Shakespeare's Tragic Skepticism

Abstract

Millicent Bell. Shakespeare's Tragic Skepticism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. xvii + 283 pp. $26.00 (cl). ISBN: 0-300-09255-5 (d). Reviewed by David L Orvis In Shakespeare's Tragic Skepticism, MUlicent BeU offers an insightful reading of Shakespeare's great tragedies by concentrating specifically on an aspect of these plays that has vexed scholars for centuries: the problem of motivation and causality. Her introduction foregrounds her argument—that "what might seem the great artist's bumbles or omissions" (22) are actuaUy manifestations ofShakespeare's philosophic skepticism—and before she actuaUy engages in a close reading oíHamlet, Othello, KingLear, and Macbeth, she maps out the ideological conditions ofearly modern England which support modes ofthinking "verging upon nihilism" (2). Though BeU's introduction retreads territory famUiar to scholars trained in the literature and culture of the Renaissance , she revisits anxieties ofthe period (such as those caused by theologicaUy threatening revelations in astronomy) to Ulustrate a pervasive sense of uncertainty in Shakespeare's lifetime. Buttressing these observations, Bell briefly details in her introduction incidents such as plagues, eclipses, and famines that destabUized notions ofa ruling cosmic order. The subsequent epistemological nightmare was, according to Bell, a concern not only ofShakespeare's works but also ofthe Essaies ofMichel de Montaigne, and in arguing for verifiable intertextuality between the works of these artists, Bell furthermore endeavors to show how Montaigne's writings influenced (or at the very least are in concert with) Shakespeare's phUosophic skepticism. The dramatist shares Montaigne's implementation of dialectical or dialogical thought, and the result in Shakespeare's great tragedies is an invitation "to question, from moment to moment, the inherited, standard truths ofhis time" and "to view fearfuUy the results ofabandoning the prop ofsuch beliefs" (5). These perceptions of thought and knowledge permeate Shakespeare 's plays, and in Bell's opinion they are the key to understanding prob- ORVIS ft 131 lematic facets of Shakespeare's works such as Hamlet's delay in avenging his father's death and Lear's decision to divide his kingdom among his daughters. BeU foUows her rousing introduction with a reading oíHamlet that focuses on loci of scholarly contention in the play: she spends the bulle of the chapter dealing with questions ofmotivation, namely how one cannot ascertain a distinct cause-and-effect relationship linking Hamlet's vows ofrevenge to his eventual enactment ofsuch vows. In fact, BeU criticizes scholars' efforts to understand fuUywhythe tragic hero delays before murdering his uncle: "There is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare meant us to guess at any impediment to prompter action" (42). She conversely argues that Hamlet's contemplation ofrevenge without immediate action represents Shakespeare's disbeliefin the "existence ofconsistent character" (62-3), a concept Montaigne investigates in his essay "Ofthe Inconstancie ofOurActions," which Shakespeare would have likely read in Florio's translation ofthe French phUosopher. To elucidate this claim, we are pointed toward Hamlet's famous solUoquies, which indeed demonstrate an unstable and contradictory sense ofself. What is as important for BeU, however, is that the tragic hero's ruminations are disconnected from the plot and thus faU to further it: "In contrast with the realist logic operating in his sources, most ofthe events ofthe play do not have obvious causes but succeed one another disconnectedly" (45). Hamlet's delay, therefore, is not problematic but rather representative ofthe human condition. This is also BeU's approach in the chapters dealing with Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Her interpretations are fascinating, and her treatment of moments regarded too often as artistic faUures is on the whole cogent and persuasive. She is particularly convincing when she moves beyond suggesting a preponderance ofphUosophic skepticism in the play's plots to demarcating specific characters (such as lago and Edmund, for example) who consciously, aggressively irritate, question, and subvert any perceptions of consistency or causality. BeU rightly notes, for instance, that Edmund momentarUy achieves the metacognitive depth of lago or Hamlet in his "skepticism about aU ideal conceptions, about love and virtue, about the ordained hierarchy of nature and society" (168). Granted, Edmund is the viUain ofthe play, but he is also the only character in KingLear who rejects natural order...