The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy by William C. Carroll (review)

282Comparative Drama William C. Carroll. The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp. ? + 292. $28.00. The subject of this book is itself protean, for, depending on the meaning one assigns to metamorphosis, one might treat the concept suitably in a note or an encyclopedia. In the narrowest sense of the word, only one metamorphosis occurs in the canon: Bottom's transformation into an ass. A slightly broader sense takes in Falstaff's appearance as Herne the Hunter and Hermione's as a statue. If the term is loosely defined, however, metamorphosis includes such Shakespearean commonplaces as transvestism, disguise, even birth, marriage, death, and resurrection . Finally, metamorphosis can become a metaphor for all theatrical endeavor and for metaphoric language. This problem of meaning is at once the greatest strength and weakness of Carroll's book. As a critic, Carroll is scrupulously fair about the meaning he wishes to assign to "metamorphosis" and blessedly clear in his discussion. After a preface that explains how Carroll will use the term, the first chapter locates the sources of his definition in history, theology, psychology, and philosophy. To present Carroll's ideas briefly is to do them an injustice. Suffice it to say that for Carroll metamorphosis requires a transcendence of the boundaries of self. As he points out: Boundaries are not effectively known until they have been violated. Metamorphosis is simultaneously both the transgression and the establishment of boundary. It can be conceptualized only after it has ceased, when we can compare the memory of past and present. A human being can therefore experience metamorphosis only by not being completely transformed. Turn a man into an ass or a prince into a frog and your lesson will be lost unless you leave him a human mind in his animal shape. Otherwise he won't know that he has been transformed. Anything can be transformed, then, but only human beings can experience metamorphosis; the recognition of transformation signals the human presence. It follows that every human transformation , if perceived by the metamorph, must be incomplete, (p. 5) This central paradox leads to others: "the loss that is a gain, the man who can both be and not be himself, the double complicity between participant and witness" (p. 40). From the outset, the focus in the book is specified as psychological and generic as Carroll explores the question of how the transformation of self affects the characters (and the character ) of comedy. The rest of the book offers a coherent series of readings that trace metamorphosis and its paradoxical implications from the early comedies to The Tempest. A useful appendix gives examples of metamorphosis in commedia dell'arte. Throughout these analyses, Carroll tries to show how Shakespeare's comedy metamorphosed into romance as the playwright's understanding of humanity deepened. In the early plays, characters use metamorphosis to escape the dark sides of their world or themselves. The modes of transformation that draw particular attention are marriage, doubling, and miming. For example, Kate is separated from her identity as a shrew in order to gain an identity as a wife through union with another person; each of the Antipholi finds himself by confronting himself in the person of another; Viola and Rosalind find simultaneous freedom and constriction in their roles as boys. Carroll next examines the dangers of metamorphosis. In A Mid- Reviews283 summer Night's Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor, he argues, the boundary between human being and monster dissolves, so that characters confront the obliteration of humanity and even loss of life. The book's concluding section shows how the romances, especially The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, confront and transcend the dangers of metamorphosis. Thus in The Tempest, not only must Prospero become a Sycorax or Medea by surrendering himself to magic, but he must also surrender his magic and his control to become fully human. Only by representing another is he free to present his true self. This summary may suggest two weaknesses in the book: ambition and arbitrariness. Sometimes Carroll lets his subject become too broad and can offer only sketchy development of his more ambitious ideas. One wishes for a fuller treatment of...