Rabbits, Ducks and Jonathan Bate

The title of this post is a play on words from a relatively well known essay by Shakespearean scholar, Norman Rabkin - "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V." The rabbit/duck reference, of course, refers to the famous optical illusion, one version of which is shown here.
Tilt your head one way and the figure looks like a duck, tilt it to the other and it looks like a rabbit. Rabkin used this optical illusion to show how, in his opinion, "Henry V" can be seen as both a patriotic and an anti-war play.

Last night I finished reading, Jonathan Bate's "The Genius of Shakespeare" which I posted about a few days ago. That post talked about one chapter in the book where Bate brilliantly shows how the history plays create a "This England" that can be seen both as the monarchs and as the people. As noted, my concern was that Bate seems not to consider the possibility that Shakespeare brings these two aspects of England together through the "Band of Brothers" speech.

Now having read the last chapter of the book, entitled "The Laws of the Shakespeare Universe," I have more of an understanding of why Bate either didn't consider this or didn't write about it. Much of the chapter focuses on how it took the development of quantum physics, specifically the idea that two contradictory things can exist simultaneously - "both and" as opposed to "either or" for Shakespearean criticism to fully appreciate the genius of Shakespeare. My running and cultural buddy DT will really appreciatioe the Quantum physics bit, since he loves science almost as much as Shakespeare.

To me Bates seems to be saying that a lot of the genius of Shakespeare has to do with how these rabbit/duck illusions permeate his work. "Henry V" is a patriotic play or "Henry V" is an anti-patriotic play - in this theory, both are there and can be seen, although not simultaneously. I do agree that ambiguity is part of the appeal of Shakespeare, primarily because the characters are more fully human. But I part company when Bate writes that the genius of Shakespeare "is certainly not the wisdom that can be extracted from Shakespeare" or at least as far as the history plays are concerned.

Unlike Shakespeare's other work the eight plays that make up the two tetralogies represent a specific focus on a specific period of English history (1399-1485). I think it highly unlikely that Shakespeare devoted that much time and effort to exploring his country's past without having some wisdom that he was trying to communicate. As noted in previously posts, I think the eight plays, especially looked at in the order they were written, represent his attempt to explore national leadership. The genius in these plays lies, I think, in that exploration and the conclusions that come from it. The ambiguity, the both/and,whatever it is called, is part of what makes the plays about real people facing real problems.

My goal remains to write a book about the history plays exploring Shakespeare's exploration of those issues and to try to discern what his conclusions were. It is a little disconcerting to read someone who has a lot more knowledge and expertise than I do discounting the "wisdom," but that just increases the challenge and my resolve. Supposedly someone told the great English actor Alan Howard, that "Henry V" is intended to be ironic. Howard's response was something along the lines of - "Well they haven't had to play it have they?"