“Classifying Shakespeare’s Comic Heroes”
Shakespeare drew so many different comic heroes that to try to classify them would be an impossible task however for the sake of economy we can consider most Shakespeare’s comic heroes would fit into any of the three following groupings, that of the boaster, the fool or the scoundrel.
According to most critics the greatest among all the great characters Shakespeare ever drew are Hamlet, Shylock and Falstaff. As the subject of this essay is the classification of Shx’s comic heroes, Falstaff is the one that concerns us at the present time. Falstaff has been described as an alazon type, a boaster, an impostor. In “The Meanings of Comedy” Wylie Sypher following Arist’s reasoning in the chapter of his Ethics dedicated to the truth,defines comedy as a struggle (agon) in which the alazon or impostor, who claimed more than his share of the victory, was brought to confusion by the eiron or ironical man, who pretended ignorance. (“The alazon is a boaster who claims more than a share of the … victory”). And this can be seen in Henry IV, Pt 1, Act 2, sc. 4, 160-265 (190-280) Show the scene in which he boasts of / about having killed X number of people.). As we have just seen Falstaff claims to have been fighting with an ever increasing number of enemies while Hal pretends not to know anything about it. As soon as Falstaff begins to talk and notices he is listened to he grows himself up and starts swelling his lies upt to the point that his “two rogues in buckram suits” become eleven. (as Maurice Charney has pointed out) Falstaff is a comedian and great talker and “he is never at a loss for words” (64), because once he realizes everybody knows the truth / he has been taken in / he pretends he was in the know from the first moment. Because as Charney says Falstaff “always maintains his … resourcefulness.” “Falstaff is not only “an entertainer and a comic philosopher,” he is also “an indispensable spokesman for … life values” (64)). Because more than any other Shx’s hero /character Falstaff represents today’s values. Falstaff will always choose life. We have only to remember that Prince Hal before the battle tells Falstaff “Thou owest God a death” (v.1.126), but Falstaff’s soliloquizes that (quote): “´Tis not due yet” and goes on expressing his philosophy of honour. Contrary to what Cervantes thought about his loss of an arm
PRINCE HENRY.
Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit.]
SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.
'Tis not due yet; I would be loth to pay him before his day.
What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me?
Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if
honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set 5/1/130
to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a
wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What
is honour? a word. What is that word honour? air. A trim
reckoning!- Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he
feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then?
yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no.
Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of
it: honour is a mere scutcheon:- and so ends my catechism.
And this is Falstaff the greatest and most comic but not the only one of the alazon types that Shx created.
The second comic type we are going to analyse is the Fool. Many types of fool can be found in Shx’s plays but I am going to centre myself on the two extremes of the whole range /spectrum of fools that Shx designed: the wise or smart fool and the extremely stupid. The wise fool would be the one that Sypher calls the natural fool, whose mission was to divert “the wrath of the gods from the anointed figure of the king” (Sypher 39), that would help to explain why in King Lear the fool is the one to be hanged, if we take Lear’s words in the final scene as applied to his Fool also, not only to Cordelia. But if in tragedy the Fool was the scapegoat, the one to suffer the wrath of the gods, he was also the only one aloud to speak his mind. We have only to remember that in King Lear,Lear doesn’t accept the slightest piece of disagreement or criticism. Lear was capable of disowning his dearest daughter and exiling his most loyal knight only because they asked to reconsider, while he accepts the whole truth from the Fool’s mouth and in spite of his continues threats about the whip, he never uses it on him, as one critic has pointed out. Contrary to what happens in tragedy in Shx’s comedy the Fool is never punished and he is always in good standing with his master as it happens in act I, scene 5 of TN when Olivia defends Feste, her clown, from Malvolio’s criticism: “There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail” (94-95). This is the smart fool, the one capable to disarm / put down his opponent with his witticisms.
On the other extreme of the spectrum there was the extremely foolish, the simpleton. It is difficult to tell if Shakespeare enjoyed that type of humour or if he created these silly characters as a concession to the gallery, to the less cultivated part of the audience. Some of the punning and witty exchanges in Shakespeare’s plays are so elaborated that we readers or viewers without the help of many of those footnotes wouldn’t be able to understand, and this critic cannot believe that in Shakespeare time the whole audience caught the meaning of each one of the hundreds of witticisms Shakespeare used in every play /understood every single piece of witticism. And I like to believe that, not only for the sake of relieving tension, but also because Shakespeare took into account every member of his audience and tried to please or to give something to laugh about to each one of them. That would explain why he retorts to that kind of universal humour once and again. Shakespeare used many of these simpletons especially in his comedies, and of those I am going to focus on the mechanicals in MSND, described by Philostrate as “Hard-handed men that work in Athens here / Which never laboured in their minds till now” (V.i.72-73). The humour of this type of characters relies mainly on the use of malapropisms. So for Bottom a lion is a wild-fowl, or he chooses to say “obscenely” (I.2.100) when “seemly” would be a more proper word, and we should take into account / mention also in this very scene, the mechanicals’ (stupid) idea that the audience would believe them to be the roles they are playing of. As for ex. Bottom’s request that Snug the joiner tell the audience he is really a man and not a lion in order not to make the ladies afraid (MSND 3.1.38-43), or their confusion of the senses, especially on Bottom’s scriptural parody, on awakening after what he believes it was a dream:
The
eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,
man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive,
nor his heart to report, what my dream was! (IV.1.208-211)
However Bottom is not always stupid, he sounds pretty alert /down to earth / smart when after hearing Titania’s flatteries addressed to him, once she has been bewitched by Oberon, he answers (quote): (3.1.135-39):
Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: 3/1/120
and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little
company together now-a-days;- the more the pity that some
honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can
gleek upon occasion.
Some of the scenes of the Mechanicals have a lot potential for humour. And with all probability Shx allowed lots of freedom to his clowns. I assume the clown actor/s indulged in horse-playing and there was much public interaction. (Show for example the play within the play in the Hollywood version of MSND), and the meal in Pet’s house or talk a little about Elbow’s use of malapropisms, & show his picture.
According to Graham Holderness in his W Sh: Romeo and Juliet, that the term clown was usually applied in the Elizabethan texts to a basically comic minor character not to the professional jester (9). However in Shx’s plays this is not always the case, Twelfth Night’s Feste is called clown and not jester, while Trinculo of The Tempest is called jester, and there is a big difference between both characters; while Trinculo doubts if Caliban is a fish, Feste is a very smart fool.
And finally we are left with the third kind of comic hero used by Shakespeare, the scoundrel. According to David Grote, “the most prominent major persona of the comic hero” (44), because he is the one who makes things really happen in a comedy. The scoundrel in order to be requires the existence of an innocent, of somebody who doesn’t know the nature of the world / evil. This is very well explained / especially exemplified by Lázaro himself in that passage in El Lazarillo in which Lázaro narrates his awakening to the real nature of the world.Lázaro will be awakened to wordly wisdom by the blind man's blow on his head against the bull of stone, as he says:
It seemed to me that, in an instant, I awoke from my simplicity in which I had reposed from childhood. I said to myself, "This man says truly that it behooves me to keep my eyes open, for I am alone and have to think for myself" (145).[i] (in the original)
At the beginning, Lazaro is innocent (Cf Grote) but because of his bad experience with the blind man Lázaro turns into a pícaro, a character endowed with the attributes that Charney assigns to the comic hero in general:
... unusual alertness [is] demanded of the comic hero. He must, at all costs, be ready for whatever turns up, and not only ready, but also skillful, versatile, ingenious, spontaneous, and improvisatory. (11)
or a scoundrel as defined by Grote "the man who really makes things happen in the comedy" (44). The blind man could fool Lázaro because he once or perhaps twice while this is still innocent. But Lázaro will try to gain wisdom after the first and extremely painful practical joke of the blind man and especially after his advice: “Necio, aprende, que el mozo del ciego un punto ha de saber más que el diablo”, as he observes: “Verdad dice éste, que me cumple avivar el ojo y avisar, pues solo soy, y pensar como me sepa valer” (Blecua 96).
However this is not exactly the case in Shakespeare’s comedies. Among his characters we find scoundrels, who in most of the cases happen to be just / only practical jokers will need of a fool or an innocent, as for ex., Autolycus and the shepherds in The Winter’s Tale or Puck and the mechanicals or Oberon and Titania. But these characters we are calling scoundrels and in most cases they are only practical jokers. Charney claims that the villain, usually associated with evil, the subject of tragedy, is an anomalous type in comedy. "At the end, he is either reconciled to the new society of the young and pure in heart (who marry or are about to marry), or is expelled from it ..." (127). However, Charney seems to contradict this assumption with later statements. In them Charney assures that comedy is cruel "because it takes a position apart from morality and accepted standards," that "morality is ... a middle-class luxury" (171), and that "[c]omic heroes tend to fight dirty" as "they generally ignore abstract questions of moral truth" (171). What has happened to the "young and pure in heart"? Charney also believes that "Since he has no stake in society, he has absolutely nothing to lose, and he can therefore gives his imagination free rein." (62) Then there are other characters who are usually outside society like Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale and those who have nothing to lose like Pet, a class of his own, who doesn’t have a fool of his own, and ends up being fooled by Kate. Kate Petruchied or Petrucho Kated as Gremio comments in (III.2.245). Tranio could be considered a scoundrel, but so could be Oberon, Puck & Pet. But it is not so sure Tranio wanted to marry Bianca, to leave his master w.o. bride, but he denies his old master, with the result that Vincentio hadn’t Lucio happened to appear at that very moment would have been sent to jail & Tranio is not punished. He is even eating at the table with his masters & is called Senior Tranio by Pet. We could think that he is not a servant but a tutor, But he is not even high class, because as Vincentio says he is the son of a sailmaker of Bergamo.
The others could be considered practical jokers mainly but Falstaff is also considered by some critics to be a rogue, because he steals, and he owns his hostess not only drink, food and board but shirts. And Falstaff is not only an alazon and a scoundrel he is sometimes a fool, a buffoon, a jester, because he is never at a loss for words, and he is also comedian, a practical philosopher and a spokesman for today’s or life’s values. That is why Falstaff becomes the greatest of all Shakespeare’s comic heroes because he joins in his persona the three types of comic heroes Shx designed the alazon, the fool and the scoundrel.
(127-141)(“Can honour heal a leg? No.” Show the scene). And this is Falstaff the greatest and most comic but not the only one of the alazon types that Shx created.
One of The most common of Shx’s comic heroes seems to be the agroikos or rustic using Northrop Frye’s terminology, according to Abrams?
Dromios: are not fools, they are pretty smart & witty, especially Dromio of Syracuse who according to his master has a great sense of humor:
A trusty villain, sir; that very oft,
When I am dull with care and melancholy,
Lightens my humour with his merry jests.
(1.2.19-21)
Boasters: Falstaff, Paroles & Lucio.
Fool: many dif types of fools. Polonius is a fool”, & so are Osric, Rosencratz & Guildersten. The audience may find them funny but no so Hamlet, “These tedious old fools!” (II.2.219) or the Queen “More matter with less art” (II.2.95) show impatience. Also a fool could be Hortensio in T of the S, after Katherina makes him look ridiculous. And then there is another kind of fool, the extremely dumb, the dummy. The extremely foolish, an unbelievable character, probably created as a concession to the gallery, to the less cultivated or educated part of the audience. The humour of this type of characters rely on the use of malapropisms. Bottom’s request that Snug the joiner tell the audience he is a man and not a real lion (MSND 3.1.38-43)
BOTTOM.
Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen
through the lion's neck; and he himself must speak through, 3/1/30
saying thus, or to the same defect,- "Ladies,"- or, "Fair
ladies,- I would wish you,"- or, "I would request you,"- or
"I would entreat you,- not to fear, not to tremble: my life
for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were
pity of my life: no, I am no such thing; I am a man as other
men are:"- and there, indeed, let him name his name, and
tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.
; but Bottom is not always that stupid, he sounds pretty smart when he tells Titania: (3.1.135-39).:
TITANIA.
I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me,
On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.
BOTTOM.
Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: 3/1/120
and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little
company together now-a-days;- the more the pity that some
honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can
gleek upon occasion.
TITANIA.
Thou are as wise as thou art beautiful.
BOTTOM.
Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out of this
wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.
Scoundrel could be Hamlet but he is a very complicated character to be so easily labelled. There are other characters who could be better qualified as scoundrels like Autolycus, Tranio, Petruccio, Pandare (a bawd) & Puck.
“Classifying Shakespeare’s Comic Heroes”
Shakespeare drew so many different comic heroes that to try to classify them would be an impossible task however for the sake of economy / simplification we can consider most Shx’s comic heroes will fit into any of the three following groupings, that of the boaster, the fool or the scoundrel.
Trying to classify Shakespeare’s comic heroes seems a very ambitious enterprise, however Shakespeare’s comic heroes usually belong to any of the 3 following types: they are either a boaster, a fool or a scoundrel, the fool being the one who admits most variations. Because together with Lear’s fool, who is not even a fool, there are other types of fools like Polonius, Osric and even Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, whom the audience may find at times funny but not so Hamlet, whose “These tedious old fools” or the Queen’s “More matter, with less art” betray impatience. And then there is the extreme fool, the rustic in Northrop Frye’s terminology, a character who if he happens to say or do something right it is only by mistake. With the help of much of the latest research in humor we will draw certain conclusions that will clarify their differences.