fixes on the relation of father and daughter. The strong and often subversive role
played by sexual attraction in Shakespeare’s writing, from Hamlet onwards, takes a
different turn after Antony. In the Sonnets,Measure for Measure,Troilus,Hamlet,
Othello and Lear, the power of sexual passion to destroy other ties is shown. Hamlet’s
attacks on the honour of women show that his mind has been tainted. In his
madness, Lear reasons that since his children have persecuted him there should be
no more children, no more procreation. When Macbeth hesitates to kill Duncan, his
wife taunts him with lack of manliness. Iago tests Othello’s masculine honour with
tales of Desdemona’s adultery.Antony weighs honour and sexual love in a more
tragicomic balance. The relation of children to the protagonist is crucial only in Lear
and (negatively) in Macbeth, but is to become central.
In Lear, the sexual effect of Edmund upon Goneril and Regan brings out
monstrosity, whereas Cordelia’s forgiving care for her father is exemplary, pure,
sacred. She revives him, brings him, as he says, back out of the grave. The moral
resurrection of a father by means of a daughter better than he deserves is again the
theme in four of the last five plays Shakespeare wrote before he began to collaborate
with Fletcher:Pericles,Cymbeline,The Winter’s Taleand The Tempest. It is as if he is
rewriting King Lear. In the late romances, sexual jealousy is a major theme only in
The Winter’s Tale, where Leontes’s jealous suspicion of his wife’s fidelity is (unlike the
jealousy ofearlier plays) without any excuse. Leontes asks Hermione to persuade his
old friend to stay, then madly misconstrues one of their exchanges. In a jealous fit he
destroys his family. The gods declare him mistaken; he does penance for many years;
then is miraculously restored. Women act as angels and ministers of grace. Their
names are clearly symbolic: Cordelia, Marina, Innogen, Perdita, Miranda. The gener-
ations were changing: in 1607 Shakespeare’s first child Susanna married a Stratford
physician,and produced the only grandchild Shakespeare would see, a girl. Also in
1607, William’s younger brother, Edmund, died, aged 27. Edmund had been an actor
in London, like William. The playwright’s mother Mary died in 1609. Mortality must
have bee n on his mind.
IfThe Winter’s Taleis the richest of these plays,The Te mpestis the most perfect. All
four are improbable in plot and unrealistic in mode. They are theatrical fairy tales, like
the indoor masques at the court ofJames I, full of special effects, songs and dances. In
each,tragedy is eventually averted by providential or divine intervention: father and
daughter are reunited in a pattern of rescue, healing, restoration and forgiveness. The
pattern is that of the medieval romances which contribute to the plots: stories where
deep human wishes come true. The lost are found, wrongs can be righted, death is not
separation, families are reunited in love. The happy endings are providential in a
Christian-humanist sense: they come by means of grace embodied as forgiveness and
loving-kindness. The plane of action is natural, human and familial, but with explic-
itly supernatural interventions, pagan in name but with Christian meaning. Although
staunchly virtuous characters such as Kent, Edgar or Paulina are necessary, the trans-
formative effect of the recovered daughters, and of Hermione, comes as a grace rather
than from merit on the part of the father. The Christian humanism which illuminates
these plays is embodied in the symbolic suggestiveness of the story itself.The Tempest
The three predecessors ofThe Te mpestbegin with tragedy and end in comedy: the
father is eventually restored to and by the daughter. But in this play the tragic matter
is already in the past. Twelve years have passed since Duke Prospero was overthrown,134 4 · SHAKESPEARE AND THE DRAMA
James I James Stuart,
James VI of Scotland,
succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603
as James I of England. In
1625 he was succeeded by
his son Charles I. Stuarts
ruled England, on and off,
until 1714.