Shakespeare Seminar - Shakespeare-Gesellschaft

Thomas Kullmann
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common in Italian love poetry, as in Petrarca’s sonnets and canzones (Canzoniere, 17,
66, 135, 189, 235, 237, 332, 359), is rather used ironically, as by Capulet who applies
it to his daughter’s feelings which he does not take seriously.
Another cluster of images concerns vastness of the sea, and, in particular, the
quantity of tiny parts which make up a vast whole, the grains of sands at the bottom
and the shore of the sea, or the drops of water. This image cluster obviously derives
from Biblical images which emphasize the smallness of the individual, thereby
enjoining humility. The image of the tides, of “ebb and flow”, to denote both
changeability and regularity, might be added as characteristically Shakespearean.
The predominant image cluster, however, defines the sea as a dangerous place for
voyagers, or even as a person characterized by irrational passion, by rage and ire, and
by impulses violent and destructive. It is this image cluster which I would like to
classify as ‘epic’, with book I of the Aeneid as the prime pre-text. This image can work
in two ways: Quite often the image can be applied to the mind of a person who has lost
his or her ability to think rationally, to control their passions. King Lear refers to the
“tempest” in his “mind” (3.4.12); like the tempest at sea, his mind needs calming down
before things can turn back to normal, before the natural order is restored. The other
sort of image involves the opposition of a voyager and the tempestuous sea; with the
sea standing for ‘the other’, forces which are inimical and incalculable, deaf to
entreaties and not amenable to reason, impervious to any attempt at force. Without
human intervention, however, these tempests are liable to subside and to allow the
traveller to reach his destination safely. The construction of the other as the sea of
course implies a certain construction of the ‘self’, a concept of the human condition.
The individual who metaphorically confronts the sea is constructed as rational and
endowed with wide but limited perception. In order to master ‘the other’ he or she
needs to be patient and skilful; they should be prepared to endure inexplicable
calamities calmly, so as not to ‘assist the storm’ by becoming passionate themselves, in
order perhaps to be rewarded by prosperous winds after the cessation of the tempest.
Life is envisaged as a voyage, with limited human control as to where we are going, a
voyage which involves both danger and hope. The sea imagery thus becomes a literary
shorthand code for a world picture informed by Stoic philosophy, slightly tempered by
the idea of a prosperous conclusion which through one’s own perseverance as well as
the mercy of some divine power might be reached at the end, an idea found in Virgil’s
Aeneid, as well as, of course, in Christianity.(Cf. Kullmann1995, 210-220)
We realize that meaning is produced by the complex intertextual pattern evoked by
the sea imagery; and we can also see that ‘real’ voyages – as undertaken by
Shakespeare’s contemporaries - are of little significance within this intertextual
pattern. 4 To Shakespeare, as well as to most of his spectators and readers, maritime
adventures were exclusively textual ones. 5 I should like to argue that in Shakespeare
4
5
This was first noted by Caroline Spurgeon (24-26, 47f.) in the context of biographical speculation.
Two exceptions which involve a reference to contemporary voyages of trade rather confirm this
rule: Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Troilus in Troilus and Cressida use “India” as a
metaphor for the sexual exploits they envisage: Concerning Mistress Ford and Mistress Page,
Falstaff announces that “they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both”
(1.3.71f.). Troilus remarks that Cressida’s “bed is India, there she lies, a pearl” (1.1.100). The
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