Northrop Frye's Notebooks on Renaissance Literature by Frye Northrop;Dolzani Michael;

Author:Frye, Northrop;Dolzani, Michael; [Dolzani, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2006-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Soliloquy

The Chorus Comment

The Dumb Show

The Emblematic Scene

The Point of Ritual Death

The Recognition

The Final Dance, Wedding or Feast

[70] II-III.

II should begin with structure as the focus of eye vs. kinetic emotion (Dryden)59 as the focus of a mob. TS: ironic double moment of K [Katharina] & B [Bianca]. In Sh’s [Shakespeare’s] play Sly goes to sleep after the 1st scene, which is right. In the Q [Quarto] he reappears at the end, having had the play as a wet dream, ready to apply its principles to his own married life.60

[71] I.

In writing on T.S. Eliot61 I came to realize that his theory of poetic drama really applied best of all to The Waste Land, & that his actual plays moved steadily away from it. His movement is the opposite of Shakespeare, who goes from action-controlled plays to the operatic Pericles, where Gower tells the story in recitativo & a series of scenes literally supported by melos & opsis (dumb show) which epiphanizes the story.

[72] Well, I ought to be fairly clear by now, II seems to be essentially an analysis of the structure of comedy, as I have it now, going through the features that point to romance. Ill brings up the world-picture & the history sequence from TC to Cy. The apocalyptic imagery in A&C & why it’s there: the whole static picture of time, nature, fortune, and art. IV would then try to set this in motion by discussing the essential point of history (liberalizing continuity), comedy (regeneration of nature by art), & of tragedy (vision of original destiny of hero). Perhaps it’s in IV rather than II that I deal with my Co–T Ath–P sequence, the scaling down of human perspective, & the like, but my H8 points surely belong in III.

[73] In Sakuntala62 a king loves a displaced tree-maiden (she has a bark dress & is beloved by the wood nymphs), the child of a sage & a nymph sent to tempt him. She unintentionally offends another sage63 who curses her, causes the king to forget that he married her secretly—she’s pregnant. The cursing sage later modifies his curse to saying it’ll end when the king sees “the ring of recognition” he’s given S. S. loses the ring: it falls into the Ganges & is swallowed by a carp which is caught by a fisherman who is arrested for stealing the ring. The king then remembers, but S. in the meantime has been caught up to heaven, or at least a Lower Paradise. The king is led there by Indra’s charioteer, where he meets his child (prophecy of the child’s greatness as the later King Bharata is the main point) &, eventually, S. The general shape of the action is closest to AW.

[74] II.

When the dromenon64 is cut off the magic turns inward & helps build up the imgve. [imaginative] universe. The theme of the abandoning of magic is linked to the completing of the comic action.

[75] III-IV.

II is a study of comedy as, in origin, a magical inducing of a birth; thence, as literature, a drive toward identity.

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