Discovering Shakespeare’s
Meaning
Chapter.5 Parallel Actions
김선이, 최혜민, 채수은, 김홍철, 전지이, 김대운
Parallel Action
• SP’s plays: usually trace 2-3 sequence of events
-> Characters- contact with one another
Ex) Much Ado About Nothig
Hero& Claudio
- Beatrice & Benedick - echoed
As You Like It is
Rosalind& orlando
- Phebe& Silvius, Touchstone & Audrey
Celia & Oliver - echoed
• The function of multiple plotting varies from
play to play
• The secondare actions/ the subsidery actions:
- Duplicate the events of the main plot
- Universalizing the issue involved
- Or, contrast: view from a different
perspective
• Contribution to meaning of the whole
- Not only
ramification of events
- But
though the relationship between
those events, forms principal
focus of audience attention.
• King Lear
- Most notable parallel plot
Main plot + repeated on a slightly lower social level
Main plot
King Lear-> is deceived by two treacherous daughters ->
vanished loyal daughter, Cordelia
Sub plot
Earl of Gloucester -> deluded disloyal son, Edmund ->
banished loving son, Edgor
• Both cases
-Unnatural offspring: Turn on their fathers
-Undergo a period of physical & mental suffering
before being succoured by their loyal children
-Reaching some understanding
prior to their death
Reinforced b y a more complex web
of correspondences
• Lear
- Most deceived while
sane
- Fuller understanding
through madness
• Gloucester
-Sees least when he
has sight
-Comes to perceive
when blind
• Function of duplicatoin is complex
• Simplest level: universalize the events of the main plot
• Lear’s experience = One man’s experience
-When paralleled by another man in same society
* The experience is generalized
* Becomes applicable to all fathers
• Lear as King is perverse
- > Unnatural dislocation of family relationship in the
sub- plot world
- > Unnatural state brought into being by the abnormal
conduct of king
• Parallel
-Gloucester plot: elevating the central figure
-Lear’s act: made more fully comprehensible
• Parallel
-Principal methods of plot construction in
Renaissance drama as a whole
-Correspondences, impossible to overlook
• Elizabethan-Jacobean theatrical conventions
-less obtrusive, unfamiliar
-other aspects of the dramatic technique appear to
approximate to those of our own age
-use of soliloquy
-emphasis on the personal experience of the central
figure
-psychological based interpretation focused view of
the hero himself
•
Psychological case history is to distort it
•
Elizabethan-Jacobean drama
-revenge play evolved through: multiplicity of plots
1. Vengeance of one individual precipitating plot
2. Counter-plot throughout the social group
Ex) Spanish Tragedy
Vengeance – revenge for Don Andrea lead to violent action> Lorenzo, Bel-imperia, Hieronimo
Antonio’s Revenge: Similar to Hamlet
5 revengers-> Villain, Piero
• SP’s play + revenge genre
• 4 revengers
-all concerned with the death of a father
-subject to some delay in the execution of
their purpose
*Hamlet, Fortin bras, Pyrrhus, Laertes
• Judgments made by the audience are
not identical
• Pyrrhus- overlooked
The play within a play diminishes
Pyrrhus’s reality within the drama
structure
Act 2, scene 2:
-line 328-358, 364, 376-398, 427-428
The lengthy introduction to the players in
relation to the performance of The
Murder of Gonzago in the following act,
Hamlet hopes to make clausius reveal his
guilt.
Speeches:
-considerable significance in relation to the theme of the
play
-no way advance the central action
• Complete revenge play in miniature
• Correspond to Hamlet it self
Hamlet
-Recite the opening passage: Pyrrhus is described
-Heightening the audience’s awarencess of the parallet
between the persons of the play world and those of
the play within the play
-Inviting comparison between the two
• Objective evidence
The vengeance of Prrhus: complicates
Act 2, scene 2: 446-459
Hamlet begins with a false start:
Effect- naturalistic
But- misquotation initiates image strands followings
Hyrcanian beast= Tiger, predatory animal
Black & red,
Rugged= Tiger recalled, emphasis on blood
Sable= Prrhus called himself, black, night, dread
Heraldry more dismal= blackness
Total gules= red
Horridly tricked with blood, pasted with ‘gore’
Two colors
= black & red represent the darkness and flames of hell
Expressions of Parallel
Actions in Hamlet
•
Barbarous and diabolic nature
of revenger
+
The human worth of his victims
Ex. -Shakespeare used
‘fathers, mothers, daughters, sons’(454)
->stressing natural bonds and the loss
involved through death for whole family group.
- The king (target of the revenge)
: Power and authority (X)
Age and Kinship (O)
The king and his sword
• The king
- The object of vengeance+ the impotence
and dignity of ageing majesty
• His sword
- antique(465),Rebellious to his arm(466),
Unequal match’d’(467),Unnerved(470)
+
His ancient and inherited office
father(470), His head is milky(474),
reverend(475)
Hecuba
• Streesed Violation of natural bonds
+ Human vulnerability
• Herself (As a wife and mother)
- No sign to show her high class
: Barefoot(501), cloth on her head instead of a
diadem(502-3), clasped blanket on her(504-5)
-> To the audience
- Feel pity(Her appearance)
+
dissatisfaction(The witness of murder)
• Correspondence between
“Dramatis person of Hamlet itself”
+
“The play-within-the-play”
invites the audience to
- consider relationship between two
- apply deduction about one to the
another
Relationship between play and
playlet
• To receive a further dimension &
additional point of correspondence
between play and playlet
Ex : Precipitate as Pyrrhus’ vengeance =
like Hamlet’s
->not accomplished without delay
• Emblematic representation of Hamlet’s posture
- The capacity to exact vengeance
-> The will of the revenger paralysed.
• Pyrrhus’ conduct (The significance of the
parallel lies)
- Tyrant(476) + Reverend(475) old man
- His hesitation
: An act of clemency or divine intervention(x)
: The prelude to an act of violence with machinelike pitilessness
• The audience might think that the task
before Hamlet is no easy one.
-> However, Hamlet himself does not view
the player’s speeches from the same
perspective as the audience.
-The audience: appalled by the horrific act
-Hamlet: impressed by the First player
reflects on the discrepancy
between
his own responses to actual experience
& the player’s response
• Outside the play world understand
->Why Hamlet complain himself for his
indifference & Fallacy of his position
• The Player’s emotion->Self-generated.
Not a response to experience.
Examples
• Hamlet
-himself pointed out in a soliloquy
• His mother
-”Like Niobe, all tears”(I.ii.149) before
getting marry
->External shows of emtion
: is not a true grief
• Soliloquy
- Widens the gulf between the spectaor’s
perceptions & those of the speaker.
Ex. Hamlet’s inability to respond to his
father’s murder
• Without the playlet(preceding the
soliloquy)
- The audience: accept this conclusion
-
parallel revenger
• The term used to explain the relationship
between Young Hamlet, Young Fortinbras and
Elder Hamlet, Elder Fortinbras. image that is
projected of the parallel revenger is a negative
one.
• Both Elder Fortinbras and Elder Hamlet die at
another man's hand, the Norwegian (Elder
Fortinbras) was killed honorably the Dane(Elder
Hamlet) dishonorably by an act of treachery.
• Superficial level-contrast between the
violent ends of the two kings suggests that
vengeance for the death of a father is not
necessarily morally justifiable.
• Fortinbras and his uncle are shown in a
relationship which is pretty similar to
hamlet and Claudius's relationship.
fortinbras
hamlet
-
his uncle
claudius
• The captain of the army from Norwey have a
conversation with hamlet, and they talk about
the value of the land that fortinbras is trying
to get back. The captain sees the land
fortinbras is about to fight for as having 'no
profit but the name'. (as being worthless as
farm land and valueless on the open market.)
This is th' impostume of much wealth and peace,
that inward breaks, and shows no cause without
why the man dies,
(27-9)
contrast between his conduct and
that of the Norwegian prince
• the judgement of speaker and listener begin to
diverge. hamlet offers two possible explanations for his
delay in exacting vengeance
1. bestial oblivion
2. thinking too precisely on th'event'
Neither explanation can be fully endorsed by the
audience. As hamlet himself has just pointed out , it is
the extent to which man applies his reason that is the
measure of his 'godlike' nature.
•
contrast between his objective and subjective responses to what he has
witnessed
Negative
When speaking to the captain, he uses the word negatively:
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw!
This is th' impostume of much wealth and peace- (25-7)
Positive
When he contrasts fortinbras' conduct with his own the context
is positive:
Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But
greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake.
(53-6)
Different response of Hamlet
and Laertes
• Hamlet: Though he censures himself for inaction, has
tested the truth of the ghost's accusation and is
therefore assured that the man he is seeking to bring
down is, in fact, his father's murderer.
• Laertes: rushing, by contrast, to the headlong
vengeance that Hamlet longs to take, mistakes the
source of the wrong that has been done to him and is
poised to commit not merely an unjust act in killing an
innocent man, but a rebellious one in unlawfully
overthrowing the head of state.
Effect of Laertes' action
• :provides an implicit comment upon hamlet's more
guarded pursuit of vengeance. His eruption into the
court serves, like that of Pyrrhus in the trojan playlet,
to elevate the monarch he opposes and to generate
sympathy for his queen. He is referred to consistently
as the king' he himself suggests that his person is
hedged about by a 'divinity' that disables aggression;
• Laertes, in a blind fury, explicitly allies himself with
the powers of darkness, and asserts his readiness
to hazard his soul in the pursuit of vengeance:
How came he dead ? I'll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I'll be reveng'd
Most throughly for my father. (130-6)
Laertes
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my
arms;
And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
The blasphemous
connotation
Claudius
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
( ACT IV SCENE V 145-148 )
Claudius
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
Laertes
Why ask you this?
Claudius
Not that I think you did not love your father;
But that I know love is begun by time;
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much: that we would do
We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
( ACT IV SCENE VII 106-122 )
Application to Hamlet
Positive value of delay
~what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than in words?
Laertes
To cut his throat i' the church.
Claudius
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds.
(ACT IV SCENE VII 124-129)
Application to Hamlet , again
Claudius
Most generous and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise
Requite him for your father.
dishonourable vengeance
Laertes
I will do't:
And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.
(ACT IV SCENE VII 135-148)
Hamlet’s generosity of spirit
Hamlet
I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
(ACT II SCENE II 581-584)
Relationship between
appearance and reality
LAERTES
It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour of life;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise
Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.
(ACT V SCENE II 317-324
)
The final confrontation
between the two men and
the vengeance of both
Vengenance of Hamlet
• Hamlet’s vengenance :
•
He himself doesn’t plan or contrive the
murder of Claudius and he doesn’t rush
into headlong action
•
He constantly test the truth of the
Ghost’s assertions and neglect the
opportunity to kill Claudius since he was
praying
• He came to content to see himself that
he is part of the providential plan too,
rather than an instigator of actions.
• Hamlet believed that ‘divinity shapes our
ends’ and ascribe the death of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to
providential plan
• Therefore, the vengeance that he finally
executes is planned not by him but by
Claudius, or by the providential acting
through him.
• Thus he is freed from both blame and
self-reproch for Claudius’ death, and
succeeds in killing his adversary without
diminishing himself or elevating his
opponent.
Hamlet’s character
• Readers and audience are lead to the view
that he is inherently noble man, tainted by
the world he inhabits and thus incapable of
acting coherently in it.
• With the examples of Pyrrhus, Fortinbras,
and Laertes before him the reader or
spectator cannot regard Hamlet’s failure to
sweep to his revenge as a flaw, when those
who embrace this course of action are
presented as animalistic and diabolic
Audience awareness
• On the one hand, the reader or audience
is encouraged to participate in Hamlet’s
self-disgust through his soliloquies, and
to share his desire to extirpate the evil
which Claudius embodies.
• On the other hand, they are made aware
of the danger to the individual implicit in
the exaction of vengeance, and feels
concern for the moral safety of Hamlet
• The audience are led to confront the issues
that Hamlet struggles, and they struggle
through him, too.
• They face the problem of reconciling the
need to fulfill the injunctions for the Ghost
with the viciousness of private vengeance.
• They also think over the attributes which
distinguish the central figure from the
subsidiary revengers, which differentiate a
man from a beast.
Thought journey of Hamlet
• Thinking too precisely on the ‘event’ is the key
feature that makes differences between the Prince
and Pyrrhus, Frotinbras and Laertes.
• Thought journey leads him to a recognition of the
inevitability of death, the incomprehensibility of
human life, and to the existence of a divinity that
‘shapes our ends’
• Audiences, faced with an unthinking Pyrrhus,
Fortinbras, and Laertes, recognize the distance
between the Prince and his fellow revengers and
think his thought journey is not of the diseased will
fo the protagonist but of his human greatness.
The use of parallel actions
• It is not exclusive to the tragedies and
other ‘problem plays’ all feature
complementary plots which contribute to
the definition of character.
• The relationship between these primary and
secondary areas of interest does not,
however, remain constant
• Ex) King Lear, exemplifies a kind of
structure by a process of repetition while
Hamlet contrast the conduct of a series of
figures placed in a similar situation.
• In Measure for Measure, the relationship
between main and subplot characters
evolves in a different direction.
• Ex) Hamlet starts from the point of
likeness and moves towards the
revelation of difference
• Ex) Measure for Measure, starts from
the point of difference and moves
towards the recognition of likeness.
Measure for Measure
• Its outset appears with the most and least
idealistic figures.
• Angelo is a man of rigid self-discipline,
whose public virtue is such he is entrusted
by the Duke with the task of purging
Vienna of vice.
• He is determined to administer strict,
impartial justice in the interests of the
whole community.
• The law Angelo is attempted to uphold is
an edict against fornication.
• The two groups of the enforcements of
the process – a pair of lovers, Claudio
and Juilet, and the associates of a bawd,
Mistress Overdone.
• Claudio and Juilet are betrothed, but they don’t
wait until they are publicly bestowed and
expecting a baby before it.
• Lucio, who has exact opposite personality to
Angelo, is one of Mistress Overdone’s principal
customers. He embraces the promptings of the
flesh with no sense of guilt.
• However, the distance between Angelo, Claudio
and Lucio is narrowed when Isabella, Claudio’s
sister is induced to plead with Angelo on her
brother’s behalf.
Change in positions of Three men
Angelo
fornication
Claudio, Lucio
Angelo, Claudio,
Lucio
Parallel Actions in
Measure for Measure
1. Progress of Angelo
: subverts the spectator’s initial preconceptions
about the nature of the play world.
Outset : Simple Oppositon between reformers(good)
and those in need of reformation(bad).
Angelo’s surrender to passion for Isabella
Simplistic division of mankind into good and bad is
rapidly overthrown.
(1) Good  Bad
fornication , perjury
(II.iv.159, V.i.232-7)
a.
b.
Fallibility of the most selfdiciplined and most
idealistic of men has
been exposed.
Human failings-lust,
mendacity, cowardicethat link an Angelo to a
Lucio have been revealed.
(2) Bad  Good
Positive aspects of the less
virtuous charact-ers have
emerged.
a. Claudio (I.ii.117-22, III.i.170)
; a capacity for repentance
cf. Angelo (V.i.364-72)
; only belatedly exhibits repentance
b. Lucio (I.iv.16-84, II.ii.25-162)
; treats Isabella with greate
respect
; goes to considerable length
to save Claudio’s life
In short,
the pure and the impure emerge,
by the final act, as mere mortal men,
compounded of both vices and virtues,
and with capacity for both good and evil.
2. Careers of Angelo’s fellow fornicators
: contribute to the exploration of a central problem
– administration of justice.
three men are supposed to be executed by the law
though the offences the three men commit are
similar, the attitudes and intentions of those that
commit them are radically different
(1) Angelo
(2) Claudio
(3) Lucio
(1) Angelo
: blackmails a chaste woman into going to bed
with him.
-> involved in the gross abuse of both his
office and another person
-> instrumental in the violation of a religious
commitment (Isabella was in the process of
entering a convent)
: motivated not by love, but by lust
: his attitude are violent and unhealthy
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;
Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes
That banish what they sue for. Redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will;
Or else he must not only die the death,
But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To ling’ring sufferance. (II.iv.160-6)
(2) Claudio
: by contrast, loves and is loved by Juliet.
: The imagery surrounding their relationship
contrast forcibly with that employed by Angelo.
(They are married in the eyes of God in that
they are betrothed, while their union is
naturally fruitful in outcome)
Fewness and truth; ‘tis thus:
Your brother[i.e. Claudio] and his lover have embrac’d,
As those that feed grow full, as blssoming time
That from the seedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry. (I.iv.39-44)
(3) Lucio
: his attitudes have more in common with Angelo’s
than Claudio’s (Both are motivated by lust)
: However, Lucio’s offence is casual.
a. Angelo acts with a consciousness of sin
b. Lucio
- has no sense of guilt
- has nothing but contempts for his partner in
them
Lucio. I was once before him [the Duke] for getting a
wench with child.
Duke. Did you such a thing?
Lucio. Yes, marry, did I; but I was fain to forswear it;
they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.
(IV.iii.167-72)
Parallel Offences of Angelo,
Claudio, and Lucio
Expose the limitations of justice
Require a much more subtle concept of
justice
Problem of administering justice in a fallen
world
Parallel offences of three men
1. exposes the limitations of Angelo’s proposition that
every crime should have its allotted punishment.
give evidence of human fallibility in the same way
However, Degree of culpability is radically different.
a. Angelo : to violate
b. Lucio : exploits
c. Claudio : wish to establish an enduring and
sanctified relationship
Misdemeanours of the three man
intentions ( gravity of the offence)
Similar
distinguished
2. failings call for a much more subtle
concept of justice
3. Problem of administering justice in a
fallen world
- all men are culpable and no man
inveterately vicious
Parallel actions allowing right
perception
1. The main plot of the Measure for Measure
may exist alone without the parallel plots
2. But, without the parallel actions M f M would
be a different kind of play.
a. would focus on one idiosyncratic experience
b. might be seen as the tragedy of Angelo
3. Seething background supplied by Claudio
and Lucio ensures the career of Angelo is not
perceived in these terms.
Parallel actions
a. define the nature of human beings
b. expose the failings common to all men
c. the centre of interest shifts from the
outstanding individual and the problem he
confronts to the problem itself.
 Measure for Measure : a play about justice
Conclusion
1. Although we cannot say parallel actions carry
the entire meaning of any play, the richness of
Shakespeare’s designs owes much to the
variations that are woven around a central
theme.
2. Of the three plays discussed in this chapter,
-Hamlet is the one which can best survive the
loss of its parallel plots.
-King Lear would be much less horrifying.
-Measure for Measure would be far less
intellectually challenging.
Conclusion
3. Hamlet is also a very important
composition when viewed in its entirety.
: not only explores a unique sensibility but
simultaneously holds up a series of mirrors
to the seeming irresolution of its central
figure – mirrors which reverse conventional
assumptions about action and retribution,
and transform a culpable failure of will into
a towering moral achievement – it becomes
a much more profound and original work.