Shakespeare’s use of the sea is always a fascination. Clarence, an older brother of the eponymous figure (this little brother will later become Richard III), has a dream during his captivity in the Tower of London. His drowning dream has received much critical attention on his guilt; In this essay, I suggest we can see how Shakespeare, on a wider plane, uses the sea to present consciousness and unconsciousness.
Guilt, undoubtedly, is part of consciousness which, for my discussion, means the awareness of our feelings, thoughts, and more importantly, how unconsciousness has effects upon us. Does Clarence have a glimpse at his unconsciousness? I think he does.
In the Tower, noticing Clarence’s heavy look, the keeper asks about the cause. Yesterday Clarence was ‘So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, / That, as I am a Christian faithful man, / I would not spend another such a night’ (1.4.3-5). Clarence perceives himself as a good Christian. God bless his soul. He is comforting himself with his religious faith that should ironically hinder his entrance to Heaven when only perdition is suitable for what emerges from his unconsciousness. Clarence has a double consciousness. He thinks he is practicing Christian principles, being a child God loves; meanwhile, he is contradictorily aware of his ill deeds.
Clarence then recounts his drowning dream to the keeper.
Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embark’d to cross to Burgundy;
And in my company my brother Gloucester,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence we look’d toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befall’n us. As we pac’d along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling,
Struck me (that thought to stay him) overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord! Methought what pain it was to drown:
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears;
What sights of ugly death within my eyes!
Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
In the dream, Richard (Brother Gloucester) has taken Clarence out of the cabin aboard. They are now walking near the side of the ship. The view of England provokes Clarence’s memories about the wars of Roses. Bloodshed. His own betrayal of the Yorks. His marriage with Isabel Neville, the eldest daughter of ‘the Kingmaker’, Earl of Warwick, whom Clarence will see in the dream as well. Though not explicit references, these may have also come to Clarence. In a sudden, Richard, now still the Duke of Gloucester, throws Clarence overboard and gets him drowned. Clarence’s guilt of mutiny and killing, as well as his anxiety of retribution, is manifested in the horrid shipwreck and corpses, both of which are death related images.
In the dreaming, Richard kills Clarence. The presence of Richard is even more uncanny. Later in the same scene, the murders sent by Richard will kill Clarence in the Tower. Is it a vision? Has God blessed Clarence, a lovely Christian as he thinks he is, with a vision of this inevitable looming death? Metaphysical and religious matters aside, I think it is Clarence’s unconsciousness tells him that in the dream. Richard is a great hunchback warrior. It makes sense that Clarence worries either Richard or his eldest brother Edward will take his life when they think of his betrayal during the wars of Roses once more. But Richard is the more cunning, bloodthirsty one. His wretched, out-of-place body ratio visualises that to the point.
After supporting his father-in-law who is on the Lancastrian side, Clarence returns to the brotherly embrace. Now he is again a Yorkist. In the dream, Clarence’s awkward encounter with Warwick reveals his struggles over loyalty and betrayal.
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who spake aloud, ‘What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’
Warwick chides him; and yet Warwick’s voice is mixed with Clarence’s. It is a voice of guilt. He channels his turmoils to Warwick and makes him say out loud what is suppressed. As if seeing himself in the third person, Clarence is being judgemental to Clarence here.
We may then ask: What role does the sea play? When the keeper questions Clarence, wondering why on earth Clarence has got time to observe the remains under the sea on the verge of death, Clarence answers:
Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood
Stopp’d in my soul, and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand’ring air,
But smother’d it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
Clarence is basically saying he wants to die but he can’t. In a rhetorical twist, he internalises the ‘envious flood’. It stifles his soul. The soul is now like the water stored within the whale waiting to spout. Clarence now matches his guilt, consciousness, and unconsciousness with the unabated flood.
It is not coincidental that in King Lear when Poor Tom imagines himself drowned in a shed, crying ‘Fathom and half, fathom and half!’ He is mad. Yes. Meanwhile, on another plane, it is a manifestation of his state of mind, or consciousness to be precise. Putting on a disguise too long, Poor Tom, I argue, is afraid of being drowned by real madness. On Poor Tom and the sea, I need another separate essay to do them justice.