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A Call to Act.Witness.Testimony.Politicalrenewal UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE A Call to Act: Witness, Testimony, and Political Renewal in Shakespeare’s Plays DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English By Tracy Clare Cummings Dissertation Committee: Professor Julia R. Lupton, Chair Associate Professor Rebeca Helfer Associate Professor Ian Munro 2015 © 2015 Tracy Clare Cummings DEDICATION To My family, my committee, and my friends in gratitude for their great help to me while I pursued my dreams and neglected theirs. “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” Zora Neale Hurston “The Puritans? The Puritans? I have no respect for them. They left England when Shakespeare was writing for the stage.” Virginia Berry Cummings ii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v CURRICULUM VITAE vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: “Better play the orator”: III Henry VI 12 and the Power of Self-Disclosing Speech CHAPTER 2: “The time of good neighbors”: Much Ado 99 About Nothing and the Danger of Public Speech CHAPTER 3: “It nips me into listening”: Pericles and the 156 Power of Shared Narratives BIBLIOGRAPHY 208 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with my committee, Julia R. Lupton, Rebeca Helfer, and Ian Munro. Their insights into literature, philosophy, and theater, as well as the patience they have shown me, have helped me learn what it takes to be a scholar and a person who treats others with respect and compassion. When I faltered, they stood firm, and when I achieved what grace I could, they welcomed my success. Julia Lupton has inspired in me a love of scholarship and the possibility of remaining an academic while bringing the material we study to people who have often been left out of the embrace of the academy. Julia maintains her high standards of scholarship while revealing that if we want to keep those standards lofty, we must invite in a wider world than many have dared to welcome. When I write with Julia in mind, I am motivated to attempt to achieve the best I am capable of. Julia’s willingness to challenge me pushed me to find a better way to think through the problems I had imagined, for which I am deeply grateful. Without Rebeca -- Becky, I would not have been able to see my own writing from a vantage point that attends to style, the contemporary, and the humorous. Since I met Becky, took her not-to-be-missed seminar, and had the pleasure of working with her during the writing of this dissertation, she has helped me keep my sanity and maintain a clear vision while also learning the finer points of argumentation. Her genuineness and insights never fail to astonish me, and I have learned that when she poses a question, it is a good idea to listen: She will have found the contradiction at the heart of the problem. I would also like to thank Ian Munro, whose patience and decency allowed me to ask him inane questions and whose genius meant he offered comprehensive answers that cleared up my confusion. He has always articulated the precise effort necessary for me to grow to the next level of scholarship while forgiving me when I have been slow to respond. Although it took many months, I was finally able to bring his suggestions into fruition because I found, of course, that he was right all along. I thank the University of California, Irvine for awarding me a Regent’s Fellowship my first year of study and travel grants as well. Both helped me pursue my scholarship and allowed me to present at conferences. Finally, to my family: Lois Cummings, who did not make it all the way with me but who never failed to encourage me to pursue my degree; John Jr., who insisted I learn how to read e. e. cummings when I was five and warned me against tempests if they were in teapots; Kathie, who taught me how much a story untold can make a person long to speak; and John III, whose affability makes my obligations a joy. It is Chris, who read every word twice, that made the journey possible at all. His championing of my ideas and will to fight for what he believes in spurred me on through every one of my escapades. And, it is Urquhart, who does not do anything I say, who reminds me what is most important: to love and to play. iv CURRICULUM VITAE Tracy Clare Cummings FIELD OF STUDY Early Modern English literature EDUCATION 2015 Doctor of Philosophy in English, University of California, Irvine 2011 Masters of Arts in English, University of California, Irvine 2001 Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing: Fiction, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 2007 Principles and Practices of Adult and Vocational Education, San Diego State University 1986 Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Honors in Philosophy, University of California at San Diego WORK EXPERIENCE 2002-Present Lecturer, Department of English and Comparative Literature, San Diego State University 2013-2015 Teaching Assistant, Department of English, University of California, Irvine 2012 Writing Consultant, University of California, Irvine 2002-2009 Teacher, National City Adult School PRESENTATIONS 2014 “Authorizing Piers: The Figura in Piers Plowman” 49th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan 2014 “Cosmopolitanism in Shakespeare’s Pericles” “Worlds Elsewhere: Globalization and Early Cultures.” University of California, Irvine 2014 “A Call to Act: Witness, Speech and Natality in Shakespeare’s plays.” Shakespeare by Design Conference, University of California, Irvine v 2012 “Repetition in George Eliot’s Middlemarch” British Women’s Writers Conference Boulder Colorado 2006 “Teaching Difficult Texts” American Language Arts Conference, San Francisco California 2003 “‘Among the Bones, Music:’ Seferis and Cavafy in the United States” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, San Marcos, California 2000 Easy Live Lit, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 1999 "Internal and External Justice in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure” University of Massachusetts, Amherst Graduate English Conference SELECT PUBLICATIONS Easy, ZYZZYVA, Volume XIX, No. 2, Fall 2003 vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A Call to Act: Witness, Testimony, and Renewal in Shakespeare’s Plays By Tracy Clare Cummings Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Irvine, 2015 Julia R. Lupton, Chair A phenomenological analysis of Shakespeare’s plays suggests that characters who testify after having witnessed intolerable conditions cause significant change by interrupting the actions of other characters and thereby enhancing the possibilities for egalitarian practices in the world of the play. The desire to testify is great enough that when public realms do not permit open disclosures, characters invent methods to give accounts of themselves or to bring their knowledge into discussion, either in soliloquy or through prompts to other characters. When possible, characters offer their personal narratives. With each divulgence, characters create greater access to information and present possibilities for alternate choices to participate in their communities, including deliberation and mutual disclosure, making it possible for others to see and recognize them, strengthening their public realms by rendering them more inclusive, and creating the potential for further disclosures. In III Henry VI, King Henry is brought to awareness of his role in England’s civil war by the anonymous testimony of two soldiers and attempts to rule wisely thereafter. In Much Ado about Nothing, Dogberry employs the speech tools of the disenfranchised to disempower the homosocial and intolerant nobility without calling attention to himself. In Pericles, Marina deliberates with her interlocutors so they can understand their vii actions from her point of view. When she is prompted to share her personal narrative, she and her father, Pericles, understand that their isolated views of their lives were mistaken; they are characters in a single story that binds them to one another. The characters thereby uncover the meaning-giving nature of narrative: It enables a person to recognize what she or he has never known. The role of Gower augments the performative effect of wonder aroused by the reunion of Marina and Pericles by wielding the tools of narrative, which include imagining, predicting, and wishing. viii INTRODUCTION A CALL TO ACT Consider the following scene: A woman runs to her lord’s home to alert him that a murder has occurred. She raps on his door, yells out, and once she is admitted in, discovers another murder. Her lady has been killed. Once she discerns that the very lord she was looking for has killed her lady she sounds an alarm to call everyone to her. She must report what happened, and along with the others, they must expose the events they witnessed and participated in that led to these murders. Even though her lord threatens to kill her, she makes it possible, even necessary, for everyone to speak. Her husband also warns her to be silent and finally does murder her, but she speaks freely and says all that she saw and did that caused her lady to be killed. Emilia was called to act. She risked her life to tell the truth, and she died for speaking it. This moment from Othello emblematizes much that I wish to examine in my dissertation. Emilia’s actions capture the promise and peril of speaking in what Hannah Arendt calls the public realm, the sphere of appearances where a person sees others and is likewise seen by them. In this communal space, people come together, speak and, by speaking, gain power.1 Since the public realm is anywhere people reveal themselves in word and deed, Emilia can transform the private space of Othello and Desdemona’s bedroom into a public one when she calls on her fellow Venetians to disclose the actions that led to Desdemona’s murder.
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