I'm so ridiculously proud of this paper (even if it's not perfect and the professor gave me lots of guff), so I figured I would share it. :D
Shattered Glass:
The "Ideal-I" in Shakespeare Mirrors are everywhere in modern society -- it is nearly impossible to avoid them for even a day. Every day people look into mirrors to do their hair, check their teeth, see if they are getting fat, flex their muscles, put in their contacts, debate whether their good looks compare to what is on the latest magazine covers, and a million other things. Inside of a single sheet of glass or metal (depending on the mirror’s make) people impose a myriad of ideas of hopes and dreams and lies -- things that would not exist if not for the expectations of the contemporary society. In modern theatre many characters will reflect this present-day habit by looking in a mirror and telling us what they see; but, in William Shakespeare's time mirrors were too expensive for his characters to do such a thing unless they were a king or vastly wealthy (Hadsund). Instead of using this modern convention, Shakespeare gave us a different mirror through which to view his characters: soliloquies. Whether it is Shylock telling us why he hates Antonio, Macbeth displaying traits of having entered a dissociative state before Duncan's murder, or Edmund railing against his fate as a bastard, we get it all through these speeches, which act as a reflection of the character's mind. The true genius comes, though, when Shakespeare breaks this convention with a character who is aware that he is being watched: Iago from Othello. Our expectations are broken as Iago manipulates what we see and feel, and the looking-glass is shattered.
In Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage" the idea of a person placing their concept of perfection within the constraints of a mirror is first presented. This "ideal-I" is the romanticized goal that all people strive for, even if the reflection will forever be opposite of what they are and nigh upon impossible to obtain. Expression of the striving for this perfect self is often found in the way the life of the person is shaped -- their dreams, disappointments, and beliefs (1-7). In theatre it is difficult for this "ideal-I" to manifest in a form that is easy for the audience to accept, unless one looks through the window proffered by the words spoken by the characters. Shakespeare knew that his characters had to express themselves through their various speeches, and used this to his advantage. He expressed their ideals and disappointments through their reactions to situations, people, and internal realizations by removing everyone else from the stage and letting the character address their inner turmoil aloud so the audience could take part in the mental and emotional journey made throughout the course of the play.
An interesting example of this particular form of genius is found in The Merchant of Venice in Act I, scene iii when Shylock the Jew gives an aside to the audience that acts as a soliloquy. By this point in the play we have learned very little about Shylock and his feelings towards the other inhabitants of Venice, but in this particular speech he unfolds not only his sentiments towards Antonio but also towards Christians and Jews alike. Our first hint that Shylock is displeased with having to deal with Antonio is the way that Shakespeare wrote the piece rhythmically. "I hate him for he is a Christian" (43) is a particularly interesting line in that it ends femininely (without the last syllable being emphasized as it usually is in iambic pentameter), which signifies that the actor is supposed to connect the thought with the next line (Sham). The emotion continues to build as the usual iambic rhythm is broken with a distinct lack of feet in the ending line of "if I forgive him", which gives a clipped, uneasy feeling that tells the audience (subconsciously) that he truly would rather place a curse on his beloved nation than ever truly forgive Antonio (53). Textual content found in the soliloquy also tells us a great deal about Shylock's mental state as he speaks to the audience. Shylock uses an interesting combination of Christian imagery--"a fawning publican" (42)--and exclusive language to reflect a great sense of Antonio being part of an antagonistic other that he wishes to wound in the name of Judaism. He is brutally honest in his reasoning: Antonio is awful in his mind because of his religious beliefs, his driving down the interest rates the Jews can charge, and for his slandering of Shylock in front of his colleagues. Audiences often miss the depth of the Jew in favor of finding someone within the play to hate, even though the truth is plainly found within what he tells his mirror, the audience (Delahoyde).
Lord Macbeth is another character that Shakespeare wrote soliloquies for so that the audience could understand the mental state his character was in. Right before the murder of King Duncan in Act II Macbeth gives the famous "is this a dagger I see before me" speech, which gives us a glimpse into the mind of the would-be killer (i.33-64). Majorie Garber says that this particular soliloquy is where Macbeth realizes that the fantasy he had created of the murder is about to merge with reality. "He tries to avoid the word [murder], to avoid putting a verb to the noun, an action to the idea" (708). As Macbeth struggles with the idea of committing the murder and being unwilling to actually put a word to it, his own indecision is reflected. He hems and haws over "murder" and in turn shows the audience that he's not really certain he can imagine the act, let alone go through with it. In many ways this speech also reflects a descent into one of the dissociative disorders known as Depersonalization, which is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition as being "a feeling of detachment or estrangement from one’s self" (American Psychiatric Association). The Depersonalized state is one thought to be triggered by high level anxiety in moment of great peril or duress in order to detach emotions that would be harmful to their mental state. At the Life, The Universe, and Everything Conference in 2009, though, Dr. Allan V. Roe, a prison psychologist for the state of Utah, presented research on how murderers often enter a Depersonalized state in order to commit the murder without feeling any particular emotional attachment to the situation, emotions that will later manifest (sometimes as soon as directly after the murder). These traits manifest in the extra feet and feminine endings that riddle the speech--such as "the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee" (34). Macbeth is clearly under great duress and tells the audience how numb he has become by saying, "To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself" (II.ii.73). He is at such a loss that he is suffering from “a failure to be able to speak, to finish a thought” (Garber 710).
Later in Macbeth (in Act V, scene v) we are given another insightful soliloquy in which Lord Macbeth conveys his mental state to the audience. It is right after he had learned that his wife has apparently died, and the Thane of Cawdor has come to reject the world in which he lives. “She should have died hereafter” (17) is the first clue that his emotional state is not what it should be; not only is the line one that ends on the off-beat in a feminine ending, but it is also a foot-and-a-half short of what it should be. To an actor this would cue that he is supposed to build emotion and tension as his audience is made uncomfortable by the break in the rhythm that they have become accustomed to, and it also tells the reader just how far removed he has become from reality. This becomes more evident as we realize that his “'tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,' is a rejection of time, a rejection of history, and of the learning experience of either life or art” that leaves him embittered towards the world he had once been so content to claim his place in (Garber 722). Ironically, before the "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech and Lady Macbeth's death is revealed, Macbeth tells the audience that he has realized how hollow his existence has become.
I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have. (iii.21-26)
At this point Macbeth's inner solider longs for nothing more than the simple pleasures of good company and honor -- things that have been denied him because of his overreaching the bounds of his place (Garber 722). By breaking the natural order, he has shattered his connection to the real world and become a numb, merciless shadow of the man he once was. Thus, when he finally reaches the point where his wife is dead he cannot bring himself to be overly emotional -- there is no capacity for deep feeling left. He has even “almost forgot the taste of fears” (V.v.9). The man has been devoured by the crime as the audience bears witness through the mirror of the soliloquy.
The textual reflections continue in King Lear as Edmund, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, diatribes against the social and political limitations that come with his bastardy. In this soliloquy found in the first act he asks,
Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? (I.ii.2-6)
Edmund is not only telling his mirror that he was born a bastard, but is also explaining to the audience why he feels he is mistreated. He goes on to explain that his "heart is as true / as honest madam's issue" and yet he is considered to be lesser since he was born of passion instead of duty (7-15). "Like Iago in Othello, the evil characters in King Lear are notable for rationality ... rationality in an evil character is opposed to credulity in a more sympathetic one" (Wells 267-8). There is, however, a difference between Iago and Edmund: the later is always honest in his soliloquies. The bastard tells us how he feels, why he feels that way, and what he is going to do about it. "Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land" plainly tells the audience that he is out to destroy his brother for the sake of gaining what society and law have denied him (16). At this time, illegitimate children were not allowed to enter a church or inherit property (Pearson 226), and it is easy to imagine that Edmund would be constantly reminded of his place in the world because of such things. “Stripped of any and all rights and burning with a sense of injustice” it makes sense that any of the Shakespearean bastards would rebel against the conventions of their society and the stigma that taints their entire lives (O'Neil), let alone one as impassioned and active as Edmund.
His speech and outrage immediately come to fruition, as Edmund told us it would, when he deceives the Duke of Gloucester through a letter into thinking that Edgar is intending to kill his father. The letter acts as a proof that Edgar should be stripped of his rights and Edmund should inherit instead (30-127). This "closely resembles Iago's equally deceiving 'occular proof' in Othello -- evidence, in fact, of nothing at all" (Garber 657). The audience cannot help but see this coming; Edmund plainly lays out his intentions and carries them out, just as Lord and Lady Macbeth draw out their plans for the audience through their conversation.
But Edmund and Macbeth are nothing when compared to Iago.
In Othello we are presented with a series of dichotomy, the greatest of which is the conflict between the darkness and the light, truth and lie (Garber 590-2). Iago, as a character, acts as the ultimate reflection of this binary by being a definite opposite of Shakespeare's other characters. Where other characters are candid in their soliloquies, "the dishonest Iago (insincere, deceitful, lacking in candor and public spirit) is labeled 'honest' over and over again in line after line [of the play]" but his words never ring true.(Garber 593). He gives us hollow reasons that never seem to be quite enough to go to such lengths--he thinks Othello has slept with his wife but "for mere suspicion in that kind, will do as if for surety" (I.iii.395-6) and “seems to bring up so many spurious motives that they cancel each other out” --such as Cassio’s being appointed Othello’s lieutenant instead of him, Othello’s race, the aforementioned alleged affair, his own feelings for Desdemona, Cassio’s supposed affair with his wife, and the simplistic thrill of the game (Delahoyde).
As a person, he is perpetually surrounded by darkness both literal and figurative. “Iago pretends to be a light-bringing, providing order and clarity, although he is in fact the source of chaos... Iago brings light in order to enforce darkness” (Garber 592). The audience gets a taste of this when he explains the tangle of emotions at work within the play.
That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it;
That she loves him ‘tis apt and of great credit:
The Moor ... he’ll prove to Desdemona
A most dear husband. Now, I do love her, too. (II.i.295-300)
At first this seems to be enlightening -- perhaps the entire tangle stems from three men loving one woman -- but then a closer look is taken. Because everyone else is in love with Desdemona Iago would like us to believe that he too has fallen victim to her charms and good looks. After all, loving her is yet another excuse for bringing about the downfall of all those around him. But wait, he loves her and wants use that as an excuse for getting her killed? It is Iago’s way of twisting the situation to his advantage and further confusing his audience so the truth is hidden within a myriad of lies. Interestingly enough, his words on loving Desdemona are immediately followed by his suspicions concerning who his wife has slept with.
The mirror is truly broken, though, with the conspiracy itself. By telling the audience of his plans throughout his soliloquies, "Iago has made [the audience] his unwitting and unwilling co-conspirators, presuming on [their] silence" (Garber 615). But Iago does more than let the audience in on his dark machinations. Through his soliloquies he twists the perceptions of the people watching the play until the looking-glass becomes broken; instead of reflecting truth, the mirror brings the audience into the tangle of lies that Iago has created specifically for them.
Every time Iago has the chance to, he addressed the audience and seems to pull them in to his devious plots as if they were on stage and he were whispering it into their ears (as if they were Roderigo). In Act III, scene iii, Iago is particularly prone to manipulating his watchers. He says, "the Moor already changes with my poison" and seems to laugh as explains just how he's been manipulating Othello (325). But Othello is not the only one who has been played upon: the spectators are also Iago’s victim. "I did say so" he exclaims, reminding the audience that he is the one in control of the entire situation, even what the playgoers are feeling and thinking as they watch the events unfold (329). Even the audience begins to change with Iago’s particular brand of verbal poison.
Many stories are told of audience members in the theatre over the centuries who have risen from their seats and shouted the truth at an unhearing Othello, that Desdemona is chaste, that Iago is his enemy, not his friend. But the play is cunningly constructed to keep us out of earshot unable to insist, like the Duke and Senators in the third scene of the play, that what Othello sees is a “pageant” to keep him in “false gaze”. Until the last act, no one on the stage--except Iago--knows that the audience in the theatre knows. (Garber 603)
And therein lies Iago’s genius. He knows that the audience is his ultimate victim, and in the end denies them what they most desire to know: what he thinks after he has been caught. Through the entire play he has trained them to expect his soliloquies and asides, knowing full well that the watchers are hanging on his every word. At the end of the play he breaks the glass by saying as much to the audience as to Othello, “demand me nothing: what you know, you know: from this time forth I never will speak word” (V.ii.303) One can practically hear him smirking within the words.
Whether it is the character’s honest ideals, as we see with Edmund, or Iago’s twisted plotting revealed within the mirrorlike soliloquies, Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage” provides an interesting insight to the minds of Shakespeare’s characters. Opportunities abound to see this particular element in action, but it is especially evident within King Lear, Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice. Shylock shows the careful reader that he is more than a hateful Jew: he is a man attempting to defend his religious beliefs and his reputation against a spiteful gentile who has caused him great harm. It also reveals that he values his religion above all things, which later explains why his daughter (who breaks the laws of Judaism) is not valued as highly as the audience expects. Macbeth reveals his mental instabilities even before the madness fully takes him by dancing around the word “murder” even when he is the only character on stage to hear such an utterance. Later his mirror also reveals his removal from the world, and that he is dead long before Macduff decapitates him. Edmund rants against his being born outside of wedlock and the condemnation that comes with his father’s sin, and he paints a clear picture of his intentions before swiftly acting on them. He wants to change the unfair expectations of his world, and makes it painfully clear to his reflection that nothing will stop him short of death. In these characters it is easy to see that the soliloquy does what no other theatre convention could: allows the audience to enter the character’s mind and come to a better understanding of their dreams, motivations, and beliefs.
Shakespeare’s genius, however, goes beyond simply letting the viewer or reader into the mind of his characters. He set up a convention of expectation -- the character is truthful within the confines of the soliloquy or soliloquizing aside and thus reveals their true nature to any who witness these speeches -- and then willfully broke it in Iago. As a playwright, William Shakespeare shakes his audience and smashes the established mirror in order to bring the greatest emotional response from the viewer; and, this is only done once in the entirety of the Shakespearean texts.
Iago makes the audience more than simple watchers: through their silence they become unwilling participants in his twisted plans. And then there was nothing. Iago not only manipulated the spectators into being part of his machinations, but he also twisted their perceptions and expectations until they became like Othello. The Moor is reflected in the audience as Iago’s silence eats at them and the peaks of frustration are felt. Why Iago truly drove Othello to murder Desdemona the audience will never know -- when the mirror was broken with his refusal to say another word all communication became impossible. It is impossible to collect anything from the shattered pieces of his mirror at the end of the play except cut hands and a bleeding heart.
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