Shakespearean Influence on Moby-Dick

SONIA SHARMIN

In 1820 in the Edinburgh Review Sidney Smith said: “In the four
quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?” (par. 4). That
was the conventional idea concerning American Literature to the
conservative British writers. But Melville proved this assumption of
the British writers wrong not by arguing with them but by
producing a huge work which in its quality is comparable to
Shakespearean great tragedies. Melville’s masterpiece Moby-Dick
consists of thousands of references, but specially references of
Shakespeare are in abundance in this book. When Melville wrote
this novel, next to the Bible Shakespeare was in his mind because he
wanted to prove the superiority of American Nation as well as
American Literature. The protagonist of the novel, Captain Ahab, is
comparable with Macbeth and Lear in many ways. Also the setting
of the novel and language of the novel are like those of
Shakespeare’s plays. The construction of Ahab as the tragic hero-
villain, his madness and blasphemous behaviour, the
Shakespearean dramatic technique, the Shakespearean language
and parallel scenes are the things which Melville borrows from
Shakespeare. Though the portrayal of character and the construction
of the novel are Shakespearean, the novel’s greatness lies in its
originality.

Melville creates Ahab in the model of a Shakespearean tragic hero.

Melville’s conception of Ahab as a tragic character was made
possible by this immersion in Shakespearean tragedy.
Shakespearean tragic heroes, for example Macbeth and Lear are
blinded by hubris or pride. They are tragic because of their error in
142
judgment. Captain Ahab also becomes tragic because of the error in
judgment. Ahab’s misfortune is brought upon him not by vice and
depravity but by some error of judgment, like Lear or Macbeth.
Captain Peleg says about Ahab: “He is a grand, ungodly, god-like
man, Captain Ahab, doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak,
then you may well listen . . . Ahab’s above the common” (68). Ahab
is not a bad man completely. Like Macbeth, he is virtuous. In spite
of his ‘monomaniac’ obsession with whale, Ahab has a good side in
him. Macbeth is a loving husband. In the same way, Ahab has also a
family. Seemingly he may be seen as an arrogant, short-tempered,
bad captain, but in reality he is not. Captain Peleg, one of the sailors
in the Pequod describes him in this way: “stricken, blasted, if he be,
Ahab has his humanities” (69).

When the play Macbeth begins other characters talk about him. They
talk about his courage and his bravery. The Captain in Macbeth says:
“But all’s too weak. / For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that
name-“ (1.2.15-16).

In Moby-Dick also different characters talk about Ahab before he

appears in the novel. When the play Macbeth opens we find that
everybody, including King Duncan feels proud of Macbeth. He is
not introduced at the opening of the book. He comes after
sometime.

Moreover, Ahab does have a Macbethian side in him. He suppresses

his human side. Like Macbeth he says: “Talk not to me of
blasphemy, man, I’d strike the sun if it insulted me” (136). He is
damned because of his hubris. He cannot enjoy beauty as Macbeth
cannot enjoy beauty. Feelings of love and beauty are denied in Ahab
also. He is incapable of feeling love. We feel pity and fear for Ahab
as he cannot enjoy beauty. The parallel language is evident by an

143
example when Macbeth says: “Stars, hide your fires. /Let not light
see my black and deep desires” (1.4.50-51). In his soliloquy in the
chapter “Sunset” Ahab says:

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was when as the sunrise
nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This
lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me,
since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I
lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and
most malignantly! clamned in the midst of Paradise! (139).

There is greatness and grief in Ahab like Macbeth. For his suffering
we pity him and we fear what would happen to him as he is
blasphemous.

In Macbeth before Macduff meets and matches Macbeth, the

protagonist tells himself:

Fear not, Macbeth no man that is born of woman

Shall e’er have power upon thee. (5.3.6-7)

But the fact is that Macbeth is killed at last. He surrenders himself

totally opposite to the prophecy made by the witches. Ahab also
thinks that he would be able to kill the whale, Moby-Dick. Ahab,
like Macbeth, does not want to understand that Moby-Dick cannot
be killed by a mere human being. There lies his flaw and that makes
him a tragic hero like Macbeth.

Ahab is almost like a villain. He is like Iago in Othello or Edmund in

King Lear. He is a malcontent who is not satisfied with his life. He
has undertaken a lot of adventures earlier. But he is not happy with
his life. Iago’s mission is to destroy the life of Othello. Similarly,
Ahab’s aim is to kill Moby-Dick. As Iago fails in his attempt, Ahab

144
also fails in his attempt to kill Moby-Dick. In Othello Iago tells
Roderigo:

. . . I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor: My cause

is hearted: thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive
in our revenge against him. If thou canst cuckcold him thou
dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. (1.3.367-368)

If he can take revenge against Othello it would be a sport for him.

Similarly, Ahab wants to take revenge to fulfill his quest. Ahab is
vindictive and crazy like Iago. In Moby-Dick Melville says: “. . . Ahab
had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more
fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last come to identify with
him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and
spiritual exasperations” (153). He seeks vengeance on the whale for
taking away his leg. The idea of vindictiveness comes in their
speeches. In Othello Iago in his last speech says:

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.

From this time forth I never will speak word. (5.2.300-301)

Similarly Ahab says before dying: “Sink all coffins and all hearses to
one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to
pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned
whale! Thus, I give up the spear!” (468). Their attitude is the same
and both of them fail in their attempts.

A major assumption that runs through Moby-Dick is that Ahab’s

quest against the great whale is a blasphemous activity, even apart
from the consequences that it has upon its crew. After losing his leg
in a chase with Moby-Dick, Ahab begins his quest for the white
whale as an open rebellion against God. Macbeth kills Duncan,
which is against the law of God. Ahab does not obey God and he
145
also breaks this code. Ahab becomes a god himself. That is why he
dies at last. He cannot kill the whale. Ahab with his sailors, except
Ishmael dies.

In his blasphemous behaviour and madness Ahab is like Lear. Lear

breaks the law of God by dividing the kingdom among his
daughters. He says:

Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.

Give me the map there. Know that we have divided.
In three our kingdom. (1.1.35-37)

Kingship is given from God. A king is the representative of God to

the common people. He cannot break the law of God. If he breaks
the law he is blasphemous. In the same way Ahab is blasphemous
as he thinks himself to be powerful like God.

The speeches of Ahab and of the mad little Negro Pip are closely
imitative of Shakespearean heroics and Shakespearean mad scenes.
Madness is one of the main themes in Moby-Dick and in King Lear.
Lear is mad because of filial ingratitude. He is obsessed with the
behaviour of his daughters:

O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave you
all -
O, that way madness lies, let me shun that;
No more of that. (3.4.18-22)

Again Lear says: “Didst thou given all to thy two daughters! And
art thou come to this?” (3.4.48-49)

In the chapter “Sunset” Ahab like Lear says in a soliloquy:

146
 What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed I’ll do!
They think me mad-- Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I
am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only
calm to comprehend itself. The prophecy was that I should
be dismembered; and Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophecy
that I will dismember my dismemberer. (139)

The word ‘madness’ comes in the speeches of both Ahab and Lear.
The “monomaniac commander”, Captain Ahab is intent on using
any and all means necessary to get revenge on the white whale.
Ahab is mad because of his obsession with the whale just as Lear is
obsessed with his ungrateful daughters. Ahab wants to kill it at any
cost. Macbeth wants to kill Banquo so that he and his descendants
can assume the power of the king. Ahab by killing God’s largest
creation in this world wants to assume the power of God. He denies
the existence of God like Macbeth and thus becomes blasphemous.
Shakespeare through the character of Macbeth and Lear wants to
mean that man’s existences is nothing in this vast world. They may
be king but all of them are subject to death. One of Melville’s goals
is to indicate the condition of man and man’s uncertainty in the
universe. Throughout the book man’s insignificance in the universe
is represented by the relationship of the crew to the ocean. This ship
is the microcosm of the whole world.

Melville makes link between the language of Shakespearean

characters and the characters of Moby-Dick. Although Melville’s
writing has a freedom he has learnt the mastery of language from
Shakespeare. Matthiessen says:

His practice of tragedy, though it gained force from

Shakespeare, had real freedom; it did not base itself upon
Shakespeare, but upon man and nature as Melville knew

147
 them. Therefore, he was able to handle, in his greatest
scenes, a kind of diction that depended upon no source,
and that could, as Lawrence noted, convey something
‘almost superhuman or inhuman, bigger than life.’ This
quality could be illustrated at length from the language of
‘The Grand Armada’ or ‘The Try-Works’ or the final chase,
or from Ishmael’s declaration of what the white whale
signified for him. (429)

From Shakespeare Melville learns how to make language more

dramatic. At this point Matthiessen says that Melville has learned to
depend more and more upon verbs of action which lend their
dynamic pressure to both movement and meaning. Melville has also
learned something of the Shakespearean energy of verbal
compounds and something, too of the quickened sense of life that
comes from making one part of speech act as another. For example
Ahab says: “I own thy speechless, placeless power but to the last
gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral
mastery in me” (415). Here ‘earthquake’ is used as an adjective and
‘placeless’ is used as an adjective from a noun. Cope comments:

Sometimes the echoes blatantly re-read Shakespeare, as

with the paraphrase of the famous “seven ages of man”
speech delivered by the malcontent Jaques in As You Like It
and echoed as part of Ahab’s meditation:

There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do

not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one
pause:- through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s
thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom),
then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s
pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the

148
 round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs
eternally. (406)

Though Ahab’s speech initially disputes the gradation of

age and the maturing intellect, he presents a catalogue
similar--- if far less precisely concrete--- to that of
Shakespeare’s original, ending on a note that exudes
Jaques’ existential despair, which sums up life’s final phase
as “second childishness, and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans
eyes, sans taste, sans everything”. (AYLI 2.7. 165-166). (2)

In King Lear Gloucester says:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods

They kill us for their sport. (4.1.37-38)

In the same tone Ahab says:

That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and
hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes
and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to
bullies, --Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel
me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again. (139)

There are similarities between the language of King Lear and Moby-
Dick here. But whereas Gloucester’s speech is about the
insignificance of man, Ahab’s speech is about his challenge against
God.

Melville uses the same kind of scenes or parallel scenes of

Shakespeare’s plays in his novel. He uses scenes of comic relief,
prophecy, supernatural elements etc. in his novel. Even more
interesting are Melville’s attempts to pattern the plot development

149
through constructing scene sequences following Shakespeare’s
plays. Scenes of thunder play an important role in King Lear. In
Moby-Dick Melville brings thunder scenes also. The chapter
“Midnight Aloft-Thunder and Lightning” deals only with thunder
and lightning.

Like Macbeth prophecy plays an important role in Moby-Dick. In

Macbeth the three witches, who are mysterious, make prophecy. In
Moby-Dick in the chapter ‘The Prophet’ the prophet Elijah comes
and he warns Ishmael and others from going to the voyage. He is
also a mysterious figure like the three witches since his language is
mixed with ambiguity. He describes Ahab as the ‘Old Thunder’. He
makes statements like the witches which are very difficult to
understand. He is a stranger among sailors. The witches in Macbeth
are strange figures. What they say comes true but there language is
ambiguous. The witches tell Macbeth that he would be the king of
Scotland in future and Banquo’s descendants would become king in
future. What Elijah tells also comes true. The ship ‘Pequod’ sinks at
last. He says “Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers?
Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and
then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all” (79).

The storm scene of King Lear has a similarity with the storm scene of
Moby-Dick. Olson comments:

The lovely association of Ahab and Pip is like the relations

of Lear to both the Fool and Edgar. What the king learns of
their suffering through companionship with them in storm
helps him to shed his pride. His hedging and self-deluding
authority gone, Lear sees wisdom in their profound
unreason. He becomes capable of learning from his fool just
as Captain Ahab does from his cabin-boy. In Lear

150
 Shakespeare has taken the conventional ‘crazy-witty’ and
brought him to an integral place in much more than the
plot. He is at center to the poetic and dramatic conception
of the play. Melville grasped the development. Someone
may object that Pip is mad, not foolish. In Shakespeare the
gradations subtly work into one another. In Moby-Dick Pip
is both the jester and the idiot. Before he is frightened out of
his wits he and his tambourine are cap and bells to the
crew. His soliloquy upon their midnight revelry has the
sharp, bitter wisdom of the Elizabethan fool. And his talk
after his “drowning” is parallel not only to the Fool and
Edgar but to Lear himself. (651)

Like Shakespeare’s plays there are supernatural elements in Moby-

Dick. The Figure of Fedallah is associated with Hamlet’s father. Just
as Hamlet is influenced by the ghost of his father, Ahab is
influenced by the apparition of Fedallah. Fedallah’s enigmatic and
secretive nature is portrayed from the start. Ishmael, the character
Melville uses to tell the story, says that the hair-turbaned Fedallah
remained a mystery to the last. Melville uses Fedallah’s entrance in
the story to show that the demon remains a puzzle to mankind.
Hamlet’s father’s figure remains a puzzle till the end.

These are some of the examples of Melville’s indebtedness to

Shakespeare. But his work is not merely an imitation of
Shakespeare’s work but a recreation to produce something new.
Through this work Melville really becomes an American Scholar
that Emerson, the great American philosopher, wanted and
cherished for long. Emerson prophecies in “The American Scholar”:
“Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of
other lands , draws to a close. The millions, that around us are
rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign
151
harvests, Events, actions arise, that must be sung. That will sing
themselves” (par.1). The American Scholar should not be the parrot
of other men’s thinking. The greatness of the novel Moby-Dick lies in
Melville’s understanding of human nature and its great theme. A
proverb goes to say that no great and enduring volume can ever be
written on the flea. To write a great book, one has to choose a great
theme. As a result, Melville has chosen the white whale as his
subject for his book and the theme of the novel deals with the story
of the white whale. Melville is a writer who has the craftsmanship of
portraying the truth about the nature of the world. In this story, the
symbolic use of the white whale, Moby-Dick, allows him to show
things of the world, God, fate, man’s quest as they are. The white
whale also symbolizes Christian God and through this Melville
wants to show how dangerous the aspect of God can be if
something stands against Him.

The influence of Shakespeare on Melville is very profound and

deeply connected. There are numerous and diverse parallels in
language, in emotional effect, in situation and tragic actions
between Moby-Dick on the one hand, and King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth,
Othello and his other plays on the other. In Moby-Dick as in
Shakespeare’s tragedies there is a solid, crowded foreground of
material things and of human characters and actions. Melville is
successful in his mission to make his work great. He chooses the
great theme and that greatness is depicted in Shakespearean way.
Melville says in “Hawthorne and His Mosses”: “men not very much
inferior to Shakespeare are this day being born on the banks of the
Ohio. And the day will come, when you shall say who reads a book
by an Englishman that is a modern?”(543). Melville as an American
wants to prove that an American can also be great like Shakespeare.

152
 Works Cited
Cope, David. “Melville/Shakespeare.” (1999): 15. 15 September 2000
<http://web.grcc.edu/english/shakespeare/notes/shakemel.doc>
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” Amazon.com (1837): 45
pars. 15 September 2008
< http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm>.
Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of
Emerson and Whitman. London, Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1941.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions
Limited, 2002.
Melville, Herman. “Hawthrone and His Mosses.” Moby-Dick. Ed. Harrison
Hayford and Hershel Parker. New York and London: Norton and
Company, 1967. 535-551.
“Melville’s Moby-Dick.” Wow Essays. 15 September 2008
<http:www.wowessays.com/dbase/aa5/vdj202.shtml>.
Olson, Charles. “Ahab and His Fool.” Moby-Dick. Ed.Harrison Hayford and
Hershel Parker. New York and London: Norton and Company, 1967.
648-651.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Surrey: Thomas Nelson and Son Ltd, 1997.
---. Macbeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
---. Othello. London: Penguin Books Limited, 1968.
Smith, Sidney. “Who Reads an American Book?” Great Epochs in American
History. 15(1820): pars. 4. 26 June 2008
<http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/preservation/epochs/vol5/pg
144.htm>.

153