Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Chapter 13 focuses on a conversation between Prince Henry and a companion in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 2. In the scene, Henry expresses weariness and a desire for beer and notices the existence of a lowly person; Auerbach explains that to those valuing a separation of styles, such actions would not be appropriate for characters of such high rank. Shakespeare’s inclusion of these traits and actions, then, is a satire on the contemporary trend toward strict separation of styles that kept the sublime and the everyday apart in literary representation. Although Shakespeare, like advocates of a separation of styles, was inspired by antiquity, his work was the “ideal and example for all movements of revolt against the strict separation of styles in French classicism” (313). His mixture of high and low is not only relegated to the actions and characters of his plays; he also uses a “marked mixture of high and low expressions in the diction,” even using the term “humble,” which often marked works of low style (313). The plays mix tragic and comic elements, although Shakespeare does only treat high-ranking characters with a sublime and tragic manner, unlike the consideration of the “Everyman” as tragic in the Middle Ages.