(Im)perfect Friendship and the Metaphor of Grafting in Shakespeare.

Abstract

Used by such authors as Michel de Montaigne and Étienne de La Boétie in their descriptions of ideal friendship, the metaphor of grafting offered one of the most powerful and tenacious figures in the early modern discourse of perfect friendship (amicitia perfecta). Closely akin to the classically-inspired figure of friends as “one soul in two bodies” (Montaigne, “Of Friendship”), this horticultural metaphor signified the absolute fusion of perfect friends, their affinity and like-mindedness, in a discourse that also emphasized the significance of truth and the telling thereof (parrhesia) as a defining characteristic of this ideal form of bonding. However, early modern horticultural manuals expressed an ambivalent set of attitudes about grafting that was viewed, on the one hand, as an opportunity for improvement and perfection but also, on the other hand, as a practice that opened up the possibility of debasement and pollution, with the grafter imposing his potentially destructive power over nature. As this essay suggests, Shakespeare’s use of the metaphor of grafting within the realm of friendship expresses this ambivalence, insistently pointing to the actual fragility of the ideal of amicitia perfecta. In various instances in his plays, the idea of perfect friendship is evoked only to be frustrated by betrayal and falsehood, especially when it is put to the test of socially unequal relationships. Offering numerous examples of friends who function as imperfect grafts and parasitize on the stocks they have been grafted onto, Shakespearean plays thus expose the grafted union of friendship as a possible site of dangerous pollution, violence, and domination.