Shakespeare's Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare
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Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare This volume presents a fresh look at the military spouses in Shakespeare’s Othello, 1 Henry IV, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth, and Coriolanus, vital to understanding the plays themselves. By analyzing the characters as military spouses, we can better understand the current dynamics in modern American civilian and military culture as modern American military spouses live through the War on Terror. Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare explains what these plays have to say about the role of military families and cultural constructions of masculinity both in the texts themselves and in modern America. Concerns relevant to today’s military families – domestic violence, PTSD, infertility, the treatment of queer servicemembers, war crimes, and the growing civil–military divide – pervade Shakespeare’s works. These parallels to the contemporary lived experience are brought out through reference to memoirs written by modern-day military spouses, sociological studies of the American armed forces, and reports issued by the Department of Defense. Shakespeare’s military spouses create a discourse that recognizes the role of the military in national defense but criticizes risky or damaging behaviors and norms, promoting the idea of a martial identity that permits military defense without the dangers of toxic masculinity. Meeting at the intersection of Shakespeare Studies, trauma studies, and military studies, this focus on military spouses is a unique and unprecedented resource for academics in these fields, as well as for groups interested in Shakespeare and theatre as a way of thinking through and responding to psychiatric issues and traumatic experiences. Kelsey Ridge earned her PhD in Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham in 2019. Her research concentrates on representations of the military, trauma, and gender/sexuality in English literature. She received her M.A. in English at University College London and her B.A. at Wellesley College. She has served as a dramaturg on opera and Shakespeare productions. She has published on The Tempest in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. Routledge Studies in Shakespeare Rasa Theory in Shakespearian Tragedies Swapna Koshy Shakespeare’s Audiences Edited by Matteo Pangallo and Peter Kirwan Shakespeare, the Renaissance and Empire Volume I: Geography and Language Jonathan Locke Hart Shakespeare, the Renaissance and Empire Volume II: Poetry, Philosophy and Politics Jonathan Locke Hart Shakespeare’s Sublime Ethos Matter, Stage, Form Jonathan P. A. Sell Shakespeare’s Sublime Pathos Person, Audience, Language Jonathan P. A. Sell Shakespeare and Civil Unrest in Britain and the United States Edited by Mark Bayer and Joseph Navitsky Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First Century Warfare Kelsey Ridge Dramaturgies of Love in Romeo and Juliet Word, Music, and Dance Jonas Kellermann For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Shakespeare/book-series/RSS Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First- Century Warfare Kelsey Ridge First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Kelsey Ridge The right of Kelsey Ridge to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Excerpts from WHILE THEY’RE AT WAR: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront by Kristin Henderson. Copyright © 2006 by Kristin Henderson. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-03382-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-03383-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-18703-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003187035 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgments vii “Our Great Captain’s Captain”: An Introduction 1 Critical Framework 6 Masculinity 8 The US Military and a Post-9/11 Context 11 Definitions: Who Is a Military Spouse? 17 Necessary Violence and the Modern Military 20 Lending Your Ears 21 1 “Our General’s Wife Is Now the General”: Desdemona and Emilia 31 Desdemona and Emilia as Military Spouses 32 Negative Impacts of Toxic Masculinity 37 Jealousy 37 Domestic Violence 44 2 “But Yet A Woman”: Lady Percy and Lady Mortimer 59 Lady Mortimer 61 Kate Percy 70 3 “Think You I Am No Stronger Than My Sex”: Portia and Calpurnia 90 Portia 93 Calpurnia 105 4 “In Time of Action”: Andromache and Patroclus 115 Andromache 116 Patroclus 124 vi Contents 5 “Of A Woman Born”: Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff 144 Lady Macbeth 145 Lady Macduff 157 6 “Thy valiantness was mine”: Virgilia and Volumnia as Military (In)Dependents 171 The Misevaluation of the Women 172 The Performance Masculinity 175 Assimilation to the Military Culture 179 Civilians 188 “My story being done”: A Conclusion 198 Glossary 202 Acronyms 202 Supplementary Vocabulary 204 Index 208 Acknowledgments I would not be where I am without the love and support of my parents, Elin Sigurdson and John Ridge. Thank you for attending years of Shake- speare festivals, telling me grad school was actually a good idea, and believing in me. I will forever owe Hannah Ridge and Natalie Gogotsi for their love, encouragement, and absolute refusal to let me give up, whether it was revising this book or rock climbing – although I still think they should have let me stop rock climbing. Thank you for sticking by me all these years. This book would not have been possible with the seemingly endless support and guidance of Chris Laoutaris. He was sure this was possible even when I was not. Thank you for always believing in me and my work and for turning me into the scholar I am today. This book was vastly improved by the kind words and wise guidance of Evelyn Gajowski, Erin Sullivan, and John Jowett. Thank you for your generous questions, suggestions, and advice. Several people over the years have helped me become the person who could write this book. Thank you to Hilary Gross, Yu Jin Ko, and Diego Arciniegas, without whom, each in their own way, this idea would never have happened. Thank you to Sandy and Dave Chantry and the Wellesley College Shakespeare Society for shaping me as a thespian in ways that are hard to quantify. This research relied on access to archives protected by dedicated teams. Thanks to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust staff for their assistance. Thank you to the archives team at the Stratford Festival, especially Liza Giffen and Nora Polley, for their kindness and assistance while I was researching there and for the chats over cups of tea. Your work with the collections is invaluable. My thanks to the team at Routledge for all their work on this book, especially Bryony Reece. My thanks, as well, to servicemembers past and present, their spouses, and their families. Special thanks are owed to navy wife Jenna Booth for viii Acknowledgments her comments on this manuscript. This book would not exist as it does without spouses having generously shared their experiences. I have done my best to write about the experience of spouses with care, and if I allow myself a vain hope, it is that these readings of Shakespeare’s military spouses will be of value and use to you. Thank you for your service. “Our Great Captain’s Captain” An Introduction This book started with a fixation on one character: Kate Percy. Reading Kate’s words about her husband in 1.3 reframed how I saw the entirety of 1 Henry IV. I followed Kate to Portia and Volumnia, and from there a relationship became clear. These women, and several other Shakespeare characters, filled a social role now colloquially referred to as “army wives.”1 That understanding led to the question: what is the role of mili- tary spouses in Shakespeare? Othello, 1 Henry IV, Julius Caesar, Troi- lus and Cressida, Macbeth, and Coriolanus, each contain two military spouses – Emilia and Desdemona, Lady Percy and Lady Mortimer, Por- tia and Calpurnia, Patroclus and Andromache, Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff, and Volumnia and Virgilia. Although not all of these characters are married, all engage in or have been in significant romantic relation- ships with military men and are themselves tied closely to the military culture, and most of these partners construct some or all of their identity through those relationships. These characters are not servicemembers but are attached to the military community. As such, they can be exam- ined through their participation in that social role. The characters in this social role in Shakespeare provide an examination of their own role, but also of the role of their male partners, and in so doing they criticize the dangerous elements of their culture’s construction of manhood and of the role of the soldier. It is easy to see why one would take an interest in Shakespeare’s war- riors. They are often shown at the center of his dramas. They perform incredible feats with sweeping ramifications, from putting down inva- sions to leading rebellions.2 Standing beside them, the spouses are eas- ily ignored.