Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley This series provides accessible yet provocative introductions to a wide range of literatures. The volumes will initiate and deepen the reader’s understanding of key literary movements, periods and genres, and consider debates that inform the past, present and future of literary study. Resources such as glossaries of key terms and details of archives and internet sites are also provided, making each volume a comprehensive critical guide. Egan SHAKESPEARE SHAKESPEARE Gabriel Egan Edinburgh This book helps the reader make sense of the most commonly studied writer in SHAKESPEARE the world. It starts with a brief explanation of how Shakespeare’s writings have come down to us as a series of scripts for actors in the early modern theatre industry of London. The main chapters of the book approach the texts through Gabriel Egan a series of questions: ‘what’s changed since Shakespeare’s time?’, ‘to what uses has Shakespeare been put?’, and ‘what value is there in Shakespeare?’ These questions go to the heart of why we study Shakespeare at all. The book encourages readers to consider for themselves this central issue in relation to their own critical writing. Key Features • A chronology of Shakespeare’s career as an actor/dramatist that locates him within the theatre industry of his time • New readings of twelve plays that form a core of the Shakespeare canon: Critical Guides A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard 2, Henry 5, Hamlet, Othello, All’s Well that Ends Well, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Tempest and Timon of Athens • Critical analyses organised by genre (comedies, histories, tragedies and romance) and by four key critical approaches: authorship, performance, Critical Guides identities, and materialism • An extensive resources section, including a glossary of the important critical terms that are often used in debates about Shakespeare Gabriel Egan is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University. He is the author of Shakespeare and Marx and of Green Shakespeare: From Ecopolitics to Ecocriticism. Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk ISBN 978 0 7486 2372 3 Cover design: Michael Chatfield Edinburgh Egan cover 2.indd 1 28/6/07 17:05:00 3285 349 362 320 281 301 2718 2725 2583 227 200 179 152 132 103 695 w. gray 9 4655 727 652 3285 Shakespeare Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature Series Editors: Martin Halliwell, University of Leicester and Andy Mousley, De Montfort University Published Titles: Gothic Literature, Andrew Smith Canadian Literature, Faye Hammill Women’s Poetry, Jo Gill Contemporary American Drama, Annette J. Saddik Shakespeare, Gabriel Egan Forthcoming Titles in the Series: Asian American Literature, Bella Adams Children’s Literature, M. O. Grenby Eighteenth-Century Literature, Hamish Mathison Contemporary British Fiction, Nick Bentley Contemporary American Fiction, David Brauner Victorian Literature, David Amigoni Crime Fiction, Stacy Gillis Renaissance Literature, Siobhan Keenan Modern American Literature, Catherine Morley Scottish Literature, Gerard Carruthers Romantic Literature, Richard Marggraf Turley Modernist Literature, Rachel Potter Medieval Literature, Pamela King Women’s Fiction, Sarah Sceats Shakespeare Gabriel Egan Edinburgh University Press This book is dedicated to my graduate students in the – cohort of the degrees ‘MA Texts in Performance’ and ‘MA Early Modern Writing’ at Loughborough University, upon whom its ideas were first tested and, in the light of their wise critiques, thor- oughly revised. © Gabriel Egan, Edinburgh University Press Ltd George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN (hardback) ISBN (paperback) The right of Gabriel Egan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act . Contents Series Preface viii Acknowledgements ix Chronology x Introduction How Shakespeare’s works come down to us P I D G Chapter Comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado about Nothing Transformation, Translation, and Plays to Pass the Time Benign and Malign Deceptions Soldiers Turned Lovers Determining Genre Dirty Jokes and Sexual Mores Chapter Histories: Richard and Henry This England Providence Serialised History and the Tudor Myth The Order of Composition What Kind of King is Henry ? vi Chapter Tragedies: Hamlet and Othello Large and Small Affairs in Hamlet Sex, Suicide, and Scepticism Testing the Supernatural The Character of Othello in Isolation The Character of Othello in the World Racial Difference – Cultural Difference – Multiculturalism Chapter Problem Plays and Romances: All’s Well that Ends Well and The Winter’s Tale Not Hamlet in a Dress, nor Helen in Breeches Choosing Among the Men Helen’s Quest Unsuitable Husbands Do Hermione and Polixenes Paddle Palms? The Winter’s Tale as Proto-novel Summer/Winter – Man/Woman – Land/Class P II C A Chapter Authority and Authorship: Measure for Measure History: Then Proposing to Isabella Being a Nun Meaning: Now Recovering Shakespeare’s Version Chapter Performance: Macbeth The Witches The Timing of Exits and Entrances The Bipolar Stage The Apparitions Indeterminacy Chapter Identities: The Tempest The Identity of Caliban Nature/Nurture vii The New World Colonialism in General Ariel as Subaltern Chapter Materialism: Timon of Athens Base and Superstructure Timon as Unaccommodated Man Money, Gold, and G(u)ilt: Shakespearian Alchemy The Second Law of Thermodynamics The New Materialism versus Gaia Conclusion Student Resources Electronic Resources and Reference Sources Glossary Guide to Further Reading Index Series Preface The study of English literature in the early twenty-first century is host to an exhilarating range of critical approaches, theories and historical perspectives. ‘English’ ranges from traditional modes of study such as Shakespeare and Romanticism to popular interest in national and area literatures such as the United States, Ireland and the Caribbean. The subject also spans a diverse array of genres from tragedy to cyberpunk, incorporates such hybrid fields of study as Asian American literature, Black British literature, creative writing and literary adaptations, and remains eclectic in its methodology. Such diversity is cause for both celebration and consternation. English is varied enough to promise enrichment and enjoyment for all kinds of readers and to challenge preconceptions about what the study of literature might involve. But how are readers to navigate their way through such literary and cultural diversity? And how are students to make sense of the various literary categories and peri- odisations, such as modernism and the Renaissance, or the prolif- erating theories of literature, from feminism and marxism to queer theory and ecocriticism? The Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature series reflects the challenges and pluralities of English today, but at the same time it offers readers clear and accessible routes through the texts, contexts, genres, historical periods and debates within the subject. Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley Acknowledgements I would like to thank the general editors, Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley, for inviting me to propose this volume in their Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature series and for their for- bearance when I failed to meet the agreed deadline. Andy Mousley read the entire typescript and made hundreds of small and dozens of large changes, all of which improved the book immeasurably and for which this sentence is too little thanks. I would like to thank Charles Edelman for talking over points of military protocol that I use in relation to the opening moments of Hamlet in Chapter . The rest of the book, for better or worse, is all my own work. The Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom has provided an ideal environ- ment in which to teach and research and I am grateful to my col- leagues, and especially to my heads of department Nigel Wood and Elaine Hobby, for creating these conditions. This book was typed by its author on an AlphaGrip keyboard, which allows the hands to rest comfortably in the lap (www.alphagrip.com). I have no con- nection with this company, but I am grateful to its president Michael Willner for his remarkable invention. Chronology Items marked * are defined in more detail in the Glossary Date Historical and Theatrical and biographical events literary events Julius Caesar invades Britain and establishes Roman presence –Roman Empire controls Britain Open-air amphitheatres built for public entertainment Roman Emperor Honorius unable to defend Britain from Pictish and Saxon attacks. Roman rule in Britain effectively ended – The one thousand years No purpose-built commonly (but misleadingly) theatres constructed known as the Middle Ages (= ‘medieval’ in Latin) or the Dark Ages Johannes Gutenberg perfects printing with movable type xi Date Historical and Theatrical and biographical events literary events William Caxton establishes a printing press in London Nicolaus Copernicus presents the heliocentric model of the solar system Protestant Queen Elizabeth succeeds Catholic