SELFISHNESS VS. SELFLESSNESS

IN SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES

The theme I’m going to deal with is the dichotomy I find in the different characters of Shakespearean comedies: selfishness vs. selflessness. I think it’s an important topic treated by Shakespeare because most of the characters are somewhat selfish, phony, they have selfish intentions, even evil sometimes. On the other hand, some characters show their selflessness, their goodness. But there are times when selfishness and selflessness can be confusing words depending on which character we are talking about. I wanted to focus on three specific plays: “Twelfth Night”, “The Merchant of Venice” and “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

First of all, I wanted to point out that all human beings are selfish in a way. Love is a selfish feeling, since we all want to have someone by our side that makes us happy. Religion is also selfish, because we, mostly, pray (the ones who pray, obviously) when things turn bad. So, we can see that it’s easier to have selfish intentions than having selfless ones. My opinion is that the world in itself is very relative, and the solution to this relativity is the lucky average, so, taking into account that we all are selfish in some way, we should find a solution to this dichotomy and avoiding a conflict between these two topics by finding a midpoint.

Beginning with “Twelfth Night”, written in 1600 or 1601 ( www.wikipedia.org ), we find a play in which many interests co-exist. Shakespeare always uses people who belong to upper classes, and those ones, though it doesn’t look like it, are, generally, the most selfish ones in the world: the more you have, the more important you are and will be. In Shakespearean plays, the characters try their best to achieve their goals, and, of course, the goals are mainly related to love. In this play, we can see how Orsino uses Viola (dressed as Cesario), so as to be close to his beloved Olivia. Maybe he doesn’t dare to go by himself because Olivia doesn’t want, at first, to talk to anyone but his servants, so Orsino chooses the easiest way. Sir Toby is another example; he takes advantage of Sir Andrew, steals his money, exploiting the fact that Sir Andrew is in love with Olivia. On the other hand, there is a confusing case: Antonio. Does he follow Sebastian with selfish or selfless intentions? Does he follow him because he loves him, or to protect him from any possible danger, even with the risk of being discovered by Orsino, his former enemy? As I said before, love is one of those topics in which we can’t rely on to separate selfishness and selflessness (since it’s a topic that, in my opinion, cannot be clearly described). So, is he selfish or not? The answer is not clear (maybe it’s a Romantic question), so I don’t dare to answer, it would be against the laws of nature.

Turning to another play, in “The merchant of Venice ”, written between 1594 and 1597 (www.wikipedia.org ), I find one clear selfish character, Bassanio (and maybe his mate Graziano, clearly influenced by the former). Bassanio falls in love with a beautiful, intelligent girl named Portia. That girl lives in Belmont and he needs 3.000 ducats to go there and try his luck to marry her. Antonio lends that amount of money without a doubt (is Antonio in love with Bassanio?), but has to turn to Shylock, a Jewish usurer (a brilliant character in my opinion and brilliantly performed by Al Pacino in the 2004 movie), looking for revenge to Antonio (Antonio is Christian) to borrow the money. Antonio is prepared to give one pound of his flesh (if he doesn’t give Shylock that money back) just to see Bassanio happy. That’s the main case of selflessness, while Bassanio is the character who plays the selfish role because he wants to achieve his goal knowing that Antonio is risking his life for him. Anyway, there’s a change in Bassanio’s behaviour, mainly when he realizes he has committed a mistake, and later becomes some kind of selfless, when he is willing to give everything to save Antonio; he even says that he would give up his wife and all that he has to save him ( www.ocf.berkeley.edu ).

The last play I wanted to comment on, related to this topic is “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, written in the mid-1590’s ( www.wikipedia.org ). Here, the cases of selfishness and selflessness are more difficult to find since this play is quite fantastic, as if it were a dream, as the play’s title itself says. Maybe Titania and Oberon, queen and king of the fairies, are both cases of selfishness, since they are angry with each other and try to solve their problems involving the rest of characters. Oberon wants to take revenge of his wife because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian prince whom he wants for a knight ( www.sparknotes.com ), and, in that revenge, almost all of the characters participate, all for a personal revenge.

Maybe, in Shakespearean times there was another meaning to the words selfishness and selflessness, or those words were seen from another viewpoint, but Shakespeare brilliantly represented one of the aspects that all human beings share, and transferred it to his characters. I didn’t want to search for more information, because I think that this is not a typical topic to treat, so I wouldn’t have found much info anyway, and then I decided to take the information by myself and try to combine my own opinions and thoughts with the plays I’ve read (or movies I’ve watched, like “The Merchant of Venice”). As we have seen above, we’re dealing with topics that are difficult to describe: love is hard to describe, religion and faith as well, so selfishness-selflessness is not less; they are both difficult to describe and to distinguish, they are confusing terms, difficult to find a clear meaning and distinction.

REFERENCES:

- www.wikipedia.org :

o Twelfth Night

o The Merchant of Venice

o Midsummer Night’s Dream

Visited: 4/5.1.2007; Contact “Wikimedia Foundation”

- www.sparknotes.com

o Twelfth Night

§ Orsino

§ Olivia

§ Antonio

§ Sir Toby

§ Sir Andrew

o The Merchant of Venice

§ Bassanio

§ Antonio

§ Portia

o Midsummer Night’s Dream

§ Titania

§ Oberon

Visited: 4/5.1.2007; Eds. B. Phillips & S. Stallings

- www.education.yahoo.com

o The Merchant of Venice (Summaries and Commentaries)

Visited: 4/5.1.2007; Contact: copyright@yahoo-inc.com

- www.ofc.berkeley.edu

o Reviews of Shakespeare’s Best Plays

§ The Merchant of Venice

§ Midsummer Night’s Dream

Visited: 4/5.1.2007; Contact: a_wirth@uclink4.berkeley.edu

- The Merchant of Venice (Movie)

o Directed by Michael Radford

o Premiered in 2004

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