Romeo and Juliet

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Romeo and Juliet Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile THE • VPSTART • CROW Editor James Andreas Clemson Unioersity Founding Editor William Bennett The Unioersity of Tennessee at Martin Associate Editors Michael Cohen Murray State Unioersity Herbert Coursen Bowdoin College Marjorie Garber Haroard Unioersity Charles Frey The Unioersity of Washington Walter Haden The Unioersity of Tennessee at Martin Chris Hassel Vanderbilt Unioersity Maurice Hunt Baylor Unioersity Richard Levin The Unioersity of California, Daois Richard Mears Drury College John McDaniel Middle Tennessee State Unioersity Peter Pauls The Unioersity of Winnipeg Paul Ramsey The Unioersity of Tennessee at Chattanooga Production Editor Tharon Howard Editorial Assistants John Bailey, Laura Blume, Mary Eberhart, David Fisher, Charlotte Holt Kaushiki Maitra, Pearl Parker, Judy Payne, John Sherrer Copyright 1992 Clemson University All Rights Reserved Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong. - T. S. Eliot What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions. -Walter Pater The problems (of the arts) are always indefinite, the results are always debatable, and the final approval always uncertain. -Paul Valery Essays chosen for publication do not necessarily represent opin­ ions of the editor, associate editors, or schools with which any contributor is associated. The published essays represent a diversity of approaches and opinions which we hope will stimulate interest and further scholarship. Subscription Information Two issues- $12 Institutions and Libraries, same rate as individuals - $12 two issues Submission of Manuscripts Essays submitted for publication should not exceed fifteen to twenty double­ spaced typed pages, including notes. Follow journal format for notes. Quotations should be single spaced in typescript. When submitting manuscripts, send two copies-the original and one xeroxed copy-and SASE. Allow six months for readers. If at all possible, along with hard copy, please also submit floppy disk. Mail to James Andreas, Editor, Upsttart Crow, Department of English, Clemson UniversityI aemson, South Carolina 29634-1503. ii Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile Contents Three Sonnets of Love and Age by Peter Cummings ................................ 1 "Every good servant does not all commands": Shakespeare's Servants and the Duty to Disobey" ........ 3 by Linda Anderson "Authentic in your place and person": Shakespeare and the Problem of Reidentification ................. 16 by William W. E. Slights Staging the Evidence: Shakespeare's Theatrical Revengers ................. 29 by Douglas E. Green Community, Narrativity, and Empowerment in Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographic Readings of Shakespeare .......................... 41 by Constance Relihan The Comic Equilibrium of Much Ado About Nothing . 60 by Morriss Partee Fate and Fortune in Romeo and Juliet .................... 74 by Douglas Waters "Cock-a-hoop" ..................................... 91 by Michael Cameron Andrews Othello's Jealousy and the "Gate of Hell" ................ 96 by Michael W. Shurgot Absence and Subversion: the "0' erflow" of Gender in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra ................. 105 by J. Robert Baker The Joining of Male and Female: An Alchemical of Transmutation in Anthony and Cleopatra ............. 116 by Mary Ann Curtis iii Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile The Alchemical Storm: Etymology, Wordplay, and New World Kairos in Shakespeare's The Tempest ...................... 127 by Peter Cummings The Phoenix Re-Viewed" . 141 by Robert Fleissner Alabama Shakespeare Review, 1992 .................... 146 by Craig Barrow iv Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile Three Sonnets of Love and Age by Peter Cummings 155 I have abided time, in works and days, And writ the best and worst of what men do; I have made plots that even me amaze, But make no sense of what I mean to you. High art called out to me in yesteryear, And youthfully I followed in my stride, And marched in meter toward the withered sere Along the margins of her ancient tide. Kings, soldiers, clowns, and women were my mask, In keeping with the parts I needs must play; They kept me from the questions I might ask: Just what would let you love me, make you stay. Kind boy, to listen to this varied voice; Cruel man, to take your heart back out of choice. 156 I was not wrong; you gave your heart to me In words that voiced your sharpest human needs, And you were right to crave my soul's decree That none would ever know your loving deeds. So much for words; lust melts their hardest wax, And breaks the seal on every promise made. The heart keeps count of all the love it lacks, And your false eyes made sure that my heart paid. Dear friend, now gone like sand from time's last glass, I long to speak with you, before you did me wrong, But once we let the locks of fleet time pass, There's no returning on the road he glides along. Time withers me, and each line of its age Marks words of wisdom, too late, on the page. 1 Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile 157 Just what, I asked, do all your stories mean? What is the text your silver tongue would weave Of figures fine and tropes of silken sheen, But that you've left, and seek now how to leave? You tell me tales of travel-seas and lands I've never seen but in my poor mind's eye, And like a child I watch your lips and hands, But read your errant gestures like a lie. You've gone both here and there, and all the while Been hurt by missing me, but as you speak I sense more meanings in your double smile That here becomes too strong, or there too weak. These signs you send in narratives of art Beguile my hearing, but they break my heart. Hobart and William Smith Colleges 2 Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile 11Every good servant does not all commands": Shakespeare's Servants and the Duty to Disobey by L. M. Anderson Service, for many of Shakespeare's servant-characters, is more than mere obedience to command. Nor is it surprising that this is so. Although it appears that all non-dramatic writers who deal with "the servant question" in this period stress the need for servants to be obedient under virtually any circumstances, such writers often mention that servants are not bound to obey com­ mands that violate a higher law. The writers of legal, religious, and conduct books, however, avoid exploring the implication of conflicts arising from the need to be obedient both to employers and to other authorities, such as God, the King or Queen, the law, the truth, or a servant's own conscience. Shakespeare, though, is less reluctant to explore this uncharted, and potentially danger­ ous, territory: the plays provide many representations of servants who are willing and able, despite threats to their lives and liveli­ hoods, to resist or disobey their employers, a disobedience that is often defined as a higher kind of service. Although Richard Strier has recently discussed "virtuous disobedience" in King Lear and the Romances, such disobedience is neither a late development nor particularly rare;1 Shakespeare, in fact, represents virtuously dis­ obedient servants resisting their employers' commands frequently enough to suggest that conflicts of service were of continuing interest to both the playwright and his audience. Shakespeare's treatment of such conflicts indicates both that he was willing to dramatize potentially controversial issues that the prose writers of his era were too timid to explore, and that his concept of service transcended the conventional one of simple obedience. On the general question of obedience to higher authority, some writers, like E. Nesbit, present the conventional argument that there can be no discrepancy between serving God and civil author­ ity, "because Caesar hath not ... commaund divided with God: but [for the Scriptures teach so] deputed of God;"2 but other writers suggest that true service is service to God and at least hint at the possibility of discrepancies between service to God and service to men. Heinrich Bullinger, for example, states: Againe, the servant must lay a part all evyll condicions, pryde, unfaythfulnes, brawling and murmuring, piking 3 Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. XII Digital Facsimile & tales telling, remembring Paules exhortacion saying: Ye servants be obedient to your maisters with feare & trembling in singlenes of your hart, as unto Christ, not with eye service as men pleasers, but even as y• servants of Christ, y• ye may do the wyll of God from your harts with love. Think that ye serve the Lord, and not men."3 Some writers go farther still; Nicholas Ling declares the need for total obedience: ''Servants must be obedient to their masters, whether they be courteous or forward .... Nature, and the Iawes which preserve nature, bind men that will be servants, to strict obedience"; nevertheless, there is an exception: "Men are bound to obey Magistrates, although they command things contrary to publique profit, except it be in such things as are contrary to the Iawes of God."4 Although many writers reiterate the need for servants to obey without question, without even contradicting their masters, other writers-sometimes even the
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