John Danby on Shakespeare's tragedies
Shakespeare's Tragedies of Love: An Ex. amination of the Possibility of Common Readings of 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Othello', 'King Lear', 'Antony and Cleopatra' H. A. Mason (Chatto and Windus £2.25) This valuable book freshens the readings of the four plays treated. Begun in extra- mural discussions, continued in intramural exchanges with students, argued further with fellow academics and considered in con- nection with the main body of professional critical comment, it aims at finding 'common readings', a common ground—a consensus, rooted in what most readers would be willing to entertain not necessarily as a final view, but as a view that most could agree was the basis for further discussion of the centralities of the plays examined. Mr Mason plays fair and honours his contract. Readers are in- vited to say 'Yes ... but'. And most readers will respond to the invitation—courteously offered, and scrupulously honoured. One should not give the impression that this is a porridge of group opinions. It is the personal expression of a sensitive and humane mind, with an ample range of literary awareness, and a fine sense of the life literature is writ- ten from and finally has to be judged by: 'the world which is the world of all of us'.
Thus in the reading of Romeo and Juliet, Mr Mason begins with a consideration of Fate and Fortune as giving the play its main motifs, and rightly dismisses anything at once so vague and heavy as providing Shakespeare with a thesis to illustrate: 'Shakespeare was for much of the time living through and filling out in stage terms what was essentially a narrative, a story, content to reap the full benefit from each incident, but—and this is what matters—not very much concerned with any total significance.' What comes alive and lingers in the mind, for Mr Mason and for most of us, is' the balcony scene. Here again, I would say 'Yes' to his lyrical and spiritually delicate percep- tion of what is happening: the scene is Juliet's, and Romeo is subordinate. It is Juliet who imports into this first meeting with love a sense of what Mr Mason calls (diffidently, but justifiably) 'the sacred'.
Othello occupies the longest section of the book, and it was here I felt the strongest reservations. Broadly, the main bearings are taken from Bradley (who accepts that Shakespeare succeeds in the attempt to portray the Noble Moor) and from Professor Leavis (following a hint from Eliot) who minimises the role of Iago as the undoer of Othello and argues that 'the main enemy is within the gates' of Othello's own mind. In a short review one cannot do justice to the subtlety of Mr Mason's comment and analysis as he tries to steer between the two. Summarily, I think more like Bradley here. Mr Mason is in fact intemperate in his disgust—Othello, in the bedroom scene, is described as 'kissing and pawing and smell- ing and savouring the externals of the sleep- ing body'l I would have preferred Mr Mason to have developed the grand 'mystery of temptation' he refers to in passing, or the hint he drops that Desdemona is a willing sacrifice, or the possibility that Desdemona's death—at his own hands—is maybe the only gateway through which Othello can escape from the hideous and dizzying nightmare- world he has been trapped into. The personae drama/is of a Shakespeare play are not merely characters, any more than people are in real life. Personae like Iago, Othello, and Desdemona ask for factors to be taken into account which, for want of a better word, might be called trans-psychological.
With King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra I found fewer 'buts' to write into the margin—but still quite a few. The sec- tions are shorter here, but some fine points are continually being made. Gloucester, for example, is brought up very close to us and seen clearly as the person in the play who ripens through the worst terrors of adversity. Edgar, however, and his strange disguises are—rather impatiently I think—put on one side. Nor does Mr Mason, again in my view, do justice to the very end of Lear. He seems, even, at one point, almost to sym- pathise with Nahum Tate's eighteenth-cen- tury modification of the fifth act. But the ending is surely 'open'—in the very sense that Mr Mason indicates all tragic endings should be: 'if we know that we are saved there can be no tragedy, for tragedy inhabits a twilight region between hope and despair: tragedies are plays of dreadful possibilities but not of certainties' (page 10). With the ending—or the endings—of Antony and Cleopatra as Mr Mason sees them I am sure I agree. Critics recently have grossly overrated 'Bring me my robe' etc. Shakespeare's verse has in this play indeed an 'angelic strength'. But neither Shakespeare nor Mr Mason is swamped by its glamour.
This is a book that one should certainly read. It freshens the mind, and should also resharpen it.
John Dan by is Professor of English Litera- ture at University College, Bangor, and author of 'Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature's
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