Shakespeare and Brecht: a Study of Dialectic Structures in Shakespearean Drama Amd the Ir Influence Om Brecht's Theatre Amd Dramatic Theory
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University College London SHAKESPEARE AND BRECHT: A STUDY OF DIALECTIC STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA AMD THE IR INFLUENCE OM BRECHT'S THEATRE AMD DRAMATIC THEORY. Submitted for the degree of PhD at The University of London. DOC ROSSI 1991 1 ProQuest Number: 10609419 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10609419 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis explores aspects of Brecht's adaptations of Shakespeare's plots and rhetoric while focusing particularly on matters of structural influence. Both authors use metafictional references in their plays to foreground a stylised artificiality, thereby pointing to the interaction of social and literary semiotics. These 'alienating' strategies expose the construction and the limitations of ideologies presented in a play, demanding recognition of the dialectical processes thus engaged. The study of Brecht's theory and practice against the background of Shakespeare's drama produces new insight into B:recht's works; similarly, Shakespeare's plays viewed against the background of Brecht's theatre and dramatic theory provide new insight into Shakespeare's literary practice. Both authors are seen to operate within and against their societies' discursive limitations in ways which are best understood through the intertextual connections proposed here. A revaluation of Brecht's attitude to Shakespeare in the context of his criticism of the orthodox theatre foregrounds the influence of Shakespearean dramaturgy on Brecht's dramatic theory. The imaginative or aesthetic dialectic structures of Shakespearean drama, particularly in Richard II, Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra, are as important to Brecht's concept of a dialectical drama as the historical-material dialectic of Hegel and Marx. The development of Brecht's dialectic approach and Shakespeare's influence upon it ctn& illustrated here with reference to Baal and The Life of Galileo. Man equals Man is used to link pre- and post-Marxist Brecht in order to explicate Brecht's sharpening of his already dialectical structure, Brecht's tendency polemically to privilege a Marxist discourse in order to criticise the status quo, as in his rewriting of Shakespeare's Corlolanus, undermines the flexible dialectic of Shakespearean drama; but by constructing his plays on a Shakespearean model which introduces the audience to an interrogative critical practice, Brecht undercuts the overt didacticism present in his plays. 3 TABLE OF CONTESTS ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 ABBREVIATIONS 7 INTRODUCTION 9 CHAPTER 1: BRECHT ON SHAKESPEARE: A REVALUATION 20 CHAPTER 2: REVERSION, REFLECTION AND REFRACTION: ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEAREAN DIALECTIC IN RICHARD II 71 CHAPTER 3: FICTIONALISED HISTORY AND HISTORICISED FICTION IN ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 125 CHAPTER 4: BRECHT'S DIALECTIC THEATRE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CRITICAL ATTITUDE 180 CHAPTER 5: HISTORICISING THROUGH PARODY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRECHT'S DIALECTICAL DRAMATURGY FROM BAAL TO MAN EQUALS MAN 225 CHAPTER 6: HAMLET AND THE LIFE OF GALILEO 275 CHAPTER 7: CORIOLANUS TO CORIOLANx THE NARROWING PERSPECTIVE 332 BIBLIOGRAPHY 383 4 ACKHTOVLEDGEXEJfTS I would like to thank first my supervisor Rend Veis for his tireless and exacting efforts and his great enthusiasm. His insights and careful consideration were indispensible and his friendship and wry sense of humour made working with him always a pleasure. Keith Walker has also been a great friend and inspiration to me at UCL. He stepped in as supervisor while Rend was in America and offered invaluable criticism and encouragement. Thanks, Keith. Professor Dan Jacobson was Post-graduate Tutor when I started at UCL; he introduced himself to me as an 'anti- Brecht ian' on my first day at College and our debates have continued since. Besides supervising my thesis Rend also helped with translations for which many thanks. Other help came from Gerde Ackenbaugher and Dorothea Kelemann and from Alex Reynolds who also helped by offering comments and criticism on Hegel, Marx and other philosophical and political questions. Thanks also to Joyce Crick of the German Department at UCL for much needed help in the early stages of my research and to Philip Brady at Birkbeck for his help in the later stages. Glenda Sluga read several versions of this thesis, offering expert comments and criticism, alerting me to other writers and questions and in general being a wonderful friend and inspiration, David Cleniis read the final version; his comments were very helpful as were our conversations over various questions concerning our projects. Thanks to both of you and the rest of the Not Gardening Committee. Special thanks are due to John McCready and Sandra Lello of the London House Trust for help in securing a small bursary which helped us through a difficult financial period and to Professor Karl Miller for giving me the opportunity to work on the staff of the Department of English at UCL. I would also like to thank Professor Martin Walsh of the Residential College at the University of Michigan for introducing me to Brecht, opening up Shakespeare, getting me involved in the theatre and inspiring me to take on this project in the first place. Grazie, Martino, Finally, thanks to my family and friends, especially Charles and Ann Ross, Pat Nemser and Jo P. Nemser Rossi for their love, enthusiasm and support of every kind. Sal ute. 6 ABBREVIATIONS AJ Arbeitsjournal 1938-55 BBA : Bertolt Brecht Archive, Berlin BOT Brecht on Theatre Diaries : Diaries 1920-1922 GV Gesammelte Werke Letters : Letters 1913-1956 MD Messingkauf Dialogues Poems Poems 1913-1956 PSP Poems and Songs from the Plays RC Refugee Conversations Shakespeare's and Brecht's plays are cited by short title; e.g. Midsummer Night's Dream is abbreviated to MND\ The Resistible Rise of Artuo Ui to Ui. All quotations from Shakespeare's plays unless otherwise noted are from the Alexander text and are cited according to act, scene and line number in that edition. Quotations from Brecht's works are more problematic: for the plays, poems, letters, diaries and The Messingkauf Dialogues all quotations are from the Methuen complete works translated into English unless otherwise noted and are cited by page number; other works are cited in the text according to the abbreviations included in the complete list above. Full bibliographical information is included in the bibliography. 7 Without some dialectics after all one can't write about much but cookery. Brecht in a letter to Swedish critic Arnold Ljungdal, June 1940 (Letters 327) . I tell you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the ' oriel, I warrant you sail find, in the comparisons between Hacedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is call'd Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but 'tis all one, 'tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. Fluellen to Gower in Henry V <IV. vii . 22-30> 8 IHTRODUCTIOM In 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919) T. S. Eliot observes that 'the past should be altered by the present as much as'the present is directed by the past' (Eliot 1975: 39). This thesis explores the development of Brecht's dramaturgy and the place of Shakespeare in that development with particular emphasis on dramatic structure and the critical practice that can be extracted from it, using Brecht's drama and dramatic theory to explore elements of Shakespearean dramaturgy, or to use Brecht's term, to verfremd1 Shakespeare, to look at his drama from a different perspective. The focus is on the questioning, challenging aspects of the plays as this was Brecht's focus when he was attacking the orthodox theatre and the society that supported it both before and after his study of Marx. A 'reading' of Shakespeare from a Brechtian point of view unlocks not only an ascertainable Shakespearean dramaturgy adopted by Brecht but a Shakespearean critical practice which can in turn be used to offer a 'reading' of Brecht. The wealth of biographical information available on Brecht and the amount of material he himself produced to explicate his dramaturgical theories and practice can help in finding meaning or intention in a particular play, but the structure he adopted from Shakespeare seen from Brecht's own critical perspective undercuts such interpretative readings, even those of Brecht himself. The lack of biographical information on and theoretical 9 A statements by Shakespeare - other than the plays themselves - help, to illustrate how the structures of his plays present to the audience a critical practice useful in observing- the events and characters represented: i.e. without firm knowledge from sources outside the plays regarding Shakespeare's political preferences it is impossible to determine from the narrative of a play which side the play supports - if any - because the dialectical structures equivocate the contradictory perspectives represented. Shakespeare was the favourite poet of both Marx and Engels (Marx 1976: 436-7) and like Brecht their appreciation went beyond traditional aesthetic considerations: they comment favourably on his depiction of the nature of money in Timon of Athens (.ibid. 136) and on his representations of historical movement (ibid. 259). On reading Marx, Brecht came to realise that the most important aspect of his own drama was its critical attitude; this revelation was not one of discovering what he should be doing but of coming to a clearer understanding about what he had been doing while attempting to carve himself a place in the orthodox theatre.