SOURCE: “Shakespeare's Tragic Prefigures,” in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. XVI, 1983, pp. 143-51.

[In the essay below, Willson asserts that the opening scenes of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are, in effect, prophetic interludes. Willson argues that Shakespeare raises significant symbolic or thematic issues in each of these scenes by introducing a character—specifically, Horatio, Brabantio, France, and Cawdor—whose actions at the beginning of the play foreshadow the conduct of the tragic hero in a subsequent, climactic episode.]

Shakespeare's tragic openings, like those of other tragic dramatists, serve the ends of exposition. We must know of past quarrels between aged kings or of promotion decisions that have snubbed deserving fellows before we can begin to understand the motives of central characters and the courses of their actions. In King Lear, for example, the opening exchange between Kent and Gloucester (I.i.3-4) reveals that the king has already decided on the realm's disposition, casting ironic shadows on the trial of affection.¹ But with a skill that is unmatched by his competitors, Shakespeare frequently uses his opening scenes as carefully designed interludes to present characters whose behavior prefigures that of the hero in later, climactic scenes. Through this method he achieves a degree of tension and excitement that enriches the play's texture; we later remember the setting and action of the opening scene as if experiencing theatrical déjà vu. The thematic purposes of the tragic openings can be said to outweigh the expositional ones to a degree that makes them important beyond their length.² In addition, the prefiguring approach serves the ends of Shakespeare the ironist. With the help of the opening scenes we are provided with considerable information about the potential tragic states of the heroes: Brabantio, for example, reacts in the same way Othello will to the lies and innuendos of Iago. The effect is one of a prophecy coming true, of history repeating itself, of human blindness failing to avoid well-known pitfalls. This important aspect of Shakespearean construction, in which the opening action takes on the quality of a prophetic playlet or interlude, deserves closer attention for both theatrical and critical reasons.³

To better understand Shakespeare's technique of prefiguring, I will examine the openings of the four major tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. In Hamlet we enter a world charged with confusion and anxiety. Chief among the figures in the scene is Horatio, who, as a scholar and friend to Hamlet, has been brought by the soldiers to speak to the Ghost. Horatio presents himself as a skeptic, unwilling to believe that the soldiers have seen anything other than an hallucination. His disdaining tone—“Tush, tush, ’twill not appear”—is intended to show the frightened soldiers that this scholar will not concede anything to mass hysteria. He must have concrete proof. Yet after the first appearance of the Ghost, Horatio's calm mood gives way to one of deep concern; Bernardo marks the change: “You tremble and look pale”—almost like a ghost, we might add.⁴

Horatio at first responds by giving a rational explanation of the Ghost's arrival. In lines 80-107,⁵ he lectures on the history of the quarrel between Old Fortinbras and Old Norway, finishing with the assertion that the Ghost must have come back to warn of the threat to Denmark presented by young Fortinbras. His learned manner also leads Horatio to instruct his listeners in the significance of “harbingers” that predict the falls of great princes like Julius Caesar. The speech recounting the chivalric duel serves an expositional purpose, telling us about the heroic stature of Hamlet's father and introducing as well the motif of son-avenger. There can be no question about the speech's importance if Fortinbras remains as a significant character in the play. As is evidenced by many stage and film productions, however, the speech may be deleted, without notable damage to plot or theme, if Fortinbras is likewise excised. In the second long speech, which has no discernible expositional purpose, Horatio unwittingly predicts the fall of Claudius (as well as pointing to the murder of Hamlet's father) by reciting the omens that appeared before the murder of Caesar. Both these accounts are historical, particular, and learned, but the first concerns an order of knowledge that is verifiable and factual, while the latter delves into superstition and legend. After the second appearance of the Ghost, Horatio again refers not to human but to supernatural events. In lines 148-56, he talks of the crowing cock recalling wandering spirits to their graves. The Ghost's departure seems to confirm this superstition, which is linked by Marcellus to the Christmas season, when the cock crows all night long and prevents spirits from stirring abroad. Horatio's response to Marcellus's words—“So have I heard and do in part believe it”—signals his transformation from a skeptic to at least a partial believer, from a scholar to a storyteller.

What happens to Horatio prefigures Hamlet's transformation from skeptic to believer, not specifically about the Ghost, but in terms of general philosophic disposition. The Hamlet we meet in the beginning of the play is genuinely skeptical about human nature, about his mother's loyalty, about Claudius's ability and right to rule. By play's end he has adopted a far more stoical attitude; his “readiness is all” speech is a sign of Hamlet's recognition of divine influence in human affairs.⁶ Horatio's close friendship with Hamlet, the only unsullied relationship in the play, suggests the parallel between the two conversions: both begin as questioners but end by realizing that the answers lie elsewhere, beyond their mortal ken. Horatio's qualified acceptance of Marcellus's explanation of the disappearance of ghosts during the celebration of “Our Savior's birth” (l. 159) gives evidence that belief is equated with faith.

In other details Horatio's behavior parallels Hamlet's. His decision to bring news of the Ghost's appearance to Hamlet, despite the pressing need to inform Claudius, foreshadows the hero's distrust of the usurping king. Although the soldiers of the opening scene do not articulate their distrust, they reveal in oblique comments such as Francisco's “I am sick at heart” that they suffer from the cancerous effects of Claudius's reign. To see soldiers and scholar agree in the decision to seek out Hamlet suggests that they regard him as the true king. As the soldiers have sought out Horatio to explain events that are beyond their understanding, so too they turn to Hamlet for light and leadership.

Thus Horatio may be regarded as a stand-in for Hamlet in the opening scene. He performs the plot task of outlining the quarrel between fathers and its potential effect on the sons; but his sudden transformation from skeptic to believer, from complete rationalist to entertainer of supernatural truth, represents the significant action of Act I, Scene i. When Hamlet later encounters the Ghost we witness a similar conversion, one which will determine the course of plot action. For both men the Ghost's appearance signals the need for movement against the cause of evil in the kingdom. That Horatio comes to share Hamlet's distrust of Claudius and to seek ways to ameliorate Denmark's condition are reasons for seeing him not simply as a devoted friend but as a type of Hamlet.

As in Hamlet, the hero is absent from the opening scene of Othello. Both opening scenes are set at night, moreover, creating moods of fear and foreboding. In Othello, however, the threat to peace does not come from a supernatural source but is of a kind that we might experience were we walking alone in the wrong part of town. This supercharged atmosphere seems the proper setting for Iago to conduct his first experiment in transforming a rational man into an angry avenger. Brabantio is Iago's victim in the opening scene, and the practicer uses precisely those techniques to bring him down that he will later use on Othello.⁷ By enlisting Roderigo's aid, Iago also exhibits his penchant for working through others to deceive his enemies. Iago as puppeteer is an image that Shakespeare imprints on our mind's eye in this bedlam-like opening.

Iago and Roderigo awake the “snorting citizens” with howls about the black ram tupping Brabantio's white ewe, an image that establishes a mood of invading animality. It is precisely the acquisition of this manner of speaking about Desdemona that will mark the perverted moral visions of both Brabantio and Othello. Here it serves mainly to introduce Iago and to elicit Brabantio's proud claim that Venice is not a grange. His position “above” at a window visually underscores the point: the vandals below are for the moment alien to the physical and moral setting. Like Othello's “Keep up your bright swords …,” this defiant statement by Brabantio smacks of wisdom and self-control.

As the scene progresses, however, and Roderigo describes the “gross revolt” (l. 131) made by his daughter, Brabantio rapidly loses the grip on his emotions. Indeed, the blinding speed with which the change takes place is dramatized in his call for light and for a thorough search of his house. Brabantio is the victim of a theft, and he reacts as did Shylock and Barabas before him. Of special significance is his reference in line 139 to his dream, which this “accident” has interrupted. Brabantio reveals a superstitious streak that tends to undermine his otherwise cool, stately manner. He has been dreaming of an event similar to the actual one; the congruence of reality and illusion proves too much for his reason. This reaction foreshadows Othello's superstitious outbreak when he traces the history of the handkerchief for Desdemona (III.iv.55-68). (We should also recall this dream when Iago tells Othello of Cassio's unlawful dream, full of lascivious details.) Iago's success in deceiving both Brabantio and Othello depends on bringing out the darker side of their imaginations. Their illusions seem to become truth when filtered through the animalistic prism set in place by Iago.

Brabantio's discovery of Desdemona's absence launches him into a fractionated monologue that mirrors his inner torment:

Now, Roderigo,
Where didst thou see her?—O unhappy girl!—
With the Moor, say'st thou?—Who would be a father?—
How didst thou know ’twas she?—O, she deceives me
Past thought!—What said she to you? Get moe tapers!
Raise all my kindred!—Are they married, think you?

(ll.159-64)

These wild and whirling words foreshadow Othello's outburst in IV.i.36-44, spoken just before he falls into a trance. In Act I, Scene i, Brabantio rants because he believes that his daughter has deceived him, violating a bond of sacred trust. Othello too will feel deceived when he concludes, on equally flimsy grounds, that his wife has violated her marriage bond.

At the close of the scene, Brabantio has gathered his household to accompany him on his justice-seeking journey to the Senate. Before they depart, however, he embraces Roderigo, the fool whom he had earlier ridiculed, dropping thinly disguised hints that he will designate him as his son-in-law. This gesture signals Brabantio's total blindness, but it also foreshadows Othello's embracing of Iago as his lieutenant at the close of Act III, Scene iii. Both men take vipers to their hearts believing that they will help them to restore order and justice to their shattered worlds. Their kinship is powerfully forged in Brabantio's warning to Othello: “Look to her, Moor. … She has deceived her father and may thee” (I.iii.287-88).

Here, as in Hamlet, we witness a transformation of character that precurses the hero's transformation in the climactic scene. Hamlet's “The readiness is all” and Othello's “Now art thou my lieutenant” denote the critical shifts in perception that lead to the hero's fall. These moments take on special significance precisely because they are prepared for so skillfully in each play's opening scene. The expositional purposes served by the precursor figures prove to be far less important than their foreshadowing actions.

Lear appears to be the exception to the prefiguring formula: the King is not only present but prominent in the action of the first scene. Yet a close look at the course of events in Act I, Scene i, reveals that France's role can readily be described as precursing the climactic transformation in Lear's character. His presence lends to the opening scene the mood of experiencing the future in an instant as we see him behaving in a manner that becomes both king and kin. France's gesture of retrieving the jewel that has been dismissed “at Fortune's alms” foreshadows Lear's heart-wrenching “rescue” of Cordelia from the hangman's noose. Like Hamlet's new-found stoicism, Lear's appreciation of Cordelia's inner worth comes too late to save him—or her. The fact that it will come, however, is established by France's ritualistic assessment of the heroine's worth.

If we accept the opening scene of Lear as an inverted trial, in which justice is subverted and human beings are treated as devalued commodities, we can better understand the symbolic and thematic significance of France's gesture.⁸ Lear has parceled out the kingdom before he solicits expressions of love from his daughters. He exhibits no feeling for England as a spiritual entity but seems instead to regard it as an estate that he can use as barter for avowals of affection. When Cordelia frustrates Lear's attempt to award her the biggest prize by reducing the bidding to “nothing,” he then proceeds to auction her off, not to the highest but to the lowest bidder. Burgundy mirrors Lear's materialist beliefs by refusing to marry Cordelia without an appropriate dowry. (Having Lear and Burgundy walk off arm in arm at scene's end is as deft a touch of irony as exists in dramatic literature.) France, however, sees beyond Cordelia's worldly price and seizes upon her inner worth, thereby championing the thematic elevation of insight. His is the kind of insight, Shakespeare suggests, that kings should possess.

France's role can in fact be described as choric.⁹ He lectures Lear on the suddenness and unnaturalness of his change in affection for his daughter (ll. 113-23). He then instructs Burgundy in the unmingled nature of true love (ll. 237-41), playing as he does on the widely accepted notion that Burgundian wine was qualified with considerable water. What France sees clearly is that Cordelia herself is a dowry or prize, a fact that Lear does not come to realize until V.iii.8-25. In his speeches France champions health in human relationships as he appeals to Lear's and Burgundy's understanding of Nature's benevolent, sustaining force. In its rhythm and nuptial-like overtones, however, his speech to Cordelia most vividly anticipates the exchanges between father and daughter in Act IV, Scene vii:

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor,
Most choice foresaken, and most loved despised,
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon,
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! ’Tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

(ll. 253-58)

These lines are studded with paradoxes, each one pointing to the wealth of Cordelia's virtues. It is precisely this ability to reason in paradoxes that Lear will have to acquire before he can begin the journey to self-knowledge. In order to see better he will have to appreciate the intangible qualities—loyalty, compassion, love—that France attests to with such a sense of wonder. Just as Burgundy mirrors what Lear is now—blind, proud, materialistic—France mirrors what Lear will become following his bout with madness.

By stealing away England's “gem” without even making a bid, moreover, France achieves a victory that underscores Lear's failure as a king and father. It is a victory accompanied by true reverence; France's words waft like a warm breeze through the winter landscape of curses and banishment that Lear's rage has created. Like Lear's reuniting with Cordelia, however, this moment of victory is only momentary; it will be succeeded by scenes of terror and death that overwhelm the major characters. Neither France nor Lear proves capable of protecting Cordelia from the tidal wave of destructive ambition that the events of Act I, Scene i, precipitate. At the same time we should recognize that France's courage and audacity in the face of Lear's anger belong to a class of action that includes Kent's becoming Lear's servant, the servant stabbing Cornwall, and Edgar protecting his devastated father. Lear himself will assume the protector role when he gives shelter and comfort to poor Tom, an outcast who possesses “nothing” in worldly terms.

It should not be surprising that Macbeth, a play packed with symbolic imagery, opens with characters whose roles consciously evoke traits of the absent hero.¹⁰ The Witches strike the crucial note of equivocation—“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”—to prepare us for the sudden appearance of the bloody captain. His wounds bespeak the foul consequence of his fair behavior in battle. His account of the fight between Macbeth and the traitor MacDonwald vivifies the theme of equivocation—“Doubtful it stood”—and ends with the description of Macbeth quartering his opponent and raising his head on Scotland's battlements. This speech depicts Macbeth as a Coriolanus-like hero (another hero turned traitor), but it also looks ahead to Macbeth's own beheading. The connection between beheading and treason is more explicitly drawn by Ross in lines 48-56, where the subduing of the Thane of Cawdor is reported as having been achieved by “Bellona's bridegroom.” Ross's epithet refers to Mars, suggesting that Macbeth has behaved like a god of war, popping up miraculously in every part of the battlefield.¹¹ Thus by the end of Ross's speech, we have a fully sketched picture of Macbeth as supernatural warrior, fierce opponent of traitors whose blood covers him from head to toe.

The overall effect of the scene, however, is to introduce characters who reflect various traits of Macbeth's usurping personality. The bloody captain represents not this Macbeth but his victims—Duncan, Banquo—and his avenger, Macduff. He is unable to report the battle between Macbeth and Cawdor, in which Ross's language is sufficiently ambiguous to suggest that we identify Cawdor's treason with Macbeth's. “Bellona's bridegroom,” for example, confronts Cawdor with “self-comparisons,” a word which in strict denotation means countermovements. But the connotation of “comparable minds” or “intents” can not be overlooked, especially when Ross adds to the ambiguity of the moment by referring to “rebellious arm ’gainst arm.” Is Macbeth's arm “as rebellious as the invader's”?¹²

Duncan's act of awarding Macbeth the Thane of Cawdor's title confirms the impression that Macbeth will inherit not just the title but the disposition to treason as well. Duncan's “What he [Cawdor] hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won” is almost a literal translation of “Fair is foul.” The irony of this ceremony concerned with the transfer of a title can be appreciated fully only later, when Macbeth realizes he has no heirs on whose heads he may place the crown. Like the fourth murderer, “the secret'st man of blood,” and Seyton, the Thane of Cawdor represents those figures whose corrupted natures generate a mood of treachery and death. Macbeth's stature will diminish—both figuratively and literally—until the Thane's traitorous gown fits him perfectly. Duncan, Macbeth's first and most “innocent” victim, unwittingly seals Macbeth's doom, and his own, by resting Cawdor's title on his shoulders.

In these four major tragedies, Shakespeare creates compelling opening scenes. They not only arrest our attention, arouse our emotions, and engage our intellects, they also reveal a design or purpose that prepares for our encounter with later scenes of climax and denouement. Foreshadowing is too general a term for this technique; prophesying seems more precise. The characters I have described—Horatio, Brabantio, France, and Cawdor—perform more than simply minor roles in these scenes. As proxies for the heroes, their actions are meant to represent in small the actions of the heroes in later scenes. The result of this design is a degree of tension and irony that contributes to the cathartic effect of the tragic moment. We not only feel more deeply as a result, we learn more about the significance of the tragic experience. In Horatio's conversion we have a model for Hamlet's, as both men move away from doubt toward belief. Brabantio's breakdown mirrors Othello's in that he allows his reason to be clouded by Iago's lascivious suggestions. France's passionate taking up of the castaway Cordelia looks forward to Lear's rediscovery of his best-loved daughter; both men learn to appreciate Cordelia through the comprehension of paradoxes. Cawdor's rebellion and death are in a sense transferred to Macbeth along with the Thane's title, underscoring the equivocal term “Fair is foul, foul is fair.” All these early “discoveries” prepare us for the moment when our attention is heightened and sharp. The interludes in which they occur are more than simple scenes; they are instead symbolic actions contrived to depict major thematic elements. To say that the purpose of these openings is mainly expositional is to ignore the critical foreshadowing or prefiguring aspect in Shakespeare's approach to tragic construction.

Notes

1. Samuel Johnson, ed., The Plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1765), VI, 3, n. 1. Even if, as Johnson suggests, only Kent and Gloucester were privy to the plan, Lear's behavior in the scene is still open to the charge of self-indulgence.

2. A. C. Bradley's statement, in Shakespearean Tragedy (1904; rpt. New York: Meridian, 1955), p. 41, is perhaps the most simplified: he divides the action into three parts and identifies the first part as devoted to “Exposition.” Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1957), p. 291, comes closer to the idea I am trying to convey when he describes the first speaker's responsibility to suggest “the quality which the subsequent events are to quantify.” But Burke does not see that first speaker as a prefigurer. See Francis Berry, The Shakespeare Inset (London: Routledge, 1965), pp. 41-43, for an analysis of Shakespeare's handling of exposition in The Comedy of Errors.

3. Hereward Price, Construction in Shakespeare (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1947), p. 24, calls such scenes “key-notes,” because they announce some major theme in the play. He does not identify opening scenes as serving this purpose, however. I am chiefly indebted to the following studies for their useful analyses of scenic design: Mark Rose, Shakespearean Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), and Emrys Jones, Scenic Form in Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

4. There are instances later in the play when Hamlet is described as ghostlike. See Ophelia's account of him looking as if he “had been loosed out of hell” in Act II, Scene i, and her moving assessment after he has urged her to enter a nunnery in Act III, Scene i. He certainly appears to Laertes to have returned from the dead at Ophelia's funeral.

5. All citations are from Sylvan Barnet, gen. ed., The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).

6. See Edward Hubler, “Introduction,” The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in Signet Classic Shakespeare, p. 913.

7. S. L. Bethell, Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (London: King and Staple, 1944), p. 76, observes that Iago's opening speech tells us more about Iago than about Othello. The speech and his subsequent actions give us all we need to know about Iago's attitude toward the hero.

8. For a full discussion of inverted ceremony in the opening scene, see William Frost, “Shakespeare's Rituals and the Opening Scene of King Lear,” Hudson Review, 10 (1958), 577-85. I have elsewhere argued that the opening may be profitably read as an auction that reveals Lear's blindness to spiritual worth. See Shakespeare's Opening Scenes, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 66 (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1977), 133-52.

9. Robert B. Heilman, This Great Stage: Image and Structure in “King Lear” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1951), p. 148.

10. See William Blissett, “‘The Secret'st Man of Blood’: A Study of Dramatic Irony in Macbeth,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 10 (1959), 397-408.

11. Using the epithet “Bellona's Bridegroom,” however, precurses Lady Macbeth's influence over the behavior of her warrior.

12. Roy Walker, The Time Is Free: A Study of “Macbeth” (London: Andrew Dakers, 1949), p. 34.