Viola’s Telemachy

Summary

From the earliest days, the Homeric poems have been read as educative models, and in particular the Telemachy of the Odyssey has offered a version of paideia (education, learning) in the moral education of Telemachus, as he is prepared, and prepares himself, to aid his father on Odysseus’ return and, over all, to be a fitting heir. In varying degrees, that theme of educative growth continued through the romance tradition that descended from the Odyssey.¹ We teachers of literature have often thought of ourselves as imitating the pedagogical role of Athene and her mortal disguises in the shapes of Mentes and, especially, Mentor, as she provides an educative guide for Telemachus during his process of maturation. Shakespeare the dramatist in some ways participates in this broadly didactic tradition of literature, and indeed he repeatedly studies youth in the process of maturation, from his extended portrayal of Prince Hal in the history plays through his greatly foreshortened but vivid picture of Miranda in The Tempest, although his Mentor figures are perhaps harder to take seriously than his youths. One thinks of such inept pedagogical guides as Holofernes, Falstaff, Polonius and Volumnia. If there is any historicity at all in the legend of Shakespeare as country schoolmaster who turned to playwrighting, that early experience must have left him with considerable scepticism about the pedagogical role of moral guide, to judge from his dramatic portrayals of mentors.