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.
IV. STRUCTURAL PATTERNS IN THE DRAMATIC NARRATIVE
The absence of linked causation naturally meant that the action was not linear. Incidents leading to the finale or to the climactic plateau did not follow one another in a succession of tightly meshed events but in a series of alternating scenes. To illustrate, between the first expression of Maria’s scheme against Malvolio (II, iii) and the first working of the scheme (II, v) intervenes the lyrical scene between Viola and Orsino (II, iv). Such separation of parts of the story encouraged the independence of one scene from another, the very thing complained of by some scholars. Schücking suggests that Shakespeare shows “a tendency to episodic intensification,” that is, the development of a scene at the expense of the whole.[24] F. L. Lucas expresses the same idea in his introduction to the works of Webster, asserting that the Elizabethan audiences reacted to separate scenes rather than to a whole play. The tendency to which they refer can be found in the three Falstaff-Merry Wives scenes. In the first of the scenes, Falstaff, caught in his love-game, hides in the buck basket, only to be dumped into the Thames. Here we have a complete action. Falstaff makes an advance, and he is repulsed. There is no counteraction on his part. If he were in a Roman comedy, he would have plotted how to punish his offenders or how to encompass the women again, and thus the second scene would have resulted from a counteraction on the part of Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. Instead Falstaff is persuaded to repeat the same adventure with similar results. The second scene is not more farcical or more extravagant than the first; it is merely different. In place of intensification we find fresh invention. The third scene again does not grow out of the preceding scene, but out of the husbands’ decision to shame the fat man publicly. All of the Falstaff-Mistress Page-Mistress Ford scenes have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They make themselves felt at the conclusion not by intensification but by accumulation.
Though in other plays of Shakespeare the scenes may be more closely joined, yet there is always a sense of their independence from one another. As I have said, Othello, of all the tragedies, is probably the most closely interwoven in plot. The deception scene (III, iii) is an example of an extended scene tying together several actions. But even in this play, we find an autonomous scene, and that near the end of the play. Half mad, playing the gruesome mockery of a visitor to a brothel, Othello questions first Emilia, then Desdemona (IV, ii). Othello arrives convinced of Desdemona’s guilt; he leaves with the same conviction. It is neither augmented nor dispelled. That the scene does not advance the action in no way detracts from its dramatic effectiveness, but it does reflect on the handling of the story. In the advancement of the classical drama, all scenes are integrated into a single line of action. In the progression of the Shakespearean play, scenes may be regarded as clustering about the story line. If this suggests an image of a grapevine, perhaps it is apt, for the scenes often appear to be hanging from a thread of narrative.