Writer identity and expression in digital spaces

Diffusing Tension and Educating the Through Humor: Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, And Chaucer

Act II, Scene 2 is one of the most dramatic and tension-laden scenes in all of Macbeth, a play that is bathed in blood and gore. In this scene, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth kill King Duncan, and "gild the faces of the grooms" with the king's blood so the lower-class men will be blamed for Duncan's death (II.2). However, almost immediately after seeing this horrific display, the audience is greeted by a profane porter. The character of the porter is awakened by Macduff's knocking on the castle door. The porter lets in Macduff, who will become Macbeth's chief adversary for the rest of the play.

Shakespeare's contrast between comedy and tension partly serves a practical purpose -- to enable the audience to calm down and collect their thoughts after Duncan's bloody murder. Macduff notes that the porter has evidently been drinking, and asks: "What three things does drink especially provoke? The porter answers: "Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes" (II.3). As well as diffusing tension, introducing comedy into the Tragedy of Macbeth shows that, even after the death of the king, ordinary life still goes on. The porter does not care about the matters that obsess Macduff and Macbeth like winning wars and royal succession. He will still have to answer the door, no matter who is king.

Although the joke is somewhat lost to audiences today, people who check the footnotes of Macbeth will also see that the reference to 'equivocation' refers to the fact that Catholics, who were persecuted in England often practiced a doctrine called equivocation: "A Catholic equivocator could lie and tell the Protestants what they wanted to hear, but God would know that what the Catholic said was really the truth in another sense" (Macbeth Navigator, 2009). Guy Fawkes, a Catholic, had just tried to blow up the English Houses of Parliament and reinstate a Catholic king in the Gunpowder Plot. By making a joke, the porter is also reminding the audience of a serious attempt to overthrow their own monarch. In Macbeth, humor functions, not just as a tension release, but also as a double-edged rhetorical sword to make the work relevant to Shakespeare's audience.

This is also true in another tragedy of murder, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. One of the more humorous characters in the novel is the drunken Marmeladov. Marmeladov is an alcoholic, and his long, rambling monologues are a startling counterpoint to the seriousness with which Raskolnikov regards his life. Without characters like Marmeladov, the novel would be almost unbearably claustrophobic and ridden with tension, as Raskolnikov tormented himself with guilt over his double murder, and the police officer Porfiry tried to trick the law student into a confession. But like the porter, Marmeladov serves an important function in underlining the novel's theme. It shows the desperation to which the poor in Russia sink: Marmeladov's dissipation forces his daughter Sofia to become a prostitute.

Without knowing Sofia and the patience with which she bears her sacrifice and her misery, Raskolnikov would never have found his path to moral redemption. Even in comedic and ridiculous people like the porter and Marmeladov, there is significance: the porter sees how there is always a danger of a kingdom being overthrown, and Marmeladov's behavior, which might seem funny to a distanced observer, has consequences that destroy his family. It is also the sight of people like prostitutes and drunks that drive Raskolnikov to kill the old pawnshop broker, in hopes of using her money in his misguided plot to help people.