Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance by Michael Hattaway

Author:Michael Hattaway
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Routledge

A demigod cannot control but may look down with a measure of compassion or contempt on the antics of poor mortals whose actions are based partly on moral deliberation, partly on their compulsive responses to the contradictions with which they find themselves faced.

I.ii. serves partly to further the exposition of the story, partly to present the audience with a procession of the images of conflict which are such important constituents of the play. After a stately entrance the King installs himself on his throne, surrounded by his court, and the General proceeds to recite his battle narrative. As its outcome has already been revealed in the first scene, we can attend to the ceremony of this dramatic aria, epic declamation rolling with climaxes built up by rhetorical repetition to its conclusion:

When he was taken, all the rest they fled,

And our carbines pursued them to the death,

Till Phoebus waning to the western deep,

Our trumpeters were charged to sound retreat. (I.ii.81–4)

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