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Shakespearean Character and Cultural Change in the Eighteenth Century

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Shakespearean Character and Cultural Change in the Eighteenth Century “Magical Glasses”: Shakespearean Character and Cultural Change in the Eighteenth Century Amanda Cockburn, Department of English, McGill University, Montreal October 2011 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) © Amanda Cockburn, 2011 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the exceptional guidance provided by my two supervisors, Paul Yachnin and Fiona Ritchie. Paul Yachnin’s enthusiasm for this project always put wind in my sails. I invariably left our meetings with a clearer vision of my own argument, thanks to Paul’s ability to help me untangle or articulate an idea with which I’d been struggling. I also left our meetings and took from our email exchanges a renewed determination and energy with which to approach my research. I am especially grateful for such a kind and generous mentor during my intellectual growth at McGill. I am also grateful for Fiona’s expertise in shaping this dissertation. Her knowledge of the field struck me many times as dauntingly encyclopedic, and I am indebted to her learning and indispensible feedback. I thank her for consistently pointing me to articles and books that proved invaluable to the development of my argument. I also must thank both Paul and Fiona for their extraordinarily perceptive and meticulous editing. I likewise thank members of the Shakespeare and Performance Research Team at McGill University, especially Michael Bristol for our conversations about Shakespeare and moral philosophy, and Wes Folkerth, whose graduate class on Shakespearean Character helped form the initial idea for this project. I am also deeply indebted to SPRITE for sending me twice to the Folger Shakespeare Library, that wonderful treasure trove, where I whet my appetite for archival work and afternoon tea. I also thank the Huntington Library for a research fellowship, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a Canadian Graduate Scholarship, both of which helped make this dissertation possible. I extend my gratitude to all those friends and colleagues who offered encouragement and discussed my project with me, and I especially thank those who read drafts of my work, including Tara MacDonald, Robin Feenstra, Asa Boxer and Katie Harding-La. I particularly wish to thank the indispensible Jessica Riddell, whose feedback was invaluable and because she edited my introduction on her honeymoon. Most of all, I am deeply indebted to my parents, Michael and Ann Cockburn, for their endless support and for always warmly inviting me back into their cozy home for productive writing sessionsthank you! Abstract This dissertation explores the preoccupation with Shakespearean character in the middle to late eighteenth century. I argue that Shakespeare’s art of characterization participated in shaping British culture and identity in this period. Recent scholarship on the history of Shakespeare’s reception has concentrated on the appropriation of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century to demonstrate how his plays served ideological purposes, such as nationalism, imperialism, and bourgeois ideals of the autonomous subject. While such studies offer a valuable account of Shakespeare’s promotion to canonical status, the focus on the historically contingent and socially invested readings of his works overstates the determined or constructed nature of literary meaning. I show that while eighteenth-century audiences sometimes interpreted Shakespeare to suit the values of their day, the complexity of his drama resisted easy appropriation and was formative of culture itself. A dialogic approach thus underpins my investigation of how Shakespeare’s art of characterization raised questions and engaged audiences in a culturally productive way. Onstage and in the world of print, Shakespeare’s characters were often scrutinized and examined as though they were real people. They took part in a mimetic moral exercise that helped people navigate the uncertain atmosphere of a modern commercial world. To understand the eighteenth-century engagement with Shakespearean character more fully and historically, I argue for the importance of the relationship between the transformation of the social order and aesthetic discourse in this period. Chapter one examines how major shifts in social structures resulted in the blurred boundaries of private and public paradigms. The interplay of private and public characterized the social order of the era and complicated ideas about morality and identity formation. This introductory chapter brings into focus anxieties about a newly commercialized public culture and the entertainment industry’s potential either to cultivate or corrupt morality. It also highlights how aesthetic discourse emphasized the function of art in shaping conscientious citizens, and establishes the importance of aesthetic concepts, such as taste, the sympathetic imagination, and moral spectatorship in shaping the reception of Shakespearean character. Following this, I explore how reading and theatrical audiences productively interacted with Shakespearean characters: by using Shakespeare’s characters as speculative tools that provided insight into human nature, readers and audiences sought to understand identity formation and morality as it occurred across shifting boundaries of private and public life. To demonstrate the culturally productive nature of Shakespeare’s plays, my discussion engages with a broad range of material. Examples include Samuel Johnson’s Preface and notes in his edition of Shakespeare’s plays, works by Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Griffith, William Richardson and Maurice Morgann, theatre reviews and acting treatises. At the same time, I underscore how creative new modes of literary and theatrical entertainment evolved from this focus on character. Examples include the theatrical criticism of Joanna Baillie, a broad range of innovative responses that remove characters from the confines of plot, the autobiography of George Anne Bellamy, and David Garrick’s enterprising introduction of Shakespearean characters to fashionable forms of performance, such as pantomime. I conclude with a focused investigation of various treatments of Falstaff to highlight the resistance of Shakespeare’s art to easy ideological appropriation. My approach to reading eighteenth-century Shakespeare criticism is within the broader framework of the role and reception of literature in eighteenth-century society. Overall, this project explores the impact of Shakespeare’s works in forming eighteenth-century culture and the role of aesthetic discourse in elevating Shakespeare to canonical status. Resumé Cette thèse a pour objet l’étude des préoccupations entourant les personnages shakespeariens au milieu et jusqu’à la fin du dix-huitième siècle. Je soutiens que l’art de la caractérisation chez Shakespeare a influencé le développement de la culture et de l’identité britannique de cette époque. Les recherches récentes sur l’accueil réservé aux œuvres de Shakespeare à travers l’histoire portent principalement sur l’appropriation des œuvres shakespeariennes au dix-huitième siècle pour montrer comment elles servaient à des fins idéologiques comme le nationalisme, l’impérialisme et les idéaux bourgeois du sujet autonome. Il est vrai que ces études décrivent bien l’ascension de Shakespeare vers son statut canonique, mais elles sont basées sur des lectures influencées par des contingences historiques ou des significations sociales, ce qui tend à exagérer le sens littéraire déterminé ou attribué. Je démontre que même s’il arrivait que public d’interprète parfois les œuvres en fonction des valeurs de l’époque, la complexité des pièces shakespeariennes était telle qu’elles pouvaient résister à une appropriation facile et même contribuer à l’enrichissement de la culture. Par une approche dialogique, cette thèse démontre comment l’art de la caractérisation chez Shakespeare soulevait des questions et retenait l’intérêt du public d’une manière qui favorisait le développement de la culture. Autant sur scène que dans la littérature imprimée, les personnages de Shakespeare étaient souvent été analysés comme s’ils étaient de vraies personnes. Les gens imaginaient ces personnages dans des exercices moraux mimétiques par lesquels ils pouvaient mieux se situer dans l’atmosphère incertaine d’un monde commercial moderne. Pour expliquer de façon exhaustive et d’un point de vue historique pourquoi les personnages shakespeariens suscitaient autant d’intérêt au dix-huitième siècle, je présente des arguments pour souligner l’importance de la relation entre la transformation de l’ordre social établi et le discours esthétique de l’époque. Le chapitre un examine comment les bouleversements dans les structures sociales ont brouillé la démarcation entre les paradigmes privé et public et comment cette interaction entre le privé et le public a caractérisé l’ordre social de l’époque en plus de rendre plus de complexifier les notions de moralité et de formation de l’identité. Ce chapitre d’introduction met en évidence les craintes ressenties face à une nouvelle culture publique commercialisée et face à une industrie du spectacle avec assez d’influence pour promouvoir ou corrompre la moralité. Le premier chapitre explique d’abord comment le discours esthétique a révélé que l’art contribuait à la conscientisation des citoyens et explique ensuite à quel point des concepts esthétiques comme le goût, l’imagination sympathique et les différentes visions de la moralité ont influencé l’accueil
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