to certain passions more readily than others. Yet, when a man is carried away by a passion uncongenial to his temperament, he assumes the quality of the passion fully. “Each passion alters the complexion of the entire body, which assumes, at least temporarily, the very qualities which excite the emotion.”[34] Thus, in Elizabethan thinking, there was a range of distinct passions and a range of distinct temperaments. Although there was a tendency for certain passions to cluster about a certain temperament, any passion could enter into any temperament. When it did, it transformed the temperament into its quality.

Some disagreement existed over the completeness and ease with which a temperament could be transformed. Bright considers the complexion strictly fixed. Other writers believe that there is a strong tendency toward a specific temperament, but that an uncongenial passion could overpower natural resistance to it. As Forest has observed of these discrepancies in the Elizabethan views about complexion, it is difficult to establish any firm conclusions about the details of the subject. Generally, it can be said that each man was thought to have some definable central temperament which arose from the disposition of humors in his system, that his external and internal faculties corresponded in a broad sense with his temperament, and that he was liable to passions which were sympathetic to his temperament. And yet it was accepted that his natural temperament could be overpowered by passions in disharmony with it, that one passion could drive out another, and that the nature of the passion was not affected by his temperament. These two groups of concepts are at bottom mutually contradictory; the first visualizes relative stability and consistency in character, the second, virtually complete subordination of the individual to immediate impulses. These views reflect the desire for similitude and order on one hand and the awareness of the power of passion on the other. Without reconciliation they continued as habits of thought throughout the English Renaissance.

Both views acknowledged the swiftness with which passion could overwhelm an individual. Professor Craig explains sudden changes in Bellafront in The Honest Whore I and in Hamlet by reference to “the theory that one emotion or passion drives out another, and that the substitution is immediately operative.”[35] One passion yields readily to another, the concupiscible passion often giving way to the irascible, as hatred may give way to anger or grief to despair. Love at first sight, as R. A. Foakes points out, is a convention based on a reality and the “common and ancient thought-habit that the sight is the chief and most powerful of the senses.” Sudden emotional changes were either the daily acts of Elizabethan behavior or the usual explanation of more gradual alterations. In either case, the potential for such immediate transformation was thought to be ingrained in every man, just as at present the potential for repressed infantile conflicts is thought to exist in every man.

Furthermore, the ability to suppress the mounting passions within oneself was thought to be very slight. Once a passion subdued the reason, the reason was virtually powerless to control the passion. It coursed through the entire body, expressing itself in external signs. An individual of extraordinary will could suppress these signs, but the vast majority of people was helpless to hide the play of passion within their souls. A correspondence between the passions and the external signs was assumed, but as we found in the study of rhetoric, there was no clear codification of passions and symptoms. Instead, the habit of expecting an expression of emotion in recognizable symptoms rather than the repression of emotion in enigmatic behavior marked the Elizabethan age. The volatile and pervasive nature of passion, then, was one of the crucial assumptions of the Elizabethan period.

Thus, the Elizabethan conception of how human beings function and feel shows two principal tendencies. In a strictly regulated society such as the Elizabethan, the members were keenly aware of degree and order. So urgent was the impulse to find order in the universe, that an elaborate series of correspondences was observed between man and all other forces in nature as well as between man and all forces within himself. It was natural for the Elizabethan to look for correspondences, no matter how farfetched, and to insist on decorum, no matter how trifling. In conflict with this tendency toward order was the recognition of the tendency toward disorder. Largely, this was thought to arise from man yielding to passion. The orderly arrangement of the moral and political world could be destroyed by the unrestrained passions of man. As a result, the description and analysis of passion became a central function of Elizabethan psychology and philosophy. Bacon carries the condemnation of passion to such an extreme that he condemns love almost entirely. It is a weak passion, it is a “child of folly.” As we turn to a consideration of the plays themselves, we shall find that by and large the tendency toward order subsumed the actions, and the depiction of passion occupied the forefront of the Globe stage.