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Shadows and the Substance of Shakespearean Drama

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Shadows and the Substance of Shakespearean Drama Shadows and the Substance of Shakespearean Drama by Janine Harper A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Janine Harper 2018 Shadows and the Substance of Shakespearean Drama Janine Harper Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2018 Abstract England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was the stage for explorations of the physics of light and its representation in art. Although much critical attention has been paid to this interest in light, there has not yet been sufficient attention to the concurrent fascination with its absence as epitomized by shadows. I argue in this dissertation that the phenomenon of the shadow existed as a powerful trope for artistic and literary expression in the period; I conceive of the Renaissance shadow not, however, just as a figure of negativity or privation, but also as one of doubling and of excess in English usage. My study identifies three prominent and interconnected senses of shadows that are of special importance to Renaissance dramatists such as Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Richard Brome, and John Webster. I investigate debates surrounding the nature of the “shades” of ghosts, familiars, and other supernatural phenomena as they are discussed by natural scientists and demonologists, and as they are staged in Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Late Lancashire Witches. The problems of imitation, subordination, and spectrality that haunt these plays also figure in staged relations of social “shadowing” that obtain between speakers and mediators in Measure for Measure and The Merchant of ii iii Venice, and between masters and servants in The Tempest and The Duchess of Malfi. As synonyms for the forms and practices of art, shadows are associated with popular denigrations of visual and rhetorical art; in Cymbeline and Philaster, they also evoke the anxiety surrounding art’s power to betray its objects with unfaithful semblances and to encourage scandalous acts of imitation. In examining these works, I show how the discourse of shadows reveals the liminal spaces and hidden undersides of early modern scientific, philosophical, and theatrical cultures. Attention to the shadow, its cognate terms, and its related phenomena engages debates that captivated dramatists at the turn of the seventeenth century regarding the operations of the mind; the unstable boundaries between science, magic, and art; and the social value of the theatre itself as a site of highly affective language and gesture. Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of my committee, for whom I have nothing but the highest respect and deepest gratitude. I am indebted to my supervisor, Elizabeth Harvey, for seeing my thesis from its vague beginnings through to its completion as a body of work that we were both excited to discuss, and for helping me to reach that point with thoughtful and encouraging questions and suggestions at our many meetings over the years. Likewise, I am grateful to Katherine Larson, who was always ready with keen advice and new reading material, and who also encouraged me to hone my pedagogical skills in ways that complemented my dissertation work. Many thanks go, too, to Lynne Magnusson, whose enthusiastic support for my project came with much-needed pushes to think outside my comfort zone, clarify my reasoning, and tighten up my close readings. Last—but certainly not least—I am grateful to Liza Blake and Mary Thomas Crane, my internal and external examiners, respectively, whose insightful questions not only made for an exciting conversation in my defense, but also helped to illuminate new directions for my work to take in the coming years. This project was also made possible by the generous financial support of numerous funding bodies. I want to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which funded my work with Canada Graduate Scholarships at the master’s and doctoral level, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program, which provided me with financial support in the fifth year of my studies. My project was also supported by the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts and Science and School of Graduate Studies, which provided me with conference travel grants, and by the Shakespeare Association of America, whose Graduate Student Travel Awards allowed me to attend annual meetings and engage in productive seminar conversations with fellow Shakespeare scholars. I am grateful as well to the Department of English for selecting me as the recipient of the Avie Bennett Scholarship and Viola Whitney Pratt Memorial Scholarship, and for continuing to support my research in my sixth year with the Doctoral Completion Award. iv v I am indebted to a nigh-innumerable array of friends and colleagues whom I have been lucky to know, work with, and share ideas with over the years. I owe my thanks to the many members of the Shakespeare Association of America—and especially to Drew Daniel, Subha Mukherji, Elizabeth Swann, and Adam Zucker—who generously read and offered insightful advice on early drafts of these chapters. I offer my warmest thanks, too, to Jeremy Lopez for acting as a pedagogical role model and a source of alternatives to my own critical reading methods during our many years of shared undergraduate Shakespeare teaching. I am grateful to Alexandra Johnston, Sally-Beth MacLean, Carolyn Black, Patrick Gregory, Kathy Chung, and the other members and associates of the Records of Early English Drama office here at the University of Toronto—not simply for taking me on and empowering me to contribute meaningfully to REED’s digital humanities projects, but also for giving me years of good conversation and moral support. I am eternally grateful, too, to the friends and colleagues within my doctoral cohort who cared for and supported me over these past seven years, and who were always willing to examine my drafts with a much-needed external perspective. Among these friends, I want to single out Jeff Espie, John Estabillo, Deni Kasa, and Sarah Star, who joined me in our very first dissertation workshop group and who may not realize how instrumental their thoughtful critiques were to the transformation of my early drafts into successful chapters. My love and thanks go out, too, to all the members of the movie night crew for being there for me during those long weeks of writing and revising, and for laughing with me at the many curiosities that I pulled out of old plays and treatises over the years. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Craig and Peggy Harper, whose support gave me the courage to begin this academic journey, and whose encouragement helped me to see it through. Table of Contents Introduction: Foreshadowing………………………………………………………….. 1 I: Ambitious substances……………………………………………………......... 1 II: “thy fair imperfect shade” ………………………………………………........ 8 III: “I’ll call thee Hamlet” …………………………………………………......... 21 Chapter 1: Describing the Demonic in Macbeth and The Late Lancashire Witches….. 32 I: Renaissance witches, at home and abroad…………………………………….. 37 Witchy words and white magics ………………………………………. 37 The shadowy universe…………………………………………………. 42 Lancashire’s “crisis of mediation”…………………………………….. 45 II: Dark demonological matters…………………………………………………. 47 Representative “shaddowes”…………………………………………... 47 Fantastical printings…………………………………………………… 51 III: Witchcraft, testimony, and forensic drama………………………………….. 55 Macbeth’s solipsistic shadows………………………………………… 55 Arthur’s imaginative empiricism……………………………………… 61 IV: Communal errors, bodily truths……………………………………………... 66 Bloody witnesses………………………………………………………. 66 Self-incriminating speakers……………………………………………. 68 “The future in the instant”……………………………………………... 71 Brome and Heywood’s loose judicial ends……………………………. 75 Chapter 2: Cymbeline and Philaster’s Rhetorical Shadows ………………………….. 80 I: The rhetorical shadow…………………………………………………………. 84 Rhetoric’s “coulours and shadowing”…………………………………. 84 Innogen’s shadow……………………………………………………… 88 Italian passions and English passivity…………………………………. 95 Artificial Arethusas……………………………………………………. 100 II: The shadow of Narcissus…………………………………………………….. 104 Revisionary histories…………………………………………………... 104 vi vii “It is a woman!”……………………………………………………….. 109 “Harmless lightning”.………………………………………………….. 113 Chapter 3: Shakespeare’s Shady Echoes……………………………………………… 120 I: Talking heads and substitutes…………………………………………………. 123 Sonic shadows…………………………………………………………. 123 The “logic of deferral”………………………………………………… 128 Supplements and substitutes…………………………………………... 132 II: Echoes of Narcissus………………………………………………………….. 135 Dubious echoes………………………………………………………... 135 Shakespeare’s bad listeners……………………………………………. 140 Conversation and seduction…………………………………………… 143 III: Selfhood and sycophancy…………………………………………………… 148 “Good echoes”………………………………………………………… 148 Shady self-conduct.……………………………………………………. 153 Chapter 4: The Servant in the Shadows……………………………………………….. 158 I: The inevitable shadow………………………………………………………… 163 Servants and their substances………………………………………….. 163 Service and ambition…………………………………………………... 166 II: Erotic servitude……………………………………………………………….. 173 “this patient log-man”…………………………………………………. 173 “a lord of mis-rule”……………………………………………………. 179 III: Servants and other selves……………………………………………………. 185 “I would hang on their ears like a horse-leech”……………………….. 185 “another my selfe”…………………………………………………….. 188 IV:
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