Write about super natural elements in Shakespeare plays? Write about the importance of supernatural elements in Shakespeare plays?
In this essay we are going to see about supernatural element in Shakespeare Plays.
THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS IN SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS
The supernatural covers all those
phenomena which cannot be explained by the laws of nature. The ancient poets believed in pagan gods; but
with the development of the Christian religion, the poets were restricted to
the world of tradition, folk-lore and superstition. So far religious supernaturalism was
concerned he was not permitted to give any free play to his imagination; but
towards superstition he was permitted to give a free play to his imagination
and also to criticise the object of his imagination according as his artistic
talent or literary canons demanded it.
During the Elizabethan period, the people of England very strongly
believed in witches, ghosts, fairies, demons, monsters prophecies, dreams, and
even in astrology and palmistry. As
Shakespeare was a very popular dramatis, he had to cater the common
superstitions of the people without personally believing in any of them and
that is why, we find in his plays so many references to ghosts, witches,
dreams, prophecies, fairies and many other sorts of supernatural agencies that
have much to do with the destiny of mankind.
But then, Shakespeare, unlike other contemporary dramatists, or unlike
his predecessors, endowed the supernatural elements with some amount of dignity
and significance. We find the various
supernatural agents playing their varied parts in the plays of Shakespeare-both
comedies and tragedies-, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth
and Richard III.
Shakespeare’s attitude towards the supernatural varied with the various
stages of his life. In his earliest
years, he regarded the supernatural beings as most amusing creatures, while in
his youth and also in his full manhood, he regarded them as possibly evil
agents or portents that give a warning to many about his coming peril; but at
the last stage of his life, when the realities of life had sufficiently invaded
his mind, he because rather rational or philosophical towards the supernatural
and believed the same agents or portents as good. But then we cannot strictly speaking, bring
his conception about the supernatural into and watertight compartment and
explain its significance as such.
Shakespeare uses much of the supernatural element in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. The fairies give him an
opportunity for exercising his imaginative faculty; and besides, fairies used
to be associated with weddings, and as this comedy was intended to be performed
on the occasion of some marriage ,
Shakespeare introduced much of the fairy element into it. The supernatural element in this play is
meant purely for entertainment purposes although the love of the fairies and
other actions of the fairies in this play serve as a parody of the actions of
the grosser human beings. At this early
stage of Shakespeare’s dramatic career, he did not conceive of the supernatural
element as any factor governing human destiny as he conceived it to play its
more significant and mysterious part in his tragedies or in the romances in
which things happen and human individuals behave in a stranger manner than any
reason can possible explain.
Of course, Shakespeare borrowed his supernatural beings mostly from the
Greek mythology but he draped them all in the colour of his own imagination and
just as his dramatic expediency demand.
He softened the classical character of the supernatural beings and made
them thoroughly English. Te chief
characteristic of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is merely to play
mischief by interfering with the affairs of other characters in the play. Even they most mischievous Puck is the least
offensive and most entertaining inspite of all the mischiefs he plays upon
other characters in the play.
It is striking that Shakespeare maintains a strict of distinction
between the supernatural mark creatures and the human characters A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because he believes
that the supernatural world is governed by quite different laws from those the
govern the natural world. This
particular point the emphasised most strongly in k his tragedies. Shakespeare’s conception of the fairies as
benevolent airy beings greatly influenced the conception of the supernatural of
the succeeding writers, either poets or dramatists; and it also helped in
finally removing from the supernatural beings the idea of malice or revenge
although in Shakespeare’s great tragedies the motive of revenge or retribution
is very closely associated with the supernatural in Hamlet, in Macbeth, in
Julius Caesar. The treatment of the
supernatural in Hamlet foreshadows the gloom of Macbeth. He has used the ghost
in Hamlet as a terrifying agent, and as clothed it in a manner which is peculiar
to the Elizabethan age of superstitions, particular, about ghosts. He makes the ghost real in order to serve the
dramatic purpose. The ghost appears in very
strange circumstances such as ‘the witching tie of the night when churchyards
yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.’ The ghost is made to speak only when it is
questioned or spoken to, and it responds only to a scholar probably because
ghosts used to be supposed to be super-human beings; and that is why we find
the ghost of Hamlet’s father is being questioned by Horatio, the scholar.
Ghosts during Shakespeare’s time used to appear just before some great
human calamity in order to give a warning or to indicate some motive of revenge
retribution or the process of wrongs done to some innocent souls. The ghost of Hamlet’s father appears before
the son in order to inform him about the true murderer of his father and also
to instigate him further to take revenge upon the murderer.
Cumberland Clark very correctly
distinguishes the treatment of the supernatural in Hamlet from that in
Macbeth. Mark his words:
In Hamlet the ghost reveals the past;
in Macbeth the witches reveal the future, and their prophecies are fulfilled-an
even more terrifying idea. The course pursued
b supernatural agents in persuading mortals to act as they required, is revealed
in these two tragedies, where the unseen has assumed a terrible aspect. The method was to connect with ideas latent
in the human mind and to strengthen and influence them until they ripened into
deeds. The ghost in Hamlet is an
instructive case of the effective employment of the spectral in dramatic
craftsmanship, and an excellent example of the skill it which Shakespeare
endowed his supernatural beings with all the prevalent superstitions. But it is actually more than that: it is a revelation of the inner Shakespeare
and his changing and darkening mental attitude towards he unseen at the
beginning of middle life and his great tragic period,
‘Macbeth is the play into which the supernatural enters most
largely. The form adopted is that of
witches, and the wholly evil designs of these half-earthly beings control
events and exert an ever-present influence over the characters. Whereas Titania’s fairies had little or no
influence over mortals, and the ghost in Hamlet had such limited power that his
mission was really a failure, the weird sisters of Macbeth accomplish their
purpose in the ruin of a great and noble character. Nevertheless, Shakespeare still held that the
spirits of evil exercised a limited power; man could not be deprived life by
them, but only lured to self-destruction.
Although the weird sisters were not intended primarily to illustrate
prevailing ideas on witches yet they did possess most of the powers credited to
these creatures. They could assume all
sorts of shapes; they had both the cat and the dog as familiars; they could
raise storms and command the wind; and an aspect of witchcraft necessarily
emphasised in this connection-they were credited with the gift of prophecy.
Shakespeare’s genius could transform even the commonplace into something
commanding respect and attention. His
handling of the supernatural in Macbeth is no exception. Having decided to use witches, avoided
anything coarse, gross or sensual. There
is much in these witches that raises them far above the conventional with of
they theatre. Shakespeare was careful
not to call them witches; he calls them weird sisters. They were intended to be without sex, passion
or life. Coleridge said of them, ‘They
were awful beings, and blended in themselves the Fates and Furies of the
ancients with the sorceresse of Gothic and popular superstition. They were mysterious natures; fatherless,
motherless, sexiess.
There are two types of the ghost, name, subjective and objective. The subjective ghost is seen only by one who
suffers from mental distraction and who naturally sees hallucination. This hallucination may be due to an unduly imaginate
mind or due to guilty consciousness. For example, the ghost of Banquo is seen
only by Macbeth because Macbeth alone suffers from distraction of the brain and
is also guilty for the simple reason that it is under instructions of Macbeth
that Banquo is murdered. The
consciousness of the guilt of Duncan’s murder also further lends a colour to
the imaginative mind or the distracted brain of Macbeth; and that is why,
neither Lady Macbeth nor any other character in the play sees the ghost of
Banquo. In Hamlet howevers, the ghost
does not appear as the result of any body’s guilty consciousness although it should
have appeared before Gertrude and Claudius because they are really the guilty
souls, who are responsible for the murder of Hamlet’s father. But then, Shakespeare makes the ghost in Hamlet
purposely objective in order to bear some dramatic effect upon the
audience. In Julius Caesar the ghost is
again subjective because it appears only before Brutus, who is one of the
leading conspirators and assassinators of Caesar, in order to revenge whose
death the ghost appears twice before Brutus.
The supernatural in Macbeth is probably of the greatest significance
because it not only has the greatest dramatic effect upon the audience but it
also reflects the gloomiest or most tragic state of Shakespeare’s own mind when
he composed the play. In the other
tragedies the supernatural element does not signify so much of the pessimistic
attitude of the dramatist’s mind as it does in Macbeth.
As regards Shakespeare’s conception and treatment of the supernatural in
the last phase of his dramatic carer Cumberland Clark remarks again:
In The Tempest he reverted to the freed and happiness of his youth full
fairy fantasy, and turned from the bitter contemplation of the start realities
of life to with an ideal But his imagination is now under the control of belief,
in the reins of a steadfast faith and mature joy. The fairies, magic spell, and enchantment of
A Midsummer Night’ Dream are all present, but they are all resent, but they are
all wielded by a restrained and practised hand.
In The Tempest, he last phase of evolution of ‘Shakespeare’s attitude
towards the supernatural is reached. The
superhuman agencies are now entirely beneath the control of man. They cannot act at all without his permission
and direction. Man has atlast attained dominion
over the force of evil. He need not fear
the unseen. It is within his capacity to
order it. But according to Prospero, the
forces of magic and mystery are best left alone. When we see Prospero voluntarily renouncing
his useful and hardwon powers, we understand that this is the course which
wisdom dictates’
Prospero in The Tempest possesses many supernatural powers but he does
not exercise any of them with malice or with any revengeful spirit. Ariel represents the finer spirits of the
air, while Caliban represents the grosser elements of the earth. While comparing Ariel with Caliban Coleridge
remarks, ‘Nothing was ever more finely conceived than this contrast between the
material and the spiritual, the gross and the delicate.’
It is worthwhile to note Cumberland
Clark’s views regarding Shakespeare’s attitude towards the supernatural. Mark what he says in this connection:
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