The Sense of crime and punishment in the Shakespearean Drama
...own and in their children's lives the full malignancy of an ancestral curse. Thyestes the younger brother seduces Atreus's wife, Aethra and seals the Golden Lamb which Pan had given only to elder brother, the true king. Atreus retaliates by killing Thyestes' children and serving their cooked bodies for the unknowing father to feast upon. The thread of crime and punishment is now taken by the next generation. Both Atreus and Thyestes are dead. Agamennon, Atreus's son, is campaigned near Troy to recover Helen and restore Greek prestige. During his 12 year's absence from Argos, Aegisthus, Thyestes surviving son, seduces Clyaemnestra, Agamemnon's wife; and on the very day of his return to his city of Argos after the successful conclusion of the Trojan war, he murders Agamemnon in his own palace. 13 This is the theme of the Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteian trilogy. Simply the story of Oedipus is of a man who plunged unexpectedly from prosperity and power to destruction and ignominy. Before Oedipus was born, his father, Laius, King of Thebes, knew from an oracle that his son was predestined to slay him. He spared no effort to avoid this matter by exposing his newly born son on the side of Mount Cithaeron with a stake driven through his feet so that he would die. Fortunately, Oedipus was saved by a shepherd of king Polybus of Corinth, who in turn raised him as his own son. Going to the oracle of Delphi to find out the truth, he sadly knew that he was fated to kill his father and marry his own mother and herein lies the core of this tragedy. Shocked by this bitter truth, Oedipus did all his best to avoid committing the crimes of which he had been informed. In an attempt to avoid the unavoidable, he decided to leave Corinth. While he was in his journey, he met his father. They combated, and Laius was slain. So, the first part of the prophecy was fulfilled. Afterwards, Oedipus went on his journey, and was able to save the Thebans from the curse of the sphinx. Trying to reward and gratify Oedipus for rescuing them, the Thebans made him king instead of Laius, who had suddenly disappeared in mysterious circumstances. With the investiture of Oedipus as a king, the last part of his destiny was achieved. As a result of the crimes which Oedipus had ignorantly committed, the land was cursed with a terrible plague. As a king, he attempted his best to discover the root cause of the plague. When the oracle said that it was the murderer of Laius who was causing the anger of gods, he called down curses upon the head of the plague-causer. Knowing of his involvement in causing this plague, Oedipus was completely blind to the fact that he was himself included in the curse. Thus, Oedipus had committed two crimes: parricide and incest. But, in fact, he had violated no grave law about killing; the victim happened to be his father and a king, and for these facts alone does Oedipus admit his pollution. In fact, Oedipus was a victim of fate whose power man could not contain and control. He was also guiltless, to some extent, of the crimes he had unknowingly committed, since he had no hand in them, but fate did have. Seneca L.A. Seneca (4 B.C.- 65 A.D.) is held to be one of the greatest Classical dramatists whose influence on the theatre was most profound in the Renaissance, when secular drama was just being revived and studies of ancient Greece had not progressed far enough to make the great Greek dramatists generally available. The bloody drama of revenge, so popular with the Elizabethans, is Seneca's contribution to English literature. Seneca is much concerned with the exploration of the human conscience, of man's need to know and justify his own motives. This attitude of introspection lies at the core of Seneca's tragedies. In Seneca's moral writings there is an element that is given a broader scope in the tragedies. This is his violent preoccupation with irrationality and terror. Such a preoccupation is shown by his portrayals of great crimes and examples of evil consequences. The Senecan tragedies show us that there is no limited or moderate evil. The smallest error is inevitably transformed into a crime. The resonance of ethical relations refuses the quarantine of a merely venial fault. The criminal divines in him and in his convulsive innards that his misdeeds can destroy all the social bonds, and consequently destroys his own life.14 With the exception of the ramifications of fatal error, Seneca's criminals are held reliable for their acts, for the will to crime was present. Thyestes was guilty because of his rape and incest; both Medea and Clytemnestra were fully aware of the possible consequences of their deeds. Aegisthus and Phaedra claim heredity as an vindication, but Seneca considers them criminals, because they used their criminal heredity merely as an excuse for submitting to their worst innate impulses. 15 Seneca is well aware that man is at liberty to choose between evil and good, and that he can put aside a criminal inheritance. By extension, Seneca is of the opinion that the criminal cannot shun the excruciating voice of his guilty conscience. He maintains that even the most depraved characters retain some sense of good, and they are not blind to their depravity but prefer to ignore it. This is shown by the fact that they vainly attempt to conceal their crime and even if the crimes are successful, they will enjoy the fruits while suppressing the fact of their misconduct. A good conscience is ready to come into open and be seen by all, hut wickedness is afraid even of the darkness. Also, Seneca. quite believes that crime cannot be kept hidden, but it cannot be enjoyed without fear. The chief and greatest punishment that criminals suffer is the fact that they have sin, and no crime-no matter if it be protected -remains unpunished, because crime is its own punishment. The criminal is torn by fear, anxiety and feeling of insecurity. "Luck, Seneca observes, frees many a man from the consequences of sin, but from fear never". 16 The only way out of these obsessive fears is suicide. For Seneca suicide is preferable to life when it saves honour and gives an escape from unlocked- for consequences. 17 Seneca's Thyestes is in substance a study of crime and punishment. The crime which doomed the House of Pelops to a series of feuds and violent acts from generation to generation was that of Tantalus, a son of Zeus, who served his son Pelops as food at a banquet of the gods. Restored to life by Zeus, Pelops got a wife and a kingdom by treachery, and on his death after many other ruthless acts of conquest his throne became a subject of controversy between his sons Atreus and Thyestes. Their agreements to rule the kingdom in turns were violated more than once. Each brother enjoyed periods of prosperity and suffered periods of banishment. At the time of the play's action, Atreus is in possession and is plotting to trick his brother by a false show of reconciliation. Thyestes, with his three sons, returns from exile, to be the victim of an atrocious crime recalling the crime of their first ancestor. The curse on the house in the persons of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, and Aegisthus, son of Thyestes and in the murder of Clytaemnestria by her son Orestes. In fact, the infusion of Senecan blood into English drama does not mean merely a new tone of life and a new repertoire of bloodshed but a new life and soul. Out-of the welter of the horrible scenes emerge the introspective studies of revenge, jealousy, ambition- the passions of Hamlet, Othello, or Macbeth, and the use of histories to handle the problems of political power, the corruption or the loneliness of kingship. These are the kind of topics which lie at the centre of the austerely formal, and at first sight almost inhuman, tragedies of Seneca whose influence on the Elizabethan drama cannot be denied. Towards a Shakespearean Conception of Crime and Punishment As general law, as is well-known, illustrated in many Shakespearean dramas, is that an initial crime, or misdeed, breeds more mischief and carries with it the sufferings, or death, of other wholly innocent victims before the criminal is meted out his final punishment. For Shakespeare evil of all kinds amounts to physical and emotional suffering, which are difficult to separate from each other. Emotional suffering arises from frustration and the anticipation of frustration: thwarted ambition, unrequited love, disappointment of all kinds, grief, jealousy, envy, and hate. Since these forms of suffering are common, man also suffers from fear; and fear is the more acute since man cannot always be certain just when, how, and to what extent evil will fall on him. That is, uncertainty is an occasion and a form of suffering. To some extent, these forms of suffering would exist even if every one were morally perfect, but of course suffering arises in part from violation of moral norms, such as disloyalty and breaches of implicit trust. Shakespeare views passion as the prime mover of sin and crime. The mere thought of crime is regarded as with as much horror as the crime itself. The passions are represented to show the confusion and misery to which they lead. Shakespeare does not see reason as a kind of antithesis to passion; he sees reason and passion as two complementary aspects of humanity. Hence, it is necessary to look briefly at the motive of revenge, because it is a stepping stone to our understanding of many | subsidiary passions. The Elizabethans viewed revenge as a serious matter, and their interest in it as a criminal passion resulted in different discussions of the different passions which excited it. Anger was often assigned to be the first cause. Grimestone in his study of passions differentiates between anger and hatred, which are of prime importance for our understanding of the villain revengers of Shakespearean tragedy. Hatred was to be defined as "natural wrath which liad endured too long and had turned to unnatural malice". 19 According to Grimestone, anger results from personal mistakes; anger may be particular, but hatred may be universal; anger can be removed by patience; anger is painful, hatred is cold; anger has limits in revenge, but hatred is boundless and aims at the total destruction of its object.20 Jealousy was another cause of revenge and murder. Jealousy bursts out so far, inasmuch as it turns into extreme hatred, and from thence falls into madness. If jealousy is not governed by reason, it may leave its destructive marks on man's public reputation and his private life.21 In the thinking of the Renaissance, jealousy was not viewed as one of the simple passions, but a compounded passion. It is a combination of envy and hatred. Hatred finds its opposite in love and is opposed to love. Yet while jealousy is opposed to love, it stems often from love. Like envy, jealousy has something of the grief and fear that results from seeing another possesses what one has already possessed.22 Ambition in Elizabethan English denotes aspiration for power, but connotes always that aspiration is evil. For an Elizabethan gentleman to aspire to be king would imply a willingness or desire to break or challenge the divine order in society, and to take the power from one whom Providence has designed it.23 Ambition was also regarded as the forerunner of revenge and death. All the unbridled passions in man are impulsive; but that of ambition is impetuously furious and furiously outrageous. 24 Macbeth is a good example of ambition. Macbeth has been guilty of the sin of ambition before the advent of the Witches. He is punished for his criminal ambition, but much more for its grave consequences, his acts of murder, usurpation, and the tyranny. In Shakespeare's England there was a persistent condemnation of revenge, a condemnation which was founded on the biblical allusion to the fact that revenge is assigned to God only. Hence, the audience was prevented by its moral and religious implications from applauding the motives of the stage-revengers. This assertion is intensified by the fact that the revengers are portrayed as suffering from heart-rending solitude. In their attempts to shape the world in accordance with their desires, Shakespeare's tragic heroes are driven by their passions to make up their minds. In Shakespeare there are stories in which men are moved in various ways towards crime and folly, there are the most remarkable and wonderful revelations of the state of strength, purity and beauty in the nature of mankind out of which the evil practices arise. Writing about Shakespeare's tragic heroes, many critics conclude that, for the most part, they get their suffering from their passionate misdeeds. Those critics maintain that Shakespeare's heroes act and speak by the influence of those passions which are conducive to self-destruction. In Hamlet (1601), and before the scene of play-within-the play, Hamlet has a word with Horatio. He tells him what the Ghost has told him of his father's murder and asks him to keep a close watch on the king's face during the play. He seizes the opportunity to reveal very frankly his affection and admiration. He incidentally speaks about the relation of tragic guilt to reward and punishment which constitutes the core of the Shakespearean tragedy. He also believes that man cannot be free from the influence of passion. Hamlet tells his close friend, Horatio: ... for thou hast been For one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, A man that the Fortune's buffets and regards Has ta 'en with equal thanks; and bless 'a are those Whose blood and judgment are so -well commingled, That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. 2S (III.ii) The tragic hero sins under the tremendous impact of passion, his reason failing to guide his passion. His passion may lead him to insanity, but as long as his passion is in conflict with reason, he has not perpetrated mortal sin. When, however, passion has taken possession of his will, has perverted his will, when in harmony with passion, his reason directs evil through the will, then we have a villain, one who is dyed in sin, and one whose sin is mortal. 26 This is the distinction to be made in order to see the difference between the villain and the tragic hero. In addition to the influence of passion upon the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies, there is also the influence of outside forces, human and supernatural, which contribute to the arousal of the criminal dispositions in Shakespeare's tragic heroes. Brutus, Othello and Macbeth have been profoundly influenced by such forces. These forces are necessary mechanisms to the events of the play, and without the intervention of these forces, there would have been no tragedy. Crimes and their punishments cannot be looked upon in isolation of these forces. Indubitably, one of the most outstanding characteristic of the Shakespearean tragedy is the use of the supernatural. Shakespeare always introduces into his plays different forms of the supernatural, such as ghosts, spirits, witches and so forth. These transcendental beings are of considerable significance and their contribution to the course of the events can be seen in the fact that they are always put in close connection with characters.27 Accordingly, these powers in Shakespearean drama are considered important dramatic devices in that they inform the spectators of what happened, of what is happening, and of what will happen in the play. Hence, the role these supernatural beings play in relation to crime and punishment must not go unnoticed. In the tragedies of Shakespeare, crime is an evil act which is born out of sin. Sin rots the soul inwardly, but crime affects others as well, damaging or destroying them. In self-protection or a matter of retaliation, the others-the victim, the victim's relations and friends or the organized society-seek to punish the criminal often demanding an eye for an eye. a tooth for a tooth. Where the punishment is inflicted by the victim or his immediate relatives, it takes the form of revenge; where society takespunitive measure against the criminal, such an action takes the colour of punishment. Nevertheless, the sinner or the criminal himself is hardly affected by the punishment from outside, for physical punishment cannot touch the soul, but remorse and repentance can. Repeatedly, Shakespeare affirms that even there is no punishment of the body, yet a man who has sinned is punished in a troubled mind,...