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Shakspere and the Unhappy Happy Ending
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
“A happy ende,” thus runs the burden of a song by one of the “uncertain” authors of Tottel's Miscellany—“A happy ende exceadeth all.” It is a sentiment, so we are often reminded, by no means unknown to the greatest of the Elizabethans. Indeed, according to the concensus of critical opinion, All's Well That Ends Well would seem to be the false divinity that, from first to last, shaped the ends of all too many of Shakspere's comedies. Thus, Mr. H. C. Hart, in the Arden edition of Love's Labour's Lost, states that that play disintegrates (has “broken down”) by the time the last scenes get under way; and Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, speaking, in effect, for a host of others, holds that the ending of The Two Gentlemen of Verona “blows all character to the winds.” “For stage effect Valentine must surrender his true love to his false friend with a mawkish generosity that deserves nothing so much as kicking.” A more or less similar judgement has been pronounced upon some of the great romantic comedies, the problem plays, and the dramatic romances. As You Like it, for instance, is marred, according to Swinburne, by that “one unlucky smear on one corner of the canvas . . . . the betrothal of Oliver to Celia,” a “sacrifice” (like the concluding marital sacrifices in Much Ado, All's Well, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, and other plays) falsely motivated by “the actual or hypothetical necessity of pairing off all the couples” so as “to secure a nominally happy and undeniably matrimonial ending.”—“In the fifth act,” says Hartley Coleridge, “ladies have no discretion”—nor gentlemen either, if we may believe his fellow critics. By the fifth act, as Quiller Couch would have it in the outburst already referred to, “there are no Gentlemen in Verona”; and so, allowing only for change of scene, as the case may require, to Messina, Roussillon, Vienna, Sicily, or Ancient Britain, says many another commentator. “Kill Claudio,” the command of Beatrice to Benedick, springs out of a fine and humanly altogether excellent moment of white-hot anger, but Coleridge and Dr. Johnson would do as much in cold blood for Angelo in Measure for Measure. Helena (in All's Well), says Lounsbury, is “untrue to her sex” in pursuing and finally marrying Bertram; and “frankly unfeminine,” according to Professor Brander Matthews' account of the conclusion of A Winter's Tale, is Hermione's forgiveness of her husband “without one word of reproach.” Hartley Coleridge, finally, urges that “the exhibition of such madness of heart” as that of Leontes in this play—to which instance Mr. G. C. Macauley adds that of Posthumus in Cymbeline—“should be confined to the sternest tragedy,” since such sinners could “surely never again be worthy of a restoration to happiness.” And all this sacrifice of poetic justice and psychological truth, this “holocaust of higher and better feelings” (to quote Swinburne once more) is exacted by our “theatrical idol,” the conventional happy ending: “the liquorish desire to leave the board of fancy with a palatable morsel of cheap sugar on the tongue.” In a word, the unhappy happy ending (“nominally happy and undeniably matrimonial”)—this really would seem to have been the fatal Cleopatra for which Shakspere lost his sense of humor—not to mention his artistic conscience—and was content to lose it.
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References
1 Shakespeare's Workmanship, p. 67.
2 Cf. Furness, Varior. ed. A.Y.L.I., p. 252.
3 Ibid., p. 252.
4 Much Ado, IV, ii, 291.
5 Coleridge, Literary Remains (for citations cf. Measure, Arden ed., p. XXIII); Johnson's Shakespeare, 1765, I, 378.
6 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, p. 390.
7 Shakespeare as a Playwright, p. 338.
8 Essays and Marginalia (for citations cf. Winder's Tale, 1st Fol. ed., p. 277).
9 Camb. Hist. Engl. Lit., VI, 110.
10 PMLA, XXXVII, 464.
11 Op. cit., pp. 308-09.
12 Though one is tempted to recall the late B.L.T.'s indignant protests against movie producers who ruthlessly violate O. Henry's best stories by screening them with stupidly impossible happy endings.
13 Rhetor ad Herenn., Lib. 1 (quoted by Steele in the motto of The Conscious Lovers).
14 Chambers, Medieval Stage, II, 209, cites the Catholicon (1286) of Johannes Januensis: “Comœdia a tristibus incipit sed cum laetis desinit.”
15 See below, p. 742.
16 Preface, 1765.
17 Cf., for example, n. 18 and n. 82 below. The only notable exception to the usual view of which I know is that of Hazlitt: “Dr. Johnson is of the opinion that Shakspere was generally inattentive to the winding up of his plots. We might think the contrary true” (on Cymbeline in Char. of Shakespeare's plays, 1817).
18 Cf. E. P. Kuhl, PMLA, XL, 567, n. 1, ad fin.
19 PMLA, XXXVII, 468.
20 Preface.
21 Shakespeare's Development as a Dramatist, pp. 107-08.
22 “The Secret of Love's Labour's Lost,” PMLA, XXXIX, 581.
23 Cf. Baker, op. cit., p. 113: “The very playfulness of the whole treatment of love throughout . . . . makes the grave note of service . . . . at the end seem incongruous.”
24 A likeness noted by Furnivall. Cf. L.L.L., Var. ed., p. xxiv.
25 Cf. Hart's view (cited above, p. 736) that this closing development “breaks down” the mainspring of the play. Professor Royster, on the other hand, finds here “the most skilful part of the comedy” because, with the mention of the death of the Princess's father, “the women cease their mocks and the men cast off their masks of insincerity. . . . . They become, in the twinkling of an eye, serious men and women” (L.L.L., Tudor ed., Intr., p. xvi).
26 See Furness, Var. ed. of the play, and critical works cited in previous notes, for the opinions quoted immediately below.
27 For an interpretation which goes dangerously near the other extreme see First Folio ed. of the play (Porter and Clarke).
28 See also W. W. Lawrence, PMLA, XXXVII, 468.
29 Cambridge Shakespeare, p. 51.
30 Cf. Johnson's note on 3 Henry VI, in his Shakespeare, V, 225; Malone's Shakspere, IV, 130; Lounsbury, op. cit., 387-88.
31 See n. 28 and text, above.
32 On this subject cf. Intr., Tudor ed. of the play, and Minto, Characteristics of English Poets, p. 215.
33 III, iv, 130-180.
34 I, i, 1, 11; II, iv, 62.
35 II, vi, 32; III, i, 4.
36 IV, ii, 95.
37 See opening of V, iv.
38 V, iv, 58-60.
39 II, iv, 1-115; 157-185.
40 See below, p. 752.
41 See below, p. 755.
42 II, i, 26-42.
43 Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 21, quoted by Baker, op. cit., pp. 268-69.
44 As suggested by Quiller-Couch, op. cit., p. 97.
45 III, i, 6-7.
46 The writers of the miracles and moralities, and Chaucer (witness the impossible husband in the Clerk's tale of Griselda).
47 Op. cit., p. 109.
48 Op. cit., II, 108.
49 Brander Matthews, op. cit., p. 161.
50 Furness, Var. A.Y.L.I., p. xx.
51 A.Y.L.I., V, ii, 8-9.
52 Op. cit.
53 “All that is improbable in Twelfth Night is the celerity of the mating” (Brander Matthews, op. cit., p. 163); cf. Furness, Var. T.N., p. XXII.
54 See Var. T.N., note on I, iii, 51.
55 II, iii, 196.
56 II, iii, 195.
57 I, v, 29-31.
58 Op. cit., p. 153.
59 Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (cf. Cymb., First Fol. ed., p. 262).
60 All's Well, I, i, 97-104.
61 See, for example, Sheila Kay-Smith's The Crown and the George.
62 Measure, V, i, 431.
63 Johnson's objection to the ending ignores this consideration while stressing, once more, his point that Shakespeare's hasty endings do not properly enforce the moral: “Decency required that Bertram's double crime . . . . should raise more resentment. . . . . His mother might easily forgive him” but “his King should more pertinaciously vindicate his own authority and Helena's merit: of all this Shakespeare could not be ignorant, but Shakespeare wanted to conclude his play” (Op. cit., III, 386).
64 I, i, 10-18; V, iii, 170; cf. Brander Matthews, op. cit., pp. 308-309.
65 II, i, 7-9.
66 PMLA, XXXVII, 421 ff.; XXXV, 391 ff.; see above, pp. 738 and 740.
67 For the other side, cf. Walter Pater, Appreciations, cited in Measure, First Fol. ed., and the Intr. to that edition, neither of which, however, covers the case as here presented. For comment by the critics named, and others, and for fuller reference, see Intr., Arden ed., and “Selected Criticism” First Fol. ed. of Meas.
68 Op. cit., p. 326.
69 Op. cit., p. 326.
70 As outlined by Hart, Intr. Arden ed.
71 See text immediately below, and n. 77.
72 See Henry V, IV, i, 216-235; IV, viii, 53-63.
73 III, ii, 155.
74 III, i, 197.
75 Cf. III, i, 6-41, etc.
76 “But that human frailty hath example for his failing, I should wonder at Angelo” (III, i, 189-91).
77 Compare Measure, II, iv, W.F.-17, with Hamlet, III, iv, 36-72.
78 V, i, 376-79.
79 See Kathleen Millay's essay “On a Cowardly Tendency,” Literary Review, N.Y. Evening Post, July 14, 1923.
80 W.T., V, iii, 142.
81 As Professor Thorndike has shown; though it is also well to recall that Shakespeare's earlier plays contain not a few of the elements which became especially marked in the dramatic romances: surprise in the ending of A Comedy of Errors, forgiveness in As You Like It and Measure, etc.
82 Barrett Wendell (Shakespeare, pp. 358-368, cf. First Fol. ed., Cymb.) finds in both Cymbeline and The Tempest a “deliberately skillful handling of dénouement.” Most critics agree so far as The Tempest is concerned, and few question the admirable workmanship of the closing (statue) scene of The Winter's Tale. In the case of Cymbeline, however, Furness and Professor Lawrence (cf. PMLA, XXXV, 391 ff.) see another instance of the hasty ending. In fact all of the last three acts, according to Mr. Lawrence, give the impression of “hasty and careless workmanship,” as if the dramatist had lost his interest. He takes exception, especially, to the last speeches of Posthumus and Imogen. Their reunion should have been staged and phrased “with appropriate dignity. Instead, all that the scene has to offer is this:
Imo. Why did you throw your wedded lady from you? Think that you are upon a rock, and now Throw me again. [Embracing him.]
Post. Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die.
A mixture of wrestling, horticulture, and banality which could hardly be surpassed.“ In a footnote Professor Lawrence adds: ”Perhaps not everyone will agree. Charles Cowden Clarke thought this reunion ‘perfectly divine!‘“ De gustibus non disputandum est! To me the thing seems not ”divine“ but sufficiently natural and reasonable, for in such a case actions speak louder than words. It is a moment of high emotional strain. Post-humus had struck the page, not knowing that the page is Imogen. Then comes the final revelation, which Imogen brings to a period by embracing her husband, and daring him, as it were, to cast her off again. O. Henry's story, ”The Proof of the Pudding,“ illustrates the point that some human beings in a state of high emotional strain express themselves with a curious lack of dignified formality. Are not a couple of hyperboles and a mixed figure or two quite pardonable under the circumstances?
83 Geschichte des Neueren Dramas, IV, 306 ff. Cf. n. 84, below.
84 The passage is quoted approvingly by W. W. Lawrence, PMLA, XXXVII, 440. Quiller-Couch (op. cit., p. 200) says somewhat the same thing. Compare notes 8 and 9 and text, above.
85 Variety of Religious Experience (1907) p. 230 (cf. on this point, Intr. Arden ed. of Measure for Measure, p. XXV).
86 W. T., Varior., p. 362.
87 Cecily hopes her governess's novel “did not end happily?—I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
Miss Prism. The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Cecily. I suppose so. But it seems very unfair.“ (Act II.)