Further to yesterday's post on Gary Taylor's introduction to the Oxford Henry V, one of his most compelling arguments (which happens to fit into my theory regarding this play being Shakespeare's epic) is the description by which he shows the large-scale organization of the work. I'll give you the quote in full, which I believe is accurate, but it is from my notes, so I apologize in advance for any discrepancy. Taylor writes that the play "advances dialectically: no sooner is a unity established than we are made aware of what that unity excludes, until that too can be contained. After the divisions of the first two scenes, Henry and his court are by the end of act one united in their common purpose - and immediately we are shown Eastcheap brawling. After Southampton, Henry can leave behind an undivided England - and we are reminded, through Falstaff, and those who have loved him, of an entire world Henry has excluded. So the process continues until, after the achievement of Agincourt, in the consummation of the dialect, Burgundy insists that the harmony must include France as well as England."

My contention is that Shakespeare was writing an epic not only for the people of England, but for all people who want to live in a civilized and just manner. He used the very symbol of patriotism and empire-building to subvert those ideals, and to show us a way of thinking that we must aspire to if we are to have a peaceful future. The play shows us that differences of opinion (as are written into the role of the protagonist and the fact that he is shown having to accept views opposed to his own, even those of common soldiers such as Williams) are not a nuisance, they are a necessity. Only in tyrannies are opposing views silenced, and only in tyrannies is no thought given to the effects our actions might have on those not, at first glance, on our side.

The most concise and accurate way of defining "epic" is to consider it as a literary work designed to teach a people its own traditions. In the Shakespeare canon, the play that best suits this definition is Henry V. And over the next couple of posts, I'm going to try to explain my reasons for thinking this.

First of all, in the Oxford edition, edited by Gary Taylor, it's explained that there is no evidence that Henry V was a popular success in 1599 (a date for its completion that can be given with relative certainty, due to the fact that the still-in-progress Irish expedition of the Earl of Essex is mentioned in the Chorus to act five - the only reference to what we would call a current event in Shakespeare). And among the many possible reasons for this is the fact that the play is built on the dialectic concept, and thus the character of Henry V is much more complex than the rally-round-the-flag figure that they might have been expecting. This is still the case today, in fact, and the essay (which I've mentioned before) that comes the closest to delineating Shakespeare's method in the play is "Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V" by Norman Rabkin, which posits the idea that the author meant to show two equally compelling views of Henry (patriotic hero or Machiavellian war criminal) and force the audience member to choose between them. This would have thwarted expectations, and still does, I think it's fair to say. And the entire play is built on variations of this approach. More on all of this tomorrow.

In Roger Warren's very interesting introduction to his Oxford edition of Henry VI, Part Two (2003), he delineates the surprising complexity involved in working with a play that has only two early versions. In this case, there is the Quarto edition (Q) of 1594 that was given the title The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster as well as the one found in the First Folio of the plays of Shakespeare (F), published in 1623, where it's titled Henry VI, Part Two. The difficulties begin with the fact that "Q is roughly a third shorter than F, and differs from it in most of its readings, even though the basic material of each scene is the same. Only a handful of passages are identical in the two texts." As a result, there are two opposing positions regarding the relationship of the two versions. The first is the belief that the Quarto version is a "reported" text, i.e. one that was put together by people involved with the production, most likely some of the actors, and with very little involvement from Shakespeare himself. The other is that both versions were written by Shakespeare, with the Folio being the result of more time and a good deal of authorial revision. Warren's findings on the subject are surprising: he finds some evidence for both sides. From this, we might perhaps conjecture that Shakespeare may have used a reported version of his own work as the basis for the finished version - a fascinating hypothesis, with many implications for understanding Shakespeare's working methods and motivations. I recommend Warren's introduction very highly, particularly since my summary is, inevitably, an over-simplification of his thoughts on the subject.

One of the important areas of contention among editors of Shakespeare plays is explained very well in the introduction to the chapter entitled, Textual Criticism and Bibliography from Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, edited by Russ McDonald. In it, he summarizes the issue as follows: In the past the assumption was that "a skilled editorial weaving of folio and quarto readings will give us an authentic record of Shakespeare's original intentions..." But now there is a growing movement toward looking at the many quartos and the Folio in a very different way, that being that "the multiple versions in which the plays exist represent different, authorially created texts of these plays", and therefore the belief underlying the old attitude is a mistaken one, and there is no ideal, perfect version that editors should be trying to re-create. It's a very interesting field of study, certainly, and one with big implications for everyone interested in Shakespeare. And I mention all of this today for two reasons: first, to try to balance out yesterday's post in which I went off a bit regarding what I feel is a wrong direction in Shakespeare scholarship (i.e. appropriating his writing for ideological purposes). In other words, I think the opposite about this field of study - this one is a right direction for it. The second reason is that it relates to some interesting things that I learned about the different versions of 2 Henry VI, which I'll be writing about tomorrow.

Another musical analogy to Shakespeare's career occurred to me yesterday, this one from an anecdote I once heard about the great Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok. Apparently, a young music student once asked him, "How do you become a composer?" and got the reply, "I have no idea." The student then said, "But you became a composer", to which Bartok said, "But I didn't have to ask". This came to mind as I was thinking of Shakespeare's lost years, which were most probably either spent in an acting company (perhaps Lord Strange's Men) or teaching in a grammar school, but were definitely not spent at a university. It's obvious now that his independent course of study was the right answer for his work, particularly if the higher learning institutions of his time were anything like the ones in ours, i.e. overrun with ideologies and the co-opting of literature for agenda-driven purposes. I find it ironic (and disturbing, to be honest) that the study of Shakespeare, a writer who made it his mission to transcend petty thought, is now used in such ways. But there is some consolation: the people who do so, unlike their subject, won't be remembered in four hundred years.

Some of my favourite moments in Shakespeare fall into the category of hyperbole, which could be defined as exaggeration for descriptive purposes. And often there's a touch of humour involved as a bonus. A wonderful example occurs in act four, scene one of Henry VIII, as two gentlemen standing on a street in Westminster, having just watched the passing of the procession after the coronation of Anne Bullen (as she's called in the play), are joined by a third, who was inside the Abbey for the event. The first gentleman greets him with: "God save you, sir! Where have you been broiling?" He then receives the reply: "Among the crowd i' the Abbey; where a finger/ Could not be wedged in more..." That says it all, doesn't it?

I can't find the precise quotation at the moment, and when I do I'll post it, but the great poet and Shakespeare commentator Samuel Coleridge once wrote something about the goal of poetry being to turn the reader into an active creative agent. The thought not only goes a long way toward explaining why poetry is often considered difficult, but also why, paradoxically, the longest-lasting of the arts is usually the least regarded (or popular) in its own time: it requires a great deal from its audience. Of course the enduring and ever-increasing nature of poetry is one of Shakespeare's great themes, mentioned most frequently in the sonnets, but put into practice most fully in the plays, where it is virtually impossible to read more than a page or two without encountering an astonishing poetic image. One example that I came across recently is found in the opening lines of the first scene from act four of Henry VI, Part Two, wherein the captain of a ship carrying prisoners, including the disguised Earl of Suffolk (who is soon to discovered and beheaded), gives this grisly description of nightfall, which he personifies as being drawn in a chariot by "jades", which in this case seems to refer not to overworked horses (as is usually the case), but to low-flying dragons:

The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day

Is crept into the bosom of the sea;

And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades

That drag the tragic melancholy night;

Who, with their drowsy, slow and flagging wings,

Clip dead men's graves and from their misty jaws

Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.