V. SCENE STRUCTURE IN SHAKESPEARE
In an earlier part of this chapter I emphasized the importance of the separate scenes as distinct units. At this point I should like to draw attention to certain characteristics of the scenes. Usually a portion of one action or story is not followed by an advance or counteraction, but by a new line of development, often containing completely different characters. This we take for granted in Elizabethan drama. The absence of liaison is emphasized by the way in which scenes are arranged. Some scenes, such as the one which Hamlet brings to a close with the cry
The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
[II, ii, 632-633]
conclude with a strong emotional lift at the same time as they thrust the interest forward. Some scenes, which I shall call “leading” scenes, produce a forceful dramatic or theatrical pointing. The brief scene in which Artimedorus prepares to give Caesar a petition warning him of the conspirators is such a scene; so is the one in which Duke Frederick thrusts Oliver out of doors until he can produce Celia. These “leading” scenes are usually brief and drive the story forward with great energy. But most scenes in Shakespeare contain an anticlimactic conclusion: they are rounded off, relaxed, brought to a subdued end. Here we must distinguish between dramatic force and story development. It is the dramatic force that is softened at the same time that the story line is brought to the fore. Upon Viola’s first visit Olivia falls in love with the “youth” (I, v). She sends a ring after “him” through Malvolio, then closes the scene with four lines:
I do I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force! Ourselves we do not owe.
What is decreed must be—and be this so!
[327-330]
Yet compare this with her feeling before she sends Malvolio off:
How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes.
[313-317]
Clearly there is a diminution of intensity toward the end. The same thing occurs in the center of the play (III, iv). Viola denies knowing Antonio, but after his arrest she realizes that he has confused her with Sebastian. The scene does not end on that uplift of discovery. Viola goes off in delight; Toby sends Andrew after to beat the page. Fabian and Toby remain for a moment:
Fabian. Come, let’s see the event.
Toby. I dare lay any money ’twill be nothing yet.
[III, iv, 430-431]
The final remark is almost desultory. By gradual stages the emotional pitch of the scene is lowered. Shakespeare could easily have given Toby a final line that would have carried the play forward with more vigor. But this was not the way of Shakespeare or, for that matter, of his colleagues.
The falling off of intensity toward the end of a scene is even more marked in the tragedies. In sequence the arrangement of the subdued and pointed endings of scenes helps determine the rhythm of the play. For example, the “plateau” in Hamlet is unified by the way in which the endings of the play-within-the-play scene and the prayer scene point forward, not only in story but in emotional level, each one concluding with Hamlet passionately wrought. Another variation, vital to the rhythm of performance, occurs in the “climactic plateau” of Lear. The first storm scene (III, ii) with Lear ends subdued. It is followed by a “leading” scene of only twenty-six lines in which Edmund decides to betray his father. The next storm scene (III, iv) also ends subdued after Lear’s meeting with poor Tom. Another leading scene, again of twenty-six lines, drives forward with Edmund’s betrayal of Gloucester to Cornwall who orders him to “seek out” his father. The last storm scene (III, vi) concludes with Edgar’s realization of the similarity of his plight to that of Lear. Though the end is keyed low, the note struck is ominous. The very next scene rises to a pitch of frenzy in the blinding of Gloucester. In the Folio it concludes abruptly with Cornwall’s order to drive out Gloucester, but the Quarto has a dialogue between two servants which, serving to round out the action, seems more typical of Shakespeare.
Within the framework of an Elizabethan scene, perhaps the most marked characteristic is the placement of emphasis not on the growth of action but on the character’s response to crisis. This, as we noted before, was a distinguishing feature of the climactic plateau. Anticipation means little to the Elizabethan dramatist. This is no more clearly seen than in the handling of the individual scenes. Even where suspense is inevitable, it is muted. The Revenger’s Tragedy contains a scene (III, v) in which Vindice, at long last, plans to take revenge upon the lascivious old Duke who murdered his beloved. The trap is set, the Duke is near. Vindice strains forward,
So, so; now nine years’ vengeance crowd into a minute.
[III, v, 124]
The Duke dismisses his train; the trap in the guise of a “lady,” actually a poisoned manikin, is sprung; the Duke kisses “her” and falls. All this occupies twenty-five lines. In this it reminds us of the closet scene. Once the Duke is poisoned, Vindice and his brother, Hippolito, triumph over the dying man; they reveal the trap and then Vindice unmasks himself. To top these horrors Vindice discloses to the Duke that his bastard son “rides a-hunting in [his] brow,” and moreover that the son and the Duchess are about to hold a rendezvous at the very spot:
[Your] eyes shall see the incest of their lips.
[III, v, 192]
They arrive. The father-husband watches their love-making, hears their mockery of him, and, immediately after their departure, dies. All this takes eighty-three lines. In the structure of the scene, intensification comes from double response: the horror and pain of the Duke and the diabolical delight of the revengers as they witness his pain.
Elizabethan scenes are not unique merely because they give more time to response to a situation rather than to its development. Their uniqueness comes from the fact that the full intensity and implication of the theme is realized not in the accomplishment of the event but in the effects it produces. After Caesar is assassinated, Antony comes to terms with the conspirators. Dramatic though his meeting with them is, the most intense moments are not where Antony composes his differences with Brutus and Cassius, but where he views the body of Caesar. The most compelling section of the scene is Antony’s soliloquy where he envisions the ravages of war which will plague the earth as revenge for the foul deed. A glance at the proportion of lines devoted to the various parts of the scene indicates where Shakespeare placed his emphasis. Seventy-seven lines are devoted to all the tension leading to the assassination, 220 to the reactions and realignments that are its results. Ultimately we find Shakespeare dispensing completely with showing the act of murder and concentrating wholly on the psychological and philosophical responses, as in Macbeth.