You’re excused if you don’t remember Oswald. Not that Oswald. I mean Goneril’s lackey in King Lear. He’s a minor character and a minor human being. His big scene comes in Act II, Scene 2, set in Gloucester’s castle. Kent arrives and challenges Oswald to a fight. The preliminaries are delicious:
KENT: “Fellow,
I know thee.”
OSWALD: “What
dost thou know me for?””
KENT: “A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deny’st the least syllable of thy addition.”
That’s world-class
invective. In Shakespeare, we usually associate this rhetorical gift with
Falstaff. Elizabethan audiences must have loved the comic interlude coming in
this bleakest of plays. What does it say about us that we relish good insults
and find them amusing? Like any art or science, invective must be honed to
laser-guided precision. Practice helps. Brevity (“the soul of wit”) is usually
essential, though Kent’s beefy rampage is a showpiece intended to amuse the audience.
Ranting, kneejerk cussing and threats are never interesting, except to the ranter. A
good insult stings and leaves its recipient stunned, even confused, at least briefly. We naturally admire people who are quick-witted and linguistically deft. That’s part of the reason we still read
Juvenal, Pope, Swift, Dr. Johnson, H.L. Mencken, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis and P.J.
O’Rourke, among others.
Apropos of
almost nothing: Kent’s explosion quoted above contains the first of two
appearances in the play of serviceable.
Shakespeare’s usage is rare today, according to the OED: “willing to be of service or assistance; active or diligent in
doing or rendering service; obliging, helpful, compliant.” In Act 4, Scene 6, it’s
applied again to Oswald, this time by Edgar as he kills him:
“I know thee
well. A serviceable villain,
As duteous
to the vices of thy mistress
As badness
would desire.”
Some of us
first encountered and memorized those lines while listening to The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” Mixed into the sound montage are excerpts from a radio
production of King Lear. You’ll hear those
lines at 4:25.
I do remember that Bradley in his Shakespearean Tragedy credits Oswald with one paradoxical virtue - faithfulness (or as Johnson put it, fidelity) to his mistress. Bradley says, "It is to a monster that he is faithful, and he is faithful to her in a monstrous design. Still, faithfulness is faithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless."
ReplyDeleteBradley, I think, is mistaken just here; Oswald's faithfulness is no more than calculation for his advancement; he compounds Goneril's faithlessness, which is counter to the spirit of true service as exampled by Kent when he tries to prevent Lear's erring judgment, though at cost to himself. This pattern, by variation, reappears often enough in the plays for us to attribute to Shakespeare's own belief the value of good service, that is, service in good cause. (Another example in the same play is the nameless servant who will not participate in his master's torturing and mutilating Gloucester: he pays extremely for his act of true service.)
ReplyDeleteBradley mistaken, ok. Bradley AND Johnson mistaken? What are the odds?
ReplyDeleteI don't remember Johnson's opinion of Oswald. From your comment I infer he held the same as Bradley, no? It may be so. I never have venerated Dr. Johnson for infallibility; he stated his views with the greatest self-assurance, but stopped short of claiming inerrancy.
ReplyDeleteHere's what Bradley said (including his quote from Johnson) - I can give almost all of it, as Bradley devotes only a paragraph to Oswald, who is a minor character:
ReplyDeleteFar the most contemptible of them is Oswald, and Kent has fortunately expressed our feelings towards him. Yet twice we are able to feel sympathy towards him. Regan cannot tempt him to let her open Goneril's letter to Edmund; and his last thought as he dies is given to the fulfilment of his trust. It is to a monster that he is faithful, and he is faithful to her in a monstrous design. Still faithfulness is faithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless. Dr. Johnson says: "I know not well why Shakespeare gives to Oswald, who is a mere factor of wickedness, so much fidelity", but in any other tragedy, this tough, so true to human nature, is only what we should expect.
If his "last thought as he dies is given to the fulfilment of his trust", how can that be "no more than calculation for his advancement"? At that point, advancement to what? You mileage may vary, but I think it's not unreasonable to credit Oswald with a measure of true faithfulness.
Should have been "this touch". Squinting at my 40 year old Bradley is no easy task, I find!
ReplyDelete