Shakespeare ADM

Savage 7 December
1992
If We Shadows Have Offended:
Thematic Foolery in Two Plays

“Is there no play to ease the anguish of a torturing hour?” (MND,

V.i.36-37). Comic release from the tensions and complexities of
Athenian life pleases Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; his life
likely is filled with various stern-minded individuals who are themselves
too tense and too complex to offer him any kind of unofficial, relaxed
view of the world around him. It is both a historic and dramatic
tradition that the presenter of such a view be the “fool,” a man who
offers a unique, witty, and often metaphoric picture of his master’s
situation. But in addition to serving his master, he must serve as a
kind of living literary device, a fleshed-out archetype who relates the
larger themes and the particular details to his audience, whether that
audience is in the text or in the theater. The fool is a passive
character in that he reflects and exaggerates the plot, maybe embodies
it, but he does not — and seemingly cannot — change it. The amateur
troupe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , for example, figures fairly
prominently in the play, but actors do not affect its course. Something
of an expanded epilogue, their presentation merely retells and recasts
the previous four acts.
It is Falstaff, the fool of 2 Henry IV, who weaves a running commentary
and a running symbolism into the play, but neither does he significantly
alter plot direction. Although he is an interesting character, full of
wit and gruff charm, and a superb thematic device, his necessity to the
plot engine and to other characters’ development is questionable. Like
the troupe in Midsummer’s Night, Falstaff is a subjective secondary
narrator, a character who carries considerable literary meaning but
little dramatic weight. Interestingly, the dramatic weight of the fools
seems proportional to their necessity to their respective masters. Their
audiences under-appreciate their worth. Theseus repeatedly expresses a
desire to be entertained, but he engages the activity with aloof
disinterest as soon as the actual presentation begins. Likewise a prince
once enamored of Falstaff, Henry V spurns his old friend Falstaff once
Henry assumes his new role as king. Despite the fools’ cleverness,
insight, and entertainment value, their masters dismiss them as non-
essential elements of their world. It may be some solace to these fools,
however, that Shakespeare recognizes their value to the thematic unity of
his dramatic enterprise.
One apparent motif in 2 Henry IV is the tension between the new and old.
Hastings, the Archbishop, and others seek to overthrow the old ways of
the old King, Henry IV. At the same time, young Prince Harry who “hast
stol’n that [crown] which after some few hours / Were thine without
offense” (2 Henry IV, IV.v.101-102) is eager to take the power and
privileges that were his father’s. It is an issue of the old kingdom and
the younger, perhaps more vital, rebels who yearn to control the English
nation. This struggle is embodied in the heft of Falstaff, Prince
Harry’s aging but rabble-rousing friend who cannot resist hyperbole,
punnery, or conflict. His first words in the play reflect his
dilapidation as well as that of his king and his country. “Sirrah, you
giant, what says the doctor to my water?” (2HIV, I.ii.1-2), he asks his
page, requesting a diagnosis of his urine that would reveal interior,
unseen difficulties. His response is equally indicative for an aging man
and a kingdom soon to be faced with revolt: “The water itself was a good
healthy water, but for the party that ow’d it, he might have moe diseases
than he knew for.” (2HIV, I.ii.3-5) England may still appear to operate
smoothly, but the sickness of rebellion is in the process of eating away
the kingdom’s stability. Falstaff becomes with his first lines a
breathing, ailing incarnation of England’s body politic, a body “blasted
with antiquity” (2HIV, I.ii.184). The same could be said of the King, but
it is more convenient and less overt for Shakespeare to draw parallels
between the King and a fool than to have a character directly berate the
King’s condition. The King-as-State truism applies as well in drama as
it does in history, but the former allows for the manipulation of a
literary device (Falstaff) to craft a more eloquent, more intriguing
metaphor.
Falstaff mirrors the King, who wants to believe his kingdom is healthy
and energetic, despite the presence of rebels who know otherwise.
Falstaff, too, wants to possess at once the better traits of the old and
the young. He speaks at length of his facial hair as a symbol of age and
accomplishment, and gibes the prince because Falstaff “will sooner have a
beard grow in the palm of [his] hand than [Harry] shall get one of his
cheek” (2HIV, I.ii.20-22). But Falstaff later insists that “you that are
old consider not the capacities of us that are young” (2HIV, I.ii.173-
175) and that he is “only old in judgment and understanding” (2HIV,
I.ii.192). The Chief Justice assails this blind self-assessment,
demanding of Falstaff, “Is not your voice broken, your wind short,...your
wit single...and will you yet call yourself young?” (2HIV, I.ii.183-185).
King Henry is in no better condition than Falstaff. His words lose their
impact, he hasn’t the energy needed to maintain strong leadership, and
his intelligence is not what it was once. Even Prince Harry admits, “My
father is sick” (2HIV, II.ii.40).
The rebels continue the metaphor of man as state, as if they could gain
power through a rebellion of words. “I think we are so a body strong
enough,/ Even as we are, to equal with the King,” (2HIV, 1.3.66-67)
Hastings concludes. He continues noteworthy synecdoche of “King” for
“King’s army” as he draws a picture of the sickly King: “So is the
unfirm King/ In three divided.” The King saps his own strength in
fighting the French, Glendower, and Hastings. The rebels expect his
resources to drain until “his coffers sound/ With hollow poverty and
emptiness” (2HIV, I.iii.74-75), a crisis which Falstaff must deal with as
“consumption of the purse” (2HIV, I.ii.235). Matter financial as well
as political are incorporated into the metaphor.
Falstaff progresses to a dramatic representation of the King’s armies in
Act II, Scene i, in which the hostess demands Falstaff be charged for her
losses. With the conviction of insurrectionists, appropriately dubbed
Fang and Snare decide to arrest Falstaff despite the possibility that “it
may chance cost some of us our lives” (2HIV, II.i.11). For his part,
Fang is brave enough to resolve, “If I can close with him, I care not for
his thrust” (2HIV, II.i.18). That same kind of resolve is evident in
the scene immediately prior in which the Hastings confides, “That he
should draw his several strengths together and come against us...need not
to be dreaded” (2HIV, I.iii.76-77), thus cementing another parallel
between Falstaff and the King. The attempt to seize Falstaff is made
just before Gower deliver’s the news of the recent battle (2HIV,
II.ii.132). Falstaff embodies the forces of the King even until he
captures Colevile in Act IV. After Prince John identifies Colevile as “a
famous rebel,” and the reader could assume an exemplary one, Falstaff
boasts “a famous true subject took him” (2HIV, IV.iii.63-64). The two
are paired as symbolic representatives of the opposing forces, the loyal
and the rebel, the old and new.
Despite his image of himself as “Fortune’s steward” (2HIV, V.iii.130),
Falstaff does not obtain the dramatic importance he expects. To the
contrary, the new King Henry V rejects old Falstaff and his “ill white
hairs” (2HIV, V.v.48) and advises that Falstaff “presume not that I am
the thing I was” (2HIV, V.v.56), emphasizing the continued tension
between Falstaff, a symbol of the old, and Prince Harry, recent King, a
symbol of the new. Harry awakes from his youth and breaks away from his
vision of “a kind of man,...so old, and so profane,” and he “despises”
this dream (2HIV, V.v.50-61) so much, he banishes it. The King deems
insignificant aged Falstaff, who although perhaps the strongest thematic
device of the play, ceased to please. Forsaken, Falstaff can respond
only with the utterance of another theme, Christ-like, “My lord, my lord
—”
• • •
Puck would have his audience believe that the acting troupe, the
collective fool of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is as easy to dismiss as a
dream. Because their subject is far less serious that Falstaff’s in 2
Henry IV, the troupe worries it will be laughable and offend its
audience. Puck addresses the living audience of Midsummer Night, but his
final soliloquy could be as easily addressed to Theseus and Hippolyta,
who were in danger of being insulted.

If we shadows have offended

Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but slumb’red here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend. (MND, V.i.423-429)

The actors retell their story with a devoted lightheartedness deserving

of their “most lamentable comedy.” Quince the carpenter and Bottom the
weaver build and weave a narrative of their own, almost as if they were
in the audience for the first four acts. Commingling the old tale of
Pyramus and Thisby with the (for them) contemporary adaptation of Helen
and Lysander, the troupe fits exactly the role of the fool: they add a
curious, creative perspective to a familiar, though complex, situation.
The blundering of “Limander” and “Helen” for “Leander” and “Hero” (MND,
V.i.195-196 & note), reveals both the troupe’s and Shakespeare’s pointed
intention in presenting Pyramus and Thisby. To further back the parallel
structurally, Thisby’s inquiring, “Asleep, my love?/ What, dead, my
dove?” matches Helen’s “Dead or asleep? I see no blood, no wound”
(II.ii.100) to sleeping Lysander.
Especially for this setting, Theseus offers a perfect definition of
the fool. “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet/ Are of imagination all
compact” (MND, V.i.7-8). All three of these, the actors impress upon
their audience a story that is both comic and tragic, and present it in a
sad and yet laughable manner. They are fools who must worry about
offending their audience despite their announced “good will,” and despite
their interpretation of Helen and Lysander. The troupe, like Falstaff
the banished comic, nears the pathetic. The royal audience, even the
living audience, cannot determine whether it is best to laugh, cry, or
dismiss the players. Their performance is reductive and a bit
simplistic, but it captures an element of the play and translates it into
a secondary narrative to the amusement of its various audiences. Theseus
has little beyond punnery to offer the performance, except that it was
“very notably discharg’d” (MND, V.i.360-361), and so dismisses them to
bed as Henry V dismisses Falstaff to prison. The fools occupy each play
to construct and carry the thematic burden, only to face the
dissatisfaction of their plot-driving masters.