"twelfth night", "king lear" and "arcadia"

"Twelfth Night", "King Lear" and "Arcadia"Author(s): Fitzroy PyleSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Oct., 1948), pp. 449-455Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3717917 .

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VOLUME XLTTT OCTOBER 1948 NUMBER 4

'TWELFTH NIGHT', 'KING LEIAR' AND 'ARCADIA' Mr Richmond Noble associated the revision of Twelfth Night in 1603-6 with the preparation or production of King Lear: the two plays, as we know them, have a song and a singing fool in common.1 As it happens, the original Twelfth Night also had something in common with King Lear, for both plays draw inspiration from Sidney's Arcadia. To what extent they do so is not a question that has been closely studied, but some degree of dependence has in both cases been established or suggested. That Arcadia contributed to the making of Lear is common knowledge: Mrs Lennox showed once and for all that the Gloucester plot grew out of an episode in Sidney;2 and Steevens saw resemblance between Cordelia's and Philoclea's commingled smiles and tears.3 The fact that Twelfth Night derived ideas from Arcadia has, in contrast, received little notice.4 The tale of Zelmane has been cited as a parallel to Viola's; but the parallel is not striking enough in itself to prove a necessary connexion.5 A much more important point was made by Dr Greg over forty years ago-that 'to Sidney Shakespeare was.. .indebted.. .for the cowards' fight.. .'.6 The point was made in passing, however, and seems to have escaped attention.

The aim of this article is to show that in the composition of these plays Shake- speare found Arcadia a more fruitful source of inspiration than has been recognized; and its claims will be these. In Twelfth Night the dramatist owed more to Sidney than the idea of a comic duel: his reading of Arcadia determined the function and conduct of his entire underplot (hitherto considered wholly original, except by Dr Greg as has just been stated), and in one important respect influenced the tone of the rest of the play. The prototype of the Gloucester plot not only gave him characters, incidents, and situation: with other parts of Sidney's romance it acted as a spark to kindle his imagination in transforming the story of King Leir.

In meditating the composition of Twelfth Night Shakespeare read or recalled several renderings of a famous story of a maiden being separated from her lover who then woos a neighbouring lady, of her serving him as a page and going as his messenger to the lady, who falls passionately in love with her and impulsively marries her conveniently arrived twin brother, thus opening the master's eyes to the identity of his page. In Arcadia there is a partial parallel to this in the story of Zelmane, who disguises herself as a page to serve Pyrocles whom she loves but who (unlike the heroes of those other stories) does not love her in return.7 The recollection of

1 Richmond Noble, Shakespeare's Use of Song (1923), pp. 87, 148, 149.

2 Shakespeare Illustrated, vol. m (1754), pp. 291-301.

3 The Plays of William Shakespeare (1773), vol. ix, p. 440.

4 In the pages of Shakespeare's Books (1904) devoted to Arcadia (pp. 102-3), H. R. D. Anders made no mention at all of Twelfth Night. In 1923 C. H. Herford called that compendium 'the most complete and scholarly statement of the matter yet attempted'; and the comment still holds good.

5 H. H. Furness (Variorum Shakespeare, vol. xII, 1901, pp. 375-6) quoted a long passage from

M.L.R. XIII

the tale without comment. Morton Luce (Rich's 'Apolonius & Silla', an Original of Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night', 19X2, p. 87) wrote that in Arcadia Shakespeare 'read the pretty story of the "faire Zelmane", a Viola who assumes the attire of a page that she may follow her husband (sic), but ultimately reveals herself, and dies in his arms'.

6 Walter W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (1906), p. 153.

7 Albert Feuillerat, The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Cambridge English Classics, vol. I, 1912; vol. 1, 1922), vol. I, pp. 290-9. All subsequent references to Arcadia are to this edition.

29



450 'Twelfth Night', 'King Lear' and 'Arcadia'

this may have directed the dramatist's thoughts to Sidney; 1 but other considerations may have done so too. Apolonius and Silla starts with a shipwreck; so does Arcadia in its printed form; and in both stories the ship's captain attempts an act of treachery just before the wreck takes place. In Sidney, as in Shakespeare (but not in Rich), two kinsmen are consequently separated, and one believes his fellow to be drowned. The other, Pyrocles, disguises his sex to be near his beloved, and this leads to a maze of love-entanglements, for he is wooed as a woman by the king, Basilius, and as a man by the queen, Gynecia.

Which,of these resemblances made Shakespeare turn to Arcadia while brooding on the raw material of Twelfth Night does not matter. Having done so, he found at the pastoral court of Basilius the germs of the underplot of his play. There the broad comedy is provided by Dametas and his family, and the chief object of ridicule is Dametas himself, a pompous, overbearing, disapproving, and habitually suspicious fool, raised above his station to be ruler of the king's household. He is described as 'a true lover df himselfe without any ryvall', who 'ever knew the buttery better then any other place', yet 'much disdained (since his late authority) all his old companions', with whose merrymaking he was quite out of sympathy.2 Shakespeare remodelled Dametas as Malvolio, not without side-glances perhaps at his wife Miso, 'to whome cheerefulnes in others, was ever a sauce of envie in her selfe', and his daughter Mopsa, whom helping to guard Pamela had made

grow prowd over her, & use great ostentation of her own diligece, in prying curiously into each thing that Pamela did. Neither is there any thing sooner overthrows a weak hart, then opini6 of authority, like too strong a liquor for so feeble a glasse, which joined it self to the humor of envying Pamelas beauty, so far, that oft she would say to her self, if she had ben borne a Duchesse as well as Pamela, her perfections then should have beene as well seene as Pamelas.3

Twelfth Night has two comic sub-plots, both turning upon practical jokes, the gulling of Malvolio and the mock-duel between Sir Andrew and Viola. The second of these leads to the denouement, the unravelling of the knot caused by Viola's assuming male attire. This construction was clearly suggested by Arcadia, where there are two comic interludes, the duel between Dametas and Clinias, and the gulling of Dametas and his family. This last (as Sidney explicitly points out at the beginning of his fourth book) brings about the d6nouement, the unravelling of the knot caused by Pyrocles's disguising himself as an Amazon.4

No one can read Arcadia, bk. 3, ch. 13, without being satisfied that it was there that Shakespeare got the idea of a duel between two cowards, carried through much against their will to provide sport for insistent eggers-on--and without observing at the same time the large differences in tone and detail between the suggestion and what Shakespeare made of it. It will be noticed that in adopting the episode of the comic duel Shakespeare transferred it from Sir Andrew and Malvolio5 to Sir Andrew and Viola. This was determined by considerations of character (it was not Shake-

1 Orsino, like Pyrocles, is not his page's former relations between Malvolio and Feste were lover; and in this particular Shakespeare departs certainly suggested by those between Piero and from his other 'sources'. Stragualcia.

2 n, 89, 90; i, 126. 4 In that guise he claims, of course, to be 8 II, 16, 20. To connect Malvolio with Dametas descended from Penthesilea. Sir Toby's jesting is not to deny resemblances to that other tutor use of the name with reference to Maria (t, iii, Piero in Gl' Ingannati-in which play the 193) is perhaps just barely worthy to be recalled plethora of servants no doubt set Shakespeare's in this connexion in a footnote. thoughts to work on the below-stairs group. The Cf. Twelfth Night, n, iii, 135-41.



FITZROY PYLE 451

speare's way to present his persons as contemptible in every particular: Malvolio

may be vain and humourless but not a ridiculous coward of knockabout comedy), of situation (if Malvolio is to be 'in a darke room & bound' he cannot very well be

fighting a duel), and above all of plot (to make Malvolio, like Dametas, the victim of both practical jokes would lack variety; and Viola must be concerned in the affair so that Sebastian may be mistaken for her).

The gulling of Dametas, Miso and Mopsa constitutes the main series of comic incidents in Arcadia. Dorus plays upon the covetousness of the first, the jealousy of the second and the curiosity of the third so that he may get them all out of the

way and elope with their charge Pamela. None of his tricks resembles the gulling of Malvolio; yet that they gave direction to Shakespeare's fancy is plain to see. Dametas was sent after counterfeit buried treasure,

having alreadie made an image in his fancie, what Pallaces he would build, how sumptuously he would fare,

and so forth; and eventually returned from his vain employment

with such grudging lamentations as a nobler minde would (but more noblie) make for the losse of his mistresse. For so farre had he fed his foolish soule with the expectation of that which he reputed felicitie, that he no lesse accompted himselfe miserable, then if he had falne from such an estate his fancie had embraced. So then home againe went Damwatas, punished in conceite, as in conceite he had erred, till he founde himselfe there from a fancied losse falne to essentiall miserie. For.. .he founde nothing but a solitarie darkenesse;... crying and howling, knockinge his head to the wall hee began to make pittifull complaintes where no body coulde heare him.1

Then, running out as a man would gladly have run from himself, he espied his

daughter up a tree with her head muffled in a scarlet cloak, all the result of Dorus's

trickery. Being 'great with childe, with the expectation of her may-game hopes', she paid no attention to him until at his third cry, 'verily thinking it was the God

[Apqllo], that used her fathers voice', she fell from the tree and prayed him to let her have a king to her husband.2 Dametas 'thought all the worlde was conspired against him', and 'assured himselfe, his daughter was madd'.3 Meanwhile,

such was the generall mislike all men had of Dam.etas unworthy advancement, that every man was glad to make himselfe a minister of that, which might redounde to his shame, and therfore with Panike cries and laughters

many had helped Miso to seek out Dametas making love (as Dorus had feigned) to a certain shepherdess.4 Consumed with jealousy she returned from her abortive

quest

(leaving behinde her a sufficient comedie of her tragicall fancies)

and, finding her husband with a girl (Mopsa) in his arms, she cudgelled him soundly.5 He tried to make her understand that Pamela was gone.

Miso still holding on the course of her former fancie, what tellest thou mee naughtie varlet of Pamela... ? [she said.] And ever among shee would sawce her speeches with such Bastonados, that poore Damsetas beganne now to thinke, that either a generall madding was falne, or else that all this was but a vision.6

1 , 15, 48. 4 uI, 86-7. 2 , 85. 5 n, 87. 3 I, 86. 6 n, 87-8.

29-2




As for Mopsa and her mother, it was a sporte to see, how the former conceites Dorus had printed in their imaginations, kept still such dominion in them.1

Later Dametas

thought certaynely all the spirits in hell were come to play a Tragedie in these woods, such strange change he sawe every way... [and] beganne to make circles, and all those fantasticall defences that hee had ever hearde were fortifications against Divells.2

His ultimate fate was to be fettered and whipped. In all this we may scent suggestions for Malvolio's ambition, baiting, 'possession,'

confinement, and punishment 'in conceite'-even, conceivably, for details like 'What man, defie the diuell' and 'Talkest thou nothing but of Ladies?' Other

points of detail too may possibly derive from Arcadia: for instance, from the trap laid for Plexirtus by the old knight who

forged such a letter, as might be written from Artaxia, entreating his present (but very privie) repaire thether, giving him faithfull promise of presente mariage: a thing farre from her thought, having faithfully, and publiquely protested, that she would never marrie any, but [such a one] .....But he (no more wittie to frame, then blinde to judge hopes) bitte hastely at the baite, was captured, and kept in a miserable prison.3

But such questions, if multiplied, might prove will-o'-the-wisps, and in any case are negligible in comparison with that of larger, more fundamental identity. Dorus

plays like Maria4 on his victims' ruling passions, and by their ruling passions they become enthralled. Their very genius takes the infection of the device: they are put in such a dream that when the image of it leaves them they must run mad. And all this parodies on its lower plane the doings of Basilius and Gynecia, who likewise fool themselves to let imagination jade them. These two, man and wife, sleep together, each believing the other to be Zelmane.5 'The rest of thy time', says Basilius to himself with unconscious irony, 'hath bene a dreame unto thee: it is now onely thou beginnest to live.'6 Similarly Orsino, Olivia, Sebastian even, allow themselves like Malvolio to be beguiled by fancy; and this is a fundamental part of the poetical texture of the play. In Arcadia alone among the 'sources' is the thread of it to be found.

It would seem likely that it was the publication in 1605 of The true Chronicle

History of King Leir that determined Shakespeare to write King Lear. He looked

up the story in other places and, struck by its similarity to the 'storie of the

Paphlagonian unkinde King' in Arcadia, turned to that also. Sidney thought highly of the episode, for he drew special attention to it with the introductory remark that it is

worthy to be remembred for the un-used examples therein, as well of true natural goodnes, as of wretched ungratefulnesse.7

The resemblances between the two are obvious. As in the Chronicle History, so in Sidney's story, a foolish old king is led to treat 'unkindly' his 'kind' child by the

poysonous hypocrisie, desperate fraude, smoothe malice, hidden ambition, & smiling envie

1 n, 88. 5 Pyrocles in his disguise has taken the dead 2 n, 97, 98. girl's name. 8 I, 300. 6 , 92. 4 n, iii, 162-6. 7 i, 206.



of the 'unkind', who are alike 'viperine' or 'viperous' in nature.l In both the father is cruelly used, dispossessed, and constrained to wander in wild places with but a single attendant; he does not complain, but ascribes his fate to his own wickedness. In both, servants are ordered to commit murder in a wood, but spare their intended victims' lives. And in both, 'duetifull affection', 'filiall pietie', is contrasted with 'hard-harted ungratefulnes':2 the ill-used child succours the father in his affliction and ultimately defeats his persecutors in battle.

To achieve cumulative tragic effect, Shakespeare adopted the substance of Sidney's episode as the underplot of his play. Gloucester's treatment by the bastard son- and Edgar's by them both-his blinding, his getting Edgar to lead him to a cliff whence he intends to cast himself, his preservation by Edgar (a hunted outlaw risking his life to help his father), his heart bursting 'twixt two extremes of passion- all these, as everyone knows, have their counterparts in Sidney. Some lesser points have not been noticed. 'He hath bin out nine yeares, and away he shall againe' was perhaps suggested by the parenthetical remark that Plexirtus was 'called home by his father' before he 'falsly got' his kingdom;3 the idea of Edgar's leading the life of a beggar may have been prompted by the Paphlagonian king's plight, with alms his 'onelie sustenaunce' ;4 and the introduction (though not the conduct) of the duel governed by rule of knighthood (so little in keeping with the manners and atmosphere of the play) may surely be traced to preoccupation with the chivalric Arcadia, where there are battles between Plexirtus and Leonatus (the prototypes of Edmund and Edgar), a duel to the death between the two brothers Tydeus and Telenor, and a reply from Amphialus to the Forsaken Knight's challenge which has a touch suggestive of Edmund's reply to Edgar's.5 But sources of inspiration more potent than any detail were the theme itself and the moving quality of its narration- the 'matter in it self lamentable, lamentably expressed'.6

This brings us to the curious point that for two centuries the episode has been associated with the Gloucester plot, but never, as it should be, with the main plot also. Consider the setting Sidney gives it. The tale is narrated while Musidorus and Pyrocles take shelter from 'so extreame and foule a storme, that never any winter (I thinke) brought foorth a fowler child'; Leonatus and his father are also sheltering from the storm, 'both poorely arayed, extreamely weather-beaten'; and the young man entreats the princes to convey the afflicted king to some place of rest and security.7 This is far indeed from Lear on the heath; yet it appears to be the seed from which that sprang. Then consider the story itself. It is short, but much more tragic than the Chronicle History. The essential part, the narrative related to the princes, presents evil at the height of its power, ruthless, tyrannical, utterly destructive and sadistic, drying up through fear the springs of human feeling in ordinary men. Goodness, in the persons of the two principal characters, is intellectually far inferior, suffers in consequence grievous affliction of mind and body, ana shows strength only in resignation, kindness of heart, and service gladly given. In the handling of the story there is a hint of that largeness of scope and suggestiveness that belongs to high tragedy. Plexirtus deprives his father not only of his kingdom but of his sight, 'the riches which Nature grafts to the poorest

1 , 209, 289. 5 I, 210-12, 292, 454; King Lear, v, iii, 142 ff.

2, 208, 210, 208. 6 I, 210. 3 I, 300. 7 i, 206-7, 207, 208. 4 I, 209-10.

453 FiTZROY PYLE




creatures' (significant phrase in connexion with Lear), and then lets' him go, delighting to make him feel his misery:

Indeede our state is such [says Leonatus], as nothing is so needfull unto us as pittie, yet nothing is more daungerous unto us, then to make our selves so knowne as may stirre pittie. But your presence promiseth, that crueltie shall not over-runne hate. And if it did, in truth our state is soncke below the degree of feare.l

Surely it would seem that in transforming the King Leir play Shakespeare's imagination was fired less by it than by the 'source' of his Gloucester plot.2

That episode is not the only part of Arcadia from which Shakespeare's mind received impressions while the play was in process of conception. Leonatus follows his father in his own person and is known to him all the time; the same is true of Perillus, King Leir's faithful old lord. Edgar and Kent, on the contrary, adopt disguises and do good under assumed names. This grows, of course, out of the more

dangerous conditions of the world of King Lear; yet the suggestion for the change may nevertheless have come from Arcadia, for there, as we have seen, Zelmane

(Plexirtus's daughter) and Pyrocles (his rescuer) both disguise themselves to be near their loved ones. Again, just before Zelmane is introduced as a page, we find the account of Leucippe, who in her distress

every way shewed she cared not what paine she put her body to, since the better parte (her minde) was laide under so much agonie3

-a condition which seems dimly to foreshadow that of Lear himself. Lastly, in the

concluding stages of Arcadia the course of the story emphasizes that the prince's person is the very knot of the people's welfare and light of all their doings, that to be fit to govern country or dependants we must learn to govern ourselves, that whoever breaks the marriage bond 'dissolves al humanitie', and that the laws fold us within assured bounds, 'which once broken mas nature infinitly rageth'.4 Such doctrine was familiar enough to Shakespeare; yet it is significant that in King Lear he made it the basis of his whole play and explored it in all its ramifications-even to the length asserted by Sidney, that when the bounds of law are broken we should be glad 'we may finde any hope that mankind is not growen monstrous'.5

Material drawn from contiguous or related parts of Arcadia is concerned in the

making of both Twelfth Night and King Lear. The comedy alone touches on Dametas, the tragedy alone on Leonatus and his father; but in other respects their dependence on Arcadia overlaps. Can this mean that when Twelfth Night was first written the seeds of Lear were sown, to germinate slowly for a number of years? In part, it can. It may be that, reading Arcadia then with playmaking specifically in view, Shakespeare noted in the Paphlagonian story its tragic spirit, compact force, but inadequate bulk, and in the last two books a mighty theme-the threat of chaos

1 i, 208, 209, 207-8. reported death of Gloucester (the dramatist being 2 Unlike the author of the Chronicle History careful for the sake of later contrast not to

in dramatizing the Leir story, Sidney was not heighten its effect), but it looks to have been the misled into allowing his king, after the tortures point from which Shakespeare's imagination he had endured, to regain the throne and spend took flight to create the death of Lear. the evening of his days in domestic bliss. Just 3 I, 289. when happiness with his child was apparently 4 n, 175, 94. 175, 195; within his grasp, the king' eve in a moment died' 5 n, 196. In its context this stimulating phrase (I, 212), his spirit torn between comfort and is thrown out so casually that it loses much of its affliction. Not only was that the model for the force.



FITZROY PYLE 455

to the rule of law-labouring beneath a clumsy mass of not truly tragic material. In that sense, seeds of the tragedy may have been sown while Shakespeare was

preparing Twelfth Night. But even if they were, they could not germinate properly until he knew the Chronicle History; and it is unlikely that he had discovered it so

early. Once that play did come to his notice (presumably not until it was published) its similarity of plot to the Paphlagonian story would inevitably send him back to

Sidney, and this in turn would remind him of Twelfth Night. So the evidence linking the revision of the comedy with the composition of King Lear would seem to be confirmed.l

FITZROY PYLE DUBLIN

There is nothing to show which was done Night was the merest trifle; it may have been first-not that it would seem to matter. Com- carried out in the course of daily routine even paratively speaking, the work of revising Twelfth while the tragedy was being composed.



"twelfth night", "king lear" and "arcadia"

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