The Collapse of Shakespeare’s High Style in The Two Noble Kinsmen

Abstract

T H E C O L L A P S E O F S H A K E S P E A R E ’ S H I G H S T Y L E I N T H E T W O N O B L E K I N S M E N A . LY N N E M A G N U SSO N University of Waterloo .Lhe ornate eloquence of Shakespeare’s share in The Two Noble Kinsmen has often drawn tributes to a play that has not recommended itself to directors:1 The first and last acts . . . of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which, in point of composition, is perhaps the most superb work in the language, and beyond all doubt from the loom of Shakspeare, would have been the most gorgeous rhetoric, had they not happened to be something far better. The supplications of the widowed Queens to Theseus, the invocations of their tutelar divinities by Palamon and Arcite, the death of Arcite, &c. are finished in a more elaborate style of excellence than any other almost of Shakspeare’s most felicitous scenes. In their first intention, they were perhaps merely rhetorical; but the furnace of comparison has transmuted their substance . . . into the pure gold of poetry.2 Thomas De Quincey raises no questions about the dramatic utility of the high style. His hesitation between rhetoric and poetry apparently involves a distinction between degrees of stylistic virtuosity, not between verbal display and functional excellence. Other unqualified tributes depend on the same omission. Thomas Seward, an eighteenth-century editor of the play, says of the style: “The Play almost every where abounds with such sublimity of . . . Sentiment and Diction . . . that were the Beauties to be mark’d with Asterisms , after Mr. Pope and Mr. Warburton’s Manner, scarce a Page would be left uncover’d with them.” 3 It is not merely the critical bias of a time when editors expressed their appreciation for Shakespeare’s work by marking its scattered brilliances with asterisks which draws this kind of attention to The Two Noble Kinsmen. The many glossy speeches of the opening scene, Emilia’s prettily embroidered set speech about her pre-pubescent affection for Flavina in I.iii, Palamon’s savagely ironic prayer to Venus in V.i, Pirithous’s mock-heroic oration on the dancing horse that throws Arcite in V.iv; the Shakespearean portion of the play is full of virtuoso pieces, so wide-ranging in tone and manner as to tend towards disparate and unrelated ends. The “gorgeous rhetoric” which De Quincey and Seward praise is E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , x iii, 4, December 1987 precisely what has been censured by Una Ellis-Fermor: “imagery that sur­ prises by a fine excess, but turns out to have more brilliance than potency, to dazzle, rather than to illuminate.. . . the skill of the author seems to be deployed mainly in order to dazzle and bemuse us.”4 Perhaps the distinction that is needed here is between “ the pure gold of poetry” and dramatic language, or between a language that puts words themselves on show and a language that is the servant of dramatic contexts. Ellis-Fermor’s paper, pub­ lished posthumously, does not furnish the evidence for her negative evalua­ tion of the play’s language, but she does suggest the need to look at contextual use: the stylistic qualities “must be examined afresh in relation to the purpose of the play; their function in the work of art, or the failure of function, must be diagnosed.” 5 In this paper I will consider to what ends Shakespeare’s verbal skill is deployed in the opening and final scenes of the play.6 I The language of the first scene is symptomatic of the play’s “gorgeous rhetoric.” The Two Noble Kinsmen begins with a dazzling theatrical display, extravagant in its spectacle, ornate in its rhetoric. Although Shakespeare has introduced masque elements into all of his late plays, in no other play does spectacle make such a bold statement before words are spoken. A marriage procession enters. Attendants strew flowers as blessings...