In Shakespeare’s Globe plays there are forty-one farewell or greeting scenes of different degrees of elaboration. These amenities do not seem to have been perfunctory affairs, casually staged, but were ceremonious in manner, much more so than modern productions reveal. Embracing, particularly in farewells, handshaking, and kneeling all played a part in the ritual of greeting and bidding farewell. Whenever one person meets or leaves a group, he does so formally, witness Troilus and Cressida, Act IV, scene v, which contains greetings to both Cressida and Hector. Perhaps the hails of the witches to Macbeth were in imitation of courtly greetings. The manner of greeting can be glimpsed through the jaundiced eyes of Apemantus as he watches Timon welcome Alcibiades, obviously with bows and genuflections.
So, so there!
Aches contract and starve your supple joints!
[I, i, 256-257]
To a superior figure, whether King (All’s Well, I, ii), Protector (Pericles, I, iv), or mother (Coriolanus, II, i), kneeling was the accepted manner of greeting or being greeted. Although doffing the hat was the accepted sign of greeting a superior, among equals bowing or shaking hands was usual.
Embracing of men appears quite clearly in farewell scenes. Antony and Caesar embrace at parting (III, ii, 61-64), as do Flavius, Timon’s steward, and his fellows in Timon of Athens, (IV, ii, 29 f.). The farewell without ceremony, which Helen receives from Bertram (All’s Well, II, v, 59-97) is particularly offensive. In the same way as in greeting, the departing character, when he leaves a group, formalizes his farewells by making the rounds (Coriolanus, IV, i). Tears usually flow at such a farewell. Every group farewell scene in Shakespeare where a woman is present is bathed in tears (Virgilia in Coriolanus, IV, i; Octavia in Antony and Cleopatra, III, ii; Lychorida in Pericles, III, iii; Cordelia in Lear, I, i, 271). Natural patterns of decorum as well as inclinations toward uniformity characterize these scenes as a whole. Although standard external means of greeting and bidding farewell exist throughout the plays, they are observed with ceremony and rendered with deliberation.
Most of the scenes or devices considered heretofore are relatively uniform in manner and frequency throughout the Globe plays, Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean alike. The messenger, however, is a unique figure peculiar to Shakespeare. On the average, about five messengers appear in each of Shakespeare’s Globe plays, compared to an average of about one in each of the non-Shakespearean plays. Shakespeare’s messengers may be divided into two classes. Fairly often a character in a play will assume the function of the messenger in order to deliver a report. Essentially, this is what Gertrude does when she describes the death of Ophelia (Hamlet, IV, vii). Characters as messengers generally do not assume a special manner but continue to maintain their own identities.
The other type of messenger is the formal messenger. There are forty-three of these as compared to thirty-one character messengers in Shakespeare’s Globe plays. The generic messenger usually has no identity. His manner is often theatrical rather than natural. This is particularly evident when he does not inform but directs the superior characters (Julius Caesar, V, i, 12-15; Coriolanus, II, i, 276-284). Occasionally the situation demands some veil of characterization (Antony and Cleopatra, II, v; Julius Caesar, III, i). In those instances the messenger takes on the qualities of a servant.
The dramatic function of the messenger was to change the course of the scene, to bring some outside force to bear upon the characters on stage, and, by doing so, to provoke some alteration in the passions or actions of the characters. The salutation accorded the messenger is usually brief, yet attention is clearly focused upon him. The usual respect of servant to master does not seem to be present, but instead it is replaced by an imperious manner. A curious feature of the staging is that no exit is marked for the formal messenger after he delivers his message. Sometimes he is dismissed by the one who receives the message, sometimes he is held back to answer questions, but it is not clear where he goes or how he joins the rest of the actors. I am inclined to believe that he usually exits immediately after delivering his message. There are several scenes in which a series of messengers enter to report a changing situation (Coriolanus, IV, vi, 37-79; Troilus and Cressida, V, v). The effect of mounting pressure depends upon the repeated entrance and exit of the messengers. The intensification such scenes require could be effectively produced by the entrance of the messenger at one door, and after his report, by his exit at another. If this were regular practice at the Globe, the playwright did not need to mark an exit for him.
The formal messenger is an example of a purely conventional figure who is not symbolic. Whether he had a prototype in Elizabethan life or he was a creation of dramatic technique, he still emerged as a conventional figure, changing little from Caesar’s Rome to Macbeth’s Scotland. Attention was concentrated on his function—not his character. Therefore, he was granted a forthrightness of expression not found in other stage servants.