Th e story and the play
Notes on Elizabethan Drama
by Olav Løkse
I
Dr. Samuel Johnson writes of Shakespeare’s MACBETH that “it has no nice
discrimination of character.” He enlarges upon this statement by saying that
“the events are too great to admit the influence of particular dispositions,
and the course of the action determines the conduct of the agents.” 1
I find myself in full agreement with the contention implied in Dr. Johnson’s statement, that characters in drama are closely connected with the
events of the play, and that they will be under the restrictions of the course
of the action. This implies that characters in drama will be what the playwright in a given case wants them to be, only where there is achieved a
complete congruity between what the poet wants them to be, and what the
“events” and the “course of the action” will admit.
This congruity, one imagines, is not easy to attain. A series of factors
will determine the course of the action of the play. The conventions of drama,
generally, and at the particular time at which the play is written, will place
demands upon the dramatist. So will the histrionic conventions of the day.
The plot of the play, if invented by the dramatist himself, will be, theoretically at least, easily made to suit the conventions and the stage traditions.
However, in a case where the story is already familiar to the audience, as I
hold was the case with the stories of Shakespeare’s plays, yet another obliga­
tion rests upon the playwright, because the expectations of the audience must
not be neglected, but rather exploited. The audience must somehow get
their story.
Furthermore it may be found that the dramatist deliberately creates a
disparity between the character and the deeds performed by this same char­
acter: “The interest in a Shakespearean tragedy lies chiefly in the hero’s
1. Quoted by Kenneth M uir in his introduction to KING LEAR, Arden Edition, 1950,
p. xlvi.
Olav Løkse
238 conduct, and it is the greater as his conduet surprises while it satisfies: and
from the constitution of things it is difficult to imagine a character or per­
sonality whose actions shall be at once consistent and surprising .” 2
Such a technique will be an additional factor that tends to make the
events overrule the apparent intentions of the playwright, as far as characterportrayal is concerned, so that “particular dispositions” will not easily be
brought to harmonize with the course of the action. And as we have seen,
these dispositions are not necessarily intended to do so.
If we presume then that the poet starts out writing his drama with a clear
conception of what he wants his characters to be, there will be a struggle
between his conception of the characters to be presented and the demands
made by form, by conventions, by stage traditions, by dramatical effects and
by the faet that the story providing the plot for the play is a familiar one and
does not easily bear changes. On this basis we may arrive at the conclusion
that in the case of a given play, say MACBETH, the “ideal character” will
not emerge, but the poet will be left facing a character that he did not conceive of, when starting to write his play.
Now this same principle may well be applied to the work of the dramatist
considered as a vehicle of philosophy, of moral teaching or of opinions. We
may here imagine the playwright setting out to express, through his work,
an “ideal” program of thought, ideals and opinions, and find him, by the
same line of logic, obliged to rest satisfied with what he is allowed to say.
This principle would not be limited to dramatic art, but to poetry and art as
a whole. The poet does not express what he wants to express, he expresses
what he can express.
Now, it must be accepted that, as the poet sets out to create a drama, he
must cherish some ideas as to what kind of work this will be. We may then
fall back upon the conception of an “ideal drama”, the drama which the poet
wants to write. To form his conception of such an “ideal drama” the poet
will need, beforehand, to take into consideration the dramatical conventions
and the histrionic traditions of the day. The difficult element will here be
limited to the story, provided that the story is already familiar to the audience.
Unless the story, by some good fortune, is admirably suited for the drama
he had decided to write, the struggle here will be between the known story
and the poet’s conception of the “ideal play”, since only by making the
story conform to the restrictions of the necessary conventions, can the ideal
2. Robert Bridges: THE INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE ON SHAKESPEARE’S
DRAMA. London 1927. p. 16.
The story and the play
play be ereated. By these lines of logic we may well arrive at the conclusion 239
that the “ideal” drama, say the “ideal” TRAGEDY OF MACBETH was
never written. The MACBETH that Shakespeare wrote may then be not the
MACBETH that he wanted to write and set out to write, but something else.
This does not necessarily mean an inferior MACBETH.
This reasoning brings us to a situation which reminds us of a passage
by Benedetto Croce, who writes:
“The aesthetic faet is altogether in the aesthetic elaboration of impressions. When we have achieved the word within us, conceived definitely and
vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive, expression is bom and
is complete; there will be no need for anything else. If after this we should
open our mouths - will to open them to speak, or throats to sing, that is to
say, utter by word of mouth and audible melody what we have completely
said or sung to ourselves; or if we sould stretch out - will to stretch out our
hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brush and chisel,
thus making on a large scale movements that we have already made in little
and rapidly, in a material in which we leave more or less durable traces; this
is all an addition, a faet which obeys quite different laws from the former . . .
a practical faet, or faet of w ill. . . The work of art is always internal; and what
is called external is no longer a work of art .” 3
But it also opens the way to a quite dissimilar outlook. If we admit the
possibility that the dramatist cannot say what he wants to say, nor write he
wants to write, nor create the drama he has conceived of, then it seems that
this will mean a negation of the idea of the poet’s integrity in expressing his
feelings or ideas, and even his conception of his own art. This brings us
rather close to the position of the “Chicago school” of criticism, or at least
the position of those critics at a particular time, i. e. the time of the publication of Critics and Criticism, in the introduction to which R. S. Crane
writes:
“These are, stated generally, the problems that face us whenever we reflect on the undeniable faet that what the poet does distinctively as a poet is not
to express himself or his age or to resolve psychological or moral difficulties or to communicate a vision of the world or to provide entertainment or to
use words in such-and-such-ways, and so on - though all these may be involved in what he does - but rather, by means of his art, to build materials
of language and experience into wholes of various kinds to which as we
3. Benedetto Croce: AESTHETICS, transl. Douglas Ainslie, Second Edition, London
1929, p. 50.
Olav Løkse
240 experience them, we tend to attribute final rather than merely instrumental
value. The criticism of poetry (in the large sense that includes prose fiction
and drama) is, on this view, primarily) an inquiry into the specific characters
and powers, and the necessary constituent elements, of possible kinds of
poetic wholes, leading to an appreciation, in individual works, of how well
their writers have accomplished the particular sort of poetic task which the
natures of the wholes they have attempted to construct imposed on them.
For such criticism we obviously need analytical devices that will permit us
to discriminate the various species of wholes that poets have made; to determine the number, character, and ordering of their functional parts; and
to define the often quite different conditions of success or failure implied by
the nature of each .” 4
II
We need not be apologetic when we say that Shakespeare »borrowed« the
stories which he developed into plots for his plays. If we ask why he borrowed,
the answer is generally that this was the usual thing to do in those days, and
that nobody objected to such borrowings. But if we accept that, then, unless
the story that was borrowed was completely identical with the plot of the play
as wanted by the poet, we must admit that such borrowing should imply adap­
tation. We may contend that if, instead of borrowing, the poet had invented
his plot, adaptation would not be necessary and the development of the play
into the “ideal drama” would be immensely facilitated.
I do not contend that plots were not invented, but the problem still
exists. Why did the Elizabethan dramatists to such a great extent borrow the
stories for the plots of their plays, and why was this done to such a great
extent by the most successful among them? I suggest that this was not due to
lack of inventiveness. Of inventiveness there was certainly plenty. We need
only point to the novel, where, although well-known stories are, there too,
given a new form, there is still a very free play of the imagination. This also
applies to the allegorical poem. But it seems that under the discipline of
dramatic and histrionic conventions, and the strictures imposed by the play
form, stories, that, in some form, were familiar to the audiences, were pref erred by the best playwrights for their best plays. To in vent a plot was rather
the exception than the rule. I believe that, in order to find an explanation
for this, we shall have to turn to the history of English drama up to the period
there in question.
There is no reason to discuss here to what extent Elizabethan drama was
4. CRITICS AND CRITISM, ed. Crane, Chicago 1950, p. 13.
The story and the play
indebted to the various kinds of dramatical performance that preceded it. 241
It is for this purpose enough to acknowledge that they all go to make a part
of the foundations of Elizabethan drama.
Without going into any great chronological detail we may consider some
of the kinds of dramatical performance, and in doing so we find all along
that the themes and stories, on which the performances were built, were
familiar to the audience.
In the case of the Miracle play the stories, whether taken from the Bible
or from legends about holy men and women, were known to the audience.
This will also be found to be the case if we go back to dramatical performances
performed in connection with church festivals, or religious processions. In
these cases, familiarity with the sources would be necessary, since the language
would generally be Latin, and in order to make sense of the performance
the story would have to be known. This will also apply to the Morality play,
whether allegorical or not. Stock types would be engaged in stock activity.
The events would be roughly anticipated by the audience. The ultimate fate
of the characters in the performance would already be known to the onlookers.
The Devil, where present, would be known beforehand to be destined to go
out of the performance defeated and subdued, to make his retreat down
into “the hell” under the stage. Vice would always fare badly, too. What
would be watched with interest would be how the characters would meet
their fates.
The Latin school drama, again, required that spectators, other than the
comparatively few who knew their Latin, should have become acquainted
with the plot of the play at some previous time, perhaps immediately be­
forehand. An interesting parallel to this is found in the plays performed by
English companies of players touring the continent, during the reign of Eliza­
beth, and later. The acceptance of these plays, by an audience that did not
know the language, can only be explained by reference to either a prologue
or argument, which would be spoken before the opening of the play, or to
a familiarity with some version of the story, upon which the plot of the play
was founded. Besides, the audience must have been used to plays of a similar
kind, and here the Latin school plays in Germany, and other countries on the
Continent, would come in. These plays, to a greater extent than the Miracle
plays and the Moralities, would adhere to the conventions of drama as known
from the Latin drama, particularly Plautus and Seneca. What can be gathered
is that the audience did accept these plays, and that they were very popular.
On the background of the audiences’ familiarity with the story on which the
Olav Løkse
242 plot of the play was founded, the title of the play and the mention of the
names of the characters would be enough to enable the audience to follow
the play since the names of the persons would remind the audience of the
main events to come, and the characters parts in these events as well as their
ultimate fate.
III
Professor E. E. Stoll, elaborating on a statement made by Charles Morgan,
distinguishes between two kinds of suspense in drama, as well as in literature
as a whole. He distinguishes between suspense of plot and suspense of form.
He writes: “Suspense of plot, which has to do with the disclosure of a faet,
like Epicene’s sex or Tom Jones’s paternity, or with that of motive or point
of view like Nora’s and Helmer’s in the Doll’s House, has its indubitable
value; but suspense of form, which has to do with the development and estab­
lishment of the emotional illusion, has a greater value, and in the works of
either Ibsen or Euripides the two sorts of suspense are conjoined.”
“Suspense of form”, he writes, “is the excited expectation not of the
answer to a puzzle, or the disclosure of a mystery, but - under the spell of
illusion - of the rounding out of a harmony, like the rhyme to come at the
end of the verse or the rest tone at the end of a song. It is the expectation of
the way that Othello will receive the slander and afterwards the truth, or that
Hamlet will baffle his enemies, have his revenge and meet his death .” 5
It goes without saying that when the dramatist takes for the plot of his
play, a story that is familiar to the audience, this will offer him great possibilities of creating suspense of form. Since the story is known the interest will
be focussed primarily on how the playwright will make those events take
place, which because they do so in the story, must take place. What is omitted
will baffle them as much as will what is added. The audience will be in the
position of gods, seeing what is hidden to the characters of the play, the
future and their fates. Because of their familiarity with the story, the audience
will be able to feel fear on behalf of the characters in anticipating events the
coming of which is unknown to the characters. There is the possibility of
creating contrasting feelings for example humour where sorrow would be the
right thing, and vice versa... There will be the possibility of creating great
dramatic effect by contrasting the facts of the story with the accepted or
supposed situation which the characters believe to be the actual case and on
which they act blindly. To the Elizabethan playgoers watching a play, the
5. E. E. Stoll: SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER MASTERS, Cambridge, Massachusets,
1940, p. 14.
The story and the play
story of which they already know, reality will be the reality of the story. No 243
other reality is needed.
We are now brought back to our discussion of the relation between the
“course of the action” on the one hand, and the intentions of the poet on the
other. The demands of the playform chosen, say a tragedy, may be found,
on some points, to be in conflict with the expectancy of an audience to whom
the story is known, and this conflict may be increased, since they also know
the demands of the conventions of the stage traditions. When it is necessary,
the playwright must change the story in order not to break the conventions
of the drama, but the change or changes must, if possible, be so made as to
keep up in the audience the illusion that they are, essentially at least, getting
the story they expect to get. This means that the poet, during the process
of creating his drama, will be working under the pressure of a conflict that
must somehow be solved. That this is so in Shakespeare is for example noted
by John Middleton Murry, who writes: “The degree of Shakespeare’s liberty
to adjust his dramatic action to his imaginative needs must have varied according to the definiteness of popular expectation .”6
Among the imaginative needs of the dramatist, comes also his need to give
a clear outline to his characters, if such an outline fits in with his intentions, i. e.
if it is part of his “ideal drama”. Again Middleton Murry should be quoted:
“But it is worth more than passing notice that the two perennially populai
plays of Shakespeare - THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and HAMLET are the two of which we can say most definitely that his freedom to alter the
action was most limited; and they are also the plays in which the nature of
the chief characters is most disputed .” 7
IV
Prefacing his collection of material for the study of KING LEAR, and his
New Variorum Edition of that play, H. H. Furness writes:
“And it minds me to say that of all departments of Shakespearean study
none seems to me more profitless than this search for sources whence Shake­
speare gathered his dramas.” 8
By comparing Shakespeare’s plays with the stories used by him as material
for the plots of his plays it is evident that the writing of some of these plays,
at least, must be regarded as veritable experiments in the création of drama6. J. Middleton Murry: SHAKESPEARE, London 1936, p. 211.
7. Ibid. p. 211.
8. H .H . Furness: A NEW VARIORUM OF SHAKESPEARE, V, KING LEAR, Philadelphia, 1880, p. 383.
Olav Løkse
244 tical illusions. The audience get the essence of their story, but they get it in
the way that serves Shakespeare's dramatical intentions as fully as possible.
Only by close scrutiny is the full extent of this process to be realized. Source
study is therefore an essential part of Shakespeare studies, and indispensable
if one is to arrive at the fullest and most reliable interpretations of what have
been regarded as doubtful points of action as well as of character. The illusions
created by the poet are sometimes so excellently worked out that they have
baffled modern audiences and critics, especially if they have not taken full
account of knowledge, possessed by Shakespeare’s audiences, of the story on
which the plot of the play is built.
Shakespeare’s KING LEAR is a good example of the influence of the
story on the plot of the play, under circumstances where the story must have
been known to the audience. To turn the old Lear story as found in Holinshed,
in the old Leir play and in Higgin’s ballad, into a tragedy, must have ap­
peared to the dramatist to be an almost impossible task. For one thing, in the
old story the king does not suffer death as the result of the conflict of the
story. Lear reigns happily for long after the dramatic situations of the story
are passed, and dies in peace. Besides, in the story Lear is not a very suitable
character for the hero of a tragedy. Still Shakespeare succeeds in adapting
the story into the plot for a tragedy. Moreover, he transforms Lear into the
hero of the tragedy by making him the dominant figure, while at the same
time retaining him as essentially the suffering king from the story. KING
LEAR is a masterpiece of the art of creating dramatical illusions.
The choice of the Macbeth story for the plot of a tragedy and of Macbeth
for the hero of the play, must indeed have been a still more dangerous undertaking. Shakespeare ventures to make the man, who killed the ancestor of
the reigning King of England, the hero of a tragedy to be performed in the
presence of this same king. And as the hero of the tragedy, he must be given
a status which seems to be an impossibility, since he is a murderer, and is
actually doing the deeds that are generally done by the villain of the play.
Shakespeare transforms the villain into a character who is accepted as the
hero of the play, in spite of his unheroic qualities, and the audience is given
a plot that is essentially the old Macbeth story. In both cases, when studying
KING LEAR as well as Macbeth, as well as in the case of other Shakespearean
plays, noteably HAMLET and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, I hold
that we are liable to misjudge badly what kind of plays we are dealing with,
and what is really happening in them, if we do not realize that the playwright
is working also under the pressure of the expectancy of the audience.