Persuading sequences
Charles A. Hallett, Elaine S. Hallett · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 1991
Because Shakespeare relied so heavily on the reversal to transform narrative into action, his use of it in creating action at the sequence level can hardly be overemphasized. We have seen how effectively he combines the reversal with the cumulative intensification by varying the repeated pattern in the third episode in a way that will thwart the expectations of the presiding character and how often he uses a reversal with various forms of the motivated intensification – characters in meditating sequences are moved to new positions by the logic of their thoughts, characters in observing sequences are altered by the action they witness, characters hearing reports are changed by the information they hear. The activity of persuading of course lends itself readily to such treatment: in persuading sequences the propelling character strives to obtain the consent of the resisting character to some urgent request or proposal, and the resisting character is driven, beat by beat, toward a response to the accumulating pressure – how natural that that response be cast as a reversal. Since the general form of the persuading sequence was examined in chapter 6, with Iago persuading Roderigo to continue his pursuit of Desdemona, we can concentrate here on the various and particular ways in which Shakespeare works out the reversal in persuading actions. Like all motivated sequences, which lack the freedom of the openended chronological sequence to range in any direction, the persuading sequence has its own set of constraints: an action based on persuading can obviously end in only one of two ways – the persuader can either win his opponent over or fail to influence him.