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Dramaturgy, Ideology, and Interpretation in Shakespeare's Late

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Dramaturgy, Ideology, and Interpretation in Shakespeare's Late 'SKILL IN THE CONSTRUCTION' DRAMATURGY, IDEOLOGY, AND INTERPRETATION IN SHAKESPEARE'S LATE PLAYS by JONATHAN WILLIAM HARTWELL A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The Shakespeare Institute School of English The University of Birmingham April 2003 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis examines the way dramaturgical techniques in Shakespeare's late plays are used to create a complex and radical exploration of the relationship between ideology and interpretation. It links such concerns via the multiple meanings of "construction", illustrated using the scene of reading at the end of Cymbeline, centred upon the prophetic label. In Part I, major reservations are expressed about the standard interpretative paradigms applied to late Shakespearian drama, and their effect on critical understanding. The deficiencies of a "Romance" reading and the problems with traditional attitudes to chronology, authorship, and collaboration are stressed; elements often marginalized as aesthetically inferior are defended; and two related areas of dramaturgical technique, theatrical spectacle and reported action, are emphasized. Part II focuses on reading individual late plays, with special emphasis on Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. It adopts a reconstructed, politicized close reading, concentrating on issues relating to the problematics of interpretation within the plays. Individual chapters highlight different forms of "construction": art, history, truth, authority, display, narrative. Attention is drawn to how reading and interpretation are shown to be always inscribed within power relations and the performative dynamic of language. There's more adoe to interprete interpretations, than to interprete things: and more bookes vpon bookes, then vpon any other subject. We doe but enter-glose our selves. Michel de Montaigne (translated by John Florio) Truth may seem but cannot be, Beauty brag, but 'tis not she. Truth and beauty buried be. William Shakespeare And the clear truth no man has seen nor will anyone know concerning the gods and about all the things of which I speak; for even if he should actually manage to say what was indeed the case, nevertheless he himself does not know it; but belief is found over all. attributed to Xenophanes of Colophon (c.580 - c.480 BC) CONTENTS Preface 1 Acknowledgements 13 References and Abbreviations 15 PART I: APPROACHING SHAKESPEARE'S LATE PLAYS 25 Chapter One Reading Constructions/Constructing Readings 26 Chapter Two Genre and Identity 93 Chapter Three Authorship and Collaboration 136 Chapter Four Dramaturgy, Ideology, and Interpretation 187 PART II: READING SHAKESPEARE'S LATE PLAYS 241 Chapter Five 'The verity of it is in strong suspicion': Spectacle and Report in The Tempest, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale 242 Chapter Six 'Words are no deeds': Henry VIII (All Is True) and the Politics of Truth 269 Chapter Seven 'Constant to eternity': Mastery and Authority in The Two Noble Kinsmen 302 Notes 326 Bibliography 601 PREFACE I started this thesis with what felt at the time like a relatively simple aim. I wanted to show why some of Shakespeare's lesser-known, less- admired late plays (basically, that is, those other than The Tempest and The Winter's Tale) were a good deal better than their long-term reputation would suggest, and so deserving of more positive and serious critical (and theatrical) attention than they ever seemed to receive. This remains one of my main objectives, though I am much more aware these days that it begs a number of significant questions. To help explain the shape the finished project has taken, I want to set out briefly here some of the thinking behind this original intention, and some of the ways in which my early ideas have developed (or survived) as my work has progressed. It needs to be emphasized, however (to introduce in passing another of my central themes), that what I offer below is very much a narrative constructed in retrospect, with the benefit - but also, therefore, through the distorting lens - of hindsight. My interest began - as the body of the thesis itself begins - with Cymbeline. A series of increasingly fascinated (some might say, increasingly obsessive) encounters with this text - and it is perhaps worth stressing that I am talking specifically about readings here, the text on the page - were accompanied by a growing frustration at the manner of the play's treatment by the critical tradition. It seemed to me that commentators had almost entirely failed to address (or for that matter, to notice) key facets of its artistic and dramaturgical construction: its multiple puns and patterns, the extraordinary degree - 2 - to which its verbal texture has been shaped (down, in many places, to the most minute details of word and imagery), the controlled complexity and quality of its design - I could go on. In other words, to use a familiar trope, I became aware of a vast gulf between what I thought I could see in this play, and what the standard criticism was leading me to expect to see in it. Looking back now, I can formulate clearly what was only inchoate then, my sense that Cymbeline, misunderstood and marginalized for decades, is an exceptionally brilliant piece of work even for Shakespeare. It may have been derided and regarded with embarrassment by some of the dramatist's most ardent admirers, and valued by others merely for its heroine or its two songs/poems, but for me, Cymbeline as a whole stands as absolutely quintessential Shakespeare, and it lies at the heart of this thesis. My initial impression of the critical tradition soon crystallized into a thoroughgoing dissatisfaction with the interpretative paradigms long dominant in this field. In company with most other students of Shakespeare in the twentieth century, I was introduced to Cymbeline within the context of the four late "Romances". From an early stage, I was troubled by this generic (and biographical) categorization, feeling that the "Romance" model of reading did little to enhance understanding either of Cymbeline itself, or of any of the other plays traditionally included under its rubric. It did even less, moreover, for a work usually omitted from the group entirely, and in which I was also already particularly interested, The Two Noble Kinsmen. I discuss my objections to the "Romance" classification of late Shakespearian drama in detail in Chapter Two. In its stead, I have adopted the non-generic term, "late plays", which I use throughout to refer, quite specifically, to six dramatic texts - namely, in alphabetical order, Cymbeline, Henry VIII - 3 - (All Is True), Pericles, The Tempest, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and The Winter's Tale. I should point out that "late plays" is a description not without its own problems, and I return to these as well in Chapter Two. An important factor behind the choice of terminology here was my decision, taken from the start, to incorporate The Two Noble Kinsmen firmly within the scope of my discussion. Like a number of its more recent critics, I owe much of my initial enthusiasm for this play to the RSC production that opened the Swan Theatre in Stratford in 1986 (though I myself saw it when it transferred to Newcastle the following year). But I can also still recall the day, probably some five or six years prior to that, when I first came across an edition of Kinsmen (the New Penguin Shakespeare text, to be precise) in a bookshop. I distinctly remember wondering, with a peculiar mixture of confusion, annoyance, scepticism, and (I like to think) excitement, (a) how there could be a Shakespeare play that I had never even remotely heard of before, and (b) why it was not to be found in my own (newly- purchased) copy of the complete works. I mention this private memory here because it provides a partial reflection of the power to challenge and disturb which this drama still possesses. The Two Noble Kinsmen is a dark and troubling work, one which by its very existence disrupts and destabilizes many of the standard narratives of Shakespeare's career. This is of course a quality that has had much to do with its being largely ignored in the mainstream realms of Shakespearian studies and performance until only recently. Notions of disruption and unstable narratives tie in well with another key starting-point in my thinking about late Shakespearian drama, the sequence of action surrounding the "return" of Hermione at the end of The Winter's Tale. What has always stood out for me here - 4 - are the unresolved problems posed by the statue-scene (5.3) at the level of the plot - the fact that Shakespeare "cheats", so to speak. Having staged what feels like a miracle within the fictional world, the play then appears to deny that it was a miracle at all, through one brief, rather enigmatic sentence from the Queen herself (11. 126-129), which in turn links back to a number of tantalizing hints given earlier on. But when all is said and done, the theory, frequently extrapolated from these hints, that the reportedly dead-and-buried Hermione has been living quietly sequestered at Paulina's house for sixteen years, makes little more "sense" in realistic terms than any magical metamorphosis from stone.
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