Outsider Characters and Social Exceptionalities
Richard Birch
Dr. A. Sol
Shakespeare Part 1
8 November 2005
Outsider Characters and Social Exceptionalities
One of the most important characteristics of Shakespearean plays is there being textual references to the social. In reading The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Midsummer Night’s Dream it is clear Shakespeare had an ardent sense of the social, and its structures and systems around him that guided the classes to be framed, constructed, sorted, and maintained upon the hegemonic ideologies of his time. As entertainment his work is full of narratives that capture the imagination of his audience through his power of language and his mastery of the structure of knowledge around it. But more importantly, his work, as sociological texts capture the audience’s sense of their own oppression. The social minorities in these plays are clearly strategically selected and placed. Shakespeare’s use of these outsider characters provides knowledge of the social hierarchies of the day. They also serve to enlighten real social minorities about their own oppression. It could be argued that viewing Shakespearean plays was one of the only ways this could occur during this period of history. The development of the outsider character’s structured knowledge is key to the social milieu of 16th and 17th century Europe. Shakespeare created these characters based on the people’s consciousness and subjective experiences. These plays are important to the social for they are based on a root proposition that states, “man’s consciousness is determined by his social being” (Berger 6). What allows Shakespeare to be perceived as one of the earliest European writers of the social was how he dealt with his fellow men as constituents of different spheres of reality (Berger 21). This subjective reality of everyday life evident in his characters is symbolic of the order of hierarchical stratification. Whether the classist ordinance be formed on the basis of gender, race, socio-economic status, sexuality, religion, or of other social stereotypes, they all originate and point towards oppression. The relative pyramids of power key to the construction of social knowledge still ever present in contemporary postmodernity. As textual they educate by challenging the reader to assess his or her own assumptions of the roles and norms designed around the organization of class and social positionality, and thus, they challenge and develop a sense of their own knowing of their own subjective existence as social beings.
Social stereotypes are complicated through highlighting the exceptionalities of their own displacement in hierarchical structures. This is called exceptionality, because to posit social knowledge of hegemonic symbolic order of classes and social minorities specifically as constituents of Elizabethan norms relies on the utilization of traditional and objective definitions of roles and norms. The exceptionalities of these classes posit the characters as unique to the texts as people with subjective selves, with individual histories, agendas, psyches and roles outside social knowledge of their stratified definitions. The characterizations of Othello, Bottom, Shylock and Portia as exemplars of social exceptionalities provide alternative standpoints to the reader. The black military leader and politician, the ambitious peasant, the Jewish money lender who is aware of and fights against his own oppression, and the strong intelligent aristocratic female who fights for love and human dignity display the writing as a revolutionary force as stated by literary historian Brents Stirling in his critical analysis of Shakespearean sociology (Stirling 77). Though Stirling’s critical analysis is heavily biased in the conservatism of his day and in a measurably literary structural functionalist methodology of discourse, he eludes to the idea that Shakespearean sociology as textual accounts of the subjective experiences of outsider characters and the social changes occurring in Elizabethan and James I eras regarding the development of a middle and bourgeoisie classes, show that Shakespeare’s writings reflect the regimes of his time (Stirling 77). Though Shakespeare wrote at times in accordance with the struggle with the bourgeoisie James I had, the existence of these characters do speak of the aim that Shakespeare had, that social knowledge can be challenged. Shakespeare’s social minorities, the humble of the folk are almost without exception “sound and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful…he has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind of people as politicians, but as a great respect and regard for their hearts” (Stirling 81). This is ever clear in his presentation of the mechanicals of Midsummer Night’s Dream. On the surface the stereotypes are present in the characterizations of Bottom, Quince, Snout, and Flute. They are depicted as not possessing an intellect that could rival other social echelons. They are very aware of their place in life and what social stratas their lives serve. They are purposely presented as without the mastery of language. This lack is key for Shakespeare as it reifies our assumptions that language, if not within their grasp, neither will the ability to negotiate their way through structures of knowledge and through their own oppression. However Shakespeare identifies a significant difference in these characters that sets them apart from other social minorities. They are self aware of their lack of agency in the hierarchy, yet they create their own agency through art and through a collective embracing of their servitude. They are ambitious, they are striving for art, they wish to do good for those above them in status so to possibly elevate themselves to a level one may not imagine them to be able to reach. It is Bottom who wishes this the most and wishes to create the most impact in every sense.
That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes: I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest – yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
(Midsummer I.ii.22-27)
Portia is indicative of the exceptionality of femininity in masquerade. Shakespeare challenges our assumptions or understandings of femininity and of womanliness through the direct juxtaposition of her character to the symbolic order of historical society. In The Merchant of Venice, the place where Portia resides, Belmont, is the place where the heavenly order is an object of admiration” (Alvis & West 236). She is obliged to descend from Belmont that literally translates into beautiful mountain, down into Venice in order to save the social apparatus that elevates her and it’s symbolic structures. Shakespeare’s intention is for Portia to embody divine wisdom and mercy traditionally and typically framed for masculinity in the classical sense. In her questioning of Shylock of his lack of mercy for Antonio she gives a case for her attack on his judgement and for her own qualities.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest
(Merchant IV.i.182-184)
Portia, though disguised as male during the moment she says this, embodies mercy and order. In essence, assumptions about femininity as socially defined constructions of knowledge are uprooted. Order, mercy, pedagogy, and elements of the cerebral typically are designated as masculine traits in literary and classical genres historically where power of law and discourse resides in male spheres. Of course her intention is to defend Antonio from Shylock and to save Bassanio from guilt and disgrace. But her actions speak of the social normativity of the period. Her embodied wisdom is to protect the law, to uphold mercy, and to defend Christianity as the religion of Venice from any attack (Alvis & West 236). The skill of Portia in her ability to defend the good of the social against that which threatens the status quo of the reigning era of the period is what Shakespeare wishes to exemplify in this. By having this activity made present by the female lead, it challenges sexist ideologies in the text. In this comedy we are given every element of a tragedy where the lovers seem to be doomed and the villain seems to be finding his way towards a personal victory. But what offsets this and places us back to the realization that it is a comedy is the agency and intellect of a seventeenth century woman (Alvis & West 282). The same can be said of Midsummer Night’s Dream where tragedy seems to be looking amongst all that unfolds, but it is the delight and ambition and greater good of the mechanicals that sets everything back to a level of comfort.
Othello also explicates social stereotypes and challenges hegemonic principles on race and ethnicity that still exist today. Yet in this tragedy there is no setting back to a level of comfort, or no wisdom shall take precedence in nurturing the greater good of all men. The true tragic element and force of Othello is based on his inability to believe the impossibility of racial prejudice (Alvis & West 289). It is a tragedy because “the outsider cannot believe he has been fully accepted as fully as he has been accepted” (Alvis & West 289). His disbelief of his social status as a sought after mercenary soldier and protector of Venetian wealth and order determines his jealousy. This play and Merchant of Venice challenge our assumptions of race and ethnicity by presenting us the modern principles and the nature of bourgeois democracy. “Henceforth Christianity, Judaism, blacks, whites, the family and the regime, must find their place within a framework consistent with the terms of trade, with comfortable self-preservation” (Alvis & West 303). But what sets Othello apart from the other two plays is how the restating of the social normalcy required in this period, does not present us a vision of the whole of Shakespeare’s western political universe. He essentially consigns us to and reifies our subjective experiential places in the symbolic. He provides cues to this in the relationship between Othello and Desdemona as they interpret their relationship and their love as vulnerable to the political universe around them.
DESDEMONA The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase
Even as our days do grow.
OTHELLO Amen to that, sweet powers!
I cannot speak enough of this content,
It stops me here, it is too much of joy.
(Othello II.1.192-195)
Though this scene is on the surface intended to exemplify a love and powerful attraction between these two characters, the inter-racial characteristics are designed to formulate a feeling of uneasiness in their inter-status relationship as well. Othello states his joy is too powerful for words, but it is exemplified as having a too much of a good thing. The challenge of racial stereotypes is not solely to posit our sensitivities on the side of the outsider and to enlighten the reader to the subjective experiences of he who is racially discriminated. The challenge involved in reversing any discourse on racial hierarchies will have to deal with the constant universality that that which is challenged also reifies and reinforces the same stereotypes one wishes to disenfranchise.
The above three examples of outsider characterizations and the presentation of the exceptionalities personified by each by these also in reinforce the stereotypes that they portray. These three plays represent themselves as extensions of the English history cycle, most predominantly in Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare as a social commentator knew that the commercial regime taking form in his era would resemble an embodiment of democratic republicanism. These plays direct the reader and the audience to the doctrine of universal framework of trade and political synergies required for an emerging modernity. The plays of Shakespeare mark not only the end of an ancient political world, but they also mark the prospect of a universal homogenous world economic structure about to develop in the following century. These outsider social minority characters are key in this context. Through successfully challenging our assumptions of the cultural stereotypes indicative of the 17th century women, the black military leader, and the poor man hoping to better his place in the world economy, and then replacing them back to a framework of oppression at the end of each of the plays ultimately reinforces these stereotypes and does not overthrow them. There is never any intent to do that in these works. The characters are intended to grow, to develop as antitheses of the norm, to be successful in their endeavours. However, at the moment of change, and when their exceptionalities become ever apparent they are not removed from their original position. Portia returns to Belmont to live with her new husband Bassanio who will ultimately provide her with her identity, Bottom will resume his place in the working class and struggle as one who resides in at the base of pyramidal structures of power, and Othello meets his demise from his mere existing against the hierarchical structures posed to destroy him. Shakespeare does provide the reader and the audience with agency to moderate our own assumptions, and even more our expectations of these outsider characters, for it provides one to obtain a knowing of their place in the social. We have the wisdom Shakespeare about this, but we never really see any real synthesis of change emerge from such synthesis. Norms and structures go untouched in these plays and so does the impact of the outsiders.
References
Alvis, John, and Thomas G. West. Shakespeare as Political Thinker. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981.
Berger, Peter. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: Anchor Books, 1966.
Proudfoot, R., Anne Thompson and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare: Revised Edition. Arden, 2001.
Stirling, Brents. The Populace in Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.
Dr. A. Sol
Shakespeare Part 1
8 November 2005
Outsider Characters and Social Exceptionalities
One of the most important characteristics of Shakespearean plays is there being textual references to the social. In reading The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Midsummer Night’s Dream it is clear Shakespeare had an ardent sense of the social, and its structures and systems around him that guided the classes to be framed, constructed, sorted, and maintained upon the hegemonic ideologies of his time. As entertainment his work is full of narratives that capture the imagination of his audience through his power of language and his mastery of the structure of knowledge around it. But more importantly, his work, as sociological texts capture the audience’s sense of their own oppression. The social minorities in these plays are clearly strategically selected and placed. Shakespeare’s use of these outsider characters provides knowledge of the social hierarchies of the day. They also serve to enlighten real social minorities about their own oppression. It could be argued that viewing Shakespearean plays was one of the only ways this could occur during this period of history. The development of the outsider character’s structured knowledge is key to the social milieu of 16th and 17th century Europe. Shakespeare created these characters based on the people’s consciousness and subjective experiences. These plays are important to the social for they are based on a root proposition that states, “man’s consciousness is determined by his social being” (Berger 6). What allows Shakespeare to be perceived as one of the earliest European writers of the social was how he dealt with his fellow men as constituents of different spheres of reality (Berger 21). This subjective reality of everyday life evident in his characters is symbolic of the order of hierarchical stratification. Whether the classist ordinance be formed on the basis of gender, race, socio-economic status, sexuality, religion, or of other social stereotypes, they all originate and point towards oppression. The relative pyramids of power key to the construction of social knowledge still ever present in contemporary postmodernity. As textual they educate by challenging the reader to assess his or her own assumptions of the roles and norms designed around the organization of class and social positionality, and thus, they challenge and develop a sense of their own knowing of their own subjective existence as social beings.
Social stereotypes are complicated through highlighting the exceptionalities of their own displacement in hierarchical structures. This is called exceptionality, because to posit social knowledge of hegemonic symbolic order of classes and social minorities specifically as constituents of Elizabethan norms relies on the utilization of traditional and objective definitions of roles and norms. The exceptionalities of these classes posit the characters as unique to the texts as people with subjective selves, with individual histories, agendas, psyches and roles outside social knowledge of their stratified definitions. The characterizations of Othello, Bottom, Shylock and Portia as exemplars of social exceptionalities provide alternative standpoints to the reader. The black military leader and politician, the ambitious peasant, the Jewish money lender who is aware of and fights against his own oppression, and the strong intelligent aristocratic female who fights for love and human dignity display the writing as a revolutionary force as stated by literary historian Brents Stirling in his critical analysis of Shakespearean sociology (Stirling 77). Though Stirling’s critical analysis is heavily biased in the conservatism of his day and in a measurably literary structural functionalist methodology of discourse, he eludes to the idea that Shakespearean sociology as textual accounts of the subjective experiences of outsider characters and the social changes occurring in Elizabethan and James I eras regarding the development of a middle and bourgeoisie classes, show that Shakespeare’s writings reflect the regimes of his time (Stirling 77). Though Shakespeare wrote at times in accordance with the struggle with the bourgeoisie James I had, the existence of these characters do speak of the aim that Shakespeare had, that social knowledge can be challenged. Shakespeare’s social minorities, the humble of the folk are almost without exception “sound and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful…he has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind of people as politicians, but as a great respect and regard for their hearts” (Stirling 81). This is ever clear in his presentation of the mechanicals of Midsummer Night’s Dream. On the surface the stereotypes are present in the characterizations of Bottom, Quince, Snout, and Flute. They are depicted as not possessing an intellect that could rival other social echelons. They are very aware of their place in life and what social stratas their lives serve. They are purposely presented as without the mastery of language. This lack is key for Shakespeare as it reifies our assumptions that language, if not within their grasp, neither will the ability to negotiate their way through structures of knowledge and through their own oppression. However Shakespeare identifies a significant difference in these characters that sets them apart from other social minorities. They are self aware of their lack of agency in the hierarchy, yet they create their own agency through art and through a collective embracing of their servitude. They are ambitious, they are striving for art, they wish to do good for those above them in status so to possibly elevate themselves to a level one may not imagine them to be able to reach. It is Bottom who wishes this the most and wishes to create the most impact in every sense.
That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes: I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest – yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
(Midsummer I.ii.22-27)
Portia is indicative of the exceptionality of femininity in masquerade. Shakespeare challenges our assumptions or understandings of femininity and of womanliness through the direct juxtaposition of her character to the symbolic order of historical society. In The Merchant of Venice, the place where Portia resides, Belmont, is the place where the heavenly order is an object of admiration” (Alvis & West 236). She is obliged to descend from Belmont that literally translates into beautiful mountain, down into Venice in order to save the social apparatus that elevates her and it’s symbolic structures. Shakespeare’s intention is for Portia to embody divine wisdom and mercy traditionally and typically framed for masculinity in the classical sense. In her questioning of Shylock of his lack of mercy for Antonio she gives a case for her attack on his judgement and for her own qualities.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest
(Merchant IV.i.182-184)
Portia, though disguised as male during the moment she says this, embodies mercy and order. In essence, assumptions about femininity as socially defined constructions of knowledge are uprooted. Order, mercy, pedagogy, and elements of the cerebral typically are designated as masculine traits in literary and classical genres historically where power of law and discourse resides in male spheres. Of course her intention is to defend Antonio from Shylock and to save Bassanio from guilt and disgrace. But her actions speak of the social normativity of the period. Her embodied wisdom is to protect the law, to uphold mercy, and to defend Christianity as the religion of Venice from any attack (Alvis & West 236). The skill of Portia in her ability to defend the good of the social against that which threatens the status quo of the reigning era of the period is what Shakespeare wishes to exemplify in this. By having this activity made present by the female lead, it challenges sexist ideologies in the text. In this comedy we are given every element of a tragedy where the lovers seem to be doomed and the villain seems to be finding his way towards a personal victory. But what offsets this and places us back to the realization that it is a comedy is the agency and intellect of a seventeenth century woman (Alvis & West 282). The same can be said of Midsummer Night’s Dream where tragedy seems to be looking amongst all that unfolds, but it is the delight and ambition and greater good of the mechanicals that sets everything back to a level of comfort.
Othello also explicates social stereotypes and challenges hegemonic principles on race and ethnicity that still exist today. Yet in this tragedy there is no setting back to a level of comfort, or no wisdom shall take precedence in nurturing the greater good of all men. The true tragic element and force of Othello is based on his inability to believe the impossibility of racial prejudice (Alvis & West 289). It is a tragedy because “the outsider cannot believe he has been fully accepted as fully as he has been accepted” (Alvis & West 289). His disbelief of his social status as a sought after mercenary soldier and protector of Venetian wealth and order determines his jealousy. This play and Merchant of Venice challenge our assumptions of race and ethnicity by presenting us the modern principles and the nature of bourgeois democracy. “Henceforth Christianity, Judaism, blacks, whites, the family and the regime, must find their place within a framework consistent with the terms of trade, with comfortable self-preservation” (Alvis & West 303). But what sets Othello apart from the other two plays is how the restating of the social normalcy required in this period, does not present us a vision of the whole of Shakespeare’s western political universe. He essentially consigns us to and reifies our subjective experiential places in the symbolic. He provides cues to this in the relationship between Othello and Desdemona as they interpret their relationship and their love as vulnerable to the political universe around them.
DESDEMONA The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase
Even as our days do grow.
OTHELLO Amen to that, sweet powers!
I cannot speak enough of this content,
It stops me here, it is too much of joy.
(Othello II.1.192-195)
Though this scene is on the surface intended to exemplify a love and powerful attraction between these two characters, the inter-racial characteristics are designed to formulate a feeling of uneasiness in their inter-status relationship as well. Othello states his joy is too powerful for words, but it is exemplified as having a too much of a good thing. The challenge of racial stereotypes is not solely to posit our sensitivities on the side of the outsider and to enlighten the reader to the subjective experiences of he who is racially discriminated. The challenge involved in reversing any discourse on racial hierarchies will have to deal with the constant universality that that which is challenged also reifies and reinforces the same stereotypes one wishes to disenfranchise.
The above three examples of outsider characterizations and the presentation of the exceptionalities personified by each by these also in reinforce the stereotypes that they portray. These three plays represent themselves as extensions of the English history cycle, most predominantly in Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare as a social commentator knew that the commercial regime taking form in his era would resemble an embodiment of democratic republicanism. These plays direct the reader and the audience to the doctrine of universal framework of trade and political synergies required for an emerging modernity. The plays of Shakespeare mark not only the end of an ancient political world, but they also mark the prospect of a universal homogenous world economic structure about to develop in the following century. These outsider social minority characters are key in this context. Through successfully challenging our assumptions of the cultural stereotypes indicative of the 17th century women, the black military leader, and the poor man hoping to better his place in the world economy, and then replacing them back to a framework of oppression at the end of each of the plays ultimately reinforces these stereotypes and does not overthrow them. There is never any intent to do that in these works. The characters are intended to grow, to develop as antitheses of the norm, to be successful in their endeavours. However, at the moment of change, and when their exceptionalities become ever apparent they are not removed from their original position. Portia returns to Belmont to live with her new husband Bassanio who will ultimately provide her with her identity, Bottom will resume his place in the working class and struggle as one who resides in at the base of pyramidal structures of power, and Othello meets his demise from his mere existing against the hierarchical structures posed to destroy him. Shakespeare does provide the reader and the audience with agency to moderate our own assumptions, and even more our expectations of these outsider characters, for it provides one to obtain a knowing of their place in the social. We have the wisdom Shakespeare about this, but we never really see any real synthesis of change emerge from such synthesis. Norms and structures go untouched in these plays and so does the impact of the outsiders.
References
Alvis, John, and Thomas G. West. Shakespeare as Political Thinker. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981.
Berger, Peter. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: Anchor Books, 1966.
Proudfoot, R., Anne Thompson and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare: Revised Edition. Arden, 2001.
Stirling, Brents. The Populace in Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.
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