A game between the forces of Good and Evil: Light and Darkness.
In Shakespeare’s comedies:
The side we hope will win, the Light, versus the side of Darkness…
Sympathy, empathy vs. Antipathy, Hatred
Truth vs. Lies, Seeming
Harmony vs. Discord
In Shakespeare’s tragedies and regeneration plays:
Love vs. Hate
Life vs. Death
Heaven vs. Hell
Order vs. Chaos
Winning the game
In the course of the game, each side plays many cards. But Darkness always plays its trump card in Act 3 and Light plays its best card in Act 4.
Whichever side plays the stronger card will win in Act 5.
If Light wins the end is harmony, which may be a ‘happy ending’ with weddings and forgiveness and may be a great victory for the spirit of love, as in Winters Tale and Measure for Measure.
If Darkness wins the end is death.
Light and Darkness
Light and Darkness represent forces, rather than people, so characters may change sides during the course of the story.
In Measure for Measure Isabella plays for Light in Act 3, keeping her vow as a postulant nun. She then plays for Darkness in the following scene when she tells her brother to “Die, Perish.” And in Act 5 she plays for Light in silently agreeing to give up her wish to become a nun and to marry the Duke. This will bring order and harmony to Vienna (marriage always implies children and the continuation of just rule). In Act 4 Mariana’s active power of love also plays for Light and Angelo finally ‘sees’ her and passes the tests he has failed previously.
The test of Love
The figure of the woman represents the active power of Love, teaching the hero, who represents the searching soul. She is always there, she represents what he is searching for, but he cannot see her til he has passed the tests of love.
In the Comedies he passes the tests and is rewarded by recognising her, as Orlando finally knows Rosalind in As You Like It.
To ‘Know’
The verb ‘to know’ in the Bible can be used to describe sexual union, usually in marriage. Shakespeare frequently uses ‘know’ in that sense as well, and at times simultaneously, as in the sense of intellectual knowledge or recognition.
This is where we need to remember the Platonic belief, known to Shakespeare, that before birth every soul was one entity containing both male and female qualities, which was then split into two at birth, resulting in the life-long search for one’s ‘other half’ or ‘soul mate.’
Marriage stands for unity after the pain of separation. In Christian belief a husband and wife are truly ‘one flesh,’ as Adriana so beautifully describes in Comedy of Errors Act 2.
In the tragedies, the hero fails the tests of Love: Hamlet and Othello reject the pure Love of Ophelia and Desdemona. King Lear rejects Cordelia but survives spiritually the tests that he so frequently fails, achieving unity in Love in the final scenes.
Leontes, too, achieves ‘true sight’ of what he has been blind to: the power of Love, represented by his wife and children. He achieves true sight through the pain of repentance.
Romeo and Juliet: an example
ACT 1
A clear issue is presented: what is to be the outcome of the forbidden love between Romeo and Juliet?
Light represents the forces working towards union and life; Darkness stands for the forces of separation and death.
The background of the conflict is made clear to us and our sympathies are engaged in the story.
ACT 2
Light plays several cards, the last being the secret marriage. Darkness also plays cards: Tybalt sends a written challenge to Romeo.
ACT 3
Dramatically changing sides, Romeo fails the test of Love and plays for Darkness by killing Tybalt. This is Darkness’ best card and, so far as the lovers’ life on earth is concerned, it proves unbeatable (notice the frequent references to Tynbalt’s ghost demanding reparation).
ACT 4
Juliet plays for Light/life with the help of Friar Lawrence. She risks death, through the potion, proving that Love is stronger than death. All Shakespeare’s heroines reach a crisis of this kind in Act 4.
ACT 5
Darkness wins the game, in that Romeo and Juliet both die. Light wins in that the feud is ended, and peace and order are restored in Verona. Romeo passes the test of Love in his reconciliation with the dead Tybalt in the tomb — “Forgive me, cousin” — before dying with a kiss for Juliet.
True to Love, True to yourself
To be true to Love and to be true to yourself become, in Shakespeare’s usage, interchangeable.
First, you have to discover the truth: the true self or the true Love / beloved. Heroes such as Romeo sometimes begin their story by loving an untrue self or a false beloved. Romeo desires Rosaline and rejects his family and friends in an unhealthy despair— an aspect of Darkness. When he sees Juliet, her beauty illuminates his life: he recognises her as his True Love.
When a character in Shakespeare says something like “I am not what I am’ or ‘nothing is but what is not,” he is stating that he does not know himself. The force of Darkness is then winning. King Lear “has ever but slenderly known himself” says his daughter Regan. If the task of any human life is to ‘know thyself,’ those who are ‘blind’ to their true nature, as Lear is, need to find sight through suffering. Shakespeare gives that brief moment of recognition of Truth to his tragic heroes, often at the moment of death.
An aspect of tragic blindness is debased idea of love and of women, usually held by a man: the force of Darkness labels women as inherently false, deceitful, using their sexual attractions to seduce, entrap and bring men to hell. In such cases sex and love are seen as opposites, which then elevates virginity into an idol, and makes sex a fearful danger only to be avoided by rejecting and destroying the women who inflame desire. This being entirely the fault of the female.
This makes the task of the woman as the force of Light even more difficult. She needs all her courage and belief in the fact that the hero IS her soul mate and her task is to teach, lead and claim him. Helena in All’s Well is another example of this: rescuing Bertram is almost impossible!
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