Shakespeare's Plays: A Study of Friendship and Love

By Mose Durst

Mose Durst, Ph.D. is Chairman of The Principled Academy in San Leandro, California.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2002
• ISBN: 9781465317155

Mose Durst

Mose Durst, Ph.D. is Chairman of The Principled Academy in San Leandro, California.

Book preview

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

The Comedy of Errors, perhaps Shakespeare’s earliest play, illustrates many of the themes he is to develop in greater depth in the later plays. Although he draws heavily on his source, The Twin Menaechmi of the Roman playwright Plautus, Shakespeare’s play is no simple farce. He introduces characters and themes not found in Plautus’ play, ones which deal with the norms, virtues, and order that characterize the world of his drama.

It is instructive to compare The Comedy of Errors with its principal source, for we can see how even in his earliest work Shakespeare’s genius as an artist shines forth. Plautus’ work is largely farce, with little complexity of theme or character. The plot, in brief, concerns twin sons who are separated when they are children. As one son grows up, he searches for his brother and comes to Epidamnus, where his brother has been reared. Herein lies the comedy, for one brother is mistaken for his twin, and mistaken identity causes much confusion and hilarity until the brothers recognize each other and are reunited.

A central figure in Plautus’ drama is Erotium, a courtesan, who occupies the affections of Menaechmus of Epidamnus. The wife of this Menaechmus is largely a shrew, and little genuine love is shared between husband and wife. The husband steals an expensive dress and a gold bracelet from his wife to give to Erotium, and he refers to his wife with such epithets as bitch. When the brothers discover each other at the end of the play, they decide to return to Syracuse together, and we hear nothing more about Menaechmus’ wife or courtesan.¹¹

Shakespeare’s play is far removed from this Roman farce. Aside from the doubling of twins, for the twin brothers now have servants who are twins, the themes of love and marriage are central to Shakespeare’s play. He creates a wife, Adriana, who is no cardboard character, and he introduces Luciana, her sister, who is not found in Plautus’ play at all. Early in The Comedy of Errors Shakespeare introduces the theme of order in marriage, a norm which was the generally accepted ideal in Elizabethan England.

Adriana complains to her sister that her husband, now called Antipholus of Ephesus, is late for dinner and exercises a liberty in marriage greater than her own: Why should their [men’s] liberty than ours be more? Luciana responds with the Renaissance view of order in all modes of existence:

There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye But hath his bound in earth, in sea, in sky. The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls Are their males’ subjects, and at their controls; Man, more divine, the master of all these, Lord of the wide world and wild wat’ry seas, Imbued with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females, and their lords: Then let your will attend on their accords. Adr. This servitude makes you to keep unwed. Luc. Not this, but troubles of the marriage bed.

Adr. But were you wedded you would bear some sway. Luc. Ere I learn love, I’ll practise to obey. (2.1.16-29)

These lines not only foreshadow similar ideas in The Taming of the Shrew, they express an Elizabethan commonplace about the role of women in marriage. Shakespeare does not promote this idea in a dogmatic or unreflective way for, as we shall see, women in this play exhibit greater virtue and stature than their male counterparts. Order in marriage, then, is not a matter of ideological abstraction, but one of heart, love, and ethics, the ordering of love. As Augustine writes, virtue is the ordering of love. Adriana reminds Antipholus of Syracuse, mistaking the twin for her husband:

The time was once when thou unurg’d wouldst vow

That never words were music to thine ear,

That never object pleasing in thine eye,

That never touch well welcome to thy hand,

That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste,

Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee.

(2.2.113-118)

We are now in the world of courtly love. Often, productions of this play are staged as slap-stick comedy, and these beautiful elements of love are run over by the speed of farce. Adriana yearns for the love she once knew, not any subjugation by a husband, and her husband seems to have lost a sensitivity and attention to his wife. With a powerful series of images she explains her unity with her husband:

For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall A drop of water in the breaking gulf, And take unmingled thence that drop again Without addition or diminishing, As take from me thyself, and not me too.

(2.2.125-129)

Nothing like this depth of thought or image is found in Shakespeare’s source, and we are a world away from the Roman play.

The theme of courtly love, with its conventions of love at first sight, adoration of the beloved, and the desire to die for the beloved, is further developed in The Comedy of Errors through Antipholus of Syracuse’s love for Lucianna. He looks upon her and says,

Are you a God? Would you create me new? Transform me then, and to your power I’ll yield

Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote; Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed I’ll take thee, and there lie, And in that glorious supposition think He gains by death that hath such means to die; (3.2. 39-40; 47-51)

This courtly lover is not addressing a married woman, often the convention of courtly love,¹² but an unmarried woman who is eligible for marriage and may be wooed properly.

As Lucianna hears these words of love from the man she believes to be her sister’s husband, she is horrified and rejects his advances. The sisterly love she bears toward Adriana is one of true friendship that cannot be violated. We are presented here with a model of friendship that Shakespeare is to illustrate in a number of plays: it is faithful, loyal, and true. The virtues of friendship and love are ideals that an Elizabethan audience could respond to, and comedy-as with all Renaissance drama-was meant to mirror to an audience the virtues and vices which would both delight and instruct.

Luciana answers Antipholus by saying, What are you mad that you reason so? Why call you me love? Call my sister so. Defending her sister’s honor, Luciana is not the airhead portrayed by numerous actresses.

When Antipholus of Ephesus is denied access to his home, he invites his friend Balthazar to have dinner at a courtesan’s house. Although this courtesan is not a central character as in Plautus, nor a bewitching siren as suggested by the name Erotium (in Shakespeare’s play the character is identified with the generic name of Courtesan), she is a temptress who disrupts the marriage of Adriana and Antipholus. It is Antipholus who is drawn away from his wife, and thus Antipholus must be chastised if harmony in the marriage is to be restored. Through a comedy of errors, he is indeed beaten in an attempt to exorcise him, and toward the resolution of the play he complains to the Duke of Ephesus, the ruling authority,

Justice, sweet prince, against that woman there-

She whom thou gav’st to me to be my wife;

That hath abused and dishonour’d me,

Even in the strength and height of injury

Beyond imagination is the wrong

That she this day hath shameless thrown on me.

(5.1. 197-202)

Antipholus has suffered and knows now what his wife must feel to be dishonored. The conflicts generated by the mistaken identities have allowed husband and wife to recognize the value of their marriage. The innocent lovers, Luciana and Antipholus, discover an ideal basis of love as a foundation for their future marriage. Both sets of twins are united as the mistaken identifies are revealed in the last scene of the play.

In the final resolution of all conflicts, the mother of the twins-who became an Abbess in a convent when she despaired for the loss of her children-reveals herself and explains the basis for the mistaken identities. She is also able to release from punishment the man whom the Duke was about to punish, and whom she now discovers to be her husband.

As all the improbabilities are explained, we are moved by a spirit of love and harmony. Antipholus of Ephesus addresses his brother in the final lines of the play:

We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another. (5.1. 425-426)

The Abbess invites each of the main characters to a gossips’ feast, a baptismal feast¹³, where they will experience new birth upon a foundation of genuine love. For through their sufferings, the main characters have learned something of the true nature of love.

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare no longer relies on a single source, as he now presents the conflict of friendship and love. The play makes its contribution to the great mass of friendship-literature that extends through the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century… . [and] even in the fourteenth century friendship is not always victorious in its conflict with love.¹⁴ The play reflects the classical ideal of friendship, the Renaissance virtues of constancy in love, and the practical goal of love leading to marriage.

As with many of his romantic comedies, Shakespeare provides us with pairs of lovers, obstacles they must overcome to consummate their love, and a resolution of conflicts leading to marriage. Valentine and Proteus, the two gentlemen, are friends from childhood, and it is they whose friendship is tested as they are challenged by their love of Julia, beloved of Proteus, and Silvia, beloved of Valentine.

Valentine tells the Duke of his friendship with Proteus:

I knew him as myself; for from our infancy

We have convers’d and spent our hours together,

And though myself have been an idle truant,

Omitting the sweet benefit of time

To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,

Yet hath Sir Proteus (for that’s his name)

Made use and fair advantage of his days:

His years but young, but his experience old;

His head unmellow’d, but his judgment ripe;

And in a word (for far behind his worth

Comes all the praises that I now bestow)

He is complete in feature and in mind,

With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

(2.4. 57-69)

We are reminded from these words that the classical ideal of friendship demanded that goodness and virtue must be the basis of friendship, not merely pleasure or usefulness. Ironically, it is Valentine who has remained true to these ideals, and it is Proteus who will belie them. It is also the ideal courtier, as described in Renaissance literature like The Book of the Courtier, who will act with the good grace of a gentleman.

The play opens as Valentine is to take his leave of Proteus and journey to the court of the Duke of Milan, where he is to perfect his education. Valentine playfully mocks Proteus’ love for Julia, for he observes how his friend exhibits all the signs of a courtly lover¹⁵:

To be in love; where scorn is bought with groans;

Coy looks, with heart-sore signs; one fading moment’s mirth,

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;

If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;

If lost, why then a grievous labour won;

However, but a folly bought with wit,

Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

(1.1. 29-35)

We can be assured in comedy that he who mocks love will shortly fall in love. Proteus, meanwhile, foreshadows how his love will tempt him to betray his friend. He understands that his love for Julia has overthrown his reason and brought disorder to his life:

He [Valentine] after honour hunts, I after love;

He leaves his friends, to dignify them more;

I leave myself, my friends, and all, for love:

Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphos’d me;

Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,

War with good counsel, set the world at nought;

Made wit with musing weak, heartsick with thought.

(1.1. 63-69)

Although love can make one lose all sense, as opposed to a love that can lead to a perfection of character, the challenge is to direct love by virtuous behavior. This, indeed, is the challenge that confronts the lovers in the play.

Valentine, shortly after his arrival at the Duke’s court, falls in love with Silvia, and he exhibits behavior similar to Proteus. He asks his servant, Speed, … how know you that I am in love? Speed responds:

Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned (like Sir Proteus) to wreathe your arms like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a schoolboy that had lost his ABC; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money, and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master.

(2.1. 16-31)

Speed mocks the courtly lover as he depicts the foolish behavior of one metamorphosed by love. Launce, a servant to Proteus, and Speed provide the realistic contrast, in their description of love, to the transformed courtly lovers. Launce even illustrates his faithful friendship to his dog, as man becomes dog’s best friend:

… I have sat in the stocks, for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed; I have stood on the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for it.

(4.4. 30-33)

The plot develops as Proteus follows Valentine to the court of the Duke. As he leaves Verona, he pledges his faithfulness to Julia: Here is my hand, he tells her, for my true constancy. In Milan, meanwhile, the Duke, Silvia’s father, desires her to marry a foolish courtier named Thurio. As Proteus meets with Valentine, who once scorned love, he hears how Valentine is now afflicted with all the signs of a courtly lover:

I have done penance for contemning Love,

Whose high imperious thoughts have punish’d me

With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,

With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs,

For in revenge of my contempt of Love,

Love hath chas’d sleep from my enthralled eyes,

And made them watchers of mine own heart’s sorrow.

(2.4. 124-130)

Valentine introduces Proteus to Silvia, and he immediately falls in love with her, forgetting his love for Julia. Valentine explains to Proteus his plans to steal away with Silvia, for since she returns his love they are betroth’d and their marriage hour has been set.

Proteus’ new affection for Silvia makes him faithless to his friend as well as to his love. Once again, his emotions overcome his reason:

‘Tis but her [Silvia’s] picture I have beheld, And that hath dazzled my reason’s light’; But when I look on her perfections, There is no reason but I shall be blind. If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compass her I’ll use my skill. (2.4, 205-210)

Proteus knows his is an erring love, but as emotion overthrows reason, disorder and destructive action follows. Although both Valentine and Proteus are smitten by love, one is ennobled while the other is enfeebled. Valentine becomes a truer friend and lover, while Proteus becomes a mere flatterer and faithless lover. He is aware of his falseness as he says:

I to myself am dearer than a friend,

For love is still most precious in itself,

And Silvia (witness heaven that made her fair)

Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.

I will forget Julia is alive,

Rememb’ring that my love to her is dead.

And Valentine I’ll hold an enemy,

Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.

(2.6. 23-30)

Proteus now claims Silvia as his friend, because of the use and pleasure he imagines in this relationship, while he betrays Valentine and Julia. He understands that he values