Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare
36 | 2018 Shakespeare et la peur Shakespeare and Fear
Anne-Valérie Dulac et Laetitia Sansonetti (dir.)
Édition électronique URL : https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/4002 DOI : 10.4000/shakespeare.4002 ISSN : 2271-6424
Éditeur Société Française Shakespeare
Référence électronique Anne-Valérie Dulac et Laetitia Sansonetti (dir.), Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 36 | 2018, « Shakespeare et la peur » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 22 janvier 2018, consulté le 25 août 2021. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/4002 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ shakespeare.4002
Crédits de couverture Dennis Tredy d'après Munch
Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 25 août 2021.
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SOMMAIRE
Introduction Chantal Schütz
Introduction Chantal Schütz
Les noms de la peur
Shakespeare and the Concepts of Fear Robert Appelbaum
“The dread of something after death”: Hamlet and the Emotional Afterlife of Shakespearean Revenants Christy Desmet
The Spectacle of Sovereignty: The Abject Multitude in Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris and Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV. Kyle DiRoberto
Terrorism and Culture: Macbeth, 9/11 and the Gunpowder Plot Graham Holderness
“Bit[ing] the Law by the Nose”: Shakespeare’s Revisions of Fear and Punishment Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise
Appropriations de la peur shakespearienne
Contexts of Fear: Edward Ravenscroft’s Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus Barbara Burgess-Van Aken
“Fear No More”: Gender Politics and the “Hell” of New Media Technologies in Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline (2014) Maurizio Calbi
Webster et Robert Merle: Du Démon blanc à Flamineo : revisiter le théâtre de l’effroi Anne Wattel
Dépasser la peur
La peur ultime dans le théâtre de Shakespeare Jean-Louis Claret
Fear and the Other in Sir Thomas More Sean Lawrence
From fear to anxiety in Shakespeare’s Macbeth Christine Sukic
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Introduction
Chantal Schütz
1 Fear is present in one form or another in almost all of the dramatic works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. From the ridiculous apprehension of cuckoldry to the horror felt by Macbeth faced by Banquo’s ghost, from the mechanicals’ worry that the “lion” might “fright the ladies” to the dread on which Richard III’s tyranny relies, every degree of fear is to be found in Shakespeare, Marlowe, or Webster. Be it in tragedies still attempting to instil sacred terror or in comedies making fun of the staging of terrifying events, in historical plays critiquing the Machiavellian uses of political terror or in the new-fangled Jacobean taste for spectacular staging, fear goes through manifold variations on the Shakespearian stage, reflecting individual emotions such as “the dread of something after death” mentioned by Hamlet, as much as the ever-present social apprehension of the plague or foreign invasions.
2 As Joanna Bourke explains in her cultural history of fear,1 one of the main difficulties facing researchers is to understand or reconstruct what it was that frightened Early Modern people, and exactly when fear was being displayed in iconographic depictions, since the physical symptoms or facial expressions often associated with the emotion are quite close to those of anger, amazement or even suspicion. Moreover, different types of fear lead to very diverse physical effects, ranging from paralysis and the impossibility of all action, to accelerated heartbeats, being short of breath or panting, irrepressible shaking or a complete loss of control over bodily functions. The researcher must therefore focus both on the physical manifestations of fear and on the cognitive response to it. The very extent of reactions and the varied modalities of fear open up verbalizing possibilities of which Shakespeare and his contemporaries made resourceful use, often grounding them in a physicality that determined their discourse as much the philosophical considerations on the nature and causes of terror or apprehension.
3 Shakespeare distinguishes fear (which occurs over 800 occurrences in the canon) from dread (50 occurrences) or fright, which is often to be found in ironic contexts, with an underlying suggestion that the events in question are not really worth the fretting they cause. The contributions presented here analyse the range of these lexical variations, beginning with a comprehensive analysis by Robert Appelbaum, author of Terrorism
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Before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559-1642, while Christy Desmet turns her attention in particular to the varied significations and associations of the word dread.
4 The contributions gathered here attempt to shed light on the phenomenon of fear and its representations on the Shakespearean stage by referring to the authority of Jean Delumeau, whose seminal work on fear (La Peur en Occident, 1978) addresses the way the catholic church repeatedly emphasized the darker, more threatening aspects of Christian doctrine (Hell, the Last Judgment, sacrilege) in its overall strategy of conversion and domination. Though the fear of death may seem less dominant in the Early Modern period than the dread of the retribution that awaits sinners and bad Christians in the afterworld, Shakespearian drama does expose the social distinctions that condition individual anxieties. Thus while Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise discusses the dialectics of fear and retribution from a philosophical angle, Christine Sukič underlines the social contrast between the expected cowardice of the common people and the aristocratic elite’s pretension to ignore and conquer fear. Relatedly, Jean-Louis Claret shows that the horror generated by the sea takes on an almost disproportionate dimension in the imagination of characters for whom the flames of Hell become less threatening than the perspective of death by drowning. In Webster’s plays, on the contrary, audience-members are no longer tormented by their terror of the reckoning that faces them in the beyond: instead they horrified by the relentless verbal cruelty displayed by the characters – a feature that inspired the French author Robert Merle in his study of the mental workings of professional killers in the Nazi era (Death is my Trade, 1952). In Webster’s world, terror arises from humans’ faculty to turn the sublunary world into a living hell.
5 Several contributors refer to Giorgio Agamben (Homo Sacer, 1995) and Carl Schmitt (The Concept of the Political, 1927), in order to address the political dimensions of terror, in particular the way in which a community can be constituted through fear of the other, or on the contrary fear for the other. Thus the apprehensions fed by the prospect of a potential return of catholic sovereigns or the massive arrival of foreigners on the British soil underpin the discussions to be found in this collection about Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris, Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More, or Thomas Ravenscroft’s adaptation of Titus Andronicus, in which the rape of Lavinia becomes a metaphor of the conquest of England by the catholic party.
6 Several authors examine the new faces of fear in the contemporary context, especially in films. The anxieties created by new media and their ability to poison the social fabric by generating and propagating mistrust and suspicion informs the representation of fear in Michael Almereyda’s adaptation of Cymbeline as analyzed by Maurizio Calbi. Finally, it is impossible to escape the parallel between Macbeth, the Gunpowder Plot and the manifestations of present-day terrorism, even though both Robert Appelbaum and Graham Holderness are keen to warn against any over-simplifying analogies.
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NOTES
1. Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History, London, Virago, 2005.
AUTHOR
CHANTAL SCHÜTZ École Polytechnique et Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3
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Introduction
Chantal Schütz
1 Il n’est sans doute aucune œuvre théâtrale de Shakespeare ou de ses contemporains qui ne mette la peur en jeu sous une forme ou sous une autre. De l’appréhension comique d’être cocu jusqu’à l’effroi de Macbeth à la vue du fantôme de Banquo, de l’inquiétude des artisans à l’idée que le « lion » puisse effrayer les dames du public à la crainte suscitée par la tyrannie de Richard III, on trouve tous les degrés de la peur chez Shakespeare, tout comme chez Marlowe ou Webster. Que la tragédie cherche encore à susciter la terreur sacrée ou que la comédie tourne en dérision les modes de mise en scène de l’effroyable, que les pièces historiques analysent en détail les ressorts de la terreur politique théorisée par Machiavel ou que les tragédies à grand spectacle capitalisent sur l’attirance croissante des spectateurs de la période jacobéenne pour les délices de l’épouvante, la thématique de la peur se décline à l’infini dans le théâtre shakespearien, reflétant des peurs intimes (« the dread of something after death » de Hamlet) autant que sociales (comme la menace toujours présente de la peste ou de l’invasion étrangère, qu’elle soit directe ou insidieuse).
2 Comme le souligne Joanna Bourke dans son histoire culturelle de la peur1, rien n’est plus difficile que de comprendre ou de reconstituer ce qui motivait la peur dans la première modernité, et quelles étaient les manifestations de cette crainte : les symptômes physiques ou expressions faciales souvent associés à cette émotion sont assez proches de ceux de la colère ou de la stupéfaction, voire du soupçon. Difficile aussi de savoir si cette émotion doit être analysée principalement du point de vue de ses manifestations physiques ou cognitives. De plus, différents types de peur donnent lieu à des manifestations physiques très différentes, que ce soit une paralysie rendant impossible toute action, l’accélération des battements du cœur, le souffle coupé ou au contraire haletant, les tremblements convulsifs, ou la perte de tout contrôle sur son corps. L’étendue même des types de réaction et des modalités de la peur ouvre un vaste champ de verbalisation de ces phénomènes qu’on trouvera décliné au fil des pièces de Shakespeare et de ses contemporains, ancrés dans une corporalité qui détermine le discours tout autant que les considérations philosophiques sur la nature et la cause de la terreur.
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3 Shakespeare établit une distinction entre « fear » (plus de 800 occurrences dans le canon) et « dread » (une cinquantaine d’occurrences) ou encore « fright », terme qu’on trouve souvent utilisé dans un contexte ironique, avec la suggestion latente que les événements concernés ne justifient pas vraiment la crainte qu’ils éveillent. Les contributions de ce volume analysent la richesse de cette variabilité lexicale, à commencer par celle de Robert Appelbaum, auteur d’une importante monographie sur Terrorism Before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559-1642. Concentrant le champ de l’analyse, Christy Desmet s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux significations variées du terme « dread ».
4 Les différentes contributions de ce recueil tentent de cerner le phénomène et ses représentations dans le théâtre shakespearien de la peur à la lumière des travaux de plusieurs auteurs essentiels, au premier chef Jean Delumeau, dont la célèbre histoire de la peur (La Peur en Occident, 1978) aborde la manière dont l’Église catholique n’a cessé de mettre en valeur les aspects inquiétants du christianisme (l’Enfer, le Jugement Dernier, les sacrilèges) dans une stratégie de conversion et de domination. Si la crainte de la mort peut sembler moins importante pour la première modernité que celle des châtiments qui attendent le mauvais chrétien ou le pécheur dans l’au-delà, comme le montre Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, le théâtre de Shakespeare met bien en évidence les distinctions sociales qui semblent conditionner l’objet des craintes individuelles. Christine Sukič souligne ainsi l’opposition entre peuple supposé couard et nobles censés maîtriser toute appréhension, tandis que Jean-Louis Claret montre que la peur de la mer prend une place presque disproportionnée dans l’imaginaire de personnages pour lesquels les flammes de l’enfer sont moins effrayantes que la perspective d’une mort par noyade. Dans le théâtre de Webster, le spectateur n’est plus tourmenté par sa hantise des supplices qui l’attendent après la mort mais au contraire horrifié par le déferlement de cruauté verbale dont Robert Merle a pu s’inspirer pour étudier les mécanismes mentaux du tueur professionnel (La mort est mon métier, 1952). La peur, chez Webster, naît de la capacité de l’homme à transformer le monde sublunaire en enfer.
5 Sont également convoqués par plusieurs contributeurs Giorgio Agamben (Homo Sacer, 1995) et Carl Schmitt (La notion du politique, 1927), ce qui permet notamment d’aborder les dimensions politiques de l’effroi, et en particulier la manière dont une communauté peut se constituer à travers la peur de l’autre ou au contraire la peur pour l’autre. Ainsi la crainte du retour de souverains catholiques ou celle de l’arrivée massive d’étrangers sur le sol britannique sous-tendent les lectures proposées ici du Massacre at Paris de Marlowe, Sir Thomas More, ou encore de l’adaptation par Thomas Ravenscroft de Titus Andronicus, dans laquelle le viol de Lavinia devient une métaphore de la conquête de l’Angleterre par le parti catholique.
6 Enfin plusieurs auteurs étudient les nouveaux visages de la peur dans des contextes contemporains, notamment au cinéma où l’anxiété générée par les nouveaux médias, et leur capacité à empoisonner le tissu social en générant et en propageant défiance et appréhension, colore la représentation de la crainte dans l’adaptation de Cymbeline par Michael Almereyda analysée par Maurizio Calbi. De même Macbeth et le complot des Poudres informent-ils inévitablement les approches du terrorisme contemporain, même si les auteurs (Appelbaum et Holderness) mettent en garde contre tout parallèle trop simpliste.
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NOTES
1. Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History, Londres, Virago, 2005.
AUTEUR
CHANTAL SCHÜTZ École Polytechnique et Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3
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Les noms de la peur Naming Fear
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Shakespeare and the Concepts of Fear
Robert Appelbaum
1 I say the concepts of fear, not concept, for there are many of them. The word fear itself is polysemantic, and explanations of fear range from the clinical and neural to the philosophical. There are also many related terms, which are commonly used to indicate states of mind or emotions that are not quite “fear” but something a little different, or several things a little bit different, or very much different, as the case may be. Anxiety, terror, horror, panic are among these terms, all of them certainly bearing resemblances to fear but also indicating separate kinds of states of mind. These terms too are polysemantic and can be explained in a large number of different ways.
2 Given this variegated conceptual and terminological field, my purpose here, to adopt an expression of Raymond Carver’s, is to ask “What do we talk about when we talk about fear?” And to go one step further, “What do we talk about when we talk about fear in Shakespeare?” There is a gap between the two questions. Our own common discourses of fear and similar phenomena have been affected by conditions unknown and unforeseeable by Shakespeare, ranging from the invention of nuclear weaponry to the development of cognitive science, not to mention the evolution of the English language. Our minds are attuned to fear in many new ways. We may or may not have more to fear today1 – after all, if we can fear nuclear war, terrorism, cybercrime, environmental catastrophe and the human immunodeficiency virus, early moderns could fear the Apocalypse. They could fear hell. They could fear hunger and invasion. They could fear military disasters. They could fear the plague and many other diseases for which there was no effective cure.2 But whether or not we have more to fear, we have many different objects of fear, and different ways of accounting for it. So a gap of time yawns between then and now. Yet there is also a continuity between the two questions. In this essay I will try to illustrate some of those gaps and continuities, and hopefully clarify what it is, or rather what those many things are, that we talk about when we talk about fear – and especially in Shakespeare. I will then go on to illustrate one of the lines of thinking opened up by a consideration of the concepts of fear with reference to Hamlet.
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3 I start with a list of words and a few expressions, then. It is not exhaustive or systematic but it is indicative of the wide range of concepts of fear today, and in most cases of the concepts of fear that either appear in Shakespeare, though perhaps with different meanings, or else are absent from a terminological point of view but present phenomenologically. Fear Anxiety Phobia Paranoia Obsessive Compulsion Panic Dread Terror Horror Awe “I fear that …” “I am afraid that …” “I dare not …”
4 Little by little in what follows I go on to provide applications and examples. There are some surprises ahead. They issue in part from the main premise informing this paper, that the languages and concepts of fear are not systematically coherent. Even though common language, whether now or then, encourages us to think the opposite, they are not systematically coherent in our own time and they weren’t in Shakespeare’s time either. That represents a challenge to analysis and interpretation. Recently a number of studies of emotions in Shakespeare and his contemporaries have appeared, often focusing on the constructedness of the affective life, with emphases on humoral psychology, theatrical experience, religious doctrine, and the politics of theatre.3 But there has been little work on fear,4 and little meta-analysis of the terms and concepts involved in the study of any Shakespearean emotions, and therefore of the kinds of assumptions we bring to bear on the study of them. In some ways, I hope to show, we have a relationship to fear which Shakespeare has already anticipated and rejected. In others, we have a conceptual apparatus that can help us understand Shakespearean texts in new ways, and which I do not believe we should reject merely in the name of avoiding the bugbear of anachronism. I am not a presentist, but I nevertheless believe that as long as we respect historical difference we need not avoid and we need not fear insights into Shakespeare that depend on our current preoccupations, vocabularies, and scientific insights.
5 And so first, fear itself, and the diversity of the meanings that can attributed to the root term. As I have said, common language encourages us to think that “fear” is either a single thing or a group of things systematically related to one another. Of the chief reasons is that, in one of its manifestations, “fear” is used as an umbrella term, both for different kinds of experiences that might be characterized as fearful and for experiences which seem similar to fear but go by other terms– anxiety, panic, terror and the like. But umbrella terms are philosophically and hermeneutically risky. The implication is that all other terms, are species of a genus, fear, and that these other forms of experience come out of fear, or descend or develop out of fear. But that is seldom how the English language really works. That is seldom, as far as we can tell so
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far, how the mind works either.5 There are psychologists and cognitive scientists who nevertheless refer to “basic emotions” of which “fear” takes pride of place, and other emotions, like anxiety, are gradations. Psychologists may differ in some details, but those who espouse the case for basic emotions usually include (along with fear) disgust, anger, joy, sadness, love, and surprise.6 There are no healthy human beings anywhere who do not experience these emotions. They seem to involve activity in the same ostensibly primitive brain region (primitive from an evolutionary point of view), and we share them with many other animals.
6 Yet there is a reductiveness in this reasoning, even when practiced under the rubric of psychoanalysis, and a methodological hastiness as well.7 Is “sadness” really at heart one kind of phenomena, and are phenomena like “grief” and “depression” really variants or sub-species? Is a mother sad at the death of a child sad in the same way as a dog left alone at home missing its master? Wittgenstein would probably say that “family resemblances” have been mistaken for essences. Ian Hacking would say that psychology has been mistaken for botany, complex psychological processes for lines of taxonomies based on demonstrable evolutionary descent.8 Some psychologists argue strenuously that psychological states should never be mistaken for “natural kinds.”9 Some would also say that cognition has been left out of the picture.10 To be afraid is to be aware of something and thus of something apprehended just as to be sad is usually to be sad about something.11 Yet others would add that there are many somethings out there. So far as the brain is a network of mappings and associations, there is seldom any one thing apprehended in the mind that amounts to what may seem to be a singular emotion.12 To be sure, we can locate neural activity that is triggered in cases of what is often called “fear,” located first of all in the amygdala, which is connected to the more extensive limbic system. But even this idea of a location of emotion is subject to doubt, and so is the nature of the amygdala.13 And our own language, and Shakespeare’s as well, tell us that what we think about when we think about fear is much more complex and diverse than that. Language shows us that fear and related terms are many things, not all of them entirely commensurate with others. We need a lot of different words not only to express nuances, but to indicate specific states and dispositions, whose differences are as important as their similarities.
7 Even the umbrella term is more complicated than at first appears. Consider one of the most famous expressions about fear, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s saying “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Well, maybe. But how does one fear fear? The saying actually echoes a comment by Montaigne: “The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear.” (“C’est de quoi j’ai le plus de peur que la peur.”)14 But again, how does one do that, and fear fear? It would seem possible only if two different meanings of fear are being played with here, one being apprehensiveness about what may occur in the future, the other a crippling worry in response to a present danger. The only thing we have to apprehensive about is a future worry that will paralyze us, preventing us from taking appropriate action. Fear here is two things rather than one. Consider next the entry in the Oxford English Dictionary on fear. It says that fear is primarily “the emotion of pain or uneasiness caused by the sense of impending danger, or by the prospect of some possible evil”. But who thinks of fear as pain or uneasiness? When I am frightened by something, I am not in pain, and I am not merely uneasy. And is there not a difference between responding to an impending danger and a future prospect of evil? Words are hard to define, of course. But the Oxford English Dictionary then goes on to refer to the use of the word familiarly as an umbrella term, suggesting also that is used
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not to be so: Fear is “now the general term for all degrees of the emotion,” it says; but “in early use applied to its more violent extremes, now denoted by alarm, terror, fright, dread.”15 We will actually not find much substantiation for that last qualification in Shakespeare, who in fact uses the term to denote anything from a rather mild worry about what may be in the future to alarm concerning the present. But the upshot is clear. In English – I won’t speak for any other languages here – fear seems to be one thing, but it is actually many. If fear is commonly used as an umbrella term, moreover, it is used that way only at the price of considerable ambiguity and confusion. The term fear – in early modern English the now obsolete pleonasm “dread and fear” was common, as in The Rape of Lucrece’s “Till sable night, mother of dread and fear” 16 – encourages us to think there are many kinds of fear, not all, even few of them being fearful in the same way. It is very hard, however, perhaps impossible, to say exactly what makes them aligned.
8 Psychologists, to be sure, especially those inclined to think of “fear” as a primary or base emotion, and who in addition find explanatory power for the emotions in evolution, commonly think of fear as an instinct-based physiological and/or neurological event that provokes the subject into action: flight, fight, or paralysis. Faced with danger, I run away, I confront my danger, or I freeze. Danger is key to fear in this sense. And the emotion – the Oxford English Dictionary allows for this in its definition (3d) – is that feeling or apprehension that something perilous is about to happen. I believe this is the most common understanding of the word today. That shocking feeling that I have to get away, or take action, or that I need to do one or the other and am unable to do either, that feeling that as it were assaults me, takes hold of me, given a possibly perilous future – that is fear, in the first instance.17
9 But there are other complications. I can experience fear when I see someone else in danger: for example, a child wandering too close to the edge of a platform in Metro station. I experience fear for the child but in me. The flight, fight, or paralysis options work much differently as a result, and they may be compared in this respect to the options I experience emotionally when I see something fearful in a drama or a film. I experience fear for the character in peril; but the emotional options are moot, since, unlike the child in the Metro station, there is nothing I can possibly do for him or her. And then there is the fear experienced which is not even fear for another. I am afraid that two cars on the road ahead of me are going to crash into one another. And it is not because I have an empathetic intimation of the people in the cars. I am afraid simply that a disaster is going to happen, beyond my control. “Why do they run away?” asks Bottom, entering as an ass in front of his friends. “This is a knavery to make me afeard” (3.1.100). The friends are afraid of a man with the head of a beast. Bottom thinks he is being tricked into being frightened by an unknown impending danger, signalled by people running away, about which he will be able to do nothing. But he will not be afraid. So there is fear of an impending unknown evil, and there is possible a resistance to the very concept of fear. (In other words, one can articulate the abstraction, fear, without experiencing it.)
10 In addition to these fears about known and unknown dangers, for oneself and for others, there are also less objective fears: fears of strangeness, fears of disorientation, fears of being abandoned and alone: children especially are prone to these fears, most popularly in fears of the dark, of “sable night,” but of course adults can suffer from them too.18 All of these varieties of feeling, it needs emphasizing, can be found in
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Shakespeare, and perhaps other varieties not yet named. Consider another case from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Hermia wakes up from a menacing dream in the middle of the forest, and her lover Lysander is nowhere to be seen, she cries out, “I swoon almost with fear” (2.2.160). She is afraid for herself; she is afraid for Lysander. She is afraid in her current condition, she is afraid because of what she saw in her dream, a snake eating her heart, and she is afraid for the future. She is afraid, for the most part, not because a present danger has alarmed her, but rather because of dangers remembered and dangers imagined. She is afraid of the strangeness of the forest and its darkness and the apprehension that she is alone. She is afraid that Lysander will betray her. To her credit, she does not allow herself to be paralyzed. She goes in search of Lysander, worrying that if she does not find him she will die. In a sense, Hermia conquers her fears – an important idea in Shakespeare, as we have already begun to see.
11 So in general and certainly in the experience of Shakespearean characters, there are many kinds of fear, many objects, many imaginary objects, and many absences feared as if they were objects. There are even several different kinds of fear that can be experienced together. But let us take it for granted for the time being that what we most commonly mean by fear in the first instance is this impulse to fight, flee, or freeze, keeping in mind that we have already located at least six alternatives, the “prospect of a future evil,” the fear for another, the fear for a situation, the fear for a fictional character, the fear of strangeness and the fear of being alone. Even so, then come all those companion terms.
12 Anxiety is next on the list, and rightly so.19 Since the nineteenth century, anxiety has been a key term for understanding not only psychology but the human condition in general. It seems to be especially pertinent today. A recent search of the MLA International Bibliography shows over 4000 recent entries where a key word is anxiety; and there are many scholarly articles and books which attribute anxiety to a condition of or in Shakespearean drama. But why? I will get back to that. But first it needs to be noted that the word is never used by Shakespeare, although it was not unknown in the sixteenth century. Death “is a remedy moost present for all euyls, and the chefest expeller of al anxieties,” wrote William Hugh in 1549 – anxiety here apparently being used, much like fear, as an umbrella term (Oxford English Dictionary: 1b). If we attribute anxiety to a condition of or in Shakespearean drama or poetry we attribute it to phenomena that Shakespeare does not name as such. Our own preoccupations are in play. But that does not mean that the attribution is incorrect. Anxieties of various kinds – “national anxiety,” “genealogical anxiety,” “cultural anxiety,” “the anxiety of deception,” “ethical anxiety,” “sexual anxiety”, “racial anxiety” – have proliferated in early modern studies, and even on the level of individual characters in early modern drama a condition of what we call anxiety may sometimes be found – perhaps Hamlet, above all. Since W.H. Auden’s poem by the name, from decade to decade intellectuals have been inclined to think that we live in an “age of anxiety.” But if that is the case, when we are moved or disturbed by Shakespearean phenomena we may be inclined to attribute to something familiar from this our own age rather than his.
13 Is there is a base or first instance of meaning to the word anxiety? If so, it is probably this: fear without a secure object. If fear is usually fear of something, anxiety is fear of nothing – not of something here or there or of something gone missing, but precisely of nothing. Hobbes described anxiety as a fear for the future, but in the sense that the
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future was not something that could be known.20 It was not a thing. When Kierkegaard took up the topic, this psychological condition also became ontological, epistemological, ethical and ultimately theological. Kierkegaard defines anxiety as the condition of sin, of the fallenness that all of us share – or more positively, in a definition that resounds through all existentialist thought, “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.”21 We are all anxious because we have to be: the objects and stimuli of our life are not secure, and we apprehend them insecurely, although at the same time we know that the insecurity of our objects and stimuli are also indicators of our freedom, or rather of our ability to be free, and that ability makes us leery; it makes us want to recline into the comfort of dependency, of conventional thinking, of ideology and myth. Confronted with what we do not know, we respond with anxiety; or else, we sense that we are really free and know what we ought to do, but mainly in the sense that we only see the possibility of our being free – not the thing, which doesn’t exist – and we are left with emptiness. If only we could be dependent! If only we weren’t aware of the possibility of being free! For Heidegger anxiety is the state of mind that reacts with alarm at “Being-in-the-world as such.”22 And so again the problem of freedom comes into play: “Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its own inmost potentiality-for-Being – that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.”23
14 But there is clinical anxiety too, a mental or emotional disorder, which is not to be underestimated: it afflicts hundreds of millions, forty million in the United States alone.24 Above all there is what the DSM-5 calls “generalized anxiety disorder,” a prolonged condition when no threats are perceived, when no danger, imaginary or real, lies in one’s way; but when one is all the same afraid.25 Sometimes the word “hyper-arousal” is added. The anxious person is stimulated by more than a situation warrants.26 Instead of being normatively wary, the subject is pathologically vigilant, or, as we say, unnerved. It is my impression that the use of the word “anxiety” in Shakespeare studies focuses on this later idea of hyper-arousal, combining it with ideas, rooted in psychoanalysis, of repression and displacement.27 The named phenomenon thus serves as both an acute symptom and a hidden cause, often generalized as a social rather than a merely personal ill. That is not what modern clinical psychology would recommend, for in most modern practice anxiety is an observable and describable syndrome, not something hidden away, and not something driving us we know not where. And it is personal rather than social. We are in anxiety if we suffer from the disorder; the cure comes in individually finding our way out. Yet in some cases, notwithstanding modern clinical psychology, some literary analysis focussed on causal and symptomatic anxieties may be correct. In Freud’s later work, the anxiety concerning something unknown, and unknown because it is repressed, expresses itself in neurotic behaviour, for example hysteria and phobia. Repression comes first; anxiety follows; and then the symptom follows after. But the symptom may well be not, say, sexual paralysis or a phobic episode, but an anxiety attack.28 That is, the condition may express itself as a condition, the hidden anxiety being also a visible knot of hyper-aroused feelings and ideas. For anxiety is not just a condition; it is also an affect. Lacan might agree, though Lacan insists that anxiety is not fear without an object; it is rather a field of significant experience, where something has been at once lost and sought for: the signifier. Anxiety is a tear, a cut, a rift in a chain of signification; and it is the condition that makes it possible, even necessary, to confront
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the world with uneasy uncertainty. Anxiety is a sign of helplessness in the face of the Real. It is even “a signal of the real.” 29
15 Next on the list, phobia, already mentioned above, is another word not present in Shakespeare, and not available to him either. It only entered our vocabulary in the 1950s. Yet the phenomenon was not unknown in the early modern period. There may be some examples in Shakespeare: Ford’s fear of cuckoldry in The Merry Wives of Windsor may be a case in point, as may be Lucrece’s fear of the dark. Certainly there are several examples in the comedies of Ben Jonson, most notably Morose in Epicoene; or The Silent Woman, who is phobic about noise. Robert Burton mentions a few; for example, fear of water, hydrophobia.30 Phobia is fear attached to very specific objects or situations, which have no objective facticity. A phobic individual experiences something like “fear” when no real danger is at hand, but he or she becomes alarmed whenever a certain thing or situation is perceived or anticipated which might be dangerous if comes into direct contact with either the thing or the situation. A phobia can be terrifying. It can lead to panic, vertigo, revulsion. And when it is developed with response to imaginary objects, to mere fantasies, it becomes what we call paranoia, the next term on our list. Paranoia is another term not available to Shakespeare, but a case can be made that some of the obsessive fearfulness of some of his characters can be denoted by the term. It has been argued, for example, that Macbeth comes to suffer paranoia.31 The problem with saying that Macbeth is paranoid, however, is that many of his fears turn out to be right. In Macbeth Shakespeare dramatizes a tragic version of an old joke: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Interestingly, both phobia and paranoia appear to be univocal terms. It may be argued in any given case whether phobia or paranoia are present; but common language and clinical language both are pretty clear about what they refer to. (A complication arises with terms like “homophobia,” where fear is mixed with hatred.)
16 So, fear, anxiety, phobia and paranoia. Next on the list is obsessive compulsion, a fear which is not so much felt or consciously recognised as it is acted out: here the object and stimulus are present, but they present something that is not really there. The obsessive compulsive is afraid because of a compulsion to be afraid, and luckily, unlike the person suffering from generalized anxiety, he or she has a remedy at hand, an obsessive ritual. Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is sometimes said to suffer from this syndrome,32 but in Lady Macbeth’s case the ritual is ineffective, and the end result is suicide. She compulsively washes her hands, but without any effect. Apparently this is not to be unexpected; it has been shown that OCD sufferers have a much higher rate of suicide and suicide attempts than the average population.33
17 Panic comes next. If fear is the apprehension of danger which may lead to an impulse of flight, fight, or paralysis, panic can occur either with or without a genuine apprehension of danger. It is an experience of fear or anxiety that causes the individual (or sometimes whole crowds) to spin out of control, to act wildly, hysterically, irrationally, destructively, the body breaking down under the weight of its own fright, the mind struggling to think what it is thinking. An impulse neither to fly, fight, or remain still, panic is a vertiginous, trembling, or raging condition, which may then lead either to nervous paralysis or an irrational acting out. Panic attacks, a common complaint today, are similar to what in early modern England were sometimes called furies or fits, although in the furies panic turns to anger, whereas in panic attacks anger is unavailable as an outlet. Shakespeare does not use the term. But it is possible
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that what Othello suffers when, as stage directions put it, he “falls into a trance” is a panic attack (4.1.41). He falls into a trance because he fears the implications of his suspicions about Desdemona: his own absurdity, his own violence, his own freedom to do evil. It is also possible to name what Macbeth feels when he sees Banquo’s ghost a panic attack. Lady Macbeth calls what he experiences a “fit,” a “momentary” fit – although again, his panic attack may be a symptom of a general condition of paranoia (Macbeth, 3.4.54). Montaigne, in his essay on fear, refers to the wild behaviour of troops in the face of danger as a “terreur panique.”34 In Florio’s translation of Montaigne, the same expression is translated as “panic terror.”35
18 Then there is dread, not a clinical term today and not much used anymore except to indicate an intense fear which is mixed with aversion, provoking avoidance. The word in Shakespeare is usually tamer than it is today, though it is frequently related not just to aversion and avoidance but also to awe and submission, especially with regard to sovereign authority. Powerful officials are dread lords, meaning I think dreaded lords, but dreaded for the right reason; they are powerful; they command paramilitary retinues and legal privileges; and they can do you harm. It is probably pertinent that Hamlet talks about “the dread of something after death” and not “the fear” of it. That “dread” seems to indicate intensity, aversion and awe all at once, with the hint that what is to be feared in the afterlife is something sovereign and not be defied. One dreads what cannot be avoided, because it is the law, but one wants to avoid it all the same, since it is, well, dreadful.
19 There are companion terms that we use today that were not used by Shakespeare: worry, solicitude, inhibition. I have not put them on the list, but I remark that these terms are part our languages of fear; and if we say that a Shakespearean character or poetic speaker is worried, solicitous, or inhibited we are not necessarily wrong. Many times when a Shakespearean character says, “I fear that …” or “I doubt that …”, we would use the expression “I worry that …”, though that now common sense of the word “worry” only comes to us from the nineteenth century. If ever Claudius and Gertrude are actually worried for the health of Hamlet, and keen to do something about it, they are in our terms not only worried but “solicitous”: a word available to Shakespeare but not common in his period, and never used by him. As for inhibition, the psychological sense of the word familiar to us today of an inner restraint, related to a conscious or unconscious fear of what would happen if one were not restrained, was not available to Shakespeare. We should be wary of that. But I find convincing a description of Romeo, where it is said that by the end of the play he is “no longer the withdrawn inhibited character of Act One.”36
20 And again there are the twin concepts of terror and horror. They are not clinical terms, but they are much with us today. They are so much with us today, since the French Terror, the invention of horror fiction, the coming of horror movies, the terrorist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century, and all the publicity that terrorism today both seeks and finds, that they can only with caution be used to describe a Shakespearean phenomenon. However, Shakespeare himself uses the words, and with some consistency. As for terror, most dictionaries define it as being merely a heightened degree of fear (regarding it as an umbrella term); but terror is traditionally associated, in many European languages, with a fear that makes one tremble. Adriana Cavarero, who has written at length on the subject, adds that this trembling is a motor force, sending the body into motion in reaction to a perceived danger. A terrified
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person is apt to flee. As for horror, Cavarera goes on to say, if terror is about trembling, horror is about bristling; it is about the hair on the back of your head sticking out. More important to the meaning, though, even for Cavarero, is the association of horror with aversion or disgust. Cavarero contrasts horror with terror by adding that if terror makes one flee, the disgust of horror leads to paralysis.37 The distinction is interesting, but it would seem to be another example of someone trying to pin down polysemantic terms in the name of scientific clarity, even though the polysemanticism is part of what is important about the terms. If I am terrified, I may well find myself paralyzed. If I am horrified, I may well flee the scene.
21 An important quality of both terror and horror (which Cavarero does not account for) is that they can be used to designate either the quality of thing or person that causes them, or else the condition of being terrified or horrified. When a headline today says, “Terror in the streets of …,” it is following this tradition, for there is both something terrible in the streets and people who are terrified. Especially with the word terror, Shakespeare prefers to use it for the cause rather than the effect, often applied to powerful magnates. “What a terror he had been to France”, says Talbot about Salisbury (1 Henry VI, 2.2.17). “[We] lent him our terror, dressed him with our love” says the Duke about Claudius (Measure for Measure, 1.1.19).38 Shakespeare does sometimes use the word to designate the state of being terrified, to be sure (he never uses either “terrified” or “terrorized”, though he does use the cognate “terrible”): Says Lucrece to Tarquin: The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed; And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly, But coward-like with trembling terror die (The Rape of Lucrece, 225-231).
22 But perhaps even in this last example, Shakespeare seems to link the emotion of terror to objective conditions which are found not only in the body of the terrorized, like trembling, but in the world itself. Natural and even supernatural enormities are sometimes associated by the playwright with terror: “Methinks King Richard and I should meet / With no less terror than the elements”, says Bolingbroke (Richard II, 3.3.53-54). Cassius refers to “The unaccustomed terror of this night,” meaning both the storm and the “apparent prodigies” people report having seen and heard (Julius Caesar 2.1.199). Macbeth, using the cognate, says that he has “terrible dreams” and he tells Lady Macbeth about murders “too terrible” to be spoken about (3.2.20). Although it may be acceptable to say today that terror is an “extreme fear,” and even Shakespeare has equated the two in the example from Lucrece, Shakespeare is more apt to frame terror less as a fearfulness than as a perception of a disturbance in the order of things, a disturbance which cannot be fought against, and probably cannot be fled from either – which is part of what it “terrible” about it.39 Or else, he uses it to refer to magnates like Henry V bespeaking their own lawful terror
23 As for horror, it is a rare word in Shakespeare, but when it appears it communicates powerfully. When Macduff finds the body of Duncan, recently and secretly murdered by Macbeth, he cries out “O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart / Cannot conceive nor name thee” (Macbeth, 2.3.59). The cognate term “horrible” is used similarly, designating something that is at once frightful and taboo, almost inconceivable, not to mention disgusting. The ghost of Banquo for example is a “horrible sight” (Macbeth 4.2.138). And then of course comes Hamlet’s ghost, reporting on life in Purgatory: “O horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!” (Hamlet Q2, 1.5.80)
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24 Last comes awe, a concept already included in the idea of dread, but a concept with a range of references all its own. In brief, awe is in the first instance a combination of fear and reverence. It was common in Shakespeare’s England to speak of the awe of God – and the problem with such awe, if it is applied to responses to any object but God, is that it demands that we love the thing that overwhelms us, that reduces us and makes us timid. Threatens Henry V, “France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe” (Henry V, 1.2.224). But note again, like terror and horror, awe can refer either to a subjective state or to the object that causes it. The awe of God or King is at once part of what it means to be God or a King and part of what it means to experience what God or a King are – to me. But the concept of awe is precisely what Cassius contests in Julius Caesar, speaking to Brutus: […] for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. I was born free as Caesar; so were you (1.2.95-99). The idea is that one cannot be in awe of someone to whom one is equal, especially if one knows exactly what one is.
25 As already noted, I have also added to the list some expressions, “I fear that,” I am afraid that…”, (or, in Shakespeare, “I am afeard that”), and “I dare not…”. It is important to note these expressions because they indicate that fear is not just a substantive, but also a part of the grammar of emotions. And sometimes, with these expressions, the concept of fear merges with the concept of being sorry. That is, the expression indicates a concession to the one who is spoken too. Says the computer Hal, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when he is commanded to open a hatch, “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”.40 In addition, the expressions “fear” or one of its cognates may function as a marker of a mood, what might be called the negative subjunctive. Says Brutus in Julius Caesar, “I do fear, the people / Choose Caesar for their king” (1.2.82-83). Says Cassius a little later, “I fear our purpose is discovered.” (3.1.17).
26 And then there is the similar locution, to dare, or dare not. Says Alexis to Antony, in Antony and Cleopatra: “Good majesty, Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you / But when you are well pleased” (3.3.3). Says Scarus, a servant of Cleopatra, “the augurers / Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly, / And dare not speak their knowledge” (4.13.4-6). These expressions mark a kind of hesitation, mixed with uncertainty on the one hand and dread of a bad outcome on the other. They avoid committal, and they incline toward politeness – that is, toward saying not what one means, but rather saying a little bit less than one means for the sake of propriety, congeniality and safety. And then there is a locution that indicates that one should be ready for something that one may fear: wariness, as in to be wary, or more plainly, sometimes, beware. “Be wary then;” Laertes says to Ophelia, “best safety lies in fear” (Hamlet Q2, 1.3.43). I hardly need mention the wariness that Caesar is supposed to feel about the Ides of March. Wariness, it would seem, is a self-defensive state of mind.
27 So there are many kinds of fear, many uses of the word fear and its companion terms, and many situations in which fear or its companion terms are useful indicators both of objective conditions and subjective responses. That is so now, and that was so in Shakespeare’s day. A problem comes when we think we are using a univocal term. Another problem comes when we think that in referring to an affect like fear, we are referring to only an affect, only a subjective condition. Such an idea indicates a bias at least as old as William James, if not Descartes, where the affective life is psychological
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life, and psychological life is rooted in the physiology of the body. Such an idea also correlates with a bias as old as Plato but that is especially pertinent today, in this age of neoliberalism, where phenomena like emotions are understood to be subjective states subject to management and therapeutic intervention. I do not, as I have indicated, object to using terms from today to describe phenomena in Shakespeare. But I think we need to be cautious in how we use them. We need to be especially cautious about thinking that just because we have landed on a medical term and its analysis that Shakespeare may have been familiar with, we have an infallible key to Shakespearean discourse.
28 Agreed: there are corporeal and clinical subjective conditions with which Shakespeare was familiar and which helped him express human emotion, even taught him how to express it. But what many accounts are leaving out is the prodigiousness of Shakespeare’s simulations of the human. Shakespeare can well regard the fears of his dramatis personae as being in some sense sick, or at least expressive of a character flaw. But that is only the beginning. He may also have them (and his speakers in poetry) distinguish between fears of present danger and fears for a danger to come. He may show characters and poetic subjects suffering from cowardice in the face of minor evils and anxiety in the face of they know not what. He may show them terrified or horrified, or awestruck by the power of magnates or the supernatural. He can show them obsessive or in panic. He can show them engaging in a grammar of fear partly out of respect for their interlocutors and partly out of respect for their own uncertainties.
29 But that is not all. For Shakespeare also consistently shows the varieties of fears as being bound with social, political and moral life, with concepts of justice, virtue, inequality, spiritual dignity and the historical moment. He thus also shows them (as we have already seen in the case of “terror”) being tied to objective conditions, or conditions that are taken to be objective, which bear upon historical circumstances as well as what might be taken as human nature.
30 To illustrate that point, and provide a preliminary conclusion, let me make a few remarks, as I have promised, about one of Shakespeare’s great assassins, Hamlet. I have already noted a few varieties of the concept of fear in the Hamlet play. And I have hinted, too, that though the concept of anxiety goes unnamed in all of Shakespeare’s work, it is plausible to claim that Hamlet himself labours under a condition of anxiety. The idea is not new. Kierkegaard made the claim, saying that Hamlet suffered from religious doubt and all that entailed, including an inescapable sense of original sin, and of bearing the responsibility for a crime he did not commit.41 The clinically minded may also have reason to think that the character of Hamlet expresses a simulation of general anxiety, which is commonly coupled (we now know from a clinical point of view) with what Hamlet himself tells us he suffers from, melancholy – what today we call depression – as well as a sense of indeterminate guilt. Are we wrong to think that way? Again, simulations of these conditions are what is at stake, not the real thing. But why couldn’t Shakespeare have simulated them, even if he sometimes lacked a clinical category for naming them? In fact, in Hamlet the playwright calls attention to the puzzling namelessness for Hamlet’s situation. And he does so by underscoring the non- anxious forms of fear that Hamlet does not suffer. For again, the very idea of fears of various kinds are connected in Shakespeare’s work with ostensibly objective conditions.
31 Consider part of a speech by Hamlet, in act two:42
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Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ the throat, carve As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha? (Hamlet Q2, 2.2.506-511) Am I a coward? The answer is no. Because if someone defied me directly I would not be afraid. I would act. So I am not afraid. It is not fear that holds me back, or not the fear that gets expressed through paralysis or flight in the face of impending danger. But what then? What empirically do I suffer from? Consider what Hamlet compares himself to in this speech – a rogue, a peasant slave, an ass and a prostitute. In such comparisons Hamlet ventures the idea that the resistance to fear – the quality called courage – is not only subjective and personal, but also objective, socially and morally and maybe even ontologically. By hesitating to act, Hamlet says, I am acting like a rogue, a peasant slave, and so on. This quality in Hamlet which today we might call anxiety is compared by Hamlet himself to the kind of timidity that belongs objectively either to someone on the margins of society, a rogue, or to someone at the very bottom of society, a peasant and a slave, not to mention an ass or a whore. To be at the top of society, in this view, to be a prince, means first of all not to be afraid.
32 The emphasis continues in the fourth act, where Hamlet discusses cowardice. Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward […] (Hamlet Q2, 4.4.38-42). “Bestial oblivion” – in other words not thinking like a rational human being. To be timid is to be irrational, or at least, not rational enough to realise that there is more to life than eating and sleeping: that life is made for the achievement of honour, first of all. In this case we find Hamlet subscribing to what is technically called a deontological ethic, and also sometimes an ethic of the virtues. And then there is the problem of “craven scruple” – in other words, thinking too much, hiding behind too much rationality. That too leads to a kind of fear – the fear that leads to paralysis. Coleridge, it will be recalled, saw this as the “overbalance of the imaginative power” in relation to reason. “Thinking too precisely on an event”- Camillo, in The Winter’s Tale, makes just the same sort of observation.43 In these situations it may be pertinent to observe that “thinking” turns into fantasizing, although the fantasy itself is made out of rational considerations.
33 So we see that being afraid, for Hamlet, in the sense of being unable to act, in the sense of responding to danger with ignoble paralysis, is associated with being socially marginal, mandatorily submissive, irrational, or overly precise. Or else, it is associated with something that goes unnamed, which is not fear. So again our word for Hamlet’s condition might well be anxiety, and this anxiety may even be exasperated by Hamlet’s not having a word (or an explanation) for it.44 To have a diagnosis can be reassuring: “I know what’s wrong with me!” Anxiety of some sort in any case may be the general status of Hamlet’s mind throughout the play, and there are many examples of specific addresses to the problem. Hyper-arousal, for instance, may be observed in his confrontations with Ophelia and Gertrude. And then there are reflective accounts, as when, in response to Horatio, Hamlet being about to enter his fencing match with Laertes, Hamlet says: “But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart.”
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Remember, this is after Hamlet has also said that he is not afraid about the match. He thinks he is going to win, but nevertheless “all’s here” is “ill.”
34 But not having a word for his condition, Hamlet only notes that in a variety of ways something about him, not about the world, but about himself, is wrong. And remember too: the official cover for his timidity is madness. In the legends and in the Shakespearean play Hamlet’s paralysis is excused by Hamlet’s madness. If he were sane he would be dangerous and revenge his father; as he is mad he needs to be watched, worried about but not dreaded.
35 All that being said, I must add that calling Hamlet anxious by itself explains very little. My own use of the term here is not a clinical diagnosis of a fictional person; it is rather the finding of a strain of resemblances and patterns in the simulation of a life which we have now come to associate with the term anxiety. Again, as long as this caveat is understood, and that no essentialism or reductivism need be involved, I think there is no hermeneutic mistake involved in using the word, no more than in writing about “splitting subjectivities” or “self-fashionings” or “misogyny” in Shakespeare’s work. Rather, the work can help us look outward, for the question of anxiety, as I have argued, ranges from the fact of a discreet emotion to a philosophical enigma regarding the meaning of freedom and unfreedom. But calling Hamlet anxious may at least clarify some of the stakes involved in applying the concepts of fear of both our own day and Shakespeare’s to the analysis of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.
36 Hamlet is one among many other examples in Shakespeare that may well require us to challenge the medical regime I referred to, and to strains in modern cognitive science as well. In the societies of Hamlet, the kind of fear that physicians and cognitive scientists warn us against is the least of our worries. In the world of Hamlet fear is embedded in the subject not only as an emotional response to danger, but also, along with its opposite, courage, in the subject’s constitution as a moral, political and social being. The fear of present danger is, among many other of Shakespeare’s virtuous aristocrats, a thing of no account. It is deplorable. “Cowards die many times before their deaths;” says Julius Caesar. “The valiant never taste of death but once” (2.2.32-33). But the fear of future danger, of dangers not completely understood, or not entirely believed in, and possibly imaginary to boot, the fear of the consequences of actions we have not yet undertaken, along with the fear of the consequences that might come if we do not act, especially perhaps if we find that what inhibits us is an intangible and inexcusable awe, based on a failure to appreciate our own dignity – this is one the great fears (or anxieties or obsessions) among Shakespeare’s armed male elite. Of course, only some of Shakespeare’s characters belong to that class.
37 The field for research lies before us. To what the research will lead I dare not say. But I end with a simple plea. Be wary of what you are saying. And don’t let the cognitive scientists dictate what to talk about when you talk about fear in Shakespeare.
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NOTES
1. For a breezy account of modern fears and anxieties, see Joanna Burke, Fear: A Cultural History, London, Virago, 2005. 2. Some of these fears and others besides are addressed in William Naphy and Penny Roberts, eds, Fear in Early Modern Society, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997. 3. Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotion and the Shakespearean Stage, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004; Gail K. Paster, Katherine A. Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds, Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; Richard Meek, ed. Shakespeare and the Culture of Emotion, Shakespeare 8.3, 2012, Special Issue; Brian Cummings and Freya Sierhuis, eds, Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013; Katharine A. Craik and Tanya Pollard, eds, Shakespearean Sensations: Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013; Laurie Johnson, John Sutton , and Evelyn Tribble, eds, Embodied Cognition and Shakespeare’s Theatre: The Early Modern Body-Mind, London, Routledge, 2014; Bridget Escolme, Emotional Excess on the Shakespearean Stage: Passion’s Slaves, London, Bloomsbury, 2014; R.S. White, K. O’Loughlin, and Mark Houlahan, eds, Shakespeare and Emotions: Inheritances, Enactments, Legacies, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; José Manuel González, “Emotion in Cervantes and Shakespeare”, Neophilologus 99.4, 2015, 523-538; Steven Mullaney, The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015; Ronda Arab, Michelle Dowd, Adam Zucker, and Phyllis Racklin, eds, Historical Affects and the Early Modern Theater, New York, Routledge, 2015. 4. A notable exception is Allison P. Hopgood, “Feeling Fear in Macbeth,” in Shakespearean Sensations, Craik and Pollard, eds, op. cit., 29-47. Hopgood’s analysis depends, however, on the assumption that “fear” is a univocal term, and, in Shakespeare’s day, entirely pathological. Moreover, it assumes that the “fear” playgoers experience is the same thing as what the characters on stage experience. I will give evidence that all three assumptions are wrong. 5. See for example, Antonio Damasio, The Feeling Of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, New York, Vintage 2000. The idea of what constitutes the mind/brain/body is of course still very controversial, and Damasio is only one among contending authorities. 6. For example, Jaak Panksepp The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, New York, Norton, 2012. Summaries of the various models of basic emotion theory, along with models that contradict it, written by some of the main scientists involved, can be found in James A. Russell, Erika L. Rosenberg and Marc D. Lewis, eds, Basic Emotion Theory, in Emotion Review 3.4 (2011), 363-463. 7. See the discussion in the introduction to Paster, Rowe, Floyd-Wilson, eds, op. cit. 8. Ian Hacking, “Lost in the Forest”, London Review of Books, 35.15, 8 August, 2013, 7-8. 9. Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Are Emotions Natural Kinds?”, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1.1 (2006) 25-58; and Kristen A Lindquist, Erika H. Siegel, Karen S. Quigley, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, “The hundred-year emotion war: Are emotions natural kinds or psychological constructions? Comment on Lench, Flores, and Bench (2011)”, Psychological Bulletin, 139.1 (2013), 255-263. 10. Philosopher Robert C. Solomon has probably been the most articulate champion of the role of cognition in emotional experience. See Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1993, and Solomon, Not Passion’s Slave: Emotions and Choice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. The debate has been a central item in the journal Cognition and Emotion since its inception in 1987. 11. The case of the melancholy Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, Antonio’s clinical depression, may be an exception that proves the rule. See Drew Daniel, “‘Let me have judgment, and the Jew
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his will’: Melancholy Epistemology and Masochistic Fantasy in The Merchant of Venice”, Shakespeare Quarterly, 61.2 (2010), 206-234, where the object of sadness is phantasmatic, but therefore nonetheless an object. 12. For an interesting application of the polysemantic point of view, see Colin McGinn, The Meaning of Disgust, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011. 13. See Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, New York, Macmillan, 2017; and Luiz Pessoa, “Emotion and Cognition and the Amygdala: From ‘what is it?’ to ‘what’s to be done?’ Neuropsychologia, 48.12 (2010), 3416-3429. The authors of “Measures of emotion: A review” write that “although there has been some progress in understanding the neural correlates of fear, disgust, and potentially sadness, the discrete-emotions perspective has yet to produce strong, replicable findings” (Iris B. Mauss and Michael D. Robinson, “Measures of Emotion: A Review”, Cognition and Emotion, 23.2 [2009], 209-237). 14. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Fear”, in Essays, trans. John Florio, Renascence Editions (University of Oregon), http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/montaigne/; chapter 17, n.p. Michel de Montaigne, “De la peur,” Short Edition, http://short-edition.com/fr/classique/michel-de- montaigne/de-la-peur, n.p. Last accessed 30 August 2017. 15. Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. “fear”. 16. The Rape of Lucrece, line 117. All selections from Shakespeare’s works, with the exception of Hamlet, are taken from the Norton Shakespeare, Second Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et alii, New York, Norton, 2008. Quotes from Hamlet are from the Second Quarto Edition, Hamlet (The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series), ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, London, Bloomsbury, 2005. They will be cited in the text. 17. Sartre has an especially acute account of the paralysis that can afflict someone in danger, referring to it as “passive fear”: “I see a ferocious beast coming towards me: my legs give away under me, my heart beats more feebly, I turn pale, fall down and faint away. No conduct would seem adapted to danger than this, which leaves me defenceless. And nevertheless it is a behaviour of escape; the fainting away is a refuge.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans. Philip Mairet, London, Routledge, 1962, p. 42. Emphasis in the original. 18. “Fear of the night” had objective causes, Darren Oldridge reminds us, in an age before artificial lighting and a common belief in the devil and evil spirits, who were held to thrive in the dark. Oldridge, “Something for the Night”, in Staging the Superstitions in Early Modern Europe, ed. Verena Thiele and Andrew D. McCarthy, Surrey, Ashgate, 2013, xiii-xxiii. Probably the most pertinent early modern text is Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night, or, A Discourse of Apparitions, London, 1594, STC 258:11. 19. For historical background, see Allan V. Horwitz, Anxiety: A Short History, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. 20. William W. Sokoloff, “Politics and Anxiety in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan”, Theory and Event 5.1 (2001), n.p. 21. Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980, p.42. 22. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1962, p. 230. 23. Ibid., p. 232. 24. Gerald Litwak, “Preface,” in Anxiety, Special Issue, ed. Gerald Litwak, Vitamins and Hormones, 103 (2017), p. xv. 25. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013. Here and throughout, when I refer to a clinical condition, I have checked it against the Manual.
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26. See Steven Taylor, Dean McKay, Jonathan S. Abramowitz and Gordon J.G. Asmundson, Current Perspectives on the Anxiety Disorders: Implications for DSM-V and Beyond, New York, Springer Publishing, 2009). 27. To give just one of the many possible examples, an excellent essay by Edward A. Snow, “Sexual Anxiety and the Male Order of Things in Othello”, English Literary Renaissance, 10.3 (1980), 384-412. The essay abounds with references to “repression,” “false consciousness,” and “méconnaissance” as well as to Othello’s and Iago’s excesses of fear about their own sexualities. 28. Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works, Volume 20, trans. James Strachey, London, Hogarth Press, 1959, p. 142. 29. Jacques Lacan, Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A.R. Price, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2014. 30. Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson, New York, New York Review Books, 2001, Part One, Mem. 1, Subs.4, p.141-142. 31. Rick Bowers, “Macbeth and Death: Paranoia and Primogeniture”, The Upstart Crow 10 (1990), 55-68; Seth Clark, “’Confusion Now Hath Made His Masterpiece’: (Re)Considering the Maddening of Macbeth”, Journal of the Wooden O 13 (2013), 34-45. 32. See, for example, Wray Herbert, “Damned Spot: Guilt, Scrubbing, and More Guilt” https:// www.psychologicalscience.org/news/were-only-human/damned-spot-guilt-scrubbing-and- more-guilt.html (accessed 2 April 2017). 33. P. Kamath, R.C. Reddy, and T. Kandavel, “Suicidal Behavior in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder”, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 68.11 (2007), 1741-1750. Subsequent studies have confirmed this finding, although not always with the same percentages of incidence. 34. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Livre I, http://www.bribes.org/trismegiste/es1ch17.htm (accessed 30 August 2017); Hopgood, op .cit., also cites this example. 35. Montaigne’s Essays, trans. John Florio, op. cit., http://www.luminarium.org/renascence- editions/montaigne/1xvii.htm (accessed 30 August 2017). 36. Marvin Bennett Krims, The Mind According to Shakespeare: Psychoanalysis in the Bard's Writing, Santa Barbara CA, Praeger, 2006, p. 85 37. Adriana Cavarero, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, trans. William McCuaig, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011, p. 4-8. 38. There is an interesting use of “terror” in just this way in Bacon: “The King was once in mind to have sent down Flammock and the blacksmith to have been executed in Cornwall, for the more terror” (Francis Bacon, Bacon’s History of the Reign of King Henry VII, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1885, p.156). 39. Robert Burton echoes this duality, or even circularity, in the authorities he cites on “terrors and affrights”: “Tully distinguishes these terrors which arise from the apprehension of some terrible object heard or seen, from other fears”; “This terror is most usually caused, as Plutarch will have ‘from some imminent danger, when a terrible object is at hand’” (Anatomy of Melancholy, op. cit., p. 335-336). 40. See Lillian Lee, “’I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that’: Linguistics, Statistics, and Natural Language Processing circa 2001,” Cornell University, http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/llee/ papers/cstb.pdf (accessed 30 August 2017). 41. James E. Ruoff, “Kierkegaard and Shakespeare”, Comparative Literature, 20.4 (1968), 343-354. 42. For a similar analysis to what follows, focusing on Richard III, see Sandra Bonnetto, “Coward Conscience and Bad Conscience in Shakespeare and Nietzsche,” Philosophy and Literature, 30 (2006), 512-527. Lacan’s analysis of Hamlet also includes an argument of this kind, emphasizing that Hamlet is not afraid of Claudius. See Jacques Lacan, “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet”, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. James Hulbert, Yale French Studies, 55/56 (1977), 11-52. 43. He says that it is “a fear / Which oft infects the wisest” (1.2.263-264).
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44. In his essay on Hamlet, cited above, Lacan never mentions “anxiety”, but he does insist that Hamlet is neurotic, an “obsessional neurotic.”
ABSTRACTS
Fear and its companion terms like anxiety, terror, and panic are not systematically related. Our attempts to conceptualize fear and related phenomena are often hampered by assumptions that there is a system of natural kinds in the emotions, when at best there are only what Wittgenstein called family resemblances. There is no one reliable system now and there was no reliable system in Shakespeare’s period. This essay examines a variety of terms used to account for phenomena like fear in Shakespeare, as well as the variety of concepts behind the terms. It highlights the hermeneutic challenges posed by fear’s polysemanticity, and by the copiousness with which Shakespeare explores all the concepts.
Lorsque l’on pense à la peur, on ne mobilise pas toujours les mots de sens voisin comme anxiété, terreur et panique. Si l’on essaie de conceptualiser la peur et les phénomènes proches, on est souvent gêné par le présupposé qu’il existe un système de types naturels parmi les émotions, alors qu’il y a tout au plus ce que Wittgenstein appelle « un air de famille ». Il n’existe pas de système fiable de nos jours, et il n’en existait pas non plus du temps de Shakespeare. Cette contribution étudie un éventail de termes que l’on utilise pour rendre compte de phénomènes tels que la peur chez Shakespeare, ainsi que les différents concepts correspondant à ces termes. Elle met en lumière les défis herméneutiques que posent d’une part le caractère polysémique de la peur, et de l’autre la richesse de l’exploration shakespearienne de tous ces concepts.
INDEX
Mots-clés: anxiété, Hamlet, neuroscience, peur, polysémie, psychologie clinique Keywords: anxiety, clinical psychology, fear, Hamlet, neuroscience, polysemanticity
AUTHOR
ROBERT APPELBAUM Uppsala University
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“The dread of something after death”: Hamlet and the Emotional Afterlife of Shakespearean Revenants
Christy Desmet
1 Contemplating suicide, or more generally, the relative merits of existence and non- existence, Hamlet famously asks: Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of. (Hamlet, 3.1.84-90, emphasis added)1 Critics have complained that Hamlet knows right well what happens after death, as is made clear by the earlier account of his father, who is Doomed for a certain term to walk the night And for the day confined to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. (1.5.15-18) This place from which no one (supposedly) returns, as described by the spirit, is patently a Dantean purgatory, where penitence is exacted on and through the physical body. But the (deceased) penitent’s experience of that place remains affectively inaccessible, despite the abundant religious literature devoted to the topic. In this essay, I argue that the early modern English imagined a range of post-mortem experiences and the emotions felt by those who experienced them and that the subsequent uncertainty engendered in the living is best defined as “dread.” Those who contemplate the “undiscovered country” and those who have returned from death’s pale are both afflicted with this emotion. “Dread” is an emotion that links the living inexorably with the dead.
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Dread
2 The first step toward anatomizing the emotional life of those who have passed over into the “undiscovered country” involves the range of connotations attached to the word “dread.” From my explorations of EEBO (Early English Books Online), the term “dread,” within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is predominantly religious, found in biblical commentaries, Song of Songs, prayers based on Augustine, and the Book of Common Prayer, but also serving equally partisan religious arguments from both Protestants and Catholics. “Dread and awe” of God is a common collocation. “Dread” can also refer specifically to fear of the afterlife and most especially of its physical pains and punishments (see, for instance, The Doctrynalle of dethe, 1498,2 or A medicine for the soule, 1550).3 There is another long-standing tradition of “dread” in the face of political authority, supported of course by the doctrine of divine right; “dread sovereign” is a common phrase.
3 Searching the Folger Digital Texts produces results comparable to the search in EEBO, although Shakespeare’s use of the word is more secularized as a common emotion and more inscrutable in its causes and effects. As in the other texts I looked at, Shakespeare’s plays are rife with “dread” sovereigns, ranging from Henry IV to the Duke of Measure for Measure. Rosencrantz, for instance, says to Claudius and Gertrude, Both your Majesties Might, by the sovereign power you have of us [himself and Guildenstern] Put your dread pleasures more into command Than to entreaty. (Hamlet, 2.2.27-30)
4 There are a notable number of appearances in the second Henriad, where the word is associated with “dreadful” preparations for war. In this context, the religious connotations of “dread” can be co-opted by the secular arm of government, as when in 1 Henry VI, Winchester nostalgically recalls the “dread” Henry V had produced in the French people he conquered: “Unto the French the dreadful Judgment Day / So dreadful will not be as was his sight” (1 Henry VI, 1.1.28). Not surprisingly, a heavily religious version of “dread” characterizes Macbeth and that monarch’s “deed[s] of dreadful note,” which amount to sacrilege (Macbeth, 3.2.49). In this respect, Macbeth is akin to Aaron of Titus Andronicus, who at point of execution rhapsodizes about the “thousand dreadful things” he wishes that he could have accomplished beyond the list of specific atrocities that he rehearses (Titus Andronicus, 5.1.143). Finally, Julius Caesar translates awe of God into a Roman key when Casca demands of Cassius, But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens? It is the part of men to fear and tremble When the most mighty gods by tokens send Such dreadful heralds to astonish us. (Julius Caesar, 1.3.55-59) The secular/religious binary collapses with the greatest ideological force in Portia’s well-known ode to mercy, which is superior to the signs of monarchic power such as the king’s scepter, “the attribute to awe and majesty / Wherein sit the dead and fear of kings” (The Merchant of Venice, 4.1.198).
5 In Shakespeare, there can also be a more specifically legalistic dimension to dread, as when Bertram of All’s Well hands down the “dreadful sentence” detailing his conditions for accepting Helena as his wife (All’s Well That Ends Well, 3.2.63). Similarly, Coriolanus experiences the “dreaded justice” of banishment from Rome (Coriolanus, 3.3.135). This connotation will play a minor role in the case of revenants, most of whom have ended
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life badly, or with a damaged reputation, and have a quarrel with the historical record’s representation of them and their deeds. Finally, there is a more visceral, emotionally primitive sense of dread as a common emotion in the face of life’s ordinary pains and challenges. In Sonnet 97, for instance, within the speaker’s overarching conceit that his absence from the beloved is like winter, the tree’s “leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near” (line 14).
6 Let us now take the paradigmatic case of Hamlet’s dread of that unnamed something after death. When Marcellus reports the ghost’s appearance to Hamlet, he says that Horatio is reluctant to credit the “dreaded sight”’s authenticity (Hamlet, 1.1.30), dismissing it as a fantasy. The frightened soldiers report the apparition to Horatio on condition of “dreadful secrecy” (1.2.217). They later worry that the ghost will lure Hamlet over the “dreadful summit” of a cliff. While these rather vague uses of the term “dread” provide a general atmosphere and context for the dread that afflicts Hamlet, there are two more pointed uses of the word that deserve attention. The first is Hamlet’s reference, during the closet scene, to the father’s “dread command,” which in this context refers to Hamlet’s promise to “revenge” his “foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.32): Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by Th’ important acting of your dread command? O, say! (3.4.122-124) How are we to interpret this statement? Is the dread command regal, as Rosencrantz suggests Claudius’s demands are? Is it political, like the dreadful wars waged by Henry V? Or is it religious dread that revenge may subject him to damnation?
7 Further clues may be sought in the dynamics of Hamlet’s and the other Danes’ actual encounter with the apparition representing the elder Hamlet. The guards offer a textbook case of fear in the face of the apparition. As Horatio reports, the ghost walked By their oppressed and fear-surprisèd eyes Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distilled Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb and speak not to him. (1.5.212-216) We are not privy to the exact source of the soldiers’ fear. Hints come throughout the play; the ghost may be a damned spirit, may drive men to suicide by luring them over a cliff, or simply brings with him the contagious, terrifying aura of the afterlife. The latter explanation seems most probable, at least according the ghost’s own interpretation, who predicts that the tale to Hamlet of his purgatorial sufferings, famously Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part, And each particular hair to stand an end, Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. (1.5.21-25)
8 As Stephen Greenblatt’s study of Purgatory in medieval and early modern England demonstrates at length, the pain and suffering experienced by Purgatory’s inhabitants communicates itself viscerally to the living, as listening to the visitants’ narratives makes them experience through their own bodies the reality of life after death. According to Greenblatt, the doctrine of Purgatory emerged relatively late in pre- Reformation theology—the twelfth century—to ease anxieties about the severe divide
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between heaven and hell, encourage good works, and raise money for the church. Paradoxically, the effectiveness of the doctrine as a deterrent to sin depended on its capacity to instill fear in the faithful.4 In visual as well as verbal representations, Purgatory looks a lot like hell, softened only by the promise of eventual rescue, and afflicts its inhabitants with severe pain: “From this perspective, fear was a gift to be assiduously cultivated.”5
9 Greenblatt’s study over-emphasizes, perhaps, the monolithic nature of the fear that circulates between revenants from Purgatory and their witnesses. As Jeremy Tambling’s study of affect in Dante’s Purgatorio shows, the cardinal vices that characterize the denizens of Purgatory are unsettled, being built through the intersection of various ethical systems that, when applied to embodied persons with specific histories, reveal subjects-in-death to be in process as much as their living selves were: the “modern” quality of Dante’s text, according to Tambling, “lies in its extraordinarily engaged attention to double and shifting states of affect.”6 Greenblatt also may skew understanding of the early moderns’ perception of the afterlife by focusing so intently on Purgatory. He argues, for instance, that apparitions of the dead are not concerned with reputation or fame: “These hauntings are not about the dream of occupying a place in the memories of future generations, not about the longing to escape from the limitations of one’s own life-world, not even about the craving for persistence that leads men to engrave their names on stone tablets.”7 But this is precisely the motive for revenants in what has come to be called the complaint tradition. While Purgatory’s denizens are focused through pain on the past that ended with death and with the nature of their judicial selves and their sins, revenants who complain retain a strong consciousness of their continuing role in historical legend and of their fame’s continuing vicissitudes over the long expanse of time.
Complaints from the Undiscovered Country
10 While Hamlet’s apparition evokes briefly the tradition of tales from Purgatory, there is another genre, popular in the early to middle 1590s, at work behind the scenes in Shakespeare’s play. This is the early modern female complaint, as defined by John Kerrigan in his edition of poetry from this genre. The complaint, most simply, is framed as a dialogue between a female revenant and a male witness whose character and participation in the colloquy vary from example to example. These revenants evince a strong but indefinable affect—something between sorrow and anger, to use Horatio’s formula for evaluating ghosts’ expressions—that is grounded in dissatisfaction with their historical reputation. In seeking to work themselves out of a position of moral vulnerability and to justify their lives, these ghostly women turn weakness into strength, emotional turbulence into forceful eloquence. They submit themselves to the court of public opinion, defending themselves from a social condemnation that continues to rankle their peace, even after death, from the shore of that “undiscovered country” that Hamlet dreads.8
11 The complaint’s literary ancestors are equally the Mirror for Magistrates and Ovid’s Heroides. Between 1559 and 1610, The Mirror for Magistrates went through four editions under several editors, and played a significant role in the construction of time and historical character in Shakespeare’s English history plays.9 Philip Schwyzer, for instance, notes that Humphrey of Gloucester and Eleanor Cobham, central characters in
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2 Henry VI, made their first appearance in the 1578 edition of the Mirror.10 He notes as well that in Richard III, the titular character who opens the play, addresses “the audience much like a ghost in the Mirror stepping out to collar” William Baldwin, the work’s original compiler.11 Betrayed, and often sexually profligate, women of English history also become part of the Mirror tradition; they generally receive harsher judgment than their male counterparts and are also more tightly controlled by the narrator.12 One notable example is Thomas Churchyard’s account of Shore’s Wife, which was included in the second, 1563 edition of A Mirror for Magistrates. Jane Shore, the unfortunate mistress of Edward IV, is a character who is deployed as a negative exemplum of female behavior by Richard III but never appears in the play to challenge the sexual and political accusations that Richard articulates against her. Shakespeare’s Richard, it seems, has usurped Mistress Shore’s place in the Mirror tradition and usurped her voice.
12 The second predecessor of the female complaint, Ovid’s Heroides, had been Englished as early as 1567.13 In these fictional verse epistles, which are part lament, part argument, historical women such as Dido not only rehearse their tales of romantic abandonment and demand the listener’s pity for their unfair treatment and untimely demise, but also rewrite the historical record from the woman’s perspective, a new narrative that lays all blame at the feet of the feckless men who desert them. This drive toward self- defense in the face of a negative historical judgment and the speaker’s ontological status as deceased—their stories are transmitted through the fiction of recovered letters—link the Heroides and its later imitators with the Mirror. But while the confessional ghosts of the Mirror “trace their destruction to a specific vice or failing,” the women of Ovidian complaint are bent on self-justification.14
13 In the 1590s, the two genres tend to coincide and to make their female heroines more aggrieved, more confrontational, and even more eloquent. For instance, in Thomas Churchyard’s revision of Shore’s Wife from the 1563 Mirror, which was reprinted as Churchyards Challenge in 1593, Mistress Shore has grown even more celebratory about her brash behavior during her life.15 Elizabethan poets were also busy creating their own works in the tradition of female complaint. A particularly popular fictional figure who extends and challenges the de casibus frame that controls the female complaint in the Mirror tradition was fair Rosamond of Samuel Daniel’s Complaint of Rosamond (1592), the mistress of Henry II who eventually was poisoned by his wife, Elinor of Aquitaine. In Daniel’s version, Rosamond is not only obstreperous—remarking snidely that while she is not able to cross into Elyseum, “Shores wife is grac’d, and passes for a saint” 16—but also argues quite vociferously with the narrator about the truth of her story.
14 Rosamond begins as a traditional revenant, referring in the opening stanza to both her continuing shame and the horror of her current existence: Out from the horror of infernall deepes, My poor afflicted ghost comes here to plaine it: Attended by my shame that never sleepes, The spot wherewith my kinde, and youth did staine it: My body found a grave where to contain it, A sheete could hide my face, but not my sin, For Fame finds never tombe t’ inclose it in.17 Rosamond experiences what Hamlet only imagines in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, a restless afterlife deprived of healthy sleep and the “ioyfull blisse”18 enjoyed by ghosts in Elysium. Rosamond is, in fact, homeless, doomed to wander on this side of the Styx
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until “lovers sighes on earth” shall deliver her soul into eternal rest. The problem she has fulfilling this condition comes from the fact that history has passed Rosamond by: “Time hath long since worne out the memorie / Both of my life, and lives uniust depriving.”19 No lover can sigh for her unless they remember who she is or the nature of her history. Even her funerary monument, Rosamond notes, has already begun to crumble.20 As the poem continues, Rosamond dwells less on her misery and more on making a formal case for pity by shifting blame for her sexual sin to other factors: the dangers of the court; her own beauty and eloquence; a wicked advisor; the heat of youthful passion—“Treason was in my bones”;21 and most legalistically, the fact of the King’s power and the paradox that she will “live defamed” irrespective of whether she yields or resists and is violated by him.22 This Rosamond is a force to be reckoned with, something of a historian in her own right. But the stakes for the revenant herself are affective as well as judicial; she rehearses eternally and in vivid detail the steps by which she was ruined, alternating between sorrow and anger in her misery. The poem’s governing conceit is that Rosamond has chosen Daniel as her confidante so that he might persuade his cruel mistress Delia to sigh for her; but when Rosamond departs to wait eternally at the Styx’s shore, Daniel returns to his fruitless sonneteering, “to prosecute the tenor of my woes: / Eternall matter for my Muse to mourne.”23 Rosamond’s woe proves contagious, or at the very least, her tale fails to lift the poet out of the romantic miasma in which she found him.
15 There were other female complainants of the 1590s, whose authors included Shakespeare’s and Daniel’s fellow Warwickshire writer Michael Drayton, who refashioned the Heroides as Englands Heroicall Epistles (1598). Rosamond makes a reappearance; also among the women chronicled here is Katherine of France, widow to Henry V, this time in her second marital role as Welshman Owen Tudor’s widow.24 Shakespeare himself showed interest in the genre and the poetic competition it generated among this group of writers in The Rape of Lucrece, a poem that, not coincidentally, contains nine instances of the word “dread.” Contemplating his crime, Tarquin is tossed between desire and dread, and Lucrece, as Tarquin looms over her bed, also awakes to her dreadful reality. The narrator urges us to Imagine her as one in dead of night From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking. What terror ‘tis! But she, in worser taking, From sleep disturbèd, heedfully doth view The sight which makes supposèd terror true. (Rape of Lucrece, lines 449-455) At the point of her own violation, Lucrece finds herself in the position of Hamlet, the recipient of a visitation from the undiscovered country beyond death—except in her case, she sees clearly her potential to become, with the success of Tarquin’s rape, a complaining and unjustified revenant. Lucrece could potentially suffer the fate of Jane Shore and Rosamond, in that she has no good choices: succumbing to Tarquin’s will without resistance brings her virtue into question; on the other hand, if she resists, he threatens to kill her and then publish a false story of her liaison with a groom that will brand Lucrece as an adulteress for the rest of history. This last danger is foremost in Lucrece’s own mind as she delivers her account of the rape to the collected Roman men and then commits suicide, in effect becoming her own historian and forestalling any possibility that she would need to return from the beyond as a female complainant to right the historical record. Lucrece’s less fortunate sisters, however, are in a different
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situation. Like penitents in the medieval Purgatory, they experience an enduring connection with the living without being capable of acting on that historical stage. They experience history in process and watch their own changing role in history, without being able to act beyond death.
That something after death
16 I would like to suggest that the existential dilemma of these female complainants colors Hamlet and Hamlet’s experience of the undiscovered country after death. While the literature on Purgatory depicts a graphic world of tortures both physical and psychological, the narrators of female complaints are plagued not only by their continued existence after death, but their acute awareness of time’s forward march for the living, which both exacerbates their bad reputation and, even worse, begins to erase them from memory. While Senecan ghosts may be preoccupied by revenge, as Hamlet senior is at some points of the play, the protagonists of historical complaint are concerned with memory. To some extent, this is true of all stage ghosts, as Peter Stallybrass argues: Most stage ghosts have active stakes in inheritance, which is both about the ownership of the future and about the control of memory. Most of these ghosts are the revenants of men and, specifically, aristocratic men: Andrea in The Spanish Tragedy; Andrugio in Antonio’s Tragedy; Hamlet in Hamlet; Banquo in Macbeth; Alonzo in The Changeling; Brachiano in The White Devil. They return to claim a future that they “properly” own and that has been taken away from them.25 Female revenants, by contrast, are combatting the bias of patriarchal history. Their problems are two-fold: challenging the simplified, misogynistic accounts of their own deeds and misdeeds found in standard histories, the dilemma for Jane Shore; and the erasure of women’s histories, the predicament in which Samuel Daniel’s Rosamond finds herself. In life, she was immured in a castle, to serve the desires of her sovereign. After death, as Rosamond complains to Daniel’s narrator, she has watched her tomb be destroyed and thus, all evidence of her existence erased. As Stallybrass puts it, “When Samuel Daniel reused the form of the female complaint for The Complaint of Rosamond, it was self-consciously to remember the unremembered, to bring back to life a woman whose memory had been erased.”26
17 I would suggest that the apparition of Hamlet’s father, as a revenant, finds himself very much in the predicament of the female complainant. While he alludes to, and no doubt experiences, the night wanderings and daytime exercises endured by ghosts that Greenblatt explores in his book on purgatorial Hamlet, the ghost has other problems, as well. One is the historical record. It is said that King Hamlet died while sleeping in his orchard when in fact, he was “by a brother’s hand” of “life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched” (Hamlet, 1.5.80-81). This misconception he sets straight with his tale to Hamlet, trusting to the son to disseminate that tale. The ghost of Hamlet senior is also combatting the erasure of his life’s memory. Gertrude, no Niobe she, remarries within a month, twice two months, whatever: “(O God,” Hamlet laments, “a beast that wants discourse of reason / Would have mourned longer!” [1.2.154-155]). And so he charges Hamlet to “Remember” him. Typical of this play, however, the rectified story of the elder Hamlet, like the tale of his Purgatorial tortures, remains untold. Thus, he is denied even the narratological satisfaction of history’s downtrodden female complainants.
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More in sorrow than in anger
18 Renaissance female complainants can be querulous; they argue constantly with their interlocutors. They are also aggrieved, complaining about their own bad fame or lack of recognition and sniping at other historical women whom they could know only from written histories and literature. In an effort to alter, emphasize, and control history’s course, they name and curse their enemies. And they also suffer. Running the emotional gamut from sadness to vituperation, they experience what R. S. White and Clara Rawnsley call “mixed emotions,” not only vicissitudes from one passion to another but liminal states that are not definable as particular emotions, affective moods that bleed into one another.27 The ghost in Hamlet resembles them to a significant extent. He frowns, but according to the eyewitnesses, he shows “a countenance more in sorrow than in anger” (Hamlet, 1.2.247). Like the female complainants, he is keen to set right the historical record, and he passes a harsh judgment on Gertrude—“‘O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!” (1.5.54)—although he never reaches the point of cursing his antagonists, not even Claudius. He and those who encounter him are linked by a mutual affect of “dread.”
19 This ghost’s emotional resemblance to the living is reinforced by Gail Kern Paster’s humoral analysis of Hamlet in Humoring the Body. According to Paster, the Galenic model of humors “locates the emotions, or passions, in the ebbs and flows of the body’s fluids. Emotions flood the body not metaphorically but literally, as the humors course through the bloodstream carrying choler, melancholy, blood, and phlegm to the parts and as the animal spirits move like lightning from brain to muscle, from muscle to brain.”28 Significantly, “dread” is both cause and symptom of humoral disarray. As The Method of Physick recounts, for instance, the cause of syncope or swooning, for instance, is a rapid evacuation of blood or, on an emotional level, “feare, dread, and all such like perturbations of the mind.”29 Dread that works on the body to immobilize and prevent action is amenable to the specifically humoral vicissitudes between rage and paralysis that Paster outlines in her chapter on Hamlet. Pyrrhus from the Player’s speech, with his sword suspended in mid-air over the hapless Trojan patriarch Priam, is roasted o'er in wrath; in effect, his body movements are choked up and his vengeful arm immobilized by excess of choler. If choleric Pyrrhus is stuffed with excess humors, melancholy Hamlet is depleted in body and passions. As Paster writes, deficits of appetite explain why self-reproach in Hamlet expresses itself as the perception of bodily lack. His withdrawal by grief and disappointment into the inactivity of melancholy means that he is not consuming enough of his world’s “stuff” behaviorally, pneumatically. In this he is precisely the opposite of Aeneas’s Pyrrhus, that excessive consumer both of his own body and spirits and of the human material of Troy.30 A similar languor, or sense of dread, infects the ghost’s mood. The apparition of young Hamlet’s father fits a sub-genre of ghost that can be found in contemporary cinema, including films of Hamlet. This melancholic revenant, characterized by something between sorrow and lack of affect, is epitomized for me by the low-key ghost played by Bruce Willis in the popular thriller The Sixth Sense.31 Willis is on a mission, first, to compensate for his hubris as a psychologist in life by helping a young boy afflicted by angry ghosts and second, to let his wife know that she “never came second” emotionally to the job that caused his death. Throughout the film, where his status as a
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ghost comes as a final surprise, Willis is measured, contemplative, but also detached from his surroundings. One cue to his status is the character’s detachment from his social setting, which is expressed in both his lack of conversation and his physical isolation. He stands in opposition to the furious ghosts who have been victims of crime and torment the little boy Willis befriends both physically and psychologically.
20 In the film’s final scene, a woman cyclist who has been killed in an accident just moments before appears at the car window to address her grievances to the young boy. Something between the melancholic psychologist and this seething victim, holding forth to her male historian, is what I imagine as the emotional range of early modern revenants deriving from the female complaint tradition. My imagined ghost of Hamlet senior would emphatically not be Brian Blessed in the epic 1996 Kenneth Branagh Hamlet. He would be more like Paul Scofield as the ghost in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, where the ghost sits brooding, without really making eye contact as he recounts the story of his murder to the son.32 Most of all, he would be like the revenant of Sam Shepard in the Almereyda Hamlet, whose dark countenance matches his son’s anomie. Whether standing on the balcony outside his son’s apartment, slumped in a chair opposite young Hamlet as he tells his tale, or vanishing into the Pepsi machine, this Hamlet demonstrates repeatedly the permeability of that barrier between the living and the dead.33
Conclusion: Remember Me
21 Like Jane Shore, fair Rosamond, and their kin, the spirit of Hamlet’s father is plagued by dread—a persistence of consciousness and personal memory after death, combined with the knowledge that his story can be nothing more than an incomplete footnote in historical chronicle. Unlike the female complaints produced by Shakespeare and other writers in the 1590s, Hamlet remains pessimistic about the possibility of revising, or even preserving individuals’ history. The emblem of the female complainant in this play is Hecuba. Evoked in the Player’s speech as a paradigmatic figure of historical mourning, Hecuba laments the fall of Troy and her husband’s cruel slaughter at the hands of Pyrrhus. Derived equally from texts by Virgil and Ovid, the figure of Hecuba would have been familiar from the schoolboy exercises in ethical lament or ethopoeia. Not limited to tears and sighs, by the rules of rhetoric Hecuba must speak, and speak at length. In Rudolph Agricola’s Latin translation of Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata, before being sent into exile she rails against Fortune and recounts her own history: Fortune, called a strait or an estuary and not without reason, I unhappily have now experienced. How haughtily I, so very blessed, gloried. The daughter of a king, the wife of a king, the mother of the fairest and bravest of heroes, I have now fallen into so many great calamities that they neither can be worked out or expressed. Fortune bore me up high so that I might suffer a heavier blow when I fell.34 In this exercise, Hecuba’s de casibus account of her fall from high places and her cursing of Fortune place her within the tradition of female complaint. In Shakespeare’s case, by contrast, Hecuba is bereft of language to lament. The Player describes her pathetic appearance, as she run[s] barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, About her lank and all o’erteemèd loins A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up— (Hamlet, 2.2.530-534)
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22 Anyone who had seen this sight, according to the Player, would have—like Hecuba herself in the schoolboy exercise—“’Gainst Fortune’s state […] treason have pronounced” (2.2.536). But the queen herself is inarticulate: [I]f the gods themselves did see her then When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs, The instant burst of clamor that she made (Unless things mortal move them not at all) Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven. (2.2.538-543) Instead of the eloquent arguments of Jane Shore and Rosamond, we get only Hecuba’s inarticulate “burst of clamor” and the counterfactual surmise that if the gods had seen the sight, they too would have cried in horror and pity. The fact of the matter, however, is that Hecuba is denied her speech and the gods remain unmoved.
23 Hecuba’s fate in the Player’s speech bodes ill for Hamlet’s final request that Horatio, instead of sealing his own fame with a stoic suicide, live on to report Hamlet and his “cause aright”: You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you— But let it be.—Horatio, I am dead. Thou livest; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied. (Hamlet, 5.2.366-372) Like the heroines of female complaint, Hamlet wants his judicial “cause” to receive a favorable judgment; he wants for life and actions to be vindicated. For Hamlet as for his father, however, this vindication remains out of reach, Fortinbras’s final pronouncement confers on the prince a bland, hesitant epitaph—that had he lived on and been tested on the historical stage, Hamlet would have “proved most royal” (5.2.444). Hamlet too will recede into the background of historical chronicle, as just one figure in the parade of forgotten kings whose reigns were short, but not memorable.
24 Hamlet is just one of Shakespeare’s largely feminized revenants who return from the undiscovered country to set the historical record straight and to communicate to us their dread of the afterlife. Some, like Lucrece and Lavinia from Titus Andronicus, are ghosts before their time. Others, like the more traditional revenants of Julius Caesar and Richard III, intervene directly in history. Most spectacular of all, as a female complainant, is Queen Margaret in Richard III, who although literally dead by the time represented in Shakespeare’s play, nevertheless wanders in and out of the plot to curse her enemies and organize the lamenting women into a unified group of what Phyllis Rackin has called “anti-historians” who challenge “official” English history.35 These revenants, like Hamlet’s father and Hamlet himself, continue to whisper to us the familiar words—““Remember me.” They pass on as well to us their dread, hoping for justification in the historical record that has heretofore excluded them.
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NOTES
1. Hamlet, Folger Digital Texts, based on the print editions of Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for the Folger Shakespeare Library. Folger Digital Texts are freely available at http:// www.folgerdigitaltexts.org (last accessed 31 August 2017). All subsequent references to Shakespeare’s plays and poems will be to this edition and will be given directly in the text. 2. The Doctrynalle of dethe, Enprynted in Westminster, In Castons hous, by me Wynkyn de Worde, [1498]. 3. Anon, A medicine for the soule as well as for them that be sick, most necessary in the bytternes of death, and in their last moost daungerous seasons, London, R. Tottell, ca. 1550. 4. Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 28. 5. Ibid., p. 71. 6. Jeremy Tambling, Dante in Purgatory: States of Affect, Turnhout, Belgium, Brepols Publishers, 2010, p. 263. 7. Greenblatt, op. cit., p. 41. 8. Kerrigan’s long introduction to his anthology of female complaint poetry offers a thorough genealogy of the genre; see John Kerrigan, Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and “Female Complaint’: A Critical Anthology, Oxford, Clarendon, 1991, p. 12, 28, and passim. 9. Paul Budra, A Mirror for Magistrates and the de casibus Tradition, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000, 1-13. 10. Philip Schwyzer, “‘Most out of order’: Preposterous Time in The Mirror for Magistrates and Shakespeare’s Histories,” A Mirror for Magistrates in Context, ed. Harriet Archer and Andrew Hadfield, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 231-245, p. 234. 11. Ibid., p. 241. 12. As Deborah Greenhut explains, Turberville in particular works to keep his female speakers under control: first, by making them moralize their plights and second, by framing their epistles with arguments in the narrator’s voice (Deborah S. Greenhut, Feminine Rhetorical Culture: Tudor Adaptations of Ovid’s Heroides, New York, Peter Lang, 1988). See also Raphael Lyne, “Intertextuality and the Female Voice after the Heroides,” Renaissance Studies, 22, no. 3, 2008, 307-323. 13. George Turberville, trans., The heroycall epistles of … Publius Ouidius Naso, in English verse, London, Henrie Denham, 1567. 14. Schwyzer, op. cit., p. 235; see also Kerrigan, p. 28. 15. Thomas Churchyard, Churchyards Challenge, London, John Wolfe, 1593. 16. Samuel Daniel, Complaint of Rosamond, in Kerrigan, op. cit., line 25. 17. Ibid., lines 1-5. 18. Ibid., line 9. 19. Ibid., lines 17-18. 20. Ibid., lines 701-707. 21. Ibid., line 309. 22. Ibid., line 337. 23. Daniel, Complaint of Rosamond, in Kerrigan, op. cit., lines 738-739. 24. Michael Drayton, Englands Heroicall Epistles, London, P.S. for N. Ling, 1598. 25. Peter Stallybrass, “Hauntings: The Materiality of Memory on the Renaissance Stage,” Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe, ed. Valeria Finucci and Kevin Brownlee, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2001, 287-316. 26. Ibid., p. 306.
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27. R. S. White and Clara Rawnsley, “Discrepant Emotional Awareness in Shakespeare,” The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, ed. Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2015, 241-263, p. 141-142. 28. Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 14. 29. Philip Barrough, The methode of phisicke conteyning the causes, signes, and cures of invvard diseases in mans body from the head to the foote. VVhereunto is added, the forme and rule of making remedies and medicines, which our phisitians commonly vse at this day, with the proportion, quantitie, & names of ech [sic] medicine, London, Thomas Vautroullier dwelling in the Blacke-friars by Lud-gate, 1583. 30. Paster, “Roasted in Wrath and Fire: The Ecology of the Passions in Hamlet and Othello,” op. cit., p. 25-76, p. 48. 31. The Sixth Sense, dir. M. Night Shyamalan, perf. Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Hollywood Pictures, 1999, DVD. 32. Hamlet, dir. Kenneth Branagh, perf. Kenneth Branagh, Brian Blessed, Castle Rock Entertainment, 1996; Hamlet, dir. Franco Zeffirelli, perf. Mel Gibson, Paul Scofield, Canal+, 1990. 33. Hamlet, dir. Michael Almereyda, perf. Ethan Hawke, Sam Shepard, Miramax, 2000. 34. Aphthonii sophistae Progymnasmata, partim a Rodolpho Agricola, partim a Ioanne Maria Catanaeo, Latinitate donata, Londini, Henricum Middeltonum, 1572, p. 183, my translation. The 1520 English translation by Richard Pynson includes the ethopoeia of Niobe, but not of Hecuba. 35. Phyllis Rackin, “Anti-Historians: Women’s Roles in Shakespeare’s Histories,” Theatre Journal, 37, no. 3, October 1985, 329-344.
ABSTRACTS
The Shakespearean corpus provides fifty instances of the word “dread.” My examination suggests that an atmosphere of dread correlates with specific genres (the Roman plays, English histories), subjects (politics and history), and works (The Rape of Lucrece and Hamlet). In a few cases, notably Lucrece, “dread” is also associated with an acute awareness of life-after-death in the form of history and reputation. Dread of God’s judgment is a common theme in uses of word before 1600, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary. In Hamlet, however, there emerges a more modern connotation of “dread” as a malaise that persists after death. The old-fashioned ghost has confidence that his material condition in whatever afterlife he inhabits could make Hamlet’s hair stand on end; he has a traditional early modern sense of dread as terror that expresses itself through the body. But the dread that stays Hamlet’s hand is different. I place Hamlet and his father’s ghost within the context of other early modern revenants who relive emotionally their pasts. These revenants belong to the poetic female complaint, a tradition popular in the 1590s that specifically informs The Rape of Lucrece. The dread felt by Lucrece and Hamlet comes from anticipating historical reputation but also from a perception of the conflict between historical character and lived reality that haunts historical actors in the afterlife.
Le corpus shakespearien contient cinquante occurrences du mot « dread » (terreur). Mon analyse suggère qu’une atmosphère de terreur est associée à des genres spécifiques (les pièces romaines, les pièces historiques anglaises), à des sujets spécifiques (la politique et l’histoire), et à des œuvres spécifiques (Le Viol de Lucrèce et Hamlet). Dans quelques cas, et en particulier Lucrèce, la terreur s’accompagne aussi d’une conscience aiguë de la vie après la mort sous l’aspect de
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l’histoire et de la réputation. La terreur du jugement de Dieu est un thème commun dans les emplois du mot « dread » avant 1600, d’après les relevés du dictionnaire Oxford English Dictionary. Dans Hamlet, toutefois, émerge une connotation plus moderne du terme : un malaise qui perdure après la mort. Le fantôme démodé est sûr que sa condition matérielle post-mortem pourrait faire se dresser les cheveux de Hamlet ; il a un sens de la terreur typique de la Renaissance, et qui passe par le corps. Mais c’est une autre terreur qui arrête la main de Hamlet. J’étudie Hamlet et le fantôme de son père dans le contexte d’autres revenants de la première modernité qui revivent en émotion leur passé. Ces revenants appartiennent au genre de la complainte féminine, tradition populaire dans les années 1590 qui informe Le Viol de Lucrèce. La terreur que ressentent Lucrèce et Hamlet provient de leur anticipation de leur réputation historique, mais aussi de leur perception du conflit entre le personnage historique et la réalité vécue qui hante les protagonistes historiques dans l’autre vie.
INDEX
Keywords: Churchyard Thomas, Daniel Samuel, Drayton Michael, female complaint, Mirror for Magistrates (A), Ovid, Rape of Lucrece (The), reputation, Shakespeare William, Turberville George Mots-clés: Churchyard Thomas, complainte féminine, Daniel Samuel, Drayton Michael, Mirror for Magistrates (A), Ovide, Shakespeare William, Turberville George, Viol de Lucrèce (Le)
AUTHOR
CHRISTY DESMET University of Georgia (USA)
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The Spectacle of Sovereignty: The Abject Multitude in Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris and Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV.
Kyle DiRoberto
1 Early modern literature seems to offer a critical perspective on our current political realities now more than ever. Ways of thinking we tend to see as outside our more positivist worldviews, those we expect to encounter only in the dusty realm of medieval and early modern jurists’ thinking, concepts like a lack of distinction between legal and literary fictions, the subject and social contract, or even the distinctions between a person and a corporation (think Hobby Lobby), are suddenly of utmost importance. Far from being arcana, such concepts are relevant to the very survival of our civil liberties. In fact, the Supreme Court granting corporations freedom of speech (i.e., special interest groups being granted unlimited campaign funding) and religion (again, in the case of Hobby Lobby), seems to suggest an agenda that may empower certain types of future oppression.3 Significantly, legal discourse relating to gender, especially female sexuality, may hide an economic desire for power, as the government gives more rights to corporations backed by special interest groups to sway elections and suggest future limits to the rights now granted to the individual; these rights lately seem less and less impervious to change. Indeed, behind much of the discourse of exclusion that is playing a central role in constricting even geographic liberty, economic interests point to a diminishing of important elements of democracy in this stage of late consumer capitalism. We seem, in fact, on the brink of slipping into totalitarianism, where the spectacle of the autocrat looms large. As such, Marlowe’s the Massacre at Paris and Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV still have much to teach us.4
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The Feminine Abject and the Discourse of Revolution
2 Feminine sexuality, even its criminalization, is not only a discourse of oppression it is also central to expressions of liberty. The character of Antigone for example has long been thought to represent the spirit of revolution. From G. W. F. Hegel to Melissa Sanchez scholars have explored the feminine gendering of a male political subject in acts of rebellion. According to Slavoj Žižek, who reinterprets Hegel via Lacan, in Antigone, the ultimate rebellion arises out of the feminine abject self-determining act:5 “the paradigmatic case of such an act is feminine: Antigone's “No!” to Creon, to state power; her act is literally suicidal, she excludes herself from the community, whereby she offers nothing new, no positive program— she just insists on her unconditional demand.”6 Likewise Judith Butler, proposed that Antigone be read as a “parodic figure who [,] speaking in the voice of . . . the state . . .[,] performatively question[s] social normativity.” 7 Most recently, in fact, Yannis Stavrakakis, rethinks readings of Antigone’s “inhuman, (antisocial and antipolitical) desire” in the context of the tragedy as a whole, and suggests that the play represents a useful conception of rebellion, that it “articulate[s] a set of aporias,” which, understood through Lacanian ethics, can, even now, serve “a politics of radical social transformation.”8
3 This transformation is based on “an anti-essentialist ontology of lack and negativity.” It both frees one from the fantasy of desire for transcendence and reconciles one to democracy as a perpetual “struggle.” This realization and the acceptance of a lack of transcendence, wholeness, resolution, etc., becomes the “ethical nodal point” of “a new political order worthy of the democratic tradition,” worthy because this “radical absence” of the fantasy of completeness becomes “the basis for a critique of any form of oppression.” 9 Significantly, this seemingly disparate politics of cynicism and discourse of abject feminine desire, in the early modern era, forms a critique of proto democratic rebellion and absolute monarchy. Expressed primarily through the rhetoric of Machiavelli and Calvin, Marlowe’s the Massacre and Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV epitomizes such a notion as “radical absence” in the representation of the spectacle of sovereignty in the abject multitude.
The Feminine Abject in the Early Modern Period
4 Much like the above readings of Antigone, Melissa Sanchez finds in the feminine engendering of rebellion the emergence of a hagiographic political identity founded on a virtue of opposition that was difficult to distinguish from feminine abjection. As Sanchez claims, this gendered discourse draws on the aesthetic of Petrarchism and the rhetoric of Protestant martyrology, providing a “public fantasy” upon which “perversion rather than integrity [and] ambition rather than humility” just as likely represent the constitutive act that challenges authority as does integrity or virtue.10 A byproduct of this rhetoric, Sanchez claims, is that human susceptibility to abject and narcissistic desire means that erotic and political subjects can never be entirely certain what the rational course of action would be much less whether they are following it. One’s worst enemies are within, and the fact that one rarely recognizes them as such make them all the more fearsome.11
5 This fear of feminine abjection and the preoccupation with discovering appetite driven motives are in fact part of a Calvinist ideology to which the mostly Puritan authors
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(e.g., Spenser, Sidney, Milton) that Sanchez examines would adhere. However, this Calvinist discourse became increasingly widespread as it articulated the structure of power that arose out of capitalism and liberal democracy, and while it simultaneously rendered suspect the motives of the subject, as Sanchez suggests, its primary function seemed to be the limiting of the sovereignty of the monarch. The preface to Calvinist Institutes, in fact, cautions Francis I that “the king who in ruling over his realm does not serve God’s glory exercises not kingly rule but brigandage,” or highway robbery.12 He cautions the king using a similar rhetoric of self-serving desire by which he condemns his enemies: “their God is the belly . . . and their kitchen their religion.”13 And even though Calvin asserts his humility, claiming he and his followers “are quite aware of what mean and lowly little men” they are, what “miserable sinners,” his preface to the King belies the potentially dangerous conviction that their doctrine, “must tower unvanquished above all the glory and all the might of the world.”14
6 Alongside this Calvinist discourse of conscience, as Victoria Kahn reminds us, there also arose a Machiavellian “discourse of contract.”15 In the Massacre everyone is abject and religion is alternately a vehicle to justify vengeance and to facilitate a lust for power, in essence the play exemplifies this Machiavellian discourse of power, as scholars have noted. Little attention, however, has been focused on the role of this feminine abject as a vehicle for the contestation of authority, for facilitating the agentic in a proto social contract, or for the intertextual nature of this discourse in another popular history play of this era - Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV - which, significantly, echoes Marlowe’s Massacre. Andrew Kirk’s article on the Massacre, in fact, comes close to uncovering this element of the feminine abject in what he astutely claims to be the play’s reflection of the proper structure of political power according to Machiavelli, affirming what Irving Ribner argues in his article “Marlowe and Machiavelli.” Ribner claims the Guise is an expression of a more complex view of Machiavelli’s political perspective, one that comes closer to Dido, Queen of Carthage or Tamburlaine,16 than is The Jew of Malta, which represents a more one-dimensional but popular conception of this discourse.17 Of course, Ribner was referring to a Machiavellian construction of absolute monarchy, whereas Kirk’s reading of Machiavelli in terms of gender is even more complex, as is Marlowe’s.
The Abject Feminine in Representations of France and Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris
7 As Kirk notes a “gendering of historical causation occurs in Machiavelli, who writes that a feminine fortune requires an opposing masculine response,” mutability itself “was seen to be “a product of inconstancy or fickleness . . . attributes . . . assigned to women, children, . . . the lower classes,” and any “other.”18 In fact, the English constructed France as disordered and used this feminine abject “other” as an aporia of contestation and self-creation. 19 Kirk suggests, in fact, that the conflict in France, historical texts about France’s instability in the period, and popular theater was used to demarcate a historical topos that, like the female body, was imagined as a space open to male contestation and appropriation. Though nondramatic texts also provided sites for the confrontation of self and cultural other, the popular theater, as Steven Mullaney has shown, was a place more open to the representation or “rehearsal” of alterity.20
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8 Kirk claims the Guise and Navarre represent two possible structural patterns of masculine order, two modes of bringing order to the disorder of French history. Guise, as illegitimate aspirer, wishes to mold France to his own image, imposing the order of his own towering will onto everything that surrounds him.21
9 Conversely, Navarre is said to define his “role in providential history . . . ostensibly a manifestation of an underlying divine order.”22 Of course, both of the possibilities are anything but uncomplicated masculine figures of order, as Kirk acknowledges. In fact, the Guise and Navarre remain more emblematic of abject feminine desire. The Guise is an aspiring but, ultimately failed, treacherous, cuckold and Navarre is an ambitious coward. As Kirk’s close reading of Navarre’s soliloquy suggest: he is too close to the Guise in his “overriding sense of self-identity” and in the instance when “he speaks of how ‘opportunity’ will serve him and of the army he must raise so that he will not be ‘crossed’ in his ‘enterprise,’his language points to economics and personal ambition.23 Finally, Kirk suggests that the masculine order arrives at the end of the play, ironically, in the form of a woman, in Navarre’s expressed allegiance to the English monarch, Queen Elizabeth, suggesting that order is ultimately constructed out of English representations of French political instability and a fantasy of “stable, self-affirming English power.”24 This is a rather reductive place to arrive in reading the Machiavellian discourse of contract that along with the Calvinist discourse of conscience, as Kahn suggests, was part of an ultimately revolutionary discourse of power that was restructuring Europe socioeconomically.
Abject Feminine Desire in 1 Henry IV and The Massacre at Paris
10 It seems, in fact, that English authors are both anxious and invested in the complexities of the feminine abjection as an expression of liberty and as contestation. This is evident in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV which alluding to the Massacre, expands our understandings of these discourses beyond French politics and the nobility, even beyond Machiavelli, to the emergence of the agentic, as well as the dependence of all sovereignty on spectacle and, at the least, to political recognition. In Richard II, for example, the play which proceeds I Henry IV in the Henriad, Richard describes how Bolingbroke successfully woos the people “div[ing]into their hearts / With humble and familiar courtesy.” His strategies are reverence, patience, and humility.25 He doffs “his bonnet to an oyster-wench” and when “a brace of draymen bid God speed him” he pays them tribute “by kneeling.”26
11 The rhetorical situation changes in 1 Henry IV because of religious and economic realities, and so, too, does the monarch’s need to master their new discourses of power. The rising prominence of the lower gentry and even the new significance of the lower classes is evident in Hal’s need for a tutor in Falstaff, so that he can boast that he is “so proficient” in this rhetoric that he can “drink with any tinker in his own language,” even the discourse of contracts is hinted at in his exclamation that he is “sworn brothers to a leash of drawers.”27 Falstaff, the quintessential emblem of feminine disorder, however reveals a sea change in the deployment of religious discourse. The emphasis is hardly on humility and self-sacrifice, although those are still recognizable elements. Religion has shifted to an interpretive game, an often Calvinistic/
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Machiavellian linguistic exercise in exegesis, open to the insight of the lower classes, but also open to the construction of a more complex Machiavellian sincerity, a sincerity based on performance. Truth becomes a kind of shell game in which contradictions are aired, laughed at, and, astonishingly, vanish. Hal for example attempts to prove Falstaff to “be one of the wicked” based on his obvious lack of a vocation. This is evident in Hal’s response, when Falstaff asks him the time: What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta.28
12 Significantly, Hal ties the appetite driven individual to the use of a religious discourse associated with the vice, which is reinforced by the phrase “what a devil.” He is not reverential, patient, or humble towards Falstaff. In fact, his relationship is constructed as far more intimate. He has become the common man, not just bowed to him, and his rhetoric is that of the market, of the comic spectacle, of “razzing.” Hotspur, the hoped for emblem of masculine order, against whom Hal is juxtaposed, as Richard is to Bolingbroke, is mistaken when he advises Douglas not to “go so general current through the world."29
13 In The Massacre Marlowe also dramatizes the nature of the proper sovereign through representations of its inverse—monarchs who are driven entirely by appetite, especially feminine appetite. “The face of rebellion” spawns a brutal world of endless massacres and civil wars. Religious hatred merely masks this appetite for power, and it is a mask often haphazardly worn. For example, in reply to Epernoune’s accusation that the Guise acts for “[his] own benefit,”30 the Guise claims he “is not traitor to the crown of France” and, in fact, with a phrase that echoes Puritan rhetoric, he claims that his rebellion was done for “the Gospell sake.”31 Moreover, the capriciousness of the Guise’s religious excuses for killing are evident in the translation of his plan to kill “Puritans,” as members of the house of “Burbon,”32 this mere excuse is even more evident, when later in the play the Guise himself claims his reason for being an enemy to “the Burbonites” is that he is “a Prince of the Valoyses line,”33 not that he objects to their religious beliefs or practices.
14 Furthermore, the feminization of appetite among the nobility is all pervasive in the Massacre. Initially the Guise attempts to rule the kingdom through the Queen Mother, who rules Charles. In this way the play suggests the Guise’s already inordinate appetite for power is further polluted by his association with the feminine. And when the Queen acts to maintain that power, by possibly murdering her son, Charles, as she threatens to do in the scene before Charles suddenly dies, her replacing him with Henry, who she believes to be the more receptive to her will, only seems an excuse for the play to focus on Henry’s selfishness, violence, and tyranny. At Henry’s coronation, this lawlessness and unrestrained greed is deftly represented in a powerful allegorical scene in which Henry’s minion, Mugernoun, whimsically cuts off the ear of a cutpurse that has cut off Mugernoun’s gold buttons. He catches his ear and offers to trade the thief’s ear for the gold buttons. This violence is evocative of the cutting off the subject’s means of perception (especially in a play, which people went to hear rather than to see). Such a cutting off would be important if the king’s power was reliant on the acting out of glory for the people, but the only audience members the solipsistic Henry attempts to impress are his minions. In fact, in this instance of sudden violence predicated by greed, against an unnamed subject, the Guise, who speaks out against the act, becomes
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momentarily heroic, and, by contrast—rather unbelievably—a more desirable ruler. He also, earlier in the play, could have been seen as a violated subject, in that he suffers the tyranny of a king who facilitates a kind of usurpation of his property, when the king’s minion carries on an adulterous relationship with the Guise’s wife, justifying his act of rebellion.
15 1 Henry IV, in a more comic vein, depicts Falstaff’s envisioning Hal as the future king, and recalling the customary salutation, “God save thy grace,” but suddenly claiming, because of his state of reverie, to have forgotten and to correct himself, that he should substitute the term “majesty”34 for grace, asserting (and turning the same discourse that Hal uses on him, on to Hal) that Hal is one of the damned, for “grace thou wilt have none” and he adds, similarly to Hal’s tying religion in Falstaff to sexual desire, that grace for the prince also hides appetite. It is a mere perfunctory prayer before eating: “not so much as will serve to prologue an egg and butter.”35 Likewise, Falstaff, in the role of the Puritan subject, challenging the legitimacy of the king, emblematizes the humor and arrogance of commoners presuming to know the will of God and to correct the king; not unlike Calvin, he still simultaneously aids the king in creating the right kind of spectacle, one reliant on a conjunction of the sacred and the profane.
16 The rhetoric of the common man, not “the grace of God,” of official discourse suggests the crucial construction of spectacle over the older glory of medieval kings. Through Hal’s successful performance of sovereignty, we come to associate Hal, as we do the Guise, with a spectacle of spirituality, the stuff of theater, and also with transgression. His reformation must “glitter o’er [his] fault”36 to be compelling. In fact, he rather irreligiously, like Navarre, uses the rhetoric of providence (and sin) to construct a viable sovereignty: “I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;/ Redeeming time when men think least I will.”37 In making grace a prologue for a prince’s will to power, however craftily constructed as self-sacrifice, the play suggests Hal can be reinterpreted as unfit to rule, similarly to Richard II, at any time. As mentioned in I Henry IV, Hal’s identity is frightfully close to that of the Guise, as is evident in the Guise’s soliloquy regarding his aspirations to be king: “although my downfall be the deepest hell. / For this I wake, when others think I sleep; / For this I wait, that scorn attendance else.38 Similarly, the Guise’s ambition, his wanting to achieve an uncommon glory with regard to “the diadem of France” which he claims he will “either rend . . . with [his] nails to naught, Or mount the top with [his] aspiring wings” is echoed in Hal’s pledge to bend France to his “awe, / Or break it all to pieces”. 39
The Abject Feminine in the Construction of the Self and the Other in Proto Capitalism and the Emergence of Liberal Democracy
17 As Jesse M Lander relates in ‘"Crack'd Crowns' and Counterfeit Sovereigns: The Crisis of Value in 1 Henry IV," Falstaff’s puns about coinage throughout the play suggest an equally unethical economic practice of kings. Falstaff claims "thou cam'st not be of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings,"40 and as Lander explains “he is punning on the fact that a royal was worth, or stood for, ten shillings.” However, as she further explains, “Falstaff is[also]teasing Hal for his reluctance to engage in robbery. In this case, it is cowardice that calls his royalty into doubt, and somehow we arrive at the disturbing conclusion that to be a courageous robber is to be truly royal.”41 Moreover,
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Lander also documents the way in which economic fraud, such as debasing coins, was not beyond the morality of kings. In fact, because of this behavior in Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth had to restore the value of the sterling, and she, as well, was perpetually concerned with issues of legitimacy. In sum, it is often the theme of money and merely the rhetoric of religion, in all these works, that throws into relief the role of ambition in structuring both the subject and the monarchy’s subjectivity.
18 Marlowe and Shakespeare’s representation of the economic interests underpinning new religious practices—especially those expressed in the Machiavellian cultivation of the self—belies the new role of religious rhetoric in the development of a secular individualistic economics characteristic of the lower classes and the ruling class. This is true of Catholics, Protestants, and, in fact, those who merely feign religion like the Guise and Falstaff. This development is reflected in Shakespeare’s Henriad, as a source of excitement and anxiety, at once seditious and empowering, as is evident in the characters Falstaff and Hal. Like Marlowe’s Guise and Navarre, Shakespeare represents Falstaff and Hal as metonymically linked to the common man, who are at once both sacred and profane figures of disorder. Falstaff would sell his country by trading able bodied men for coin and brings men incapable of defending the realm to fight for the king. Yet his pockets are empty, and he is undone by the lack of promises from the king.
19 Finally, this lack of recognition constitutes the death dealing blow, as Hal comes to disavows him altogether. This “human essence” or sovereignty of the subject is not as some radical Puritans, themselves, wanted a “freedom from the will of others.”42 On the contrary, Shakespeare’s plays suggest that the subject and the monarch are both, in this era, perpetually on trial, continually having to sell a spectacle to their audience, whether subject or king. In the Massacre, too, the monarch is constituted by the abject, as is anyone who takes on a position of power. This is evident in the Guise’s opposition to Charles, who he claims has “pleasure uncontrolled, [that] / Weakneth his body, and will waste his Realm.”43 Yet, the Guise, like Hal, is also defined by his own self- determining ambition. He willingly risks his life in these acts of treason, claiming that “perill is the cheefest way to happiness.” His abjection is obvious in that, like Antigone, his desire is alternately nihilistic and “pure demand:” “Ile either rend it with my nayles to naught, / Or mount the top with my aspiring wings,” and, ultimately, beyond comprehension.
20 The transformations of Hal and Falstaff are evocative of the resurrection and Hal’s successful staging of kingship is a Machiavellian cultivation of spectacle. As mentioned above Hal's theatrical plan is laid out in his first soliloquy: Yet will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wandered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him […] So when this loose behavior I throw off And pay the debt I never promised By so much shall I falsify men's hopes […] I'll so offend to make offence a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will. 44
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21 In this soliloquy, he scripts his role of kingship by acting out a rhetoric of redemption and prodigality, by emphasizing the relationship of the parable of the prodigal son to Christ's death and resurrection. He talks about throwing off this "loose behavior" as the son in the parable does, but he also speaks of paying debts that he never promised, alluding to the idea of Christ having paid the debt of original sin. Moreover, he evokes images of rising, in his image of the sun, and of "the redeemer" who conquers death, when he claims to redeem time. In an inverse of Flastaffian rhetoric, a rhetoric that attempts to transform immorality by the imposition of moral terms on immoral behavior, Hal redefines moral action as deception; his Christ-like action will falsify men's hopes and make offense a skill.
22 Likewise, Falstaff uses a sacred parody of the resurrection to his advantage. He sets off his deceptions with the prince's gilt, like the prince who uses Falstaff's foul contagion as a foil. Falstaff uses his relationship with Hal to build his reputation. He pretends to kill Hotspur and has the prince endorse his lie. Hal responds to Falstaff's deceptions that "if a lie can do [Falstaff] grace [he'll] gild it with the happiest terms [he] has."45 Hal's rhetoric of repentances and future conversion are found in Falstaff's promises. He claims that if he grows in greatness, in other words advances politically, he will "purge and leave sack and live cleanly, like a nobleman should do."46 Moreover, in giving the famous rebel Colevile to Lancaster, he echoes the prince's sun and gem metaphor, insisting, Let it be booked with the rest of this day's deeds, or by the Lord I will have it in a particular ballad else, with mine own picture on the top on't, Colevile kissing my foot: to the which course if I be enforced, if you do not all show like gilt twopences to me, and I in the clear sky of fame o'er-shine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the element. . . 47
23 In a mock resurrection, Falstaff pretends to be dead on the battlefield, and even listens to the prince's eulogy of him before rising and giving a disquisition on being; and fearing Percy might actually be playing dead too, he asks, "how if he should counterfeit too and rise?" The relationship of his death and resurrection to that of Christ is emphasized and joined with the blasphemy of popular writers such as Marlowe by an obscure referent for the word 'too' and by Shakespeare's use of the descriptive term 'rise.' The referent could refer to Christ, as well as to Falstaff, and hence, to Marlow's infamous suggestion, reported by Kidd, that Christ's miracles (like those of Falstaff's) were a fraud. But more to the point, Shakespeare not only reflects the artistic deceptions and pleasures that underpin a Machiavellian spectacle of the self, but he also mocks the conversion experience, which was central to Puritan ideology, and the discourse of conscience as a potential economically motivated performance of religious identity.
24 Moreover, the similarities that characterize the Catholics and Protestants in The Massacre are all primarily of socioeconomic significance. Marlowe represents the Guise’s treasonous plans, for example, as financially motivated, and he metonymically associates these with identities of foreign corruption in all Catholics: Spain’s “Indian” gold and the “largesse” of the Pope represent the Catholics’ corrupt motives. 48 Likewise, Marlowe alludes to the Huguenot’s Puritan practices of usury as potentially treasonous and, especially, foreign, referring to their clandestine meetings as “synagogues.”49 The practice of usury that Marlowe’s play alludes to, in associating Protestants with Jews, is, in fact, a common association in this period in England. This
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was a shorthand for economic predation, and it conflates Puritans with what will be understood as capitalism and, thereby, with a Machiavellian identity, as the Machivellian prologue to The Jew of Malta suggests.
25 However, this self as property construction, associated with capitalism, indeed, with “the tenets of possessive individualism” which, C.B. Macpherson claims, ultimately lead to liberal democracy and a rhetoric of inclusion, also significantly limits the self especially the gendered or economically disadvantaged self by constructing the “individual” on a subject/abject dichotomy, which associates the feminine, the poor, or the racialized other with the abject.50 As Jonathan Gil Harris argues, The accusation that the strangers are “infected” with Spanish gold is most striking . . . for its pathological language. . . the term “infected” arguably works to fashion the foreigner as . . . a transnational site of undecidable identity, a diseased hybrid of Dutch, Jew, and Spaniard. In this pathological hybridity, moreover, lurks once more the color-full stain of usury.
26 After that year, according to the antiquarian Iohn Southerden Burns, one-third of Antwerp’s “merchants and the workmen who worked and dealt in silks, damasks, and taffeties, and in baizes, sayes, serges, stockings, &c., settled in England, because England was then ignorant of those manufactures.” As Burns’s observation makes quite clear, people from the Low Countries migrated to England for economic as much as for religious reasons.51
27 “These migrants were perceived as a significant threat by merchant gentry and laborers alike: London’s artisans repeatedly protested what they saw as the usurpation of their labor by skilled strangers . . .” 52 In fact, it is the anxiety around monopolies that leads to the emergence of the rights of the subject as property in the early modern era, which is evident in the case of Darcy v. Allen, in which, a grant of monopoly was found to “take away a man’s skill from him”53 and as Coke argues, in one of many moments of judicial activism, applying what he claimed as the Magna Carta’s declaration against depriving “the plowman of his wain . . “ man’s occupation is his property by inheritance or lawful acquisition.”54
28 The justification for leveling the playing field, or, indeed, giving the advantage to the natural born English is realized in terms of the rights of the subject to themselves as property, and rhetorically structured through this literature on the denunciation of greed. The subject is constructed against the political discourse of desire. It is easy to see, thereby, the way in which the rights of the subject, though somewhat empowering for the poor locally, is problematic for all “others,” especially for those who are (through race, gender, or economics) associated with the body through appetite, which extends the threat of criminalization to anyone. Often as Louis Althusser’s claims facile representations of this subject offer “a description of the ruling class’s social reality”55 and ignore “The division and dehumanization that results from class .”56
29 In addition, although as the Puritan Leveller Henry Overton wrote, “God made everyone free to enjoy birthright and privilege of property, liberty, and freedom”57, the relentless competition of the world of Marlowe’s play attests: Conflict[ . . . ]must inevitably emerge out of attempts by an unlimited number of individuals of unequal talents and positions, operating within an increasingly finite economic “space” to achieve and enjoy the benefits of proprietorship[. . . ]rais[ing] profound and perhaps unanswerable questions about the viability of the liberal- democratic theories . . . built upon the premises of possessive individualism.58
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30 Indeed, the glorification of equality, humility, and generosity that a Puritan religious rhetoric of inclusiveness enacts, in the period, is fraught with the possibility that heretofore the landless, constrained, and disenfranchised will continue landless, constrained, and disenfranchised. Yet the Puritans do seem to be more accepting of difference if it is economically useful. The Calvinistic Puritans in England construct the significance of their new theological economic understandings of the sovereignty of the subject on private property, linking their new found Christian discourse not to economics directly but to religious difference, so that the Jews, indeed, become their model for this theological economic belief.
31 As Wermer Sombart points out, the Puritan “Levellers,” who called themselves “Jews” . . . advocated the adoption of the Torah as the norm of English legislation,” and “on the banners of the victorious Puritans are inscribed “The Lion of Judah.”59 In addition, early modern critics often attributed Puritan affiliation with the Jews as predicated upon unethical economic practices and a lack of allegiance to the monarch. Moreover, they associated Puritanism and Jewish identity not only with the economic undermining of communities but with a disruptive emergent possessive individualism. Indeed, The Massacre associates unethical practices with religious identity, whether Catholic or Protestant. Marlowe is indiscriminate with his foreign associations. He associates the Puritans with Spain, as mentioned above, perhaps due to their status as merchants. He claims that the Puritans are “infected” with “Spanish gold,” and, in so doing, associates them with Popery, as the Massacre claims, Spain “is the council chamber of the Pope.”60 Moreover, they are represented as disloyal due to personal economic motives, like the Guise, who Epernoune denounces as a traitor to “the crowne of France” for the same reason.61
32 As Ernst Kantorowicz reading of the king’s two bodies suggest the Henriad stages the criminalization of the King; his “inner kingship[...]dissolve[s];” and he realizes “his place among the Pilates and the Judases” having become “no less a traitor[. . .] or even worse [. . .],” having become, “a traitor to his own immortal body politic and to kingship[. . .]. 62 Although Kantorowicz claims this as a historical moment in the secularization of government and in emergent notions of the higher office of kingship, the impact of a new religiosity in a Calvinist discourse of conscience is also evident as the audience sees its function in delimiting the monarch. However, this Calvinist examination of conscience could just as easily limit the subject and empower authority. As Hal’s use of a Calvinist rhetoric with Falstaff makes clear, a Calvinist discourse of conscience constituted not so much an opposition to the Machiavellian discourse of contract as a tool at the disposal of anyone rhetorically capable of using it. The abject feminine, of course, traversed them both, and it could be at once as exciting as it was anxiety producing rendering this authorial identity illicit, this illicit identity legitimate, reducing all, in fact, for the popular theater, to a matter of spectacle.
33 In The Kingdom and the Glory, Agamben, in fact, suggests the sovereign’s dependence on popular appeal and asserts glory’s evolution into “the spectacle,” a spectacle that he claims will ultimately structure the modern system of power. As he argues, absolute monarchy becomes “consensus democracy.”63 The jurist’s representation of the sovereign taken over by popular playwrights like Shakespeare and Marlowe, functions then not just, as Kantorowicz claims, “to establish an image of kingship which was merely human and of which MAN, pure and simple, was the center and standard. . .” but also to expose the limits by which both sovereign and subject qualify as human or
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“MAN.”64 In fact, it is this abject structuring of power and scapegoating of “the other” that still informs both this economic environment of liberalism and the religious conception of the subject. It is this abject self that then as now, constitutes the “zone of indistinction . . . where techniques of individualization and totalizing procedures converge.”65
NOTES
1. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, tr. Daniel Heller-Roazen Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 6. 2. Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer : le pouvoir souverain et la vie nue, Paris, Seuil, 1997, p. 13. 3. According to Joshua Barkan, “one of the most pressing concerns about corporate power today is the ways that the economic strengths of corporations enable them to govern fundamental aspects of life without the checks associated with democratic government.” See Joshua Barkan Corporate Sovereignty: Law and Government Under Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013) p. 220. This is also echoed in the dissenting opinion of Justice Stevens in referring to the ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission as potentially granting corporations “special advantages in the market for legislation.” See Stevens, Justice. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (24 Mar. 2009), [www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/ 08-205.ZX.html], p. 82. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have influenced the Supreme Court’s allowing Hobby Lobby’s exercise of religious freedom to trump the concept of “personal, marital, familial and sexual privacy” said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); and Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S 438 (1972)). 4. I would like to thank Joseph DiRoberto and Robert Hornback for their continued guidance and support. 5. See also Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960. Trans. Dennis Porter, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1997. 6. Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! New York, Routledge, 2001, p. 43. 7. Alison Hugill, “The Act as Feminine: Antigone Between Lacan and Butler,” Psychoanalytic Post, Tamar Schwartz, July 13th, 2015. www.pyschoanalyticpos.com/the-act-as-feminine-antigone- between-lacan-and-butler/paper/Tamar-schwartz. 8. Yannis Stavrakakis, “The Lure of Antigone: Aporias of an Ethics of the Political,” in Umbr(a): Ignorance of the Law, No. 1 (2003): 117-129, p. 117. 9. Stavrakakis, “ Re-Activating the Democratic Revolution: The Politics of Transformation Beyond Reoccupation and Conformism,” Parallax, 2003, vol. 9. no. 2, p. 56-71, p 62. . 10. Melissa Sanchez, Erotic Subjects: The Sexuality of Politics in Early Modern English Literature, New York, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 243. 11. Sanchez, Idem, 243. 12. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion The Library of Christian Classics Vol. XX, Trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Ed. John T McNeill, Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1960, p. 12. 13. Calvin, Idem, 15. 14. Calvin, Idem, 15. 15. Victoria Kahn, Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation In England 1640-1674, 2004, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 1.
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16. Irving Ribner, “Marlowe and Machiavelli” Comparative Literature, Vol. 6, No 4 (Autumn, 1954), pp. 348-356, p. 335. The Guise as a caricature of Machiavelli is also offered by Marlowe himself, in the third line of the prologue to The Jew of Malta. 17. Ribner, Ibid, p. 356 18. Andrew M. Kirk, "Marlowe and Disordered Face of French History", SEL, 1500-1900, vol. 35, no. 2 Tudor and Stuart Drama (Spring, 1995), p. 193-213, pp. 200. 19. Kirk, Idem, p. 199. 20. Kirk, op. cit., p. 198. 21. Kirk, Idem, p. 205 22. Kirk, op. cit., p. 205. 23. Kirk, Idem, 206-7. This representation of Navarre suggests the multiple uses of Machiavelli. That it is used to condemn the Catholic royal government is evident in accusations, in Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1574), the authors of which claim that, “Catherine de Medici had used Il Principe as a text book for her children” and that it was “her bible.” Moreover, Henry III was said to have “learned his lessons well at his mother’s knee,” keeping a copy of it “always in his pocket, for ready reference, when he needed guidance on how to be most effectively evil.” See Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos, Or Concerning the Legitimate Power of a Prince over the People and the People over a Prince, ed. George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. xxi. Here Marlowe suggests its equal applicability in the condemnation of the Protestant Navarre. 24. Kirk, Idem, 209. 25. William Shakespeare Richard II, Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, ed. Charles R. Forker, 2002, London, Thomas Learning, 1.4.25-6. 26. Idem, 1.4.31-33 27. William Shakespeare, I Henry IV, Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, ed. David Scott Kastan, 2002, London, Thomas Learning, 2.4.6, 17-19. 28. 1Henry IV, Idem., 1.2.5-9 29. Idem, 4.1.4-5 30. Marlowe, op. cit., 19.23 31. Idem, 19.22 32. Idem, 14.56-57 33. Idem, 19.31-32 34. I Henry IV, op. cit., 1.2.17. 35. William Shakespeare, Henry V, Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, ed. T. W. Craik, 1995, London, Thomas Learning,1.2.18-2.1. 36. I Henry IV, op. cit. 37. Loc. cit. 38. Marlowe, op. cit., 2.40-43. 39. I Henry IV, op. cit, 2.ii. 136-137 40. Henry V, op. cit., 1.2.247-248. 41. Lander, op. cit., p. 121. 42. Shanahan, op. cit., p. 77. 43. Marlowe, op. cit., 2.70-1. 44. 1 Henry IV, op. cit., 1.2.187-207. 45. 1 Henry IV,op., cit., 5.5.158. 46. 1 Henry IV, op., cit., 5.5.163-5. 47. 1 Henry IV, op., cit., 5.3.45-52. 48. Marlowe, op. cit , 2.61-62. 49. Marlowe, op. cit., 1.1.24. 50. Daniel Shanahan, Toward a Genealogy of Individualism, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, p. 77.
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51. Harris, op. cit., p. 67. 52. Harris, op. cit., p.67. 53. Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writing and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard, Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 2003, Vol. 1: (accessed on line at http://rey.myzen.co.uk/libell.htm http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/coke-selected-writings-of-sir-edward-coke-vol- i--5#razing-01_head_109 last accessed April 15th, 2017, section 109. 54. J.H. Hexeter, “Property, Monopoly, and Shakespeare’s Richard II,” Culture and Politics: From Puritanism to the Enlightenment, Ed. Perez Zagorin, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1980, p. 15. 55. Nancy G.M. Hartstock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited And Other Essays p. 141. 56. Hartstock, op. cit., p.149. 57. L. S. Koetsier, Natural Law and Calvinist Political Theory, Victoria, Trafford Publishing, 2003, p. 136. 58. Shanahan, op. cit., p. 79. 59. Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, tr. M. Epstein, original date 1911, Charleston, Nabu Press, 2010, kindle edition, loc. 3690-3695. 60. Marlowe, op. cit., 16.12. 61. Idem, 19.21. 62. Kantorowicz, Idem, p. 38 63. Agamben, The Power and the Glory, op. cit., p. 197-259. 64. Idem, p. 451 65. Agamben, op. cit., p. 6
RÉSUMÉS
La différence religieuse n'est paradoxalement pas l'unique origine de la peur dans Massacre à Paris, bien que la pièce de Marlowe porte sur les violences de la Saint-Barthélémy. Au contraire, c'est la représentation du désir mimétique qui y perpétue, tout comme dans la première partie du Henri IV de Shakespeare, la menace de violence intestine qui hante la pièce. La pièce de Marlowe et celle de Shakespeare éclairent toutes deux la façon dont une interprétation genrée de l'agentivité ou de l'auto-détermination du sujet permet de faire émerger et de consolider une inquiétante "zone d'indistinction" qui voit la convergence de "l'individuation et la totalisation des structures du pouvoir moderne2". Cette intersection complexe apparaît de manière évidente chez Marlowe et Shakespeare dans les représentations des luttes du souverain et des sujets pour établir et asseoir le pouvoir. Ces œuvres suggèrent en réalité que le discours genré façonne les représentations de la soif de pouvoir et de reconnaissance du sujet en même temps que la dépendance du souverain au peuple. De manière plus signifiante encore, ces pièces montrent l'importance du discours sur le genre et le désir dans le passage du féodalisme à un premier capitalisme marchand et aux prémices d'une démocratie libérale.
Surprisingly, mere religious difference is not the only source of fear in Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris despite the play’s focus on the religious violence of the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre. Instead, like Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, representation of mimetic desire perpetuates the threat of internecine violence that haunts the play. Indeed, Marlowe’s Massacre and Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV both illuminate the way in which a gendered interpretation of the agentic, or self-determining
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subject, incites and reinforces an uncanny “zone of indistinction . . . at which techniques of individualization and totalizing procedures converge.”1 This troubled intersection is evident in Marlowe and Shakespeare’s representations of the sovereign and subjects’ struggle to establish and maintain power. In fact, the plays suggest how this gendered discourse shapes representations of the subject’s desire for power, or even recognition, and in the same instance the sovereign’s dependence on popular appeal. Most significantly, however, the plays trace the roles the discourse of gender and desire play in the changing political order from feudalism to an emergent merchant capitalism and the stirrings of liberal democracy.
INDEX
Mots-clés : Capitalisme marchand, démocratie libérale, désir, deux corps du roi, féminin abject, peur religieuse, zone d'indistinction Keywords : Abject feminine, Desire, King’s Two Bodies, Liberal Democracy, Merchant Capitalism, Religious Fear, Zone of Indistinction
AUTEUR
KYLE DIROBERTO The University of Arizona, Sierra Vista
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Terrorism and Culture: Macbeth, 9/11 and the Gunpowder Plot
Graham Holderness
1 Robert Appelbaum defines terrorism as “violence undertaken to advance a political agenda”.1 Without the latter, violence is just violence, and doesn’t qualify as terrorism. Terrorism always “sends a message”, is invariably “violence that speaks and … in speaking, has the power of changing power”.2 In connecting terrorist violence with the agenda it purports to serve (or as we used to say, the end with the means) Appelbaum also facilitates their disengagement, by implying that the political purpose cannot be reduced to its chosen method (the end might justify the means). If terrorism is “the strategic use of violence to advance a political agenda”,3 then what Martha Crenshaw calls its “tactical aspect”4 cannot simply be identified with its parent agenda, and the political cause that invests in terrorist violence cannot be invalidated by reference to the terrorist violence alone. Any analysis of terrorism that seeks to ignore or minimise its constitutive political “agenda” is likely to misinterpret its significance. If we respond to terrorism as meaningless violence, we are simply refusing to listen to its ‘message’. If we view terrorism solely from the point of view of its victims, we are more likely to perceive it as random and arbitrary, and again fail to comprehend its communication. If we regard a particular act of terrorism as something literally unspeakable, unthinkable, impossible to comprehend - as has been said of both the Gunpowder Plot and 9/115 - then we will never understand, either historically or politically, what terrorism is all about.
2 The example Appelbaum provides in his essay “Shakespeare and Terrorism” is the murder of David Riccio by Darnley, Ruthven and Moray in 1566.6 Clearly an act of terrorism conducted by Protestant men, designed to intimidate Queen Mary herself and her Catholic supporters, the savage act of butchery was not (according to Appelbaum) without political meaning. In George Buchanan’s History of Scotland (1690) Riccio’s murder is narrated as “a symbolic assertion of republican values”. The historian attributes to the killers a “political program“ very similar to his own republican theory of sovereignty. In assassinating the Queen’s favourite, they were sending ”a message about governance”.7 The message was in essence that the Queen was guilty of both
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tyranny and nepotism, where she ought to have ruled under the law and with the consent of the nobility; and its intended audience included the Queen herself, her allies and the nation at large. For both Buchanan and Appelbaum “the communicative nature of the violence”8 is more important than the nature of the violence itself. To qualify as terrorism - as the murder of Riccio clearly does - the violence must speak for itself. The Protestant nobles could just have communicated their political programme to Mary through more conventional channels; but they chose instead to demonstrate both its necessity, and their power to perform it, in the form of an object-lesson - by stabbing her favourite to death in her presence.
3 Riccio’s murder did not change relations of power in the intended way, as the subsequent execution of the conspirators and the later murder of Darnley abundantly demonstrate. But Appelbaum’s point is not about whether terrorism is or is not successful,9 but about what it has to say, the language its violence speaks. The murder was “a case of violence meant to send a message with the power of changing power”.10 The Gunpowder Plot also failed in its objective of “modifying power relations”,11“but it nonetheless had a very clear political purpose. That manifest and easily intelligible ‘political agenda” was nonetheless systematically denied by the Stuart state and its apologists. The Plot was an attempted act of unprecedented cruelty and evil - an “offense that no man can express” (Edward Coke)12; “an hyperdiabolical devilishness” (William Barlowe).13 Appelbaum summarises the official response to the Plot as a programme of “depoliticization”: there was no reason for it, according to the state, other than envy and evil; it had nothing to say about power or justice. It testified only, in King James’s own words, quoted from the 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians, to “the mystery of iniquity”.14
4 In his judicious discussion of my essay “Shakespeare and Terror”15, which links Macbeth, the Gunpowder Plot and 9/11, Appelbaum sees my argument as a retrospective collusion with the Stuart state, whose agents insisted that the intended violence of the Gunpowder Plot exhausted its meaning in violence, and had nothing else to say. He applauds my interpretation of Macbeth as an embodiment of the ‘terrorist imagination’; agrees that the the play is a “total response to the idea of the Plot”; and accepts the “provocative statement” that Macbeth “is himself the Gunpowder Plot”,16 even supplementing this assertion with another, contemporary parallel: “Macbeth is jihad”.17 But he observes that by claiming Macbeth has no political agenda – “There is in Macbeth no notion of effecting political change, destroying tyranny, bringing about an improved state of affairs”18 - I am concurring with Barlowe, Coke and James I that “the Plot was without any purposes beyond vaulting ambition”.19 And in denying it political recognition, I am also disqualifying it from Appelbaum’s definition of terrorism.
5 In Terrorism Before the Letter, Appelbaum seems to some degree to concur with what he understands me to be saying of the Gunpowder Plot: “[i]n retrospect it may seem that King James was certainly right, that the 9/11 of early modern England would have been a catastrophe beyond imagination […].”20 But there is a qualification: [B]ut that is because Coke (and we along with him) look at what might have been from the side of the intended victims … we are happy to resist the meaning of the intended violence. But from the opposite point of view, if the Plot had succeeded, who knows what the climate of discourse would have been in the end? Who knows how its message would have been disambiguated?21
6 Had the Gunpowder Plot been successful, a Catholic monarchy might have sponsored a complete re-write of its “founding violence” in the course of forming a state that would
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perhaps have been no worse than the Jacobean one. To align ourselves with the view that both the Gunpowder Plot and 9/11 represent forms of terrorist violence that remain (rhetorically of course), unspeakable, unprecedented, immeasurable (“no man can express it, no example pattern it, no measure contain it”)22 is in Appelbaum’s view to court misunderstanding. We should also consider, he argues, what was meant by the intended or successful perpetrator, look at the events from both sides, disambiguate the speech of violence so we can hear its political voice.
7 Now of course terrorism speaks, means something, communicates a message. It is “propaganda by deed”, or it is not terrorism. The perpetrators of the failed Gunpowder Plot were absolutely explicit about their political programme and the symbolism of the atrocity itself: they spoke to their captors, extensively and explicitly. Fawkes explained to the Council that they had intended to “purge the kingdom of perfidious heresies”; and chose to destroy Parliament because it was there that true religion “had been universally suppressed”. The plotters even set up their own equivalent of a video testament, having a ship at the ready to cross to Europe and “give news of the deed to the rulers of Christendom”. They were already planning for a different future.
8 Here the parallel with 9/11 - an act of “performance violence”, aimed at targets of huge “symbolic significance” (as Jurgensmeyer23 puts it) - is clear. The terrorists of 9/11 attacked (or tried to attack) the same primary symbols of economic, political and military power (the WTC, Pentagon, possibly Congress), and Bin Laden explained exactly why and what for in his October 2001 videotape: America was the “oppressor”, the murderer of Muslims, and should immediately withdraw from “the land of Muhammed”. You’d have to be deaf not to hear messages like these.
9 So does that condition of “unspeakability” arise from a perspective which simply sides with the victims of terrorism, as suggested by Peter C. Herman: “to those on the receiving end, terrorism is unspeakable”?24 Why would anyone do this to me? What have I done to deserve this? I can’t understand it. Here again a common rhetoric connects the Plot with 9/11. ‘A production without a match’, said Barlow: “a treason without parallel”.25 “Sine nomine”, said Edward Coke26 (suggesting Shakespeare’s “a deed without a name”). And King James couldn’t find words to express it: “the like was never either heard or read”: “Vox facibus haeret” [my voice sticks in my throat]’.27 “’Something’ that we do not yet really know how to identify, determine, recognize, or analyse”, was how Derrida described 9/11,28 a “limit event”, according to Kristiaan Versluys, “that defeats the normal process of meaning making”.29
10 And so as academics, as intellectuals, we insist that the unspeakable be given a voice, we call for a “long, wide view of terrorist violence”,30 a “more nuanced approach”. 31 One of the tactics of this demand is to invoke the dogma of moral equivalence: there is little if any difference between the terrorist and those he attacks. If we look beyond the explosion and our fear, and decode its message, we might hear something that is not unreasonable. After all, are we not as bad as they are? “The threatened violence of the Gunpowder Plot” says Peter Herman, “[…] was an integral but occluded aspect of the Jacobean state”; while “a more complex sense of [9/11] recognises American complicity and ’the brutality of enhanced interrogation’”.32 In both cases effect is neatly elided with cause, reprisal cited as originating violence. Maybe I hit you first, but you started it. Terry Eagleton writes of “the ineradicable terror that lies at the heart of social existence”.33
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11 The doctrine of moral equivalence derives ultimately from earlier post-structuralist work on Shakespeare. Alan Sinfield for example stated that in Macbeth, and in the play’s critical reception, a clear distinction is visible between “the violence the state considers legitimate and that it does not”.34 According to this ideological perspective “violence is good ... when it is in the service of the prevailing dispositions of power; when it disrupts them, it is evil”.35 This ‘qualitative’ distinction between kinds of violence otherwise indistinguishable seems ‘natural’ only because we are ideologically trained not to think of state violence as violence at all. This distinction parallels Zizek’s contrast between “subjective” and “systemic” violence. We notice the former, “acts of crime and terror”, and are blind to the latter, which provides our standard of a normal “non-violent zero”: “Systemic violence is something like the ’dark matter’ of physics, that counterpart to an all-too-visible subjective violence”.36 Sinfield’s argument is that the play can be read either conventionally - as implicitly endorsing state violence, and condemning the violence of disruption and insurrection; or oppositionally - as equating the two. The play contains both possibilities, and the ‘qualitative’ difference lies in the chosen strategy of reading.
12 Frances Barker’s reading of Macbeth in The Culture of Violence also distinguishes between illegitimate and legitimate violence, between “the transgressive deed” and “violence in the name of the restitution of legitimacy”.37 He concedes that these forms of violence are remarkably similar in the play, even twinned with one another, as the play invests its poetry both in authority and in the energies that seek to overthrow it. Barker concludes however that ultimately Macbeth “exists precisely to warn against such an alteration in the sovereign order”.38 The play shares in the tendency of culture to collude with violence.
13 When Macbeth is described as confronting the rebel Cawdor on the battle-field with “self-comparisons” (1.2.56), the audience is made aware of likeness as well as difference. This, together with Macbeth’s rapid alternation of titles, indicates that identity here is not fixed, but dispersed among patterns of similarity. The violent killing of Macdonald thus prepares us for the murder of Duncan, and ultimately for Macbeth’s own death, which parallels both his initial repression of rebellion, and his act of regicide. Although Duncan’s sacred kingship can produce an ideological language of organicism, social totality, kinship and family, the play makes absolutely explicit the bloody violence that underpins it: [H]e faced the slave Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’chaps And fixed his head upon our battlements. (1.2.21-23)39
14 Royal authority, whether it be gracious Duncan’s or canny Malcolm’s, requires as its legitimising totem the severed head of a defeated enemy, Macdonald or Macbeth. Thus the text reveals the unmistakable similarity between “subjective” and “systemic” violence, and simultaneously represents and demystifies state power.40 For Barker, Macbeth is “the tragedy that comes closest to dramatising the monarch in presence”, but also comes closest to “dramatising, only just in the wings, the violent overthrow of that same sovereignty”.41 The play is able “both to confirm the ideology of kingship in an unassailable positivity, and also to heighten and intensify the assault on that sovereignty which inheres in the act of political murder and ’social’ violation at the centre of the play”.42 Ultimately, however, for Barker Macbeth presents “violence in the name of restitution of legitimacy” as “wholly to be sanctioned”, while the
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“transgressive deed” of dissident violence is ‘“punished savagely”.43 Thus the play ends with “a crushing victory for reparation”.44
15 These readings stand as typical New Historicist and cultural materialist takes on Macbeth. The play presents both state violence and terrorist violence, but colludes with state violence in a tribute to legitimacy. Sinfield and Barker both see the play in this way, as Sinfield admits that it has to be read “against the grain” to produce a radical reading. Here then, where “power is constituted through theatrical celebrations of royal glory and theatrical violence visited upon enemies of that glory”, Shakespearean tragedy is “one of power’s essential modes”.45 Here we see the “family resemblance between authority and its Other”.46 The context of the play could hardly be more conducive to this collusion of culture with power if, as some scholars suggest, Macbeth was played before James I at Hampton Court in August 1606, possibly before the first such assembly of state officials gathered since the discovery of Gunpowder Plot. Jonathan Goldberg notes that the play begins and ends with severed heads;47 and Leonard Tennenhouse suggests that those severed heads represent a historical reversal of fortune parallel to November 1605. The assassin’s head is served up to the king in an inversion of terror that offers violence to the sovereign as a gift: “The play’s tribute to James comes as Shakespeare signals the reversal of Macbeth’s reversal […] by having Macduff hold up the severed head of a tyrant.” 48
16 Just as at the beginning Macbeth plays the hangman in enacting a ritual disembowelling and decapitation of Macdonald, so at the end Macduff echoes the executioner’s cry: “Behold where stands/Th’usurper’s cursed head” (5.9.21-2). Both killings point unmistakably towards Tyburn, and the ritual slaughtering of the Gunpowder Plotters and other Catholics. The answer to terror is war on terror: “blood will have blood” (3.4.122). But because in a war on terror the innocent suffer along with the guilty, such violence shows, in Richard Wilson’s words, “the history of terror humanist culture shares with the tyranny it opposes”.49
17 Scholars argue about the date of Macbeth, and whether or not the single Folio text we have may incorporate several different versions of the play. But there is general agreement that there is a close relationship between the play and the Gunpowder Plot: If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence and catch With his surcease, success, that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all – here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. (1.7.2-7)
18 “Blow” was the word James claimed to have understood (as “explosion” rather than “impact”) from the Monteagle letter, when he alone “did upon the instant interpret and apprehend some dark phrases therein” in a manner contrary to any imaginable customary or rational elucidation.50 Later Sir Edward Coke alluded to “those dark words of the letter concerning a terrible blow”.51 Gary Wills observes that in the aftermath of the Plot, words like “train” and “blow” could never have been innocently deployed, any more than “sneak attack” after Pearl Harbour, or “grassy knoll” after the assassination of JFK.52 The words would always invoke that unimaginable, unspeakable crime, both terrifying and sublime: O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive, nor name thee. (2.3.56-7)
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19 That of course was the official, authorised response to the Plot, a response mandated by the state propaganda that set out to “blow the horrid deed in very eye/That tears shall drown the wind”. (1.7.24-5) William Barlow, in the sermon preached a few days after the discovery, like Macbeth used the word “blow” in these two senses. The conspirators were like Caligula who ”wished that all the Citizens of Rome, had but one neck, that at one blow he might cut it off“. If successful, the “horrid deed” of the Plot would have had unlimited consequences: “... this lawless fury had, with this blowing up, bin blown in and over the whole nation ... ”.53
20 For the plotters themselves, and for those who felt affinity with them (and who clearly outnumbered the very few who became actively involved), the prospect of “this terrible blow” that might be “the be-all and the end-all” was fatally attractive: a catastrophic destruction of the ruling elite; a liberation of the realm from tyranny and oppression; the apocalyptic advent of a new age of religious liberty, jumping the life to come.
21 There is ample scope for drawing parallels. But I want to focus on the “terrorist imagination” that possesses Macbeth, and of which he is possessed. This play does not, like Julius Caesar, explore political assassination in terms of a multiplicity of motivations, some good, some bad. It does not reflect on the shortcomings of the current state, explore the dilemmas of republican virtue, or envisage the possibilities of a new order. There is in Macbeth no notion of effecting political change, destroying tyranny, bringing about an improved state of affairs. Macbeth doesn’t actually have any reservations about the kingdom, except that he is not king of it; nor does he want to be king to actually do anything with the acquired political power. Everything then is in the desire, the hunger, the passion to pit the self against power, and by destroying power, to authenticate the potency of the self, the force of desire, the triumph of the will.
22 The terrorist imagination is apocalyptic, possessed of an irrational hope that the annihilation of one’s own body and the bodies of others can effect a kind of cleansing purgation of the world, sweeping away its corruption, blowing away its power, clearing a space for the incursion of the divine. “Tame your soul, purify it”, the 9/11 hijackers were instructed. “Fight them until there is no more Fitnah [unbelief]”, says the Qu’ran: “and the worship will all be for Allah (alone in the whole of the world)”. (8.39) The Gunpowder Plot was obviously seen as an averted apocalypse from which the kingdom was mercifully delivered: James told Parliament that his kingship had been saved from two trials, a flood of spilled blood and a fire (the Gowrie Conspiracy and the Gunpowder Plot), which could have been “two great and fearful Doomsdays”.54 By the same token, the hope of destroying “the whole body of the state” at one blow was an aspiration of apocalyptic proportions.
23 Macbeth is, of course, full of apocalyptic language and symbolism, often generalised but often also specifically eschatological: Duncan’s murder is in itself ‘“the great Doom’s image”. (2.3.72) The strongest apocalyptic feeling in the play is that of the time growing short, running out: the kingdom is at hand. That which has always been about to come, is suddenly on its way. “The time between you and your marriage in heaven is very short”.55 Lady Macbeth, on receiving her husband’s letter, feels immediately transported “beyond/This ignorant present”, and able to feel futurity bursting through the immediate. “I feel now/The future in the instant” (1.5.54-6). Barker says of this speech that it betrays an “aspiration which is prepared dynamically to reshape time in a quasi-modernist, if not almost revolutionary apprehension of the present ’instant’ as
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a constellation pregnant, shot through with a desired future”.56 In his analysis this hope is the embryonic revolutionary content of Macbeth, that messianic hope for change in “the entire order of things” which the play’s ultimately legitimist ideology cannot countenance.
24 But in Macbeth what hope lies beyond the change? Freedom, justice, democracy? Anything that Frances Barker would have wanted to see? No: only death. “When the hour of reality approaches, the zero hour ... wholeheartedly welcome death for the sake of God”.57 There will be a future, those men must have been assured, in which the dar al Islam covers the whole world, and their actions would contribute to its eventual victory. But the suicide bomber will not see it. No matter: he already has his reward. They were brought to believe, and presumably must have believed, that they would step off tarmac and into heaven. “Afterwards begins the happy life”. This is what it really means to “jump the life to come”, to “jump the gap between word and deed”,58 to accomplish with one catastrophic action the immediate collapsing of the boundaries between present and future, between this world and the next. There are only two places in which such a sublime transfiguration is conceivable: one is in suicidal terrorism like 9/11, and the other is in art. And there is an “unconfessable complicity” between the two.
25 We can see this complicity, as Terry Eagleton has recently reminded us, in Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent, “the first suicide-bomber novel of English literature”.59 Conrad depicts a corrupt world which he himself would like to see swept away: so he cannot avoid an imaginative sympathy with his own creation the Professor. “What’s wanted” states the Anarchist suicide-bomber, “is a clean sweep and a clear start of a new conception of life”.60 Eagleton points out that this is also “the familiar cry of the avant- gardist who rather than submit to the messiness of history and material process seeks to leap at a bound from present to future, actual to desirable, finite to infinite”.61 To feel, one might say, ‘the future in the instant’ of self-destructive cataclysm.
26 Karlheinz Stockhausen provoked outrage when he confounded art and reality over 9/11, calling it “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos”.62 9/11 created on a grand scale “the leap out of security, out of what is usually taken for granted, out of life, that sometimes happens to a small extent in art”: Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for 10 years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying, just imagine what happened there. You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. By comparison, we composers are nothing. Artists, too, sometimes try to go beyond the limits of what is feasible and conceivable, so that we wake up, so that we open ourselves to another world. 63
27 The fortuitous correspondences with the vocabulary of Macbeth are eerily repetitive: “act”, “dream”, “dispatched”, “wake”. Attempting later to distance himself from his own words (“It’s a crime because those involved didn’t consent. They didn’t come to the ’concert’.”), Stockhausen came even closer to the language of terrorism in Macbeth: “What happened spiritually, this jump out of security, out of the self-evident, this sometimes also happens in art ... or it is worthless” (my emphasis)64. Stockhausen and Macbeth share the same word, “jump” (Sprung), and bring together in a common vocabulary the shared fantasies of aesthetic transcendence and suicidal martyrdom.
28 Macbeth lives beyond the moment of his transcendence into a world devoid of meaning, where there is “nothing serious in mortality” (II.iii.84). Asked if the terrorism
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of Al-Qaida could be identified as a “a quintessential expression of founding violence”, the kind of revolutionary violence that lies at the root of every state, Derrida said that such terrorist violence differs from political violence in that its actions “open onto no future”, it leaves “nothing good to be hoped for”.65 So in Macbeth the millennial rapture of feeling the future in the instant is replaced by the weary fatalism of “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. Everything can be done tomorrow: tomorrow, perhaps, they will finally feel “safe”. Notwithstanding, they remain stranded “here upon this bank and shoal of time”, where tomorrow never comes, since there is “nothing good to be hoped for”.
29 We see, then, why Shakespeare is such an interesting subject for reflections on terrorism. As a man, if Richard Wilson, Stephen Greenblatt66 and others are right in their speculations about Shakespeare’s crypto-Catholicism, Shakespeare could have made the choice to enlist under the banner of religious martyrdom. Perhaps that’s why he was able to dramatise those forbidden desires, that secret jubilation, that messianic hope that seems so much clearer about the coming terrors (which as we know are within our power to bring about), than about the kingdom to come. But if Catholic martyrdom was an option for Shakespeare, it’s one he didn’t take. So simultaneously he was able to depict the reality of that nothingness that would inevitably follow on such violent destruction, and to compare it honestly, if ruefully, with the imperfections of the status quo. Better Malcolm than Macbeth, Shakespeare probably would have said; better James I than Thomas Percy. Better even Bush than bin Laden.
30 Despite their family resemblances, art and terrorism are not analogous but diametrically opposed to one another. The cynicism of Baudrillard’s “terrorist imagination”, or the feverish excitement of Stockhausen’s catastrophic “concert”, give access to an element of the truth about 9/11. Tragedy began with the violence of Dionysian ecstasy, and with sacrifice. But the violence was ritualised and framed, and the human sacrifices, Pentheus or Oedipus, were slaughtered only in imitation. “Philosophical and artistic works”, says Kearney, are […] capable of furnishing some extra, because indirect, insights into the enigma of horror. For both proffer an unnatural perspective on things - by virtue of style, genre and language.67
31 I agree that terrorism speaks, communicates meaning, and conveys a message. But I want to insist that as an ethical and spiritual action it speaks only of itself, exhausts itself in its utterance. In defining terrorism, in Jurgensmeyer’s words, as “the public performance of violent power”68, we should also appreciate that the meaning of a performance is unique and integral, and can’t be assimilated to something outside or beyond it. To say that terrorism is propaganda by deed is not the same as saying that the violence is merely a proxy for the propaganda, or that the propaganda can somehow disown the deed, that something irrational can convert itself into something rational. To return for a moment to the death of Riccio. A drunken husband butchers his wife’s lover before her eyes; surely one of the worst cases of domestic violence on record. A gang of Protestant men, fired up by John Knox’s sermons against the monstrous regiment of women, show the queen how things should be done in a man’s world. The message is sectarian hatred and masculine violence; and the medium is the message. There is no way this crime can be re-written as an exemplification of republican virtue. Terrorism speaks: but its words are daggers; its grammar cruelty, its syntax innocent blood. In ISIS we have a terrorist organisation that collapses all such intellectual distinctions, and acknowledges no difference between war and peace,
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combatant and civilian. ISIS has no intelligible ‘secular and strategic’ goal, like ridding what they see as Muslim lands of foreign troops. Its use of terror is not tactical, it is constitutive. Does ISIS use terror to found an Islamic state? Or does it want an Islamic state in order to freely deploy terror?
32 I can only reiterate my reading of Macbeth in “Shakespeare and Terror”: the assassin is driven by fear; and obsessively seeks, with an apocalyptic urgency, a “cleansing purgation” of the world from that which he fears most, the power of others. Yes of course Macbeth wants to found a dynasty, and can’t bear the thought of Banquo’s seed succeeding him. But what he wants to see in that vision of the future is his own lineage, a succession of little Macbeths stretching out to the crack of doom. But this is not a political agenda: it’s a rejection of all politics to make room for an infinite extension of the self. “For mine own good/All causes must give way” (3.4.141-2).
33 Setting the language of Islamic terrorism (such as the 9/11 Spiritual Manual)69 alongside testimony from the Gunpowder Plotters and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, we can clearly see a commonality of discourse. “Fear is a great form of worship” says the 9/11 Manual, “and the only one worthy of it is God”. At his trial Fawkes bore a “stern look, as if he would frighten death with a frown”.70 “Why do I yield to that suggestion”, asks Macbeth, “whose horrid image doth unfix my hair/And make my seated heart knock at my ribs/Against the use of nature?” (1.3.138-41)
34 “Fight them until there is no more Fitnah” says the Quran “and the worship will all be for Allah” (8.39). The Gunpowder Plotters aimed to “purge the realm of perfidious heresy”. 71 “Scour these English hence”, says Macbeth (5.3.58). We will never understand contemporary terrorists, as no less an authority than Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in Paris, recently stated, unless we understand the apocalyptic religion they take literally, and seek to put into practice.72 All three of these historical examples - the Gunpowder Plot, Macbeth, 9/11 - are religious events fuelled by apocalyptic visions. But our interpretative methods are not religious. We eschew doctrine and despise dogma. We think there is always another side to the argument; a message beyond the violence; a meaning to disambiguate. But an ISIS beheading video does not require any disambiguation. It means exactly what it says, and says exactly what it means.
35 Terrorism is evil. Terry Eagleton identifies its root as “the death drive”, which is implacable, vindictive and bottomlessly malevolent, rejoicing in the sight of gouged eye sockets and the bleeding stumps of limbs. It does not simply endorse such destruction, but actively revels in it. It sucks life from death, growing fat on human carnage. … Those who actively pledge themselves to this force commit deeds which can genuinely be described as evil.73
36 Evil. And let me also reiterate that literature has something of value to say about these matters, alongside religion and philosophy. When the real Frances Tresham asked Catesby if participation in the Plot was “damnable”, Catesby insisted it was not. The real 9/11 hijackers were taught to believe they would immediately enter Paradise, to be rewarded for their atrocity: “Afterwards begins the happy life”. Each systematically falsifies his own faith. The fictional Macbeth, infused with Shakespeare’s Protestant Christianity, knows that he is irrevocably damned: “I have given mine eternal jewel” he says, “to the common enemy of man”; and he lives out his life in torments of conscience, “tortures of the mind”. Macbeth is emphatically not jihad, though he commits an act of terrorism. He identifies himself as “that man of sin, even the son of
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perdition” from 2 Thessalonians, the “adversary”, who “exalteth himself against all that is called God, or that is worshipped: so that he doth sit as God in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 3-4). Blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak. Augurs and understood relations have … brought forth The secret’st man of blood. (3.4.128-133)
37 Shakespeare’s great achievement is to reveal to us the ‘enigma of horror’,74 that ‘mystery of iniquity’ that King James accurately identified as lying behind, and within, all terrorism.
NOTES
1. Robert Appelbaum, “Shakespeare and Terrorism”, Criticism, 57.1 (Winter 2015), p. 23-45, p. 26. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Martha Crenshaw, ‘The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behaviour as a Product of Strategic Choice’, in Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, ed. Walter Reich (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 1998), p. 7-24. 5. Jacques Derrida called 9/11 ‘an unspeakable crime’ (Jacques Derrida quoted in Giovanni Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida [University of Chicago Press, 2003], p. 167; and Edward Coke defined the Gunpowder Plot as ‘sine nomine’ (Edward Coke, cited in A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Last Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit, and his Confederates, ed. Henry Garnet [London 1606], sig. D3v2). See below for further examples. 6. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 23-25 7. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 24 8. Ibid. 9. In his book Terrorism Before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland and France 1559-1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), he argues that it never can be: “terrorist violence never can [succeed]. It cannot control its own aftermath”, p. 224. 10. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 28. 11. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 29. 12. Edward Coke, cited in A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Last Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit, and his Confederates, ed. Henry Garnet (London 1606), sig. D3v2. 13. William Barlowe, Sermon Preached at Powles Crosse, the Tenth Day of November Being the Next Sunday After the Discoverie of this Late Horrible Treason (London, 1606), sig. C2v. 14. From the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. 2.7. 15. Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey, “Shakespeare and Terror”, in Shakespeare After 9/11: How a Social Trauma Reshapes Interpretation, edited by Matthew Biberman and Julia Reinhardt Lupton (Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellen, 2011), p. 23-56. 16. Holderness, op. cit., p. 423. 17. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 43. 18. Holderness, op. cit., p. 44.
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19. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 44. 20. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 99. 21. Ibid. 22. Coke, op. cit., sig. D3v2. 23. Mark Jurgensmeyer, ‘Terror Mandated by God’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 9.2 (Summer 1997), p. 17. 24. Peter C. Herman, ‘”A deed without a name”: Macbeth, the Gunpowder Plot, and terrorism’, Journal for Cultural Research, 18.2 (2014), p. 116. 25. Barlowe, op. cit., sig. C4r. 26. Coke, op. cit., sig. D3v. 27. James I quoted in Political Writings, edited by J. Sommerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 149. 28. Derrida quoted in Borradori (2003), p.167. 29. Kristian Versluys, Out of the blue: September 11 and the novel (NY: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 1. 30. Appelbaum, op. cit., p. 26. 31. Herman, op. cit., p. 127. 32. Ibid. 33. Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 17. 34. Alan Sinfield, Faultlines (Berkely: University of California Press, 1992), p. 94. 35. Ibid. 36. Slavoj Zizek, Violence (London: Profile Books, 2009), p. 2. 37. Francis Barker, The Culture of Violence: tragedy and history (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 65-66. 38. Barker, op. cit., p. 64. 39. Quotations from Macbeth, ed. A.R. Braunmuller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 40. Christopher Pye, ‘The Sovereign, the Theatre, and the Kingdome of Darknesse: Hobbes and the Spectacle of Power’, in Stephen Greenblatt, ed., Representing the English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 299. ‘The authoritarian preserves a secret compact with the anarchist’. Eagleton, Holy Terror (2005), p. 9. 41. Barker, op. cit., p. 59. 42. Barker, op. cit., p. 60. 43. Barker, op. cit., p. 66. 44. Barker, op. cit., p. 70. 45. Stephen Greenblatt, ‘”Invisible bullets”: Renaissance authority and its subversion’, in Alan Sinfield and Jonathan Dollimore, eds., Political Shakespeare: new essays in cultural materialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), p. 33. 46. Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: licence, play and power in Renaissance England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988), p. 126. 47. Jonathan Goldberg, ‘Macbeth and Source’, in Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor, eds., Shakespeare Reproduced: the text in history and ideology (London and NY: Methuen, 1987), p. 249. 48. Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: the Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres (London: Methuen, 1986), p. 15. 49. Richard Wilson, ‘”Blood will have Blood”: regime change in Macbeth’, Deutsche-Shakespeare- Gesellschaft-West Jahrbuch, Vol. 143 (2007), p. 16. 50. Quoted in Gary Wills, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 19. 51. Wills, Witches and Jesuits (1995), p. 123. 52. Quoted Wills, op. cit., p. 27.
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53. Quoted Wills, op. cit., p. 21. 54. Quoted Wills, op. cit., p. 19. 55. “Last Words of a Terrorist.” The Guardian, 30 September 2001. Available at [http:// www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/30/terrorism.september113]. Accessed 30 December 2016. The document has been published in H.G. Kippenberg and Tilman Seidensticker, The 9/11 Handbook: Arabic Text, Annotated Translation and Interpretation of the Attacker's Spiritual Manual (London: Equinox, 2006). See also Hans G. Kippenberg, “’Consider that it is a Raid on the Path of God’: The Spiritual Manual of the Attackers of 9/11”, Numen, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2005), p. 29-58. 56. Barker, op. cit., p. 63. 57. “Last Words of a Terrorist” (2001). 58. Frank Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe, Crimes of Art and Terror (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 8. 59. Eagleton, Holy Terror (2005), p. 121. 60. Quoted Eagleton, Holy Terror (2005), p. 123. 61. Ibid. 62. Quoted in Julia Spinola, ‘Monstrous Art’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 September 2001. 63. Stockhausen, quoted Lentricchia and McAuliffe, Crimes of Art and Terror (2003), p. 9-10. 64. Ibid. 65. Derrida quoted in Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror (2003), pp. 167, 113. 66. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: how Shakespeare became Shakespeare (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), pp. 108-110. 67. Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters: interpreting otherness (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 134. 68. Jurgensmeyer, op. cit., p. 17. 69. “Last Words of a Terrorist” (2001). 70. Antonia Fraser, Faith and Treason: the story of the Gunpowder Plot (London: Anchor Books, 1997), p. 219. 71. See H.F. Browne (ed.), Calendar of State Papers: Venice (London: Public Record Office, 1900), vol. 10, p. 289. 72. ‘Bishop Bashes Jihadis’. The Sun, 19 November 2016. Available at [https://www.thesun.co.uk/ news/uknews/2219097/archbishop-of-canterbury-justin-welby-slams-isis-apologists-who-say- group-are-not-islamic-as-he-demands-religious-leaders-take-responsibility-for-terror-fanatics- crimes] [Accessed 30 December 2016]. 73. Eagleton, op. cit., p. 18. 74. Kearney (2002), p. 134.
RÉSUMÉS
Cet article propose une relecture critique du travail de Robert Appelbaum sur Shakespeare et le terrorisme, et plus particulièrement de ses réflexions sur Macbeth et la Conspiration des poudres. Le présent texte vise à démontrer que le terrorisme tel qu’il s’est incarné dans la Conspiration des poudres et le 11 septembre est peut-être en réalité, en dépit de ses motifs affichés, une forme de nihilisme essentiellement destructrice et n’offrant, pour citer Derrida, “rien de bon à attendre”. Ce que le Macbeth de Shakespeare parvient à dévoiler, par le truchement des langages
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poétique et religieux, c’est le “mystère de l’iniquité” (2 Thessaloniciens 2:7) qui sous-tend toute forme de terrorisme.
This article offers a critique of Robert Appelbaum’s work on Shakespeare and terrorism, particularly his reflections on Macbeth and the Gunpowder Plot. It argues that terrorism such as that exemplified by the Gunpowder Plot and 9/11 may, whatever their ostensible motives, be in reality nihilistic, merely destructive and offering (in Derrida’s words) “nothing good to be hoped for”. The achievement of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is to expose, via the languages of poetry and religion, the ‘mystery of iniquity’ (2 Thess. 2.7) that lies behind all terrorism.
INDEX
Keywords : Robert Appelbaum, Gunpowder Plot, Macbeth, nihilism, terrorism, 9/11 Mots-clés : Robert Appelbaum, Conspiration des poudres, Macbeth, nihilisme, terrorisme, 11 septembre
AUTEUR
GRAHAM HOLDERNESS Hertfordshire University
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“Bit[ing] the Law by the Nose”: Shakespeare’s Revisions of Fear and Punishment
Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise
1 In a world ridden with what may seem to be new fears, we are tempted to turn to Shakespeare’s plays as we turn to a sacred text, hoping to find providential lessons and words of comfort, for Shakespeare too lived in a time rife with religious tensions and anxieties about plots and treasons – we desire Shakespeare to be both a prophet and “our contemporary.” Perhaps it would be fairer to say that as scholars, eager to exert just a little more critical distance than that, we turn to Shakespeare in the same way as Patrick Boucheron recently turned to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes of good and bad government in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, enquiring whether they might teach us how to “avert fear” – “conjurer la peur.”1 For Boucheron, the fires, the unruly soldiers, the desiccated fields that are glimpsed on the western wall, supposedly depicting the effects of bad government – or the antithesis of the Republic – in fact translate and materialize the anxiety of the Republic – the slow, inevitable subversion of civic values from within.
2 The “troubled” “heavens” of Macbeth (2.4.6),2 the wind, rain, and thunder of King Lear, the “o’erflowing Nilus” (1.2.42) of Antony and Cleopatra bespeak the diseased state of other common weal about to turn common woe. Boucheron asks whether the frescoes will in effect ward off fear – “le danger sera-t-il écarté?” – and immediately responds in the negative to his own question: “les images n’ont pas ce pouvoir […] la force politique des images consiste précisément à ne rien dérober au regard” (“images do not have that power […] the political power of images consists precisely in concealing nothing from the eye,” my translation).3 Of course, 1606 England is not 1338 Siena, anymore than it is our 2017 more globalized political stage, but might we suppose that the power of Shakespeare’s theatre consists precisely in not concealing anything from the eye, that it addresses fear by becoming a theatre of fears? If so, how does Shakespeare represent fear and what does he do with fear? Does he seek to play with fear or create fear? Does he attempt to deconstruct or demystify fear? My particular focus in this
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paper will be on the dialectics of fear and punishment and the way Shakespeare’s dramaturgy questions both the fear of punishment and punishment as an effective response to fear. I approach these questions through three different lenses, a Foucauldian one, a Hegelian one, and finally through the definitions that are given to fear in early modern religious literature, which appear to be more pertinent in delineating the implications of Shakespeare’s dramatic treatment of fear.
3 In the Year of Lear (a year of fear), James Shapiro argues that it is “no coincidence” if “[t]he year 1606 would turn out to be a good one for Shakespeare and an awful one for England” for the playwright “grasped the dramatic potential of popular reaction to the plot: a maelstrom of fear, horror, a desire for revenge, an all-too-brief sense of national unity, and a struggle to understand where such evils came from.”4 As I started piecing out chastisement scenes that seemed to dramatize the complex interworking of fear with punishment, I was drawn, like Shapiro, to the three great tragedies, Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra, presumably written in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, as well as Measure for Measure, an earlier play, but written quite shortly after the 1603 Main Plot, to which it may well relate. These four plays undoubtedly stage fears, show some of the ways fears are dealt with, and – most importantly for my purpose – attempt to inflict punishment upon traitors. Chastisement scenes are more or less prominent in each one of these plays. Sometimes they relate only to secondary characters or inset plots, or are even reduced to a very short, reported story within the play, as is the case with the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. Other times they constitute the play’s “grand finale,” as is the case with Measure for Measure, even though here the expected executions are overturned in extremis thanks to the Duke’s pardon.
4 Put together, these scenes of chastisement, execution, or reprieve, suggest that punishment is ineffective in deterring from further wrong-doing (Macbeth is not instructed, for instance, by the example of Cawdor’s treason and execution) and that punishment is ineffective in putting an end to fear, for fear breeds hate which, in turn, breeds more fear. Charmian’s warning to her mistress Cleopatra that “In time we hate that which we often fear” may well apply beyond matters of love (1.3.14). Later in the play, at the end of act 3, when Antony is defeated, and at the very moment when Enobarbus is about to turn traitor to his master, the servant sheds light upon another troubling aspect of the mechanism of fear in which the fearlessness and valour of the epic hero, turned tragic, are in fact only a higher level of fear, or fear “in her most exalted mood.”5 “Furious” – that is, seemingly heroic – cruelty grows from the seeds of fear: ENOBARBUS. To be furious, Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still, A diminution in our captain’s brain Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason, It eats the sword it fights with. (3.13.227)
5 The description of Antony by Enobarbus curiously echoes the glorious portrait the captain gives of Macbeth in the liminal lines of the play, suggesting perhaps a secret terror that has yet to be externalized and dramatized in the passage from the heroic account to the direct staging of Macbeth’s troubled spirit: For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name) Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
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Which smok’d with bloody execution, Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage (1.1.18-21)
6 What frightens Enobarbus into treason or desertion is in fact Antony’s more awesome fear. He does not attempt to hedge himself against the same type of chastisement as the one just undergone before his eyes by Thidias, Caesar’s servant, violently whipped by Antony and Cleopatra for bringing bad news. Ironically, Enobarbus will not be punished for deserting his master but kill himself for not having been punished by his master. Though punishment does not dispel fear (whether the fear of the wrong-doer or the righter of wrongs), mercy is not restorative either: it only underscores, by contrast, the vileness of the traitor.
7 Punishment in early modern plays has largely been explored in the past couple of decades by a rich literature of historicist readings building on a Foucauldian perspective.6 Violent punishment is read as a ritual performance enabling political control, a subsuming of discordant bodies into the great body politic as traitors and trespassers are tortured or dismembered to be better reintegrated or absorbed in spectacles where the awesome display of power is not systematically exclusive of carnavalesque festivity.7 Prospero, sole ruler of the island, compares the “afeared” monstrous Caliban, who dreads him more than he dreads the dark Setebos, to beecombs or wax which he has to pinch into form through corporeal forms of punishment (1.3.386). Physical punishment and torture are performed publicly not only as a spectacular warning to others but because they are the performative means of the exercise of power, which is also an exercise of fear. The bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays, it is argued, blur the distinction between the theatre and the scaffold as a space of performance, building on the model of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy and its gusto for executions, however in a somewhat more subdued vein.8 The Shakespearean theatre reenacts the ritual of punishment while keeping it at a certain distance to better bring it into the limelight, revealing its most subtle mechanisms.
8 Though it stages the political assassination of one who is a threat to the body and the laws of the Roman Republic, and not a chastisement ordered by the application of a penal code, Julius Caesar shows Shakespeare pinpointing already at an early stage the impossibility for the performance of the physical ritual of power not to be at once an act of butchery. The violent act of revenge that the plebeians unfairly commit against the poet Cinna (3.3), for bearing the same name as one of the conspirators, only furthers, on a burlesque and fully indiscriminate mode, the butchery of the political assassination. Though fear is part and parcel of such analyses focusing on the tyrannical control of rebellious or extravagant bodies by the body politic (in turn legitimate or illegitimate), it is apprehended mostly as part of the mechanics of the exercise of power, and is largely erased as a “mood”, to use Enobarbus’s term. We are given a commanding view of how the use of fear or terror plays into the exercise of power, but it is seldom explored from within or for itself. To find a more intimate view of the dialectics of fear and punishment, we need to revert to the former, longer Romantic trend of criticism that developed out of Hegel’s readings of Shakespeare, privileging the study of the Shakespearean moral imagination, which remained current down to Harold Bloom.
9 In “Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” Hegel uses Macbeth as an example to distinguish the moral law, expressed in the penal code and generating a fear of something “alien,” from “fate as punishment,” which the philosopher describes as a fear or “awe” of
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oneself. For Hegel, the trespasser’s experience of fear, when submitted to the penal code, is always embodied by another person, i.e., the executor of the sentence or the “lord of this reality.”9 This dread, just as the prospect of punishment that sparks it, is absolute, because alien, and is equated with a fear of death, the ultimate fear. The penal law offers a moral horizon and an incentive to moral betterment; it rests upon a belief in deontological and teleological system as it lays the foundations for duty-driven and purpose-driven action but it does not lay the basis for a truly ethical life in Hegel’s view.10 In the contemplation of one’s fate, on the other hand, life itself becomes its own enemy. Macbeth, the eponymous protagonist of Shakespeare’s most clearly “frightful” tragedy (in that it most explicitly refers to fear than any other in the Shakespearean corpus, rendering with great precision down to the physiological symptoms of fear), stands to a certain extent for both of these types of fear and of punishment. Macbeth clings onto the witches’ prophecy as to the penal law, making their ominous, sentence- like prophecies the rule of his action – in Hegel’s own terms, Macbeth “clung to alien Beings, and so in their service had to trample and slay everything holy in human nature, had at last to be forsaken by his gods (since these were objects and he their slave) and be dashed to pieces on his faith itself.”11
10 At the same time, he stands on the brink of embodying the modern tragic hero, as his fear opens onto a metaphysical experience in which he becomes an enemy and stranger to himself. His famous comment that “Life’s but a walking shadow” (5.5.24) in the last stages of the play articulates not only the baroque topos of the ephemeral and illusory quality of life, but also what Hegel later calls the nullification of one’s own life that comes in “fate as punishment”: only through the killing of life, is something alien produced. Destruction of life is not the nullification of life but its diremption,12 and the destruction consists in its transformation into an enemy. It is immortal, and, if slain, it appears as its terrifying ghost which vindicates every branch of life and lets loose its Eumenides. The illusion of trespass, its belief that it destroys the other’s life and thinks itself enlarged thereby, is dissipated by the fact that the disembodied spirit of the injured life comes on the scene against the trespass, just as Banquo who came as a friend to Macbeth was not blotted out when he was murdered but immediately thereafter took his seat, not as a guest at the feast, but as an evil spirit. The trespasser intended to have to do with another’s life, but he has only destroyed his own, for life is not different from life, since life dwells in the single Godhead. In his arrogance he has destroyed indeed, but only the friendliness of life; he has perverted life into an enemy.13
11 The excess of fear and the fear of self collide with a senseless fearlessness in which life is “its terrifying ghost”: I have almost forgot the taste of fears The time has been, my senses would have cooled To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hai Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts Cannot once start me. — (5.5.9-15)
12 But it is precisely because life appears “as its terrifying ghost,” that this experience of frightful self-estrangement can also give way to a transformation, transcending both fear and punishment, and offer the premises for an ethical life founded on moral imagination. Hegel uses in other places the example of Hamlet.14 “To be or not to be” is an unsolvable question: Hamlet cannot choose life over death or death over life. Unlike
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the hero of classical tragedy, he cannot commit the envisioned suicide nor even blind himself, submitting himself to penal-like punishment. He is trapped in fear and condemned to contemplate his life as an enemy through the process of sublation.
13 Hegel’s reading of the two types of fear and two types of punishment is compelling but problematic notably because of his association of penal punishment and the law to “the spirit of the Jewish people”, as opposed to “fate as punishment”, which keys into the idea of grace that participates in the “Spirit of Christianity.” We cannot deny, however, that discourses on fear, as well as the very experience of fear itself, were already articulated in religious terms in Shakespeare’s day. A contextualization of notions of fear in relationship to punishment in the early modern period and especially in the Christian doctrine of Reformation England may provide a better basis for understanding what sort of dialectics of fear and punishment are really at stake in Shakespeare’s plays and what Shakespeare does with fear.
14 The tension between two types of fear described by Hegel is in fact inherent in the religious thought of the early modern period, and its complex typology of the different kinds of fear, both holy and unholy, charted with much more psychological finesse than we tend to realize in theological texts. One may argue that looking towards soteriological teachings and spiritual comfort literature does not have much to do with the English legal system, its enforcement of punishment and the fears it might have fostered in the early modern period. However, because crimes of treason became more than ever religious crimes against royal supremacy with the Main Plot and the Gunpowder Plot, and because England developed a special penal code to uphold the establishment of its national Church throughout the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, at a symbolical and imaginary level at least, the fear of eternal damnation was in many ways redoubled if not fused with the dread of legal punishment and its executor. Looking more closely at the echoes to spiritual discourses on fear Shakespeare weaves into his plays, enables us to move beyond the acknowledgment of the impressive spectacle of violence and punishment to look at what Shakespeare does with, or to, fear, a disposition which is so inward that, despite its symptoms, it is difficult to fully denote on stage. I would like to suggest that one of the things Shakespeare does with fear is that he subtly shows how the trespasser often embodies or materializes not his own fears but the fears of the executor, thereby revealing, through a system of dramatic reverberation, that trespass, including treason, is not an easy thing to define and that the law (and more specifically the godly law of the godly kingdom of England) in fact generates its own ghosts and dangers. Shakespeare does not deconstruct the law nor explicitly advocate a different penal system than the one prevailing in the society to which he belongs but, as is the case with Lorenzetti’s frescoes of the effects of good and evil government as analyzed by Boucheron, he does not shut his eye on fear, however inward and inherent it is in the executor himself.15
15 Fear, in the early modern experience, is first and foremost the fear of death as the moment of ultimate judgment. Few people in Shakespeare’s age would have been inclined to follow Francis Bacon’s opinion according to which “Nothing is terrible except fear itself.”16 Such an attitude might have been seen as characterizing the fearless self-confidence of atheists, whom no prospect of judgment could frighten (Mark Antony and Macbeth seem to epitomize the irreverent pride and Icarian motif that was also associated with the figure of the atheist in early modern culture). Robert Burton articulates two of the prevalent ideas on the matter in his Anatomy of Melancholy
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when, dealing first with religious melancholy, he suggests that Catholic soteriology leads to despair because of the frightful perspective of the hardships of purgatory and, beyond purgatory, eternal punishment in hell.17 Criticizing the teachings of the Council of Trent, he asks: “good God, how many men have been miserably afflicted by this fiction of Purgatory?”18 While pre-Reformation depictions of purgatory in church frescoes were notably geared at frightening believers into good actions (and the necessity of intercession), it is illusory to think that such representations were not indexed upon a more complex understanding of fear and punishment, as it is illusory to think that in whitewashing these frescoes, Protestant iconoclasts erased the fear of last judgment. Stephen Greenblatt has attempted to demonstrate that Shakespeare’s stage functioned in part as a substitute for such visual depictions of purgatory in becoming a sort of performance of a purgatorial space and furnishing the lost visual support.19
16 One of the most brilliant testimonies of the fear aroused by the prospect of judgment is perhaps the collection of “Holy Sonnets” by John Donne, in which the persona quakes with fear as he comes face to face with death: I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dim eyes any way; Despair behind, and death before doth cast Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh. (sonnet 13, l. 3-8)20
17 However, the sonnet sequence reveals that it is not only this vision of purgatory, where sins are weighed, that frightens the poet’s soul. He is equally terrified by what could be interpreted as a sentence of predestination to damnation, the anxiety that “thou […] wilt not choose me” (sonnet 1, l. 13) or the baffling consideration that “if serpents envious / Cannot be damned; alas, why should I be?” (sonnet 5, l. 3-4). This gestures towards types of fears generated at the other end of the religious spectrum, signaled again by Robert Burton – the way Reformation doctrine, and especially double- predestinarianism, with the hiatus it introduces between crime and punishment, could be conducive of greater fears yet than the belief in the purifying punishments of purgatory.21
18 In fact, one finds a striking continuity between pre-Reformation and post-Reformation understandings and classifications of fear, preparing for the late sixteenth-century Puritan or Godly emphasis on the very positive notion of the “god-fearing” and the opposition between holy types of fear and sinful or interdicted types of fear. The distinction between “filial” and “servile” fear was formulated in scholastic thought.22 Whereas “servile fear” (a taxonomy that foreshadows Hegel’s own analysis) is the mere fear of punishment that may be felt by a servant towards his master, “filial fear” is alike to the reverence a child may feel for his parent. Catholic writers of the very early Reformation period in England, such as William Bonde, in his 1534 A deuoute epystle of treaty for them that ben tymorouse and fearefull in conscience, advised that holy fear lead to the exercise of charity. Servile fear, on the other hand, risked being indiscreetly used and would then displease God.23 It seems that the idea of the use of servile fear as a dubious political tool may be contained within such an understanding. Roger Edgeworth in a 1540 sermon entreating to “godly fear” distinguished more finely between “carnal and worldly fear” of losses in this life, “servile fear” of punishment in hell, and “filial and charitable fear” thanks to which “servile fear” is abolished.24 Interestingly, however, the experience of “servile fear” was not all together ill, in that
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it could gradually lead to a better sense of justice and a turn of the soul toward filial fear. Protestant reformers were going to use these distinctions and ambiguities to forward a different soteriology. But both traditions testify to the growing turn “inward” of spirituality in the sixteenth century and the consideration of natural fear as an element that needed to be addressed and be eased by theologies of comfort and instruction on well-dying.
19 William Perkins, the prime Calvinist theologian of the later Elizabethan Protestant Church, seemingly polarizes the typology of fear by contrasting holy fear and “forbidden fear,” which is when one looks only to the punishment without consideration for the ethical value of one’s acts. In his Whole Treatise of the cases of conscience he defines “feare” in general as a Christian “inward” virtue pertaining to the believer’s adoration of God, along with Obedience, Patience, and Thankfulness. Holy fear, for him, is “not a feare of the offence alone, but of the offence and punishment together, and of the offence in the first place” whereas forbidden or sinful fear is that “of punishment alone.”25 He is also intent on turning his treatise into a work of consolation as well as of admonition, for, as a theologian and pastor, he seeks to take into account the psychological needs of the faithful. Thus, he recognizes that there can be more natural forms of fear. He carefully explains that fear can arise either from a disturbed conscience or from a disturbed imagination but that it is not always easy for the fearful person to distinguish between the two. In the first case, fear derives from sin and can only be cured by Christ, but in the second case it derives from melancholy distempers, or pathologies, and can be cured thanks to the intervention of Physicians: Therefore the fourth and last helpe, is the arte of Physick, which serues to correct and abate the humour, because it is a meanes by the blessing of God, to restore the health, and to cure the distemper of the bodie. And thus much touching the trouble of mind, caused by Melancholy.26
20 In both Catholic and Protestant early modern understandings of fear, the moment of punishment, bet it only moderate chastisement or an execution, becomes a moment of trial, a test of the believer’s repentance. If the trespasser wants to die well, he must shun and overcome the sinful fear of his impending punishment, showing instead reverence (or holy fear) for God. From a Catholic perspective then, dying well, becomes one of the means to salvation. From a predestinarian perspective, the trespasser’s ability to surmount his natural fears and demonstrate reverent fear of God instead becomes one of the legible signs of his salvation.
21 Macbeth can be read along the lines of such early modern typologies of fear. Testimony of godly fear at the hour of death, or, at least, testimony of the spectacle of a godly death, is given from an early stage of the play as a foil for “brave Macbeth” who “disdains fortune with his brandish’d steel” (1.2.18-19), when Malcolm recounts the traitor Cawdor’s execution: DUNCAN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not Those in commission yet returned? MALCOLM. My liege, They are not yet come back. But I have spoke With one that saw him die: who did report That very frankly he confess’d his treasons, Implored your highness’ pardon and set forth A deep repentance: nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death
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To throw away the dearest thing he owed, As ’twere a careless trifle. (1.4.1-12)
22 Duncan’s ambiguous reply, however, to this reported testimony casts a shadow on this ultimate expression of master- and god-fearingness. “There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face,” he declares (1.4.13-14). But is he speaking about Cawdor’s unexpected treason here, or the moment of the ultimate, godly spectacle of his death?
23 Though Shakespeare situates the action of his play far before the days of the Reformation, this inserted narrative of a scene of punishment and repentance calls to mind late sixteenth-century accounts of executions, such as that of the Jesuit priest and poet Robert Southwell, a close friend of Henry Garnet, superior of the English Jesuit Mission from 1586 on, who, despite his efforts to discourage Robert Catesby from carrying out the Gunpowder Plot, was also accused of treason, tried and executed in 1606. The main charge in Garnet’s case was that of equivocation, as he had heard Catesby’s intentions at confession but had not warned the crown directly, keeping the information under the seal of confessional. While Garnet’s trial has repeatedly been linked to Shakespeare’s treatment of equivocation in Macbeth, the account of Southwell’s 1595 torture and execution offers an unnoticed parallel to the short inserted story of the Thane of Cawdor’s execution. Arrested by Topcliffe in 1592 for treason, i.e., for having practiced Catholic rites in private homes in England, Southwell was in fact the first Jesuit to be charged with equivocation27 and was finally sentenced to death three years later. Testimonies of Southwell’s torture and execution reveal that all witnesses, including a vast majority of Protestants, were impressed by his admirable behavior. Accounts stress his fortitude, his ability to overcome his fears, and, therefore, to manifest his true devotion.28 This impression was apparently shared even by the executioners, who, stirred to pity, would have pulled on his legs to help him die faster after the hanging and before the disembowelment and quartering, usually performed on the agonizing but still living traitor. Unlike Cawdor, he did not confess to treason but only to have been a Catholic priest and true believer. Yet, similarly to Cawdor, “Nothing in his life” became it “like his leaving it.”
24 In contrast to these spectacles of repentance or stoic enduring, Macbeth’s sinful fears, in which he seems to be paradoxically fearless of any sort of punishment, may be inspired by the devil. From a stark predestinarian perspective, the physiological symptoms of dread he experiences could be seen to reveal his predestined damnation. The symptoms are poignantly described by the damned character himself when he speaks of the “horrid image” of the still unaccomplished murder of Duncan which haunts his mind as soon as he is made Thane of Cawdor, “unfix[ing] his hair” and “mak[ing] [his] seated hear knock at [his] ribs” (1.3.145-146), or yet in the unnatural vision he has of the dagger in which his eyes are “made the fools o’ th’other senses” (2.1.51). This is not to say that Shakespeare adheres to such a reading but he dramatizes it as one of the possible readings. The final couplet of Macbeth’s dagger soliloquy, which “summons” Duncan “heaven or to hell”, seems to mime the arbitral sentence of the predestinarian God, unless these horrid images are only the symptoms of a distempered imagination. Symbolically, Macbeth embodies at once the traitor, trespasser and damned sinner, ridden with fears signaling his damnation, and the executor of another man’s sentence. If he prefers to slay both guards and king at night in their sleep, it is perhaps never to contemplate his own image and dread in the terrified faces of his victims. Through the overlapping of the figure of the damned
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traitor and the executor, Shakespeare does by no means endorse a predestinarian understanding of fear. Rather, he chooses not to close his eyes upon these anxieties and reveals on stage how these anxieties and imaginings may in fact be born from within the system of values that allegedly tries to keep these same anxieties at bay.
25 Interestingly, in the final act of the play, the doctor’s diagnosis concerning Lady Macbeth’s illness, recalls the careful distinction in contemporary theological literature between natural fear or melancholy, that can be “abated” by the physician through God’s blessing, and unnatural or sinful fear, against which the physician is powerless: Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets: More needs she the divine than the physician. God, God forgive us all! Look after her; Remove from her the means of all annoyance, And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night: My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight. I think, but dare not speak.
26 Whether they are damned or not – Shakespeare cares little to determine so –, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have come to embody the monstrous ghosts of a social structure that feeds on and fuels its own fears.
27 The early modern typology of holy fear and sinful fear may again furnish a key for reading the scene of Gloucester’s violent blinding in King Lear. The violence of the chastisement led many, including Samuel Beckett, to believe that this scene was virtually unstageable as such. Yet, the violence of this punishment is mitigated when compared to the early modern practice of hanging, training, and quartering traitors. Plucking out the eyes of a trespasser was a medieval treatment inflicted upon traitors and adulterers, as it was a common punishment used against early Christians. The symbolism of the type of chastisement Shakespeare chooses is in any case multilayered: while it identifies Gloucester as a traitor to Lear’s daughters, it may also discreetly reminisce the character’s adultery of old (that which lead him to give birth to his natural son Edmund), and signal his ultimate identity as a stoic and true Christian, undergoing unfair persecution. Gloucester remains remarkably calm throughout the ordeal, at least if we follow the speech indicators rather than later stagings of the play. The dissipation of the physiological symptoms of fear show him to have become truly repentant and god-fearing: “O my follies! Then Edgar was abused / Kind gods, forgive me that and prosper him” (3.7.97-98).
28 Regan’s use, on the other hand, of exclamations and the haltering rhythm of her speeches betray that she is more frightened than the victim of her punishment: “Wherefore to Dover?”, “filthy traitor”, “how now, dog”. While her name etymologically suggests kingship, it may also derive from the Gaelic Irish adjective ríodhgach, meaning “furious.” Her anger turns into dread, preventing her from responding to Gloucester’s question right after she has cut off a piece of his beard: These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin Will quicken, and accuse thee. I am your host. With robber's hands my hospitable favours You should not ruffle thus. What will you do? (3.7.39-42)
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29 To a certain extent, it is Gloucester himself who verbally performs his own punishment before Regan and Cornwall actually blind him when he explains that he sent Lear to Dover to protect him from the type of chastisement he himself is about to endure: Because I would not see thy cruel nails Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs. (3.7.59-61)
30 Gloucester’s fear is all inward and godly, as he calls upon himself a punishment he takes in the end to be a godsend. Most stagings of the horrific scene highlight the gory quality of the mutilation, in keeping with accepted ideas about the Elizabethan relish for blood on stage. Yet, directors might be more faithful to Gloucester’s ultimate stoicism and acceptance as translated by the text in showing him with his back to the audience and concealing his hideously mutilated face to let the audience read instead the horror on the faces of his punishers. Gloucester has indeed acted treacherously towards Regan and Cornwall but what he comes to materialize and reveal, are the sinful fears of the executors.
31 Similar reverberations occur in two chastisement scenes in Antony and Cleopatra, though they concern much more secondary characters and bring together a sense of the burlesque in association with violence. The first one takes place, or nearly takes place, soon after Antony is “bound unto Octavia” (2.5.69) by marriage. A messenger is sent to Cleopatra’s court to bring her the news. Though he is no traitor and only an informer, he is immediately confused by Cleopatra with the contents of the message he bears. She strikes him and promises to perpetrate upon him the same chastisement as Regan and Corwall inflicted upon Gloucester: “Hence horrible villain, or I’ll spurn thine eyes, / Like balls before me! I’ll unhair thy head” (2.5.77-78). The second one, already mentioned above at the beginning of the present essay, occurs at the end of act 3 when Thidias, he too a herald of ill fate who has been sent to try to convince Cleopatra to rally Octavius Caesar, is whipped before Enobarbus. His face is made to reflect and make visible the executors’ fear once more: “Whip him fellows,” orders Antony, “Till like a boy you see him cringe his face / And whine aloud for mercy” (3.13.121-123). All of these plays then, Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra, presumably written in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot and testifying to the fears of a nation suspicious of further religious treasons, show how difficult it is to pronounce fair judgment and enact fair punishment, for who can tell whether their fears are sinful or holy in the end? Whether these are caused by the criminal’s conscience or simply by a disturbed imagination? Indeed, “There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face.” Or who can say whether the fears of the punished are not simply the ghosts of the fears generated by the body politic but which sustains its structure and cohesion thereby? Traitors themselves may secretly be the temples of godly fears or, when their fears are mostly unnatural, they may become in the face of their impending damnation, models of the deepening of self-consciousness, which stands at the beginning of the ethical life, according to Hegel.
32 Measure for Measure, written a few years earlier, in 1603 or 1604, also gives shape to an impending sense of danger and pervasive fear. At one level, it may be read as allegorizing the discovery of the Main Plot leading to the sentences to death of Lord Cobham, Griffin Marham, and Walter Raleigh (represented by the slanderer Lucio in the play) for treason, though these men would obtain reprieves for various reasons. Shakespeare satirizes Angelo's, or the Duke deputy’s use of the moral law to his own
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personal benefit. He stands as the figure of the Puritan hypocrite who “bites the law by the nose” (3.1.119) in self-interest.29 Claudio, who is condemned at an early stage in the play and sentenced to death for fornication, at first seems to embody the cool stoicism of one who knows he has not in fact committed a sin: “If I must die, / I will encounter darkness as a bride / And hug it in my arms” (3.1.89-91). But the prospect of his impending death makes him lose faith and fall prey to “the fear of death,” to the point that he even encourages his own sister to sin in order to save him: Ay, but to die, and go we know not where […] ’tis too horrible. The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death. […] What sin you do to save a brother’s life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far That it becomes a virtue. (3.1.129, 139-143, 146-148).
33 The only character to remain unimpressed by his own death sentence is Barnardine, a murderer, who is to replace Claudio secretly on the scaffold. When Abhorson, the executioner, comes to fetch him in his cell, Barnardine is drunk. But this in fact turns out to be less of a carnavalesque gesture of resistance to the fear of death than a clever technique to escape the death penalty. Well versed in the religious culture of Shakespeare’s one times, Barnardine knows that a drunk man cannot be put to death in a state of semi-conscience, which would obscure whether he is ultimately justified or reprobate.30 As the Duke in disguise himself declares: “A creature unprepared, unmeet for death / And to transport him in the mind he is / Were damnable” (4.3.49-51). The terrifying execution scene, which is the work of Angelo, who rules by fear and by the rod, is ultimately overturned by the gracious pardon and mercy of Duke Vincentio, who stands as the ultimate figure of Justice and the double for King James I.
34 Yet, the Duke’s ambiguous attitude towards Lucio in the final lines of the play, betray that Shakespeare is also keeping his eyes open on the secret fears of the royal double in his play, of this all-too merciful executor. Lucio begs the duke not to be punished, for his slander was “spok[en]” “but according to the trick” (5.1.529). The Duke himself has done nothing but play a trick on everyone throughout the play. He ultimately “remits” Lucio’s “other forfeits” but enforces the sentence to have him marry a “punk” which, for Lucio is the equivalent of a “pressing to death, whipping, and hanging” (5.1.545). The Duke’s appeal to have his “pleasure herein executed” (5.1.544) nonetheless because “slandering a prince deserves it” (5.1.546) may suggest that the only punishment he enforces in the end testifies to his innermost fears. In sending most characters to a “worthier place” through his mercy, but condemning Lucio to this abhorred marriage, Duke Vincentio, who seemed to stand up to the frightening, Puritan hypocritical penal code, performs, just as arbitrarily as the predestinarian God, sentences of salvation and damnation according to his “pleasure.”
35 Though mercy triumphs in this “problem” comedy, here, as in the tragedies written in 1606, all fears have not been dispelled. Shakespeare keeps an eye open on the anxieties that are inherent in kingly mercy. Through the use of complex dramatic framing devices based on mirror effects and reverberations, that turn the (supposed) trespassers into the image of the executors’ fears, Shakespeare creates a special perspective, that is not unlike the theatrical and strident effects built into the pictorial
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space of Lorenzetti’s frescoes, enabling the viewer to look at Peace, sitting “on her podium, so beautiful in her immaculate dress,”31 looking at her own ghosts on the western wall of the Sala dei Nove of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.
NOTES
1. Patrick Boucheron, Conjurer la peur. Essai sur la force politique des images, coll. “Points histoire”, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2015 [2013]. 2. All Shakespeare references are to The RSC Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. Complete Works, ed. Jonothan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, London, Royal Shakespeare Company and Macmillan, 2008 [2007]. 3. Boucheron, op. cit., p. 210-211. 4. James Shapiro, The Year of Lear, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015, p. 7, 9. 5. The phrase is, of course, a reference to Wordsworth’s famous definition of imagination as “reason in her most exalted mood” yet the term “mood,” it shall be noted, is also used by Shakespeare in the following passage from Antony and Cleopatra. 6. The chief source of inspiration here is Michel Foucault’s Surveiller et Punir (1975), and especially the first chapters “Le corps des condamnés” and “L’éclat du supplice.” For an English translation see Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York, Vintage Books, 1995. 7. See in particular Charles Mitchell, Shakespeare and Public Execution, Lewiston, New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 2004; Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999; Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750, New York: Longman, 1999, and “‘Last Dying Speeches’: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England”, Past and Present 107 (1985), 144-167. 8. See, for instance, Andreas Höfele, Stage, Stake, and Scaffold Humans and Animals in Shakespeare’s Theatre, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011. 9. Friedrich Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate”, in On Christianity. Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox, New York, Harper Torchbook, 1961, p. 231. Excerpts of this early essay in T. M. Knox’s translation are also made available in Paul A. Kottman (ed.), Philosophers on Shakespeare, Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2009. 10. On the difference between Moralität and Sittlichkeit, see Jennifer Ann Bates’s useful introduction to Hegel and Shakespeare on Moral Imagination, Albany, New York, SUNY Press, 2010, p. 10-11. Bates explains this distinction becomes more clearly delineated in Hegel’s later works and especially in his definition of Sittlichkeit in the Philosophy of Right, see n. 41, p. 298. 11. Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity”, op. cit., p. 205. 12. The original German term is “« Entzweiung »,” which can be glossed as “forcible separation” or, according to J. A. Bates, a “dialectical sundering or negation”, op. cit, p. 186. 13. Hegel, “The Spirit of Christianity”, op. cit., p. 229. 14. Hegel writes of Hamlet in several of his later works, The Phenomenology of Spirit, the Lectures on Aesthetics, and, more briefly, in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. For an analysis of Hegel’s notion of Aufhebung or “sublation” (or the dialectical means by which the consciousness
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progressively rises to higher levels of insight) in relation to Hamlet, see Bates, ch. 3, “Aufhebung and Anti-Aufhebung, Geist and Ghosts in Hamlet”, p. 55-84. 15. I use the terms “law” and “penal system” in a broad sense here as my own focus is not specifically on legal issues and, notably, nor on the difference between the “common law” and the “penal” code that was used to punish traitors and dissenters. For a recent in-depth study of Shakespeare’s theatre in relation to the elaboration of a uniquely British legal system, relying on the “common law”, see Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Côté cour, côté justice. Shakespeare ou l’invention du droit, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2016. As we shall see at the end of the present study, Shakespeare probably broaches this issue more head-on in Measure for Measure. 16. “Nil terribile nisi ipse timor”. Quote taken from “Fortitudo”, De Augmentis Scientarum, bk VI, in The Works of Francis Bacon, London, printed for C. and J. Rivington, 1826, vol. 7, p. 300. 17. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621, et 1624], 6 vols, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989-2000. See in particular Part. 3, Sect. 4. Memb. 1, Subs. 2, “Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Divell by Miracles, Apparitions, Oracles…”, in vol. 3, p. 343 & ff, where Burton criticizes the institutional (political and religious) instrumental uses of religious fear. 18. Idem, p. 358. 19. Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2001. 20. All quotations from John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” are given after Donald R. Dickson (ed.), John Donne’s Poetry, Norton Critical Edition, New York and London, Norton, 2007. 21. See the section “Causes of Melancholy. GOD a cause” in Burton, op. cit., part I, sect. 2, subs. 1, vol. 1, p. 172-173. 22. See Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of timor servilis and timir filialis, Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, 19, in ed. and trans. T. Gilby et al., 60 vols, London, Blackfriars, 1964-1981, vol. 13, p. 43-85. 23. William Bonde, A deuoute epystle of treaty for them that ben tymorouse and fearefull in conscience, London, 1534, 2v-4r. 24. Roger Edgeworth, Sermons very Fruitfull, Godly and Learned, ed. J. Wilson, Woodbridge, D. S. Brewster, 1993, p. 128. 25. William Perkins, The whole treatise of the cases of conscience, Cambridge, printed by John Legat, 1606, p. 259. 26. Idem, p. 195. 27. See Christopher Delvin, The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr, New York, Farrar, Strauss and Cuhady, p. 300-302, and Thomas M. McCoog S. J., The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–1597: Building the Faith of Saint Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy, Farnham and Burlington, Ashgate, 2012, n. 132, p. 181. 28. See in particular “A Brief discourse of the condemnation of Mr. Robert Southwell, priest of the Society of Jesus” held in ABSI, Anglia II, 1, published in Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus : historic facts illustrative of the labours and sufferings of its members in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, London, Burns and Oates, 1875-1883, vol. 1 (1877), p. 364-375. For more detailed information on his trial and execution, see Devlin, op. cit., p. 274-290 and 303-324, and Caramon, op. cit., p. 59-66. 29. These words are spoken by Claudio, on the eve of his planned execution. He hopes that Angelo will actually “bite” the law rather than enforce it here. The phrase echoes Duke Vincentio’s own words in act 1, scene 3 when he complains to Angelo that the city has become dissolute, that “liberty plucks justice by the nose” (1.3.29), and that “the rod” has become more “mocked than feared” (1.3.26-27). In the end, Angelo is revealed to be the one who actually and ironically “plucks justice by the nose”. 30. See act 5, scene 3, lines 40 to 75.
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31. Patrick Boucheron, p. 211, my translation (the original French reads: “La Paix voit cela. Depuis son estrade, si belle dans sa robe immaculée, elle voit tout cela.”)
RÉSUMÉS
Cet article traite de la dialectique de la peur et du châtiment dans quatre pièces de Shakespeare écrites dans le contexte de la conspiration principale (1603) et de la conspiration des poudres (1606) : Mesure pour mesure, Macbeth, Le Roi Lear, Antoine et Cléopâtre. Il se demande ce que Shakespeare fait de et à la peur, en adoptant différentes approches critiques qui offrent, chacune, une autre réponse à cette question. L’accent sur la mécanique de l’exercice du pouvoir et le spectacle du corps supplicié mis au jour dans l’approche foucaldienne ne permet pas de véritablement aborder la peur comme une expérience ou une émotion vécue par le malfaiteur. Il y est avant tout l’instrument d’une consolidation du corps-politique. La distinction hégélienne entre la peur de la loi pénale et morale, et la peur plus profonde du destin ou de soi-même, permet une meilleure exploration de l’expérience même de la peur, de la conscience morale, et du processus menant de la peur et du châtiment vers un plus grand degré de conscience. Cet article suggère, cependant, que le traitement dramatique que Shakespeare réserve à la peur est mieux compris lorsque lu à la lumière de la pensée théologique de la peur et de ses tentatives pour la rationaliser le plus finement possible. Shakespeare met en scène cette typologie de la peur qui lui est contemporaine mais pour mieux questionner la foi aveugle dans une justice prétendument inspirée de la loi divine et montrer que l’angoisse du malfaiteur (supposé) devant le châtiment est en réalité le reflet des peurs de l’exécuteur de la loi.
This article focuses on the dialectics of fear and punishment in four plays by Shakespeare written in the wake of either the Main Plot (1603) or the Gunpowder Plot (1606): Measure for Measure, Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra. It asks what Shakespeare’s dramaturgy does with fear and to fear, using a variety of critical approaches that yield different responses to this question. The Foucauldian emphasis on the mechanics of the exercise of power and the awesome display of chastised bodies tends to by-pass the examination of fear as a mood and experience of the punished trespasser, considering it instead as an instrument put to the service of the body politic. Hegel’s distinction between two types of fear, the fear of the penal code or moral law, and a deeper fear of oneself or “fate as punishment,” enables us to probe deeper into the experience of fear, the moral imagination, and the process leading from fear and punishment to a greater degree of self-consciousness. This paper argues, however, that the implications of Shakespeare’s dramatic treatment of fear are best understood when read in light of early modern theological literature and its attempts to finely rationalize the experience of fear. Shakespeare’s plays dramatize a contemporary typology of fear, undermining beliefs in a “native punishment” (Henry V) and “God’s law”, better to show how the (supposed) trespassers are in fact the reflectors of the executors’ fears.
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INDEX
Mots-clés : Antoine et Cléopâtre, châtiment, complot des poudres, complot principal, conscience morale, Foucault Michel, Hegel Friedrich, Macbeth, Mesure pour mesure, peur, punition, trahison, Roi Lear (Le) Keywords : Antony and Cleopatra, Chastisement, Fear, Foucault Michel, Gunpowder Plot, Hegel Friedrich, King Lear, Main Plot, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, moral imagination, Punishment, Treason
AUTEUR
ANNE-MARIE MILLER-BLAISE Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 EA 4398 PRISMES
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Appropriations de la peur shakespearienne Appropriating Shakespearean Fear
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Contexts of Fear: Edward Ravenscroft’s Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
Barbara Burgess-Van Aken
Introduction
1 London, 1678. Long-festering fears reach frenzied proportions when news breaks of a plot to assassinate King Charles II, backed by Rome and the King of France—news that pamphleteers quickly dub “The Horrid Popish Plot.” Against the backdrop of the Exclusion Crisis (the term historians now use to describe the movement to prevent the Catholic Duke of York, from succeeding his brother on the throne) that had begun four years earlier, the plot’s discovery is so disturbing that 200,000 Londoners gather to burn the pope in effigy in 1679.1 Fear of Jesuit terrorists is nothing new these days. The phobia had begun to foment in the sixteenth century and had escalated after the discovery of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Now, in the wake of the Civil War, the beheading of King Charles I, and the Interregnum, fears have escalated. The Popish Plot sets all this tinder on fire.
2 The investigation of the Plot sends scores of suspected co-conspirators to the Tower and some to their deaths before proof emerges in 1683 that the plot is nothing more than fake news. Amid this climate of fear, political factions work to promote their agendas. Since the restoration of Charles II to the throne, tensions between the monarchy and Parliament have been constant. Charles has tried to promote religious tolerance, but meets resistance from all factions. Part of the strategy of the parliamentary interest groups is to conflate Catholicism with tyrannical absolutism to promote public distrust of having Catholics involved in government. Consequently, whiggish factions2 among the House of Commons have been able to pass laws like the Test Act of 1673 that exclude non-Anglicans from holding national office, forcing Charles II’s Catholic brother to resign his post in the Admiralty.
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3 Despite the factions, as of 1678 political stances are anything but binary; the ideologies that would eventually result in Tory vs. Whig affiliations are only loosely articulated. The House of Commons’ priority is to rein in the power of the king and to prevent Catholics from holding positions of authority. Meanwhile Royalists, many of whom have no love of Catholics, prioritize the preservation of the monarchy’s power—even if it means religious tolerance—and therefore support Charles and the succession of his brother to the throne. Regardless of one’s politics, everyone fears another civil war and tends to distrust the Other. The result is a rhetoric that justifies hate-mongering and promotes an irrational fear of foreigners, who are often suspected of being Jesuit terrorists. In 1678, the vehicles of this political discourse are pamphlet wars and, of course, the London stage.
The Text: Shakespeare vs. Ravenscroft
4 Enter Edward Ravenscroft (c.1654-1707), a not very original playwright who, was a descendent of an ancient Flintshire family and an ardent Royalist.3 He wrote twelve plays between 1671 and 1697, the majority being adaptations of French and Spanish farces. According to the paratext of its 1687 publication, Titus Andronicus, Or the Rape of Lavinia, was first staged in 1678. It was Ravenscroft’s only Shakespeare adaptation, and his first tragedy, a genre he did not attempt again for twenty years.
5 Of course, Ravenscroft was not the only dramatist to adapt Shakespeare. Of the 54 new plays produced between 1678 and 1682 (the height of the Exclusion Crisis), 10 were re- workings of Shakespeare’s tragedies,4 constituting what Hazelton Spencer termed “an epidemic of alteration.”5 Almost all of them, as Jean Marsden has pointed out, deal “directly or indirectly with the problem of factions and rebellions.”6 Ravenscroft’s adaptation of Titus is no exception. What distinguishes his play, however, is the opportunity it affords us to examine a shift in the fears that play addresses between its original production and its publication nine years later.7
6 In the 1687 publication of Titus Andronicus, Or the Rape of Lavinia Ravenscroft describes his rationale for the first writing and staging of the play “at the beginning of the pretended Popish Plot” in 1678. If we take the playwright’s claim at face value, as critics have done over the years, we can conduct a comparative analysis between the play’s text and paratext to examine how each reflects fears about the political climate in which it was written. In doing so, I argue that Ravenscroft’s intended message has shifted from warning audiences about the dangers of reacting to the Plot with irrational fear to an attempt to quell the fears of those who still object to having a Catholic king. In this sense, he has changed his emphasis from expressing his own fear about his nation to assuaging the fears of others. To explore the trajectory of evidence for Ravenscroft’s morphing message we need to consider the political relevance of the original play’s themes to the trepidations of Restoration audiences, the symbolic effect of the heightened sense of horror in the adapted play-text, and the didactic Royalist message in the 1687 publication’s paratext. Embedded in all these elements is a complicated mesh of fears that reflects a collective state of mind that has an uncanny resonance with today’s global political climate, particularly in regard to fears of foreigners.
7 As a play about the tragic results of poor political choices, Titus Andronicus was an apt choice to promote Ravenscroft’s Royalist agenda. First published in 1594, Shakespeare’s
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Titus is more than a Senecan revenge tragedy set in ancient Rome; in chronicling the challenges to a long-revered family line, Titus is also a play that illustrates the horrific consequences of misplaced loyalty and irrational fear with the use of intense violence. In fact, Clark Hulse calculated that by the final curtain, the audience has seen “14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape…, 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity and 1 of cannibalism—an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines.”8
8 Gory as the play is, Liberty Stavanage and Paul Hehmeyer note that Titus’s reception has had recurring cycles of popularity over the centuries, claiming that horror is the key to its theatrical success primarily because that is what moves audiences.9 Similarly, Allard and Martin, citing Sir Philip’s Sidney’s claim that “tragedy’s scenes of suffering act with ethical force upon even the most hardened consciences,” examine the instructional value of trauma on the stage, considering how pain and “bodily spectacles” can both promote and “hamper national and political identities.”10 Even without alteration, then, Shakespeare’s blood-soaked plot is a useful vehicle for political allegory in the Restoration context. Indeed, it is easy to interpret the Andronici as representing the loyal Royalists who want to preserve the monarchy and aristocracy, Queen Tamora and her rapist sons Chiron and Demetrius as representing the whig factions in the House of Commons, and Aaron the black man as representing a foreign (and Jesuit) threat to the nation’s political stability.
9 I am inclined to agree with Susan J. Owen, however, who cautions against such tidy allegories and encourages us to consider recurring themes and tropes that reflect the collective and pre-existing political anxieties of all factions. Speaking of the 1678-1679 theatrical season, Owen notes that although many Restoration plays had political subtext, “few [playwrights] yet envisaged solutions in terms of taking sides” on either the Exclusion debate or on the Popish Plot investigation.11 At the same time that she would acknowledge Ravenscroft’s Royalist leanings, Owen would also urge us to resist polarizing our interpretation of his Titus. Similarly, the earlier critic Richard Ashcraft points out that Exclusion Crisis literature is “better understood at the discursive level, since it is the cultural vocabulary itself, rather than party affiliation, that conveys the stress brought to bear on the ideological underpinnings of the crown.”12 My close reading of Ravenscroft’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus accepts Owen’s and Ashcraft’s caveats and illustrates the tangled web of tropes and themes that Restoration audiences would have viewed as a nation struggling to articulate its fears and political affiliations. To illustrate this complexity, I have identified three themes and related tropes commonly found in Exclusion Crisis plays that work well for Ravenscroft and would have resonated with Restoration audiences even before he makes any alterations to Shakespeare’s text: loyalty as it relates to the actions of Titus; chaos as it relates to the characterization of Aaron;13 and rape as it relates to Lavinia’s plight.
10 Loyalty is a theme that Exclusionist playwrights of all factions draw upon, even if they don’t all define the term the same way. For those who fear a powerful monarchy, loyalty to the state supersedes fidelity to the throne. They fear that a king who relies upon a popish court will result in divided loyalty between church and state.14 As evidence they point to Charles II’s lack of commitment to rooting out popery,15 claiming that Charles has been too lenient with Catholics ever since 1660, even allowing some of them in his Privy Council. By contrast, loyalty for Royalists means a stoic non- resistance to the monarch, justified by the conviction that wrong political decisions are
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slippery slopes that will lead to chaos.16 Regardless of one’s political leanings, Owen points out, “loyalty in the drama is seldom characterized by glad submission and is more likely to be productive of pain than pleasure,”17 which is true in Titus, even before Ravenscroft makes any changes.
11 In both Shakespeare’s and Ravenscroft’s versions, the play begins with Titus, a warrior and head of a long noble family, acting out of blind loyalty to the new emperor, Saturninus. When the patriarch’s sons defy Saturninus’ orders to seize his brother Bassianus for running off with Titus’ daughter Lavinia, Titus disowns his sons rather than appear disloyal to the head of state. It is only after his sons are framed for murder and his daughter is raped that Titus abandons his loyalty to the emperor, an act that results in the very chaos that Royalists fear. In the end, the message is that Titus’ mistake is misplaced fidelity. His wrong decision and unrewarded loyalty make Titus a flawed hero (a common trope related to the theme of loyalty) and lead to a dark ending that implies a murky future for the nation (which is also typical in Restoration plays).18 More specifically, in Titus the fate of the realm remains unclear; although Lucius takes the reins of Rome, the cost of preserving the family line has been a horrendous bloodbath that makes it hard to envision the restoration of order a situation that audiences could identify with in 1678.
12 By contrast, the absence of loyalty in a society can lead to chaos, which everyone fears in 1678 but, again, has different meanings for different factions. For the anti- monarchists chaos means tyranny; for the monarchists—rebellion; for the anti-papists —terrorism. Regardless of one’s vision of chaos, the audience would see the character of Aron the Moor as the incarnation of their worst fears. His blackness, which Ravenscroft emphasizes in derogatory language even more than Shakespeare does, makes him an Other that Restoration audiences would equate with danger. Given the context of 1678, it would be easy to read Aron as representing the supposed Jesuit perpetrators of the Popish Plot. Indeed, Jennifer Airey’s study of the rhetoric of Restoration politics points to frequent propagandizing of Jesuits as “unspiritually obsessed with secular powers and pleasures” as well as “sexually violent and dangerous.”19 But because Ravenscroft’s Royalist subtext is more focused on preservation of the monarchy than on Catholics, I read Aron’s actions as a vivid portrayal of the consequences of a disrupted political order that any political faction could relate to. Even before Ravenscroft changes the text, Shakespeare’s Aaron is destructive—he has an illicit affair with Tamora; he masterminds Lavinia’s rape; he frames Titus’ sons with the murder of Bassianus; he tricks Titus into severing his own hand; and he kills the nurse of his child by Tamora. Moreover, he does it all without a soupçon of remorse, for chaos has no conscience or loyalty, which is why people fear it.
13 Another common trope that evokes disruption of social order is rape. Airey notes that the metaphors of sexual violence and the language of rape that permeate the pamphlet wars in this era aim to justify political stances and to stir the populace to actions such as Pope-burnings.20 Similarly, rape often reflects civil strife in Exclusion Crisis theatre.21 By contrast, as Suzanne Gossett notes, actual rape occurs only four times in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays.22 But, as with loyalty, opposing factions interpret rape differently. Whiggish audiences would be likely to view the act on stage as a monstrosity that equates to tyranny. Royalists, however, would be more apt to equate it to rebellion,23 an interpretation that is rooted in the etymology of the Latin word rapere, or “to seize,” which is what Royalists see the House of Commons as trying to do with the crown.24
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Ravenscroft’s revision of Shakespeare’s title from The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus to Titus Andronicus, Or the Rape of Lavinia reflects this latter interpretation, according to Kara Reilly, who reads Lavinia’s fate as a reference to Britannia and the attempted rape of England (i.e., seizure of the power of the throne) that the Exclusionists are pursuing.25
14 The etymology and classical allusion in the name Lavinia, while not Ravenscroft’s choice originally, reinforces this connection. As the daughter of King Latinus and the last wife of Aeneas, the historical Lavinia was the mother of the first Romans. Moreover, the word “Latinus” derives from the term Latinum, which signifies the periphery of Rome, a territory that would be easily evocative of Britannia for London audiences. As Reilly comments, “With her tongue cut out and her arms lopped off, Lavinia is unable to speak or write in response to violent conspiracy and assault; thus, the pain of Lavinia’s body site is a citation of the trauma of the body politic.”26 Other critics identify Lavinia as symbolic of Britannia as well. For example, Richard Braverman explains that “[d]ynastic politics are manifest as sexual politics because the quest for a settlement was played out in terms that refigured the body politic as a feminized body.”27 In this context, he relates how the search for trust (the lack of which generates fear) between Royalist and parliamentary factions pervades literature of all types between Charles I’s execution and the Glorious Revolution. Consequently, audiences would have recognized the political resonance of Lavinia’s marriage to Bassianus. As an example, Braverman cites a 1645 tract by Henry Parker, “Jus Regnum. Or, A Vindication of the Regall Power” that applied the principle of coordination between the monarch and Parliament to matrimony.28
15 Few of Ravenscroft’s other changes to Shakespeare’s Titus are as significant as the addition of the word “rape” to the title, despite his claim in the Preface to the 1687 edition that he only made the play better, describing Shakespeare’s version as “the most incorrect and indigested piece in all his Works” (A2). Technically, Ravenscroft uses 1,300 fewer words and conflates 14 scenes into 7.29 Although he reorders some of the action, the plot remains basically the same. Scholars have analyzed the changes that Ravenscroft made to the original text of Titus from various critical perspectives— race, gender, and pain theory being prime examples.30 But they all relate back to the context of the political uncertainties of the era. Focusing on Ravenscroft’s Royalist agenda, then, we can analyze three types of changes he made to Shakespeare’s text, all of which would resonate with the threat to civil order and the monarchy that the Popish Plot was causing in London embellishments of setting details to glorify a revered family line, characterization emphases, and alterations of plot.
16 A striking augmentation of several stage directions serves to further glorify the Andronici. In Act 1, Titus returns from war against the Goths with his sons who bear the armor of their slain brothers to the family crypt. By adding the stage direction “Warlike Musick all the while Sounding” (3),31 Ravenscroft lends a ceremonial flourish to the scene. Later, in Act 4 another procession of sorts occurs when Titus, having severed his hand in a vain attempt to spare two of his sons’ lives and having vowed revenge on Tamora and her sons, leaves the stage with his family to escort Lucius to his banishment. Notably, instead of Lavinia carrying the severed hand between her teeth, as occurs in Shakespeare’s version, Ravenscroft delegates the task to Titus’s grandson, Young Junius, the presumable future patriarch of the family: “And Junius too, share in this Ceremony, / Bring thou that hand—and help thy handless Aunt” (38). In 1678, the
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severed hand would no doubt evoke memories of Charles I’s beheading. Although there are actual beheadings elsewhere in the play, the ceremonious procession in which Titus’s heir bears the hand and helps the debilitated Lavinia (symbol of the nation) evokes the restoration of the monarchy. Collectively, these references to their heritage glorify the Andronici’s long line of leadership, which Restoration audiences might interpret as an endorsement of the divine right of kings.
17 One other notable change to stage directions is the location of the rape scene. In light of Reilly’s interpretation of Lavinia representing Britannia, it becomes significant that Ravenscroft shifts the site of the rape from the woods to the garden of the royal palace. Being the seat of an oppositional political faction that that has been invaded by Goths, Royalist audiences might interpret the site as representing the parliamentary factions that threaten the traditional order. Significantly, Saturninus is sleeping, an absence that suggests his neglect of the nation. As Liberty Stavanage aptly observes, “Lavinia is raped at court in the same way the Royalists perceived the sanctity of the Divine Right of Kings being brutally violated through the Popish Plot.”32 Stavanage goes on to note that, Lavinia’s loss of speech following the rape is equally suggestive: “Confined to her suffering body, Lavinia’s silent pain transforms her into a symbol of life in Rome under a tyrant, for Lavinia is referred to as ‘Rome’s royal mistress’.”33
18 A second category of changes that Ravenscroft makes to the play concerns characterizations, specifically to those of Titus, Young Junius, and Aron the Moor. In the Senecan tradition where personal tragedies often trigger temporary insanity, Shakespeare’s Titus responds to grief with madness as he distractedly shoots arrows with messages to the gods (4.4). In Ravenscroft’s version, however, Titus shoots the messages more purposefully so that the citizens of Rome will receive them, which stirs civil discontent. When Saturninus learns of Titus’ disruptive archery, he rants: “Was ever known, / An Emperour in Rome thus us’d?” and complains “Fine Scrowls to fly about the Streets of Rome; / What’s this but Libelling against the Senate? / As who wou’d say, in Rome no Justice were” (41). Similarly, instead of losing his mind when he learns that even after severing his own hand to save his sons Saturninus has executed them, Titus sharpens his resolve, and significantly it is he, not his brother Marcus, who identifies Lavinia’s rapists, thus giving his vengeance a focus.34 Although Tamora assumes Titus is mad when he offers Young Junius as a hostage to Saturninus, we soon learn the grandson is a deliberate accomplice in Titus’s plan of revenge, a logical change in a Royalist context; if the Andronici serve as a trope for the legitimacy of the British monarchy, Ravenscroft had no choice but to portray Titus as sane.
19 Although a minor character, the changes that Ravenscroft makes to Titus’s grandson also underscore the playwright’s Royalist agenda. More than simply changing his name from Lucius to Young Junius, the author develops this character from a fearful child who flees the sight of his armless aunt (Act 4, scene 1) to a young man who bravely helps bear responsibility for the preservation of his family line. I have already alluded to the symbolic gesture of Young Junius carrying Titus’s hand in a family procession, but in Act 5, scene 1 Titus’s heir becomes essential to the vengeance plot. Giving the boy to Tamora’s sons as a hostage while waiting for Lucius to arrive to negotiate with Saturninus, Titus speaks to his grandson cryptically, signaling that a plan is in place. After Titus reminds him of all the wrongs that the family has endured, Junius weeps but also reassures Titus that he can count upon him: TITUS. Now my little Lad, remember thy Lesson: And wherefore I brought thee hither.
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JUNIUS. I do Grandfather. TITUS. Remember thy wrong’d Aunt Lavinia. JUNIUS. Yes, and my Banished Father, and my two dead Uncles, And you Grandfather, that have but one hand. [Weeps.] TITUS. That’s my good Boy, Forbear thy tears, his Passion makes me weep. JUNIUS. You and my Uncle Marcus made me Swear, And do you think Grandfather I will be forsworn? (47) We soon learn that by promising to lead them to gold, Young Junius cunningly delivers Chiron and Demetrius to Titus, who beheads them and uses their hearts, tongues, and blood to prepare a banquet for their mother Tamora. By playing this instrumental role in the plot, Young Junius demonstrates the rationality and fearlessness of Rome’s future leader.
20 Aron the Moor, whom I have already identified as a personification of chaos, is the third characterization that differs significantly from Shakespeare’s version. Aron’s actions do not change much, but Ravenscroft heightens the fearsomeness of the threat that the Moor poses to society, regardless of one’s political alliances. For example, although Aron raises havoc with Titus’ family, he also plays on the fears of Saturninus by reminding him that there is danger of civil unrest if he disrupts the Andronici. Specifically, in Act 2, scene 1 he counsels the new emperor to be lenient with Titus: (You know he has a plausible pretence, He kill’d his Son, by him the Traytor fell) And so supplant you for ingratitude, Which Rome reputes to be a heinous Crime. (13) In Shakespeare’s version, Tamora speaks these lines. By giving them to Aron, Ravenscroft reminds Restoration audiences that chaos preys upon everyone’s fears, regardless of their political leanings.
21 Similarly, chaos undermines loyalty, a point that Ravenscroft highlights by changing the nature of Aron’s relationship with Tamora. Compared to Shakespeare’s Aaron, Ravenscroft’s villain does not reciprocate Tamora’s lust; his liaison with her is strictly opportunistic, a point he makes bluntly in Act 3, scene 1 when Tamora approaches Aron amorously, suggesting that since they are alone, “Under this Shade, my Aron, let’s sit down, / In full possession of all these delights.” Uninterested, Aron flatly rejects her, saying “Madam, tho’ Venus Govern your desire, / Saturne is Dominator over mine” (19).
22 The author further emphasizes Aron’s contribution to the disruption of the social order not only by moving horrors that occur off-stage in Shakespeare’s play into audience view, but also by adding to them in the closing scene. Shakespeare’s Aaron confesses his crimes much earlier—in Act 4, scene 2—when a nurse appears with Aaron’s child. Ravenscroft, however, saves Aron’s confession until the banquet scene in Act 5, where he unleashes the Moor’s chaotic nature in full force. In Shakespeare’s final scene, Aaron makes a brief appearance, and speaks few lines before Lucius orders his live burial (5.3). By contrast, Ravenscroft’s Aron plays a much larger and more dramatic role in the conclusion where the audience witnesses the torturing of Aron on a rack while Titus extracts his confession. Even in agony, Aron revels in reciting the litany of his atrocities. In his one significant change that involves Tamora, Ravenscroft shows her killing the black infant she bore by Aron. But not to be outdone in perverseness, Aron utters, “Give it me—I’le eat it” (55). While Exclusion Crisis plays often conclude with “societal disintegration,”35 Airey notes that Ravenscroft’s play uses the act of
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cannibalism to reestablish appropriate societal boundaries, eliminating “social toxins via ingestion” and neutralizing the threat of the Goths “as Tamora and Aron literally consume their children out of existence,” adding that “[t]he cannibal father becomes, perversely, a symbol of renewed cultural stability, reflecting Ravenscroft’s persistent loyalty to the Stuart line.”36 Nevertheless, the stability of Rome still seems fragile as Lucius and his son take the reins of the realm, and in 1678 audiences would have had little trouble drawing a parallel between the assault on the Andronici and the Popish Plot’s threat to the monarchy. Moreover, Ravenscroft’s decision to send Aron, the fomenter of fear, up in flames as the curtain drops is a fitting reversal of the public’s response to the Plot—Pope-burnings.
Paratext and Context
23 By 1687, the political landscape of London has changed. Pope-burnings subsided, and the Popish Plot collapsed, but not before several members of Charles II’s court went to the Tower. In the end 35 people were executed for supposed complicity in what turned out to be a mere hoax perpetrated by Titus Oates.37 Meanwhile, other crises fueled the fears of the British people, including the thwarted Rye House Plot in 1683 (another plan to assassinate Charles II) and the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 (a failed attempt by Charles’ illegitimate son to usurp the throne). In that same year, the Whigs’ worst fear was realized—the coronation of a Catholic King. By 1687, the Exclusion Crisis was over.
24 Meanwhile, on the London stage, the pendulum swung between pro- and anti-Royalist sentiment. After 1678, polarization between Royalists and formative factions of the Whig Party sharpened as Parliament went on the offensive in 1680 to try to pass the Exclusion Bill, which would have limited the powers of the monarch and prevented any Catholic from taking the throne. In response, a wave of pro-Royalist plays propagandized against the bill only to be superseded by a wave of Whig plays as support for the legislation gained traction.38 Owen even notes that several Royalists, including Ravenscroft, went underground until 1688, adding that “It is as if the voice of loyal playwrights dutifully stifles itself just as their loyal heroes absorb outrage and transform pain to self-annihilation. Tory quietism leads paradoxically, but logically given the contradictions involved, to silence.”39
25 Owen is not entirely accurate, however. Ravenscroft actually maintained a presence on the London stage. In 1681 his farce, The London Cuckolds, was produced and performed annually thereafter on the lord mayor’s day until 1752.40 While that play’s text and paratext are ostensibly apolitical, his 1683 production of the comedy Dame Dobson included an epilogue with a rather scathing attack on Whigs. Finally, as noted earlier, he may also have staged a revival of his Titus prior to the publication of the play in 1687. All this activity suggests that Ravenscroft was not as fearful of reprisals for his productions as some of his Royalist contemporaries, a stance he reinforces with a dose of self-righteousness and didacticism in the paratext of the 1687 edition.
26 That edition begins with a dedication, “To the Right Honourable The Lord Arundel [sic].” Arundell was a devoted Catholic who, charged with conspiracy in the Popish Plot, spent years in the Tower, narrowly escaping execution. A year after exoneration in 1685, he was appointed to James’ Privy Council.41 In seeking the Lord’s favor, Ravenscroft signals his support of James II’s succession to the throne, stating that if
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someone as great as James II made Arundell a trusted advisor, then surely the Lord must be great as well: Needless it is then for me to recount those Virtues that Ennoble you, since the Judgment of a Prince that calls you to his Councels, & service in the Management of the great affairs of State, so amply declare and Confirm ’em to the World: for his Royal Favours are not unwarily or loosely bestow’d, but like his Seal leave an Impression, and give the Stamp of Greatness. (A2v) Aside from flattering Arundell, the author implies that Britain should celebrate James’ succession, a point he amplifies by citing the king’s sterling qualities and affirming the Divine Right of Kings when he states that James’ “personal Virtues render him Great, not only by Nature Endow’d, but by Experience taught; a Prince whose Life from his Cradle to his Coronation, was spent in the School of Virtue; and every Action, whilst a Subject, was a Noble Lesson for succeeding Princes to Learn and imitate…” (A2v). He adds that the king’s coronation was indeed just and, in turn, James himself has administered justice by calling men such as Arundell for “whome the fire of Persecution, and Imprisonment had Try’d” into his service (A2r). In 1687 the connection between the injustices that Arundell and Titus endured would be obvious.
27 But the paratext also reflects a shift from the Ravenscroft’s intent in writing the play message and the message he sends by publishing it, a shift that becomes evident by comparing how the author describes the past and the present in the Dedication. Speaking of the present, the author praises Arundell and the king, thereby endorsing Divine Right and honoring Arundell as a deserving member of James’ Privy Council. In this sense he expresses no fear; rather, he offers comfort to readers who may be afraid of a Catholic king. No longer needing to warn audiences about the danger of believing the Popish Plot, the most important message of the play when applying it to the present is one of reassurance: the Andronici survive and justice prevails.
28 But by Ravenscroft’s own admission, reassurance was not his purpose in writing the play. When he talks about the past, he recounts that he wrote Titus at a time when factions exploited the fear generated by the Popish Plot and threatened the monarchy. Back in the present, he claims victory for himself as well, stating that not only was he among those that knew the Popish Plot was fabricated but that the play’s purpose in the past was to expose “Base and Ignoble deeds,” and to “divert and deter the ungenerous from their practices” (A2v). Referring specifically to the Popish Plot, he adds that his play “was Calculated to the Season, when Villany and Treachery and Perjury, Triumph’d over Truth, Innocence and Loyalty” (4r). In other words, he wrote the play to warn London audiences how irrational fear makes one vulnerable to deception and plotting—something he knew all along.
29 Ravenscroft is similarly braggadocious in his address “To the Reader,” stating that he risked losing money on the production out of a commitment to exposing the truth: […] at the beginning of the pretended Popish Plot, when neither Wit nor Honesty had Encouragement: Nor cou’d this expect favour since it shew’d the Treachery of Villains, and the Mischiefs carry’d on by Perjury and False Evidence; and how Rogues may frame a Plot that shall deceive and destroy both the Honest and the Wise; which were the reasons why I did forward it at so unlucky a conjuncture, being content rather to lose the Profit, then not expose to the World the picture of such Knaves and Rascals as then Reign’d in the opinion of the Foolish and Malicious part of the Nation: but it bore up against the Faction, and is confirm’d a Stock-Play. (A2v)
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Although Marsden assumes that Ravenscroft’s assertion that he was content to lose money was probably disingenuous and suggests that the play probably was profitable because of its parallels with the events related to the Plot,42 there is no evidence that Titus ever became a “Stock-Play.” Regardless, the author’s description of the 1678 political climate underscores that he was addressing his own concern about how the Plot was stirring irrational fears that threatened the monarchy by adapting a play in which the protagonist’s fatal error of misplaced loyalty results in an uncertain future for the nation.
30 While the shift in emphasis about the significance of the play’s plot is relatively consistent in the dedication and address to the reader, the inclusion of three different prologues and an epilogue that were not even written for his adaptation of Titus is puzzling. Explaining that “[i]n the Hurry of those distracted times” these pieces “were lost” (A3), Ravenscroft says that in order to give readers their money’s worth, he has “furnished” the reader with substitutes that he wrote for others’ work “proportion’d to that Mad Season”, although he is not explicit about which plays he is referring to or their dates. In the first substituted prologue, the playwright calls for calm and exhorts the “men of Bus’ness in the Nation” to “leave Faction, Jelousies, and Fears” behind and to “learn all due Allegeance to the King” (A3), a message that serves Ravenscroft’s purposes in the Titus edition. However, in the substituted epilogue, Ravenscroft distances himself from politics, telling the audience that even though they came “Swell’d Big with Expectation […] to see us Act our great Affairs at home” with “Papists accus’d and Satyrs against Rome,” his play “forbears to represent the Present Age” (A3). In fact, he claims to have tricked the audience, saying that story of the play “was no Popish-Plot” (A3v). This statement raises questions. Was the contradiction in the epilogue with the rest of the paratext something that Ravenscroft merely overlooked? Or, are readers supposed to apply the disclaimers that the play is not political to Titus? If so, the epilogue contradicts the politicized message in the dedication and reader address.
31 This contradiction becomes even more puzzling in light of Genest’s report that Ravenscroft’s contemporary, Gerard Langbaine, author of the 1691 Account of the English Dramatick Poets, claimed that he had copies of the original prologue and epilogue (probably from having attended a production in 1678), which he offered to Ravenscroft, presumably prior to the publication of Titus. While we don’t know why the playwright passed up Langbaine’s offer, the failure to do so suggests the possibility that the “apolitical” assertion in the substituted epilogue is disingenuous and that there may have been content in the originals that the author did not want to come to light again. Regardless, the paratext written expressly for the 1687 edition suggests that what Ravenscroft wanted to achieve when staging the play at the outbreak of the Popish Plot differed from what he was aiming to accomplish with its publication nine years later, and that both goals are directed at London’s political anxieties at the time.
32 Finally, what Ravenscroft does not say in the paratext reinforces his shift in emphasis. Specifically, he gives no indication that he has revised the play in any way between 1678 and 1687. Closing the reader address with the justification: “it is the business of the Stage, as well as Pulpits, to declaim and Instruct,” he adds “[t]hat was my design when I Writ, and now Print’em” (A2), making no mention of having edited the play itself. In contrast to the changing political contexts that the paratext illuminates, the stasis of the text itself highlights the value of a close reading of the 1687 edition of
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Titus; the contrasting political references of the 1678 performance and the 1687 edition is a useful example of how context could re-inflect the text to serve political discourse on the Restoration stage.
Conclusion
33 For all the questions about the author’s intentions that the adapted Titus raises, we can conclude for certain that the confidence Ravenscroft expressed about James II’s leadership in the 1687 edition was ill-founded. A year after the publication of Titus Andronicus, Or the Rape of Lavinia, the Glorious Revolution brought the Protestant William and Mary to the throne as James negotiated his exile to France. Even after its publication, there were no more productions of the play in London until 1704.43 But today, as we deal with a resurgence of nationalist movements that tolerate the demonization of the Other, the fears that Titus addresses are all too familiar. If Stavanage is right that interest in Titus goes in cycles, perhaps we are due for a new adaptation of the play. For if Ravenscroft’s adaptation has shown us anything, it is that when it comes to portraying irrational fear of the Other, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus will always be relevant theatre.
NOTES
1. Sheila Williams, “The Pope-Burning Processions of 1679, 1680 and 1681”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1958, vol.21, no. 1/2, p.1679. 2. Although the Whigs did not become an official political party until 1689, the term “whig” began to gain currency in 1679 as a reference to a person with pro-exclusionist sentiments, which is the sense in which the term will be used in this article (see Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. “whig”). 3. Louis A. Knafla, “Ravenscroft, Edward (fl. 1659-1697),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23171, accessed 23 August 2017], doi: 10:1093/ref:odnb/23171. 4. In addition to Ravenscroft’s Titus Andronicus, Or the Rape of Lavinia (1678): John Dryden, Troilus and Cressida (1678) and All for Love [Antony and Cleopatra]; Thomas Otway’s The Rise and Fall of Caius Marius [Romeo and Juliet] (1680); John Crowne’s The Misery of Civil War [Henry VI, Part II](1679) and Henry VI, the First Part (1681); Nahum Tate’s Richard II (1680-81), The History of King Lear (1681); and The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth [Coriolanus] (1681); and Thomas D’Urfey’s The Injur’d Princess [Cymbeline] (1682). 5. Spencer Hazelton, Shakespeare Improved: The Restoration Versions in Quarto and on the State, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1927, p. 96. 6. Jean Marsden, The Re-Imagined Test: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory, Lexington, KY, University of Kentucky Press, 1995, p. 41. 7. John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, vol. 1, New York, Burt Franklin Research and Work Series 93 (originally published in Bath, 1822), p. 230, 347. Genest indicates that the actual date of the first production is speculative since the only evidence
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we have is self-reported by Ravenscroft in the paratext of the 1687 publication. Genest does list a 1682 production of Titus Andronicus in a list of 21 “old plays” that were revived, which allows us to assume that the production was Shakespeare’s play, not Ravenscroft’s. See also Van Lennep, William, Ed., The London Stage, 1660-1800, vol. 1, Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1965, p. 352, who suggests that the adapted Titus may have been revived in either the 1685-1686 or 1686-1687 season. 8. Clark Hulse, “Wresting the Alphabet: Oratory and Action in Titus Andronicus”, Criticism, 21.2, 1979, 106-118, p. 106. 9. Liberty Stavange and Paxton Heymeyer, eds, Titus out of Joint: Reading the Fragmented Titus Andronicus, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars, 2012, p. 3. 10. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy, ed. Katherin Duncan-Jones, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 45. 11. Susan J. Owen, “Interpreting the Politics of Restoration Drama”, The Seventeenth Century, 8.1, 1993, 67-97, p. 71. 12. Quoted in Richard Braverman, Plots and Counterplots: Sexual Politics and the Body Politic in English Literature, 1660-1730, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 156. 13. Shakespeare spells the Moor’s name “Aaron;” Ravenscroft spells it “Aron”. 14. Owen, “Interpreting”, op. cit., p. 79. 15. John Kenyon, Stuart England, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1978, p. 119, 121. 16. Owen, “Interpreting”, op. cit., p. 82. 17. Ibid., p. 89. 18. Owen, “Interpreting”, op. cit. Owen doesn’t apply these tropes specifically to Ravenscroft’s Titus. But her application of them to other plays such as Otway’s Venice Preserv’d (1682) and Lee’s The Massacre of Paris (1679), both Royalist plays, is analogous. 19. Jennifer L Airey, The Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage, Newark, University of Delaware Press, 2012, p. 2. 20. Ibid., p. 5. 21. Owen, “Interpreting”, op. cit., p. 84. 22. Suzanne Gossett, “’But men Are Molded out of Faults’: Marrying the Rapist in Jacobean Drama”, English Literary Drama, vol.14, no.3, 1984, p. 305. 23. Owen, Restoration Theatre, op. cit., p. 174. 24. Reilly, op. cit., p. 141. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Braverman, op. cit., p. xii-xiii. 28. Ibid., p. 31. 29. Stavanage, op. cit., p. 142. 30. See James Allard and Mathew Martin’s Staging Pain, 1580-1800: Violence and Trauma in British Theater, which discusses the play in terms of pain theory or Liberty Stavanage’s feminist reading, “From Titus to Titus: Edward Ravenscroft’s Titus Andronicus and the Emasculation of Shakespeare’s Tamora,” in Stavange and Hehmeyer, op. cit. p. 141-161. Stavanage argues that Ravenscroft gendered Tamora by disempowering her. 31. All references to Ravenscroft’s text come from a facsimile of Titus Andronicus, Or the Rape of Lavinia. Acted at the Theatre Royall, A Tragedy, Alter’d from Mr. Shakespears Work, London, Cornmarket Press, 1687. From the copy in the Birmingham Shakespeare Library, 1969. 32. Stavanage, op. cit., 142. 33. Ibid, p. 143. 34. Owen, Restoration Theatre. op. cit., p. 158.
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35. Airey, op. cit., p. 24. For example, Airey points to Lee’s Lucius Brutus (1680) and Mithridates, King of Pontus (1678), as well as Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d (1682), and John Crowne’s Thyestes (1681). 36. Ibid., p. 174. 37. “Marshall, Alan”, “Oates, Titus (1649-1705),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [http:// oxforddnb.com/view/article/20437, accessed 27 August 2017], doi: 10.1093/ref/odnb/20437. 38. Owen, “Interpreting,” op. cit., p. 86-87. 39. Ibid., p. 92. 40. Knafla, op. cit. 41. Peter Sherlock, “Arundelll, Henry, third Baron Arundelll of Wardour (bap. 1608, d. 1694),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/716, accessed 7 September 2017], doi: 10.1093/ref.odnb/716. 42. Marsden, op. cit., p. 42. 43. Genest, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 316. Genest, reports that it was also performed at Drury Lane in 1717 and again at Lincoln Inn’s Fields in 1720.
ABSTRACTS
Fear of a Catholic on England’s throne stirred high social and political anxieties that played out on the Restoration stage during the Exclusion Crisis. This paper explores the provenance of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus by the Royalist playwright Edward Ravenscroft. Probably first performed in 1678, the play apparently dropped out of sight as the investigation of the Popish Plot led to incarceration and executions. I argue that Ravenscroft heightened the terrifying elements of the play in response to the initial outbreak of the Plot but by the time that the Catholic Duke of York succeeded to the throne as James II, Ravenscroft refocused his message to help quell the public’s fears about James II’s reign. My analysis explores why Restoration audiences would resonate with the horrors in the play, how changes that Ravenscroft makes to Shakespeare’s original text heighten the fear of a civil unrest, and how excerpts from the paratext of the 1687 publication illustrate a shift of emphasis on the fears that Ravenscroft was addressing between 1678 and 1687. Ravenscroft’s decision to use Titus not only demonstrates Shakespeare’s innate understanding of fear but also the Bard’s adaptability to a variety of politically charged contexts.
La crainte qu’un Catholique n’accède à la couronne d’Angleterre suscita de fortes angoisses sociales et politiques dont le théâtre de la Restauration se fit l’écho pendant la crise de l’Exclusion Bill. Cet article explore la genèse de l’adaptation de Titus Andronicus réalisée par le dramaturge royaliste Edward Ravenscroft. Cette pièce, jouée pour la première fois en 1678, disparut de la scène lors des arrestations et exécutions qui suivirent l’enquête sur le « Complot papiste ». Je démontre que dans sa pièce Ravenscroft a amplifié les éléments générateurs de terreur en réponse à l’annonce du complot, mais qu’il a retiré l’œuvre lorsque l’enquête inquisitoriale s’est intensifiée. À l’avènement de Jacques II, catholique, Ravenscroft estima qu’il pouvait sans danger publier et monter à nouveau sa pièce, ce qu’il fit pour aider à apaiser les craintes du public à l’égard du nouveau régime. Mon analyse explore les raisons pour lesquelles l’horreur présente dans la pièce toucha les spectateurs de la Restauration ; elle montre aussi comment les changements apportés par Ravenscroft au texte de Shakespeare amplifièrent la
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peur que la monarchie ne soit ébranlée et comment des extraits du paratexte de l’édition de 1687 illustrent l’évolution de ses propres craintes politiques. La décision de Ravenscroft d’utiliser Titus démontre la compréhension que Shakespeare avait de la peur mais également l’adaptabilité de son œuvre à une variété de contextes politiques contestés.
INDEX
Mots-clés: « complot papiste », « Exclusion Bill », Ravenscroft Edward, Titus Andronicus Keywords: Exclusion Crisis, Popish Plot, Ravenscroft Edward, Titus Andronicus
AUTHOR
BARBARA BURGESS-VAN AKEN SAGES Fellow, Case Western Reserve University
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“Fear No More”: Gender Politics and the “Hell” of New Media Technologies in Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline (2014)
Maurizio Calbi
1 In a series of seminal essays, Peter Donaldson has persuasively argued that many contemporary Shakespearean films display “sustained thematic attention to media [...] practices,”1 and that the exploration of “the ferment in communication technologies” in these films is often just as significant as “new interpretations of the plays,” or even more so.2 Although Donaldson’s main focus is on the so-called Shakespeare-on-film boom of the 1990s, this media-inflected “Shakespeareccentricity”3—a phenomenon that is close to what Douglas Lanier has identified as “post-textual Shakespeare”4—has arguably not come to an end with the turn of the millennium, as testified, for instance, by recent Shakespearean films as different from one another as Alan Brown’s Private Romeo (2011), Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus (2011), Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (2013), and Matías Piñeiro’s Viola (2012). In this paper, I want to focus on Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline (2014) as an example of the continuing trend toward media self- reflexivity in twenty-first-century Shakespearean adaptation. This is a film in which the Shakespearean text is forced to cohabit with an intense exploration of a wide range of media technologies. I want to show that the media consciousness of the film is inextricably linked with its politics of gender and, more specifically, that the processes of remediation that it repeatedly activates (i.e., the re-framing of one medium through another)5 fundamentally contribute to the fashioning, rearticulation, and questioning of notions of masculinity and male bonding.
2 Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline is a modernized re-telling of Shakespeare’s play in which the Briton motorcycle gang, led by drug kingpin Cymbeline (Ed Harris), comes into conflict with the Rome police force, led by Caius Lucius (Vondie Curtis-Hall), as a result of Cymbeline’s refusal to continue to bear the Roman “yoke” (3.1.52),6 and pay the “wonted tribute” (5.5.563) to the (corrupt) representatives of law enforcement.
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Much like in Shakespeare’s play, Cymbeline’s “wicked queen” (Milla Jovovich) (5.5.564) and her son Cloten (Anton Yelchin) are instrumental in the transformation of the uneasy peace between the factions into “war and confusion” (3.1.66). The “time” of Almereyda’s Cymbeline is thus a “troublesome” time (4.3.21). 7 Violence permeates the film. Moreover, and perhaps much more than in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, where, at least in terms of the ideological project of the play, violence is teleologically oriented toward the re-creation of a gendered and “imperial” male body,8 in Almereyda’s Cymbeline there is no clear-cut distinction between the violence of the Britons and the violence of the Romans. The film underlines the boundless cycle of violence especially in the scene in which the Queen sings Bob Dylan’s enigmatic “Dark Eyes” to an enthralled audience made of Briton bikers: as she sings, we witness a sequence in slow motion in which the brutal shooting of two Romans by the Britons (see figure 1 below) is juxtaposed to the cruel clubbing to death of a Briton by the Romans in the Rome police station, which takes place as Caius Lucius placidly sits at his desk, counting money (presumably part of the Britons’ “tribute”), and pleasurably rolling up a cigarette (see figure 2 below).
Figure 1: Michael Almereyda, Cymbeline, 2014, screen grab (DVD).
Britons’ violence. Grindstone / Lionsgate (DVD 2014). All further illustrations taken from this reference.
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Figure 2. Roman violence.
3 The endemic violence pervading the film is arguably constitutive of a male body that is almost constantly, and even before any actual conflict, a “body-at-war,” an entity that repeatedly fashions itself as hyperbolically masculine. This body presents itself as authoritative and in control, with all its paraphernalia (from guns to clubs to knives to leather jackets), and yet it is also that which intermittently appears as striving to maintain this idealized version of itself—all the main male characters, from Posthumus to Pisanio, from Iachimo to Cymbeline himself,9 are occasionally but significantly shown as (reluctant) bearers of a body-in-pain, as if the film wanted to suggest that hypermasculinity may be in itself a self-defeating construct.10 One may want to add that this “body-at-war”—and at war with itself—mostly operates in derelict, anonymous, depopulated places, which are far away, both geographically and symbolically, from the glamorous, metropolitan locations that Almereyda’s previous Shakespearean film, Hamlet 2000, chose to explore. In this sense, the life of the polis in the film approximates what Giorgio Agamben calls life under the state of exception.11
4 It is also worth pointing out, as many critics have done in connection with Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,12 that the “real” violence taking place within the film is co- extensive with the (gendered) violence of rhetoric, and that this is in turn strictly bound up with detrimental notions of masculine honor. Major instances of this form of violence, which the film duly revisits, are of course the rhetorical “madness” of the wager scene; Iachimo’s rhetorical bravado in coining a “false report” (1.7.173) as regards Posthumus; Iachimo’s rich accumulation of details—his “inventory” (2.2.30)—as he sneakily penetrates and “un-covers” a woman’s secret and private place;13 Posthumus’s fantasy of dismemberment following Iachimo’s gradual revelation of Imogen’s (supposed) infidelity: “O, that I had her here, to tear her limb-meal” (2.4.147).
5 One of the most interesting aspects of Almereyda’s film is that it often makes the (gendered) violence of rhetoric resonate with the “violence”—and rhetoric—of new media technologies. Many of the (overwhelmingly negative) reviews of the film have remarked upon the frequent presence of these technologies (from cellphones to iPads to laptops), and mostly read it as part of Almereyda’s inconsistent and superficial updating of Shakespearean material. Suffice it to mention here the Los Angeles Times
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review, significantly entitled “‘Cymbeline’ in the Instagram age,” which calls the film “a mash-up of social media shortcomings and Shakespearean tragedy that becomes […] a tale of cinematic ambition gone awry;”14 or the sarcastic comments that appear in another review: “Laboring under the misconception that the problem with the play as written was the singular lack of Apple products [...], Almereyda makes only the most cosmetic of changes.”15
6 Yet, I want to argue that the film does not merely—or randomly—emphasize the proliferation of technological devices in the contemporary world in an attempt to divert attention from, or redress, the shortcomings of a Shakespearean text that has often been seen, at least since Samuel Johnson, as containing much incongruity; in a self-conscious way, it folds a variety of media forms within the cinematic medium so that they interact and compete with each other, and this mostly in order to draw attention to, and explore, the politics of gender that maybe part of the (Shakespearean) past but obdurately come back to haunt the present.16 In order to begin to illustrate this, I want to return to the three-minute sequence in which the Queen sings Bob Dylan’s “Dark Eyes,” and in particular to the moment when she sings the lines: “I live in another world / Where life and death are memorized.”17 As we hear these words, we are offered a close-up of Imogen (Dakota Johnson) against the background of an Old Master painting with hounds hunting a stag (see figure 3 below); subsequently, as the camera moves away from her face, we realize that she is sitting on piece of furniture next to a small, old-fashioned TV, waiting for her attendants to complete the transportation of Iachimo’s “trunk” (Ethan Hawke) into the room next to her bedroom (see figure 4 below).
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Figure 3: Imogen framed by an Old Master’s painting.
Figure 4: Imogen and an old TV set.
7 As Douglas Lanier points out, the cinematic techniques used in the initial part of the film, including this section, repeatedly insist on Imogen’s naiveté, alienation, and confinement, her “divorce from the ugly realities of her situation;”18 she does, indeed, “live in another world,” to refer to Bob Dylan’s lyrics, and this world, I want to suggest, is also the “anachronistic” world of “archaic” media, which explains the emphasis on an Old Master’s painting as well as on the old-fashioned TV, itself a piece of furniture much more than a technological device. Imogen owns a cellular phone, but she is always in the position of a (passive) receiver: in one scene she lies on her bed with Posthumus’s “mean’st garment” (2.3.132) covering her (i.e., the red T-shirt she has just received by post), and she is mildly annoyed when she has to answer the phone call announcing the arrival of “a noble gentleman of Rome” (1.6.10); at least twice she reads messages on somebody else’s phone (including Posthumus’s “letter” to her about Milford Haven, 3.2.40-47);19 she prefers not to use the laptop herself, and asks one of her female attendants to “read, and tell me how far it is” to Milford Haven (50-51). (Later on, Cloten will check this laptop, and find out about Imogen’s whereabouts by perusing the browser’s history: “This is the history of my knowledge touching her flight”.)20 Only on one occasion she is shown as an active user of new media technologies, when she is about to message her father Cymbeline regarding Iachimo’s “assault” (1.7.150), but of course she never completes her task.21
8 Thus, an integral part of the alien “world” of archaic media in which Imogen lives is an Old Master’s painting of hounds attacking a stag, a painting that cannot fail to evoke the specter of the Ovidian narrative of Diana and Actaeon. Framing her face and then her whole body, the painting implicitly but forcefully inserts her in this narrative, positioning her as a “chaste Dian” (2.4.82) who is about to be (symbolically) “wounded” (2.2.14) by the gaze of a not-so-blameless impersonation of Actaeon (i.e., Iachimo), a figure who also stands in for other emblems of male violators alluded to in both Shakespeare’s text and the film, from Tarquin to Tereus (2.2.12; 45). Yet the painting simultaneously and proleptically points to the (symbolic) dismemberment of the male violator and, in particular, to the physical and psychological pain that will be inflicted
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upon him. For reasons that have less to do with plot development than with the film’s indictment of what Martin Orkin calls “a masculine potential for rhetorical […] treachery” and duplicitousness,22 Iachimo re-appears in the film’s finale with his arm on a sling, which is arguably the corporeal sign of the “heaviness and guilt” that “takes off [his] manhood” (5.1.1-2). He thus ends up exhibiting the same bodily handicap that emblematizes the “wretchedness” of Posthumus (5.1.11) for most of the film, and this suggests some kind of uncanny proximity between these male characters (I will return to this).
9 In contrast to the “world” of Imogen, the world of Iachimo is undoubtedly the world of new media technologies. When he first appears at the beginning of the wager scene, he is a self-complacent young man who is having a haircut. As Philario and the exiled Posthumus enter the room, he quickly looks at himself in a small mirror to check if the extemporaneous barber / Frenchman has done a proper job, and the mirror oddly turns out to double as his iPad. Thus, from the very beginning, the shallowness of the Italianate Iachimo of the “original” is rewritten as an artificial identity that is inextricably dependent upon prosthetic media devices. For instance, in the much- pared-down dialogue with Imogen (1.7), his fabrication of “evidence” through the use of pictures on his iPad becomes an integral part of his aggressive, virtuoso rhetorical skills aimed at persuading Imogen of Posthumus’s infidelity. Indeed, the film suggests that this fabrication is the culmination of his twisted rhetoric, some kind of contemporary media equivalent of rhetorical figures of “vivid description” such as enargeia or evidentia.23 In terms of visualization, the “form” of Iachimo’s “false report” (1.7.173) is just as important as the “content,” and perhaps even more so. The sequence, that is, foregrounds the pictures of “tomboys [...] diseas’d ventures [...] such boil’d stuff” (1.7.122; 123) along with the technological device that “contains” and “frames” them, so that we are forced to consider the “medium” of the “message”—the medium as the message—and, more specifically, the “evil” properties of a small screen that contaminates and supplants the cinematic screen (see figure 5 below).
Figure 5: Fabricating evidence.
10 What the film inscribes here is not only the consolidated, philosophical tradition that sees external, prosthetic media as detrimental,24 but also, and more importantly, the conflict between “evil” medium and “beneficial” medium, between contemporary new
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media and the “classical” medium of alternative, independent cinema such as Almereyda’s own film. Put differently, the sequence draws attention to the new medium as itself an example of “poison.” Like the pictures of “tomboys,” this new medium is a kind of “boil’d stuff” that “might poison poison” (125-126). It is “poisonous” to the extreme not just because it is an up-to-date technological support through which one can manufacture “evidence,” but also because one can easily undo— with the same ease with which one clicks or digits to reverse the effect of a computer command—the “evidence” one fabricates. This is what Iachimo does when he reveals to Imogen that the charges against Posthumus are untrue, and shows her the “real” predicament of her exiled husband: on the same iPad, he shows Iachimo sitting on a couch, all by himself, writing things down on what a later sequence will clearly identify as a “traditional” medium—a red notebook (see figure 6 below).
Figure 6: Undoing evidence.
11 As Lanier points out, “What the film seems to process [...], especially through Iachimo’s actions, is an anxiety about the general effect of social media, its capacity to poison the social fabric, to breed and propagate mistrust” (my emphasis).25 One may want to specify that this anxiety is compounded by the fact that new media, at least as far as Almereyda’s film understands them, open up a bi-directional, potentially reversible process of visual inscription that relativizes any form of “truth,” a process whereby each and every form of visual rendition of the “truth,” including Iachimo’s true “report” about Posthumus on his iPad, remains haunted by opacity, by its own dark, uncanny shadow.26
12 Given the opacity that structurally inhabits Iachimo’s second visual “report,” one may want to explore how the qualities that Iachimo attributes to Posthumus articulate themselves in terms of media technologies. Undermining his previous account, Iachimo states that Posthumus is “such a holy witch / That he enchants societies into him: Half all men’s hearts are his;” he adds that as “he sits ’mongst men like a descended god,” “he hath a kind of honour sets him off” (1.7.165-168; 170). How does being a man amongst men relate to media technologies? First of all, it is worth pointing out that Posthumus, unlike media-savvy, hipster Iachimo, is almost entirely associated with the world of old media, and from the very beginning. If the film, as Almereyda repeatedly
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stresses in interviews, is “a blighted love story,” much more than a story about “the forming of the British Empire,”27 this “love story” profoundly relies upon the “other world” of old media. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this is how Posthumus firstly establishes contact with Imogen after his exile: he makes a woodcut and sends it to her through Iachimo, a woodcut that bears the inscription “Fear No More,” and depicts a wide-eyed girl entwined with a skeleton (see figure 7 below).
Figure 7: “Fear No More” woodcut.
13 Yet the contact between the two lovers through the medium of the woodcut is ambiguous to say the least.28 It redefines them not simply as film characters within a Shakespearean adaptation but also as characters who are aware—at least partially and potentially—of the Shakespearean text around which the adaptation that they inhabit gravitates. Put differently, it re-situates them as film characters that are always- already haunted by “spectral” Shakespearean traces, and this fundamentally contributes to their sense of alienation.29 One must add that the politics of gender inscribed in this self-reflexive layer are a little disconcerting. Posthumus’s woodcut, that is, is a poisonous gift: on the one hand, it is a reassuring love token that should reseal the bond between the two lovers; on the other, it functions as a sinister invitation to Imogen to insert herself in the consolidated aesthetic tradition of representation of “Death and the Maiden”; to identify, that is, with the “maiden” wide- eyed girl inextricably entwined with a skeleton, and thus to live in the expectation of death, marked by death in advance.30 In textual terms, as the original dirge recites after the apparent death of Imogen, and the film reiterates later on, this is an invitation to go, or remain at, “home,” since her “worldly task” has already been “done” (4.2.260-261).
14 Posthumus’s oblique incitement to his “maiden” lady to relocate herself “beyond” life is also a subterranean but forceful request to be dead to desire. Feminist critics have often emphasized the “monumentalization” of female characters in Shakespeare’s drama, “the metaphoric displacement of women into static objects” as a form of containment of the erotic.31 The wager scene is an example of this, as the men compete with each other over and against the body of a woman who is compulsively construed as a series of reified objects—rings, stones, and diamonds—that inscribe and uphold a
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man’s honour and worth, albeit in a necessarily precarious way. For my purposes here, what is most interesting about this scene is that, at least as far as Posthumus’s politics of gender are concerned, there is no solution of continuity between his use of old and new media technologies. This is one of the rare occasions in which Posthumus is shown to be conversant with new media technologies and yet the emphasis is still on the absence and / or containment of female desire.32 As he expostulates that he “esteem[s]” his lady “more than the world enjoys,” and that she is none other than “a gift of the gods” (1.5.75-76; 82), he takes his cellphone out of his pocket and shows a photo of Imogen as an innocent, pre-pubescent child (see below, figure 8).
Figure 8: Imogen as pre-pubescent girl.
15 Posthumus thus “encorpses” Imogen (to use Valerie Traub’s Shakespearean expression) through his iPhone.33 He is, indeed, a “holy witch” who turns his wife into a “spectral,” frozen image that is denied any kind of movement. He also “enchants [male] societies into him” (1.7. 165-166) by circulating this de-sexualized picture among all the men involved in the scene. Needless to say, the male rivalry informing the wager scene does not erase the bond between a man and what remains a man’s most significant other— another man. For instance, Iachimo asserts that he “make[s] [his] wager rather against [Posthumus’s] confidence than [Imogen’s] reputation” (1.5. 107-108). Moreover, his cynical remarks about Posthumus’s wife as a “lady” who “is not [...] living” (my emphasis), or an “unparagon’d mistress” who “is dead,” can be said to be disquietingly proximate to Posthumus’s praise of his wife as somebody—or something—who belongs to “another world,” an entity that irremovably remains elsewhere, “more than the world enjoys” (1.5.76) (my emphasis). Thus, praise and cynicism about this praise uncannily coalesce.
16 Iachimo’s attempt to “make [his] voyage” upon Imogen (1.6.155) is also an attempt to replace Posthumus’s photo of a virginal, pre-pubescent girl with photos of his own. Many critics have underlined the extent to which early modern drama, anatomical treatises, and other cultural artifacts are shaped by an ocular drive, a desire to see, penetrate, and even dismember a body that is irremediably construed as female.34 In the bedroom scene of Almereyda’s film this desire manifests itself through the use of new media technologies. After emerging from his trunk and rubbing his sweaty face on
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a T-shirt that is hanging in the bedroom—a “garment” (2.3.132) that materially and symbolically belongs to the “rival” Posthumus—, Iachimo compulsively starts taking pictures of a sleeping Imogen with his iPhone. They remain images of a virginal Imogen, an Imogen as “fresh lily,” “whiter than the sheets” (2.2.15-16), but one who invites violation—Imogen’s unconsciously languid pose on her bed symbolically makes her complicit with Iachimo’s violation of her “private space” and body. Iachimo’s desire to see quickly transmutes into a more “material” desire to touch Imogen’s body (“That I might touch! But kiss, one kiss!”, 16-17). Of course, given the dramatic situation, this “touch” can never come to fruition. But what is interesting here is that the film insists on how this desire is sublimated through media technologies: the desire to touch Imogen becomes Iachimo’s self-referential, almost masturbatory act of touching his iPhone screen35 before taking yet another photo and then a “selfie” lying with his head on the bed tête-à-tête with Imogen (see figure 9 below).
Figure 9: Iachimo’s selfie.
17 More generally, as the scene progresses, we are made to understand that the photographic image generated through new media technologies is the thing itself; that the image supplements (in a Derridean sense) whatever rhetorical and narrative skills Iachimo displays throughout the movie. For instance, as he takes a photograph of Imogen’s “left breast” with its “mole cinque-spotted” (37-38), we realize that it is the image itself that functions as “a voucher, / Stronger than ever law could make” (39-40); that what is “riveted, / Screw’d to [Iachimo’s] memory” (43-44) is nothing but what is stored in his cellphone’s memory. One may go as far as to argue that in the film this form of storage replaces the essential technicity of writing as a form of exteriorization and memory: “Why should I write this down, that’s riveted, / Screw’d to my memory?” (43-44).36 In short, the unnecessary supplement of writing that the “original” underlines becomes in the film the necessary supplement of the (stored) photographic image.
18 One must add that this form of visualization often functions within a male homosocial economy. In the bedroom scene Iachimo seems to waver a little, overwhelmed as he is by heterosexual, male predatory desire (even if sublimated by means of technology), but then he decidedly swerves to his proper “design” (“But my design”, 23), which is
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not just that of collecting images but also of producing images that are significant for the male rival as well as for the other men who have witnessed the wager. And yet, this male homosocial economy, as articulated within the film, does not necessarily exclude some kind of opacity, or even the disappearance of the image. In other words, what is striking about the scene in which Iachimo is supposed to “make’t apparent / That [he has] tasted [Imogen] in her bed” (2.4.56-57) is that we never see the photographs he has taken. What we see is that Iachimo puts his pieces of evidence, which crucially include his iPad, on Posthumus’s most cherished means of transport (i.e., his skateboard). As the skateboard-cum-iPad moves back and forth between the two rivals, the film seems to suggest—and the cynical Iachimo with it—that the new medium is an updated form of bonding between men, and that male connectivity per se matters more than any visual content appearing on a screen.37 According to this extreme form of male homosocial bonding, the woman was never “worth our debate” (1.6.157), which is the line Posthumus will take later on when he lashes out: “Is there no way for men to be, but women / Must be half-workers?” (2.5.153-154).
19 In both the play and the film, Posthumus’s redemption is mostly dependent upon the rejection of these deleterious forms of male bonding (“No bond, but to do just ones”, 5.1.7) as well as upon the assertion of the value of a certain knowing blindness: “There are none want eyes to direct them the way I am going, but such a wink, and will not use them” (5.4.187-189).38 In Almereyda’s film this is synonymous with a questioning of techniques of visualization through new media technologies. In this respect, the ghostly appearance of an old biker who is none other but Posthumus’s father Sicilius is fundamental: he reads “Of God We Ask One Favor” by Emily Dickinson as his son lies on a metal table in a morgue-like place in a state of drowsiness. The theme of forgiveness emerging from Dickinson’s complex poem is of course important at this specific juncture of the film. But what is equally significant is the old, crumpled composition notebook that Posthumus’s father lays on his son’s chest after reading from it (see figure 10 below): Posthumus’s symbolic rebirth, the scene suggests, has also to do with some kind of re-acquaintance with an old medium he has culpably forsaken because of Iachimo’s seductive screen technologies.
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Figure 10: Posthumus and composition notebook.
20 Yet, by the end of the film one realizes that if the critique of new media technologies has been maintained—to borrow an expression from the character who is most consistently associated with them, they are somehow equivalent to “hell” (2.2.50)—, there is no simultaneous, clear reassertion of the value of old media. Moreover, and relatedly, Posthumus will never become his father’s son (or become again his substitute father’s son). The last scene of the film is emblematic in this respect. As Cymbeline emphatically states that “pardon’s the word to all” (5.5.423), and as one of the Briton bikers sets fire to the scapegoated, dead body of the Queen, the two clearly distressed and horrified lovers sneak out, and then ride off on a motorbike, surrounded by dead bodies. Their (physical) departure is also, and fundamentally, a radical departure from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and its patriarchally inflected genealogies. Significantly, in terms of the politics of the gender of the film’s finale, it is a shorthaired, androgynous- looking Imogen who is the pilot, a character who is very different from “the piece of tender air” (447) of the oracle in the “original.” In a way that parallels Posthumus’s implicit refusal of male genealogy, she will never be her father’s daughter. The film ends with a self-reflexive gesture: we are offered a close-up of the “Fear No More” woodcut, finally lying on the pavement among pieces of broken glass (see below figure 11), after circulating throughout the film as a signifier bearing multiple, even contradictory meanings, and affecting characters (from Iachimo to Imogen to Cloten)39 in different ways.
Figure 11: Woodcut lying on the floor.
21 It is this woodcut that the lovers also leave behind as they move toward an unknown destination, a Shakespearean inscription—in fact, a Shakespearean “home”—that finally appears to be uninhabitable as a symbol of redemption and re-birth. As Douglas Lanier argues, “in Almereyda’s hands, Shakespeare emerges, at least deep structurally, as an indie artist, one to which he and the indie film genre can claim to be distant heirs.”40 Yet, the film’s finale introduces a cautionary note. It suggests that “Shakespeare” is a complex textual ensemble that can be inherited and become an ally against mainstream cinema, and perhaps against new media technologies, only if it is
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forced to go through a process of multiple transformations and migrations, not least as regards its deleterious politics of gender.
NOTES
1. Peter S. Donaldson, “Bottom and the Gramophone”, Shakespeare Survey 61, 2008, spec. issue Shakespeare, Sound and Screen, ed. Peter Holland, 23-35, p. 23. 2. Idem, “‘In Fair Verona’: Media, Spectacle, and Performance in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”, Shakespeare After Mass Media, ed. Richard Burt, New York, Palgrave, 2002, 59-82, p. 61. 3. Richard Burt, “Introduction: Shakespeare, More or Less? From Shakespeareccentricity to Shakespearecentricity and Back”, Shakespeares after Shakespeare. An Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture, vol. 1, ed. Richard Burt, Westport and London, Greenwood Press, 2007, 1-9, p. 3. 4. Douglas Lanier, “Recent Shakespeare Adaptation and the Mutations of Cultural Capital”, After Shakespeare on Film, spec. issue of Shakespeare Studies 38, 2010, ed. Greg Semenza, 104-113, p. 106. 5. For this concept, see Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge, MA and London, MIT Press, 1999. In this paper my emphasis is more specifically on remediation as the uncanny coexistence of media. 6. William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, ed. J. M. Nosworthy, coll. The Arden Shakespeare, London, Methuen, 1955. References to the play are from this edition, and are included parenthetically in the main body of the text. 7. Many reviewers associate the film with the TV show Sons of Anarchy, not least because of the common reference to biker culture. The distributor briefly retitled the film Anarchy, probably in order to attract fans of the show. In interviews Michael Almereyda repeatedly denies that he knew about what he disparagingly calls “this little show.” See, for instance, Steven Mears, “Interview: Michael Almereyda,” Film Comment, 13 March 2015 (accessible online at: https:// www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-michael-almereyda, last accessed 3 June 2017). 8. Much has been written on this aspect of the play. See, for instance, Jody Mikalachki, The Legacy of Boadicea: Gender and Nation in Early Modern England, London, Routledge, 1998; and Willy Malley, “Postcolonial Shakespeare: British Identity Formation and Cymbeline”, Shakespeare’s Late Plays: New Readings, eds Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 145-157. This homogenous, ethnically-marked body that re-submits to “the Roman empire” (5.5.462) in view of its own “imperial” destiny is a body that claims for itself an uncontaminated maternal role: “CYMBELINE. O, What am I? / A mother to the birth of three? Ne’er mother / Rejoic’d n deliverance more” (5.5.369-371). See Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest, New York and London: Routledge, 1992, where she speaks of the end of Cymbeline as the “magical restoration of paternal authority and the fantasy-accomplishment of a parthenogenetic family” (p. 220). 9. For instance, Posthumus, a penniless skateboarder in the film, is shown from the very beginning with a broken arm; Cymbeline often seems to be in pain, and is clearly on medications. 10. On hypermasculinity as a construction that defies embodiment and identification, see Judith Butler, “Sexual Inversions,” Discourses of Sexuality: From Aristotle to Aids, ed. Domna C. Stanton, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1992, 344-361.
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11. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998 [1995], p. 37. This a “state” in which there is no safety, since everyone potentially becomes homo sacer (i.e., an entity “that may be killed but not sacrificed”) for everyone else (p. 83). 12. See, for instance, Martin Orkin, Local Shakespeares. Proximations and Power, London, Routledge, 2005, p. 85-111. 13. On the “dis-covery” of a woman’s secret place in early modern culture, see esp. Patricia Parker, “Othello and Hamlet: Dilation, Spying, and the ‘Secret Place’ of Woman,” Representations 44, 1993, 60-95. 14. Betsy Sharkey, “‘Cymbeline’ in the Instagram Age. Bring Shakespeare’s Drama of Deception into Today’s Social Media World: A Good Idea Gone Awry,” Los Angeles Times, 12 March 2015 (accessible online at: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cymbeline- review-20150313-column.html, last accessed 3 June 2017). 15. Jessica Kiang, “Venice Review: ‘Cymbeline’”, The Playlist, 2 September 2014 (accessible online at: http://www.indiewire.com/2014/09/venice-review-cymbeline-starring-ethan-hawke-dakota- johnson-ed-harris-milla-jovovich-penn-badgley-anton-yelchin-272964, last accessed 3 June 2017). 16. The interaction of media forms I am emphasizing here relates to Almereyda’s description of his project: “to approach [the play] scene by scene as a collision between contemporary reality and the world that Shakespeare was defining, and to see how those two things talk to each other and intersect”. See Steven Mears, “Interview: Michael Almereyda,” Film Comment, 13 March 2015 (accessible online at: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-michael-almereyda, last accessed 3 June 2017). 17. For the full lyrics, see https://bobdylan.com/songs/dark-eyes, last accessed 3 June 2017. 18. Douglas Lanier, “Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline: The End of Teen Shakespeare”, Shakespeare on Screen: The Tempest and Late Romances, eds Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, 232-250, p. 240. I want to thank Douglas Lanier for kindly supplying a draft copy of this essay. 19. Additionally, Pisanio makes her privy to Posthumus’s murderous plans by handing over his phone to her (3.4.212). 20. This is of course a tongue-in-cheek transformation of Pisanio’s lines: “This paper is the history of my knowledge / Touching her flight” (3.5.100-101). 21. Like Imogen’s room, Belarius’s working-class cabin also exhibits old media devices, including an outdated TV set and a turntable. According to Lanier, this cabin is an emblem of a “pre- digital,” dissident American culture that Imogen will come to embrace. Her (renewed) association with this “pre-digital” world and what it stands for is essential to her rebirth as “a disaffected alt-cult youth” (“Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline”, op. cit., p. 241). 22. Orkin, op. cit., p. 89. 23. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. E. Arber, London, Alex Murray, 1869 [1589], p. 155. 24. For a lucid summary of this tradition, see Mark B. N. Hansen, “New Media”, Critical Terms for Media Studies, eds W.J.T Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 2010, 172-185. 25. Lanier, “Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline”, op. cit. p. 242. As Lanier also convincingly argues, Almereyda’s Cymbeline, when compared to his Hamlet, is “rather more pessimistic about screen technology as a vehicle for alternative culture” (p. 243). 26. According to the film, that is, in the world of new media there is no trust that one can clearly and unequivocally separate from mistrust. 27. Emily Rome, “Interview: ‘Cymbeline’ Director Michael Almereyda on Reuniting with Shakespeare and Ethan Hawke”, Hitfix, 13 March 2015 (accessible online at: http://uproxx.com/
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hitfix/interview-cymbeline-director-michael-almereyda-on-reuniting-with-shakespeare-and- ethan-hawke, last accessed 3 June 2017). 28. This is also “con-tact”: Imogen yearningly touches it at the beginning of her dialogue with Iachimo, and this is probably contrasted with Iachimo’s subsequent, “malignant” touch of his iPad screen to show the photoshopped, incriminating evidence against Posthumus. 29. On Shakespearean spectrality see Maurizio Calbi, Spectral Shakespeares. Media Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe draw a useful distinction between kitsch and camp Shakespearean adaptations. Camp adaptations do not deny that the Shakespearean text is always-already part of the cultural environment within which they take place. In this sense, Almereyda’s Cymbeline falls within the realm of camp. See Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe, New Wave Shakespeare on Screen, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, p. 14-21. 30. There are undoubtedly similarities between the skeleton in the woodcut and the figure of the Grim Reaper carved into the clubhouse table in Sons of Anarchy. Given Almereyda’s position vis-à- vis the show (see note 7 above), it is difficult to tell whether this is a conscious borrowing or not. When read in the light of the (voluntary or involuntary) transmigration of visual motifs from the TV show to the film, Iachimo’s invitation to Imogen appears to be even more sinister. (For the series, “to meet Mr Mayhem” / the Reaper is to meet death). I want to thank one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for alerting me to this similarity. 31. Valerie Traub, Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, p. 28. 32. The other instance is when Posthumus orders Pisanio to kill Imogen through a phone message. In this message, Imogen is defined a “strumpet” (3.4.22). His two uses of new media technologies reflect his dichotomization of women as either (pre-pubescent) virgins or whores. 33. Traub, op. cit., p. 26. 34. See Parker, op. cit., esp. p. 66. 35. Iachimo touches his phone just as he utters the word “touch.” 36. For a lucid account of the technicity of writing and its relation to memory, see especially Bernard Stiegler, “Memory”, in Mitchell and Hansen, op. cit., 64-87. 37. On connectivity per se as a fundamental aspect of new media, see Hansen, op. cit., p. 180-181. 38. The gaoler replies: “What an infinite mock is this, that a man should have the best use of eyes to see the way of blindness” (5.4.190-193). 39. Cloten picks it up at the quarry near Belarius’s home. In his case, it clearly announces an unredeemable death. 40. Lanier, “Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline”, op. cit., p. 248.
ABSTRACTS
The paper focuses on Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline (2014), a modernized re-telling of Shakespeare’s play in which the Briton motorcycle gang, led by drug kingpin Cymbeline, comes into conflict with the Rome police force, led by Caius Lucius. In the film, which has been defined as “Shakespeare in the Instagram age,” sustained attention to media practices and technologies competes with the incorporation of textual material. In particular, the film displays a conflict between old media, including Shakespearean textual inscriptions (e.g. the “Fear No More”
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woodcut that Posthumus makes and sends to Imogen as a gift), and new media technologies, pervasively associated with perverse visualization and the “spreadability” of rumour and untruth. The paper shows that the media consciousness of the film is inextricably linked with its politics of gender and, more specifically, that the processes of remediation that it repeatedly activates fundamentally contribute to the fashioning, rearticulation, and questioning of notions of masculinity and male bonding.
Cet article analyse le film Cymbeline de Michael Almereyda (2014), réécriture moderne de la pièce de Shakespeare dans laquelle un gang de motards bretons insulaires, mené par le baron de la drogue Cymbeline, entre en conflit avec la police de Rome, dirigée par Caius Lucius. Dans le film, que l’on a pu qualifier de « Shakespeare à l’ère d’Instagram », l’attention soutenue portée à l’utilisation des médias et aux technologies entre en concurrence avec l’incorporation de matériau textuel. Le film repose en particulier sur le conflit entre les anciens médias, notamment des inscriptions renvoyant à des textes de Shakespeare (comme par exemple la gravure « Fear no more » fabriquée par Posthumus et qu’il envoie en cadeau à Imogène), et les nouveaux médias, associés systématiquement à une visualisation perverse et à la capacité de la rumeur mensongère à se répandre. Cet article montre que la conscience médiatique du film est indissociable de sa politique du genre et, plus précisément, que les processus de remédiation qu’il déclenche de façon répétée apportent une contribution fondamentale à l’élaboration, la reformulation et la mise en question des notions de masculinité et de compagnonnage masculin.
INDEX
Mots-clés: adaptation, Almereyda Michael, compagnonnage masculin, Cymbeline, « Fear no more », nouvelles technologies, politique du genre, Shakespeare et les médias sociaux Keywords: adaptation, Almereyda Michael, Cymbeline, “Fear no more, ” gender politics, male bonding, new media technologies, Shakespeare and social media
AUTHOR
MAURIZIO CALBI University of Salerno (Italy)
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Webster et Robert Merle: Du Démon blanc à Flamineo : revisiter le théâtre de l’effroi
Anne Wattel
1 Robert Merle, après son premier roman, Week-end à Zuydcoote, récit de la débâcle de 1940 qui lui valut le prix Goncourt, entreprend en 1950 de retracer « la lente et tâtonnante mise au point de l’usine de mort d’Auschwitz1 ». Il explore, sidéré, au Centre de Documentation Juive International toutes les archives de Nuremberg et il essaie d’appréhender Rudolf Hœss, le bourreau d’Auschwitz, cet homme, un homme, qui tua deux millions et demi de ses semblables et auquel il choisit dans son roman, La mort est mon métier, paru en 1952, de donner une voix, à la première personne. Et pour comprendre, pour saisir le pire du XXe siècle, pour saisir le mal et aller au-delà de la sidération, de l’effroi, Merle, professeur de littérature anglaise, fait d’abord un détour par le XVIIe siècle, par le théâtre de l’effroi, non pas par Shakespeare qu’il connaît pourtant très bien, mais par Webster et sa pièce de 1612, Le Démon blanc2. Il se tourne vers le dramaturge dont il estime qu’il est un « maître ès agonies » qui a exploré la mort de manière obsessionnelle, avec « une force étrange », « avec des accents plus inoubliables que ceux de Shakespeare » (DB, 72). Il se tourne vers le morbide et le macabre, vers l’univers de Webster chez lequel « le “mal” atteint sa plus grande profondeur » (DB, 68).
2 L’œuvre, on le sait, s’inspire d’un épisode réel, l’histoire de Vittoria Accoramboni, qui défraya la chronique italienne entre 1580 et 15853. Il s’agit d’une tragédie de vengeance qui conte les amours adultères du duc Brachiano et de la belle Vittoria qui, épaulés par un entremetteur, le frère de cette dernière, Flamineo, s’emploient à éliminer les obstacles à leur bonheur et font assassiner et l’époux fantoche de Vittoria, et la vertueuse Isabella, sœur de Francisco de Médicis, duc de Florence, qui obtiendra vengeance.
3 On peut véritablement parler de fascination de Merle pour cette pièce de Webster et cette chronique italienne : non seulement il la traduit en 1950 aux éditions Aubier Bilingue, mais il la réécrit aussi avec son Flamineo, mis en scène pour la première fois au
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théâtre de Rennes en 1949 ; elle lui inspire également trois versions romancées publiées entre 1958 et 19874.
4 Nous nous attarderons tout d’abord sur la pièce de Webster et sur le fait qu’au-delà des délices macabres de la pièce baroque, ce que Merle admire, c’est la peinture d’un univers en totale décomposition, peuplé d’êtres effroyables, mais non pas de monstres. Car ces êtres-là, les Brachiano, les Vittoria, les Lodovico et Flamineo sont, certes, des criminels qui font frémir, mais ce sont des hommes dont la part démoniaque trouve à s’exprimer dans une société qui a quelque chose de pourri en elle. Et c’est cette peinture inégalée, moderne, intemporelle du mal que Merle trouve en germe chez Webster.
5 C’est donc à partir de Webster, nourri de Webster, par-delà Webster, que Merle écrit son Flamineo5, un Flamineo qui va le guider dans son exploration du bourreau du XXe siècle, de Rudolf Hœss, un Flamineo qui devient « une pièce d’aujourd’hui6 », comme le notait Aragon, une pièce centrée sur un personnage, le tueur, et sur cette question qui traverse en filigrane toutes les œuvres de Merle : d’où vient que nous fassions le mal ?
Le Démon blanc, une pièce de l’effroi
6 Webster est considéré comme un maître de l’épouvante : il aurait engendré, selon Henri Fitzjeffrey, son contemporain qui en fit un portrait à charge en 1617 dans ses Notes du Théâtre des Blackfryers, une œuvre monstrueuse, « some centaur strange, some huge Bucephalus / or Pallas, sure, […]7 ». Pour Philarète Chasles, professeur au collège de France, du XIXe siècle, « la Gorgone est sa muse ; il se plaît dans l’horrible » ; et l’universitaire de préciser : « Ne cherchez rien de tendre, de gracieux ou de tempéré dans ces tragédies, désert sanglant où règne une atmosphère empoisonnée, où le forfait appelle le forfait […]8 ». Plus récemment, Yves Peyré, dans sa notice pour l’édition de la Pléiade, évoquant l’univers du Démon blanc, indique qu’il est « monstrueux et contre nature9 ».
7 Détracteurs ou admirateurs, tous s’accordent à dire que Webster est l’auteur d’une œuvre-centaure, qui peint l’inhumanité tapie au fond de l’homme, la sauvagerie ; d’une œuvre qui relève de l’excès ; une œuvre-gorgone qui méduse, pétrifie le spectateur.
8 Et, il est vrai, il s’agit bien là d’un théâtre de l’effroi, un théâtre plein « d’horreur et de sang » (DB, I. i.81), fait pour les yeux et sur lequel s’amoncellent les corps meurtris, corps douloureux qui agonisent longuement. Il faut ensanglanter la scène ; pas moins de sept morts sont offertes en spectacle.
9 On note chez Webster un indéniable raffinement dans la monstration de l’horreur, une monstration renforcée par la mise en scène d’un voyeurisme de l’acte criminel. Ce voyeurisme peut être macabre et jouissif, comme c’est le cas pour le duc Brachiano qui réclame qu’on les lui montre, ces meurtres, qu’on lui offre la vision de leur exécution (DB, II.ii.131). La magie est alors convoquée et apparaissent sous ses yeux deux pantomimes au fort potentiel dramatique. Brachiano, assistant en qualité de spectateur à la mort de sa propre épouse qu’il a commanditée, s’exclame : « Fort bien, donc elle est morte » (DB, II.ii.133) : simple constat, cynique et glaçant.
10 Avec le personnage de Cornelia, la mère pathétique, le voyeurisme se fait frémissant. Webster ne se contente pas de mettre en scène le fratricide, il pose l’acte sous les yeux de la mère impuissante et le spectateur, ébranlé par l’acte lui-même, l’est d’autant plus
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qu’il voit la mère horrifiée par Flamineo, le monstre qu’elle a enfanté ; qu’il découvre l’horreur d’une mère qui voit dans son fils l’entremetteur et qui s’exclame : « plût à Dieu que je ne t’eusse pas enfanté ! » (DB, I.ii.103).
11 L’effroi dans la pièce de Webster, vient aussi des mots eux-mêmes : la parole sadique, la violence du langage se font l’écho d’un désir de destruction et profanation du corps de l’ennemi car la mort ne suffit pas. Lodovico, artiste en cruauté, qui rêve de faire avec les tripes de ses ennemis « de la dentelle italienne » (DB, I.i.81), contemple à la fin de la pièce la scène qu’il vient d’ensanglanter triplement et se félicite : « Je me glorifie de dire : c’est moi qui ai fait ceci […] – c’est moi qui ai peint cet effet de nuit. C’est mon chef d’œuvre » (DB, V. 6. 275). Tous les personnages ou presque s’adonnent à des fantasmes barbares : on rêve de « hacher menu » et laisser « le sauvage vent du nord balayer les morceaux » (DB, IV.ii.183) ; d’empaler sur un piquet ou un pal (DB, V.i.219 ; V.vi.265) ; on souhaite que l’autre s’étouffe avec sa salive (DB, III.ii.159) ; on se déclare prêt à s’arracher la lèvre d’un coup de dent plutôt que de donner un baiser (DB, IV.ii. 189). Et même la pure Isabella, épouse de Brachiano, évoque, dans une cascade d’infinitifs que ne renierait pas Médée, ses désirs de vengeance : « Arracher les yeux de la catin, la laisser mourir à petit feu quelque vingt mois, lui couper le nez et les lèvres, arracher ses dents pourries, et faire momifier sa chair pour la garder comme un trophée de ma juste colère » (DB, II.i.121). Mutilations, dépouilles profanées, corps percés, hachés, empalés, par le feu, par le fer, par le pieu : chacun semble rivaliser d’inventivité quand il s’agit d’évoquer la torture.
12 Mort et putréfaction envahissent également l’arrière-plan. Tout dans cette pièce est corrompu : corrompues, la théologie (DB, IV.i.179), l’époque (III.ii.157), la femme ; violée, la justice. Le Démon blanc est une œuvre de la pourriture, et rien n’échappe à la décomposition : le corps se dégrade, dents et membres sont pourris (DB, IV.ii.189, II.i. 121) ; la nature se meurt avec son gui flétri et épuisé (DB, II.i.129) ; le médecin est un « habile et corrompu bourreau » (DB, V.iii.229). Vie et mort coexistent tant et si bien qu’elles n’en sont plus antagonistes : la vie, faisandée, n’est qu’une étape vers la mort. Cette pièce est bien, comme l’indique Yves Peyré une « tragédie de la dislocation du sens, de l’éclatement des perspectives et de la perversion des valeurs10 ».
13 Le baroquisme de Webster est fréquemment présenté de manière critique : il proposerait une surenchère dans l’effroi et la monstration, il se complairait dans le sang qui appelle le sang, d’où l’accusation bien postérieure d’être, comme le notait Marc Beigbeder dans Les Lettres Françaises en 1953, un « bâtisseur de mélo » mettant en scène un « Hamlet des bas-fonds11 ».
14 Merle, qui analyse longuement la pièce dans son introduction aux éditions Aubier, s’arrête sur les reproches qui ont pu être faits à Webster, à commencer par celui d’avoir négligé, malmené l’Histoire. En appliquant les lois de « la concentration et de l’accumulation dramatique », en transformant l’Histoire en histoire de vendetta, en accumulant les menaces qui pèsent sur les deux amants, Webster a, selon Merle, « pimenté » l’histoire et l’a rendue « scéniquement plus efficace » (DB, 20). Si l’on compare, dit-il, « la version historique des faits et la version de Webster, on ne peut manquer d’apercevoir combien, pour les effets de “la pitié et de la terreur” celle-ci l’emporte sur celle-là » (DB, 20-21).
15 Merle récuse le terme de « mélodrame ». Selon lui la différence entre drame et mélo réside « dans le fait que le mélo s’organise et se construit autour du frisson d’horreur – du “thrill” – tandis que le “thrill” n’est qu’un des éléments auxquels le drame peut ou
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non recourir » (DB, 27). « Le mélodrame – le “thrill” pour l’amour seul du “thrill” – est une erreur esthétique. Mais le morbide est du domaine légitime de l’art » (DB, 28). Par ailleurs, selon Merle : Empoisonnements raffinés, guets-apens mortels, meurtres maquillés en accidents, massacres et savantes tortures, fantômes et mandragores, rien de tout cela, en fait, ne paraissait aux Élisabéthains incroyable ou excessif. Au XVIe siècle, ce que nous appelons le « mélodrame » c’était l’étoffe même dont la vie était faite. (DB, 26)
16 Et cette étoffe, cet arrière-plan des tragédies du sang, force est de constater, comme le notait Aragon – qui s’étonnait de l’accueil fait à Webster dans Les Lettres Françaises –, qu’il est curieux « qu’elles semblent être devenues incompréhensibles aux contemporains du nazisme, à ceux qui ont vu fumer les fours d’Auschwitz […]12 ».
Une peinture inégalée du mal
17 Si Merle reprend dans son Flamineo cet arrière-plan, s’il s’adonne au morbide et parsème sa scène de cadavres, ce n’est pourtant pas là ce qui explique son détour par Webster. Par dessus tout, c’est la peinture inégalée du mal que Webster propose qui le fascine.
18 L’œuvre, dès son titre, est placée sous le signe du démon ; pourtant, étonnamment, elle ne met en scène que des êtres humains, terriblement humains. Pas de sorcières, ni de véritable diable en scène : les termes « enfer, démon, sorcière » s’ils apparaissent bien dans la pièce, ne sont que métaphores. Le mal est bien présent, mais c’est un mal humanisé, au cœur de la nature humaine.
19 Dans la pièce de Webster, on fait à peine trembler le spectateur avec l’au-delà. Le Diable n’est, comme le dit Vittoria que « carton peint » juste bon à faire peur aux enfants (DB, III.ii.151), or elle a passé l’âge des tremblements sans cause. Au mieux, il relève du délire, celui d’un Brachiano agonisant, empoisonné (DB, V.iii.233) qui voit le diable. Délire que tout cela, comme l’indique Vittoria qui répond laconiquement : « Monseigneur, il n’y a rien ici ».
20 Il en est de même pour les spectres13 : Webster, fidèle à la tradition, ne manque pas cette scène à faire : deux spectres sont convoqués, ceux d’Isabella (DB, IV.i.179) et de Brachiano (V.iv.253-255). Le premier est évacué par la raison : il n’émerge que par le pouvoir de l’imagination, comme le constate Francesco de Médicis, le frère d’Isabella : « il n’y a rien d’autre ici que ma mélancolie ». Spectres et diables, tout cela n’est que « conte de bonne femme » (DB, IV.i.179), hallucinations émanant d’esprits mélancoliques ou perturbés. Le second, le spectre de Brachiano qui apparaît à Flamineo suscite il est vrai plus d’effroi. C’est une « terrible apparition », « davantage qu’un simple accès d’hypocondrie » (DB, V.iv.255), mais c’est un « risible objet », drôlement attifé et qui n’effraie que parce que Flamineo y voit un présage funeste.
21 L’enfer est bien sûr évoqué : mais il devient fait de langage, manière d’imprécation et permet de montrer la supériorité de l’humain dans la noirceur, dans la douleur, dans l’horreur : « l’enfer n’est que rosée de glace, comparée à mon affliction » dit Isabella (DB, II.i.121). Et si l’ « odeur de suie, le foie bouilli, la brûlure des flammes infernales » sont bien évoqués (DB, V.vi.265), c’est uniquement lorsque Flamineo feint de mourir, c’est du chiqué…
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22 La peur, chez Webster, vient de ce que l’homme lui-même est capable de faire et de ce qu’il transforme le monde en enfer : « Quel enfer que ce lieu ! » dit Vittoria (DB, V.iii. 239). Si démon il y a, c’est au cœur de l’homme. C’est cette nature humaine que peint Webster, avec sa galerie de personnages à la noirceur démoniaque qui horrifient le spectateur : son démon blanc, pire que le noir, c’est Vittoria, qui, sous de beaux atours cache une âme noire ; elle est une véritable pomme de Sodome, un « beau fruit » en apparence mais qu’on verrait « se réduire en suie et en cendres » à peine touché (DB, III.ii.145). Elle est un diable « incarné en dehors séduisants » (DB, III.ii.155), et c’est elle qui suggère à son amant « de faire disparaître son mari et la duchesse » (DB, I.ii.97), elle qui, corrompue, passe de l’adultère au crime, comme le dit le cardinal Monticelso lors de son procès : « À la suite du démon Adultère, le démon Meurtre apparaît » (DB, III.ii. 149).
23 Le démon, c’est Lodovico également, « prêt à n’importe quel crime, comme ces chiens qui, ayant pris gout au sang, ne cessent de vouloir tuer » (DB, IV. 3. 208) ; c’est Brachiano, que Lodovico et ses comparses déguisés en moines lors de la scène d’assassinat, associent par trois fois au démoniaque (DB, V.iii.237-239) ; c’est Zanche, la mauresque, noire de peau, dépravée, corrompue ; et c’est bien sûr Flamineo, dont seul le diable sait quelles vilénies il pourrait commettre (DB, V.i.215) ; Flamineo le proxénète, le fratricide, qui injurie sa propre mère, et ne recule devant rien.
24 Nous l’avons dit, ces personnages voués au mal sont humains. Tous ont subi un échec d’intégration ; ce sont des héros en lutte contre les obstacles à leurs désirs, et qui ne sauraient se soumettre. En cela, ils suscitent une admiration horrifiée. Ainsi, Brachiano et Vittoria sont deux mal-mariés et, si le duc fomente des actes criminels, il n’est, comme le dit Robert Merle « fondamentalement ni bas, ni cruel » ; il « n’est pas un monstre, mais il est muré dans la prison de sa passion. Il est mort à tout ce qui n’est pas l’urgence de son amour » (DB, 36). Vittoria choisit la transgression et le rejet de l’ordre moral par amour, pour n’avoir pas à mettre de freins à ses désirs. « Elle fait face de façon superbe », nous dit Merle (DB, 59). On le voit notamment lorsqu’elle récuse l’avocat qui s’exprime en latin puis dans un jargon inintelligible : « Je ne veux pas que votre accusation s’enveloppe de la brume d’une langue étrangère. Que tout le monde ici entende ce dont vous m’accusez » (DB, III.ii.143). Le démon blanc n’est pas hypocrite. Flamineo, l’abject, est le type même du malcontent, machiavélique ; c’est un héros de la frustration, un « être fier, qui […] souffre d’un insatiable sentiment d’infériorité ou d’échec » (DB, 64) parce que sa pauvreté en fait un laquais, un chien. C’est un « Hamlet noir », comme le désigne Merle, qui a le franc parler du railleur, même avec son maître, et qui adopte une franchise brutale, refuse l’hypocrisie sociale. Il est celui qui pointe le désordre derrière l’ordre apparent, qui revendique sa responsabilité, qui défie. Les personnages de Webster, on le voit, sont les victimes de la situation et leur lutte pour que triomphent leurs objectifs ne manque pas de grandeur.
25 Chez Webster, Merle trouve donc une galerie de personnages, effroyablement humains, qui adoptent un comportement criminel dans des conditions particulières de dégénérescence de la société et parce qu’ils sont murés dans une idée fixe, l’amour, l’ambition. Ce qui interpelle Merle dans cette pièce c’est donc aussi une interrogation sur la fin et les moyens, cette possible porosité entre innocence et culpabilité, bourreaux et victimes ; des questions qui ne sont pas, en 1950, sans faire écho au débat Sartre/Camus, aux justes et aux mains sales ; ce qui interpelle Merle dans cette pièce,
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c’est l’horreur du mal – est-il radical ? est-il banal ? – alors même qu’il tente d’appréhender Rudolf Hœss.
Du Démon blanc au Hamlet noir
26 Lorsque Merle décide de réécrire Le Démon blanc, c’est sur le héros noir (DB, 69)14, sur « l’immonde, le sinistre, le fascinant Flamineo », qu’il focalise son attention. L’auteur du XXe siècle notait déjà dans son analyse de l’œuvre de Webster, le « pouvoir de fascination » du personnage de Flamineo (DB, 71). Il modifie alors le titre : au « démon blanc15 », Merle substitue un « Flamineo ». Il simplifie les péripéties de la pièce élisabéthaine16, resserre l’action autour de son personnage éponyme et transforme les données de la pièce source de manière à ce que « tout ce qui est crime appartie[nne] à Flamineo »17. C’est le tueur qu’il choisit d’ausculter dans son Flamineo. De cette différence qu’il jugeait essentielle, Aragon disait : « malgré la fable empruntée, c’est elle qui fait que Flamineo n’est plus une pièce de Webster, mais de Robert Merle18 ».
27 Certains critiques reprochèrent à Merle de s’être contenté d’élaguer Le Démon blanc et de n’en proposer qu’une redite. Or Merle a modifié « la physionomie du héros primitif19 », et inséré des thèmes nouveaux, ceux de la damnation, du monstre, de l’inceste. Ce sont ces modifications qui vont nous intéresser maintenant : ce choix de centrer l’œuvre sur le Hamlet noir plutôt que sur le démon blanc ; les explications psychologiques que Merle ajoute à Webster ; les chemins du meurtre qu’il explore au travers du personnage de Flamineo.
28 Ce que Merle explore dans ses œuvres romanesques ou théâtrales, c’est ce qui pousse l’homme à rechercher la mort de l’homme. Une phrase, une même phrase, revient comme un leitmotiv : cette phrase, en 1949, c’est celle de Maillat indiquant que la mort des hommes « la Nature s’en charge. C’est ignoble de lui donner un coup de main20 » ; c’est celle aussi du Magicien qui tentant d’empêcher la mise à mort d’Isabelle dit à Brachiano : « Crois-moi, la Nature […] tue bien assez vite [les créatures de Dieu]. La Nature est la grande tueuse. Et l’homme qui tue son frère entre avec elle dans une ignoble complicité » (FLAM, II.ii.73). Plus tard, en 1950, en en retrouve une variante dans Sisyphe et la Mort puis en 1957 dans le Nouveau Sisyphe.
29 Faire alliance, être complice, donner un coup de main, toutes ces expressions disent le lien étroit entre l’homme et le meurtre. Dans ses œuvres, Merle explore « l’ingéniosité fameuse que les Mortels ont toujours montrée à […] servir [la Mort]21 » ; il questionne leur amour pour la mort, leur désir de la mort des autres, leur consentement à leur propre mort et, ce faisant, il s’interroge après-guerre, après-Auschwitz, sur le mal historique et ce pour faire face à l’effroi. On comprend mieux pourquoi c’est chez Webster qu’il va puiser, Webster qu’il tenait pour un amoureux de la mort, un maître ès agonies, un peintre du mal.
30 Plus encore que chez Webster, Merle montre la porosité entre bourreaux et victimes : le mal est tapi au cœur de la nature humaine et, dans certaines conditions, mêmes les plus vertueux, les plus consciencieux peuvent s’y vautrer. Ainsi, si l’Isabella de Webster est une figure touchante et sublime, si son Marcello, frère de Flamineo, est un des rares contrepoints vertueux de la pièce, chez Merle, tous deux sont d’effroyables criminels en germes.
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31 Isabelle incarne le sublime. Sublime son amour pur pour Brachiano, sublime son mensonge, lorsqu’elle feint devant son frère, duc de Médicis, de rompre de son propre chef avec Brachiano pour que la guerre n’éclate pas entre les deux hommes. La scène est directement reprise de Webster. L’intention est noble, mais Merle insère, après le jeu d’Isabelle un dialogue entre Brachiano et Flamineo qui analysent ce à quoi ils viennent d’assister. Et seul Flamineo voit que « tout n’était pas que feinte dans sa feinte » (FLAM, II.ii.69), il voit la possible meurtrière derrière le sublime, dans la noblesse, il voit le gluant. « Tenez, voyez ce fil ! du sublime ! et avec ça, c’est gluant, le sublime, ça colle aux doigts, ça paralyse ! J’en suis tout entortillé, Monseigneur. Comme une mouche ! » (FLAM, I.i.67). Isabelle, la vertueuse, est aussi capable, par amour, de passer à l’acte : c’est cette révélation qui la perdra.
32 Le personnage de Marcello, antithèse de son frère Flamineo, est lui aussi, chez Webster, une figure de vertueux22. Merle nous propose une peinture plus nuancée : Caïn et Abel sont plus semblables qu’on ne le croit. Car Marcello aussi est un tueur, qui fait peu de cas de la vie humaine, mais il tue par ordre, « consciencieux sans conscience23 » – sans mauvaise conscience – étant capitaine au service de Médicis. Ce sont des ennemis de l’État, des Turcs qu’il tue. Et en cela, ce criminel-là est respecté, c’est un héros quand son frère, lui, est un monstre. C’est là toute l’ironie de la chose que Flamineo, cynique, débusque : il y a des combats honorables, des meurtres justes, héroïques, vertueux, dignes d’admiration et des assassinats monstrueux qui suscitent l’effroi.
33 Dans la pièce de Merle, il n’y a pas, à proprement parler, de justes, il n’est plus guère possible de distinguer le bon grain de l’ivraie, de séparer les bourreaux des victimes. Tous ont les mains sales mais certains les exposent et d’autres les cachent : s’il est des monstres, des Lodovico, et, plus abjects encore, des Flamineo, ils ne sont pas les seuls coupables. Et c’est cette question de la culpabilité que Merle ajoute à Webster et qui apparaît clairement dans la modification de la pantomime, empruntée au texte source, qui donne à voir la mort d’Isabelle. Comme chez Webster, un magicien, dans Flamineo, fait apparaître la scène aux yeux de Brachiano. Comme chez Webster, ce dernier va alors être réduit au statut de spectateur, mais en 1612, on s’en souvient, une fois la scène faite, Brachiano s’exclamait : « Fort bien, donc elle est morte » (DB, II.ii. 133).
34 C’est tout différent chez Merle. Son magicien ne se limite pas à faire apparaître, il tente de détourner Brachiano et de sa recherche de mort et de sa curiosité morbide. En véritable metteur en scène, il a le pouvoir encore, avant que ne se lève le rideau, de « déjouer le piège infernal que Flamineo a préparé pour elle » (FLAM, II.ii.74). « Il est temps encore » répète-t-il à deux reprises (FLAM, II.ii.72 ; 74). Mais le Duc veut voir, il veut voir l’exécution de son ordre, il veut voir la mort d’Isabelle, il veut en jouir, persuadé que « la mort d’Isabelle ne [le] troublera pas davantage que celle d’un chien dans [s]on chenil » (FLAM, II. ii. 75). Après avoir exigé que le magicien mette en branle son pouvoir de faire voir, Brachiano, assistant au « spectacle », en chair, en corps, voudra y mettre fin, voudra dé-jouer ce qui s’annonce : BRACHIANO. Giordano LE MAGICIEN. Monseigneur ? BRACHIANO. Peux-tu encore, par ton art, retarder, dans son vol, la minute fatale ? LE MAGICIEN. Non, Monseigneur. BRACHIANO. Si tu ne peux arrêter l’écoulement du temps, peux-tu du moins, par le pouvoir magique de tes formules, amputer la cause de son effet mortel ? LE MAGICIEN. Non, Monseigneur. BRACHIANO. Mais tu peux encore, n’est-ce pas, Giordano, tu peux arracher son
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venin au poison ? LE MAGICIEN. Non, Monseigneur. (FLAM, II.ii.78)
35 Dans ces trois interrogatives point l’angoisse de voir l’horreur en face. Mais désormais, il n’est plus temps, le spectacle a commencé, ce qui est écrit sera joué. Or, parce qu’il a voulu voir, parce que le spectacle de l’empoisonnement et de l’agonie d’Isabelle est insoutenable dès lors qu’il est palpable, visible, et non récit par voix interposée, Brachiano ressent terreur et pitié. Il s’empresse alors de se désolidariser du criminel, du monstre : « Abominable Flamineo ! La torture paiera ton crime ! » (FLAM, II.ii.79). L’adjectif possessif dit assez que Brachiano ne peut revendiquer l’acte atroce auquel il vient d’assister. Or, ce que nous a confirmé la pantomime, c’est que parler c’est faire, et qu’il n’est guère de différence entre celui qui ordonne et celui qui accomplit l’acte de mort. Et ce que l’on entend déjà ici, c’est le « Mais ce n’est pas moi ! je n’y suis pour rien !24 », « je n’en suis pas responsable ! », d’un Rudolf Hœss dans La mort est mon métier et au procès de Nuremberg.
36 Merle, avec le personnage de Flamineo, poursuit son exploration de ces êtres dont la mort est le métier. Il tente de connaître le mal. Et pour ce faire, il va ajouter à Webster l’explication psychologique ; il va passer de l’excommunication, chez Webster, à la damnation, de l’anticatholicisme de Webster à la négation de la morale chrétienne.
37 Qu’est-ce donc qui mène l’être humain à un tel degré d’abjection ? Qu’est-ce donc qui fait le monstre ? Rien d’inné, comme le suggèrent les références à un « autrefois », un autre Flamineo, sensible, aimant : « J’ai moi-même aimé une dame, jadis » (FLAM, I.18), « J’avais une femme aussi, autrefois… » (FLAM, I.30). Un Renzino d’avant Lorenzaccio25.
38 L’explication est donc à chercher ailleurs. Et, pour Aragon, ce sont justement les explications psychologiques de Merle « qui font de Flamineo une pièce moderne. Il s’agit pour Robert Merle d’expliquer psychologiquement les chemins du meurtre26 », d’expliquer comment et pourquoi on devient Flamineo et de comprendre ainsi comment et pourquoi on devient Rudolf Hœss.
39 En effet, Merle fournit une explication que Webster ne donnait pas27 : il la trouve dans le tout premier meurtre de Flamineo, qui, pour venger un ami cher, torturé et étranglé par un lieutenant de police, a donné la mort à ce dernier après l’avoir fait blasphémer par trois fois. Suite à ce crime, qui n’est que justice – la justice corrompue protégeant le lieutenant –, Flamineo est allé voir un prêtre qui a refusé de l’absoudre. Ce refus le condamne à la damnation : « […] je suis damné. Damné pour l’éternité » (FLAM, I.32). Dès lors, l’enfer n’est plus un possible auquel on peut échapper par une vie de vertu, l’enfer devient « une certitude ». Et cette certitude est cela même qui libère Flamineo de tout sens moral. Plus de garde-fou : « personne ne peut plus m’en faire une menace. Car, quoi que je fasse maintenant, je ne saurais être davantage damné que je ne suis » (FLAM, I.32). Cette épée de Damoclès ayant disparu, Flamineo est libre et le clame dans une tirade aux accents dostoïevskiens : […] fini la peur de l’enfer ! Fini l’immonde terreur de l’enfer qui vous torture tous, et un chacun, mes doux seigneurs, de la naissance à la mort ! Je peux tout faire désormais ! (Criant.) Je suis libre, moi ! Je peux tout faire ! Je peux mentir, trahir, voler, blasphémer, tuer. Je peux tuer n’importe qui ! Je peux tuer l’enfant à la mamelle ! Je peux tuer mon frère ! (FLAM, I. 33)
40 L’exemple est explicite : au lexique hyperbolique de la terreur, s’oppose l’irruption d’un « pouvoir » qui se clame, anaphorique, comme une revanche : « Je peux ». Au « vous » des soumis, des enchaînés à vie, s’oppose un « je » désaliéné et l’ouverture sur l’horizon
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de tous les crimes possibles, dans une cascade d’infinitifs – « mentir, trahir, voler, blasphémer, tuer » qui sont les négations de toutes les antiennes chrétiennes – qui s’achève sur le nefas, la sortie hors des limites de l’humanité, avec l’évocation d’actes parmi les plus inouïs, inhumains par excellence, l’infanticide et le fratricide.
41 Flamineo fait de la peur de l’enfer l’entrave, la seule entrave qui contraint les individus à tendre vers le bien. Et l’œuvre, comme le dit Aragon, devient « la dénonciation d’une morale qui n’a d’autre base que la crainte de l’enfer, où les hypocrites trichent avec le ciel, laissant à d’autres la matérialité du crime qui sert leurs intérêts28 ». Et, si abject que soit Flamineo, « sa conscience s’oppose à cette hypocrisie29 », comme le note Aragon.
42 Flamineo, c’est le monstre, certes, mais il est le produit hideux et sans masque d’une société corrompue. Or, pour que puisse demeurer la bonne conscience, le monstre doit être désigné, mon(s)tré, nommé. Et tous, dans l’œuvre, de faire bloc contre le « ruffian, proxénète, Caïn » (FLAM, IV.iii.132), contre l’« abominable » (FLAM, II.ii.79). Car, faire de l’assassin, du bourreau, d’un Flamineo, un monstre, un démon, est rassurant finalement : il n’est pas moi ; et il est rassurant aussi de ne pas le croire humain, comme il est rassurant de ne pas croire humains les Hœss et les Eichmann. Or, et c’est ce que suggère déjà Merle dans son Flamineo, c’est ce qu’il explorera plus avant dans La mort est mon métier, les Eichmann ne furent, comme le dit plus tard Hannah Arendt, ni pervers ni sadiques, mais terriblement et effroyablement normaux.
43 Merle est donc passé du « démon blanc », une périphrase, à un nom propre, Flamineo, avant de pouvoir, à la première personne, donner une voix au bourreau : il y a là une véritable mouvement concentrique qui tente d’approcher au plus près l’individu, le criminel. Et s’il reste un jouissif fumet élisabéthain dans Flamineo, ce ne sera pas le cas dans La mort est mon métier. Car Merle, en deux ans, va explorer deux pôles antagonistes : après la monstration, le voyeurisme de l’effroi qu’il trouve chez Webster, qu’il exploite dans son Flamineo, il crée La mort est mon métier, l’anti-Webster, sans affect, sans pathos, sans corps sanglants et tordus, mais dans un style neutre, décolorant l’univers, plat, prosaïque.
44 Pour Aragon, sous la plume de Merle, par la réécriture de Webster, Flamineo devient un personnage représentatif du XXe siècle : […] un personnage complexe, le tueur tel que notre siècle l’a vu à Chicago ou à Shanghaï ; le cagoulard ou le nazi, au service d’Hitler ou de l’Intelligence Service, non pas un homme de la Renaissance, mais un personnage de l’époque des guerres et des révolutions, qu’on appelle le XXe siècle, il n’y a pas à s’y tromper30.
45 C’est du détour par ce personnage tiré de Webster, c’est de la compréhension de ce monstre-là qu’a pu émerger le Rudolf Hœss du roman de Merle « qui n’eût certainement jamais écrit La mort est mon métier, ce portrait du SS Rudolf, s’il n’eût quelques années plus tôt tiré de Webster ce Flamineo […] et appris dans Flamineo ce qui allait lui éclairer Rudolf31 ».
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NOTES
1. Robert Merle, La mort est mon métier, [1952], Gallimard, coll. « Folio », Paris, 1972, préface, p. II. 2. John Webster, Le Démon blanc [The White Devil], traduction, introduction et notes par Robert Merle, Aubier, Paris, 1950. Toutes les pages indiquées entre parenthèses renvoient à cette œuvre et cette édition, abrégée comme suit (DB, Acte. Scène. Page) ; lorsqu’il n’y a nulle mention d’acte ou scène, la référence renvoie à l’introduction de Robert Merle. 3. Une chronique si « frappante » et si « italienne », nous dit Merle, qu’elle attira l’attention de Stendhal qui l’évoque dans ses Chroniques italiennes (DB, 68). 4. Une biographie intitulée Vittoria, Princesse Orsini, publiée chez Del Duca en 1958 ; une nouvelle intitulée « Isabella », publiée dans la Revue de Paris en juillet de cette même année ; et un roman, L’Idole, publié en 1987. 5. Robert Merle, Flamineo – Sisyphe et la Mort – Les Sonderling, [1950], Gallimard, coll. « Le Manteau d’Arlequin », Paris, 1986. Toutes les pages indiquées entre parenthèses renvoient à cette œuvre et cette édition, abrégée comme suit (FLAM, Acte. Tableau. Page). 6. Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », [Dans :] La lumière de Stendhal, Denoël, Paris, 1954, p. 119-161, p. 72. 7. Cité par Robert Merle (DB, 6). 8. Philarète Chasles, Études sur W. Shakespeare, Marie Stuart et l’Arétin. Le drame, les mœurs et la religion au XVIe siècle, Amyot, Paris, 1852, p. 106, puis 107-108. 9. Line Cottegnies, François Laroque et Jean-Marie Maguin (dir.), Théâtre élisabéthain, T. 2, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, 2009, p. 1700. 10. Line Cottegnies, François Laroque et Jean-Marie Maguin (dir.), Théâtre élisabéthain, op. cit., id. 11. Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », op. cit., p. 121. 12. Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », op. cit., p. 127. 13. Spectres dont Merle regrette qu’au XXe siècle ils ne fassent plus peur et que même ils fassent rire (DB, 26). 14. Pour Merle, Flamineo est un « Hamlet noir, affranchi une fois pour toute de ce “lait de la tendresse humaine” que le Prince de Danemark, comme Macbeth, conserve en lui » (DB, 71). 15. Comme l’indique Merle, le titre de Webster, périphrase désignant Vittoria, n’est pas sans évoquer le sermon prêché par T. Adams en 1613 à Saint-Paul et qui s’intitulait « The white divell, or the hypocrite uncased » (DB, 58). Et même si Webster n’emploie pas tout à fait l’expression dans le même sens, il n’en reste pas moins qu’elle a cours à son époque et qu’elle met l’accent sur une des grandes terreurs du XVIIe siècle, l’hypocrisie. 16. Simplification qui entraîne, par exemple, la suppression des personnages de la mère vertueuse Cornelia et du cardinal Monticelso, futur pape. 17. Ainsi, au rêve de Vittoria qui suggérait d’éliminer les époux-obstacles chez Webster, Merle substitue le rêve de Flamineo, raconté à Brachiano pour l’inciter à soutenir le meurtre. 18. Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », op. cit., p. 139. 19. Robert Merle, Flamineo, Corbeil-Essonnes : imprimerie CRÉTÉ, 29-4-1954, archives privées, préface, p. 1-2. 20. Robert Merle, Week-end à Zuydcoote [1949], Gallimard, coll. « Folio », Paris, 1972, p. 149. 21. Robert Merle, Nouveau Sisyphe – Justice à Miramar – L’Assemblée des femmes, Gallimard, coll. « NRF », Paris, 1957, p. 99. 22. Mais déjà, chez Webster, il se voit contraint de se parjurer en plein procès. 23. L’expression est celle-là même que Merle utilise pour qualifier Rudolf Hœss dans sa préface à La mort est mon métier. 24. Robert Merle, La mort est mon métier, op. cit., p. 324.
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25. Le Flamineo de Webster est, à n’en pas douter, l’« embryon de Lorenzaccio », comme le signale au passage Beigbeder (Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », op. cit., p. 122). 26. Ibid., p. 140. 27. Car, comme le dit très justement Aragon, « le texte anglais avance par images, mais se passe d’explications psychologiques » (Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », op. cit., p. 140). 28. Ibid., p. 143. 29. Ibid., p. 144. 30. Louis Aragon, « Webster, Stendhal et Robert Merle », op. cit., p. 139. 31. Ibid., p. 142.
RÉSUMÉS
Cet article aborde le théâtre de Robert Merle et sa réécriture du Démon blanc de Webster. Qu’est- ce donc qui pousse le romancier du XXe siècle à réécrire cette tragédie du sang toute baroque ? Qu’est-ce donc que Merle va chercher – et trouver – dans cette pièce macabre et morbide ? En quoi son Flamineo, au « fumet » élisabéthain, devient-il une pièce représentative du XXe siècle ? L’article aborde ces questions en deux temps : en montrant d’une part que l’univers de Webster propose une peinture effroyable et inégalée du mal ; d’autre part que, sous la plume de Merle, par la réécriture de Webster, Flamineo, ce « Hamlet noir », devient un personnage représentatif du XXe, et c’est du détour par ce monstre-là, qu’a pu émerger Rudolf Hœss, le bourreau d’Auschwitz, « terriblement et effroyablement normal », que Merle met en scène, à la première personne dans La mort est mon métier.
This article discusses Robert Merle’s drama and his rewriting of Webster’s White Devil. What brings the twentieth-century novelist to rewrite this tragedy of blood? What does Merle seek and find in this macabre and morbid play? What makes his Flamineo, an “Elizabethan” play, representative of the twentieth century? The article addresses these questions in two parts: first by showing that Webster’s world provides a frightful and unparalleled painting of evil; then, that Merle turns Webster’s Flamineo into a “black Hamlet”, a character representative of the twentieth century – a detour which will pave the way for another monster, the “terribly and appallingly normal” executioner of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, in Merle’s first-person narrative Death Is My Trade.
INDEX
Mots-clés : Aragon, Démon, Effroi, Mal, Robert Merle, John Webster Keywords : Aragon, Devil, Fright, Evil, Robert Merle, John Webster
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AUTEUR
ANNE WATTEL Anne Wattel est agrégée et enseigne dans le secondaire. Elle est l'auteur d'une thèse de doctorat portant sur l’œuvre romanesque de Robert Merle, sous la direction de Nelly Wolf, à l’Université de Lille 3 – Charles de Gaulle (Univ. Lille, EA 1061 - ALITHILA - Analyses Littéraires et Histoire de la Langue, F-59000 Lille, France).
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Dépasser la peur Overcoming Fear
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La peur ultime dans le théâtre de Shakespeare
Jean-Louis Claret
1 Parler de peur ultime revient à adopter une approche introspective. Ce qui fait le plus peur est en effet lié à l’histoire personnelle de chacun, à son intimité la plus secrète et le révéler revient à se mettre en danger. Mais la peur ultime a pu, au fil du temps, prendre une dimension collective. À l’époque de Shakespeare, les représentations mentale et picturale du Diable et de l’enfer ont atteint un tel degré de développement que ces deux terreurs ont pu occuper dans les esprits toute la place réservée à la peur. L’apparence du prince des ténèbres avait été déterminée par un lent processus dont Robert Muchembled situe le commencement au XIIème siècle. À la Renaissance, il était partout : on pouvait le croiser au coin d’une rue, dans une taverne, sur une scène de théâtre et même dans la pénombre d’un monastère. La peur qu’il inspirait pouvait alors se substituer aux peurs individuelles. Je vais m’attacher à cette créature redoutable qui a nourri les esprits crédules pendant des siècles et voir comment Shakespeare a su décupler la peur que ce personnage inspirait à ses contemporains. Associer le Diable à la mer, que Jean Delumeau situe à la toute première place dans le palmarès des peurs, est une tentation à laquelle le dramaturge élisabéthain n’a pas eu peur de succomber. Je vais donc m’intéresser tout d’abord à la peur du Diable et de l’enfer pour ensuite me concentrer sur la peur de la mer. Ce travail nous permettra enfin de proposer une lecture originale de Richard III,1 pièce dans laquelle un prisonnier, Clarence, raconte le rêve qu’il vient de faire et au cours duquel il décrit son arrivée en enfer après s’être noyé.
Le Diable
2 Commençons par le Diable. À la fin du XVIe siècle, il n’est plus nécessaire de le nommer précisément sur la scène de théâtre. Lorsque Richmond parle de l’ennemi de Dieu (« God’s enemy » V.iii.252 et 253) dans Richard III, lorsque Macbeth affirme qu’il a donné le joyau éternel de son âme à « l’ennemi commun des hommes » (« the common enemy of man » III.i.67-8) ou encore quand Viola mentionne « The pregnant enemy »
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(« l’ingénieux ennemi » II.ii.28) dans La Nuit des Rois, le public élisabéthain pouvait identifier sans peine celui à qui il était fait allusion et dont le nom même, Satan, signifie d’ailleurs l’ennemi. Ce personnage était très présent dans les esprits et son activité de collecteur d’âmes de choix – Méphistophélès est en quête de « glorious souls » dans Dr Faustus – était suffisamment connue pour faire l’objet de métaphores audacieuses. Ainsi, lorsqu’Olivia, la comtesse d’Illyrie, affirme: « A fiend like thee might take my soul to hell » (III.iv.212), le dramaturge ne ressent pas le besoin d’expliciter son propos. De même, un grand nombre de personnages sont comparés au diable : c’est le cas, par exemple, de Shylock dans Le Marchand de Venise – « the Jew is the very devil incarnation » (II.ii.26) –, de Prospéro dans La Tempête – « The devil speaks in him » (V.i. 129) dit Sebastian –, de Macbeth dont la cruauté surpasse celle des légions infernales (Macduff, IV.iii.55-7), de Richard Gloucester dans Richard III ou encore d’Angelo dans Mesure pour Mesure. (V.i.30)
3 Le Diable n’a acquis la popularité que lui confèrent les personnages de Shakespeare qu’au terme d’une lente évolution. Robert Muchembled2 a démontré que ce processus a été accompagné par le développement et la cristallisation de son apparence. Au Moyen- Âge, il revêtait des formes multiples : il combinait entre autres les attributs du bouc, du chien, du lion, du serpent, du dragon et de l’ours et renvoyait à des traditions multiples. On peignait sa peau en rouge, en noir ou en vert3. Le diable était aussi parfois représenté avec deux visages, ce qui attestait son caractère vorace et insatiable. C’était une créature multiple et ce manque d’unité était un obstacle à l’émergence d’une peur profonde. Ce diable hybride n’était pas très inquiétant. On pensait pouvoir facilement le berner et le renvoyer en enfer comme le suggère Dumaine qui, dans Peines d’Amour Perdues, est en quête de stratagèmes pour le tromper : « Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil. » (IV.iii.279)
4 L’auteur d’Une Histoire du Diable, XIIème-XXème siècle affirme que « jusqu’au XIIème siècle, le monde était trop enchanté pour permettre à Lucifer d’occuper tout l’espace de la peur, de la crainte et de l’angoisse4. » Pour revigorer la foi déclinante et, comme le dit Roland Villeneuve, « déraciner le paganisme dans les cœurs et les esprits5 », l’Église devait brandir un épouvantail véritablement terrifiant. Toutes les peurs devaient être canalisées et associées à une seule entité. Les autres créatures – lutins, gobelins, satyres et autres méchants de tous poils – allaient devoir s’effacer devant l’Ennemi de Dieu officiel et son armée de sorcières. Un ange inversé a été élaboré : les ailes colorées sont devenues des ailes de chauve-souris, son auréole a cédé la place au cercle interrompu d’une paire de cornes, et sa beauté s’est putréfiée en laideur immonde. La laideur de Satan est inversement proportionnelle à la beauté de l’ange qu’il fut. Ce qui fait peur dans son apparence c’est le fantôme immanent d’une beauté perdue6. Le Sonnet 94 de Shakespeare n’affirme-t-il pas que, quand ils pourrissent, les lys sentent plus mauvais que les mauvaises herbes ? (« Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. ») La beauté parfaite de l’ange s’est transformée en laideur ultime qui a, à son tour, suscité une peur sans fond ; sans fond, comme l’enfer, ce lieu de suppliques que chacun imagine et auquel les peintres donnent un visage lui aussi identifiable.
5 On peut résumer cette stratégie ecclésiastique en disant qu’un loup a été créé afin que les moutons apeurés se tournent à nouveau vers le berger pour obtenir sa protection. La peur est donc au cœur de cette manœuvre. Le Diable en est devenu l’incarnation, une visibilité qui « nous regarde et peut nous engloutir7 ». Le règne de la terreur, que la philosophe appelle « phobocratie8 » pouvait s’affirmer et les regards régresser vers les
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craintes de l’enfance puisque, comme l’affirme Lady Macbeth, « ‘Tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil. » (II.ii.53-4) L’élaboration de la figure centrale du Diable à partir de traditions multiples s’accompagne d’un mouvement régressif visant à fragiliser les individus. La peur du diable est donc une création politique, au sens large du terme. La place majeure qu’il a occupée dans les esprits à la Renaissance indique que cette période ne fut une libération que pour quelques uns, comme le souligne Jean Delumeau dans La Peur en Occident, « mais (que) pour la plupart des membres de l’élite européenne, elle fut sentiment de faiblesse9. » Le royaume du Prince des Ténèbres s’étendait à l’infini au delà de la mort et la croyance en son existence devint, selon Christopher Hill, l’un des instruments de persécution religieuse les plus efficaces10. Les hommes ont pris la mesure de leur petitesse, petitesse que la mer leur avait déjà signifiée.
La mer
6 Dans l’ouvrage qu’il a consacré à la peur, Jean Delumeau affirme que « pour le plus grand nombre, (la mer) est restée longtemps dissuasion et par excellence le lieu de la peur11. » « Si tu veux apprendre à prier, va sur la mer » dit un proverbe portugais. La scène d’exposition de La Tempête de Shakespeare est donc une scène particulièrement terrifiante : les spectateurs assistent impuissants au naufrage d’un bateau que les eaux engloutissent avec tout son équipage. La mer dévorante est aveugle et rien ne peut calmer ses ardeurs, pas même le nom de roi. La mort qui attend les marins est terrifiante et Gonzalo lui préfèrerait toute autre alternative. Les derniers mots qu’il prononce tandis que le navire s’enfonce lentement dans les entrailles froides des flots sont empreints d’une terrifiante résignation : GONZALO. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground – long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death.
7 L’allitération finale en D nous permet d’entrer dans la poitrine du personnage et d’entendre les derniers battements de son cœur. Cet homme qui sombre partage la peur du maître d’équipage qui demande si leurs bouches sont condamnées au froid : « What, must our mouths be cold ? » « Mourir, » la belle affaire, semblent-ils dire, mais devenir froid, sentir que la chaleur de ce courant interne va devenir une motte de terre compacte est insupportable. C’est ce que dit Claudio depuis sa cellule dans Mesure pour Mesure. (« This sensible warm motion to become / A kneaded clod » III.i.119) Dans un élan poétique, Shakespeare fait du cadavre une clef froide et lourde : « Key-cold figure of a holy king, » (I.ii.5) dit Lady Anne en touchant le cadavre de son beau-père. Le trépas peut être décrit comme la perte de la chaleur de la vie. Les profondeurs glacées de la mer lui sont tout naturellement associées car elles prennent possession des corps qui les atteignent. Le passage est rapide et pour signifier que le naufrage vient tout juste de se produire, le clown du Conte d’Hiver déclare que les corps des marins ne sont pas encore froids : « the men are not yet cold under water. » (III.iii.104) Les flammes de l’enfer sont presque rassurantes à côté de la sépulture glacée des flots. Homère en avait conscience, lui dont Sebastian Brant affirma en 1494 dans sa Nef des Fous qu’il « inventa l’histoire d’Ulysse pour nous apprendre à être sages, à craindre l’aventure en mer12. » Sébastian Brant lui-même le savait bien : la vie est un naufrage et les hommes des fous destinés aux vagues dévorantes (345) :
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Cherchons fortune en ce marasme Où l’on ne peut que s’échouer. Puis rompent mats, voiles et cordes, À peine pouvons nous flotter La vague est haute comme un mont, Les hommes ne savent plus bien Où est le ciel, où est le fond. (…) Sommes perdus, désemparés Et dans le gouffre allons sombrer.
8 La mer avale ceux qu’elle éloigne de la « terre mère ». Elle devient un monstre hideux dont les bateaux gravissent la crinière monstrueuse. Dans Othello, un gentilhomme décrit les montagnes d’eau qui se dressent jusqu’aux cieux puis se déversent sur les embarcations (II.i.12-15) : SECOND GENTLEMAN. The chiding billow seems to pelt the clouds, The wind-shak’d surge, with high and monstrous main, Seems to cast water on the burning bear, And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole
9 Le naufrage en mer fait échapper les marins aux regards des observateurs que ce spectacle emplit d’effroi. C’est ce que démontre la scène rapportée dans Le Conte d’Hiver après que le navire d’Antigonus a été avalé par les flots cruels (III.iii.97-99) : CLOWN. But to make an end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-dragoned it: but first, how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them
10 La tombe glacée des eaux profondes fait donc peur aussi car elle fait disparaître ceux dont elle ne restitue pas les corps froids. Ainsi, les flots se referment sur les hommes sans laisser une trace de leur passage. La mer est une tombe muette – « watery grave » (Périclès, II.i.10) – sur laquelle on ne peut pas graver son histoire. Il ne reste que l’absence et la présence silencieuse de « simples coquillages. » (Périclès, III.i.69)
L’enfer sous-marin
11 La mer est un monstre indomptable et imprévisible qui dévore les hommes et, ce faisant, ravive le souvenir du Déluge biblique. Elle peut atteindre les cieux et descendre jusqu’aux tréfonds de la terre qu’elle recouvre. Ainsi, en passant de l’un de ces extrêmes à l’autre, elle fait le lien entre le paradis et l’enfer. C’est ce que suggère Othello lorsqu’il évoque une embarcation malmenée par les vagues (II.i.187-9) : OTHELLO. And let the labouring bark climb the seas, Olympus-high, and duck again as low As hell’s from heaven.
12 Puisque les neuf cercles de l’enfer décrits par Dante atteignent le centre de la terre, il est possible de penser que le fond des océans permet d’atteindre ce lieu redouté. Après tout, la mer et l’enfer ont en commun la profondeur qu’Isabella évoque dans Mesure pour Mesure lorsqu’elle décrit le fourbe Angelo (III.i.92-3): ISABELLA. His filth within being cast, he would appear A pond as deep as hell.
13 Cependant, bien que les Saintes Écritures fassent allusion à un puits sans fond (« the bottomless pit »), Thomas Hobbes rappelle à ses lecteurs que la profondeur de l’enfer ne peut pas être réellement infinie car la terre a une circonférence13. Même si les
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descriptions des tourments de l’enfer que proposent les personnages de Shakespeare mettent en avant la souffrance des damnés soumis au feu ou à la glace, l’évocation de ce lieu comporte parfois une allusion à l’élément liquide. Claudio, qui souhaite convaincre sa sœur de sacrifier au Duc les trésors de son corps, évoque des flots ardents (III.i. 116-128) :
14 CLAUDIO. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.
15 Sa description rappelle le second cercle de l’Enfer de Dante où le vent fouette les damnés, les septième et huitième cercles où les âmes sont immergées dans du sang bouillant ou des lacs de feu, et le neuvième où elles sont en parties figées dans des blocs de glace. Quant à Othello il estime mériter d’être immergé dans des fleuves de lave. (V.ii.278-281)14 Il est vrai que l’enfer chrétien est parcouru par des fleuves hérités de la tradition grecque : le Styx, l’Achéron empoisonné que Charon permet de traverser, le Léthé, le Phlégéthon (le fleuve de feu) et le Cocyte (le fleuve glacé des lamentations). Thomas Hobbes rattache d’ailleurs timidement le mot Hell au grec Hadès.15
16 Les descriptions proposées par Othello ou Claudio sont conventionnelles et renvoient au texte de Dante. Associer le fond de la mer à l’enfer, comme le fait Shakespeare dans Richard III, est peu orthodoxe. En effet, lorsque les poètes et les dramaturges anglais de la Renaissance imaginaient le fond des mers, ce qu’ils décrivaient était le plus souvent merveilleux. Ainsi, dans Hero and Leander, Christopher Marlowe campe le paysage suivant :
17 Leander striv’d, the waves about him wound, And pull’d him to the bottom, where the ground Was strew’d with pearl, and in low coral groves Sweet singing mermaids sported with their loves On heaps of heavy gold, and took great pleasure To spurn in careless sort the shipwrack treasure.
18 Au fond de l’eau se trouvent les belles sirènes amoureuses, le palais d’azur de Neptune et les trésors engloutis que le dieu entend offrir à Léandre : « to the rich Ocean for gifts he flies. » Dans Henry V, Canterbury évoque le fond de la mer avec ses épaves et ses trésors innombrables (I.ii.164-5). La chanson d’Ariel dans La Tempête décrit les coraux que sont devenus les os du père de Ferdinand (I.ii.397-403) : ARIEL. Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made;
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Those are pearls that were his eyes, Nothing of him that doth not fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.
19 La mort en mer permet de glisser dans un monde coloré et paisible et les squelettes des naufragés se métamorphosent en un trésor secret.
20 Le rêve de Clarence dans Richard III est quant à lui plus angoissant. L’originalité de cette vision est qu’elle conjugue la peur de la mer et la peur de l’Enfer. Déjà, au début de La Tempête, Ariel avait rapproché l’enfer de la mer en rapportant les propos de Ferdinand selon qui tous les démons de l’enfer s’étaient donné rendez-vous sur le bateau : « Hell is empty, And all the devils are here. » (I.ii.214-5). Ce lien avait été également suggéré par le Malleus Maleficatum puisque c’est en les jetant dans l’eau – même en la présence de leurs parents – que les sorcières s’appropriaient les âmes des jeunes enfants qu’elles ne dévoraient pas16. Bien que la Bible mentionne à deux reprises (Job, 26:5 et Isaïe, 14:9) la prison sous-marine des géants, comme le rappelle Thomas Hobbes dans son Léviathan17, ce qui se passe après la mort est souvent représenté comme une descente sous la terre. De nombreuses visions eschatologiques sont évoquées en littérature et le mythe d’Er au livre X de la République de Platon en est un exemple célèbre. Au début de La Tragédie Espagnole de Thomas Kyd le fantôme d’Andréa arrive directement sur la rive de l’Achéron18. Dans le livre IV des Métamorphoses, Ovide décrit un chemin sinueux qui descend vers le Styx. Quant à Dante, il passe par la porte de l’enfer dont la dernière ligne a marqué les esprits : « Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. » L’approche que propose Shakespeare dans Richard III est unique en ce sens qu’elle permet d’assister à la mort du personnage et à son passage dans l’autre monde.
21 Tout d’abord, Clarence rêve qu’il traverse la Manche en bateau avec son frère Richard pour se rendre en Bourgogne (I.iv.10). Les deux hommes se bousculent et Clarence tombe par-dessus bord. Il est englouti et ses yeux restent ouverts tout au long de sa descente, ce qui lui permet d'observer les fonds marins, comme l'aurait fait Alexandre le Grand jadis grâce à un bathyscaphe de verre.19 Il faut dire que le prisonnier rêve une mort par noyade particulièrement terrifiante et douloureuse : « O Lord ! Methought what pain it was to drown. » (I.iv.21) La vision est ici moins paisible que dans la chanson d’Ariel (24-33) : CLARENCE. Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalu’d jewels, All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls, and in the holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept – As 'twere in scorn of eyes – reflecting gems, Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.
22 Les perles d’Ariel ont été remplacées par des diamants nichés dans les orbites des crânes, les naufragés sont mangés par les poissons et les os jonchent le sol. Malgré la présence des joyaux, le fond de la mer est sale et inhospitalier. C’est une « mort boueuse »20 que la noyade entraîne. La description effectuée par Clarence rappelle la caverne de Mammon que Guyon visite dans le chant 7 du livre II de The Fairie Queen d’Edmund Spenser21. Les mots de Lady Macbeth nous reviennent à l’esprit. « L’enfer est
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poisseux », (« Hell is murky » V.i.34) avait-elle dit. La descente de Clarence s’accompagne de l’emprisonnement de l’âme dans le corps mourant du rêveur, les flots jaloux refusant de la laisser rejoindre les airs. Alors commence la tempête dans son âme (44) qui annonce le début du voyage dans l’au-delà, phase que Thomas Hobbes appelle « la deuxième mort »22. Les couleurs disparaissent. Ensuite, Clarence traverse l’Achéron sur l’embarcation de Charon et atteint le pays de la nuit éternelle (47) qui semble correspondre à son arrivée dans les profondeurs abyssales. Là il rencontre les âmes de ses victimes qui lui rappellent sa traîtrise et envoient des démons le tourmenter. Leurs cris terribles le réveillent et pendant un moment encore il pense être en enfer.
23 Clarence se retrouve en enfer car il a été bousculé par le Diable. C’est du moins le rôle que se donne Richard dans le rêve éveillé de sa quête : « (I) seem a saint when most I play the devil » dit-il (I.iv.338). Dans 3 Henry VI, Richard Gloucester avait dit son ambition folle. Il avait annoncé son intention d’assécher la mer pour atteindre la couronne qui brillait de l’autre côté des flots. Puis il avait ajouté qu’il vivrait en enfer tant qu’il n’y serait pas arrivé (III.ii.146-171) : RICHARD. I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, And, whiles I live, to account this world but hell,
24 C’est donc un monde aquatique, un enfer sous-marin qu’il entend assécher, que Richard évoque. Dans Richard III, la mère du héros déclare qu’il a fait de ce monde un enfer pour elle (« Thou camest on earth to make the earth my hell. » IV.iv.167-8) et son épouse affirme qu’il ne sera à sa place qu’en enfer (I.ii.111). Le monstre a donc atteint son but! La pièce Richard III peut être considérée comme la réalisation du rêve cauchemardesque que le héros a annoncé dans 3 Henry VI. Le spectateur attentif peut même se surprendre à penser que la pièce Richard III a été rêvée par 3 Henry VI. Au début de la représentation de Richard III, les spectateurs de théâtre s’endorment, comme Clarence,23 dans le rêve terrifiant du monstre. Le passage de la réalité au rêve est effectué grâce au discours hypnotique initial prononcé par Richard qui pénètre leurs esprits à grands coups de « Now » et de « I ». La scène d’introduction peut d’ailleurs être perçue comme une tentative du personnage malfaisant de prendre possession de l’esprit et du regard des spectateurs. Lui qui est visible sur la scène se décrit pourtant et il renchérit sur ses malformations. C’est son regard déformant qu’il entend substituer à celui des spectateurs à qui il impose une vision anamorphique. Il essaiera finalement de s’enfuir à cheval après avoir transformé le monde en abattoir, en cauchemar, en night-mare. Quitter le cauchemar à cheval, belle ironie. Mais Richard ne sait pas qu’on ne peut pas s’extirper d’un cauchemar : Jorge Luis Borges nous rappelle que c’est le cauchemar qui nous chasse en nous infligeant une surdose de peur. Des gouttes de sueur glacées peuvent perler sur son front : son ennemi, Richmond, déclare se battre aux côtés de Dieu (« God, and our good cause, fight upon our side. » V.iii.240) et il va chasser l’apprenti diable de la pièce.
Conclusion
25 Associer l’enfer et la mer, comme le fait Shakespeare dans Richard III, c’est mêler l’angoisse de ce que Jankelevitch appelle « le terrible seuil du mourir24 » et la peur des tourments infernaux qu’orchestre le diable. C’est aussi symboliquement placer l’enfer dans le royaume de Dieu : en effet, dans The Great Code, Northrop Frye nous rappelle que « sous l’un des aspects du symbolisme, les eaux du Déluge ne se sont jamais retirées et
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nous sommes tous des poissons dans un monde d’illusions qui est symboliquement sous-marin25. » Une fois qu’il aura asséché la mer, Richard sera parvenu à éliminer le monde aquatique divin pour le remplacer par l’enfer qu’il porte en lui. Et cet enfer sera son paradis.
26 Dans Richard III, la crainte du passage se conjugue à la terreur que suscite l’idée d’une éternité de douleurs. La peur n’est pas causée par le fait que l’on ne sait pas où l’on va, comme le dit Claudio, mais plutôt par la certitude du châtiment que l’on mérite. Finalement, l’enfer est en chacun d’entre nous et c’est notre conscience qui lui ouvre les portes. En 1636, Thomas Browne affirmera dans son Religio Medici : « The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feele sometimes a hell within my selfe, Lucifer keeps his court in my breast26. » Clarence porte donc l’enfer en lui et il l’entraîne au fond des mers. Il pourrait dire, comme Méphistophélès dans le Doctor Faustus de Christopher Marlowe, que l’enfer est le lieu où le damné se trouve (« Where we are is hell », 2.i.122). Le rêve de Clarence est donc intime, puisque le personnage rencontre les âmes de ceux qu’il a assassinés, mais il est aussi collectif car il se nourrit des craintes communes à tous les hommes. « Rien n’est plus difficile à analyser que la peur, dit Jean Delumeau, et la difficulté s’accroît encore lorsqu’il s’agit de passer de l’individuel au collectif 27. » Le théâtre permet ce glissement de l’un au multiple puisque chacun est isolé du public qu’il constitue par sa réception du spectacle. Le dramaturge a su capter les inquiétudes de son temps et mettre en scène les cauchemars de ses contemporains. Si le cauchemar est le lieu de la peur ultime, de la peur la plus profondément ensevelie, sa représentation et son partage grâce à la représentation théâtrale ne sont-ils pas le moyen de glisser de l’individuel au collectif ? Les mots de Jorge Borges pourraient terminer cet article: « Les cauchemars seraient-ils des brèches de l’enfer ? Serions-nous dans le cauchemar, littéralement en enfer ? Pourquoi pas ? Tout est si étrange que même cela est possible28. »
NOTES
1. Les références aux pièces de Shakespeare sont celles des éditions Arden: The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, éd. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson et David Scott Kastan, Londres et New York, Bloomsbury, 2011. 2. Robert Muchembled, Une Histoire du Diable XII°-XX° siècle, Paris, Seuil, 2000. 3. Michel Pastoureau signale que certains diables étaient peints en bleu. Les importateurs et les marchands de garance qui avaient peur de la dangereuse concurrence du bleu dans les pratiques vestimentaires ont payé des artisans pour qu’ils représentent des diables bleus dans les vitraux… 4. Robert Muchembled, Une Histoire du Diable, XIIe-XXe siècle, Paris, Seuil, 2000, p. 33. 5. Roland Villeneuve, La Beauté du Diable, Paris, Bordas, 1994, p. 31. 6. Cette beauté était parfaite, ce qui implique qu’elle recouvrait le masculin et le féminin comme l’indique Méphistophélès dans le Faust de Marlowe :
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“I'll cull thee out the fairest courtezans, / And bring them every morning to thy bed: / She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have, / Were she as chaste as was Penelope, / As wise as Saba, or as beautiful / As was bright Lucifer before his fall.” 7. Marie José Mondzain, L’Image peut-elle tuer ? Paris, Bayard, 2002, p. 28. 8. Marie José Mondzain, Homo Spectator, Paris, Bayard, 2007, p.73. 9. Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, Paris, Fayard, 1978, p. 331. 10. Voir Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the English reformation, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1972, p. 177-8. 11. Delumeau, op. cit. p. 39. 12. Sebastian Brant, la Nef des Fous, Paris, José Corti, 1997 (1494), p. 344. 13. « Not that the Writers of the Scriptures would have us beleeve, there could be in the globe of the Earth, which is not only finite but also (compared to the height of the Stars) of no considerable magnitude, a pit without a bottome ; that is, a hole of infinite depth, such a the Greeks in their Demonologie and after them in the Romans called Tatarus (…) for that is a thing the proportions of Earth to Heaven cannot bear : but that wee should beleeve them there, indefinitely, where those men are, on whom God inflicted that Exemplary punishment. » Leviathan, Part III, Chapter 38, London, Penguin Classics, 1985 (1651), p. 485-6. 14. « Whip me, ye devils, / From the possession of this heavenly sight! / Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! / Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! » 15. « Hades (from which word perhaps our word Hell is derived). » Leviathan, London, Penguin Books, 1987 (1651), p. 487. 16. Henry Institoris et Jacques Sprenger, Malleus Maleficatum (1486), Paris, Jérome Million, 1997, p. 276. « Des enfants marchant au bord de l’eau, elles savent sans se faire voir les jeter dans l’eau en présence même des parents. » 17. Leviathan, p. 486. 18. « When I was slain, my soul descended straight / To pass the flowing Stream of Acheron. » (I, 1,18-19) 19. Le Verre, un Moyen Âge Inventif, sous la direction de Sophie Lagabrielle, Paris, Musée de Cluny, 2017, p. 12. 20. C’est ainsi qu’est décrite la mort par noyade d’Ophélie dans Hamlet : « But long it could not be / Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death. » (IV,7, 179-182) 21. « But all the ground with skulls was scattered, / And dead mens bones, which round about were flung / Whose lives, it seemed, whilome there were shed, / And their vile carcases now left unburied. » Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London and New York, Longman, 1984 (1590), p. 229. 22. Leviathan, op. cit., p. 490. 23. On notera que Dante s’endort lui aussi en arrivant au bord du fleuve Achéron : « De cette terre de larmes jaillit un souffle, qui projeta un éclair de feu, lequel m’enleva tout sentiment ; / et je tombai comme un homme qui succombe au sommeil. » Dante, La Divine comédie, (publ. 1472), trad. D’Alexandre Masseron, Paris, Albin Michel, 1995, p. 77. 24. Vladimir Jankelevitch, La Mort, Paris, Flammarion, 1977, p. 65. 25. Northrop Frye, The Great Code: la Bible et la littérature, Paris, Seuil, 1982, p. 210. 26. Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1636, section 51. 27. La Peur en Occident, p. 26. 28. Jorge Luis Borges, Conférences, Paris, Gallimard, 1980, p. 53.
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RÉSUMÉS
Dans La Peur en Occident, Jean Delumeau affirme que la mer est le lieu des peurs les plus profondes. Mais s’il en est ainsi, c’est que la “grande verte” est le lieu d’une mort particulièrement inquiétante: la noyade. Même disloqué, le corps du supplicié est rendu à la terre mais avant de mourir, le naufragé est emporté par les flots puis happé par les profondeurs marines. Là se produit le passage. Le noyé échappe aux regards et sa mort devient absence. C’est pour cela que dans La Tempête Gonzalo aspire à une « mort sèche » ( « I would fain die a dry death » I,1,67). Le danger et l’imprévisibilité des flots sont mentionnés plusieurs fois dans le théâtre de Shakespeare et ils sont un ressort dramatique (Le Marchand de Venise, Péricles, La Nuit des Rois). Mais la crainte des courants qui happent le naufragé est aussi liée à la présence d’un monde sous-marin et secret dont Clarence a la révélation dans un rêve. Richard III contient la description hallucinée de ce lieu qu’habitent les démons et où les nuages sont ensevelis (I,1,3-5). Le Diable, l’ennemi commun des hommes qu’on avait alors tendance à représenter dans un lieu fermé et souterrain, y a donc lui aussi élu domicile. Il est partout, même dans les profondeurs froides de la mer. L’enfer qu’évoque Claudio dans Mesure pour Mesure est presque rassurant face à celui que peint Clarence. C’est un lieu que Dante a décrit et dont la topographie était connue à l’époque. La terreur que suscite l’enfer du malheureux frère de Richard Gloucester est plus terrifiante car elle déplace une peur dans une autre. C’est la peur ultime.
In La Peur en Occident, Jean Delumeau asserts that the deepest fears are related to the sea. This can be explained by the fact that the “big green” can cause people to drown and drowning is a particularly worrying form of death. Even the criminal’s dismembered body is given back to the earth; but the castaway’s is carried away by the floods then swallowed by the watery depths until the final passage occurs. The drowning sailor disappears and his death boils down to an absence. This is why, at the beginning of The Tempest, Gonzalo wishes for a “dry death.” (« I would fain die a dry death » 1,1,67). Shakespeare’s drama contains many allusions to the unpredictable and dangerous seas that serve as dramatic engines (The Merchant of Venice, Pericles, Twelfth Night). Yet the fear of the floods that carry the castaway goes hand in hand with the presence of a secret underwater world that Clarence glimpses in his dream. In Richard III, this amazing world, inhabited by devils and where the threatening clouds were buried (1,1, 3-5), is described by the dreamer. The Devil, the common enemy of man who was usually represented confined to the nether world, seems to haunt this place. He is everywhere to be found, even in the deep cold sea and Claudio’s depiction of Hell in Measure for Measure may look reassuring when compared with Clarence’s vision. The former refers to Dante’s description of it and it was familiar to Renaissance minds. The terror raised by Richard’s poor brother’s description is all the more bloodcurdling as it causes a fear to be hosted by another one. It is the ultimate fear.
INDEX
Keywords : Clarence, death, devil, dream, drowning, Gloucester Richard, nightmare, sea, treasure. Mots-clés : cauchemar, Clarence, diable, Gloucester Richard, mer, mort, noyade, rêve, trésor
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AUTEUR
JEAN-LOUIS CLARET Université d’Aix-Marseille, LERMA.
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Fear and the Other in Sir Thomas More
Sean Lawrence
1 Fear pervades the plot, the critical history, the contemporary reception and even the form of the surviving manuscript of the collaborative play Sir Thomas More. Fearing the reaction of Londoners to the theatrical representation of a xenophobic riot, Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, scribbled his judgement at the beginning of the manuscript: “Leave out the insurrection wholly and the cause thereof.” He threatens the authors, allowing them to mention the rebellion “only by a short report, and not otherwise, at your own perils.”1 E. A. J. Honigmann notes that the writers of the play assigned William Shakespeare “One scene [which] needed to be written with particular care,” where More must calm the rebels. Honigmann considers Shakespeare’s three pages to be important because “they demonstrate the quality of More’s mind and personality” but they would also constitute the most politically sensitive scene in the play.2 Honigmann also judges that “the writing of the Three Pages was an act of considerable courage,” on Shakespeare’s part.3 Certainly, all of the writers would have been correct to fear censorship or even their “own perils.” Fear, in other words, might not only be the reason that the play was neither printed nor produced for hundreds of years, but also the reason that Shakespeare was included in the project at all.
2 Tilney was not the first authority to fear the fictive rebellion. Within the excised scenes themselves, Surrey remarks that “This tide of rage, that with the eddy strives, / I fear me much will drown too many lives” (3.62-63). Fear not only of popular violence but also of the state hangs over the characters of the play. This latter finds expression in the beheading of the title character, as well as the hanging of John Lincoln and near- hanging of the other rebels. Fear of “the strangers” drives the rebellion, and the strangers, in turn, fear the rebels. According to the clown, the strangers even “smell for fear” (4.47-48). More’s wife cries “Oh, God, I fear, I fear” when the Earls of Surrey and Shrewsbury arrive (13.129). More raises the spectre of fear in his last line, even while denying his own: “Our birth to heaven should be thus: void of fear” (17.124). The play broaches a broader question of the role of fear in politics, beyond all these particular fears expressed in the play itself and manifested by those who wrote, revised or finally
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suppressed it. By adding the scene in Hand D, Shakespeare shifts the focus of the audience and of the play as a whole from fear of the other to fear for the other.
3 Tilney’s fears were by no means misplaced. Eric Griffin notes that “Tilney had presciently gauged the pulse of London’s merchant and artisan resentments,” expressed in the so-called Dutch Church Libel published at roughly the same time. This bill refers to the works of Marlowe, in its promise to cause English events on the scale of the “Paris massacre” and reference to Tamburlaine.4 Stage violence risked inspiring off-stage imitation. Tilney’s strong warning inspired fear among the playwrights who generated the script, evident in the fact that the play remained unstaged until an amateur production at Birkbeck College in 1922.5 By 1923 “the play’s significance to the study of Shakespeare had been fully established.”6 Due to its late, partial and somewhat ambiguous admission into Shakespeare’s canon, the play remains in many ways a curiosity, locked within the circumstances of its original composition and trapped by the fears of its historical moment.
4 More’s speech to the rioting Londoners has nevertheless become a free-floating but culturally powerful instance of fear of others. “It might have been written yesterday, might it not?” asked John Dover Wilson in a 1938 lecture, printed in a 1962 book.7 Perhaps the speech might have been written in all our yesterdays. Samantha Power, then American ambassador to the United Nations, applied it to contemporary events in 2016: “The ‘wretched strangers’ have changed of course,” Power admitted, “from the Lombards targeted in 1517 in those riots to the Huguenot refugees in Shakespeare’s time and to the Syrians, Iraqis, South Sudanese, Eritreans and others fleeing repressive governments of our time.”8 Sir Ian McKellen, the first professional actor to perform the title role, has delivered the speech several times as an independent monologue, including in response to a horrifying gay-bashing incident close to the place in London where the historical More would have met the rioters. McKellen first sets the scene, explaining that the crowd makes the usual complaint about strangers, immigrants, odd people, queers. They behave differently from the rest of us, and they look different and they eat our food and take our jobs. You know: send them back where they came from. Get rid of them. Stamp of their heads, even.9
5 This is hardly the only speech by Shakespeare to be habitually torn from the context for which it was written. Ulysses’ speech about degree in Troilus and Cressida would provide another example.10 Indeed, R. W. Chambers argued for Shakespeare’s authorship of the three pages in Hand D on the grounds that this passage echoes the support for authority in Troilus and Cressida.11 Where Ulysses’ speech defends hierarchy, however, More’s speech has assumed new life as a free-standing call to tolerance. In Power’s reading, the call to tolerance extends from the immigrants --- mostly Lombards and French --- against whom the Ill May Day riots were directed five hundred years ago, to the Huguenots who were victims of riots closer to the time of the play’s composition, and to the many immigrants who suffer discrimination and violence today. McKellen extends this further, from immigrants to gays and, by extension, any sort of “other.”
6 The passage may be taken out of context so easily, in part because its relation to any period is imprecise. To begin with, it commits historical inaccuracy. If Holinshed is to be believed, not only did More fail to quell the crowd, but one Nicholas Downes who accompanied him as a sergeant at arms incited its members to greater violence by his
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angry response to being attacked.12 Shakespeare may have altered historical events to reflect those in his own time. He did, after all, live with a refugee Huguenot family, the Mountjoys, as Charles Nicholl details wonderfully in The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street.13 Honigmann describes several of Shakespeare’s immigrant connections, including the wife of his publisher, Richard Field; Peter Street, builder of the Globe theatre; Gheerart Janssen, the stonecutter responsible for the bust on Shakespeare’s monument; and Martin Droeshout, engraver of the famous image of the writer in the first folio.14 For that matter, Shakespeare himself might have been considered an internal migrant, from Warwickshire. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton suggests that this outsider perspective may have recommended him to the other writers of the play.15 He nevertheless follows Tilney’s lead in not referring to French immigrants, and so distances his version of the speech from recent events.16 In any case, there is no reason to connect English xenophobia with any particular eruption of violence. According to Laura Hunt Yungblut, actual attacks, anticipated attacks, or investigations of threatening materials (such as anti-alien pamphlets or broadsheets) are recorded for 1493, 1517, 1573, 1575, 1581, 1583, 1586, 1587, 1593, and 1595; and native or foreign dignitaries from the 1460s to the 1610s wrote eloquently and consistently about the English people’s xenophobia.17
7 Even if we must tie the play to contemporary issues or attitudes, there is little reason to think it a covert reference to particular contemporary events. Nor should we make too much of parallels to refugee crises of our own time. In spite of Power’s parallel between the strangers in the play and refugees of today, the strangers in the first scene are not, in fact, “fleeing repressive governments.” On the contrary, they flaunt their ability to appeal to royal authority through their own ambassador, and therefore claim the protection, formal or actual, of two governments: “My Lord Ambassador shall once more make your Mayor have a check if he punish thee not for this saucy presumption,” Francis de Barde sneers at George Betts (1.41-44). John Jowett notes that The insurrection relates strongly to current concerns about urban unrest and relations between indigenous and historically immigrant communities, but the cultural politics are disconcerting to a modern audience and the theme has run its course before the play is halfway through.18
8 It is always worthwhile to historicize, but Shakespeare’s contribution to the play addresses issues beyond the immediate historical context and which do not comfortably map unto ours. Neither historicism nor presentism accounts for the importance of More’s speech. On the contrary, the Hand D passage has relevance to the time it purports to describe, to our own time, to Dover Wilson’s time, and to the time of its composition because it raises broad, ethical questions.
9 The passages ascribed to Shakespeare distinguish themselves from the rest of the play not only in their imagery and handwriting, but also in their presentation of the strangers. Tudeau-Clayton notes that “represented in the opening scenes as predatory and profiteering abusers of privilege, they are represented by ‘Hand D’ rather as scapegoats and victims of exclusionary violence.”19 More’s “verbal image of the ‘wretched strangers,’” Sabine Schülting notes, is “diametrically opposed to their previous appearance on stage.”20 The first scene of the play, written by Munday, justifies the London mob’s fear of strangers. Even before the play was written, Edward Hall, in his chronicle of the events, asserted that “...the straungers were so proude, that they disdayned, mocked and oppressed the Englishmen, which was the beginnynge of
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the grudge.”21 Raphael Holinshed follows Hall closely enough as to be accused of plagiarism if he did not cite Hall, albeit with the addition of marginal notes, such as “The insolent sawcinesse of the Frenchmen against the English,” and “The diuelish malice of the Frenchmen.”22 Had the play been performed, the audience would have first been greeted by the spectacle of de Barde attempting to abduct Doll Williamson: “Thou art my prize,” he claims, “and I plead purchase of thee” (1.2-3). The early scenes of the play dramatize events from the chronicles, in which the foreigners function as other in the sense of being objects of fear.
10 One may be more specific: the foreigners pose an existential threat, and therefore constitute an enemy in the sense used by Carl Schmitt, a threat sufficient to unite Londoners against them. Schmitt argues that “Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend or enemy.”23 Moreover, this derivation gives politics a bellicose and existential character: “War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.”24 Such enmity, Schmitt is careful to clarify, can be reduced neither to aesthetics nor to morality. No group need consider its enemy ugly or evil in order to view it as an existential threat. “The enemy in the political sense,” Schmitt specifies, “need not be hated personally.”25 Indeed, Schmitt objected to the whole idea of fighting on behalf of humanity, for this transforms the enemy into “a monster that must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed.”26 Though written in 1932, this attack on what would later be understood as international humanitarian law served Schmitt later, when he “impugned the legitimacy” of the Nuremberg trials, to which he was nearly summoned as a defendant.27 Schmitt argues that “The definition of the political suggested here neither favors war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism.”28 Nevertheless, enmity defines the state for Schmitt and hence defines politics. The injunction to love our enemies, he insists, applies only to the private sphere. “It certainly does not mean that one should love and support the enemies of one’s own people.”29 To Schmitt, we are not known, as in Christianity, by our loves, but by our enmities.
11 Initially, the strangers do indeed reveal themselves as an existential threat, the external enemy that defines a people. Cavaler takes food from Williamson, stealing his doves, and the citizens complain that “strangers eat the bread from the fatherless children” (1.123). In the first scene, the foreigners attack Londoners, not vice versa. They are also, however, an existential threat in a sense other than mortal. By successfully appropriating London women, they unman the Londoners, robbing them of identity. In the play as in the chronicles, their predations threaten the city itself. The goldsmith whose wife is seduced away from him represents the city corporation. In case anyone could miss the point, de Barde specifies that “an she were the Mayor of London’s wife, had I her once in my possession I would keep her in spite of him that durst say nay” (1.53-55). The Londoners’ first act of rebellion –- or, they would no doubt insist, resistance –- is to prevail upon one Doctor Beal to publish a list of their grievances from the pulpit as part of the annual Spittals sermons. This complaint describes Londoners as victims exclusively, drawn into solidarity by their shared victimhood: For so it is that aliens and strangers eat the bread from the fatherless children, and take the living from all the artificers, and the intercourse from all the merchants, whereby poverty is so much increased that every man bewaileth the misery of other; for craftsmen be brought to beggary, and merchants to neediness.
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Wherefore, the premises considered, the redress must be of the commons knit and united to one part. (1.123-130)
12 As Lincoln notes before reading it, “You shall perceive there's no hurt in the bill” (1.114-115). It establishes the Londoners as victims of a mortal threat, and calls them to unity.
13 Their position as victims is no sooner established, however, than they plot to become oppressors themselves. Betts immediately moves to raising a rebel army of what he calls “friends enough, whose names we will closely keep in writing, and on May Day next in the morning we’ll go forth a-Maying, but make it the worst May Day for the strangers that ever they saw” (1.140-144). A plan to attack the strangers expresses the rebels’ solidarity: “My masters,” Williamson suggests with egalitarian zeal, “ere we part let’s friendly go and drink together, and swear true secrecy upon our lives” (1.149-151). As Betts’s phrasing indicates, the rebellion draws its participants together into a group of friends. The rebellion includes women, most notably the character Doll who, in contrast to her homonym in Henry IV, Part 2, is not a prostitute, but a faithful wife resisting de Barde’s rapine advances.30 After the failure of the rebellion, she touchingly asks to be executed first: “You know not what a comfort you shall bring / To my poor heart to die before my husband” (7.80-81). Doll is the first to subscribe to Betts’s list of supporters, promising to “make a captain among ye” (1.147). Indeed, the position of women as outside the law may recommend them as rebels: “If our husbands must be bridled by law,” Doll informs the strangers, “their wives will be a little lawless, and soundly beat ye” (1.74-76). The rebellion shows itself internally egalitarian, but the rebels’ egalitarian community relies on the distinction of friend and enemy so important to Schmitt’s theory of the political. Its internal solidarity is merely the inverse of its violence against outsiders.
14 The setting, class context and characters change in the next scene but without breaking thematic continuity, in that both scenes broach the question of who should be considered a victim, and whether victims are to be blamed. The second scene introduces the title character as a member of the Court of Sessions and shows him tricking a Justice Suresby into showing his own hypocrisy. Suresby accuses Smart, the victim of a convicted pickpocket, of bringing the theft upon himself: “What makes so many pilferers and felons / But such fond baits that foolish people lay / To tempt the needy miserable wretch?” (2.31-33). More, in turn, arranges for Lifter, the aptly-named pickpocket, to obtain Suresby’s purse, then repeats his own words back to him (2.175-177). Over the course of the first seven scenes, the Londoners transform from victims to oppressors then back to victims, with a speed that might induce vertigo in the audience, had there been one. As previously noted, Betts promises to “make it the worst May Day for the strangers that ever they saw” (1.142-144), but soon Lincoln warns the rebels that they must escape, “Lest this prove to us an ill May Day” (4.78-79). For much of the execution scene, the rebels seem to have been cheated by More’s promise to obtain their pardons. Doll remarks that “had’t not been for his persuasion, / John Lincoln had not hung here as he does” (7.92-93). Pathetically, she commends her young children to “the love of some good honest friend / To bring them up in charitable sort” (7.117-118). In what promises to be her last speech, she reaffirms her solidarity with the other rebels, and returns to the threat of rape, which she escapes even in death: “when I am dead, for me yet say / I died in scorn to be a stranger’s prey” (7.130-131). A pardon arrives suddenly, with Surrey explaining that “Sir Thomas More humbly upon his knee / Did beg the lives of all” (7.144-145). These lines provide
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another historical inaccuracy, but they also culminate the transformation of the rebels back into victims, or at least potential victims.
15 The clown, in particular, adds a note of manic anarchy to the rebellion. He reverses the threat of rape, declaring skeltonically, Now Mars for thy honour, Dutch or French, So it be a wench, I’ll upon her. (4.53-56)
16 The same character calls on the rebels to “Use no more swords, / Nor no more words, / But fire the houses” (4.33-35). Sherwin immediately recognizes that such a pyrotechnical tactic “would much endanger the whole City” (4.41). The danger of fire would be obvious to an early modern audience, who lacked the means to effectively fight it. “Next to plague,” writes Keith Thomas, “perhaps the greatest single threat to security was fire.”31 The scene nevertheless ends with a call to “Burn down their kennels” (4.78), in hopes of causing enough distraction to cover a retreat. At the beginning of scene five, the hard-pressed representatives of law and order receive a report from Sir John Munday, saying that he was attacked by “A sort of prentices playing at cudgels” whom he fears “are gone to join / With Lincoln, Sherwin and their dangerous train” (5.3, 5.7-8). The reader meets these apprentices, boasting of their fighting skill, in a scene removed in the course of revision.32 We soon hear that the rebels have freed prisoners from Newgate, “Both felons and notorious murderers, / Who desperately cleave to their lawless train” (5.21-22). The rebellion increasingly unites all forces of disorder and mayhem under its own banner. It also gathers strength from ignorance. In the next scene, Lincoln accuses the foreigners: “They bring in strange roots, which is merely to the undoing of poor prentices. For what’s a sorry parsnip to a poor heart?” (6.11-13). The play shifts rapidly from sympathy with a popular movement, achieving its own, egalitarian organization, and pitting itself against the oppression of an international elite, to fear of a recklessly ignorant and destructive populism. Whereas the version of the Spittals sermon read by Lincoln presents the London rebels as objects of pity, they become a serious threat to the foreigners, order in general and even themselves. They become, in other words, objects of fear.
17 In one of his final public presentations, accepting the Kluge Prize by webcast, Paul Ricoeur addresses the role of fear in founding the social contract: The myth of the state of nature accords to competition, to defiance, to the arrogant affirmation of solitary glory, the role of foundation and of origin. In this war of all against all, the fear of violent death would reign supreme. This pessimism concerning the ground of human nature goes hand-in-hand with praise of the absolute power of a sovereign who remains outside the contract of submission made by citizens delivered from fear.33
18 The historical and the fictive More lived and were written before Thomas Hobbes started publishing. Nevertheless, the play’s title character anticipates the description of the state of nature in The Leviathan, when he claims that “men, like ravenous fishes, / Would feed on one another” (6.97-98). More proclaims the importance of peace to the well-being of the rioting Londoners: Look what you do offend you cry upon; That is, the peace. Not one of you here present, Had there such fellows lived when you were babes That could have topped the peace as now you would,
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The peace wherein you have till now grown up Had been ta’en from you, and the bloody times Could not have brought you to the state of men. (6.71-77)
19 Despite anticipating the myth of the state of nature, More does not anticipate the theory of the social contract, for he does not found his argument on the Londoners’ fear for themselves. They certainly express none in answer, continuing to protest that they wish to see “the removing of the strangers, which cannot choose but much advantage the poor handicrafts of the City” (6.80-82). Moreover, More does not show the rebels that they would suffer in a renewed state of nature. The use of the past conditional, describing what would have been the case in other circumstances, compounds the awkwardness of the second sentence above, though the stranded phrase with which it begins hardly aids comprehension. More refers to the past, but to a past already delivered from a state of nature and which only hypothetically might once have returned to it, “Had there such fellows lived when you were babes.” Rather than calling on his audience to fear a return to anarchy, More here demonstrates the logical priority of peace. The Londoners had to have lived in a state of peace in order to live at all, and therefore foment violence. Even rebellions, More argues, require internal peace, if they are to entertain any chance of succeeding: “Why, even your hurly,” he explains, “Cannot proceed but by obedience” (6.128-129). Rebellion depends on the very order which it undermines: “What rebel captain, / As mutinies are incident, by his name / Can still the rout? Who will obey a traitor?” (6.130-132). The Homily against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion treats the breakdown of social order as a violation of doctrine and a threat to the rebels themselves, who will certainly be punished. It cites Romans 13, quoting “there is no power but of GOD, and the powers that be, are ordeined of GOD. Whosoeuer therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of GOD, and they that resist, shall receiue to themselues damnation.”34 More refers to the same passage when he declares that “’tis a sin / Which oft th’apostle did forewarn us of, / Urging obedience to authority” (6.105-107). Honigmann notes that “No one can fail to observe the dramatic irony when Sir Thomas preaches obedience to the King as the gospel of good citizenship.”35 Surrey reverses the irony: “’Tis strange,” he observes, “that my Lord Chancellor should refuse / The duty that the law of God bequeaths / Unto the king” (10.105-107). More makes a conventional argument for divine right but events later in the play ironize it. The homily also threatens, calling to mind “the histories of olde, as also of latter rebellions, in our fathers, and our fresh memorie” in which are recorded withall to perpetuall memorie, the great and horrible murders of infinite multitudes and thousands of the common people slaine in rebellion, dreadfull executions of the authours and captaines, the pitifull vndoing of their wiues & children, and disinheriting of the heyres of the rebels for euer [...] with the finall ouerthrow, and shamefull deaths of all rebels.36
20 More follows this logic later in his speech to the rebels, implicitly threatening when he calls on them to imagine their own short and brutal lives in exile, hinting further that they deserve worse, though the king might “come too short of your great trespass / As but to banish you” (6.140-141). More does appeal to the self-interest of the Londoners in calling for them to submit to the king’s mercy and avoid an anarchy which would be destructive in itself, as well as inevitably invite retribution. In addition and less conventionally, however, he treats rebellion as a sort of absurdity, a logical impossibility or contradiction in terms.
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21 As strikingly, More appeals to the rebels’ concern for others, at least as much as he appeals to their self-interest or fear for their souls, and before he does so. “Grant them removed,” he begins: “Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, / Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage, / Plodding to th’ ports and coasts for transportation” (6.83; 6.85-87). By “transportation,” More probably does not mean “Removal or banishment, as of a criminal to a penal settlement,” as this use is not witnessed by the Oxford English Dictionary until 1669.37 Quite apart from such philological concerns, the definition cannot apply because More does not criminalize the strangers, but treats them as objects of pity and concern. In More’s appeal, the strangers cease to constitute an existential threat which wields the rebels into a popular movement, and instead become something much more like the Other described by Levinas,38 who “can present himself as a stranger without opposing me as obstacle or enemy. … The Other who dominates me in his transcendence is thus the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, to whom I am obligated.”39 In “Diachrony and Representation,” Levinas argues that the alterity of the Other elicits fear of all the violence and usurpation that my existing, despite the innocence of its intentions, risks committing. The risk of occupying --- from the moment of the Da of my Dasein --- the place of an other and thus, on the concrete level, of exiling him, of condemning him to a miserable condition in some ‘third’ or ‘fourth’ world, of bringing him death.40
22 Only after establishing his image of the strangers as refugees, does More proceed to point out the consequences to the rebels of destroying order: “by this pattern / Not one of you would live an aged man” (6.93-94). His reasoning begins with the suffering of an Other, before turning to how his audience would themselves suffer. He makes a similar argument later in the speech. “You’ll put down strangers, / Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses [?]” he asks rhetorically, before pointing out that his audience are themselves under threat of banishment and if it came about, “Why, you must needs be strangers” (6.135-137; 6.146). This seems like a Biblical argument for sympathy: “But the stranger that dwelleth with you, shall be as one of yourselves, and thou shalt love him as thyself: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”41 The crowd, clearly inspired as much by Matthew’s Gospel as by More’s appeal, answers him by crying “Let’s do as we may be done by” (6.157-158).42 Where the Old Testament injunction refers to a previous experience of being strangers, however, More does not start with the suffering of his audience, and ask them to compare the suffering of strangers to their own. On the precise contrary, their hypothetical exile is to be understood by reference to “the strangers’ case.” Fear for the other precedes and serves as a model of fear for the self. At least at this point, More inverts the logic of the social contract. He accepts “the myth of the state of nature,” as a terrifying primordial anarchy, and indeed accuses the rioters of “mountainish inhumanity” (6.156). Instead of imagining a state in which everyone would fear for herself or himself, however, More imagines a situation in which everyone would fear for other people. The crowd is called to feel what Levinas calls “Fear for the other, fear for the death of the other man” which is “my fear, but it is in no way a fear for oneself.”43 More’s speech calls for a recognition of the Other as “the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.”
23 Schülting notices something similar, arguing that More –- and, by extension, Shakespeare –- calls on the characters on stage, but also the audience “imaginatively to cross the gap not merely between fiction and reality, but also between their own and another’s experiences.”44 In this instance, the rioters are calmed by “More’s appeal to
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their empathy with the migrants.” Specifically, they are asked to imagine themselves as exiles. “More’s vision,” Schülting argues, “places the exiles in a condition reminiscent of Lear’s situation on the heath; excluded from all society, reduced to bare existence, and denied not merely the status of citizens but even that of human beings.”45 I have argued elsewhere, however, that Lear’s sudden access to concern with the “poor naked wretches” does not follow from his exposure “to feel what wretches feel.”46 On the contrary, his recognition of his own situation follows recognition of others, starting with the Fool.47 “I should e’en die with pity,” says Lear when he awakens with Cordelia, “To see another thus.”48 Self-pity follows concern for others --- even hypothetical or imagined others --- to whom one’s own position can then be compared. Similarly, in Shakespeare’s additions to Sir Thomas More, the rioting Londoners are not called to care for the strangers by comparing “the strangers’ case” to their own, which they would first care about in the manner of self-interested agents. Before being asked to imagine themselves becoming exiles, they are asked to imagine the suffering of “the wretched strangers.”
24 For that matter, the Spittals sermon describes the suffering of Londoners as producing a situation “whereby poverty is so much increased that every man bewaileth the misery of other” (1.126-27). The Londoners unite murderously against strangers as a Schmittian enemy, but first they care for and fear for one another. The Levinasian Other, as a call to responsibility, precedes the Schmittian enemy, opposition to whom constitutes the state and hence the political, in Schmitt’s understanding of the term. On the other hand, instead of founding politics and hence the state on the distinction of friend and enemy, Levinas claims that the state’s “necessity is ethical --- indeed, it’s an old ethical idea which commands us precisely to defend our neighbours.” Speaking in this instance in the shadow of accusations of Israeli collusion in massacres at Lebanese refugee camps, he adds that “there is also an ethical limit to this ethically necessary political existence.”49 Without some concern for other people, even Schmitt’s concept of the political makes little sense, for the threat posed by the enemy would not inspire the foundation of a state except by eliciting concern for others. As importantly, this ethical prompting not only helps to found the state, but also describes its limits.
25 The first book of the historical Thomas More’s Utopia presents a debate over the question of whether the scholar has an obligation to participate in the world of politics. Raphael Hythlodaeus asserts to More’s fictive alter ego that public service is futile, whereas the character More retorts that “This is the most important part of your duty, as it is of every good man.”50 The author entered royal service, faithful to the advice of his own namesake and creation, but with mortal and martyrological results. The fictive More of the play also struggles with this issue in a soliloquy at the beginning of scene eight, in which he attempts to maintain his humility, whilst recognizing the danger of his public position. In scene ten, however, we find More rather cynically suggesting that the king employ the Holy Roman Emperor as a mercenary: “Then, to prevent in French wars England’s loss, / Let German flags wave with our England’s cross” (10.66-67). He seems, in other words, to have sold out his pacifist principles for royal service. His respect for royal power, however, is less than absolute. On the contrary, as he shows in calming the crowd, fealty to royal power follows from a more basic commitment to the good of others. Faced with the articles to be signed, he demurs: “Our conscience first shall parley with our laws” (10.73). More becomes politically
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active --- indeed he seems at this point to adopt a royal “we” as his own --- but power is not, for him, an absolute end.
26 It is a platitude of contemporary criticism that everything is political, but it is not clear what this means. Many thinkers in the western tradition ascribe a commanding position to violent struggle, to war as “the father and king of all things,” as Heraclitus said.51 Both Schmitt and Michel Foucault reverse Carl von Clausewitz’s dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means, to turn politics into a continuation of war.52 So does John Yoo, a lawyer whose career is principally remembered for co- authoring the so-called “torture memos” which justified the use of waterboarding on suspected terrorists.53 Which of these figures one finds most disconcerting may perhaps serve as a litmus-test of one’s own loyalties, but all agree that politics grows from war, from the struggle against an existential threat in which, as in Ricoeur’s description of the state of nature, “the fear of violent death would reign supreme.” Such a politics proves, I argue, inadequate both to our fears and to our relations with other people. The spectre of a common enemy draws the London rebels in Sir Thomas More into solidarity, but even this enmity depends on an earlier concern with one another. In shifting from a depiction of the strangers as threatening enemies, to an image of them as themselves threatened, Shakespeare’s More introduces a new basis of the political, more primitive than the fear which would reign supreme in social contract theory or the divine right theory of his own time. Fear inspires his politics, but it is a fear for others at least as much as a fear for himself.
NOTES
1. Anthony Munday et al., Sir Thomas More, ed. John Jowett, coll. Arden Shakespeare, London and New York, Bloomsbury, 2011, Tilney.1-6. Further references to the play will be to this edition, and indicated in parentheses. References to the critical apparatus will appear in the notes, but under Jowett’s name. 2. E. A. J. Honigmann, “Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More and Asylum Seekers”, Shakespeare Survey 57, 2004, 225-235, p. 233. 3. Idem, p. 226. 4. Eric Griffin, “Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Stranger Crisis of the Early 1590s”, Shakespeare and Immigration, Ashgate, 2014, 13-36, p. 22, 23. 5. Jowett, p. 108. 6. Idem, p. 465. 7. Shakespeare’s Happy Comedies, London, Faber and Faber, 1962, p. 111. 8. A transcript of Dr. Power’s speech at the Lincoln Center Global Exchange in New York on September 16, 2016 is archived by the United States Mission to the United Nations at https:// 2009‑2017‑usun.state.gov/remarks/7434, last accessed 10 April 2017. 9. The entire, largely autobiographical, speech to the Cambridge Union can be found on Youtube. The relevant clip begins a little after an hour and three minutes into the speech. https:// youtu.be/SpMAM‑Qc‑6Q?t=1h3m58s, last accessed 8 April 2017.
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10. Most famously in E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, London, Chatto and Windus, 1943, p. 7 ff. (accessible online at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531693, last accessed 15 April 2017). 11. William H. Matchett, “Shylock, Iago, and Sir Thomas More: With Some Further Discussion of Shakespeare’s Imagination”, PMLA 92.2, 1977, 217-230, p. 218. 12. Reproduced in an appendix by Jowett, op cit., p. 478. 13. New York, Viking, 2008. 14. Honigmann, op. cit. pp. 233-234. 15. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, “‘This is the Strangers’ Case’: The Utopic Dissonance of Shakespeare’s Contribution to Sir Thomas More”, Shakespeare Survey 65, 2013, 239-254, p. 244. 16. Jowett, op. cit., p. 46 17. Laura Hunt Yungblutt, Strangers Settled Here Amongst Us: Policies, Perceptions and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England, London and New York, Routledge, 1996, p. 40. 18. Jowett, op cit, p. 120. 19. Tudeau-Clayton, op. cit., p. 246. 20. Sabine Schülting, “‘What Country, Friends, Is This?’ The Performance of Conflict in Shakespeare’s Drama of Migration”, Shakespeare and Conflict: A European Perspective, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 24-39, p. 29. 21. The vnion of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke, London, Richard Grafton, 1548, p. lix verso (document image 436), STC 12722, last accessed (via EEBO) 8 April 2017. 22. Reproduced as an appendix by Jowett, op. cit., pp. 473-474. 23. The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1976, p. 37. 24. Idem, p. 33. 25. Idem, p. 29. 26. Idem, p. 36. 27. Lars Vinx, “Carl Schmitt”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, (accessible online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/ schmitt/, last accessed 8 April 2016. 28. Op. cit., p. 33. 29. Op. cit., p. 29. 30. Jowett, op. cit., p. 30. 31. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England, London, Penguin Books, 1971, p. 17. 32. Op. cit., Appendix 1, OT1b. 33. Paul Ricoeur, “Accepting Personal Capacities and Pleading for Mutual Recognition”, Library of Congress Webpage, 2014, accessible online at https://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/prize/ricoeur- transcript.html, last accessed 8 April 2017. 34. “Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion”, Renaissance Electronic Texts, ed. Ian Lancashire, reproduces STC 13675, II.2.1.87-1-90, accessible online at www.library.utoronto.ca/ utel/ret/homilies/bk2hom21.html, last accessed 8 April 2017. 35. E. A. J. Honigmann, “The Play of Sir Thomas More and Some Contemporary Events”, Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production 42, 1990, 77-84, p. 78. 36. Op. cit., II.2.1-1041-1048. 37. “Transportation,” noun., 2c. 38. Translators of Levinas by convention capitalize “Other” when they translate the French “autrui,” which Levinas uses to designate the Other as an ethical command from the merely logical other, as in “X is other than Y.” The former is, of course, the sort of Other most fully distinguished from the other designated by Schmitt as the enemy. Alphonso Lingis explains his establishment of this convention, whereas Dino Galetti decries it. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and
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Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1969, pp. 24-25, footnote. Dino Galetti, “The grammar of Levinas’ other, Other, autrui, Autrui: Addressing translation conventions and interpretation in English-language Levinas studies”, South African Journal of Philosophy 34, 2, 2015, 199-123. 39. Totality and Infinity, p. 215. 40. “Diachrony and Representation,” Entre Nous, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barabra Harshav, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, 159-177, p. 169. 41. Leviticus 19.34, Geneva Bible, http://www.biblegateway.com, last accessed 14 April 2017. 42. Matthew 7.12. 43. “From the One to the Other: Transcendence and Time”, Entre Nous, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barabra Harshav, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, 133-153, p. 146. 44. Schülting, op. cit., p. 37. 45. Idem, p. 29. 46. William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. R A. Foakes, coll. Arden Shakespeare, 3rd edition, London, Thomas Nelson, 2000, 3.4.28, 3.4.34. 47. Sean Lawrence, Forgiving the Gift: The Philosophy of Generosity in Shakespeare and Marlowe, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 2012, pp. 101-103. 48. King Lear, 4.7.53-54. These words appear as an epigraph at the beginning of Emmanuel Levinas, Humanism of the Other, trans. Nidra Poller, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 3. 49. “Ethics and Politics”, The Levinas Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989, 289-297, p. 292-293. 50. Thomas More, Utopia, ed. William P. Weaver, trans. G. C. Richards, A Broadview Anthology of British Literature Edition, Peterborough (Ontario), Broadview Press, 2010, p. 46. 51. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, The Spell of Plato, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1962, p. 16. 52. Schmitt, op. cit., p. 34-35; Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power”, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, 58-75, p. 64-65. 53. He entitles his autobiography War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror. It is mentioned by David Luban, “Carl Schmitt and the Critique of Lawfare”, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 43, 1, 2010, 457-471, p. 457.
RÉSUMÉS
Le drame Sir Thomas More, écrit à plusieurs mains, comprend une scène Shakespearienne dans laquelle le personnage éponyme apaise une foule xénophobe de Londoniens, qui s’en prend aux étrangers. L’appel de More inspire à la foule une crainte pour l’étranger, au lieu d’une crainte de l’étranger. Bien qu’il puisse se placer dans le context historique de More, celui de Shakespeare ou du nôtre, le discours de More pose une série de questions plus larges sur l’importance d’autrui et sur la politique. On peut utiliser ce discours pour contredire les vues de Carl Schmitt pour qui l’autre est ennemi et la politique résulte de la menace de guerre. De même, on peut utiliser ce discours pour défendre la philosophie d’Emmanuel Levinas selon laquelle l’autre appelle à la responsabilité, et la politique est inspirée par le souci de l’autre.
The collaborative play Sir Thomas More includes a scene written by Shakespeare in which the title character calms a xenophobic mob of Londoners, bent on attacking “strangers.” More’s appeal to
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the crowd inspires in them a fear for the strangers replacing their earlier fear of the strangers. Although it can be placed within More’s historical context, Shakespeare’s context, or ours, the speech opens a series of broader questions about the importance of the other and the nature of politics. It can be used to argue against Carl Schmitt’s view of the other as enemy, and of politics as proceeding from the possibility of war, in favour of Emmanuel Levinas’s view of the other as a call to responsibility, and of politics as inspired by a concern for others.
INDEX
Mots-clés : Immigration, Paix, Rébellion, Réfugiés, Carl Schmitt, William Shakespeare, Guerre, Xénophobie Keywords : Immigration, Peace, Rebellion, Refugees, Carl Schmitt, William Shakespeare, War, Xenophobia
AUTEUR
SEAN LAWRENCE University of British Columbia, Okanagan
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From fear to anxiety in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Christine Sukic
1 In the early modern period, fear was either a necessary passion, as when Christians are said to live in the “fear of God”1, or an emotion that had to be suppressed or at least mitigated, when it concerned the “fear of death”. There are numerous books of ars moriendi that claim, in their titles, that they intend to “take away the feare of death”2 or will “comfort” Christians against that fear3. In a Christian context, fear was thus seen as a sort of natural passion, which was acceptable as long as it was “holy fear”, as Emilia calls it in Two Noble Kinsmen (5.1.149), but that had to be alleviated in order for Christians to “die well”, with as little fear as possible. In Measure for Measure, Claudio seems to have learned to “encounter darkness as a bride / And hug it in [his] arms” (3.1.83-4) until Isabella’s visit reminds him that “Death is a fearful thing” (3.1.115).
2 At a time when moral philosophers were discussing the status of the passions and their significance, the passion of fear was most commonly envisaged in a moderate way— mainly under the influence of Aristotle. Jacques Hurault, who was Henri III of France’s councillor, recommended, like many of his contemporaries, control over the passions in Les Trois livres des offices d’Estat (1586), his work about the education of princes that was translated into English by Arthur Golding and published in 1595 under the title Politicke, Moral, and Martial Discourses: Let us for example take Hardines, which is a meane betweene Fearfulnesse and Over-boldnesse, of which two this latter is the excesse of boldnesse, in offering a mans selfe to danger, and the other is the default or want of boldnesse in the same case, when Boldnesse is requisit or expedient. 4
3 Fearfulness is here defined as excess, while its opposite is the absence of fear (“Over- boldnesse”). For Hurault, the ideal position towards those passions is “hardiness”, which he sees as a middle ground between two excesses. He insists on the importance of the absence of fear, a cardinal virtue that can be called “Fortitude, Prowes, or Valiantnesse” and that he opposes to “Fearfulnesse or Cowardlinesse”: “This vertue is more generallie followed of princes”, Hurault adds. 5In other words, fear is defined in a negative way, as its absence is a princely and heroic virtue. Hurault thus introduces a
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social dimension in the definition of fear by attributing its opposite, a cardinal virtue, to princes and great men (“as we have seene in Alexander, Pirrhus, Hanniball, Pompey, Iulius Caesar, Themistocles, Alcibiades, and manie others”). 6The absence of fear could therefore be seen as a definition of heroism, as Hurault’s list of great men suggests here. Unsurprisingly, he also associates the absence of fear to the value of honour: Aristotle saith, It is the dutie of Prowesse to be utterlie undismaied with the feare of death, to be constant in suffering adversitie, to be void of dread of danger, to chuse to die with honour, than to live with dishonour, or to be conquered in battell. At a word, it is the dutie of prowesse, to be unafraid of any dangers, which reason sheweth that we ought not to feare. 7
4 The social dimension of fear and courage is confirmed by military memoirs such as the Discourses of the Huguenot captain François La Noue, who writes—in the 1588 English translation—that “There are other reasons, besides the equitie of a cause and urgent necessitie, that stirre up men to fight couragiously: As the presence of noble persons which detest cowardlinesse and exalt prowess”. 8
5 Shakespeare partakes of the same social framing when it comes to fear and courage: when war is at stake, courage is exalted and generates greatness while cowardice is scorned and defines base men. Henry V excites his men to action with “greater courage” in a situation of “great danger” (4.1.1), while cowardice is associated with the treachery of Cambridge, Grey and Scroop—their blood is “cowarded” (2.2.72)—or with the baseness of Pistol. In 1Henry IV, Shakespeare also opposes fear and courage by staging the death of the fearless hero Hotspur while having Falstaff stage his own counterfeit heroic gest and dismiss “honour” as an empty value (5.1.134). In Macbeth, Shakespeare envisages another kind of opposition between courage and fear, since it concerns the same character, a brave warrior that becomes a fearful and tormented tragic hero.
6 When Macbeth comes back from the war, after his encounter with the Weird Sisters, he and Banquo are met by Ross who reports to him the admiration of King Duncan for his brave action at war: “He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks, / Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make, / Strange images of death” (1.3.95-97). This passage confirms what we witness in 1.2, when at the King’s camp, messengers come in, full of stories of war containing what Robin Headlam Wells calls “the obscene detail of epic convention”,9 evoking narratives of men with “brandish’d steel”, smoking with “bloody execution”, where wounds do not provoke fear but “smack of honour” (1.2.17-18 and 45). Macbeth is part of this martial world of epic heroism where great men are brave and are not afraid of “strange images of death”. And yet, as soon as he learns he has been made Thane of Cawdor, he is immediately taken by the most terrible fear: If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings (1.3.134-8).
7 While he is not affected by anything that is under his eyes (“Present fears”), what he discovers inside himself he finds to be worthy of terror, as he confirms it himself a few lines further down in order to explain to his companions why he was so lost in his thoughts: “my dull brain was wrought / With things forgotten” (150-1). This fear of the self is further explained by Macbeth in the next scene, when he refuses to see his “black and deep desires”, that which “the eye fears” (1.4.51-3).
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8 This opposition takes the form of a passage from a world in which fear does not seem to exist, where no spectacle is able to frighten a heroic character, be it a “strange image of death”, to another one in which something that does not exist materially is an object of fear for a former martial hero. More than just a social reconfiguration, this passage illustrates an epistemological crisis according to which fear is no longer a social criterion, that which defines a social class against another, or a superior class of heroes against the rest of the world, but a passion that affects all humankind, therefore defining humanity. As such, it is integrated into Shakespearean drama as a source of fiction: fear creates stories.
9 The beginning of Macbeth corresponds to a common discourse—literary or not—in the early modern period, a topos that states that fear is the opposite of bravery, and that noblemen are characterised by courage. The great French historian of fear, Jean Delumeau, in his seminal book about fear in the western world, (La Peur en Occident, first published in 1978), pointed to the early modern taste for that literary discourse glorifying temerity and courage, virtues that were associated with the upper classes, seen as fearless in the conduct of war, while the masses were generally defined as being without courage. He cites a classical source10 that, according to him, already established that difference between high and low birth, when Virgil, in the 4th book of the Aeneid, dissociated fear from nobility and had Queen Dido exclaim about Aeneas: “Who is this stranger guest who has entered our home? How noble his mien! How brave in heart and feats of arms! I believe it well—nor is my confidence vain—that he is sprung from gods. It is fear that proves souls base-born”.11 Fear is here relegated to the lower, non-heroic categories of humans. There are some emblematic models of those fearless classes such as Jean Ier de Bourgogne, John the Fear-Less at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, or Bayard, the knight “without fear or beyond reproach”, who lived about a century later. Closer to Shakespeare, after the assassination of the French king Henry IV, the Huguenot writer and translator Jean Loiseau de Touval called Henry “That Peerless, Fearless Hercules”, 12and imagined, on the other hand, his enemies tremble with fear at the evocation of his name: “The Poles did tremble at my conquest’s sound, / Th’Antipodes did feare my victories”. 13
10 This vision of fear as a social marker seems to have been a commonplace at the time. In the descriptions of fear found in moral philosophy, and in the moral treatises about the passions especially, the theatre of war is the place where this social distinction can be best explained, that is to say, a situation where the body is involved and subject to danger. It is obvious in Montaigne, who devoted a short essay to fear, entitled “Of feare” in Florio’s translation. Montaigne describes the physical and mental effects of this passion, and from the very beginning of the essay, envisions it as a social marker which affects the “Vulgar sort”14 more than members of the nobility, soldiers more than commanders or officers, since the subject of fear immediately leads Montaigne to that of war: But even amongst Souldiers, with whom it ought to have no credit at all, how often hath she changed a flocke of sheep into a troupe of armed men? Bushes and shrubbes into men-at-armes and Lanciers? our friends into our enemies? and a red crosse into a white?15
11 Pierre Charron goes even further, in his Livre de la sagesse, a book shaped by the ideas of Montaigne as well as by neo-Stoicism, which was published in English in 1608 as Of wisdome three bookes written in French (translated by Samson Lennard) 16. Charron strongly condemns fear in the chapter devoted to that passion, except when it concerns
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the fear of God. Apart from this case that seems to be set outside the rest of his reflection, Charron defines fear as “a deceitfull and malicious passion” that cultivates a “doubtfull darkenesse” 17holding us in a “darke place, as theeues do by night”18. Charron is also interesting in that he constantly opposes wisdom (the subject of his book) to the opinion of the “vulgar sort”. He devotes one chapter to those people whom he describes as either fearful or too audacious (“People or vulgar sort”, first book, chap. 52). They are “either out of hope too much trusting, or too much distrusting out of feare. They will make you afeard, if you feare not them: when they are frighted, you chocke them under the chin, and you leape with both feet upon their bellies. They are audacious and proud, if a man shew not the cudgell”19.
12 This mistrust of the “vulgar sort”, and their association with cowardice is also exemplified on the early modern stage. One of the most striking examples of this is to be found in Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a play endowed, as its publisher states it, with a “privy mark of irony” (Epistle, l. 5).20 In this play that was presumably first performed at the Blackfriars by the Children of the Revels in 1607 or 1608, Rafe, the grocer’s apprentice, becomes a knight-errant in the play within the play, or, as he himself says, “grocer-errant” (1.1.259). At the end of his adventures, before the epilogue, Rafe exhorts his troops as a brave knight would do, asking his men not to be afraid of war-action: Gentlemen, countrymen, friends, and my fellow-soldiers, I have brought you this day from the shops of security and the counters of content, to measure out in these furious fields honour by the ell, and prowess by the pound. Let it not, oh, let it not, I say, be told hereafter the noble issue of this city fainted, but bear yourselves in this fair action like men, valiant men, and freemen. Fear not the face of the enemy, nor the noise of the guns, for believe me, brethren, the rude rumbling of a brewer’s cat is far more terrible, of which you have a daily experience […]. (5.l.138-147)
13 As we see in the vocabulary used by Rafe referring to his trade (shops, counters, measure out, the ell, etc.), the whole exhortation—and the character himself—has to be read ironically. The same could be said about the end of the play, when he reappears after his death as a ghost evoking his former constipation. Rafe is supposed to be an object of ridicule, and if he is, it is mainly because the part he has to play on stage—a fearless knight-errant—does not correspond to his social class: he should be afraid, and he is brave. The play thus uses the clichés of the bravery of the aristocracy in an ironic way, applying them to a character that is out of place. This inversion is the basis of this comedy, in which the absence of fear induces ridiculous heroics.
14 We also find examples of this topos in a play where, as we have already seen it, war plays a great part, Henry V, in which the absence of fear characterises both sides, the English, but also the French, who represent an obsolete type of heroism. Henry uses another cliché, that of fear as an instrument of war, almost a weapon. In 3.1, he asks his men to “lend the eye a terrible aspect […], let the brow o’erwhelm it / As fearfully as doth a galled rock…” (9-12). Whitney’s emblem of “Furies & rabies”—an emblem devoted to anger, the passion that incites men to fight—depicts Agamemnon’s shield, full of terrible figures meant to provoke fear (griffins, lions, dragons, and, like in Henry V, tigers) and bearing the following verse: “Man’s terror this, to fear them that behold: / Which shield is borne, by AGAMEMNON bold”21. Those shields decorated with objects of fear such as Medusa’s heads—imitating Athena’s shield—were quite common in the early modern period, usually as parade shields22. It is interesting that anger and fear should be associated in this emblem, as those two passions are seen as positive
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instruments of war for heroic men, the first one to give courage in battle, and the second to frighten one’s enemies. In the treatises of the passions, fear is either condemned (like anger, really) but can also be seen in a positive way. Nicolas Coeffeteau, for instance, in the Table of Humane Passions (1620), whom I am quoting here in Grimeston’s translation (1621), says there is also “a kinde of moderate feare, which striking reason but gentlely, makes us advised (to the which the Stoickes give the name of circumspection) to provide with judgement for that which concernes us: for that it makes us carefull and atentive to looke to our affaires, and to give order for that which is necessary to shelter us from stormes”. 23Following in that Aristotle, Coeffeteau points to a more positive use of the passion, which can have a positive effect, a moral one that makes us “advised” and gives us “judgement”. Thomas Wright, in The Passions of the minde, goes further because he uses the topos of fear as an instrument of war, when he tells his readers how fear can be “moved”. Instead of viewing fear as the passion that prevents heroic action, he sees it as one that can be the trigger to moral action and therefore heroic action. He cites the example of war against “the Turk”. According to him, by stating all the dangers and the threats represented by the Turkish enemy, one might be able to move somebody to martial action. It is, therefore, by the fear of the Other that Wright purports to turn fear into a positive passion: The children who are warlike in their infancy perforce shall be taken from their parents and sent into a far country from them, and there trained up in martial prowess and Turcism, and forget both father and mother, country and kindred, and neither yield comfort ever to progenitors nor receive any comfort from them. Many more such tyrannical vexations and barbarous cruelties I could recount, but he that will not be moved with these I hold him neither a wise moral man nor any way touched with one spark of Christian zeal24.
15 Of course, it is another type of war that is fought in Henry V, but fear is also used as a weapon, such as when the French king exhorts the Dauphin and the great nobles to use their “spirit of honour” (3.6.38). The Constable of France hopes that fear will help them in this enterprise: “I am sure when he shall see our army / He’ll drop his heart into the sink of fear, / And for achievement offer us his ransom” (58-60). Like Hotspur in 1Henry IV, the Dauphin is eager to fight and does not seem to be affected by fear. He is a “gallant prince”, as Orléans calls him (III. 7. 96-7). Most of the martial action is characterised by bravery, except for the characters of Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol, who have to be driven forward by Fluellen, and are called “these three swashers” by the boy (3.2.28-9). Pistol is definitely dismissed in act V.1 when Gower calls him “a counterfeit cowardly knave” (72) and he himself says how he will invent stories of the “Gallia wars” about the “cudgell’d scars” (92-3) he just got from Fluellen.
16 In fact, Henry V only mentions fear as a deterrent in war, or as a base passion affecting villains who are eliminated from the stage and the theatre of war anyway. But the presence of those cowards does affect the perception we get of this great epic narrative. As we have already seen in with the counter-example of Falstaff in 1Henry IV, the absence of fear is part of the culture of honour. However, there seems to be a reconfiguration of the idea of fear as a social marker in the dramatic literature of the period.
17 It is especially obvious in scenes that are characterised not by fear, but on the contrary, by an absence of fear, moments in Shakespearean drama when there is danger, or a situation that suggests a threat. One of the characters—who is not aristocratic and more often than not a secondary character—overcomes their fear in order to achieve a
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surprising act of courage. When, in King Lear, Gloucester is being tortured on stage by Regan and Cornwall, the first Servant, maybe emboldened by Gloucester’s courageous attitude in spite of his old age, and repulsed by his daughter and son-in-law’s cruelty, takes the defence of the old man and courageously stands up to Cornwall: “Hold your hand, my Lord. / I have serv’d you ever since I was a child, / But better service have I never done you / Than now to bid you hold” (3. 7. 70-73). Further down, as the same servant takes up his sword and challenges the nobleman, Cornwall is stunned by his audacity: “My villain!” (76), he exclaims. Regan cannot stand the social infringement this represents: “Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus!” (78) and kills him, presumably from behind. The social transgression represented by this character is striking here: he is in charge of the heroic action on stage at that moment in the play, while Gloucester, the old man, is unable to react, being in a passive position, tortured by Regan and Cornwall, whose cowardice is marked in the text by several visual signs (the fact that the servant is killed from behind, while he is having a go at Cornwall with his sword; that Gloucester is defenceless and tortured while being tied to a chair; that he is old; that the confrontation is uneven with the old man being attacked by a rather young couple).
18 There are, in fact, several scenes of this kind in Shakespearean drama, scenes that are similar to this one not so much in terms of plot or situation, but rather because of this social pattern indicating a discrepancy, where a character of a lower social class is suddenly put to the forefront thanks to an act of bravery, while the nobleman or noblemen are stigmatised for their fearful lack of courage. Another relevant example can be found in Antony and Cleopatra, when Antony thinks that Cleopatra has killed herself and wants to die but is unable to do so, pointing to his own “baseness” and lacking, he says, “The courage of a woman” (4.14.60). He is afraid of killing himself, he who has with his sword, “Quartered the world, and o’er green Neptune’s back / With ships made cities” (57-59), and so he asks Eros to do it for him, to be brave instead of his own heroic self. And there again, Shakespeare stresses the contradiction between Antony’s status as a great Roman general and his baseness, his lack of courage, and, on the other hand, that between Eros’s social baseness—he is a slave that has been enfranchised by Antony—and his capacity to be heroic at this point in the play, to be, as Antony remarks once Eros has killed himself instead of killing Antony, “Thrice nobler than myself!” (95), that is to say to have gained a sort of nobility that has nothing to do with social class but with the lack of fear, an attitude that befits a hero.
19 Social inversion can go even further, as in the anonymous A Larum for London, Or the Siedge of Antwerpe (1602)25. The play is about the three-day sack of Antwerp (or “Spanish Fury”) by unpaid and mutinous Spanish troops in 1576 and takes the form of a “warning” to London (the alarum of the title). As the epilogue states it, this “may be a meane all Cittyes to affright” (Epilogue, l.1677). So the play is supposed to provoke a valuable reaction of fear, but in its plot, the city of Antwerp is characterised by fear and cowardice, on the part of the citizens (the Burghers) and the governor of the city, who are afraid of offending the Spaniards if they accept the reinforcement from the Prince of Orange, and who are unable to react. Their cowardice is also marked by a gender inversion, when the wife of one of the burghers points to his lack of courage: “For shame, / Be not so fearefull […]/ Have yee not Soldiers to withstand their force?” (l. 507-511). In the meantime, the only brave character is the poor soldier who is the hero of the play, Vaughan, or Stump, called so because he has lost one of his legs. After his
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death, his body is treated like that of a hero and he is said to have a “Heroycke spirit […]” (l. 1649).
20 This social remapping of fear is in keeping with the more general reconfiguration of heroism in the early modern period: it signals changes in the perception of the aristocracy and the fearless conduct of war and, in the literary field, a questioning of the values conveyed by the classic epic narrative. To come back to Macbeth, if his fear is absent on the battlefield, after the murder of Duncan it never leaves him: “I am afraid to think what I have done” (2.2.50), he utters. Fear even materialises on stage, when Banquo comes to haunt him. Lady Macbeth rebukes him for that passion: This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which you said Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, Impostors to true fear, would well become A woman’s story at a winter’s fire Authorised by her grandam (3.4.70).
21 Lady Macbeth, in character, is accusing him of being a coward, and gendering his cowardice, as she has done almost from the beginning of her presence on stage. The words she uses in this passage are particularly interesting, when she refers to “painting”, and opposes “true fear”, to these “impostors”. In fact, she is referring to Macbeth’s fears as fiction, as imagination. She is, indirectly, suggesting that there is efficient imagination at work—able, let us remember, to place a character on stage, Banquo, a character that the audience can see. There is, in this passage, a contradictory poetic art, a poetics of fear in reverse that tries to deny what we see on stage: that fear creates fiction.
22 This is, by the way, suggested by many authors of the period, such as Montaigne who says that this “strong Passion” materialises the objects of fear. The “vulgar sort”, he says, imagine those objects in various guises, be they “their Great-Grandsires, risen out of their Graves in their Shrowds”, or “Hob-Goblins, Spectres and Chimaera’s.” 26Montaigne gives the case of “Souldiers”, “a sort of men”, he says, “over whom, of all others, it ought to have the least Power”, but who are also occasionally given to this passion, and whose fear also materialises their phobias: “how often has it converted Flocks of Sheep into armed Squadrons, Reeds and Bull-rushes into Pikes and Launces, Friends into Enemies, and the French White into the Red Crosses of Spain!” 27Charron also stresses the materialisation of fear that places before the eyes of the fearful subject all sorts of images. We could say that it is a very creative passion that translates to fiction, in a way: “it tormenteth us with masks and shewes of evils, as men feare children with bug-beares.”28
23 Some authors—such as Coeffeteau—remark on the difficulty to define this passion because, as he says, even though it can have tremendous effects, it remains unseen, and difficult to envision: “although shee seeme not to bee so active as the rest, and remaines as it were covered and hidden, yet she doth cause strange accidents in the life of man; for that shee hath sometimes ruined powerfull Armies, brought Kingdomes and States into dangers, and overthrowne the fortunes of private persons.”29 So there is a kind of duality about this mysterious passion that is difficult to perceive, but that also has an almost material effect on imagination. Coeffeteau concludes his chapter about fear by pointing out that it “doth wholly trouble the imagination of man.”30 So, like the other passions, it has an effect on the human body—that is the reason why the passions
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were also called the “motions” of the soul—but more than the other passions, it has a strong power of imagination.
24 At the end of the play, Macbeth states that he has “almost forgot the taste of fears” (5.5.9), the word “taste” suggesting a materialisation of the objects of fear, things one can taste and things one “sups” on since Macbeth also says he has “supped full with horrors”. So this is a contradictory statement that, first of all, triggers Macbeth’s speech (“She should have died hereafter”, 5.2.16), a great moment of lucidity at the news of Lady Macbeth’s death, and a form of tragic knowledge about the insignificance of man. The references to the materialisation of fear are counterbalanced by the images of insubstantiality contained in Macbeth’s speech. This passage is situated, by the way, in between two moments when his tragedy takes on an ironic turn as reality denies his absence of fear: Macbeth first strongly asserts that he “will not be afraid of death and bane, / Till Birnam Forest comes to Dunsinane” (5.3.58-60); however, at 5.5, he is told— probably fearfully—by the messenger: “I looked toward Birnam and anon methought / The wood began to move” (32-3). I suggest that, at that moment in the play, when the materiality of fear turns to immaterial images and impalpable elements, Macbeth is, indeed, not so much affected by fear as he is by anxiety, in a sense that is defined by the OED as “Worry about the future or about something with an uncertain outcome […]; a troubled state of mind arising from such worry or concern” (first entry). Contrary to fear, anxiety concerns the mind more than it concerns imagination. Thomas Cooper’s dictionary translates the Latin scrupulositas as “Anxietie: curiousnesse of conscience: scrupulositie: spiced conscience”31. The word “anxiety”, as in this example, is often coupled with “scrupulosity”. Interestingly, even though the OED gives 1475 as the first known occurrence of the word, it is quite rare to find it before 1600, and it is used a lot more after 1650. The association with “scrupulosity” shows that it also has a moral dimension, which is another indication of its intellectual rather than passionate quality.
25 In Macbeth, the hero undergoes a change, from an absence of fear that characterises an obsolete kind of heroism, to anxiety expressed about a world that is unknowable, illusory, and impalpable. This shift from one state to another is visually represented by a contradiction between the material and the immaterial, between the ghost, or the advancing wood, and the “walking shadow”. This is characteristic of the Shakespearean tragic self. In Hamlet, the hero’s incapacity to act is also situated between an archaic world that appears on stage, that of the ghost first perceived as a “goblin damned” or a “questionable shape”, words that are reminiscent of the descriptions of the effects of fear (in Montaigne, for instance), and this “conscience” that Hamlet mentions, that prevents him from acting. “Am I a coward?”, Hamlet asks in 2.2, (in the “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I” monologue) and at 3.1, he answers that “conscience makes cowards of us all”. This “cowardice” is not socially marked since it affects “us all”. Conquering fear on the stage of Hamlet does not mean being able to act but on the contrary leaving the archaic world of action behind, becoming a coward, like “us all”.
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NOTES
1. Amongst numerous examples: Henry Smith, The preachers proclamacion Discoursing the vanity of all earthly things, and prooving that there is no contentation to a Christian minde, but onely in the feare of God, London, 1591. 2. Jean de l’Espine, A treatise tending to take away the feare of death, and make the faithfull man desire the same…, London, 1619. 3. Stephen Jerome, Seaven helps to Heaven Shewing […] Comforts for Christians against distresses in life, and feare of death, London, 1614. 4. Jacques Hurault, Politicke, Moral, and Martial Discourses. Written in French by M. Iaques Hurault, lord of Vieul and of Marais, and one of the French kings privie Councell. Dedicated by the Author to the French-kings Maiestie: And translated into English by Arthur Golding, London, Printed by Adam Islip, 1595, p. 59. 5. Ibid., p. 275. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 275-276. 8. François La Noue, The politicke and militarie discourses of the Lord de La Nouue Whereunto are adioyned certaine observations of the same author, of things happened during the three late civill warres of France. With a true declaration of manie particulars touching the same. All faithfully translated out of the French by E.A., At London, Printed for T. C. and E. A. by Thomas Orwin, 1588, p. 275. 9. Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 119. 10. Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris, Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1978, p. 15. 11. Virgil, Aeneid, IV.10-12, in Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I-VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold, The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass, London, England, Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 423. 12. Jean Loiseau de Tourval, Three precious teares of blood, flowing from the wounded harts of three great French ladies In memory, of the vertues, complaint of the losse, and execration of the murther, of that thrice-worthy monarch, Henry the Great. Now shed againe in English…,Printed at Britaine Burse for John Budge, and are there to be sold at his shop, 1611, p. 15. 13. Ibid., p. 7. 14. Montaigne, Essays…, transl. John Florio, 1613 edition, Book 1, chapter 17, “Of feare”, p. 28. 15. Ibid. 16. Pierre Charron, Of wisdome three bookes written in French by Peter Charro[n] Doctr of Lawe in Paris, translated by Samson Lennard, 1608. 17. Ibid., p. 99. 18. Ibid., p. 100. 19. Ibid., p. 201. 20. Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. Michael Hattaway, New Mermaids, London, Methuen Drama, 2002. 21. Geffrey Whitney, A choice of emblemes, and other devises, For the moste parte gathered out of sundrie writers, Englished and Moralized. And divers newly devised, Leyden, In the house of Christopher Plantyn, by Francis Raphelengius, 1586, p. 45, in Whitney’s “Choice of Emblemes”. A fac-simile reprint, ed. Henry Green, London, Lovell Reeve & Co., Chester, Minshull & Hughes, Nantwich, E. H. Griffiths, 1866. 22. There is a beautiful example of a parade shield of embossed steel with Medusa’s head in the centre, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, dated 1552 and made in Augsburg by Jörg Sigman, a
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famous German goldsmith (Museum number 3660-1855). URL: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/ item/O97494/parade-shield-sigman-jorg/, accessed 25 August 2017. 23. Nicolas Coeffeteau, A Table of humane passions. With their Causes and Effects. Written by ye Reverend Father in God F. N. Coeffeteau, Bishop of Dardania, Councellor to ye French King in his Councels of Estate, Suffragane and Administrator ge|nerall of ye Bishopricke of Metz. Translated into English by Edw: Grimeston Sergiant at Armes, London, Printed by Nicholas Okes, 1621, p. 572. 24. Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in General, ed. William Webster Newbold, The Renaissance Imagination, vol. 15, New York and London, Garland Publishing, 1986, p. 286. 25. I am using the Malone Society Reprint edition of 1913. 26. Montaigne, Essays, op. cit., p. 83. 27. Ibid. 28. Pierre Charron, Of wisdome three bookes, op. cit., p. 100. 29. Nicolas Coeffeteau, The Table of Humane Passions, op. cit., p. 429. 30. Ibid., p. 472. 31. Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae…, Impressum Londini, 1578.
RÉSUMÉS
Jean Delumeau, dans sa célèbre histoire de la peur (La Peur en Occident, 1978), montre les aspects sociaux de la peur à l’époque moderne : un noble est par définition sans peur, alors que « le vulgaire » (Montaigne, « De la peur ») est considéré comme excessivement peureux et couard. La peur, passion « servile et honteuse » (Coeffeteau, Tableau des passions humaines, 1620) dépend donc de son contraire traditionnel, le courage, et se place dans ce cadre dialectique. On trouve cette opposition sociale dans la plupart des discours sur la peur de la première modernité : la peur est donc vue comme caractéristique des classes populaires, alors que le courage est associé à l’individualité aristocratique. A partir de ce constat, cet article étudie la façon dont le théâtre shakespearien sape cette opposition sociale en mettant en scène des actes de courage accomplis par des humbles, tout en faisant de la peur le fondement du sujet moderne, la peur n’étant plus un défaut mais le fondement d’une définition de l’humain. Enfin, Shakespeare fait de la peur le fondement d’une poétique.
Jean Delumeau, in his seminal history of fear (Fear in the West, first published in 1978) points to the social configurations of fear in early modern societies: a nobleman was by definition fearless, while people of the “Vulgar sort” (Montaigne, “Of fear”) were taxed with being excessively fearful and cowardly. Fear, “a servile and base passion” (Coeffeteau, A Table of Human Passions, 1620) was thus determined by its traditional reverse, bravery, and placed within that dialectic frame. That social opposition structures most early modern discourses about fear and informs a vision of fear as being characteristic of the popular masses, while bravery is associated with aristocratic individuality, desire for fame and heroism. Bearing in mind this dominant discourse, I would like to look at the ways in which Shakespearean drama undermines this social framework by staging humble representations of acts of bravery, while at the same time using fear as a fundamental basis for the modern subject, no longer a defect but as a defining trait of humankind. Fear becomes a source of fiction on the Shakespearean stage. Key words:
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INDEX
Keywords : Anxiety, aristocracy, bravery, fear, heroism, passions, poetic art, Shakespeare Mots-clés : Peur, anxiété, courage, passions, aristocratie, héroïsme, art poétique, Shakespeare William
AUTEUR
CHRISTINE SUKIC Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
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