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On Fluellen's Figures, Christ Figures, and James Figures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Richard Levin
Richard Levin*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
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Abstract

The method used by some recent critics to prove that certain Shakespearean characters are “figures” of Christ (or of other biblical or Renaissance personages) was parodied by Shakespeare himself in Fluellen's comparison of Henry v to Alexander the Great. Its success is guaranteed in advance, since it allows the critic to select only the similarities between the two persons being compared without considering whether these are unique or whether they are more significant than the differences between them. The evidence is thus subjected to a double screening: the critic determines which events in the character's career can be compared to the historical personage, and then which aspects of those events are relevant to the comparison. Even the differences between them can be converted into positive evidence. It is therefore possible by this method to prove that almost any character is a figure of Christ or of King James or of almost anyone else, which is the great strength of “Fluellenism” and also its great weakness, since a method that can prove anything proves nothing.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 2 , March 1974 , pp. 302 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 311 John Cottrell, Anatomy of an Assassination (London: Frederick Muller, 1966), pp. 13–14; see also Homer Bigart, New York Times, 14 April 1965, p. 28.

Note 2 in page 311 On this see Ephim Fogel, “Salmons in Both, or Some Caveats for Canonical Scholars,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 63 (1959), 223–36, 292–308.

Note 3 in page 311 Since I am not concerned with these particular studies (or those following) in themselves, but only as examples of the general trend, I have not singled them out with the usual documentation.

Note 4 in page 311 This “complementary” relationship of Viola and Sebastian is justified by a Fluellenian list of parallels within the play itself designed to prove that “there is a remarkable identity in the events of their lives: both endure a sea tempest, both are saved and aided by good sea captains, both are wooed by and in a manner of speaking woo Olivia, both are forced to a duel with Andrew Aguecheek, both give money to Feste, both are in the end betrothed to their proper lovers.” “In a manner of speaking” is a particularly fine touch.

Note 5 in page 311 I quote from the King James Version, which this critic used.

Note 6 in page 311 The next sentence of this study adds that Macbeth “is also like Lucifer . . . and his internal dismay when Duncan proclaims Malcolm the Prince of Cumberland is like Lucifer's dismay when God announces the begetting of His Son,” which makes Malcolm a second Christ figure. A third is produced by another critic's comparison of the porter scene to the “Harrowing of Hell” in the mystery cycles: “Christ comes to hell in these plays and awakens hell and its porter with his thunderous command, Attollite portas, etc. Macduff is the Christ-figure who hammers at the door of Macbeth's hell.” And another critic finds a fourth such figure in Fleance, because the play makes a “direct comparison” of his escape “to Christ's escape from Herod's massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem.”

Note 7 in page 311 The final clause shows that this trend has now reached the stage of a self-sustained chain reaction, where a character's credentials for Christ figurehood need no longer go back to biblical parallels but can be established by comparing him to other alleged Christ figures. The same critic finds it “significant” that some lines in Flavius' account of Timon (iv.ii.42–44) “are similar to France's words about the rejected Cordelia, another Christ figure.”

Note 8 in page 311 This proliferation also seems to have reached the self-sustaining stage, as can be seen, for instance, in a recent study of Believe as You List which advances as one reason for believing Prusias to be a James figure the fact that his traits “bear some resemblance to the traits Massinger attributes to Roberto in The Maid of Honour, who is undoubtedly intended as a portrait of the English king.”

Note 9 in page 311 One critic has gone a step further by arguing that these differences between the dramatic character and the King can themselves create a kind of James figurehood: “If James seemed to unite Britain . . . Lear sought to divide it. In this important respect, Lear is James's ‘anti-type,‘ his figurai antithesis.”

Note 10 in page 311 This kind of study was parodied by Baldwin Maxwell in “The Original of Sir John Falstaff—Believe It or Not,” Studies in Philology, 27 (1930), 230–32, where he proved Falstaff was a Greene figure. It is amusing to see that one of them, in the course of making Hamlet a James figure, tries to connect his remark on Alexander in v.i to the Earl of Essex by means of a comparison that brings us back full circle to Fluellen's own demonstration: “like Alexander, Essex had travelled widely, and met his enemies in distant lands and, like him, he too perished in his youth.”

Note 11 in page 311 The psychological process is revealed quite unconsciously in one critic's account of how he came to realize that Duke Gonzago of The Fawn was a James figure: “I first read this play shortly after completing a survey of the available material upon James and his court and was immediately struck with the likeness.”