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Shakespeare and the Blending Mind
Michael Booth
Introduction What is in this picture? A standing and gesturing man whose head is that of an ass; a woman sitting in a silken gown, looking at him; a silvery crescent in which she is seated; a backdrop that is midnight-blue, mirrored so that it shows the two figures from behind !bservers of this picture anywhere, if ac"uainted with Western literature, will have little difficulty recogni#ing it as a scene from $hakespeare%s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Many will know that the woman is &itania, the 'ueen of the (airies, and that the man is )ick Bottom, weaver and aspiring actor, and that she is in love with him, under a spell We who are familiar with the story can absorb the image at a glance, its diverse elements making sense in relation to each other (or us, something is happening mentally here at great speed*an act of conceptual integration*to bring comprehension of the image &his "uick cognitive activity has a relation to narrative, since the viewer may recall how the two characters have come together, and what the nature of their relationship is, and what its past and its future are &he mental process or processing also has something to do with humor, as this scene is recogni#able as an amusing one from a comical play* the ass-head on the man being the most conspicuous of this story%s layered absurdities +ab , surdus meaning etymologically -out of tune,. and hence -clashing./ Absurdities
Michael Booth
or cognitive clashes can elicit the laughter of surprise, which is one pleasure that the playwright strove to provide for his public A modern audience might notice that while the man in the picture is wearing everyday working clothes in contrast with the woman%s gown*Bottom figuring in the story as a working man whose rough-and-ready manners contrast with &itania%s*this man is wearing clothes of the 12th or 10st century, a conte3t widely, perhaps absurdly, removed from the 4li#abethan provenance of the play 5f there is narrative implicit in the image, and if there is humor, there is also poetry6 the moon is literally &itania%s seat here because it is figuratively her seat, her local habitation and the emblem of her supernatural authority as (airy 'ueen +-7ome, wait upon him; lead him to my bower &he moon methinks looks with a watery eye8./ 0 9er encounter with Bottom is played before a mirror*reversed, doubled and dimmed* because the world of this play%s midsummer night is e3plicitly that of dreams, and its meanings are accordingly reversed, doubled and half-lit A Midsummer Nights Dream is, indeed, an apt place from which to begin a book on $hakespeare%s conceptual blending because that phenomenon is a continuation, in the unconscious levels of waking thought, of the creative and accommodating dream-logic which allows one thing to be many 1 &itania%s dark comple3ion in this image is a fact that different viewers% minds may process differently, race being a particularly overdetermined domain of cultural coding; white theatregoers in past generations, seeing a black &itania, might have thought her incongruous in the same way as Bottom%s clothes; later audiences might have registered her comple3ion as enriching the production in which she appears, belonging not to the play%s humor but to its poetry Audiences today or tomorrow may take no notice of an actor%s race, and in some productions the comple3ion of Bottom rather than of &itania would be the perceived anomaly, if there is one 7ultural conte3ts vary geographically and change over time; meanings vary and change But the action of the mind in registering meanings*of deciding which details are important and interrelating them*is at all times a matter of subtlety and comple3ity 5t is perhaps less well understood than is generally assumed, and there is little enough reason to think that it has changed between $hakespeare%s time and ours; indeed, the fact that audiences worldwide still en:oy his plots, poetry and wit suggests that it has not changed in that time 5t seems to me significant that people unfamiliar with A Midsummer Nights Dream will try to interpret this enigmatic scene; their imagination will go to work on this picture, as on any picture, to ascertain what is the story there, or the :oke, or the metaphor 5t also seems significant that people familiar with the play can derive a number of impressions, inferences and meanings from this picture without any recourse to words; the intellectual and aesthetic activity prompted by this picture may not ultimately depend upon language, notwithstanding what has long been a prevailing theoretical view in literary studies
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555 i 9enry $ &urner%s 122; Shakespeares Double Helix +<ondon and )ew =ork6 7ontinuum Books, 122;/ uses A Midsummer Nights Dream to e3plore, in much the same spirit, this play%s notable celebration of -the value of mi3ing ideas and substances that are not normally mi3ed together . My book is in harmony with these interests, as its pro:ect is to assess the effects of $hakespeare%s conceptual blending, precisely -mi3ing ideas that are not normally mi3ed . &he differences between my approach and &urner%s are, first, that he pursues a comparison between $hakespeare%s creative activity and that of modern biological science, and second, that he balances this anachronism with a of foregrounding cultural history 5 pursue "uestions that are principally phenomenological rather than historical or historicist
Shakespeare and the Blending Mind No one knows what occurs within the creati e mind.!>
Michael Booth
5t may be true that -)o one knows what occurs within the creative mind,. as the critic Alfred 9arbage remarked in a 0?@; study of Hamlet. 9arbage%s attitude was of wonder before the comple3ity of an artistic enigma, and implicit in his discussion was the assumption that -what occurs within the creative mind. is a matter of the greatest interest and importance, which defies ade"uate description but would be very well worthy of it 9is words might also e3press a consensus in criticism today, but for different reasons; a confluence of opinions about the nature of meaning and language has brought about a general view that there is nothing really properly to be said about -the creative mind. or what occurs there, because the term -mind. is refused on principle While literary studies, as a field, has adopted a posture of agnosticism about the mind in recent decades, various other fields of study, from neuroscience to cognitive linguistics and psychology have been steadily accumulating new insights into the mind and empirical support for them &here is a longstanding cultural tradition of celebrating $hakespeare as a great genius, and a newer tradition of setting aside "uestions of artistry or aesthetics to discuss either the indeterminate condition of language or the ideological tensions of the time in which particular te3ts were produced, as well as the tensions of our own time; these discussions have long proven their value, and yet my primary interest continues to be in the mystery of imaginative e3perience in writer and reader, which 5 have found to be illuminated by cognitive linguistics and especially the theory of -blending. or conceptual integration @ $hakespeare is most interesting to me not as a figure to be aggrandi#ed or reduced, but as a writer manifesting capacities that are common to all of us, even if we are not ourselves professional theatre-poets &o understand what is intellectually rewarding in his works is to understand better the workings of human thought in general A Becent work in cognitive fields is well worth the attention of literary critics partly because it offers a clear :ustification for the study of literature*i e , that literature is a laboratory of thought and a window onto the workings of the mind*at a time when such a :ustification may be needed within our society at large 5t also merits the attention of critics because it furnishes a number of parameters according to which :udgments of "uality or value might be made*as, for instance, what makes a good play, a good :oke, a good metaphor, a good rhyme, a good poem*:udgments which of course may be more important or less important to readers with different priorities As critic Amy 7ook says, -Blending theory offers theater practitioners and scholars a tool to improve staging and design because it provides a way to understand what is meant when we say one thing Cworks% and another does not . D 7ognitive theory can help to clarify e3actly what one is focusing on in forming a given aesthetic :udgment about a literary representation, and so
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9arbage, As "he# $iked %t& An 'ssa# on Shakespeare and Moralit# +)ew =ork6 Macmillan, 0?@;/, 02? &his theory was formulated by cognitive linguists Eilles (auconnier and Mark &urner, and has subse"uently been e3plored by researchers in a wide range of fields $ee for instance6 (auconnier and &urner, "he (a# (e "hink& )onceptual Blending and the Minds Hidden )omplexities +)ew =ork, 1221/; $eana 7oulson, Semantic $eaps& *rame+Shi,ting and )onceptual Blending in Meaning )onstruction +7ambridge, 122D/ A -&o :udge aright, and with distinct consciousness of the grounds of our :udgment, concerning the works of $hakespeare, implies the power and means of :udging rightly of all other works of intellect, those of abstract science alone e3cepted . . $amuel &aylor 7oleridge, Shakespeare and the 'li-abethan Dramatists +4dinburgh6 Fohn Erant, 0?2A/, A0 D Shakespearean Neuropla#& .ein igorating the Stud# o, Dramatic "exts and /er,ormance through )ogniti e Science +)ew =ork6 Galgrave Macmillan, 1202/, ?0-?1
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Michael Booth
offers an avenue out of the perennial trap of -talking past each other. in such matters ; &he specific "uestion of what works well on stage is not central to my present pro:ect, but parameters for :udging a good story might include these "uestions6 9ow unified is it, and how intricate? &o what e3tent does it satisfy a desire for causality, even inevitability, and also a desire for surprise? 9ow does it balance the pleasures to be derived from anticipation and from reali#ation? Which characters% e3periences and predicaments engage our sympathies? Which characters% evolving relationships interest us, and why? $ome parameters for :udging a good 0oke might be6 9ow sudden and e3tensive is the reali#ation it entails for the listener? 9ow relevant is it to the e3perience or concerns of the listener, either long- or short-term? 9ow forceful or striking are its subversions? With how much tact, subtlety or cleverness does it seem to grace its speaker or inventor? Garameters for :udging poetr# seem to me rather more difficult to specify, since poetry is perhaps above all associated with polymorphous and une3pected conceptual possibilities +-5 dwell in possibility, a fairer house than prose,. says 4mily Hickinson/ )ew insights into cognition are at least useful grounding for a conversation about the things that a given literary work does in the minds of its readers !ne may complain that a work%s aesthetic effects are too timid or conservative, or too chaotically a ant+garde1 but in either case it might be useful to have some agreement about what those effects are 7ognitive theory also reminds us that the writer and reader of criticism are engaged in creative meaning-construction as surely as the writer and reader of literature I With its concern for the reality of both thinking and human intentionality, a cognitive approach allows a view of authorship that is less grandiose than some traditional views, but more ade"uate to the sub:ect than has arguably been the norm in historicist accounts With its greater interest in scalar or gradient relationships than in binarisms, and its attention to other conceptual relations than -difference. tout court, a cognitive approach enlarges poststructuralism in a manner partly anticipated by 7oleridge, who saw in our thought an -ever-varying balance, or balancing, of images, notions or feelings8conceived as in opposition to each other,. but who thought that infinite gradations between likeness and difference -form all the play and all the interest of our intellectual and moral being .? 5f historicism and poststructuralism are idioms for constructing and unpacking meaning, cognitive theory differs only in focusing our attention on these mental acts themselves 02 7onceptual integration theory considers metaphor as fundamental to ordinary linguistic meaning, and as involving the interaction of -mental spaces,. a fact which 5 think might usefully conte3tuali#e the common rhetoric of spatiality in literary criticism6 critics fre"uently employ a spatial vocabulary as their ultimate grounds of argument, speaking of connections, gaps, centers, margins, sites, boundaries, parallels, intersections, of opening up a space for one matter or another, of situating a problem or themselves
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(or this phrase, see Havid 9awkes, -Against 5dealism &oo6 A Besponse to 7ritics,. 'arl# Modern )ulture, 5ssue ?; 1201 I &his important point is made by )icholas Moschovakis in -&opicality and 7onceptual Blending6 "itus Andronicus and &he 7ase of William 9acket,. in )ollege $iterature, >>J0 +122D/6 pp 01;-A2 ? )oleridges (ritings on Shakespeare, ed &erence 9awkes +)ew =ork6 E G Gutnam%s $ons, 0?A?/, @I 02 -&he culturally and historically specific nature of cognitive embodiment makes cognitive linguistics its own kind of historicism, with cognitive blending its most powerful instrument for gauging KinputsK among dominant and subordinate ideologies and the discourses and te3ts that constitute literary history8 &his list could continue8to include the many C-isms% of our postmodern literary milieu . ( 4li#abeth 9art, -&he Liew of Where We%ve Been and Where We%d <ike to Eo,. )ollege $iterature >> 0 MWinter 122DN
Michael Booth
5n the course of three chapters, 5 consider different aspects of the conceptual-integration process that seem most pertinent to $hakespearean story, wit, metaphor and verse 00 &here is overlap, because some of the same processes are at work in any instance of meaning-construction with which the language arts present us But there are also differences among the chapters as they specify what is characteristic of each mode $torytelling is the art for which $hakespeare is perhaps best known, and it involves, as my first chapter discusses, two sorts of conceptual-integration6 the causal integration of events into a plot, and a sociocognitive integration of relationships among the characters 5ndeed $hakespeare%s playwriting career, as 5 discuss in the book%s appendi3, can be seen as a decades-long process of recombining elements to produce new aesthetic unities Wordplay and metaphor, or wit and poetry, are the focus of my second and third chapters $tories, puns, metaphors and rhymes involve the :u3taposition and interpenetration of -mental spaces. 01; we have networks of scenarios in the back of our minds, from which we improvise hybrid scenarios to help us think &he resulting blends, though useful for particular purposes, are often very strange, either manifestly or on reflection, and the combination of strangeness and insight is characteristic of much that we consider literary A metaphor or pun, a sonnet and a play are usually distinct ob:ects of in"uiry, but are also manifestations on different time scales*seconds, minutes, and hours, from the audience%s point of view*of an artist%s creative intelligence e3ploring human e3perience through an -ever-varying balance8of images, notions or feelings . 7oleridge posits a dynamic interaction among conceptual entities, and rightly so; if there are relationships in our mental e3perience*causeJeffect, pro3imity, similarity* these must be between entities of some kind, however provisional or transient they are 7ognitive theory offers several names for them, the nuances of which 5 shall e3plore, including -mental spaces,. -conceptual frames. and -scenarios . &his last term seems a useful one to begin with in discussing $hakespeare the actor and playwright, who was, perhaps preeminently among his professional peers, an artist and e3plorer of scenarios &he fact that scenarios can be linked mentally, by relationships such as causality, has led cognitive theorists to look closely at the parameters and affordances of such linkage, and many now see thought as operating within networks of linked scenarios &hese networks are assembled and modified in the mind of a given thinker, unconsciously and rapidly
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5 could well have devoted a chapter to $hakespeare%s stagecraft in the same conceptual-integration terms that 5 am bringing to bear on his other arts, but that pro:ect has been ably handled by the theatre scholars Bruce Mc7onachie and Amy 7ook $ee 7ook, above, and Mc7onachie%s 'ngaging Audiences + a )ogniti e Approach to Spectating in the "heatre +)ew =ork6 Galgrave Macmillan, 122I/, in which he writes that -conceptual blending may be a more accurate way to understand the doubleness of theatre for spectators than MisN Csuspending disbelief% . AA? &hough 5 discuss some stage effects, my main concern is with meaning as reali#ed or transacted through $hakespeare%s words 01 -M!Nur hypothesis is that, in terms of processing, elements in mental spaces correspond to activated neuronal assemblies and linking between elements corresponds to some kind of neurobiological binding, such as coactivation !n this view, mental spaces operate in working memory but are built up partly by activating structures available from long term memory Mental spaces are interconnected in working memory, can be modified dynamically as thought and discourse unfold, and can be used generally to model dynamic mappings in thought and language $paces have elements and, often, relations between them When these elements and relations are organi#ed as a package that we already know about, we say that the mental space is ,ramed and we call that organi#ation a -frame .85n the unfolding of a full discourse, a rich array of mental spaces is typically set up with mutual connections and shifts of viewpoint and focus from one space to another J Mental spaces are built up dynamically in working memory, but they can also become entrenched in long-term memory8 M4Nntrenchment is a general possibility not :ust for individual mental spaces but for networks of spaces8 5ndeed, much of our thinking consists of activating entrenched integration networks for dealing with present sub:ects . "he (a# (e "hink, 021->
Michael Booth
+-swift as thought. is an e3pression that $hakespeare uses in some form several times/,0> and they help the thinker find some analogical purchase on any new situation that arises $cenarios are recruited from long-term or short-term memory, a distinction important to cognitive science and relevant to literary e3perience, as 5 shall discuss &he sub:ects of wit and metaphor, it seems to me, are best approached with emphasis on the reader%s e3perience, as they are perhaps best defined as moments of reali#ation e3perienced by one person though engineered by another &his engineering or bringing together of the right array of scenarios is a key concern of conceptual-integration theory, as is the e3perience of reali#ation, or -global insight . &o analy#e a pun or a metaphor is necessarily to give testimony about one%s own encounter with possible meanings, and in discussing these aspects of $hakespeare%s art, 5 focus on the integrations that seem most ineluctably at work in my own mind in appreciating cases of comic or poetic wordplay 7oleridge remarked that -=ou feel M$hakespeareN to be a poet, inasmuch as for a time he has made you one*an active creative being.; 5 take this assertion "uite seriously, not to e3alt $hakespeare%s creativity above the reader%s, but to e3amine their interdependence $hakespeare%s stories, wit and poetry matter not only as instances of an artist%s creativity, but as occasions where the -active creative being. of the reader or auditor comes alive A sonnet or a play, on the other hand, has a more ob:ective e3istence as the product of deliberate composition 5t does e3ist in the minds of its readers, and differently for different readers, in much the same way as puns and metaphors0@*but it also has a composedness that is, to a greater e3tent, available for study if we are interested in the craft or creative power of the artist 0A 5n my discussions of these, therefore, 5 focus on some of the acts of conceptual integration that seem to have gone into making them My chapters introduce, as they go along, concepts from cognitive theory; this design is perhaps like that of a book on the physics of sports, if each chapter focused on one sport, and the analytical vocabulary of mass1 energ#1 ectors1 etc were introduced and revisited as needed &his approach is probably a more practical one than attempting to e3plain all of physics before discussing the sports, and probably more engaging for the sports fan than a book that used sports merely to illustrate the underlying physics As this book is written for those interested in $hakespeare, the terms of conceptual-integration theory will be introduced as they become relevant, adding up to a comprehensive picture of cognition in the service of a greater appreciation of $hakespeare &his approach involves a bringing to consciousness of nuances involved in a given act of meaning-construction,0D
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-But love8courses as swi,t as thought in every power, and gives to every power a double power, above their functions and their offices 5t adds a precious seeing to the eye . $o es $abors $ost1 5L iii >1;; -9aste me to know it, that 5 with wings as swi,t as meditation, or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge . Hamlet1 5 v 1?->2 0@ -4ach composes a play as he reads and a new play on each successive reading . 9arbage, 021; -What each of us does is to construct a private understanding8out of materials furnished con:ointly by ourselves, $hakespeare, a cloud of critics, and the actor who happens to be concrete before our eyes at the moment . &homas M Oettle, -A )ew Way of Misunderstanding Hamlet1. +0?2A/ in "he Da#s Burden +)ew =ork6 7harles $cribner%s $ons, 0?0I/, 0>? 0A &his distinction is perhaps adumbrated in $amuel Fohnson%s remark that -M$hakespeare%sN comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action . 2ohnson on Shakespeare& 'ssa#s and Notes Selected and Set *orth with an %ntroduction b# (alter .aleigh +<ondon6 9enry (rowde, 0?2I/, 0?; &he recognition of -thoughts and language. on the one hand and -incident and action. on the other, as distinct sources of pleasure, seems to me pertinent apart from Fohnson%s concern with comparing comedy and tragedy 0D !r, as Amy 7ook wonderfully observes in a slightly different conte3t, -7onceptual blending theory can provide8 a cognitive barium milkshake, lighting up the process of creating, thinking and understanding . 7ook, 1D
Michael Booth
perhaps like the slow-motion replay of particular moments in sports Blending, proper, is a prototypically artistic or literary kind of conceptual integration We e3pect integration from e3pository writers who are proposing to bring one domain to bear on another, or are generali#ing about a range of things We e3pect it, in fact, from anyone making an argument But we e3pect blending from an artist, one whose work will be valued not simply for its unity, but for its unresolved tensions -Blend theory. seems the most concise way of referring to the theory of conceptual integration, even when dynamics other than blending per se are the immediate focus of discussion; there is, however, some danger of misunderstanding with the word -blend,. which is often used to mean homogeni#ation While blend theory addresses the process by which we create unities, it also considers the persistence of difference and comple3ity in this process &he emphasis of the word -blend,. in this book, is less on unity, as with blending paint, than it is on diversity and discordance, as with the blending of languages, or households 7riticism using blend-theory seeks, as did 7leanth Brooks in his theoretical investigations of parado3, to shed light on -the relative comple3ity of the unifying attitude*the power of the tensions involved in it, the scope of the reconciliation which it is able to make . &he mind creates aesthetic richness -not by ignoring but by taking into account the comple3ities and apparent contradictions of the situation concerned . 0; Blending is the process by which thought undergoes, in the crosscurrents of our unconscious mental life, Ka sea-changeJ into something rich and strange,K as Ariel sings in "he "empest.0I With two domains as comple3 as the varied artistry of $hakespeare on the one hand, and the ineffable, evanescent motions of the human mind on the other, the "uestion arises how one could integrate them in a discussion that has real coherence while doing :ustice to them in their own right &his dilemma illustrates the challenge of achieving conceptual integration, as well as its strong pertinence to literature and to critical practice <ike the )ewtonian universe, the mind produces a huge diversity of effects from a few principles operating in tandem and in tension with each other; these will be e3plored in what follows (auconnier and &urner have written that 7onsciousness can glimpse only a few vestiges of what the mind is doing8 4volution seems to have built us to be constrained from looking directly into the nature of our cognition, which puts cognitive science in the difficult position of trying to use mental abilities to reveal what those very abilities are built to hide 0? &he general invisibility the mind%s characteristic operations to consciousness is part of what makes blend theory a fresh contribution to current debates about meaning, and their
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7leanth Brooks, -&he Groblem of Belief and the Groblem of 7ognition,. "he (ell (rought 3rn +)ew =ork6 9arcourt, Brace and 7ompany, 0?@;/, 1AD 0I "he "empest1 5 ii >?;-@2> 0? "he (a# (e "hink1 >@; -M5Nt may be part of the evolutionary adaptiveness of these mechanisms that they should be invisible to consciousness, :ust as the backstage labor involved in putting on a play works best if it is unnoticed Whatever the reason, we ignore these common operations in everyday life and seem reluctant to investigate them even as ob:ects of scientific in"uiry 4ven after training, the mind seems to have only feeble abilities to represent to itself consciously what the unconscious mind does easily &his limit presents a difficulty to professional cognitive scientists, but it may be a desirable feature in the evolution of the species !ne reason for the limit is that the operations we are talking about occur at lightning speed, presumably because they involve distributed spreading activation in the nervous system, and conscious attention would interrupt that flow. 0I
Michael Booth
ubi"uity and centrality to creative thought are what make it an important contribution &he following chapter employs blend theory, along with a little cognitive psychology, to integrate a century of critical insights about $hakespeare%s art of storytelling from critics including $amuel Fohnson, William 9a#litt, Eeorge Gierce Baker, Bichard E Moulton, 9ardin 7raig, (rank Oermode, 9erschel Baker, Hon <eGan and Fean 4 9oward
Chapter One: Shakespeares Stories
Michael Booth
$hakespeare is celebrated for many reasons, but is perhaps best known as a storyteller; even those who could not readily "uote his poetry are likely to be able to recall the stories of .omeo and 2uliet, 2ulius )aesar1 Hamlet or Macbeth $amuel Fohnson observed that 9is real power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select "uotations will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen 12 &hough 5 will, in fact, be using select "uotations to discuss $hakespeare%s poetry and wit *5 will be recommending the house of $hakespeare at least partly for its bricks*my starting point is -the progress of his fable,. and 5 will hope to show why Hr Fohnson might locate so emphatically within the domain of storytelling the -real power. of an artist who is aesthetically powerful in many ways &he simplest e3planation is perhaps the one that Mark &urner has offered in his book "he $iterar# Mind +and has elaborated in "he (a# (e "hink1 his collaboration with cognitive linguist Eilles (auconnier/6 that we think in stories and that our thinking, in a fundamental way, depends on our encountering, remembering and combining them 10 We process e3perience, in its overwhelming comple3ity, by using the familiar to grasp the unfamiliar, searching at each moment for visceral scenarios that offer a useful analogical purchase on the world According to (auconnier and &urner, the mind follows certain imperatives in the course of ordinary assimilative thought, which include6 7ompress what is diffuse $trengthen vital relations !btain global insight 7ome up with a story. &he task that was $hakespeare%s daily bread*coming up with a story*is, on this view, a fundamental and universal impulse of the human mind $mall wonder, then, that there has always been an audience for narrative and dramatic literature, or that some of it has commonly been perceived as making available a wealth of insight &he -vital relations. that tend to be strengthened in conceptual integration are, as 5 shall discuss, such things as se"uence, contiguity, causality, identity and intentionality &he compression of what is diffuse can be seen in $hakespeare%s skillful crafting of well-formed works of art from many disparate te3tual sources at once, and more generally from the inchoate materials that constitute our human emotional life and everyday e3perience &he art of the dramatist is, as it seems to me, to infuse an abundance of implication into the given space of short-term memory that is the duration of the play, some of which abundance may stay with us and become part of our long-term or -semantic. memory; an intellectually ambitious playwright not only writes a coherent story, but packs it with comple3ity and significance so that it pays and repays contemplation !ne way to do this
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Fohnson, -Greface to $hakespeare. +0;DA/, in 2ohnson on Shakespeare& 'ssa#s and Notes Selected and Set *orth with an %ntroduction b# (alter .aleigh +<ondon6 9enry (rowde, 0?2I/, 01 10 (auconnier and &urner, >01 -Stor# is a basic principle of mind Most of our e3perience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organi#ed as stories &he mental scope of story is magnified by pro0ection *one story helps us make sense of another . &urner, "he $iterar# Mind +!3ford6 !3ford Gress, 0??D/
Michael Booth
is to intensify a sense of causal connection among incidents of the drama, compressing time and space to show, selectively, the incidents most relevant to one chain of causality Another way is to tell two or more stories at once, interweaving them into a comple3 plot Another way is to populate the story with as many comple3 and evolving characters as the audience, with all its powers of concentration and all its innate social curiosity, can keep up with Another way is to fill the minds of audience members not only with interest in what is happening, but with curiosity about what is going to happen and why 4ach of these dramaturgic strategies, pioneered by $hakespeare, has been considered in its own right by $hakespearean critics; in what follows, 5 aim to show, with the aid of the blending paradigm, how they might all be considered in relation to each other Conceptual integration adumbrated in prior criticism 5/ $hakespeare achieves comple3 unity through selective compression of events, intensifying our sense of both causality and individual intentionality +motivation/ Because we think in stories, they have a naturally strong claim on our attention, especially if they manifest the "ualities most congenial and convenient to our thought With regard to criteria for the aesthetic appraisal of drama, Eeorge Gierce Baker wrote, -&he first principle of all is that a play must have unity, not because the rhetorics call for that in composition, but because the great public does not permanently care for storytelling which leaves no clear, final impression .11 4stablishing this artistic standard was, in his view, a signal achievement of $hakespeare6 &he high comedies and the tragedies of $hakespeare give us in perfect union, story, characteri#ation, and poetry of phrase and informing spirit &his perfection of accomplishment8rests on minute care for the techni"ue of the drama, and in turn this care for techni"ue was called into being by $hakespeare%s desire to fulfill at one and the same time his own wishes as to characteri#ation and the wish of the audience for story 1> &he distinct yet interpenetrating matters of story and characteri#ation cited here as essential to $hakespeare%s artistry are both to be addressed in cognitive terms in the present chapter; they are similarly paired in the critic Bichard E Moulton%s remark that -&he appreciation of $hakespeare will not be complete until he is seen to be as subtle a weaver of plots as he is a deep reader of the human heart .1@ <isa Punshine%s recent work offers us a cognitive framework for analysis of the characteristically literary imperative to -read8the human heart,. and Eilles (auconnier and Mark &urner offer a cognitive analysis of the conceptual integration involved in weaving subtle plots; synthesi#ing these approaches will yield a fairly comprehensive account of the dramatic techni"ue to which Baker identifies above as $hakespeare%s particular contribution
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Baker, "he De elopment o, Shakespeare as a Dramatist +)ew =ork6 Macmillan, 0?2;/, 0@I Baker, 1ID 1@ Bichard E Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist& A /opular %llustration o, the /rinciples o, Scienti,ic )riticism +)ew =ork6 Hover, 0?DD/, >A;; first printed in 0IIA
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Michael Booth
Baker speaks of drama as re"uiring a -selecti e compression of life so that it may be represented within the limits of five acts.6 $uch selective compression as 5 have :ust been noting makes, of course, for unity in the telling of the story, and if the first step in dramatic composition be so to select your incidents that you can illustrate within five acts the idea or the character which obsesses your mind for the time being, the second essential is that you shall not scatter the interest of your audience, but shall so order your details that at the end your purpose, if any, is clear, or that your story, at least, develops clearly and interestingly from start to finish 1A Both the compression and the selectivity noted here are, as we shall see, distinctive principles not only for the art of drama, but for the ordinary workings of human thought &he story told by Baker%s book +"he De elopment o, Shakespeare as a Dramatist/ can briefly be summari#ed as follows6 &he earlier 4li#abethan playwrights had established basic notions of plot and character, but in rudimentary form; they were able to stage a series of related incidents, though without reliable continuity or clima3 $hakespeare%s earliest efforts in comedy +$o es $abors $ost and "he "wo 4entlemen o, 5erona/ show only weak development of character and plot; the former play has very little plot at all, and the latter has a plot which raises e3pectations as to the resolution of conflicts among the characters which it does not meet &he most effectively plotted of his early comedies +"he )omed# o, 'rrors/ is built on the solid comedic foundation of Glautus, which gave a boost to $hakespeare%s developing sense of dramatic economy An early foray into tragic melodrama, "itus Andronicus, shows some technical skill with respect to the creating of suspense, though Baker believes that in this case, too, $hakespeare was building his play on received foundations &hen, however, a vogue for chronicle history plays helped to shift $hakespeare%s emphasis from plot to character6 MWNith the sudden rise into great popularity of the chronicle play between 0AIA and 0A?I, MhisN purpose became by well-chosen illustrative scenes to e3hibit the historical figures doing the deeds for which they were famous and uttering their e"ually famous words M(Nrom the rather bald accounts in the histories, the dramatist must re-create the historical figures, but without his usual freedom in his use of incident and dialogue from the sources 1D 5n the first tetralogy, -the actions are related one to another rather because historically they did happen in that order or because they happen to the same person or group of persons, than causally . Belying on chronology +and a compelling central character1;/ rather than upon a causality internal to the play, meant that crucial possibilities of plot and character development went unreali#ed in these plays 4ven the later Henr# the *i,th is -a pageant and a character study rather than8a play in which 9enry reveals himself by
1A 1D
Baker, 11 Baker, 0D> 27 -M<Nike the child, an audience, loving story-telling for its own sake, craves some compelling central figure whom it can follow sympathetically or even with fascinated abhorrence &he least e3perienced story-teller for children knows that mere incident with no central figure can never compete with Fack the Eiant-killer or the Qgly Huckling . Baker, 0A1
00
Michael Booth
significant and deftly correlated action . Qp to about the year 0A?D, $hakespeare could -characteri#e perfectly within the scene; he could develop from the merest historical suggestion characters which fitted perfectly into the chief historical incidents of the play 8but he could not bind, or did not care to bind, all this crowding incident together e3cept through some one central figure like Bichard 555 or 9enry L .1I &his limitation, though, began to be transcended as $hakespeare continued to work in genres besides history A Midsummer Nights Dream strongly emphasi#es plot in its intricate choreography among the groups of characters whose interactions make the story6 the lovers, the rustics, the fairies, and the framing characters &heseus and 9ippolyta -9ere is8the masterly sense of dramatic values in originally separate groups of figures which was absent in the handling of the historical plays . &hen, in .omeo and 2uliet1 $hakespeare shows a true grasp of motivation, -not merely within the scene but so as perfectly to relate part with part within a play, and so as cunningly to e3pound character . 5t is not very long thereafter, in "he Merchant o, 5enice, that he shows further that he has -ac"uired in perfection the art of so interweaving in his narrative many different strands of interest that if the sources were not known, no one would suspect him of bringing together incidents and episodes not originally connected . &his play shows he can -hold at the same time two points of view*an absolute necessity for any great dramatist .1? &he comedies were $hakespeare%s proving ground for comple3, evolving character, a skill or effect that he was than able to transfer to his tragedies >2 5n Baker%s view, an increased attention to character brought with it, for the maturing playwright, a care that his paying public did not lack the satisfaction of plot for which, he knew, they came to the theatre; he met this need by drawing upon more than one e3tant story for each play, at least doubling the amount of causally related incident for an audience to absorb -5n not one of these three great plays MMuch Ado About Nothing1 As 6ou $ike %t1 "wel,th NightN has he been content with what a single source supplied him . Making the stories unfold in tandem re"uired, of course, artful integration of causes, effects and identities; this fusing of stories is, as we shall see, an instructive case study in conceptual blending >0 Gerhaps more fully than any playwright since anti"uity, $hakespeare wrote tragedy as -a se"uence of serious episodes leading to a catastrophe and all causall# related . As he moved away from the restrictions of chronicle history even in handling historical material +though 2ulius )aesar is still notable for -the loose coordinating of its scenes./, his tragedy offered, like his comedy, -e3citing incidents neatly woven into a compact plot .
1I 1?
Baker, 0;0-0;> Baker, 0?2-10A 30 -7omple3 character, true to life, not within the scene or the act, but developing as the play advanced and able to endure scrutiny and analysis for the consistency of its drawing from start to finish,*this was one of $hakespeare%s contributions to high comedy But his mastery of his art by 0A?I enabled him to make this contribution to all of the dramatic forms in which he chose to work . Baker, 1@0 31 -5n Much Ado he weaves three strands6 the story of 9ero and 7laudio, to be found in Bandello, though not taken directly thence by $hakespeare; the love making of Beatrice and Benedick, the e3act source of which is not clear; and the character studies of Hogberry and Lerges, evidently wholly $hakespeare%s.; -M5Nt is Hogberry and Lerges who overhear the plotting of 7onrade and Borachio, and so ultimately bring the news that clears 9ero from her disgrace; and it is the blow falling on 9ero which makes Beatrice and Benedick drop their pretences and8come to an understanding .; -5n "wel,th Night8 it is the duel forced upon Liola by $ir &oby that8brings about the denouement, since it is $ir Andrew%s attack on $ebastian, whom he mistakes for Liola, which finally brings brother and sister together . Baker, 1@D-;
01
Michael Booth
(inal points Baker raises are that -&ragedy involves a struggle, a clash of wills,. and that $hakespeare shows -care for motivation in characters other than the title part .>1 $hakespeare%s ultimate achievement, then, is the parado3ical one of creating a strong sense of aesthetic or conceptual unity in its handling of a clash; his techni"ue arose to satisfy simultaneously his own curiosity about characters, even peripheral ones, and a growing public demand for causally integrated storytelling &he initially apparent means of binding incidents together into a story was the presence, throughout, of a central figure +as in .ichard the "hird, following Marlowe%s "amburlaine/; this left unsolved the problem of relating part with part within a play 7omedy helped to solve this problem, for reasons that Baker does not discuss at length, but which are precisely the sub:ect of my ne3t chapter, -$hakespeare%s Wit . &he moments of laughter associated with 7omedy tended also, in the hands of Glautus and even more so in the hands of $hakespeare, to be moments of reali#ation, and specifically of apprehending a difference in understanding between characters A chain of laughs meant a chain of reali#ations, and a comic focus on characters% reactions to one another served to embed them within a ne3us of cause and effect inseparable from their constantly changing affective states 7haracters, in comedy, thus revealed themselves in correlated action, and this principle of revelation turned out to be fully transferable to conte3ts in which the events were dire and the affective states grim; the tensions regularly relieved by laughter in a comedy could instead be compounded and directed toward an ultimately tragic effect &he public%s growing appetite for suspense in dramas, a curiosity about what would happen ne3t and how, became closely tied to their observation, and increasingly their inference, with regard to characters% causally interrelated emotional changes Motivation, in a word, came to suffuse $hakespeare%s dramatic storytelling; the discovery that each action of each character could and should be logically motivated was a dividend that $hakespeare%s diligent minding of the public%s love of plot paid to his own artistic interest in human personality &he converging and diverging motivations of multiple characters gave $hakespeare practice in holding several points of view, and soon he was skillfully integrating not only individual characters into mutually influencing groups, but groups of characters into a coherent story, and finally different stories into a richly diversified and e3citing drama &hrough it all, his depiction of characters% interactions was marked by dramatic economy, compactness and selective compression of incidents 55/ $hakespeare uses cross+space mapping between different stories to make them reinforce one another as they are combined 5n his Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Bichard E Moulton sought to counter a tendency for critics to disparage $hakespeare%s plotting, which Moulton attributed to their encountering $hakespeare more often on the page than on the stage >> 5n response, he points to the great economy with which $hakespeare marshaled the elements of his tales $hakespeare%s plots are federations of plots6 in his ordering of dramatic events we trace a common self-government made out of elements which
>1 >>
Baker, 1A?, 1I1, 1D@, 1D1, 1I>, 0AD -Amongst ordinary readers of $hakespeare, character-interest8has MprevailedN; and most of the effects which depend upon the connection and relative force of incidents, and on the compression of the details into a given space Mof timeN, have been completely lost . Moulton, >1>
0>
Michael Booth
have an independence of their own, and at the same time merge a part of their independence in common action8 Analysis distinguishes the separate actions which make up a plot MandN notes the various bonds between these actions and the way in which they are brought into a common system6 it being clear that the more the separateness of the different interests can be reduced, the richer will be the economy of design >@ 5t seems to me that the desiderata of bringing diverse actions into a common system and reducing the separateness of different interests are recogni#able as those of conceptual integration, and the sense of thereby enriching the economy of design seems to reflect the aesthetic intensification characteristic of conceptual blending, the richness being the density of implication, both logical and affective, wrought within any conceptual ob:ect that is both comple3 and compressed &he careful tracing of -bonds. between distinct mental scenarios is precisely what blend theory undertakes to do Moulton recogni#es "he Merchant o, 5enice as an amalgamation of two folk stories *that of the pound of flesh, and that of the casket game*which are woven more tightly together by the addition of two other plots6 the elopement of Fessica, and the comic story of e3changed wedding rings &he Cpound of flesh% story most centrally concerns Antonio and $hylock, who are both entangled in the principle of nemesis1 which is to say not :ust that they are antagonists to each other, but that each is made to undergo a reversal of fortune that he partly brings upon himself Bassanio is the occasion for Antonio%s debt, and is thereby an instrument for linking the stories; the idea that a man might borrow money in order to woo a rich woman allows $hakespeare to unite, through Bassanio, the AntonioJ$hylock story and the casket-story to which Gortia belongs principally as a pri#e
9er eventual disguise as a doctor of law +a gender-bending dramatic irony continuing what $hakespeare had e3plored in "he "wo 4entlemen o, 5erona/ augments the interest of her character, transforming her from passive pri#e to active and ingenious heroine
>@
Moulton, >A?->DA
0@
Michael Booth
&he unthrifty friend in one story is mapped onto the fortunate wooer in the other story; the woman wooed and won, in the casket-game story, is granted the role of :urist in the other story and delivers its punch-line &he elopement of Fessica helps to bring the main stories together in several ways6 it allows stage time to pass between when the bond is struck and when the bond comes due; it allows the news of Antonio%s trouble to be brought to Bassanio and Gortia at Belmont; it provides a fresh outrage to $hylock, plunging him into an implacable fury :ust at the very moment when he might otherwise have contented himself with e3tending to Antonio -a contemptuous pardon .>A &he Fessica plot strengthens not only the play%s causal logic but its human interest6 Fessica%s relationship to her father lends him an additional depth, and her relationship with Gortia elevates both &he same is true of Fessica%s relationship with her new husband <oren#o, whose favor with the audience offers a possibly needed buttress to that of Bassanio, the play%s ostensible hero >D &he episode of the rings, at the end, neatly allows Gortia to test her new husband%s devotion to her against his friendship for Antonio*a knowing and plausible human touch on $hakespeare%s part, which, like the Fessica story, deepens the play%s character interest 5t also underscores the play%s symmetry of construction by distinguishing between the two characters in Bassanio*the friend and the lover*and so between the stories in which they are embedded 5t also brings balance to the hybrid story by adding a pattern of -complication and resolution. that the comic side of the play would otherwise lack $uch dovetailing of constituent stories strongly suggests to me what blend-theorists describe as the compact synthesis enabled by cross+space mappings6 the mapping of friend onto wooer in Bassanio, of daughter onto messenger in Fessica, or of romantic heroine onto law clerk in Gortia
>A
Moulton, I0 Bassanio -has so little scope in the scenes of the play itself, which8present him always in situations of dependence on others, that we see his strength almost entirely by the reflected light of the attitude which others hold to him; in the present instance we have no difficulty in catching the intellectual power of <oren#o, and <oren#o looks up to Bassanio as a superior . Moulton, ID
>D
0A
Michael Booth
Blend-theorists typically supplement their analysis of cross-space mappings with a diagram with the following components6 5/ separate circles representing mental spaces, in this case the constituent stories; 55/ dots within these representing key structural elements +e g , lender1 borrower1 and ,riend in one space; wooer and lad# in the other/; 555/ lines drawn among the dots, representing conceptual links $ome elements in the blend, like CBassanio%, are composite in conception; others are simply inherited from the Cinput% spaces +e g Clender%, Clady%/ and others are introduced, via imaginati e completion,>; to fill out the picture +e g CFessica%, Crings%/ $uch diagrams can be a useful notation, but they have serious drawbacks6 they are static, schematic, and minimal, and in these ways completely unlike the volatile and vivid realm of cognitive e3perience that they are meant to describe !ne effect of any diagram is to occupy the viewer%s visual imagination, which in the case of blend theory is probably better directed toward the interacting conceptual scenarios under discussion, in all their human-scale three-dimensionality 4ven the term mental spaces carries an ambiguity as to whether one is discussing humanly inhabitable spaces, or abstract spaces like those marked by circles on a page &he diagrams hitherto routinely proffered by blend theorists can, in short, give an unfortunately misleading impression of what the theory argues, or what it is, and for these reasons 5 will generally refrain, in this book, from presenting diagrams 7rucial to Moulton%s argument is his observation that $hakespeare characteristically -makes a plot more comple3 in order to make it more simple.; this seemingly parado3ical accomplishment is a crucial point of interest for blend theory, and again a rather difficult one to represent diagrammatically &he secondary stories in a given play, he says, -have the effect of assisting the main stories, smoothing away their difficulties and making their prominent points more prominent.; their characters, who are often :ust mechanically necessary in one plot, find dimensionality when assigned roles in the other6
>;
-We rarely reali#e the e3tent of background knowledge and structure that we bring into a blend unconsciously Blends recruit great ranges of such background meaning Gattern completion is the most basic kind of recruitment6 We see some parts of a familiar frame of meaning, and much more of the frame is recruited silently but effectively to the blend . (auconnier and &urner, @I
0D
Michael Booth
-the multiplication of individual figures, instead of leaving an impression of waste, is made to minister to the sense of dramatic economy . 5t has often been noted that some $hakespearean characters such as Bichard the &hird and 5ago are allowed to become in a sense the authors of the plays in which they appear, or at least the authors of the part that is under their control Moulton points out what makes them authors of truly $hakespearean skill, which is their :udicious parsimony6 -&here is Min BichardN a dreadful econom# of crime6 not the economy of prudence seeking to reduce its amount, but the artist%s economy which delights in bringing the largest number of effects out of a single device .>I &he principle of dovetailing, of economy, of -watching one device produce two effects. is a key to the plays% artistry and beauty >? 555/ $hakespeare compresses identities to enrich story and character &he compression posited by conceptual-integration theory can occur within any of several logical relations6 Any distance may be imaginatively compressed to pro3imity or presence; any span of time may be compressed to consecutive se"uence or simultaneity; any chain of cause and effect may be compressed from a tenuous, diffuse connection to apparent immediacy and logical necessity; and relations of analogy and similarity may be compressed to the relation of identity 9ardin 7raig describes such identity-compression in his essay -Motivation in $hakespeare%s 7hoice of Materials,. showing how Macbeth blends key personages from different reigns described in 9olinshed%s chronicles6 Ban"uo belonged to the story of Macbeth8but mainly $hakespeare resorted for amplification to the chronicle of Oing Huff 5n that he found the story of Honwald, a man whom Oing Huff never suspected, who murdered Oing Huff in the castle of (orres &his deepened Macbeth%s guilt, since in his own story he had been an open rebel against Oing Huncan, but the story of Honwald amplified the plot in another way 9aving, with the aid of his wife, drugged the two chamberlains who lay with the king, Honwald, although he greatly abhorred the deed and did it only at the instigation of his wife, induced four of his servants to cut the king%s throat When morning came, he slew the chamberlains and cleared himself of the crime by his power and authority, though not without being suspected by certain noblemen because of his over-diligence &hus from the chronicle of Oing Huff came <ady Macbeth and all that pertains to her 8&he voice of sleeplessness comes from the chronicle of Oing Oenneth @2 Besides compression, 7raig%s source-scholarship serves to foreground another aspect of conceptual integration already addressed e3plicitly by Baker, which is its selectivity &homas 9amner remarked in the 0Ith century that -a poet%s :udgment is particularly shown in choosing the proper circumstances, and re:ecting the improper ones of the
>I
-)o one will suppose that 5ago has any other interest in reducing the amount of evil in the world beyond this economic interest of watching one device produce two effects, and leaving the hostile forces of goodness to work his ends without his troubling to draw upon his own resources of evil . ;@-D, 022, 1>I >? -What form and colour are to the painter, what rhythm and imagery are to the poet, that crime is to Bichard6 it is the medium in which his soul frames its conception of the beautiful . ?> @2 7raig, @>
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Michael Booth
groundwork which he raises his play upon,.@0 and 7harles Armitage Brown noted in the 0?th century that -&hose accustomed to e3amine the prototypes of $hakespeare%s fables8 well know how artfully he could appropriate incidents or shades in character, while he partially or almost wholly differed from the story .@1 5n order to come up with the story of Macbeth as we know it, $hakespeare compressed what was diffuse*assorted treacheries in $cottish history, serving different agendas* into the singular career and agenda of one $cottish noble and king, Macbeth &he basic insight served by this compression was a highly partisan one6 a heavy intimation of the wickedness of the ancestral enemy of the house of $hakespeare%s patron Fames $tuart 5n this, $hakespeare was simply doing for his new master what he had done previously by dramatically vilifying Bichard the &hird, historical enemy of the house of 4li#abeth &udor 5t is worth noting here that no special truth-value attaches to the insight attendant on conceptual blends; a sudden reali#ation or epiphany may be "uite incorrect, or based upon wholly false information, and still offer a powerful cognitive e3perience of e3tensive and suddenly apprehended coherence 5n viewing or reading Macbeth, we come to -reali#e. how depraved Macbeth is, and it is a matter of genuine insight with respect to the constructed character, howsoever little it may illuminate or :ustly represent the historical individual who is travestied in the fiction &he blending of these several reigns in $hakespeare%s story entails the compression of some of the aforementioned -vital relations. and the strengthening of others &he diverse times of the different historical incidents are made pro3imate with each other and identical with the present e3perience of the audience; the different locations*a heath, 5nverness, etc *are, as always in theatre, made identical with the space of the stage $uch collapsing of times and places yields a cognitive and affective intensification !ne especially compressed form of analogy, according to blend theory, is -role,.@> a word which in one of its senses is of obvious relevance to any discussion of theatre, and which is relevant here in a slightly different sense6 $haring the role -$cottish &hane. is something that enables the historical Macbeth and Honwald, as chronicled by 9olinshed, to be blended with each other to form the protagonist of $hakespeare%s Macbeth &he analogy between these men, implicit in their shared cultural and political role, is easily compressed to the relation of identity &his blending and identity-compression serves to intensify the psychological reality of $hakespeare%s Macbeth, furnishing him with a fall into secret treachery as well as with a wife tempting him to that fall &he indelible intentionality of <ady Macbeth*accomplice to Macbeth%s war on children, which arises from $hakespeare%s aim of celebrating the survival of (leance, ancestor to Oing Fames 5 *is something else notably intensified in this blend As (auconnier and &urner note, -5ntentionality is often heightened under blending . @@ 7raig similarly traces how $hakespeare wove 7ing $ear from disparate materials, and emphasi#es the transforming and intensification of its sources% affective content6
@0
9anmer, Some .emarks on the "raged# o, Hamlet1 /rince o, Denmark +<ondon, 0;>D/, ?; Brown, Shakespeares Autobiographical /oems +<ondon6 Fames Bohn, 0I>I/, >1 @> -Bole is a ubi"uitous vital relation8 Within mental spaces and across mental spaces, an element can be linked, as a role, to another element that counts as its value 4lements are roles or values not in some absolute sense but only relative to other elements /resident is a role for the value $incoln, and a value for the role head o, state . (auconnier and &urner, ?I @@ "he (a# (e "hink1 020
@1
0I
Michael Booth
5t was natural and yet a stroke of genius that made $hakespeare combine two stories so different in their tone and yet so closely parallel in their course as that of Oing <eir and the blind king of Gaphlagonia 9e knitted those stories together with a naturalness which will always be ama#ing, but his general task may be described as permeating the <ear story with the tragic tone and temper of the Eloucester story @A Where $hakespeare found several basically analogous +because all politically ambitious/ historical &hanes to work with in crafting the character of Macbeth, he seems to have been struck by an interesting contrast in considering the two stories that would become the sub-plots of 7ing $ear Analogy, as we have seen, is a key logical relation in the linking and integrating of mental spaces; disanalogy is as well @D 5L/ $hakespeare compresses space and time, to intensify causality and intentionality &he art of drama involves compressions of time and causality,@; and because drama is fundamentally, for the audience, a way of spending time, the tracing of these particular compressions can be a way of reflecting on both the audience%s or reader%s e3perience and the artistry that orchestrated it !ne may recall Baker%s emphasis on the virtue of dramatic succinctness, as in his remark that a dramatist must illustrate character -by selecting, not simply scenes which show this or that aspect of it, but the scenes which, first, represent it dramatically, and, secondly, represent it in the shortest space of time .@I $hakespeare%s compression of time to yield a tight dramatic unity, intensifying our sense of causality and of intentionality, has often been remarked on in so many words (rank Oermode notes $hakespeare%s habit of Kaltering and compressing to make a sharp
@A
"he "rue )hronicle Histor# o, 7ing $eir is a rather bright and cheerful play 5t furnished events for $hakespeare%s 7ing $ear, but it did not furnish tone, atmosphere, the deeper significances and the tragic concept &hese came from the story of the CGaphlagonian unkinde Oing, and his kinde sonne% as narrated in the tenth chapter of the second book of $idney%s Arcadia8 $idney furnishes active cruelty, filial ingratitude in a dreadful form, base deceit and dark intrigue 9e furnishes the theme of hunted fugitives, e3posure to storm, a cave of refuge +which may be the hovel/, blindness, danger, destitution, and, more than all, the deepest possible reflection on tragic folly and the worthlessness of miserable life8 (rom the fifteenth chapter of the second book of Arcadia, which treats of the story of Glangus, come by plain suggestion the machinations by which 4dmund undermines and uproots 4dgar 5t is by means similar to those used by 4dmund against 4dgar that the corrupt stepmother achieves the downfall and banishment of Glangus (rom that story also comes the suggestion for the disagreeably appropriate liaison between 4dmund and the wicked daughters of Oing <ear8 M$hakespeareN retains from the old play the sweetness of 7ordelia and the faithfulness of Oent +Gerillus/ . 7raig, @A-; @D -Hisanalogy is grounded on analogy We are not disposed to think of a brick and the Atlantic !cean as disanalogous, but we are disposed to think of the Atlantic !cean and the Gacific !cean as disanalogous8 Gsychological e3periments show that people are stymied when asked to say what is different between two things that are e3tremely different, but answer immediately when the two things are already8 analogous . (auconnier and &urner, ?? @; -M)No conception of the movement of a drama will be ade"uate which has not appreciated the rapid se"uence of incidents that crowds the crisis of a life-time or a national revolution into two or three hours of actual time. Moulton, >1>; -MENood storytelling does not have to be realistic in matching stage time and story time 5n fact8 narrative time is allocated based on the emotional load and overall importance, and not some realistic rendering of time flow . Barbara Hancygier, "he $anguage o, Stories& A )ogniti e Approach +7ambridge6 7ambridge Qniversity Gress, 1201/, 0AA @I Baker, 0I1
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Michael Booth
theatrical point, telescoping events, e3panding such characters as the )urse and Mercutio, cutting material and inventing new episodesK in telling of the story of Bomeo and Fuliet @? 9erschel Baker remarks of .ichard the "hird that Kevents are notably compressed and rearranged to maintain the rapid tempo of the plot,. and of Henr# the *ourth1 /art % that As in his other history plays8the so-called facts were artfully or ruthlessly deployed to tighten up the action and reinforce the theme8 M&Nhe four main crises punctuating 9enry%s reign8are so tightly s"uee#ed together that they appear not widely spaced events but phases of a continuous and accelerating action8 M&Nhese telescopings and distortions give shape and speed and moral meaning to 9olinshed%s inept narration; and :ust as they lead us to view 9enry%s reign as one of urgent and successive perils and as a drawn-out act of penance for the crime of usurpation, so $hakespeare%s :uggling with the ages and motives of his characters serves the other, cognate theme of Grince 9al%s preparation for the awful burden of the crown A2 &he fact that elisions of time enable $hakespeare to present Oing 9enry the (ourth%s fourteen-year reign as a single and continuous -act of penance. seems to me a clear case of narrative unity being created and intentionality intensified through time-compression A0 Moulton%s analysis of $hakespeare%s integration and compression in plots has both synchronic and diachronic aspects6 &he mind8must be conscious of a unity 5t must also be conscious of a comple3ity of details without which the unity could not be perceptible But the mere perception of unity and of comple3ity would not give the art-pleasure it does give unless the unity were seen to be de eloped out of the comple3ity, and this brings in a third idea of progress and gradual movement .A1 What Moulton calls the -art-pleasure. of perceiving conceptual convergence over time in a story appears to be related to the more general pleasure of economy noted above, a delight in seeing things dovetail, seeing things -brought into a common system. before
@? A2
"he .i erside Shakespeare1 0021 -Oing 9enry, who is shown at the beginning as so Cshaken% and so Cwan with care% that his fatal illness in Gart 1 occasions no surprise, was actually only thirty-si3 when he overcame his foes at $hrewsbury and ten years older when he died $imilarly his Cunthrifty son%*a lad of si3teen at $hrewsbury*is made coeval with 9otspur, who, though depicted as a splendid youth, was actually thirty-nine in 0@2> and thus a generation older than the wayward prince to whom he stands8as foil and rival . 5bid, IIA A0 -We commonly find networks involving human action where the form of causation and intentionality in the blend is sharper, simpler, and stronger in the blend than it is in the inputs . (auconnier and &urner, >>2 A1 >1@ Moulton gives as an e3ample the comple3 plot of 7ing $ear, emphasi#ing the -convergent motion, by which actions, or systems of actions, at first separate, become drawn together as they move on, and assist one another%s progress8 MEloucester%s castleN is the seat of the underplot, and the two systems become united in the closest manner by this central linking8 All the separate lines of action have thus moved to a common centre, and their concentration in a common focus gives opportunity for the clima3 of passion which forms the centre-piece of the play8 M&Nhroughout the fourth and fifth Acts all the separate actions8have an ultimate reference to Hover as the landing-place of the invading army6 in military phrase Hover is the common ob:ective on which all the separate trains of interest are concentrating 5n this way have the actions of this intricate plot, so numerous and so separate at first, been found to converge to a common centre and then move together to a common dRnoument . >;;
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Michael Booth
our very eyes, and seeing -the separateness of the different interests. reduced as if by a powerful though previously unapprehended principle of order in the world Fean 4 9oward, in her book Shakespeares Art o, 8rchestration& Stage "echni9ue and Audience .esponse, addresses $hakespearean play-construction in its synchronic and diachronic aspects, showing how -many elements of the stage event*tempo, kinetic effects, visual happenings, tonal shifts*work together to produce a comple3 field of meanings and to control the perceptions and responses of the audience . A> 9er metaphor of -orchestration. captures well the perceptual and temporal dimensions of blending, and it is striking how often she uses the words -assimilate,. -synthesi#e. and -integrate. to describe the response re"uired of audiences by $hakespearean comple3ity, whether in regard to relationships between plot events, thematic elements, characters, or aspects of a character 5mportantly, in view of the fact that our e3perience of plays as comple3 conceptual-integration networks occurs in real time, with constraints on our powers of attention and short-term memory, 9oward%s references to integration, synthesis and assimilation almost always imply a process unfolding in time and re"uiring a pause A@ <ike Oermode, 9oward admires the time-compressions in $hakespeare%s dramaturgy6 By a dramatic sleight of hand $hakespeare makes it appear that the storm scene Min 2ulius )aesarN occurs both on the night following the <upercalian festival and on the night preceding the 5des of March &hus, 7icero begins 5 iii by asking if 7asca has seen 7aesar home, presumably from the celebration of the <upercalia =et the scene ends with 7assius saying that before morning the conspirators will go to Brutus%s house; and from there, of course, they proceed to 7aesar%s &his blurring of the actual time scheme, however, is seldom noticed in performance AA $he also calls attention to time-compression in the thought of individual characters6 -5nvoluntarily, Min the famous 7ydnus speechN 4nobarbus slips into the present tense midway through his description, the moment of vision collapsing then and now .AD 9ardin 7raig%s discussion of the source-blends that yielded Macbeth and 7ing $ear1 and Bichard Moulton%s discussion of the blending that informs "he Merchant o, 5enice1 have in common a principal focus on the thought-processes of the writer of the story, and a critical or theoretical stance that is more synchronic than diachronic, as if the various elements involved in the blending were pieces of material laid out for a "uilt, or strands for a braid, whose relations were essentially spatial and simultaneous &his picture is of course complicated by the several ways in which a story is time-bound6 it was written in a particular era; it is made out of episodes, or pieces of time, which it serves to coordinate; its composition was a process, if often a non-linear one, that the story-writer underwent, making some logical and causal links in the course of the telling that he or she may not
A> A@
9oward, 0@ e g , -Hesdemona%s distracted song creates a moment of slackened tension in which the ultimate conse"uences of his transformation can be assimilated.01; -Huring such moments the audience is faced with the nearly impossible task of assimilating the opposing voices of the psychically divided hero . ;> AA 9oward, 0D?n AD -&he barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water8 9er gentlewomen, like the )ereides, so many mermaids, tended her i% th% eyes, and made their bends adornings At the helm a seeming mermaid steers8 (rom the barge a strange invisible perfume hits the sense8. Anton# and )leopatra + 55 ii 0?1-10>/, 9oward, >A
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Michael Booth
have forseen at the outset; and perhaps most importantly of all, for aesthetic criticism, the story as a finished work of art is a special e3perience-in-time constructed for its audience 9oward observes that &o MdiscussN the thematic and psychological patterns in the play, of course, involves wandering back and forth, in retrospect, over its surface, imposing an abstract ordering paradigm upon events that, e3perienced se"uentially, do not reveal a unifying meaning so readily What this mode of criticism does, and it is a useful and necessary operation, is to spatiali#e a temporal phenomenon, to see it in one glance as a simultaneous whole A; What appears here in 9oward%s reflections on her own critical approach is a mental habit endemic in conceptual blending6 that of translating temporal relations into spatial ones to make them easier to handle in imagination 7ertain vital relations transform, under the pressure of conceptual compression, into certain others, and there are strong regularities as to which relation is thus translated into which other6 :ust as analogy can compresses to identity, time shows a remarkable ability to compress, in thought, to space AI 7ompression, though, is largely a scalar phenomenon, and the changes it effects tend to be e3perienced as "uantitative, along a continuum, before they become "ualitative Fust as one might pass through a continuum of analogy, from weak to strong to strongest, before the relation in "uestion seemed to be one of actual identity, our desire to think about long stretches of time tends to make us compress them into short stretches; we may watch a two-hour dramati#ation of a two-year war in order to understand the war better, then analytically spatiali#e the drama we have watched in order to gain perspective on it, and hence a further degree of understanding 9oward considers the individual scene or scenario as the fundamental unit of conceptual manipulation*something that, through linking and combination, produces more comple3 unities, temporal and thematic &he integration of scene-se"uences, in her view, offers an aesthetic intensification, as conceptual blending characteristically does A? )oting how -one scene can recall an earlier scene to underscore changing circumstances within the play%s world,.D2 she points out cases where such -mirror scenes,. as she calls
A; AI
+Qniversity of 5llinois Gress, 0?I@/, 0;I -A striking general property of blending is that it can compress one vital relation into another 5ndeed, there are canonical compressions relating different vital relations8 !ur most basic understanding of time is achieved through cultural blends like the sundial, the watch, the calendar . (auconnier and &urner, >0A; -7ompression can scale &ime, $pace, 7ause-4ffect, and 5ntentionality Analogy can be compressed into 5dentity or Qni"ueness 7ause-4ffect can be compressed into Gart-Whole8 5t is also a fundamental power of the way we think to compress Bepresentation, Gart-Whole, 7ause-4ffect, 7ategory, and Bole into Qni"ueness8 Lital relations are what we live by, but they are much less static and unitary than we imagine 7onceptual integration is continually compressing and decompressing them, developing emergent meaning as it goes . 020-021 A? -$hakespeare, in constructing his plays, often looked beyond the single scene to larger theatrical se"uences consisting of several ad:oining scenes orchestrated as a single unit and designed to be e3perienced as such by the viewer !ften, these se"uences of linked scenes are orchestrated to gain power from one another and to achieve, collectively, an emotional and intellectual resonance no single scene could attain by itself . 9oward, 0>D D2 9oward, 01@ -As 7laudius kneels, 9amlet appears behind the praying king and meditates revenge &his visual configuration, recalling the player%s description of Gyrrhus poised to kill old Griam, suggests the new vulnerability of 7laudius and the sudden power 9amlet has ac"uired through the play within the play. 001
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Michael Booth
them, are distributed in such as way as to give the play%s action a dramatic -spine .D0 &hese mirror scenes, and the spines they sometimes form, are close in conception to what cognitive theorists have called -mirror networks.*one type of conceptual-integration network, in which several different mental spaces share the same organi#ing frame, rendering highly efficient the processes of comparison, cross-space mapping and imaginative substitution among their constituent elements D1 <ike a blend-theorist, and also like critics such as 7raig, Moulton and Oermode, 9oward is attentive to the way that integration of scenarios can create a sense of clarity, immediacy and emotional force $he points to -crescendo effects. carried over consecutive scenes, as for instance when three scenes in 7ing $ear + 55 ii-iii-iv/ -enact the same basic event, but each repetition is pitched at a higher level of intensity.6 &he solo voice and the solitary figure of <ear are pitted against an ever more venomous succession of voices and an ever larger array of defiant bodies As the dialogue moves relentlessly back and forth between the old king and his enemies, it is as i, a hea # ball were being tossed back and ,orth between a line o, e er stronger people on one side and a single ,igure on the other. 4ventually, that unsupported figure must weaken; and <ear finally does, rushing from the stage cra#ed with grief and rage D> 5t is interesting to see that 9oward%s elucidation of an emotional dynamic among these scenes in 7ing $ear resorts for clarity*e3actly as cognitive theory predicts*to a basic physical scenario or -image schema. with intuitive, palpable force-dynamics 5n the movement from scene to scene that 9oward discusses, the mental integrations of the playwright can be shown at times to capitali#e on disanalogy as a principle of connection among mental spaces; she notes that scenes may be connected not only by the relation of
)ote that the mental process by which the one tableau evokes the other one entails cross+space mapping, the sudden identification of Oing 7laudius with Griam and of 9amlet with Gyrrhus &his particular scheme of association, which tends to lend 7laudius the pathos traditionally associated with Griam, probably affects 9amlet%s decision not to kill 7laudius +whatever he may say about preferring to kill him in sin than prayer/ 5t was probably not the scheme that initially prompted 9amlet to re"uest the Crugged Gyrrhus% speech from the players when they first arrived; he seems to have been trying, at first, to identify imaginatively with Gyrrhus the remorseless avenger without also considering 7laudius as, Griam-like, a sympathetic victim &he difference between 9amlet%s intended and actual +or first and second/ ways of mapping the Gyrrhus scenario onto his own situation illustrates the selecti e pro0ection that is always a factor in blending D0 $he calls attention, for instance, to the linked street-fight scenes in .omeo and 2uliet +9oward, 00;-0I/, the -spine of court scenes. in Hamlet that -affords three concrete visuali#ations of 9amlet%s changing relationship to 7laudius in his public role as king. +00I/, and -a spine of group scenes in 7ing $ear!6 -MANudience response to the play%s final events*<ear addressing the dead 7ordelia amid a ring of courtiers and attendants*depends directly on that scene%s comple3 recapitulation and transformation of visual, aural, and kinetic patterns the audience has repeatedly encountered in earlier parts of the performance . 00? D1 -A mirror network is an integration network in which all spaces8share an organi#ing frame Mi e N a frame that specifies the nature of the relevant activity, events, and participants . (auconnier and &urner, 011->; -&he sharing of the organi#ing frame automatically transfers a rich topology from space to space 5ntegration is provided in the blend by the shared frame and its elaboration &his elaborated frame is often already a common, rich, and integrated frame, like race or debate or encounter &he sharing of the frame throughout the network automatically preserves the Web connections between spaces . 5bid, >>; D> 9oward, 01>
1>
Shakespeare and the Blending Mind causality but by tonal, philosophical and characterological and contrasts D@ L/ $hakespeare coordinates and integrates perspectives
Michael Booth
&he notion of character-contrasts brings us now to the very important consideration of $hakespearean intersub:ectivity*the way in which $hakespeare%s plays are able to -weave many perspectives upon reality into an interlocking whole with generous acknowledgment that the Bottoms of this world have value as well as the &itanias .DA As with her use of the phrase -crescendo effects. to describe emotional intensifications over successive scenes in $hakespeare, 9oward%s metaphor for the plays% intersub:ectivity is a musical one*that of counterpoint, by which she means the impression of sub:ective difference and simultaneity created in the play%s dialogue by, usually, an alternation between self-consistent, stylistically contrasting speakers6 MGNrevented from passively adopting the perspective of either stage party8 the spectator must develop a more complicated and comprehensive point of view, one indirectly shaped by the way in which, through its contrapuntal orchestration, the scene progressively defines and undermines the two limited perspectives it brings into such sharp :u3taposition DD &his more comprehensive audience-perspective would be a conceptually blended one, enabling us to entertain simultaneously several unreconciled perspectives 9oward cites scenes from .ichard the "hird1 Henr# the *ourth1 /art 8ne1 As 6ou $ike %t1 Hamlet1 "roilus and )ressida1 8thello1 7ing $ear and "he "empest :; &he phenomenon of comple3 intersub:ectivity is highly characteristic of $hakespeare, whether in the mode of comedy or tragedy 5n the comedy "wel,th Night, we are given two interwoven subplots, each with its own very rich sociocognitive comple3ity6 5n the
D@
-M&Nhe clowns% matter-of-fact approach to death contrasts with and defines, respectively, the lyrical and strangely soothing reveries of Eertrude upon the death of !phelia and the probing and horrific speculations of 9amlet upon the skull of =orick and the dissolution of great Ale3ander . DA 5bid, 1> DD 5bid, A; -&he spectator is forced to tolerate a deliberate division of his attention and to perceive one strand of stage speech in the immediate conte3t of another8M$Nuch a division usually brings to prominence oppositions in outlook, temperament, or values among stage participants and thereby calls into play the audience%s powers of :udgment and discrimination More important, contrapuntal stage techni"ue allows the dramatist to control the perspective from which the audience views stage action, inviting us to identify now with one, now with another, stage party or forcing at times our detachment from both . 5bid, A> D; -&he abrupt transitions from episode to episode Min 9amletN constantly unsettle our perspective upon events while helping to suggest a network o, unreconciled tensions . 0A0; -We are manipulated by a deliberately dis:unctive stagecraft to feel8the difficulty of winning through to a unifying truth amid multiple and competing ,rames o, re,erence. 5ronically, the theatrical unity of the movement comes largely from the cumulative effect of its inner discontinuities . 0A1; -"roilus and )ressida offers perhaps the most comple3 and pu##ling instance of this particular mode of scenic orchestration 5n L ii a lovers% dialogue between 7ressida and Hiomedes is overheard by &roilus and Qlysses, and both of these parties are in turn observed by &hersites $hakespeare8is employing the eavesdropping convention several times over &he central dialogue is commented upon by at least three different observers, all of whom evoke, by tone and idiom, contrasting perspectives on what they see . D@; -!nly the words of the listening Oent and the asides of 4dgar offer a counterpoint to this scene M555 viN of whirling madness and remind us of a contrasting world of reason and coherence . 01;
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Michael Booth
plot involving the aristocratic main characters, Liola +in male disguise as -7esario./ secretly loves 7ount !rsino, who sends her to woo the lady !livia on his behalf; !livia falls in love with -7esario,. and then mistakenly marries Liola%s twin brother $ebastian !rsino :ealously confronts $ebastian, believing him to be an une3pectedly perfidious 7esario All these characters are in great perple3ity as they try to cope with a tangled web of veiled intentions and misapprehensions which the audience too, even with its privileged perspective, must encounter as a cognitive challenge
Meanwhile in the subplot, the downstairs characters $ir &oby, $ir Andrew, (este, Maria and (abian conspire to practice upon the peace, sanity and reputation of Malvolio, against whom they share a grudge &he mind-game that they contrive is to make him believe,
through the device of a forged letter, that his employer, the <ady !livia, is in love with him and wishes to see him at all times smiling and in cross-gartered yellow stockings* 1A
Michael Booth
two stipulations ridiculously at odds with his personality and position in her household
5n performance, the stockings prove a famously memorable material anchor for the play%s sociocognitive web of divergent perspectives, unfailingly comical because always keeping vividly before our attention the painfully great difference between what Malvolio believes to be his relationship with !livia, and what she understands it to be; on top of this, there is the simultaneous difference between Malvolio%s perspective and that of the other characters% conspiracy, in which the audience gradually finds itself implicated Along with scenes, then, Fean 9oward considers characters% perspectives as among the mental spaces to be choreographed in a play, or indeed blended $he considers speeches -in which one character seems to voice some portion of the psychic life of another,.DI and cases where one character%s attributes transfer to another through malign influence6 -!n the one hand, we have the controlled and confident !thello8!n the other, we have the passionate, enraged !thello who has been tainted by 5ago%s ideas and language . $ometimes a play calls for the compression of two characters% intentions and identities6 -&he rage of M<aertesN is manipulated and e3ploited by M7laudiusN, until the united energies of both coalesce around the intricate plan to kill the prince .D? 9oward also considers cases in which -two contrapuntal voices actually are used to reflect the divided consciousness of :ust one of MtheN characters .;2 &his techni"ue is one upon which
DI
-<ucio, lurking on the periphery of the scene MMeasure ,or Measure1 55 iiN and speaking only to 5sabella, seems to make available to the audience some of 5sabella%s inner thoughts and emotions and thus make comprehensible the changing te3ture of her overt behavior . 5bid, ;0; -Maynard Mack calls MtheseN umbrella speeches, Csince more than one consciousness may shelter under them% . ;In D? 5bid, 0@ &his -orchestration. is not unlike a moment in /eter and the Wolf6 when Geter enlists a friendly bird to help him catch the wolf, we hear the voice of the bird +flute/ sounding Geter%s theme instead of its own theme; it is instantly clear that the one character has taken up the agenda of the other ;2 5bid, D?
1D
Michael Booth
$hakespeare relies for tragic pathos,;0 but also one that he uses to comic effect, as in "wel,th Night +5 v/ where Liola%s uneasiness with her role and her script finds e3pression in a wonderfully compressed Mn b N e3ample of verbal counterpoint created by a single Mcharacter%sN speech At one and the same time Liola attempts to deliver her prepared te3t and to make in"uiries and deliver rebukes in a fashion not at all in keeping with the decorum of her assigned task ;1 -$hakespeare was thoroughly a master of the mi3ed motives of human character,. William 9a#litt wrote,;> and Fean 9oward%s findings seem to corroborate this view 9er arguments are of additional interest to me both because they overlap to a striking e3tent with the premises of blend theory6 besides synthesis and compression, she anticipates blend theory%s interacting conceptual frames;@ and the global insight delivered through their interaction ;A &hese concerns :oin in her discussion, as in mine, with the cognitive and aesthetic matter of intersub:ectivity 9oward is of course not the only scholar interested in $hakespearean perspectivism6 9erschel Baker similarly remarks on the -techni"ues of :u3taposition, inversion and antithesis MthatN enable us to watch the action from many points of view,.;D and 9oward acknowledges both )orman Babkin;; and Wolfgang 5ser;I as precursors in this area of in"uiry 5n performance, Macbeth strikingly compresses into one space, on the stage, at least two incommensurate perspectives6 the perspective of the guilt-stricken Macbeth, who can see a ghost among his guests, and urgently warns his wife about it8
;0
-7onsider, for e3ample, !thello%s terrible speech M5L iN when, having struck Hesdemona before <odovico, he calls his wife back to him at <odovico%s re"uest8 7onsider, too, the feast scene in Macbeth +555 iv/, in which Macbeth%s language fluctuates with terrifying suddenness between the welcoming words of fellowship he offers in his role as Chumble host% and the frightened outbursts he utters before the ghost who haunts his table !r consider the self-division that occurs when <ear talks to the blind Eloucester in Hover%s fields &he mad king by turns rages against the corruption that infects the world%s body and preaches the lessons of patience and forgiveness . 5bid, ;1-> ;1 5bid, 0;1 ;> "he )haracters o, Shakespeares /la#s +<ondon6 0I;2/, 00> ;@ -As an une3pected voice suddenly disrupts the audience%s engagement with a developing line of stage action, a new ,rame through which to view that action is introduced $uch an occurrence significantly alters the audience%s perspective on the central stage action . 5bid, A; ;A e g -$uch an encounter invites, not a simple moral :udgment, but a recognition of the gulf that separates the $hakespearean hero from other men and of the vulnerability that accompanies great aspiration . 5bid, D@ ;D "he .i erside Shakespeare1 II; ;; -)omplementarit# is the word Babkin uses to describe $hakespeare%s characteristic presentation8of opposing elements that are mutually e3clusive and yet individually compelling $uch a mode of vision denies the viewer a single, coherent, simple reading of reality . 9oward, ;An $ee Babkin, Shakespeare and the )ommon 3nderstanding ;I -Wolfgang 5ser +"he Act o, .eading1 esp 02;->@/ discusses the way the reader of a fictional te3t, by virtue of the wandering viewpoint, achieves a perspective more inclusive than that of individual characters within the te3t, often including the narrator Hespite the generic differences between drama and the novel, there are similarities between the reading activities 5ser describes and the attempts of the theatergoer to assimilate the partial perspectives of separate dramatic characters and to achieve a coherent Creading% of the action more comprehensive than that of any single character . 5bid, ;A-Dn
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Michael Booth
and the perspective of the guests themselves, who cannot see a ghost among them
&his compression of perspectives into a shared space is one way in which the dynamics of conceptual integration can be seen to overlap with those that cognitive psychology treats under the headings of -&heory of Mind. or sociocognitive comple3ity &he dramatic entrance of Ban"uo%s ghost is an e3ample of how a conceptual incongruity or -frame clash. can occur among differing mental spaces*sociocognitive ones, in the present case, or semantic ones in the case of much wit and poetry, as 5 shall also discuss &he aesthetics of the frame clash will be a fundamental common denominator in my discussions of wit and poetry L5/ $hakespeare challenges his audience 1I
Michael Booth
Fean 9oward is onto something very important, 5 think, when she remarks that -contrapuntal. or intersub:ective se"uences of rich comple3ity in $hakespeare%s plays -tax the audience and stretch its powers of perception and :udgment .;? &he same insight lies at the heart of <isa Punshine%s pro:ect of assessing the place of intersub:ectivity within literary e3perience Punshine%s work, partly anticipated here by 9oward%s, is a ma:or contribution to the nascent field of cognitive criticism because it conceives of literary aesthetics not simply as a manifestation of universal mental capacities, but as representing a frontier of human mental life; they are the point at which we grapple* valiantly, ingeniously*with our own mental limits We are human, and so we continually imagine things, yet we are onl# human, and so we can only imagine so much at a time, and can only sustain our imaginative work for so long at a stretch, and can only remember so much, at a given time, of all that we have imagined 5t was Punshine who lately introduced into criticism the terms -&heory of Mind. +&oM/ and -metarepresentation,. both originating in the field of cognitive psychology &heory of MindI2 is defined as that mental faculty that is operative when one person makes inferences about what another feels or believes &he term was developed for use in cases where this capability seems to be reduced, as with autism-spectrum disorders -Metarepresentation. is -our evolved cognitive ability to keep track of sources of our representations +i e , to metarepresent them/ . &his term too originates in the effort to characteri#e a deficient or nonstandard state, in this case schi#ophrenia, which involves -failure to monitor the source. of one%s mental representations, so that patients fail to recogni#e their own thoughts and speech as originating from themselves, or to identify another person%s speech with that person Punshine, as literary critic, considers novels of various kinds*detective novels, novels employing stream-of-consciousness techni"ue or unreliable narrators*as catering to the pleasure that people derive from the stimulation of their metarepresentational capacities $uch stories -demand outright that we process comple3ly embedded intentionalities of their characters, configuring their minds as represented by other minds, whose representations we may or may not trust .I0 &he relevance of conceptual integration theory to these concepts, and ice ersa1 may impress itself upon the literary-critical reader, as they all involve connection and embeddedness among variably configured mental representations I1 A significant convergence between &oM phenomena and conceptual integration has to do not only with networks of mental connection, but with the normal limits of cognitive performance
;?
-&hey often force us to assimilate two sorts of stage happenings at one time6 a "uarrel and a commentary on that "uarrel; a persuasion scene and a simultaneous revelation of the psychic struggles of one of the participants (re"uently, contrapuntal se"uences direct the audience%s attention to oppositions in outlook, temperament, or value that are impossible to reconcile and that e3ert competing claims upon our assent and sympathies . 5bid, ;@ I2 A person%s -&heory of Mind. is hisJher cognitive capacity to attribute mental states to other people; the word -theory. in this phrase does not imply conscious con:ecture or formulation of propositions, as it does, for instance, in -theory of evolution,. or in -blend theory . I0 (h# (e .ead *iction& "heor# o, Mind and the No el +7olumbus6 &he !hio $tate Q Gress, 122D/, 0A? I1 &he fact of metarepresentation is, indeed, at the heart of mental space theory, which first arose from the logical problem of referential opacity in language*i e cases where a sentence has a clause embedded in a psychological predicate 5f you say that -Fohn thinks the criminals should go free,. should 5 assume that the characteri#ation -criminals. is part of Fohn%s view or part of yours? &he ambiguity of such cases had been a problem in formal linguistics, and (auconnier%s -mental spaces. were addressed to this dilemma
1?
Michael Booth
As Punshine points out, and cites e3perimental data to support, -people have marked difficulties processing stories that involve MmetarepresentationN above the fourth level . (or illustration, she cites a cartoon by Bruce 4ric Oaplan in "he New 6orker1 in which a man says to a woman -!f course 5 care about how you imagined 5 thought you perceived 5 wanted you to feel .I> As a literary theorist, Punshine is interested in the "uestion of why comple3 sub:ective embeddedness +such as -A wants B to believe that 7 thinks that H wanted 4 to consider (%s feelings about E./ is more difficult for us to conceptuali#e than chains of causality +such as -A gave rise to B, which resulted in 7, which in turn caused H, which led to 4, which made possible (, which eventually brought about E ./ I@ (auconnier and &urner are also interested in the fact of limits on working memory, and they understand conceptual blending partly as a pragmatic adaptation in the face of such limits6 compressed blends can be very useful as codes, shorthands, mnemonics &hey remark on a limit on working memory observable in linguistic constructions of the form -&he secretary of the wife of the president of8 . Where logical recursion occurs in speech, they point out, -9uman beings typically top out after a handful of repetitions We say C&he scarf my aunt bought% and C&he scarf my aunt my uncle married bought,% but it gets hard at C&he scarf my aunt my uncle my father disliked married bought% .IA Many conceptual blends, (auconnier and &urner, suggest, arise under pressure of this constraint, as ways of conveying in a kind of conceptual shorthand the same information that would e3haust the listener%s short-term memory if spelled out Both of these cognitive approaches address a point at which our capacities -top out,. a phenomenon that literary critics might e"ually well identify with the absurd*as in -!f course 5 care about how you imagined 5 thought you perceived 5 wanted you to feel.* or the sublime; one can well imagine, hypothetically, an inspired dramatic, poetic or novelistic epiphany that conveyed, in an instant, :ust how -you imagined 5 thought you perceived 5 wanted you to feel . 9enry Fames is one artist who might accomplish such a thing, and $hakespeare is surely another; such a mental dynamic is indicated by Mariana in Measure ,or Measure, who says of Angelo that he -thinks he knows that he neSer knew my body, but knows he thinks that he knows 5sabelSs KID $hakespeare is, of all writers, an artist of both the absurd and the sublime 4ven as they play for laughs, his works can
I>
-!verwrought to the si3th level of mental embedment*the level at which our species is not that cognitively fluent*this statement about mutual sensitivity, caring, and understanding is literally incomprehensible and has to be deciphered with pen and paper, if one bothers to decipher it at all . 1? I@ -$ub:ects had little problem with the factual causal reasoning story6 error rates were appro3imately AT across si3 levels of causal se"uencing 4rror rates on the M&oMN tasks were similar +A-02T/ up to and including fourth-level intentionality, but rose dramaticall# to nearl# :<= on ,i,th+order tasks . 7ognitive scientists knew that this -failure on the mind-reading tasks MwasN not simply a conse"uence of forgetting what happened, because sub:ects performed well on the memory-for-facts tasks embedded in the M&oMN "uestions . Punshine cites Hunbar, -!n the !rigin of the 9uman Mind. in ' olution and the Human Mind& Modularit#1 $anguage and Meta+)ognition1 eds 7arruthers and 7hamberlain +7ambridge6 7ambridge Qniversity Gress, 122/, 1@0; Punshine, 1I-? IA (auconnier and &urner, >ID Brian Boyd, in (h# $#rics $ast& ' olution1 )ognition1 and Shakespeares Sonnets +7ambridge6 9arvard Gress, 1201/, similarly considers the constraint of short-term or -working. memory as a defining factor in the phenomenology of verse, cross-culturally6 -All verse depends on line length, on lines that usually take two to three seconds to utter*according to one e3planation, the length of the human auditory present, our capacity to hold a se"uence of sounds in our head at once; according to another, the si#e of working memory, which can cope with five to seven different chunks of information . 0D ID L i 12>-@
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Michael Booth
overwhelm with their cognitive richness, intricacy, comple3ity, depth*whether in a layered metaphor that strains and rewards our inferential powers, or in the plot of a tragedy like 8thello or 7ing $ear that presents minds -as represented by other minds, whose representations we may or may not trust . &he ne3t chapter will turn its eye onto $hakespeare%s artistry of the absurd, and we will have more there of Punshine%s -sociocognitive comple3ity. in both aspects*as an absorbing pleasure and a challenge My chapters on wit and poetry will both link $hakespeare%s artistic eminence in those domains with an audience- and reader-e3perience of being overwhelmed by a certain cognitive abundance or surplus An interest in characters and emotions, and a capacity to monitor them, runs deep in human cognition, and some have posited an evolutionary link between our powers of integrating se"uences and of integrating perspectives Brian Boyd, for instance, writes6 -As our imaginations have e3panded, we have also become adept at metarepresentation6 at entertaining multiple perspectives and understanding the relationship of one perspective to another, like that of successive moments of our past to each other and to the present or the future, or others% perspectives on us or anything else .I; L55/ $hakespeare provokes curiosity, e3pectation and imagination Hon <eGan similarly links temporality with intersub:ectivity in literary e3perience6 MGNlots seem Cdramatic% to us not as a result of the conflict itself, but as a result of the way in which complications are introduced which prevent the conflict from coming immediately to a head, or, even more fre"uently, as a result of conflict or potential conflict being concealed from one or more of the parties involved &hus we are led to feel a continual sense of e3pectation of the conflict coming into the open and being resolved II &he representation of a character%s changes +K9eSs full of alteration and self-reproving,K 4dmund observes of Albany in 7ing $ear1 L i >-@/, involves both causal capacities and sociocognitive ones, and the depiction of characters whose changes are interdependent is an integration of integrations -M&Nhe dramatist who seeds his stories with deceptions,. <eGan remarks, -is able to reap a double harvest6 to e3cite our imaginations into a formulation of the story in advance of its unfolding in action, and to evoke the rich effects of dramatic irony as the story emerges in the continuing present tense of the action on the stage .I? &he classic instance in which $hakespeare, as a mature artist, seeds a story with deceptions to intensify its emotional impact is probably the plot of 8thello We watch, for instance, as a smiling 5ago presses drinks upon the non-drinker 7assio in feigned fellowship but in fact to engineer 7assio%s disgrace, with the collusion of Boderigo, whose part is to provoke the drunken 7assio into a brawl; meanwhile, as we know but Boderigo does not, 5ago has misled Boderigo about his motivations and sympathies, and plans to discard Boderigo as soon as he has used him; in fact, 5ago will murder Boderigo, though this is one plot-element reserved as a surprise for the audience
I; II
Boyd, 0>; Hon <eGan, "he )ogniti e .e olution in (estern )ulture& 5olume >?"he Birth o, 'xpectation +<ondon6 Macmillan, 0?I?/, 0;D I? 5bid , 1@I
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Michael Booth
&he aesthetic effect of this plot is due partly to the sociocognitive comple3ity involved* we know that 5ago knows that Boderigo only thinks he knows about what 5ago plans to make !thello think about 7assio, etc *and it is partly due to the brilliant economy of 5ago%s scheming, his ability to -make one device produce two effects,. in Moulton%s phrase; in blending-theory terms, 5 would say this plot involves elegant compressions of causality &he story%s aesthetics are also greatly determined by its engagement of our capacity for rational e3pectation, as analy#ed by Hon <eGan*something that blendingtheory would address as a mode of imaginati e completion
<eGan%s work, predating blend theory, sees the scenarios of the comple3 plot as imaginatively interlinked to intensify our impressions of causality and intentionality $hakespeare%s plays are and were a source of pleasure, and they needed to be that because the writer and his fellow players depended on a paying public for their living &his pleasure, as 5 hope to show, had various sources including wit and poetry, but <eGan%s particular focus is on the pleasure of rational e3pectation*$hakespeare%s use of which, he argues, is a compelling advance past most pre-$hakepearean drama,?2 and past $hakespeareSs own early work, as for e3ample "itus Andronicus, in which, as he notes, Kanything can happen ne3t K?0 &he recognition of cause and effect is itself a potential source of intellectual pleasure, and it underlies at least two others in drama6 the e3citement of weighing possible futures at a given moment, with their respective implications and degrees of likelihood,?1 and the pleasure of having one%s e3pectations +as of a character%s ultimate marriage or death/ satisfied, but in an une3pected way
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4ven in so early and in some ways light a work as "he "wo 4entlemen o, 5erona1 <eGan argues, $hakespeare, both in his selection of story materials and in the ways in which he moulded those materials into a comple3 plot*arousing our e3pectations; delaying their fulfillment; sustaining highly dramatic effects; suggesting the passage of time through scenic structure; and saturating the action with dramatic irony*e3hibited a degree and variety of technical accomplishment unprecedented in 4nglish drama . 1@? ?0 5bid , 1;2
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Michael Booth
-Minds predict features of their environments, which normally do not change rapidly from moment to moment,. says Brian Boyd; -&hey tend to notice only what escapes their prediction, and they actually receive a dopamine reward when they detect something that has not been fully predicted.?>; such a reward, it seems to me, might help to e3plain the pleasure that often accompanies encounters with the une3pected in conceptual blending *as with the plot twists that enhance storytelling, and as with the ,rame clashes that, as 5 will show, provide a cognitive common denominator between wit and poetry ?@ 9aving developed the skill of delivering its satisfactions to an audience, <eGan argues, $hakespeare appears to have become firmly and consistently devoted to the comple3 plot &he difference between simple and comple3 plots is that in the former, e g ' er#man, M5Nt is impossible for the minds of the audience to move ahead of the action in any fashion other than aimless speculation !ne thing happens, and then another thing happens in a se"uence of more or less self-contained episodes8 &he curiosity of the audience is thereby restricted to an interest in what will happen ne3t, with no single possibility regarded as being more likely to happen than others A comple3 plot, on the other hand, entails not only a more involved blending of direct presentation with e3position, but also a much more complicated and complete knitting together of the developments of the story 5nstead of forming an episodic Cand8then% se"uence, the incidents are linked by numerous causal connections &he affective mechanism of the comple3 plot is to create a continual sense of anticipation among the readers or members of the audience by drawing them into this unfolding pattern of connections with the past and future of the story .?A &his account of plot seems highly convergent with the theory of conceptual integration, and indeed, though it is not his main focus, <eGan takes notice of the comple3 cognitive underpinnings of plot6 -M&Nhe formation of specific notions as to what is likely to happen is not as simple an operation as we might think; it re"uires the ability to combine various and often disparate pieces of information, which may have been received at several different times and places, in a particular way; to draw inferences from these data; and to pro:ect these inferences into the hypothetical realm of the future .?D &he mechanism of our absorption in a comple3 plot is foregrounded intentionality, <eGan argues 5n $hakespeare%s mature plays1 -the awareness of the story and its network o, intentions is constantly infusing an imaginative life into our interpretation of the action before us .?; 4ven in $hakespeare%s earlier and less intersub:ectively comple3 work, intentionality is foregrounded <eGan argues, for instance, that .ichard %%% manifests more richly than any 4nglish drama before it the techni"ue of building plot
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$hakespeare%s arch-villains are particularly good at directing attention towards such contemplations6 K)ow, whether he kill 7assio, !r 7assio him, or each kill the other, every way makes my gain K 5ago, 8thello1 L i 01-0@; KWhich MsisterN shall 5 take Both? one? or neither?K 4dmund, 7ing $ear1 5L vii A;-I ?> Boyd, 10 ?@ -5n such networks, both organi#ing frames make central contributions to the blend, and their sharp differences offer the possibility of rich clashes (ar from blocking the construction of the network, such clashes offer challenges to the imagination . (auconnier and &urner, 0>0 ?A <eGan, 0;A ?D 5bid , ;A ?; 5bid , 1@@
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Michael Booth
around the intentions of a character; the audience memberSs mind is unconsciously enlisted in an identification with a strongly intentional mind within the represented world We may be horrified as we watch Bichard or 5ago proceed through a string of victims, and yet we cannot help vicariously involving ourselves in the aims of whomever seems the most focused, comprehensive and goal-oriented consciousness presented in the play ?I 5f a morally satisfying ending comes, it is because of the transfer of our vicarious interest to someone else with strong intentions, a Bichmond or a MacHuff Hrama, since $hakespeare, intensifies our sense of causality by omitting much of whatever might distract from it6 -M&Nhe e3traneous or inconse"uential details that fill so much of daily life are whittled away in literature, leaving our imaginations free to focus on the future of the story &he comple3 plot8encourages the formation of e3pectations that are both more focused and more comprehensive than those in real life .?? When $hakespeare writes, in Henr# the *i,th1 -$mall time; but in that small most greatly livedJ this star of 4ngland,. the sense of a correlation between a small time and living greatly belongs partly to the historically short life of this particular king, but also belongs to the achieved intensity of the -small time. in which the play has transpired &he affective intensifications wrought by temporal and causal compression in drama022 constitute one of the key themes of <eGan%s discussion; another is the highly compelling, even addictive pleasure in what blend theorists call imaginati e completion Punshine helps us to understand literature in general as being largely defined and structured by pleasure-giving imaginative completions in the domain of intersub:ectivity +-9er speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection; they aim at it, and botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,. as is said of !phelia/020; <eGan helps e3tend this same principle along a temporal a3is Both critics are concerned with the broad phenomenon of curiosity as driving our investment in literary works* Punshine highlighting the surprising intensity of our curiosity about other people%s thoughts and feelings, and <eGan pointing out the intensity of our curiosity about whether and how our temporalJcausal e3pectations will be fulfilled, especially in so far as they are
?I
-7learly we cannot share the intentions of all the characters in a play when those intentions are in conflict with one another What happens in such cases is that our imagination naturally attaches itself to the fullest or most omniscient intentions8 7ritics who feel disinclined to concede Ma bondN with characters whom it is impossible for us to admire sometimes feel obliged to attribute the appeal of Bichard 555, for e3ample, to our admiration for his Csense of humour% or his Csheer cleverness% 5n fact, what is operating is not any admiration for Bichard%s "ualities as a character, but an imaginative sympathy with the intentions he e3presses with the plots in which he is continually formulating for us the future of the story . 1DA-D ?? <eGan, 1D@ 022 -5n the case of cause and effect, scaling can consist in shortening the causal chain from many steps to few or only one8 $caling of cause and effect can also consist in reducing the number of different types of causal event8 &he range of effects, of kinds of effects, of causal agents, and of kinds of causal agents may be similarly compressed Another scaling of cause and effect is to compress a diffuse or fu##y causation into a sharp one . (auconnier and &urner, >0> 020 Hamlet1 555 ii >I0-1
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Michael Booth
e3pectations about the thoughts and feelings of others 021 7uriosity, in both cases, is importantly not a passive wonder, but a state of imaginative engagement and activity &o sum up the chapter, 5 believe that $hakespeare can be considered to be, in Moulton%s phrase, -as subtle a weaver of plots as he is a deep reader of the human heart,. inasmuch as readings of the human heart are the weft of his plots, where time is the warp &he plays thereby woven are compact conceptual integration networks, with subplots made to augment plots by -drawing their mutual interweaving yet closer, and throwing their character effects into relief6 the additional comple3ity they have brought has resulted in making emphatic points yet more prominent Mi e , intensi,icationN, and the total effect has therefore been to increase clearness and simplicity Mi e , global insightN .02> 5n the art of drama, different scenarios are notably linked by relations of causality and intentionality in order to satisfy an audience%s innate sociocognitive curiosity6 we want to e3perience vicariously not only a striking situation, but also -all that belongs to this. 02@* the fullest elaboration of a scenario that our imagination can provide, and the richest significance that it can ac"uire as part of a coherent integration network such as a play; here 5 mean -coherent. in the sense of internally consistent, adhering to a plausible logic, but also consistent with our individual e3perience and entrenched cultural knowledge 5t seems to me that blend theory accounts very well, and very comprehensively, for the dynamics of creativity in general*for which $hakespeare%s name is now a byword* and specifically for, the principle of -watching one device produce two effects,. which 5 follow Moulton in considering a key to $hakespeare%s artistry and his enduring appeal A significant part of blend-theory%s value for literary criticism is its help in identifying beauties of economy and compression, in a clear and consistent way, across a full spectrum of artistic modes*from plots to puns and :okes, to metaphors, to rhymes, to stage effects, to cinematic versions, to updatings or modern adaptations of the plays What <isa Punshine%s form of cognitive theory and criticism usefully contributes, "uite apart from its focus on intersub:ectivity per se, is a focus on the dynamic interaction of mental powers with their limits*something that is noted by (auconnier and &urner and is implicit in their whole blending model, but whose implications for literary aesthetics have not yet, 5 think, been sufficiently e3plored An encounter with cognitive limits is essential to the aesthetic e3perience of the audience of literary art, and in many cases it is also important for the artist; certainly an interplay of freedom and constraint defines the art of rhyming verse to which $hakespeare was repeatedly drawn, as 5 shall discuss in chapter three, and 5 think it can be seen as marking $hakespeare%s storytelling as well 9e had the freedom, as a playwright, to wander imaginatively over all the stories that he had ever encountered; he was constrained, though, by what he learned to be the cognitive limits of his theatergoing public6 their need for an ultimate sense of unity, coherence and causal integration in the stories that they would pay to watch and hear
021
<eGan%s argument has a strong historici#ing dimension, in that he believes he can trace, through $hakespeare and other writers, the rise of the this curiosity as a factor in Western culture; if this position seems to open him to charges of both bardolotry and cultural chauvinism +charges that he addresses, 5 think persuasively, in the second edition of his book/, he at least cannot be accused of perpetuating a naively trans-historical essentialism about -our. interest in comple3ities of plot and character*the latter of which, especially, seem to me, too, to belong more fully to late-and post-$hakespearean literary representations than to early- or pre-$hakespearean ones 02> Moulton, I? 02@ -Wilt thou hear more, my lord?.J -All that belongs to this . )#mbeline1 L v 0@D-;
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Michael Booth
7ausality and intersub:ectivity are interlacing webs of mental spaces Both of these* endless to contemplation in the abstract*are, in drama, subdued to the element of time6 futurity, in the interplay of e3pectation and surprise that deepens our involvement in a play, and past time, as reflected in the demands that a $hakespearean poetic drama makes upon our working memory &here is a distinction to be considered, in plot, between time as a structuring principle*one of the vital relations that may be used to coordinate mental spaces with beautiful economy*and time passing, as e3perienced by an audience &his inherent tension, between understanding $hakespeare%s plays as e3periences in time, and understanding them as the products of design, is one that will inform my subse"uent discussions of wit and of poetry as well 5 shall now embark upon my e3plorations of -the splendour of particular passages,. having thus shown, 5 hope, why some measure of $hakespeare%s power is to be found, as Hr Fohnson says, in -the progress of his fable .
-$hakespeare%s originality seems to have consisted in the selection of great significant patterns, in the discovery of incidents, in une"ualled ingenuity in ,itting parts together so that they reinforced one another, and in masterly skill in realistic amplification .02A
02A
9ardin 7raig, -Motivation in $hakespeare%s 7hoice of Materials,. in Shakespeare )riticism >@AB+>@:<1 ed Anne Bidler +!3ford6 !3ford Qniversity Gress, 0?;2/, @2
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Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

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Chapter One: Shakespeares Stories

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

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Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

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Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

Shakespeare and the Blending Mind

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