구아리니의 비희극 이론 관점에서 본 셰익스피어 극의 구조: 『베니스의 상인』을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the aesthetic and theatrical meanings behind Shakespeare’s tragicomedy. As a way of facilitating such an enquiry, we shall employ Giambattista Guarini’s theory of tragicomedy, focusing primarily on his analysis of the phenomenon of fusion between tragedy and comedy. Guarini is an Italian playwright strongly interested in dramaturgy and the emotional effect of tragicomedy. To make an authentic tragicomedy, he argues, there must be a harmonious mixture of tragic and comic elements far removed from the kind of tension or emotional confrontation which characterizes most modern tragicomedies. At its best, according to Guarini, tragicomedy happens when the two distinct entities are melded into parts that can not be divided. For this to occur though, art, as a kind of demiurge, must alter the autonomous natures of the tragic and comic so that they can be successfully integrated as tragicomedy−thus producing a perfect blend in which the comic and the tragic moderate one another. It is important, however, not to think of this blending as an equal identity of opposites; for, despite Guarini's idea of tragicomedy as an organic form, much of his observation clearly demonstrates that the tragic is subordinate to the comic. According to Guarini, it is tragicomedy that adopts the comic order. By employing Guarini’s ‘dramaturgical theory of emotional moderation,’ this article shall endeavor to illuminate the process of building tragicomic suspension and pleasure in the audience. Additionally, this article will show that such a method will be useful for revealing how the ‘modal conflict’ in the various forms in Shakespeare’s tragicomedy is brought about by the various theatrical situations. Together with this stage-centered (i.e., performance oriented) analysis, we shall explore the distinctive features that separate Shakespeare’s tragicomedy from its Medieval and Renaissance antecedents. Due to the fact that Shakespeare’s contemporary audience was fully conversant with the theatrum mundi metaphor, his dramatist-actor was acknowledged as a ‘surrogate-playwright-God.’ Such understanding, therefore, reflects the dramatist-actor’s skill at evoking metaphysical resonances, such as providential design or wish-fulfillment tropes borrowed from romance literature, into the tragicomedy’s ending. Thus the audience perceives the double vision of tragicomedy; namely, the artifice of art is rendered successfully through the metadrama of which the dramatist-actor subtly alludes to. At first glance, Shakespeare’s dramatist-actor appears to be leading the audience toward an apparently happy ending. But on a closer examination we find that Shakespeare’s dramatist-actor initiates an ironical ending by the introduction of a dark and problematic quality vis a vis the formal happy ending. Eventually Shakespeare makes his audience experience distinctive emotional and intellectual responses that are different from the types produced by Medieval and Renaissance tragicomedy, which typically reassert the comic order at the end. As a case in point, Portia, the dramatist-actor in The Merchant of Venice enacts her very own metadrama: she saves Antonio in a way that also confirms her romantic love for Bassanio. Nonetheless, her metadrama fails in the end because: first, Shakespeare raises a question about Portia’s ideal comic vision via a realistic description of Shylock’s defeat in the court scene; and, second, by his juxtapositioning of romantic love with more dissident strains of sexuality such as homosexuality. Shakespeare’s tragicomic endings induce critical discomfort in the audience because his dramatist-actor goes against audience expectation. Shakespeare’s dramatist-actors appear to be a ‘flaw’ extracted from the tragicomic aesthetics of Medieval and Renaissance tragicomedy. However, the discomfort or dissatisfaction aroused by Shakespeare’s dramatist-actor, especially one experienced in dramatic resolution, is not the result of any flaw in the play’s design. The reason for this is because ‘the flaw’ is very much part of the inherent design underpinning Shakespeare’s tragicomic aesthetics.