• Undoing Shakespearean Temperance
• Maurice Hunt (bio)

There are about two dozen articles or book chapters on Shakespeare's plays that either entirely or in part—and in some cases only for several pages—focus on the classical virtue of temperance.¹ And only ten have "temperance" or forms of this word in their title. The authors of virtually every one of these publications assume in the play(s) they analyze that temperance is a stable reality that has dramatic consequences for the characters who do or don't practice the virtue. No one has argued, as I do in the following pages, that in a number of Shakespeare plays (and a sonnet) in which temperance figures the virtue exhibits instability, evaporates, has no consequences, or is irrelevant to the action. The subtlety by which this happens, notably within the dynamics of Aristotelian methodology and its tensions, has mainly determined the selection of the works I explore. I should caution that my thesis requires my criticism of criticism itself when a commentator argues in mistaken ways for the relevance of temperance in a Shakespeare play.

John Wilkinson in 1547 translated into English Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, giving the result the title The Ethiques of Aristotle. Wilkinson's effort became part of a "renewed emphasis on the 'Ethics' in the post-Reformation educational programmes of both the Jesuits and German Lutheran pedagogues such as Melancthon."² This emphasis reached Shakespeare, possibly in the curriculum of the King Edward school Shakespeare attended, or possibly in his general reading as preparation for writing one or more of his plays. W. R. Elton has demonstrated Shakespeare's familiarity with the Nicomachean Ethics in his analysis of the playwright's Troilus and Cressida.³ Since the dynamics of Aristotelian temperance frequently bears upon Shakespeare's staging of temperate and intemperate behavior in various characters, identifying some of its deficiencies and limitations helps explain why they either cannot attain it or find it nonexistent.

Plato helped Aristotle understand that temperance could be a rare virtue. In The Republic Plato asserted that the best men in his city-state will be "wise, courageous, self-disciplined, and just."⁴ By "self-disciplined," Plato means temperate, for he goes on to say that "self-discipline . . . is [End Page 73] a kind of order. . . . It is a mastery of pleasures and desires; [however], "moderate desires, which are guided by rational calculation, using intelligence and correct belief, are things you come across only among a few people."⁵ Only a few people had the mindset to achieve a difficult balance between two extreme emotional states both of which seem radically rooted in human nature. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle describes excellence of character as an "intermediacy between two bad states, one involving excess, the other involving deficiency." Almost immediately Aristotle admits to the problem of assigning terms to the three states of a given affect, especially with regard to its deficiency. "With regard to anger . . . there are excessive, deficient, and intermediate states, but since they are practically nameless, let us—since we say the intermediate person is mild-tempered—call the intermediate state 'mildness'; and those at the extremes, let the one who goes to excess be 'irascible,' and the corresponding state 'irascibility,' with the deficient one being in a way 'spiritless,' and the deficiency 'spiritlessness.'"⁶ But what could it mean to be spiritless? Would it be without feeling of any kind? So difficult is finding the right word here that one translator of the Ethics resorts to the cloudy coinage "unirascibility."⁷ Pleasure proves even more difficult, for what would the defect of pleasure be called: pleasurelessness, or would it be something akin to the Stoic state of apatheia?⁸ Montaigne in fact implicitly asserts that achieving anything more than momentary moderation in pleasure proves futile. "Isn't man a miserable animal? Hardly is it in his natural condition, to taste a single pleasure pure and entire, and still he is at pains to curtail that pleasure by his reason: his is not wretched enough unless by art and study he augments his misery."⁹

Howard Erskine-Hill writes that "in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle described intemperance as an excess...

• 取消莎士比亚节制
• 莫里斯·亨特（生物）

关于莎士比亚的戏剧，大约有十二篇文章或书籍章节，全部或部分（在某些情况下仅占几页）集中于节制的经典美德。^1个并且只有十个标题中带有“节制”或该词的形式。这些出版物中几乎每一个的作者都在剧本中假设，他们分析了节制是一种稳定的现实，对那些实践或不实践这种美德的角色产生了巨大的影响。就像我在后面的页面中所做的那样，没有人争辩说，在许多莎士比亚戏剧（和十四行诗）中，节制表明美德表现出不稳定，消失，没有后果或与行为无关。发生这种情况的微妙之处，尤其是在亚里士多德方法论及其张力的动态范围内，主要决定了我探索的作品的选择。

约翰·威尔金森（John Wilkinson）在1547年将英语翻译为亚里士多德（Aristotle）的《尼科马尚伦理学》（Nicomachean Ethics），并将结果命名为《亚里士多德伦理学》。威尔金森的努力成为“在耶稣会士和德国路德教会的教育家（例如梅兰琴顿）的改革后教育计划中再次强调“道德”的一部分。²莎士比亚强调了这一点，可能是在爱德华国王学校莎士比亚就读的课程中，或者可能是在他的通读中为编写一部或多部戏剧作了准备。WR Elton在分析剧作家Troilus和Cressida的过程中证明了莎士比亚对Nicomachean伦理学的熟悉。³由于亚里士多德节制的动态经常取决于莎士比亚对各种人物的节制和不节制行为的表现，因此，找出其不足之处和局限性有助于解释为什么他们要么无法实现，要么发现它不存在。

柏拉图帮助亚里士多德了解节制可能是一种罕见的美德。在《共和国》一书中，柏拉图断言，在这个城市国家，最优秀的人将“明智，勇敢，自律，公正”。⁴柏拉图所说的“自律”是温和的，因为他继续说“自律……是[末页73]一种秩序……是对快乐和欲望的掌控； [但是，“只有通过少数人才能遇到的，由理性计算，运用智慧和正确信念指导的适度的欲望。” ⁵只有少数人有在两种极端情绪状态之间实现艰难平衡的心态。两者似乎都根植于人性。亚里士多德将品格卓越描述为“两个不良状态之间的中介，一个状态涉及过度，另一个状态涉及缺陷”。亚里士多德几乎立刻就承认给给定情感的三个状态分配术语的问题，特别是在其缺乏方面。“关于愤怒……有过度，不足和中间状态，但由于它们实际上是无名的，所以让我们-因为我们说中间人性情温和，所以称中间状态为'温和'；而那些处于愤怒状态的人则处于'温和'状态。在极端情况下，让过度努力的人变得“易怒”，而相应的状态为“易怒”，而缺乏者则表现为“无精神”，而缺乏者则为“无精神”。” ⁶但是，变得无精打采意味着什么呢？会没有任何感觉吗？在这里找到正确的词是如此困难，以至于一位《伦理学》的译者诉诸于阴暗的造币“独特性”。⁷愉悦被证明更加困难，因为愉悦的缺陷被称为：愉悦，还是类似于斯多葛式的淡漠状态？⁸蒙田（Montaigne）实际上暗含断言，在享乐中实现除短暂的节制之外的任何事情都被证明是徒劳的。“人不是可悲的动物吗？在自然条件下，很难尝到一种纯粹而完整的快乐，而他仍在痛苦地通过其理由来减少这种快乐：除非经过艺术和学习，否则他的痛苦就不足为奇了。他加剧了他的痛苦。” ⁹

霍华德·厄斯金·希尔写道：“在《尼古玛时代伦理学》中，亚里斯多德将节制描述为一种过份的行为……