The Wedding of the Daughter: Marriage in the Last Plays

Abstract

Shakespeare’s last four plays have always defied easy generic pigeonholing, for elements of both comedy and tragedy are deeply rooted in them: The Winter’s Tale ends in reconciliation and marriage, but it is irrevocably shadowed by the death of its teller Mamilius; Prospero renounces his art and thinks of his grave; Cymbeline finds his sons but loses his queen; and Pericles regains his family only after years of grief and isolation. In blending these two genres, Shakespeare may seem to owe something to the increasingly flourishing art of Beaumont and Fletcher, as exemplified in plays like The Maid’s Tragedy, A King and No King and Philaster; but there are also clear differences. Beaumont and Fletcher’s tragi-comedies characteristically combine a cracking pace, much use of disguise, mistaken identity and cross-dressing, and a wildly unpredictable plot, structured by dramatic and unexpected reversals of fortune and, often, of attitude. An audience may be consistently surprised and amused, and may often admire the ingenuity and the political daring of many of the plot developments, but it is very rarely moved. Indeed, there is a sense in which Fletcher’s own definition of his preferred tragi-comic form as offering ‘the danger, not the death’ precludes any significant emotional response: if we know that danger will always be averted, we are, in effect, in much the same fantasy mode as that inhabited by Batman or Indiana Jones.