COMIC RELIEF
Shakespeare’s historical plays cover a period of three hundred years;
the breakdown of the feudal system, and its replacement by a monarchy
more or less controlled by a parliament. We have ten plays dealing with
this period. Some of them Shakespeare wrote entirely, getting his data
from old chronicles; others he worked over from older plays. He was
careless about his facts; and how little grasp he had of fundamentals
you may judge from the circumstance that “King John” does not even refer
to the signing of Magna Charta. He might easily have had a character in
this play make a speech on the subject of the people binding the
insolence of their rulers. But he had no interest in such matters.
What Shakespeare did was to make a series of chronicle plays dealing
with the intrigues and quarrels and fightings of the English nobility.
He followed tradition, but never hesitated to change the characters in
order to heighten the dramatic interest. The result has replaced English
history in the minds of all English school-boys, and those grown-up
school-boys called statesmen. Their national poet flatters their
vanities and encourages their insular prejudices. He did not like the
Irish, he did not like the Welsh, he did not like the Scotch, he did not
like the French, and of course he did not like the Spaniards. He liked
the Romans, apparently because they resembled the English ruling
classes.
John of Gaunt in his dying speech proclaims England in a series of
rapturous similes “this other Eden, demi-paradise ... this happy breed
of men, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea ...
this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”... And that
is all right, that is the correct way for Englishmen to feel about
England. But do they permit Frenchmen to feel that way about France, to
love and defend their country, and manage it in their own way? The
answer is, they do not. Frenchmen are to see English kings laying claim
to their throne; they are to see English armies invading their country,
destroying their cities and laying waste their fields; and they are to
hear the great poet of England cheering on the invader with his golden
eloquence, burdening his play with wearisome speeches to prove the
validity of the English claim to the throne of France, and explaining to
Frenchmen that it is for their own good that their country is invaded by
a superior race.
Stranger yet, we shall find American scholars and critics enraptured
over such English imperialist poetry! I go to my local library to see
what the learned gentry have to say on this subject, and the most
up-to-date thing I find is a book called “English History in
Shakespeare’s Plays,” by a professor of a university in Louisiana. He
quotes the passage in which Henry V incites his troops to the attack on
Harfleur:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
Says our scholar: “We are now greeted by the noble strain; a strain
unworn by constant quotation, unhackneyed by trite allusions. Like the
splendid harmonies of a master-musician it throbs and thrills us as we
read, in spite of the declamations of the schoolroom and the parsing
exercises of childhood.”
Joan of Arc arose to inspire her people to drive out these invaders; and
the English burned her as a witch. A hundred and sixty years had
passed--surely time enough for sober second thought, surely time for
England’s national poet to do what he could to wipe this blot from his
country’s good name. But the maid of Orleans had to look elsewhere for
vindication than to Shakespeare, friend of the rich and powerful, who
never advocated an unpopular cause in all his forty plays. He represents
Joan according to the basest of the prejudices of his “groundlings”; a
vain, boastful creature, unchaste, and not denying her unchastity.
In the series of plays dealing with King Henry VI comes a still more
significant incident, the rebellion of Jack Cade. For three hundred
years the blood and treasure of the English people had been wasted in
these foreign wars, and incessant civil wars of rival earls and dukes
and barons. In the middle of the fifteenth century there was widespread
distress, and in Kent occurred an uprising; a popular leader took the
city of London, and forced some promises of reforms, and was then
betrayed and killed. This incident fell into Shakespeare’s lap--an
opportunity for delicious gentlemanly wit at the expense of the
exploited workers. “Be brave, then,” cries Cade, “for your captain is
brave and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny
loaves sold for a penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and
I will make it felony to drink small beer.”
Just as soon as the Cade of Shakespeare gets power he sets himself up to
be a nobleman, and offers to strike one of his followers dead for
failing to recognize his claim. He addresses Lord Say, one of the
persons against whom the indignation of the people had been roused:
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in
erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our fathers had no
other book but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing
to be used; and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou
hast erected a paper mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou
hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun, and a verb, and
such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.
Such is the wit of our gentleman poet; and what is the comment of our
Louisiana scholar? He tells us: “This savors of modern times.... The
demagogue has the ignorance of his audience on his side. He has in
behalf of his appeals that sullen jealousy of the masses who are
conscious of classes, that is, of a caste above them and more
accomplished.” To be sure, the Louisiana professor admits that
Shakespeare is here handling a great historic scene “flippantly”; but
then, you see, the poet had such a good excuse! He was “sorely in need
of comedy for the tragic drama of ‘Henry VI’”! But I ask: why could he
not have made up some comedy dealing with noble lords and gentlemen?
The answer is: It is a tradition of the leisure-class literature of
England that the sufferings of the rich and powerful are dignified
tragedy, while the sufferings of the poor are “comic relief.” The only
way a poor person of any sort can get Shakespeare to take him seriously
is by being a devoted servant of some wealthy and powerful person; for
example, Old Adam in “As You Like It,” a part which, according to
tradition, was played by Shakespeare himself. But when the common people
try to do something for themselves, they are clowns and fools, yokels
and tavern roysterers.
Take the comedy scenes in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” when working people
actually attempt to give a play. Shakespeare thinks that no idea could
be more absurd. But nowadays working people give many plays in England;
there are radical theater groups producing a new dramatic literature, in
which it does not always happen that poor people are boobs, while ladies
and gentlemen are refined and gracious. More significant yet, the
descendants of those Jack Cade rebels, whom Shakespeare represents as
objecting to grammar schools, have by a century-long struggle forced the
establishment of free schools for the children of the people in every
corner of England. They have some three thousand branches of the
Workers’ Education Association, in which the people learn about nouns
and verbs at their own expense. Was ever a national poet more sternly
rebuked by the people of his own nation?
Says Mrs. Ogi: “It is time for Jack Cade to make it felony to read
Shakespeare.”
“No,” says Ogi; “we have to follow the example of the Catholic Church,
whose priests are allowed to read prohibited books for purposes of
controversy. But certainly it is time for us to get clear in our minds
that Shakespeare is a poet and propagandist of the enemy; for the
present, at any rate, a burden upon the race mind. He is the crown and
glory of the system of class supremacy, and a magic word used by every
snob and every time-server in the place of straight thinking and the
reality of life.”