Abstract
My paper discusses the relationship between typical medieval and Tudor prologues and epilogues, in which a moralistic and didactic tone is common, and Shakespeare’s more nuanced early modern use of framing devices. The latter’s approach, I argue, is driven more by a heightened sense of poetics and dramatic functionality than by didacticism or homiletic sentiment. Nevertheless, a distinctly medieval ethos is palpable in his framing speeches, and my paper will explore the balance between such medieval elements and an early modern dramatic application. This begs the question why Shakespeare avails himself of the choric device in some plays but not in others. I make the case for the history and romance genres being associated with choric devices in Shakespeare’s dramas, to a much greater degree than comedy and tragedy. Through textual analysis of language, such as the use of archaism, as well as diction and versification choices in his framing speeches, this article charts Shakespeare’s skilful creation and deployment of a medieval and early modern hybrid.
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Notes
E.g. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral with its chorus of women of Canterbury.
E.g. Alfieri in Miller’s A View from the Bridge.
Both Schneider’s and Bruster and Weimann’s book-length studies offer broader accounts of prologues and epilogues in early modern plays, but in neither study does a closer analysis of Shakespeare’s use of framing devices across his body of dramatic writing seem to be the primary focus.
Chaucer’s presumably complimentary epithet for his supposedly more high-minded poetic contemporary, employed in the closing dedication (Book V, line 1856) of his narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde. See ‘O Moral Gower: Chaucer’s dedication of Troilus and Criseyde‘ by R. F. Yeager, The Chaucer Review Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1984), pp. 87–99.
Authorship of this Tudor interlude is sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall. See Peter Happé ed. Tudor Interludes, (1972, 223).
The dramatist can only be identified by the initials of the name. Authorship is sometimes attributed to Richard Bower. See Happé, ed. Tudor Interludes, 28–31 and 273.
Written by Ulpian Fulwell, probably 1568.
‘Drury-lane Prologue’ written by Johnson and delivered by David Garrick at the opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane, 1747. See Johnson, S. Preface to Shakespeare in H.R. Woudhuysen (Ed.) Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare. Penguin, 1990.
With reference to what we now think of as the Wars of the Roses tetralogy, it is worth noting that, apart from Richard’s self-presenting, in-character opening monologue in Richard III, the play-cycle does not use any framing device at all.
See Brian Vickers’s detailed and persuasive chapter on the history of the co-authorship debate in connection with Pericles and the methodologies for determining co-authorship in his Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays, referencing all the significant interventions: ‘Pericles with George Wilkins’ (Ch.5).
See Cooper (2004:105–7) for a clearly argued perspective on the Gower-Shakespeare connection.
A collaborative picaresque drama published in London the sane year as Pericles by John Wright Publishers in 1607. See also A. Parr, Ed. ‘The Travels of the English Brothers’. In Three Renaissance Travel Plays. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, pp. 55–134. Wilkins’s own prose tale version The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre, published the following year in 1608, made reference to the play, Pericles, and likewise employed the figure of Gower as presenter and narrator.
Anglo-French for latter-day coins (corners)—referring to ‘corners’ of the earth or all four directions. Gower’s three major works—as represented by the three books on his tomb in Southwark Cathedral—were in French, Latin and English respectively, signifying his special status as a trilingual medieval poet. Shakespeare and Wilkins’s passing use of French and Latin, in addition to Middle English, in Gower’s prologues is, therefore, not coincidental.
The prefix ‘y’ functioned as a past participle marker in Middle English, while the archaic negative coordinator ‘ne’ (later ‘nor’) and preposed complement in the phrase “aught escapen” were similarly redolent of Middle English usage.
Vickers, ibid. 304.
Berthelette’s 1532 and 1534 editions of the Confessio Amantis, Gower’s English-language magnum opus, featured numerous editorial notes and recensions.
If Shakespeare can be plausibly accused of stealing the Gower conceit from Greene’s non-dramatic and rather turgid Greene’s Vision, one might respond to the charge with the often quoted aphorism that “good artists borrow, whereas great artists steal.”
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Ingham, M. “Admit me Chorus to this history”: Shakespeare’s M.C.s and Choric Commentators—How Medieval, How Early Modern?. Neophilologus 103, 255–271 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-018-9576-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-018-9576-6