So said Thomas Rhymer in his 1693 treatise A Short View of Tragedy. Rhymer has been dismissed as an idiot, but his book cannot be ignored because it is the first extended criticism of Shakespeare (and of English drama, too). Yet Rhymer’s comments are fascinating, and in their own way, very illuminating, most especially about issues that we have bandied about in our RR Lear discussion.

As a way to advance to a reading of Lear’s final scene I am going to rehearse some of Rhymer’s problems with Shakespeare. First it is interesting to note that he begins by telling us that it is generally agreed that when it comes to tragedy, Othello doth bear the bell away. It is nice to know that Othello truly is a perennial. Rhymer however then proceeds to do all he can to destroy this play’s reputation. First and foremost, he finds the entire play implausible:

“With us a Black-amoor might rise to be a Trumpeter; but Shakespear would not have him less than a Lieutenant-General. With us a Moor might marry some little drab, or Small-coal Wench: Shake-spear, would provide him the Daughter and Heir of some great Lord, or Privy-Councellor:And all the Town should reckon it a very suitable match”

Now granted we are on the other side of the flood (as Dryden said) when we get to Rhymer—a good hundred years have past, but still I think we can deduce some things. First as to the claim that Shakespeare’s plays are too erudite and reflect too much worldly experience to have been written by some country bumpkin—that argument suddenly seems much weaker, doesn’t it? Desdemona strikes Rhymer as a ringer for a country chamber maid (the day after her wedding she is out flirting with Cassio!), and he finds the midnight scene in the Venetian senate absurd: “They will sit up all night to hear a Doctors Commons, Matrimonial, Cause . . . ?” So much for Will Shakespeare alias of some MP.

And as for Shakespeare’s stunningly sophisticated language, Rhymer sees it very differently: “we meet with nothing
but blood and butchery, described much-what to the style of the last Speeches and Confessions of the persons executed at Tybum: with this difference, that there we have the fact, and the due course of Justice, whereas our Poet against all Justice and Reason, against all Law, Humanity and Nature, in a barbarous arbitrary way, executes and makes havock of his subjects.” Again Rhymer is very instructive: Shakespeare’s characters talk like criminals and thieves attempting to say something coherent and profound before they are executed. That is, the speeches are fueled by that desire in nobodies to say something great, an urged shared by their author who comes straight out of their world.

All of this to one point:

“What instruction can we make out of this Catastrophe? [Beyond, as best Rhymer can see, the moral that women ought to be vigilant and not misplace their linen less their husband smother them.] Or whither must our reflection lead us? Is not this to envenome and sour our spirits, to make us repine and grumble at Providence; and the government of the World? If this be our end, what boots it to be Vertuous?”

And here Rhymer concludes that to one-up Shakespeare in this game means you have to out do the devil.

Quite frankly, as misguided as Rhymer is, he gets at something truly profound about Shakespeare. It is settled doctrine in criticism of the comedies. Will starts simple: three stooges stuff. Then he gets sophisticated with romantic comedy, then he tires of the form and starts playing with it: these are the so-called problem comedies. Well to me it seems clear that he goes through the same process with the tragedies. With Romeo and Juliet he masters the domestic tragedy and Julius Caesar is executed with the same precision proving he can do public tragedy. Then he starts toying with the form. Above all, he undermines the notion that tragedy should edify. And it is as if with each effort he grows more amazed at what he can get away with. Finally he gives us Lear.

Consider the ending. James Whyle has already talked about the line: “Pray you, undo this button.” In my version, Lear is asking for assistance in undoing Cordelia’s blouse. He does so because he wants to see a sign that she is alive, that she is breathing. He calls for a mirror to hold up to her face. Then he calls out “look you—there! There! THERE!” And dies. For me the most convincing reading of this bit is that Lear dies DELUDED, convinced that his daughter is really alive. But we know better.

Why do this to Lear? Because it denies him insight. Hegel, here, is the best guide. It is one of his most troubling arguments: the difference between pathos and tragedy. Oedipus, for Hegel, is tragic because he seeks the truth. Lear, though, is simply pathetic (Hegel’s example of pathos is the Jews and their suffering--like I said, troubling). So Lear dies in a dream, in delusion, just as he began. If Lear was a success, and I like to think it was (more! they cried much to Shakespeare’s astonishment), I can see why he followed it up with Macbeth. When you hear the speech about Life being a tale told by an idiot filed with sound and fury, signifying nothing, you don’t say, ah, just what a murderer would say. You say, that’s right. And I’m not sure what else you can do to an audience after that. What is left to take away? How else can you abuse them? Only then does Shakespeare turn to Romance.

I am happy to talk about Lear and will do so on other RR blogs, but this is my last blog on Lear.