In the first part of this paper, I will analyse how the depiction of masters and servants in Shakespeare’s plays can be traced back to the Italian Commedia dell’arte and how its characters serve Shakespeare in his comedies. I will give a general overview of the importance of Service in his works as well as in the Early Modern society, before turning to one comedy in specific. Namely, the “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, which is a significant example of different master-servant relationships. Several passages of the comedy mention the interplay of master and servant, whereas it is also important to bear in mind that a lover would refer to his or her beloved as master or mistress without him or her being an actual servant in the conventional sense.
The described different forms of service in Shakespeare’s plays lead to the basic question of the paper’s next part. How could different concepts of love be found to be the ground of a master-servant relationship? There are three concepts of love to be introduced here: Nomos, Eros and Philia. Elements of these forms of love can be found throughout The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which will be examined based on certain relationships, notably between the characters Proteus and Julia, Proteus and Valentine, Valentine and Silvia as well as between Julia and her servant Lucetta.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The motive of Master and Servant
2.1. The Commedia dell’arte
2.2. Service in the Early Modern Society and Shakespeare’s plays
3. Master and Servant in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
3.1. General Considerations
3.2. Master-Servant relationships in the play
4. Service and Love: Concepts of Love
4.1. Overview
4.1.1. Nomos
4.1.2. Eros
4.1.3. Philia
4.2. Concepts of Love in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
4.2.1. Proteus and Julia
4.2.2. Proteus and Valentine
4.2.3. Valentine and Silvia
4.2.4. Julia and Lucetta
5. Conclusion
References
1. Introduction
“My heart is ever at your service” – this well-known quote in one of William Shakespeare’s tragedies implies that there might be a connection between the complex network of service in Early Modern society and a form of love or affection between a master and his or her servant. Certainly, there are different forms of service as well as different forms of love – sometimes it is difficult to define them apart – so it is of great interest how these two intertwine in varying degrees in Shakespeare’s plays.
In the first part of this paper, I will analyse how the depiction of masters and servants in Shakespeare’s plays can be traced back to the Italian Commedia dell’arte and how its characters serve Shakespeare in his comedies. I will give a general overview of the importance of Service in his works as well as in the Early Modern society, before turning to one comedy in specific: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is a significant example of different master-servant relationships. Several passages of the comedy mention the interplay of master and servant, whereas it is also important to bear in mind that a lover would refer to his or her beloved as master or mistress without him or her being an actual servant in the conventional sense.
The described different forms of service in Shakespeare’s plays lead to the basic question of the paper’s next part. How could different concepts of love be found to be the ground of a master-servant relationship? There are three concepts of love to be introduced here: Nomos, Eros and Philia. Elements of these forms of love can be found throughout The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which will be examined based on certain relationships, notably between the characters Proteus and Julia, Proteus and Valentine, Valentine and Silvia as well as between Julia and her servant Lucetta.
The selection of references that was used to support this paper raises no claim of completeness. It presents a basic spectrum of voices to the Commedia dell’arte and the master-servant relationship and forms of love in Shakespeare’ works. The Two Gentlemen of Verona was analysed on the basis of its 2004 Arden Shakespeare Edition.
2. The motive of Master and Servant
The motive of master and servant can be traced back to Roman comedy and later the Italian commedia dell’arte. Caused by the high influence of Italian styles and performances on plays in Shakespeare’s time, one can find many similarities between characters and motives. Due to the limited range of this paper, I will not go into extensive detail of the similarities between certain character types like the clown of the commedia dell’arte and characters in Shakespeare’s plays. In this chapter, I will mainly focus on the basic features of commedia dell’arte connected to service and how service in general was defined in the early modern society and depicted in Shakespeare’s plays.
2.1. The Commedia dell’arte
The Italian commedia dell’arte was a genre of comedian plays that were first performed in Italy around the 1540s. (cf. Schironi 2014: 467) “[T]hey mainly consisted of an improvised form of theater based on scripts […], which were limited to the outline of the plots and gave the artists […] freedom to add set pieces of dialogue and comic gags as they saw fit.” (Schironi 2014: 467) The Italian comedy mainly focused on wordplays, as there are also many in Shakespeare’s works, some of which are to be observed later. Also, “Shakespeare’s early collaborations with playwrights and actors often included Italianate sight gags and wordplay […].” (Preeshl 2017: xiv) which can be connected to the commedia dell’arte.
An important character of the commedia dell’arte was the servant, who makes this form of comedy vital to be considered here. The servant – “[…] called ‘ zani ’ or ‘ zanni ’, a Venetian abbreviation of the name Gianni/Giovanni common in Northern Italy […]” (Schironi 2014: 469) – would have a major role in the plots and like Roman and Renaissance comedy, the commedia dell’arte was mostly based on two young lovers who had to face several obstacles before they could fulfil their love. (cf. Schironi 2014: 468) The zani ’s role to the plot was similar to the servus callidus in Roman comedy: “Like the Roman servus callidus, the zani is a pivotal figure in the commedia dell’arte: he becomes its staple, and rarely is such a character not part of a plot.” (Schironi 2014: 476)
In contrast to Shakespeare’s idea that a servant could also act as the master’s trusted advisor (see 4.2.4.), the zani of commedia dell’arte were generally not expected to be “[…] an especially ‘gifted’ group that could defy their social class and be superior to ‘free men’.” (Schironi 2014: 477) The main idea of the service in the commedia dell’arte was thus a form of subordination and hierarchy between the servant and the master, which is further analysed in my 4th chapter.
Furthermore, when we observe the settings of Shakespeare’s plays, we note that they often take place in Italy: Romeo & Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, or the play analysed in this paper The Two Gentlemen of Verona, are only a few examples.
Generally, we can conclude that “[t]he adoption of Italian literary and performance styles in the 1500s and early 1600s and performances of the Italians in England in the 1570s suggested a viable influence of commedia dell’arte on Shakespeare’s plays.” (Preeshl 2017: xiv) The elements of Italian theatre style were a central aspect of plays in the early modern society.
2.2. Service in the Early Modern Society and Shakespeare’s plays
The society of the Early Modern period from the 15th to the 17th century was marked by the important structure of service. In addition to the common understanding of being a servant to a master, service could be defined in many ways: “To be in service could mean, in addition to being a servant to a master, that one was a servant of the Crown, a courtier devoted to a particular woman, or simply one who worshipped God.” (Rivlin 2015: 19) According to this definition it is important – for the next chapters of my paper – to emphasize that lover would refer to his or her beloved also as master or mistress not meaning the service in the conventional sense that we might expect. This will especially be shown in chapter 4.2. where I will analyse several passages of the play that imply a master-servant relationship of a loving kind.
This service in varying areas of social life mostly was of subordinating character “[…] whether this someone [was] a master, a courtly lover, the sovereign, or God.” (Rivlin 2015: 20) Although, Schalkwyk states that there was a certain form of reciprocity involved in a subordinate master-servant relationship throughout the different social ranks: “In Shakespeare’s time, this combination of reciprocity and subordination in love was part of a set of relationships that extended from the most menial master and servant to monarch and subject […].” (Schalkwyk 2008: 7) Furthermore, it was found by Neville and Evett that the strict subordinate service probably still involved a voluntary trait. “Unlike the models of bondage found in Plautus and his contemporaries however, Evett also notes that the service of Shakespeare’s day necessarily involved choice […]” (Neville 2009: 373) This overlap of the element of friendship and service is also shown in the varying salutations found in Shakespeare’s works:
It is just the problematic shift that occurs when “servants” are “called friends” which Shakespeare traces in his sonnet sequence, where the role of the speaker oscillates painfully between “servant,” “vassal,” “bondsman,” “slave,” and “friend,” while the “fair friend” himself is also acknowledged “master” and “sovereign.” (Neill 2003: 322)
Hence, the mix of the service’s characteristics with the ones of a friendship led to the assumption that servant and friend could be used both to describe a master-servant relationship. “The hierarchical arrangement of human relationships […], which early moderns inherited from the feudal system, meant that ‘friend” and ‘servant’ could be virtually synonymous […]”. (Neill 2003: 320) This mingling of service and friendship will be further examined in chapter 4.1.
In addition to a social life predominated by service, I should shortly draw the focus to the different forms of service within the means of the early modern theatre and the employed actors, as “[…] the material organisation of labour within the theatre meant that it was itself shaped by relations of service and mastership […].” (Schalkwyk 2008: 12) according to Schalkwyk, actors were the most significant servants in early modern theatre as they were members of theatre companies like the Lord Admiral’s Men, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men or even the Queen’s or the King’s Men. (cf. Schalkwyk 2008: 9) This membership put actors in a special social spot. If actors were already servants themselves in the construct of early modern society, what would happen to an actor’s social affiliation if he had to play a servant or master on stage? Schalkwyk presents three difficult levels for the depiction of service on stage:
[…] the representation of service of Shakespeare’s stage is complicated by its embodiment of the player on three levels: (1) the player himself as a servant, symbolized by his livery as part of the retinue of a member of the nobility or, subsequently, of the royal household; (2) the player as master or servant (or both) within the material relations of the theatre itself; (3) the player as embodiment either of the “eye-service” that threatens master-servant relations at their core or its repressing corollary, the person reduced to mere performance, robbed of any independent subjectivity. (Schalkwyk 2008: 14)
The depiction of service or affiliation to a certain social class was thus a complex part of being an actor, especially as the subject was almost omnipresent in Shakespeare’s plays.
We find the elements of service and love or friendship that are intertwined in a society of different social classes in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Especially “[…] the early comedies such as The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and Two Gentlemen of Verona offer their audiences ‘a straightforward, stable account of social classes’ whose ranks are ‘fixed with precision’.” (Neville 2009: 372f.) These fixed ranks make it easier to depict service between members of different social classes. Whether this service can be explained with love will be shown in chapter 4., but we can certainly observe that Shakespeare often involves the element of friendship in a class-marked society of his plays. For instance, also in Hamlet we see “[t]he paradoxical frailty that greatness discovers through its need for friendship […]” (Neill 2003: 326) which is a decisive element of the play like in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
In conclusion, I can state that service – whether it may be based on love or friendship or none of those two – occupies an important role in the early modern society and subsequently in Shakespeare’s plays. In the following, I will investigate the depiction of different master-servant relationships in several passages of Shakespeare’s comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
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