SALZBURG STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE UNDER THE DIRECTION OF PROFESSOR ERWIN A. STÜRZL JACOBEAN DRAMA STUDIES 17 CONTRASTS IN THE REPRESENTATION OF DEATH BY SOPHOCLES, WEBSTER AND STRINDBERG BY DR. WINIFRED KITTREDGE EATON 1975 INSTITUT FÜR ENGLISCHE SPRACHE UND LITERATUR UNIVERSITAT SALZBURG A-5020 SALZBURG AUSTRIA 809 E 135cn LIMITS OF THE STUDY The representation of death on the stage has differed greatly across the centuries and against varied cultural backgrounds. In order to investigate several diverse ways of treating death, this dissertation will consider three playwrights from widely separated periods and places. Each of them rose from a vigorously dramatic era: Sophocles from fifth-century Athens, John Webster from Jacobean England, and August Strindberg, who in the nineteenth century, considered himself to be a citizen of Europe. Each of these dramatists has approached the mimesis of death in a markedly different way. I shall seek to show that this representation of death is the work of an outstanding playwright, deeply colored by the cultural attitudes of his age. In the ancient Greek theater the death of a character was not customarily acted out for the onlookers at all1. The murder of Agamemnon, the suicide by hanging of Jocasta, and the slaying of Medea's sons were related by messenger. In Antigone Sophocles describes three deaths through the vivid words of an attendant of the king, and in the effect of his news on the hearers we feel that a kind of divine justice is being done which avenges the despair of the heroine. The acclaim with which Antigone was received is a measure of the warmth of the author's relation with the audience. Many other contemporary accounts attest his popularity in Athens, where he was accepted as part of the artistic and civic life of his time in a way that the older Aeschylus, with his austere concern for questions of cosmic justice, and Euripedes, with his challenges of traditional customs, probably were not. The humanistic focus of 1 Harr 5-18-76 7004818-012 2 Sophocles accords harmoniously with other artistic expressions in such different media as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the poetry of Pindar, the philosophy of Plato, the architecture of the Acropolis and the sculpture of Phidias, Aristophanes' comedy, The Frogs, doubtless bespoke the people's attitude in its reverence for Aeschylus, hearty disapproval for Euripides, and marked affection for Sophocles. 1 In Elizabethan England the representation of death and violence on the stage was looked upon quite otherwise. The closing scene of a tragedy was likely to be filled with corpses, four at the end of Hamlet and a terrible heap in the Duchess of Malfi. They may have met death by poison, by strangling, by stabbing in a duel, in battle, or simply of heartbreak. The Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences expected to see death, especially violent death, accomplished before their eyes; indeed they would have resented merely hearing about it at second hand. For the greatest of the men of this age, the world seemed to have at its core, not an equilibrium of divine justice, but the possibility of redemption of the spirit by individual greatness in a universe awry. So Lear redeems himself in defeat, and so Othello before his death; even Macbeth, who has made his own chaos, can end with a kind of poetry which affirms the spirit even while denying it. Quintessence of this absorption in enacted death as a grim end in a violent and disrupted world is John Webster, whose position late in the Elizabethan era makes him partaker both of its power and its dissolution. For him in spite of occasional Christian references death seemed the final act which proved the fundamental instability of the inner world. T "The Frogs," The Complete Greek Drama, ed. Whitney Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. (New York, 1938), II, 917-99. To both Greeks and Elizabethans, even with their different religious assumptions, death meant the factual end of life on earth with its vivid action, its choices, its joys and sorrows. Whatever might happen afterward to the indwelling soul, the individuum as he walked and took part in life with other people was gone. This was for them a conclusion too self-evident to discuss, and in this matter, though their approach was so different, the two peoples thought alike. Sophocles and Webster have been selected for study as tragic dramatists dealing with death, first because they are great artists, and second because their work, done within a vigorous period of national life, portrays persistent modes and attitudes of their times. August Strindberg, however, was a forerunner of the future mode rather than an exponent of the drama of his day. When at the end of the nineteenth century, the hidden recesses of the mind began to be of paramount interest, the Scandinavian Strindberg was one of the first to discover that a correspondingly complex form of dramatic expression would become necessary. He endeavored to portray his own inner experiences regarding the meaning of death, which he saw not as an event, but as an element within existence itself. He therefore embodied the death-principle in characters and settings which play a continuing role throughout the drama. In The Ghost Sonata the Milkmaid is already dead and appears only to those who have second sight. In A Dream Play the entire milieu of the action slips without barrier between dream and death as the author creates for us a journey where "time and space do not exist."2 The Daughter of Indra moves through the stages of humanity and travels from Foulstrand to Fairhaven, only to return at last to the clouds of the other world from which she came. 2 "A Dream Play," Six Plays of Strindberg, trans. Elizabeth What is the significance of such wide divergencies in presenting this natural and universal rhythm? Though death is basically the same everywhere, the dramatic approach to it can be strikingly various. In part, of course, the strong personal bent of a major dramatist will determine his emphasis, just as his writing ability will establish his effectiveness. Nevertheless, powerful elements in the life of the Greeks, the Elizabethans, and the Europeans of the nineteenth century worked together with the creative talents of Sophocles, Webster, and Strindberg to form their manner of presentation. In turn, the dramatists themselves helped to shape the style and cultural pattern within which they worked, and of which they formed a prime expression. Each of them has left an impress on literature. Each of them has helped to crystallize and then carry forward the thought of his time as well as to give it literary delineation. ..3 Although this paper proceeds on the belief that the three authors chosen react meaningfully to their own eras and to a marked degree portray them, it is necessary to note the caution of E. E. Stoll that "literature reflects the taste of the time rather than the time itself. We shall not find in Sophocles' Antigone a picture of life in Athens, but a skillfully staged portrayal of a political and moral conflict which appealed to the Athenians sufficiently to receive the first prize. It was popular enough to be the basis for several stories about its author, among them the rather fantastic tale, even for the drama-loving Greeks, that Sophocles was forthwith made a military general. 4 "Literature and Life" in Shakespeare Studies by E. E. Stoll (New York, 1960), p. 39. 4 Cedric H. Whitman, Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 81. |