Simon Gray's Butley and Shakespeare

Simon Gray's Butley and Shakespeare David M. Bergeron University of Kansas As act 2 of Gray's Butley opens, Miss Heasman, a student, reads her essay, "Hate and Redemption in A Winter's Tale, " to her tutor, Ben Butley, who reduces her literary analysis to sardonic and amusing ridicule. In fact, in his skilled and practiced hands the task is relatively simple, though, of course, he does not confront the ideas in her somewhat predictable and pretentious essay. Why this literary discussion in the play? The first response is that the play, filled with such literary allusions, offers yet one more. True — but the matter, or so I will argue, cuts more deeply than that. I suggest that Gray's use of Shakespeare does two things: it brings into focus the incidental and scattered satire on literary criticism; and, more important, it underscores the ironic gap between Butley and Shakespearean characters and the resolutions of their action, particularly in Shakespeare's romances. According to my reading of the play and my calculation, there are at least twenty-five writers and literary figures either named or their works alluded to (sometimes quoted) in the play; there may well be others that I did not catch.1 Whatever the precise number, that is an impressive array of literary references in a not particularly long play. Sophia Blaydes is the only critic whom I have read who has assayed this matter of literary allusion in the play and its purpose. It seems to me, however, that she does not push either her investigation or her argument far enough. She overlooks a number of allusions and has nothing to say overall about the references to Shakespeare, beyond the obvious business of Miss Heasman's essay. She is surely right when she suggests that "Gray has indeed effectively used allusions to literature to undermine the illusions of academe" (390-91). But the foibles and failures of the academic world shine through with or without literary allusion. Two writers are referred to more often than others: T.S. Eliot and Shakespeare. The choice of Eliot is understandable since Butley is presumably especially interested in Eliot, is indeed allegedly writing a book on Eliot. As we look around Butley's cluttered office, we see the large photograph of Eliot on the wall; it is appropriately smeared and curling up at the corners, emblem of Butley's own messy ways and life. Butley resides in a psychological "wasteland" of sorts; in contrast to Eliot, he is unable to move out of it to a clearer, more hopeful vision of life. 179 180Rocky Mountain Review If Eliot is appropriate, what about Shakespeare? Gray alludes to six Shakespeare plays: Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. These references come from plays at the middle or at the end of Shakespeare's writing career, with allusions to the romances (Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest) dominating. The emphasis on these late plays is, I think, deliberate. The discussion of The Winter's Tale at the beginning of act 2 underscores the play's pervasive attack on literary criticism, at least from Ben Butley's perspective. We first notice in the analysis of The Winter's Tale that Gray has the title wrong: he consistently refers to the play as "A " Winter's Tale. This is either Gray's lapse of memory or his little joke, for neither the intense student writing about the play nor the learned tutor takes note of the error. If this is deliberate on Gray's part, then he calls attention to the occasional failure of literary critics to get the facts straight. Miss Heasman's essay vibrates with critical commonplaces about theme, paradox, imagery, and symbolism. She is an easy target for Butley; thus, when she comments on the paradox ofthe "frozen soul" in the play, Butley responds with a possible allusion to Hamlet: "Bit fish-mongery, that" (43), making the pun on soul-sole. As she stumbles over a passage in her essay, having been distracted by Butley, he asks, "Can you see?" (43). The stage directions indicate that he then aims the desk light at...