Shakespeare and the Rose of Love. John Vyvyan
boyhood, it is usually assumed, he went to Stratford Grammar School. If he did, he would have received an excellent literary education there. The Elizabethan grammar school was guided by the enlightened spirit of Erasmus. On the basis of the old trivium – grammar, rhetoric and logic – the Latin classics were conscientiously taught, and, in the higher forms, the Greek. Compared with a modern curriculum, the subjects were few; and for that reason, a much higher standard was obtained in them. But there are only two points about Shakespeare’s early reading on which I should like to lay emphasis: he had been thoroughly grounded, as every Elizabethan schoolboy was, in the plays of Terence; and at some time, probably for his own delight, he had read Chaucer’s translation, The Romaunt of the Rose. From Terence, and his commentators, he learnt the five-part construction of a play; and from The Romaunt of the Rose he learnt, among other things, the elements of the medieval philosophy of love.
Ce est li Romanz de la Rose
Ou l’Art d’Amors est toute enclose.
As the poem turned out, that is an over-statement. It does not embrace the whole art of love: both Dante and the Renaissance Neo-Platonists had much to add. But before we consider Shakespeare’s debt to The Romaunt of the Rose we must look rather more briefly at what he owed to Terence.
The fact that Shakespeare and his contemporaries conceived their plays in five logical parts – although these were not necessarily presented as separate units on the stage – does not at first seem relevant to the theme of love. But I think it will be granted that structure may be a guide to meaning: and I hope to show that, in the present case, it is an important one. I have discussed elsewhere the temptation-sequence in Shakespeare.* This was incorporated later, its origins are different, and it need not detain us here.
The five-act structure, as the Renaissance understood it, was mainly derived from Roman comedy, and particularly from long study of the plays of Terence. I do not propose to analyse it in detail, but only in so far as it may give a clue to ideas in Shakespeare which we might otherwise miss. Essentially, it is a method of plot-construction, not of stage-presentation. We may consider the five acts as five phases of the story; but when an interval was needed in the theatre, it was natural to place it at the close of such a phase. The logic of this construction – although its first use was for light entertainment – will be readily revealed by a metaphor of war.
Act I
We find that a war is about to break out. We are told the cause of it; the objective of each side is made clear to us; and our sympathies are definitely enlisted on one side only. Briefly, the first act gives the rational and emotional background of the coming action.
Act II
The action opens with the preliminary skirmishes and manoeuvres of both armies. The main battle is not joined; but all the moves leading up to it are made, and we await it in suspense.
Act III
The battle begins with the attack of the side we hope will lose; but at the end of the act, it seems as if it is going to win. Our suspense is accordingly greater.
Act IV
The counter-attack is launched; and the act closes with everything prepared for the final victory, but just short of it.
Act V
There may be a persona ex machina, or twist of surprise. And then the crowning success of the side we always hoped would win.
There is sound dramatic logic in this. The opening satisfies the wish of the audience to be ‘in the know’, gives it an outcome to hope for, and engages its sympathies. The action provides the conflict, which is the heart-beat of drama. The climactic point of each act creates mounting suspense. And the conclusion gives the audience its heart’s desire. It is particularly suited to comedy, for which, of course, it was created; but it has been brilliantly adapted to other purposes. Reduced to schematic simplicity (with apologies to The Lady of Andros), Terence builds a plot on it somewhat as follows.
Act I
A young man is in love with a charming girl of whom his father disapproves, and he has promised to marry her. The father is determined that he shall marry someone else. Each of them is well-intentioned. Although no action has begun, it is clear that conflict lies ahead. The background of it is understood, the aim of each side is clear, and the sympathies of the audience are enlisted for the son.
Act II
The son finds that a friend of his is in love with the girl he does not want to marry; so, naturally, they join forces. There is also a clever slave – a little too clever, and by him an amusing knot of error is tied.
Act III
The father takes the field. He approaches the family of the girl he wants his son to marry, and wins their consent to the match. The wedding is to take place at once. The outlook is calamitous.
Act IV
The son and his allies make a counter-attack. This is to let the family find out that he and his true-love have already had a baby. The wedding is therefore called off, and the situation is reversed.
Act V
Harmony is now to be established. It is discovered that the son’s sweetheart is really a long-lost daughter of the other girl’s family – in fact, the girls are sisters. The father withdraws his opposition, and finds that his son’s own choice will be the perfect daughter-in-law after all. The second girl is paired with her right young man, and everyone is happy. There are no losers.
It will be seen that however nugatory the story may be, this construction gives it logic, balance and proportion. It is shaped consciously as a work of art. Without losing the artistic unity, a sub-plot can be interwoven, if required, to make the pattern as complex, yet well-designed as a cobweb. And this web may catch and exhibit the fleeting things of life, whether bluebottles or dewdrops. In the knot-of-error kind of play, the opposing sides may represent error and truth, which can be taken as lightly or seriously as the author pleases. The audience naturally hopes that truth will prevail, and the interplay or conflict between them may be shaped according to the formula. This opens the way for an allegorical under-meaning; and so, no doubt, endeared the plan to Shakespeare. In general, the structure comes so logically to an entertaining story that many authors have used it, or approximated to it, without giving Terence a thought.
Later commentators reduced this construction to three parts, which they termed protasis, epitasis and catastrophe. There was some difference of opinion as to where the protasis should end, and medieval commentaries confine it to the first act; but in the form in which the theory probably reached Shakespeare, it covered the first two. Baldwin has shown that there are good grounds for believing that the edition of Terence published by Willichius about 1550, with a preface by Wagnerus, in which he analyses the structure of the Andria, greatly influenced Shakespeare. Wagnerus, in the preface, distinguishes two internal goals for a play:
The first goal is the thing towards which the protasis tends, at the end of the second act. The second is the thing towards which the epitasis tends, the occasion of the catastrophe, at the end of the fourth act. So the first and second acts form a sub-unit, as do the third and fourth. This integrated formula of Wagnerus (Willichius) gives a very definite framework indeed for constructing a play.*
On this analysis, then, the protasis is the content of the first two acts; that is, everything up to the decisive struggle. The epitasis is the third and fourth acts; that is, the whole decisive engagement, attack and counterattack. And the catastrophe is the happy ending. The triple division is of less importance than the five-fold one, which became the norm of staging as well as of construction; but it is sometimes