Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist / A Popular Illustration of the Principles of Scientific Criticism

by Richard G. Moulton

The Enveloping Action.

In the process of analysis we are led to notice special forms of action: in particular, the Enveloping Action. This interesting element of Plot may be described as the fringe, or border, or frame, of a dramatic pattern. It appears when the personages and incidents which make up the essential interest of a play are more or less loosely involved with some interest more wide-reaching than their own, though more vaguely presented. It is seen in its simplest form where a story occupied with private personages connects itself at points with public history: homely life being thus wrapped round with life of the great world; fiction having reality given to it by its being set in a frame of accepted fact. We are familiar enough with it in prose fiction. Almost all the Waverley Novels have Enveloping Actions, Scott's regular plan being to entangle the fortunes of individuals, which are to be the main interest of the story, with public events which make known history. Thus in Woodstock a Cavalier maiden and her Puritan lover become, as the story proceeds, mixed up in incidents of the Commonwealth and Restoration; or again, the plot of Redgauntlet, which consists in the separate adventures of a pair of Scotch friends, is brought to an issue in a Jacobite rising in which both become involved. The Enveloping Action is a favourite element in Shakespeare's plots. In the former part of the book I have pointed out how the War of the Roses forms an Enveloping Action to Richard III; how its connection with the other actions is close enough for it to catch the common feature of Nemesis; and how it is marked with special clearness by the introduction of Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York to bring out its opposite sides. In Macbeth there is an Enveloping Action of the supernatural centring round the Witches: the human workings of the play are wrapped in a deeper working out of destiny, with prophetic beings to keep it before us. Julius Cæsar, as a story of political conspiracy and political reaction, is furnished with a loose Enveloping Action in the passions of the Roman mob: this is a vague power outside recognised political forces, appearing at the beginning to mark that uncertainty in public life which can drive even good men to conspiracy, while from the turning-point it furnishes the force the explosion of which is made to secure the conspirators' downfall. A typical example is to be found in Lear, all the more typical from the fact that it is by no means a prominent interest in the play. The Enveloping Action in this drama is the French War. The seeds of this war are sown in the opening incident, i. i. 265.in which the French King receives his wife from Lear with scarcely veiled insult: i. ii. 23.it troubles Gloucester in the next scene that France is 'in choler parted.' Then we get, in the second Act, a distant hint of rupture from the letter of Cordelia read by Kent in the stocks. ii. ii. 172.In the other scenes of this Act the only political question is of 'likely wars toward' between the English dukes; ii. i. 11.but at the beginning of the third Act Kent directly connects these quarrels of the dukes with the growing chance of a war with France: iii. i. 19-34.the French have had intelligence of the 'scattered kingdom,' and have been 'wise in our negligence.' In this Act Gloucester confides to Edmund the feeler he has received from France, iii. iii.and his trustfulness is the cause of his downfall; iii. iii. 22.Edmund treacherously reveals the confidence to Cornwall, iii. v. 18.and makes it the occasion of his rise. Gloucester's measures for the safety of Lear have naturally a connection with the expected invasion, iii. vi. 95-108.and he sends him to Dover to find welcome and protection. iii. vii. 2, &c.The final scene of this Act, devoted to the cruel outrage on Gloucester, shows from its very commencement the important connection of the Enveloping Action with the rest of the play: the French army has landed, and it is this which is felt to make Lear's escape so important, and which causes such signal revenge to be taken on Gloucester. Throughout the fourth Act all the threads of interest are becoming connected with the invading army at Dover; if this Act has a separate interest of its own in Edmund's intrigues with both Goneril and Regan at once, iv. ii. 11, 15; iv. v. 12, 30 &c.yet these intrigues are possible only because Edmund is hurrying backwards and forwards between the princesses in the measures of military preparation for the battle. The fifth Act has its scene on the battlefield, and the double issue of the battle stamps itself on the whole issue of the play: the death of Lear and Cordelia is the result of the French defeat, while, on the other hand, v. iii. 238, 256.all who were to reap the fruits of guilt die in the hour of victory. Thus this French War is a model of Enveloping Action—outside the main issues, yet loosely connecting itself with every phase of the movement; originating in the incident which is the origin of the whole action; the possibility of it developed by the progress of the Main story, alike by the cruelty shown to Lear and by the rivalry between his daughters; the fear of it playing a main part in the tragic side of the Underplot, and the preparation for it serving as occasion for the remaining interest of intrigue; finally, breaking out as a reality in which the whole action of the play merges.

Economy: supplementary to Analysis.

From Analysis we pass naturally to Economy. Considered in the abstract, as a phase of plot-beauty, Economy may be defined as that perfection of design which lies midway between incompleteness and waste. Its formula is that a play must be seen to contain all the details necessary to the unity, no detail superfluous to the unity, and each detail expanded in exact proportion to its bearing on the unity. In practice, as a branch of treatment in Shakespeare-Criticism, Economy, like Analysis, deals with complexity of plot. The two are supplementary to one another. The one resolves a complexity into its elements, the other traces the unity running through these elements. Analysis distinguishes the separate actions which make up a plot, while Economy notes the various bonds between these actions and the way in which they are brought into a common system: it being clear that the more the separateness of the different interests can be reduced the richer will be the economy of design.

Economic Forms.

It will be enough to note three Economic Forms. ConnectionThe first is simple Connection: the actual contact of action with action, the separate lines of the pattern meeting at various points. In other words, the different actions have details or personages in common. Bassanio is clearly a bond between the two main stories of The Merchant of Venice, in both of which he figures so prominently; and it has been pointed out that the scene of Bassanio's successful choice is an incident with which all the stories which enter into the action of the play connect themselves. and Linking.There are Link Personages, who have a special function so to connect stories, and similarly Link Actions: Gloucester in the play of Lear and the Jessica Story in The Merchant of Venice are examples. Or Connection may come by the interweaving of stories as they progress: they alternate, or fill, so to speak, each other's interstices. from ii. i. to iii. ii. 319.Where the Story of the Jew halts for a period of three months, the elopement of Jessica comes to occupy the interval; or again, scenes from the tragedy of the Gloucester family separate scenes from the tragedy of Lear, until the two tragedies have become mutually entangled. Envelopment too serves as a kind of Connection: the actions which make up such a play as Richard III gain additional compactness by their being merged in a common Enveloping Action.

Dependence.

Another Form of Economy is Dependence. This term expresses the relation between an underplot and main plot, or between subactions and the actions to which they are subordinate. compare i. i. 35, 191.The fact that Gloucester is a follower of Lear—he would appear to have been his court chamberlain—makes the story of the Gloucester family seem to spring out of the story of the Lear family; that we are not called upon to initiate a fresh train of interest ministers to our sense of Economy.

Symmetry.

But in the Shakespearean Drama the most important Economic Form is Symmetry: between different parts of a design symmetry is the closest of bonds. Balance.A simple form of Symmetry is the Balance of actions, by which, as it were, the mass of one story is made to counterpoise that of another. If the Caskets Story, moving so simply to its goal of success, seems over-weighted by the thrilling incidents of the Jew Story, we find that the former has by way of compensation the Episode of the Rings rising out of its close, while the elopement of Jessica and her reception at Belmont transfers a whole batch of interests from the Jew side of the play to the Christian side. Or again, in a play such as Macbeth, which traces the Rise and Fall of a personage, the Rise is accompanied by the separate interest of Banquo till he falls a victim to its success; to balance this we have in the Fall Macduff, who becomes important only after Banquo's death, and from that point occupies more and more of the field of view until he brings the action to a close. Similarly in Julius Cæsar the victim himself dominates the first half; Antony, his avenger, succeeds to his position for the second half. Parallelism and Contrast.More important than Balance as forms of Symmetry are Parallelism and Contrast of actions. Both are, to a certain extent, exemplified in the plot of Macbeth: the triple form of Nemesis, Irony, and Oracular binding together all the elements of the plot down to the Enveloping Action illustrates Parallelism, and Contrast has been shown to be a bond between the interest of Lady Macbeth and of her husband. But Parallelism and Contrast are united in their most typical forms in Lear, which is at once the most intricate and the most symmetrical of Shakespearean dramas. A glance at the scheme of this plot shows its deep-seated parallelism. A Main story in the family of Lear has an Underplot in the family of Gloucester. The Main plot is a problem and its solution, the Underplot is an intrigue and its nemesis. Each is a system of four actions: there is the action initiating the problem with the three tragedies which make up its solution, there is again the action generating the intrigue and the three tragedies which constitute its nemesis. The threefold tragedy in the Main plot has its elements exactly analogous, each to each, to the threefold tragedy of the Underplot: Lear and Gloucester alike reap a double nemesis of evil from the children they have favoured, and good from the children they have wronged; the innocent Cordelia has to suffer like the innocent Edgar; alike in both stories the gains of the wicked are found to be the means of their destruction. Even in the subactions, which have only a temporary distinctness in carrying out such elaborate interworking, the same Parallelism manifests itself. e.g. i. iv. 85-104; ii. ii, &c.They run in pairs: where Kent has an individual mission as an agency for good, Oswald runs a course parallel with him as an agency for evil; e.g. iv. ii. 29; v. iii, from 59.of the two heirs of Lear, Albany, after passively representing the good side of the Main plot, has the function of presiding over the nemesis which comes on the evil agents of the Underplot, while Cornwall, who is active in the evil of the iii. vii.Main plot, is the agent in bringing suffering on the good victims of the Underplot; iv. ii; iv. v; v. iii. 238.once more from opposite sides of the Lear story Goneril and Regan work in parallel intrigues to their destruction. Every line of the pattern runs parallel to some distant line. Further, so fundamental is the symmetry that we have only to shift the point of view and the Parallelism becomes Contrast. If the family histories be arranged around Cordelia and Edmund, as centres of good and evil in their different spheres, we perceive a sharp antithesis between the two stories extending to every detail: though stated already in the chapter on Lear, I should like to state it again in parallel columns to do it full justice.