Els Launspach paper COV&R 2007

According to Girard, a text of persecution manifests itself by the mythic proportions of the supposedly committed crimes, which direct the attention of the reader to the scapegoat. In general such a text will not be romanesk literature, since it is an unconscious effort to supply the audience, and the writer´s self, with an explanation of past events.

Aristoteles has used the word ´mimesis´ to describe Attic tragedy of the 5^th century BC, in which Greek mythology was used for the dilemma, the character and to a certain extent also the plot of the play. This mimesis expresses the actions of a god or a hero (2) to the audience.

Action means development, confirming itself in an act. In modern drama-theory this development can be schematized into the well known theatrical arch of inciting force, crisis and climax. Normally the subject matter of Greek tragedy, hubris, can be seen as an overthrow of moral or ´divine´ laws. Hubris includes a longing for uniqueness followed by an error of judgement, called hamartia.

Applying Girard to the most important notions of drama-theory, the inciting force (a minor event interfering with the protagonist´s action) coincides with the sharpening of the hero´s desire. This makes him vulnerable in a world where an unconscious mimetic crisis exists and the equally unconscious tension of envy is being heightened.

The ensuing rising action leads to the pinnacle of the crisis, where the protagonist decides his course. In this way the crisis coincides with the trespassing, the ´crime´ which exposes the protagonist as a potential scapegoat. Here the existing tragic symmetry transforms, by mysterious unanimity, into asymmetry: the focus of the action points definitively to the choices of only this offender. From there we discern a falling action, which includes the catastrophe coming down on the protagonist, only to be temporarily relieved by moments of hope. During or after the climax the protagonist/scapegoat is to be sacrificed. He is killed or banished because he, only he, appears to be responsible for the community´s problems.

The catharsis functions as follows: the protagonist submits to his guilt and is punished. He realises his part as a scapegoat by fully acknowledging his mistake. By doing so he accepts being sacrificed, which is the solution of the (hidden) mimetic crisis. This leads to immense relief in the audience, because all responsibility is now signified by the scapegoat.

During the rising action there may be some traces of reciprocal rivalry, but soon the collective violence changes into an individual desire (concerning state control, kingship, sexual admiration and so on). As a consequence we witness this individual´s decision at the summit and the visible trespassing of the community´s laws. The guilt is taken from our shoulders.

Drama, as the art of metamorphosis, is organised by causality. Girard discovered that this metamorphosis coincides with the solution of mimetic rivalry and the restoration of order. This means that drama is ritual, a renewal of the original event which resulted in peace. Therefore myth is its subject-matter. Pure tragedy (3) will always contain a certain awareness of collective violence and expose the danger of mimetic rivalry leading to an innocent scapegoat, but in the end the writer will submit to the need in the audience for being cleansed. Being white-washed is a relief which goes together with drama-aesthetics.

It goes without saying that the protagonist´s taking the blame is a mental position of self-sacrifice, which affords him an almost unbearable vulnerability. Since the audience represents the community or the polis in a wider sense, we do recognize this vulnerability. At the same time we as spectators in ´the crowd´ - are not placed in this impossible position. The order can be restored, a new ruler will guarantee the comfort of a new beginning.

According to Girard myth functions a a ritual by which the original mimetic crisis is repeated by heightening the tension and finding a solution in the end. In my view drama, opera, choreography, movies and televisionsoaps all use this pattern.

Is it possible to define Shakespeare´s history King Richard III as a ritual, because the structure of the drama ends in a likewise solution of mimetic competition? Punishment of the protagonist and restoration of order is the outcome of Shakespeare´s play.

Historical evidence points to political and military upheavals by the nobility and even the danger of civil war, which king Richard averted by becoming king. However, the collective dimension of 15^th century violence in

England

is disappearing quickly from the play. Instead, the invasion of Richards opponent has been lavishly beautified by propaganda after the battle of Bosworth, where Richard was betrayed and slain.

It is generally known that Shakespeare´s play is built on debunking the dead king by Thomas More and many chroniclers of the time. Categories of good´ and ´evil´ are clear from the beginning, as Richards first line already shows

Of course an Elizabethan play can contradict these lines, building more motivations, qualities, and background of the character. But none of this happens, and I wonder whether in this play the double strategy of the author can be found, which he is assumed to have used elsewhere (4). The first image of villainy in the main character is repeated by noble women cursing Richard, by emphasis on his physical deformities like the hunchback, and strange stories about his unnatural birth. As far as I can discern, the former king is made into a fascinating but scary monstrosity in a rather melodramatic way, with hardly any vulnerability. The existence of a double strategy within the text, serving the more sophisticated parts of the public, should be researched of course. But one thing is crystal clear: staging Shakespeare´s play has repeated the ritual blackening an punishing the scapegoat for centuries.

Already acquainted with Shakespeare´s play and its theatrical possibilities, I encountered the views of René Girard. After a time I realised that my past articles on the play´s productions reflected my position as a drama-critic. By the author´s theatrical aesthetics, using scapegoat-signs from the Tudor tradition (Richard as a monster in the physical and the moral sense) the audience always seems to take his villainy for granted, and as a consequence also receives his ruin in the end (´My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse!) with pleasure and relief. So did I as a drama-critic, voicing the murderous crowd in the play.

Because I now acknowledge my own position in the persecuting crowd, I discern the workings of the play even more. To describe its effect I would like to introduce the notion mimetic satisfaction.

With this notion I try to encompass the mechanism of the scapegoat by a persecuting unanimous crowd, which reaches the audience during the production. The unanimity of the persecutors on stage and the audience culminates in the climax of the play. The meaning of the play is partly personal for the spectators, but by the aesthetics of the theatre they all agree on one point: Richard is guilty and his death is justified.

As Girard demonstrated in the story of Herodes and John the Baptist mounting to the reward Salome asked for her dance to please her mother (5), art can function as an acceleration of the mimetic process by way of its aesthetics and enchantment. Instead of the gradual revelation in literature, in drama we are often subjected to an inevitable but sudden change in perspective, an acute discovery.

That is what happens in ritual, and as I discovered also in Shakespeare´s history. Here the rise and fall of the state-enemy Richard is being enacted, culminating in the climax where all ´evil´ is banished so that the community´s wellbeing can be restored by a new king who creates a new dynasty. Hence the dawn of a celebrated new period of humankind, while Richard III as the ´troublemaker´ may rise again in film and on stage.

In short, I agree fully with Girard in his remark that we are obliged to discover and expose our own human need to create enemies and sacrificing them in one way or another, in order to feel relieved of complicity. But, since this particular play is so drenched in our culture of violence, it seems we never will be able to stop debunking Richard III.

1) Commercial drama in our modern culture (successful movies, soaps, videoclips) seems to fulfil a need for public execution which in former times was furnished at the market-place. Easy labels of ´good´ and ´evil´ seem to lead to mimetic satisfaction rather than to a catharsis in the Aristotelian sense.

2) Is it sufficient to define only tragedy with a continuous balance of positive and negative qualities in the protagonist as ´pure´ tragedy? When romanesk literature betrays the mimetic mechanism to the thoughtful reader, can we assume that tragedy does the same to the attentive audience in the theatre? If so, then great literature and pure tragedy cannot be marked as texts of persecution?

3) Is this mimetic satisfaction perhaps a human need in modern times, counterpoised by the equally necessary tolerance and vulnerability, the items of our conference?

4) What function fulfils a football match in our need to comply with the crowd and ´belong´ to one winning party?

5) Can we safely adjust mimetic rivalry in general to the parallel process of the dramatic structure?

6) The structure of drama often displays the catastrophe of human trespassing boundaries and a certain punishment in order to reinstall the difference between man and God. In Greek tragedy and in Shakespeare´s mature plays this struggle results in an almost unbearable responsibility of the protagonist and by means of the protagonist in us (for instance: Macbeth). This does not happen in Shakespeare´s early histories however, which seem to result in moral and political unanimity. I would like to invite everyone to read the text of King Richard III against the grain, in order to discover a possible double strategy as Girard demonstrated in The merchant of Venice . It must be there, true art always has this dimension.

7) But the last question will be, always, whether deconstruction of the mythical workings can be established by the means of production in the theater (acting, light, sound, scenery and so on). Moreover, to what extent can we balance our efforts to demystify with the dramatic structure of Shakespeare´s King Richard III, in order to afford a minimum of mimetic satisfaction?

1) The official title of Shakespeare´s history is: The Tragedy of King Richard III

But the play evidently is no real tragedy. I propose ´melodrama´ when the a text positions the protagonist as a villain from the beginning, while hardly any change in this view is offered during the play. In what way ´pure tragedy´ brings forth more vulnerability (analogous to a ´romanesk´ reading) is still to be studied.

2) For reasons of clarity I use the male form, my readers will understand of course that everywhere ´he´ is used the character or person can be female.

3) See note 1. The conclusions of Girard are from Le Bouc Emissaire (The Scapegoat, London 1986) en La Violence et le Sacré (Violence and the sacred, Londen 1977), resp. Paris 1982 en 1972.

4) For instance, Girard refers to a double strategy in Shakespeare´s The Merchant of Venice, where the Christians in Venice without knowing form a negative parallel to the values of Shylock. The Elizabethan elite can have discerned this critic, which Shakespeare emphasised by having Portia, entering the court, ask: Who is the criminal here? In the same way in the history of King Richard III can be established some similarities between the tyrant and queen Elizabeth, and the longing for ´evil´ in some female characters. Only to be noticed by an attentive audience. See René Girard about sacrificial ambivalence in A Theater of Envy, William Shakespeare, Oxford 1991 (Paris, Grasset 1990).

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