The Making of Shakespeare's Dramatic Poetry by G.R. Hibbard (review)

4'2 LETTERS IN CANADA 1981 The book is carefully printed and provided with a selective index of proper names. (LINDSAY A. MANN) G.R. Hibbard. The Making of Shakespeare's Dramatic Poetry University of Toronto Press. viii, 1')6. $17.50, $7.50 paper Economically written and lightly footnoted, G.R. Hibbard's study of the growth of Shakespeare's language does not parade its learning or construct elaborate critical theories. It is the product of a close engagement with the text; and it demonstrates once again that, however computerized scholarship may become, in criticism there is no substitute for the sensitive reader. Nor is the text seen in isolation; some of Hibbard's shrewdest observations concern Shakespeare's relations to the drama of his time. The ominous silence of the ghost in Hamlet is not only telling in itself but departs strikingly from the stage tradition of noisy, lamenting ghosts. A Midsummer Night's Dream is full of witty allusions to early drama, and not just in Pyramus and Thishe: Titania's 'What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?' may recall Hieronimo's oftenquoted 'Whatoutcries pluck me from my naked bed?', adding to the verbal parody (common enough in itself) a piquant transformation in the situation. In Titus Andronicus Marcus's speech over the mutilated Lavinia is a misguided attempt to outdo Hieronimo; the result is too slow and elaborate. But the curt mockery of the rapists a few lines earlier has a sardonic power that anticipates Webster. Hibbard's main work, however, is to relate Shakespeare to himself. He is alert not only to the familiar variations of style within the plays but to subtle changes within each style. In Hamlet the Pyrrhus speech is written in an old-fashioned heroic manner, but still carries genuine rhetorical power. However, 'the poetic cheese with which "The Mouse-trap" is baited is decidedly and designedly mouldy' (p 17). The most important comparisons are those that show Shakespeare growing from one play to another. CharacteristicofHibbard's method atitsbestis his comparison of the Lieutenant's speech introducing the murder of Suffolk (2 Henry VI) with the dialogue of Macbeth and his Lady before the murder of Banquo. In the first the images are pat and conventional. Atmospherics, morali2ing , and practical business lie side by side. In the second the images (unlike those of 2 Henry VI) are drawn from daily life - 'dragons' wings and dead men's graves' (p 29) yield to falconry and law - and acquire new power from being half-concealed and connected by surprising leaps of association. At the same time, through the poeticatmosphere we are made aware of the state of the characters' minds: the language does at least double duty. One kind of progress Hibbard traces is from imagery that is decorative HUMANITIES 4'3 and detachable to imagery that is implicit and functional. It is the change from Richard of Gloucester's one lost in a thorny wood That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns, Seeking a way and straying from the way; Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out to the Bastard's 'I am amaz'd, methinks, and lose my way I Among the thorns and dangers of this world' (pp 136-7)' There is also a gain in poetic power when Shakespeare goes from mere enumeration of ideas to progressive argument, as in the two versions of Berowne's defence of love. Rhetorical exaggeration, though not abandoned, gains from being juxtaposed with more natural language. In an unexpected but revealing comparison Hibbard shows how this double effect in the laments of Constancein King John (speeches that have been muchabused in criticism) looks forward to the storm scene of King Lear. Shakespeare even learns to make capital out of weaknesses and limitations. The necessity of describing action that cannot be shown becomes a positive advantage in The Taming of the Shrew: no mere presentation could make Petruchio's decrepit horse, or his madcap wedding, as vivid as they are in the characters' reports.By the time he writes Love's Labour's Lost and Richard II Shakespeare is aware that 'the...