Tragedy and the Crisis of Authority in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

Tragedy and the Crisis of Authority in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Peter C. Herman S A N D I E G O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y On the one hand, the early modern period did not lack for aclear definition of tragedy.!InthededicatoryepistletoSeneca’sTenneTragedies(1581),Thomas Newton,thetranslator,defendstragedyagainstitsdetractorsonthegroundsof moral instruction:^ ForitmaynotatanyhandbethoughtanddeemedthedirectmeaningofSENECA himself,whosewholewrytynges(pennedwithapeerlesssublimityandloftinesse ofStyle)aresofarrefromcountenauncingVice,thatIdoubtwhethertherebee anyamongealltheCatalogueofHeathenwryters,thatwithmoregravityofPhUosophicallsentences ,morewaightynessofsappywords,orgreaterauthorityof soundmatterbeatethdownsinne,looselyfe,dissolutedealinge,andunbrydled sensuality: or that more sensibly, pithily and bytlngly layeth downe the guerdon of filthy lust, cloaked dissimulation, &odious treachery: which is the dryft, whereuntoheleveleththewholeyssueofechoneofhisTragedies ,(sig.A2v-r) An earlier translation of Seneca’s Oedipus by Alexander Nevyle (1563) is even morepreciseabouttheexpectationsoftragedy:“Mineonlyentent[intransating Seneca’stragedies]wastoexhortementoembraceVertueandshunVyce[...J (sig. a.n.). But whereas Nevyle focuses on all “men,” Sir PhUip Sidney, foUowing theMirrorforMagistrates,definestragedymorecloselyandmorepolitically: So that the right use of comedy wiU, Ithink, by nobody be blamed, and much less the high and excellent tragedy that openeth great wounds and showeth forth the ulcersthatarecoveredwithtissue,thatmakethkingsfeartobetyrants,and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humors, that with stirring the affects of admira tionandcommiserationteacheththeuncertaintyofthisworld,anduponhow weakfoundationsgildenroofsarebuilded,thatmakethusknow Qui sceptra saevus duro imperio regit, Timet timentes, metus in auctorem reditu Tragedyinallthesedefinitionsreflectsamorallyclearuniverseinwhichthere is abright red line separating “Vertue” from “vice,” and the genre’s point is unam¬ biguouslydidactic:toteachitsconsumerstoavoidcorruption,eithermoral or political, which also means obey your superiors, or you will face terrible IntertextSyVoX. 12, No. 1-2 2008 ©Texas Tech University Press 9 0 I N T E R T E X T S consequences. As such, the official message of tragedy overlaps with An Homilie agaynst Disobedience and Wylful Rebellion (1570): God “not only ordained that in families and households the wife should be obedient unto her husband, the chil¬ dren unto their parents, the servants unto their masters, but also [...] people should be obedient [to the ‘special governors and rulers’] God has appointed” (sig. Aiiiv). In both cases, offenses against moral or political order result in disas¬ ter. The theory of early modern tragedy thus closely anticipates Augusto Baol’s argument that Greek tragedy constituted aform of repression in that catharsis served to reinforce the status quo (130). Practice, however, was adifferent matter entirely. As both David Scott Kastan and Jean E. Howard have pointed out, once tragedy entered the public theatre, the certainties fall away and in their place we find “a veritable factory of experimenta¬ tion”(Howard,“Geography”50;seealsoKastan5-9andHoward,“Genre”298). Farfromconfirmingmoralpieties,Elizabethantragedyfromtheverystartinter¬ rogates them.4 To give but two examples, in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1585-1587), three out of the four versions of Don Andrea’s death (the exception being the mendacious narrative by Viluppo) demonstrate that Andrea’s death resulted from the fortunes of war, not misdeeds or murder. Andrea’s desire for revenge, consequently, has no legitimacy, and the play depicts aworld in which theimpulseforviolenceisalways,alreadypresent,butwithoutastablegroundor origin.ArdenofFavershamendswithaninnocentman,Bradshaw,executedalong withtheguiltypartiesforArden’smurder.“Mybloodbeonhisheadthatgivethe sentence!” are Bradshaw’s last words, but the Mayor does not care: “To speedy execution with them all!” (Sc. 18.38-39). Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Iwant to argue, fully participates in this rede¬ finition of tragedy as the contestation of values.^ More specifically, Iargue that RomeoandJuliet'sunsetdingquestionsabouttheefficacyofauthorityfiguresarise from the very specific historical circumstances of the Crisis of the 1590s, the periodofsignificantunrestcausedbythedisastrouscropfailuresofthatdecade. ThisconnectionhasbeenexploredbyChrisFitter,andIamgreatlyindebtedto hisexcellentarticle.Fitter,however,concentratesontheplay’sexplorationof class antagonism” and “social inequity” (163, 177), and therefore accords with otherscholarswhofindRomeoandJulietcritiquingoneaspectofElizabethan culture or another. Isuggest, however, that the play’s focus is in fact much wider and deeper than previously allowed. Drawing on the skepticism toward estab¬ lishedauthoritygreatlyintensifiedbytheCrisisofthe1590s,IsuggestthatShake¬ speare created atragedy in which he questions the major forms of conventional authority—secular, religious, parental, patriarchal—and all are found wanting.® The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet does not lie, as Laurence Stone once commented, in how “they brought destruction upon themselves by violating the norms of the society in which they lived” (70). Nor is it exclusively that “the norms themselves bringaboutthetragedy,”asSnyderargues(“Ideology”95).AssumingthatVerona mirrors England and that we are meant to use English, not Veronese, cultural 9 1 HERMAN: Tragedy and the Crisis of Authority in Romeo and Juliet expectations to interpret the play, it becomes evident that...