| This thesis is a study of Shakespeare's Romances in the context of death and rebirth motifs. While acknowledged as precious works, some critics have, nevertheless, expressed their puzzlement about the last plays of William Shakespeare with regard to their overall strength, profundity, and/or artistic control, among other things. This paper suggests that these late plays consisting of Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest---to which all I will collectively refer as the Romances---can be appreciated as uniquely satisfying works if viewed significantly as mythic tales or allegories of renewal and rebirth. It will be argued that the development of the archetypal motifs in the Romances with their images of loss and restoration reveals a continuing thematic growth pattern aspiring for resolution of the earlier problem plays and high tragedies. The destructive, tragic sense of life and the unconscious, if not organically necessary, drive to creatively overcome that sense inform a genuine, consistent progression in the Shakespearean canon. They also deliver to Shakespeare's late works, the Romances, a mythopoeic, visionary quality. Enlarging on this quality, it will be suggested that The Tempest, in particular, intimates archetypal motifs of initiatory processes and ordeals. The motifs build and work themselves out to instigate religious ideals of regeneration and transformation, which in turn are pertinent to the Shakespearean progression and sense of final consummation and ordinance. The suggestion would be supported and advanced by examples of ancient Mystery Religions and their initiation rites. Perhaps then, under such consideration and evidence, could the plays that we call the Romances be less puzzling and be better appraised as nonpareil works of profound artistry and meaning by a supreme and humane master. A few words concerning my approach to the subject need mention. The investigations will rely on the interpretational approach that would involve close, in-depth reading with a special stress on the mythopoeic aspects of literature. It would be fair to say that the means are hermeneutic in the true interpretative sense and to the extent of eliciting meaning from the literary text is concerned. This eliciting entails "acts of empathy," and in this regard, I believe, I am not like the pure advocates of New Criticism, for instance, because the responsibility for the creation of meaning rests ultimately with me. Such a non-passive role on the reader's part undoubtedly touches on the main aspects of phenomenology and its philosophical inquiries, but to pursue this is to plumb dangerously astray from our proceedings, which are literary, not philosophical. To review, the thesis' procedural approach and outlook will rely on close textual reading; this would also admit that what the reader brings to the text cannot be denied, for better or worse. The method of exploration will submit to a careful reading of the diverse, critical materials present, although the final understanding or communication would be reflective and interpretative on my part as befits the subjective, literary nature of the topic. It may be helpful, perhaps, with respect to the nature of the topic being addressed to say a word or two parenthetically here about block quotations. Prose and a few non-Shakespeare poetry quotations will end with proper note citations. Shakespeare's verse quotations will be introduced or remarked beforehand with references to the relevant plays from which they are drawn. In a few instances where this is not case the name of the play will be given below the quotations alongside the numbered Act, Scene, and line(s) that will always follow the quoted verses (or words) from any play, whether they be substantial as in a block, or be singular, double, or even merely just phrases or words, but necessarily illuminating. |
