The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [85]
The dark figure in these Middle Comedies is not one of the central characters but, as it were, an outsider or third party, whose egocentric and vengeful ill-humour throws the lovers into shadow. The supreme example of this is the embittered usurer Shylock; and it is notable that when he is finally put to rout by Portia, Shylock does not go through a change of heart. As is his nature, he remains unrelenting. He cannot therefore be admitted to the general rejoicing at the end, and thus becomes the first example we have seen in Comedy (apart from Jonson's grotesques in Volpone) of what may be called the `unreconciled dark figure, who ends the story a broken object of derision: a kind of scapegoat or embodiment of all the negative, self-seeking qualities over which the ending of Comedy represents the victory.
In the next play in the sequence, Much Ado About Nothing, a similar part is played by Duke John, the treacherous brother of the lover Claudio. When his villainy is finally exposed he is unrepentant, and while Hero `returns from the dead' to produce the happy ending, John remains off stage as the `unreconciled dark figure', due for punishment.3
In As You Like It the dark figure is Frederick, whose usurpation of his brother's dominions eventually drives all the light characters into the mysterious, enchanted other-world of the Forest of Arden, He eventually does go through a change of heart, as a result of conversing with `an old religious man', but this takes place off stage (simultaneously with the resolution of the confusion in the forest, as Rosalind throws off her disguise to be reunited with her lover Orlando and her father, the true Duke), and he therefore does not join the closing celebration.
Finally, in the intricate love-tangle of Twelfth Night, the role of dark figure is reserved for Malvolio, although the whole story is so light in tone that he scarcely offers a serious threat to the lovers. His offence is not so much active malevolence as merely the absurd self-love which deceives him into seeing himself as rival to `Cesario' for Olivia's affections. Even so, Malvolio is still bundled derisively off stage as an unreconciled dark figure. In fact he is virtually the last such figure in Shakespeare's comedies,4 because from now on we see an extremely significant shift taking place in the way Shakespeare looks at the story.
The hero as dark figure
In All's Well That Ends Well we still encounter the familiar ingredients of a pair of lovers, with the central opposition between a `dark figure' and a loving heroine who at a crucial moment passes into disguise. But now the dark figure is no longer some third party, like Shylock, but the hero himself. The confrontation between darkness and light has moved right to the heart of the story, dividing the two lovers themselves. The heroine Helen relentlessly pursues the arrogant Bertram through the entire story, with a deep unrequited love. And the hinge of the action, as in Much Ado About Nothing, is a midnight assignation, involving the hero in a confusion of identity between the heroine and another woman. Only this time it is the heroine who is disguised as the other woman, rather than the other way round; and the episode eventually leads to a happy resolution rather than, as in Much Ado, to darkness reaching its blackest point. Obviously where the hero himself is the chief dark figure he cannot remain unreconciled, or the story will not remain a comedy. Sure enough, Bertram's proud defences finally crumble, and he both accepts and returns Helen's love.
In his next comedy, Measure for Measure, Shakespeare pursues this theme of `the hero as dark figure' in even more thoroughgoing fashion. Initially his hero Angelo seems the soul of virtue. But step by step he is exposed, behind this righteous persona, as a monster of vengeful hypocrisy; and once again the hinge of the action is a midnight assignation where the hero mistakes one woman in disguise for another. Despite the importance of this episode, however,