"Their Tragic Scene": The Phoenix and Turtle and Shakespeare's Love Tragedies

Abstract

ULIET'S What's a name? is an expression of one of By Shakespeare's most persistent poetic interests: that of describ* j T w ing a person, quality, or emotion by suggesting that the pow* OiJ Mt , ers of ordinary communication are not sufficient the task. * l Her apostrophe functions dramatically the scene, of course, for Juliet does not know that Romeo can hear her; but the speech draws attention an aspect of literary composition which obviously intrigued Shakespeare throughout his career. Theseus describes it as part of the poet's function, as a challenge of articulation-to give to airy nothing / A local habitation and a (Dream V. i. i6-I7). The tricks of strong imagination, he goes on, demand a localization of emotion, so that capriciously imagining some fear a dark night, how easy is a bush suppos'd a bear! In larger terms, Theseus' subject is the tenuous reliability of language name something, whether Montague's son or the composite of emotions called love. For the recognition of truth, our folly-prone perceptions need some helping grace similar that required by the poetic vocabulary for accurate definition of intangibles; Theseus' speech comes near the end of a play full of the comical results of human and fairy blindnesses. The problem suggests more than the causes of laughter. The deceptions and follies of comedy, even as they delight us A Midsummer Night's Dream, are not distant from those frailties of human perception which, Shakespeare's tragedies, frequently prevent distinction between good and evil by appearances alone. We cannot separate Shakespeare's intense poetic curiosity the problem of identifying the truth with words from his conviction, as a responsible human being, that it must be set forth, implicitly, a moral context. In spite of Elizabethan coutesy books, Richard of Gloucester and Claudius are villains while they smile, and the horror Shakespeare desired raise Iago's not what I am may have been greater than we realize. Again and again characters probe into the defining characteristics of love, hate, beauty, or constancy-that which is in a name-frequently their own bewilderment. Occasionally the device does not ring true, and Shakespeare's interest will outstrip the verbal requirements of a scene: Romeo laments,