Pretenders to the Throne Sovereignty and Modern Drama
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PRETENDERS TO THE THRONE SOVEREIGNTY AND MODERN DRAMA by Nicole Jerr A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, MD October, 2014 ©2014 Nicole Jerr All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Pretenders to the Throne: Sovereignty and Modern Drama Nicole Jerr This dissertation examines an apparent political and aesthetic anomaly that has so far not received scholarly attention: the persistence of sovereigns on the modern stage. Despite the political trend away from monarchical rule, and despite modern theater’s deliberate and celebrated replacement of noble characters by ordinary individuals, kings and queens continue to figure importantly in modern drama. Focusing on sovereign figures in works by influential modernist playwrights as various in their political and artistic commitments as Ibsen, Jarry, Maeterlinck, Yeats, Pirandello, Genet, Beckett and Ionesco, I trace what emerges as a set of concerns about the concept of sovereignty that is both political and aesthetic in nature. First, I consider the shift from literal to metaphorical sovereignty. I examine how Ibsen borrows the vocabulary and concerns of the sovereigns at the center of such early plays as The Pretenders and Emperor and Galilean to establish the dramatic characters and situations of later plays such as The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkman. Second, I explore Jarry's Ubu roi and Ionesco's Macbett, plays I categorize as Modern Macbeths. I argue that both plays offer strong critiques of popular sovereignty, expressing anxieties about "the crowd" and its threat to the individual. Third, in plays I classify as Modern Lears - Pirandello's Henry IV, Beckett's Endgame, and Ionesco's Exit the King - I explore the implications of the ambivalence toward abdication these plays ii reveal. Throughout my analyses, I argue that modern drama’s interests in sovereignty have to do with modern theater as such and its contentious status as a modern art. This study intervenes in the fields of theater history, modernism, intellectual history, and the intersection of theater and political and aesthetic philosophy more generally in at least three important ways: it provides an alternative account to the standard historical narrative of a modernist theatrical agenda motivated by a renunciation of the past; it reconsiders the efforts of modern dramatists to negotiate the limits of tragedy; and it brings together for the first time analyses of a group of modern plays under the thematic rubric of sovereignty. As the first study linking sovereignty to the modern theater, it expands our scholarly understanding of the long history of the relations between sovereignty and drama dating back to antiquity, and reveals the role of theater in contending with and contributing to the changing definitions of the politico-theological concept of sovereignty. Advisors: Michael Fried Hent de Vries Martin Puchner (Harvard University) iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the years I prepared this dissertation, I have benefited enormously from the guidance and encouragement of many individuals. My advisors have been unstinting with their time, expertise, and kindness. I thank Hent de Vries for our discussions of political theology. I am grateful to Martin Puchner for helping me fine-tune my project at every stage (and for being willing to do so while at Columbia, and then at Harvard). To Michael Fried I wish to express a particular gratitude; his belief in my writing has been an incomparable gift. Other members of the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University also deserve thanks for their support: Ruth Leys, Leonardo Lisi, Paola Marrati, and Anne Eakin Moss. I am grateful to Stanley Cavell, Christoph Menke, and Glenn W. Most for discussions of tragedy, comedy, and much in between and beyond; to Martin Harries and Bernadette Meyler for reading and commenting helpfully on early drafts of my work; and to Stefanos Geroulanos and Zvi Ben-dor Benite for ongoing adventures in sovereignty. I am happily indebted to Helene Coccagna, Sara Davis, and Robert Webber for intervening at crucial moments. Finally, special thanks go to my family for demonstrating continued love and support through the years. iv CONTENTS Introduction: Sovereignty and Modern Drama 1 PART I MODERN MOVES I. Ibsen's Bourgeois Sovereigns 22 II. The Pretenders 54 III. Emperor and Galilean 79 IV. The Master Builder 93 V. Ibsen and Modern Tragedy 108 PART II MODERN MACBETHS I. Revolution in the Theater 114 II. Jarry's Ubu roi 117 III. Ionesco's Macbett 122 IV: Counter-Revolution in the Theater 159 PART III MODERN LEARS I. Avant-Garde Theater: Forward or Backward? 163 II. Pirandello's Henry IV 175 III. Ionesco's Exit the King 184 IV. Beckett's Endgame 190 Conclusion: The King - Figure of Modern Theater 197 Bibliography 202 Curriculum Vitae 210 v GENERAL INTRODUCTION SOVEREIGNTY AND MODERN DRAMA Despite the political trend away from monarchical rule, and despite modern theater’s deliberate and celebrated replacement of noble characters by ordinary individuals, kings not only survive in modern drama, they conspicuously thrive. This is not to say they rule peacefully over flourishing kingdoms without interruption – for then there would be no drama. On the contrary, their territories are troubled and potentially barren (Beckett’s Endgame), they are beset with threats both external and internal (Yeats’ On Baile Strand, O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones), they are presumed mad (Pirandello’s Henry IV) and fools for love (Strindberg’s Erik XIV, Brecht's Edward II), they are shown to be masked figures of fantasy (Yeats’ The Player Queen, Jean Genet’s The Balcony) and of horror (Jarry’s Ubu the King, Sartre’s The Flies), they are unsentimental and calculating (Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra), they are at the mercy of those with religious authority (Anouilh's Becket, Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons), and they must confront and ultimately choose death (Ionesco’s Exit the King). Yet in all these ways, and more, they thrive on stage, they exist: The king is dead; long live the king! As the above list indicates, while hardly uniform in tone or image, sovereignty has nevertheless been staged and thematized within the many avant-garde movements of modern drama, and by some of its most significant playwrights. Astonishingly, the apparent political and aesthetic anomaly of the persistence of sovereign figures on the modern stage has so far gone unremarked by scholars. "Pretenders to the Throne: 1 Sovereignty and Modern Drama" seeks to investigate the means and motivations of the continued interest in royal figures in an effort to open a discussion on this overlooked dimension of modern theater. Directing attention to sovereign figures in works by influential playwrights as various in their political and artistic commitments as Ibsen, Jarry, Yeats, Pirandello, Genet, Beckett, and Ionesco, my work traces what emerges as a set of concerns about the politico-theological concept of sovereignty that has political and aesthetic implications. "Sovereignty and Drama" is not a new pairing to theater studies. Indeed, there has been an implicit association of sovereigns with tragedy since Aristotle's Poetics, where he specifies that a fine tragedy is about “one belonging to the class of those who enjoy great renown and prosperity, such as Oedipus, Thyestes, and eminent men from such lineages.”1 Baroque drama - by which I mean drama from the early modern period of the late sixteenth century through the eighteenth century, and includes the work of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Calderón, Corneille, and Racine - adopted themes and structures that unquestionably strengthened the relationship between sovereignty and drama as a result. Going beyond simply using royals as principal characters, baroque drama routinely investigates aspects of sovereignty that could be categorized in the following way: the ambition for power – the struggles and strategies for obtaining the throne (as in Macbeth and Richard III); the acknowledgment of sovereign position – the rights, entailments, comportment, and responsibilities of kingly governance (as in the Henriad); and the failure to meet such criteria leading to deposition or the abdication of power – 1 Aristotle, Poetics, ed. and trans. by Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995), XIII.9-11. 2 often meditating upon the politico-theological concerns attendant to sovereignty, such as the "Divine Right" of kings, and the notion of the king’s "two bodies" (as in King Lear and Richard II). Unsurprisingly, a great deal of scholarship focuses on sovereignty and baroque drama, showing how it not only systematically establishes and undoes sovereignty on stage, but furthermore, finds tragic form precisely in this movement.2 "Sovereignty and Modern Drama," however, would appear to be a contradictory pairing. The standard account of modern drama emphasizes the revolutionary move away from royal characters as it overwhelmingly relates the stories of the common individual. While this shift in perspective parallels philosophical, theological, and political movements of late modernity, drama - more so than any other literary or artistic genre - seems to have decided that the stage direction “Exit the King” is optional. As evidenced by the royal figures who show up in plays by some of modern theater's most significant playwrights, modern drama does not limit its relationship with sovereignty to representations in the overtly political sphere, but also explores sovereignty as