Spiritual Shakespeares

1111 2 3 4 5111 ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE 6 7111 General Editor: TERENCE HAWKES 8 9 1011 1 Spiritual Shakespeares 2 3111 4 5 6111 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are 7 dreamt of in secular materialism, theology, or contemporary theory. 8 That at least is what the present collection sets out so suggestively to show. 9 John D. Caputo (from the Foreword) 20111 Readers will find here an engagement with both Shakespeare and 1 spirituality which is intelligent, original, and challengingly optimistic, 2 one which surely succeeds in its wish to ‘reinvigorate and strengthen 3 politically progressive materialist criticism’. 4 Jonathan Dollimore (from the Afterword) 5 Spiritual Shakespeares is the first book to explore the scope for reading 6 Shakespeare spiritually in the light of contemporary theory and current 7 world events. Ewan Fernie has brought together an exciting cast of critics 8 in order to respond to the ‘religious turn’ in recent thought and to the spiritualised politics of terrorism and the ‘War on Terror’. 9 Opening a genuinely new perspective within Shakespeare Studies, this 30111 volume suggests that experiencing the spiritual intensities of the plays 1 could lead us back to dramatic intensity as such. It tests spirituality from 2 a political perspective, as well as subjecting politics to an unusual spiritual 3 critique. Among its controversial and provocative arguments is the idea that a consideration of spirituality might point the way forward for 4 materialist criticism. 5 Spiritual Shakespeares reaches across and beyond literary studies with 6 challenging, powerful contributions from Philippa Berry, John D. Caputo, 7 Jonathan Dollimore, Ewan Fernie, Lisa Freinkel, Lowell Gallagher, 8 John J. Joughin, Richard Kearney, David Ruiter and Kiernan Ryan. 9 Ewan Fernie is Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, 40111 University of London, and the author of Shame in Shakespeare (Routledge, 4111 2002). 1111 ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE 2 3 General Editor: TERENCE HAWKES 4 5111 6 17 8 It is more than twenty years since the New Accents series helped to 9 establish ‘theory’ as a fundamental and continuing feature of the study 1011 of literature at the undergraduate level. Since then, the need for short, powerful ‘cutting edge’ accounts of and comments on new developments 1 has increased sharply. In the case of Shakespeare, books with this sort 2 of focus have not been readily available. Accents on Shakespeare 3111 aims to supply them. 4 Accents on Shakespeare volumes will either ‘apply’ theory, or 5 broaden and adapt it in order to connect with concrete teaching con- cerns. In the process, they will also reflect and engage with the major 6 developments in Shakespeare studies of the last ten years. 7 The series will lead as well as follow. In pursuit of this goal it will be 8 a two-tiered series. In addition to affordable, ‘adoptable’ titles aimed at 19 modular undergraduate courses, it will include a number of research- 20111 based books. Spirited and committed, these second-tier volumes advocate radical change rather than stolidly reinforcing the status quo. 1 2 IN THE SAME SERIES 3 Shakespeare and Appropriation Shakespeare and Feminist 4 Edited by Christy Desmet Performance: Ideology on Stage 5 and Robert Sawyer Sarah Werner 6 Shakespeare Without Women Shame in Shakespeare 7 Dympna Callaghan Ewan Fernie 8 Philosophical Shakespeares The Sound of Shakespeare 9 Edited by John J. Joughin Wes Folkerth 30111 Shakespeare and Modernity: Shakespeare in the Present 1 Early Modern to Millennium Terence Hawkes 2 Edited by Hugh Grady 3 Making Shakespeare Marxist Shakespeares Tiffany Stern 4 Edited by Jean E. Howard Presentist Shakespeare 5 and Scott Cutler Shershow Edited by Terence Hawkes 6 Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis and Hugh Grady 7 Philip Armstrong 8 Shakespeare and Modern Theatre: 9 The Performance of Modernity 40111 Edited by Michael Bristol 4111 and Kathleen McLuskie 1111 2 3 4 5111 Spiritual 6 7111 8 Shakespeares 9 1011 1 Edited by EWAN FERNIE 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 I~ ~?io~;~;n~~~up 4111 LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2005 by Routledge A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Published 2017 by Routledge Library of Congress Cataloging in 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Publication Data Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, Spiritual Shakespeares / edited by NY 10017, USA Ewan Fernie. p. cm. – (Accents on Shakespeare) Includes bibliographical references and Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor index. & Francis Group, an informa business Contents: Introduction: Shakespeare, spirituality, and contemporary criticism / Editorial matter and selection Ewan Fernie – ‘Where hope is coldest’: © 2005 Ewan Fernie All’s well that ends well / Kiernan Individual chapters © the Ryan – Harry’s (in)human contributors face / David Ruiter – Waiting for Gobbo / Lowell Gallagher – ‘Salving the mail’: perjury, grace, and the Typeset in Baskerville by disorder of things in Love’s labour’s lost Florence Production Ltd, / Philippa Berry – The Shakespearean Stoodleigh, Devon fetish / Lisa Freinkel – Bottom’s secret / John J. Joughin – Spectres of The Open Access version of this Hamlet / Richard Kearney – The last book, available at act: presentism, spirituality, and the www.tandfebooks.com, has been politics of Hamlet / Ewan Fernie. made available under a Creative 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 Commons Attribution-Non – Religion. 2. Spiritual life in Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 literature. 3. Spirituality in literature. license. I. Fernie, Ewan, 1971–. II. Series. PR3011.S65 2005 British Library Cataloguing in 822.3′3–dc22 2005004410 Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-415-31966-9 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-415-31967-6 (pbk) 1111 2 3 4 5111 And what impossibility would slay 6 In common sense, sense saves another way. 7111 (All’s Well That Ends Well ) 8 9 No settled senses of the world can match 1011 The pleasures of that madness. 1 (The Winter’s Tale) 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 17 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 Contents 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 List of contributors ix 4 General editor’s preface xiii 5 Acknowledgements xv 6 Foreword: of hyper-reality xvii 7 JOHN D. CAPUTO 8 9 20111 Introduction: Shakespeare, spirituality and 1 contemporary criticism 1 2 EWAN FERNIE 3 4 1 ‘Where hope is coldest’: All’s Well That Ends Well 28 5 KIERNAN RYAN 6 7 2 Harry’s (in)human face 50 8 DAVID RUITER 9 30111 3 Waiting for Gobbo 73 1 LOWELL GALLAGHER 2 3 4 ‘Salving the mail’: perjury, grace and the 4 disorder of things in Love’s Labour’s Lost 94 5 PHILIPPA BERRY 6 7 5 The Shakespearean fetish 109 8 LISA FREINKEL 9 40111 6 Bottom’s secret . . . 130 4111 JOHN J. JOUGHIN viii Contents 1111 7 Spectres of Hamlet 157 2 RICHARD KEARNEY 3 4 8 The last act: presentism, spirituality and 5111 the politics of Hamlet 186 6 EWAN FERNIE 17 8 Afterword 212 9 JONATHAN DOLLIMORE 1011 1 Bibliography 219 2 Index 233 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 Contributors 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 Philippa Berry was Fellow and Director of Studies at King’s 4 College, Cambridge until 2004. She is Visiting Fellow in the 5 Department of English at the University of Bristol. She is 6 author of Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the 7 Unmarried Queen and Shakespeare’s Feminine Endings: Disfiguring 8 Death in the Tragedies. She is co-editor of Shadow of Spirit: 9 Postmodernism and Religion and Textures of Renaissance Knowledge. 20111 John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of 1 Religion and Humanities at Syracuse University. His most 2 recent books include Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions 3 and Circumfession, On Religion and More Radical Hermeneutics. He 4 is also the author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida 5 and editor of the Fordham University Press book series 6 ‘Perspectives in Continental Philosophy’. 7 8 Jonathan Dollimore recently left the academy to concen- 9 trate on writing. His books include (with Alan Sinfield), 30111 Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism (2nd edn, 1 1994); Sexual Dissidence; Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture; 2 Sex, Literature and Censorship and Radical Tragedy: Religion, 3 Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His 4 Contemporaries (3rd edn, 2003). 5 Ewan Fernie is Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, 6 University of London. He is the author of Shame in Shakespeare 7 and the leading editor of Reconceiving the Renaissance: A Critical 8 Reader. His latest essay, ‘Shakespeare and the Prospect of 9 Presentism’, appears in Shakespeare Survey 58. He is a founding 40111 editor (with Simon Palfrey) of a new series of ‘minigraphs’ 4111 called ‘Shakespeare Now!’ x Contributors 1111 Lisa Freinkel is Associate Professor of English and Director 2 of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University 3 of Oregon. Her publications include Reading Shakespeare’s Will: 4 The Theology of Figure from Augustine to the Sonnets and articles 5111 on subjects ranging from Reformation iconoclasm, to Dante’s 6 Inferno, to formalism in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Her current 17 project, The Use of Shakespeare, examines the intersection of 8 economic and linguistic theory in Shakespeare’s work. 9 1011 Lowell Gallagher is Associate Professor of English at the 1 University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Medusa’s 2 Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance and numerous 3111 articles examining the relation between religion, ethics and 4 literary figuration in Shakespeare and in early modern 5 English Catholic cultures. He is currently completing a book 6 on the ethical provocation mounted by the biblical figure of 7 Lot’s wife in patristic and early modern texts, twentieth- 8 century visual arts and postmodern philosophy. 19 20111 John J. Joughin is Head of Humanities at the University of 1 Central Lancashire and Chair of the British Shakespeare 2 Association. He is editor of Shakespeare and National Culture 3 and of Philosophical Shakespeares. His monograph on Shakespeare 4 and the Aesthetic is forthcoming. 5 Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair at Boston 6 College and is a Visiting Professor at University College 7 Dublin. He has authored over 20 books, including two novels 8 and a volume of poetry, and edited 14 more. His most 9 recent trilogy, ‘Philosophy at the Limit’, comprises the 30111 following volumes: On Stories; Strangers, Gods and Monsters; and 1 2 The God Who May Be. 3 David Ruiter is an Associate Professor of English and the 4 Director of the Literature Program at the University of Texas 5 at El Paso. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Festive History: 6 Feasting, Festivity, Fasting, and Lent in the Second Henriad. 7 8 Kiernan Ryan is Professor of English at Royal Holloway, 9 University of London and a Fellow of New Hall, University 40111 of Cambridge. His most recent books include Shakespeare 4111 (3rd edn, 2002); King Lear: Contemporary Critical Essays; New Contributors xi 1111 Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A Reader; Shakespeare: The 2 Last Plays; and Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts. He wrote the 3 Introduction for the New Penguin edition of King Lear (2005), 4 and is currently completing a study of Shakespearean 5111 comedy. 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 17 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 General editor’s preface 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 In our time, the field of literary studies has rarely been a settled, 4 tranquil place. Indeed, for over two decades, the clash of 5 opposed theories, prejudices and points of view has made 6 it more of a battlefield. Echoing across its most beleaguered 7 terrain, the student’s weary complaint ‘Why can’t I just pick 8 up Shakespeare’s plays and read them?’ seems to demand a 9 sympathetic response. 20111 Nevertheless, we know that modern spectacles will always 1 impose their own particular characteristics on the vision of 2 those who unthinkingly don them. This must mean, at the very 3 least, that an apparently simple confrontation with, or pious 4 contemplation of, the text of a 400-year-old play can scarcely 5 supply the grounding for an adequate response to its complex 6 demands. For this reason, a transfer of emphasis from ‘text’ 7 towards ‘context’ has increasingly been the concern of critics 8 and scholars since the Second World War: a tendency that has 9 perhaps reached its climax in more recent movements such as 30111 ‘New Historicism’ or ‘Cultural Materialism’. 1 A consideration of the conditions (social, political or 2 economic) within which the play came to exist, from which it 3 derives, and to which it speaks, will certainly make legitimate 4 demands on the attention of any well-prepared student nowa- 5 days. Of course, the serious pursuit of those interests will also 6 inevitably start to undermine ancient and inherited prejudices, 7 such as the supposed distinction between ‘foreground’ and 8 ‘background’ in literary studies. And even the slightest aware- 9 ness of the pressures of gender or of race, or the most cursory 40111 glance at the role played by that strange creature ‘Shakespeare’ 4111 in our cultural politics, will reinforce a similar turn towards xiv General editor’s preface 1111 questions that sometimes appear scandalously ‘non-literary’. 2 It seems clear that very different and unsettling notions of 3 the ways in which literature might be addressed can hardly be 4 avoided. The worrying truth is that nobody can just pick up 5111 Shakespeare’s plays and read them. Perhaps (even more 6 worrying) they never could. 17 The aim of Accents on Shakespeare is to encourage students and 8 teachers to explore the implications of this situation by means 9 of an engagement with the major developments in Shakespeare 1011 studies over recent years. It will offer a continuing and chal- 1 lenging reflection on those ideas through a series of multi- and 2 single-author books that will also supply the basis for adapting 3111 or augmenting them in the light of changing concerns. 4 Accents on Shakespeare also intends to lead as well as follow. 5 In pursuit of this goal, the series will operate on more than 6 one level. In addition to titles aimed at modular undergraduate 7 courses, it will include a number of books embodying polem- 8 ical, strongly argued cases aimed at expanding the horizons 19 of a specific aspect of the subject and at challenging the pre- 20111 conceptions on which it is based. These volumes will not be 1 learned ‘monographs’ in any traditional sense. They will, it is 2 hoped, offer a platform for the work of the liveliest younger 3 scholars and teachers at their most outspoken and provocative. 4 Committed and contentious, they will be reporting from the 5 forefront of current critical activity and will have something 6 new to say. The fact that each book in the series promises a 7 Shakespeare inflected in terms of a specific urgency should 8 ensure that, in the present as in the recent past, the accent will 9 be on change. 30111 Terence Hawkes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 Acknowledgements 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 I’m (once again) grateful to Terence Hawkes for help, warmth, 4 efficiency and wit. I’m also happily indebted to Liz Thompson 5 and everyone at Routledge and at Florence Production – 6 and, of course, to all the contributors. Eleni Pilla supplied an 7 admirable index. Many have kept the campfire burning. 8 Foremost among them are Philippa Berry, Mark Thornton 9 Burnett, Patrick Cheney, John Caputo, Katharine Craik, 20111 Jonathan Dollimore, Deanna Fernie, Lisa Freinkel, Hugh Grady, 1 Colin Graham, John Joughin, James Knapp, Simon Palfrey, 2 David Ruiter and Kiernan Ryan. I have to single out Eric Mallin, 3 whose extraordinary generosity helped kindle the thing. Ken 4 Jackson’s recent suggestions kept it blazing till the end. 5 6 Note 7 8 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Shakespeare 9 are from The Norton Shakespeare, General Editor Stephen 30111 Greenblatt (New York: Norton, 1997); all biblical quotations 1 are from the Authorized Version/King James Bible. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 17 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 Foreword 6 7111 Of hyper-reality 8 John D. Caputo 9 1011 1 2 3111 The essays that follow are meant to open up links between 4 the world of Shakespeare and that surprising twist in post- 5 modernism sometimes called its “religious turn.” They proceed 6 from the premise that literature does not illustrate pre- 7 established philosophical principles but can instruct philosophy 8 about matters too concrete and singular for philosophy’s 9 purview. So if, as Peter Brook says, theater is “life in a more 20111 concentrate form,” condensing a lifetime into a few hours on 1 the stage (cited in Janik 2003), then who better than Shake- 2 speare can instruct philosophy about the meaning and texture 3 of concrete experience? Who better than Hamlet, to take a 4 famous example, can teach us about the dynamics of decisions 5 made in the midst of life’s uncertainties? To this exciting 6 venture I wish to add my modest oar. I suggest that these essays 7 should be read as operating within a uniquely postmodern 8 horizon that I will call “hyper-reality” (Caputo 2001). 9 The nineteenth-century prophets assure us God is dead. 30111 According to Marx and Feuerbach, the absolute has renounced 1 its transcendent foothold in the sky and come down to earth, 2 annulling the alienation of its absolute alterity for a life of 3 immanence in the sublunary world. The positivists propose that 4 mysteries that once were the province of myth and philosophy 5 have found a demystified resting place in modern science. But 6 in 1967 Jacques Derrida remarked, “what is dead wields a very 7 specific power” (Derrida 1972: 6). There are signs of advanced 8 secularization, like the decline in regular church attendance 9 among the larger confessions or the virtual collapse of voca- 40111 tions to the Catholic priesthood in Western countries. But 4111 non-traditional forms of spirituality flourish. Above all, the xviii Foreword 1111 entire world, west and east, north and south, has been 2 swept by surging tides of Christian evangelicalism and Islamic 3 fundamentalism. These are contemporary realities with which 4 academic skepticism is totally out of touch. 5111 “Modernity” is more complicated than previously imagined. 6 The very idea of the death of God in Nietzsche constituted a 17 denial of Overarching Truth, be it scientific or theological. 8 There are only as many little pragmatic truths (Nietzsche called 9 them “fictions”) as are required for the complexities of life. 1011 Secularism’s monopoly is as dead as God’s, allowing many 1 flowers to bloom. If God is dead, a funny thing happened on 2 the way to the funeral. A profusion of new gods was born. 3111 The ancients invested a considerable effort trying to convince 4 us that the supersensible sphere is “really real,” while the nine- 5 teenth century proclaimed that realm to be an “un-real” fantasy 6 and asked us to content ourselves with the sensible reality below. 7 But in this postmodern age it is the “hyper-real” that holds 8 sway. In a world of interplanetary space probes the very pre- 19 Copernican distinction between an upper world and a lower 20111 one has lost all sense, even as totalizing omni-explanations have 1 lost their cachet. Our world is what James Joyce called a 2 “chaosmos” (see Eco 1989), neither simple cosmos nor simple 3 chaos, but a complex loosely joined and supple configuration 4 given to chance and the unexpected, open-ended and recon- 5 figurable. We no longer live by the simple distinction between 6 presence and absence. Our lives are suffused and haunted by 7 shades and spectres, quasi and virtual realities. Within the ultra- 8 horizon of the “hyper-real” diverse patterns of what this book 9 calls “spirituality” unfold. 30111 In speaking of the “hyper-real,” I am first of all commending 1 to the reader Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of an electronic repli- 2 cation of reality in a “virtual” world so uncanny as to blur the 3 distinction between the real and the unreal (to what extent was 4 the “Gulf War” real and to what extent was it a media event? 5 (see Baudrillard 1995)). Baudrillard’s point, whose importance 6 cannot be overestimated, goes to the heart of one of the senses 7 of postmodernism that has been artfully explored in the works 8 of Mark C. Taylor (see Taylor 2003 and 2004). In such a 9 world, the insubstantiality of what the materialists call matter 40111 is visited upon us with a fury. We lead lives in which the lines 4111 between nature and techne, bodily organs and artificial trans- Foreword xix 1111 plants are so complex that the very meanings of “mother,” 2 “birth” and “nature” have been made to tremble. In such a 3 world, materialistic reductionism or “naturalism” is an anachro- 4 nism, while Elizabethan ghosts and angels have become 5111 interestingly timely. 6 But I use “hyper-real” in a second and distinctly ethico- 7111 religious sense that bears quite directly on the present volume. 8 For if it is true that contemporary theorists are critics of realism 9 and essentialism, as they certainly are, still it brushes against 1011 the grain to call them (simply) “anti-realists,” if that is taken 1 to connote any kind of vicious subjectivism. For the truth is 2 that by and large contemporary theory is turned toward the 3111 affirmation of the “Other.” This is the very opposite of self- 4 ishness or fantasy. Derrida’s discontent with realism arises not 5 from anti-realist motives but from hyper-realist ones, from a love 6 and a desire for the real beyond what today passes for real, 7 which springs from a desire for a justice or a democracy to 8 come! 9 And yet the point here, let us recall, is not to fit Shakespeare 20111 into any pre-established theory but to shush the philoso- 1 phers and make them listen to the play because the play’s 2 the thing, die Sache selbst, in which the whole of life has been 3 concentrated. 4 Shakespeare knows that our lives are haunted by shades and 5 shadows of the dead who remind us of what they expect, that 6 they are uplifted by the voice of a “divinity” who “shapes our 7 ends”, and that they are disturbed by the demonic distortions 8 of evil. He knows that we are called to respond in the present 9 even as we are solicited by the promise of things to come. 30111 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than 1 are dreamt of in secular materialism, theology or contem- 2 porary theory. That at least is what the present collection sets 3 out so suggestively to show. 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 17 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 7111 Introduction 8 9 Shakespeare, spirituality and 1011 contemporary criticism 1 2 Ewan Fernie 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 I 2 3 Before he is ‘environed’ by ‘a legion of foul fiends’ in a dream 4 of ‘the kingdom of perpetual night’, Clarence is assailed by his 5 angry father-in-law. 6 7 Then came wandering by 8 A shadow like an angel, with bright hair, 9 Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud, 30111 ‘Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, 1 That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury.’ 2 (Richard III, 1.4.52–6) 3 4 Ass-headed Bottom, in a very different dream, enjoys unfath- 5 omable ecstasies in a fairy bower. His is a comic, synaesthetic 6 experience that deforms (reforms?) Pauline pieties in the expres- 7 sion: ‘The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath 8 not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to con- 9 ceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was’ (A Midsummer 40111 Night’s Dream, 4.1.204–7). Uncomfortably hard on the heels of 4111 Shylock’s humiliation, Lorenzo apprehends a musical sympathy 2 Ewan Fernie 1111 between all things, a ‘sweet harmony’ that ‘creeps’ into the ears 2 of men and women, tames savage horses and wields a charming 3 power over ‘trees, stones and floods’, but also reverberates at a 4 superhuman pitch in the heights: 5111 6 There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st 17 But in his motion like an angel sings, 8 Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins. 9 Such harmony is in immortal souls, 1011 But while this muddy vesture of decay 1 Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. 2 (The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.53–90) 3111 4 Cordelia is a ‘soul in bliss’ to the unhappy father who gazes 5 up at her while he turns on a wheel of fire that his tears 6 (mysteriously) ‘scald like molten lead’ (King Lear (conflated text), 7 4.4.46–8). Othello cries for devils to whip him from the ‘heav- 8 enly sight’ of Desdemona’s innocent corpse; to blow him about 19 in winds, roast him in sulphur, wash him in ‘steep-down gulfs 20111 of liquid fire’ (Othello, 52.285–7). Cleopatra elegises a cosmic 1 Antony whose ‘reared arm crested the world’ and who dropped 2 ‘realms and islands’ like loose change from his pockets (Antony 3 and Cleopatra, 5.281–91). Hermione is seemingly resurrected. 4 5 To a greater or lesser degree, such moments have embar- 6 rassed the predominantly materialist criticism of the last twenty years, and they have typically been passed over in silence or 7 1 8 treated as an historical curiosity. But, as the current volume 9 demonstrates, this significantly misrepresents and curtails 30111 Shakespearean drama. Spiritual Shakespeares treats Shakespear- 1 ean spirituality as a distinctive, inalienable and challenging 2 dimension of the plays, one that may be illuminated by, but 3 remains irreducible to, any established theory or theology. 4 Although it draws liberally from history, the volume offers a 5 primarily ‘presentist’ engagement with its topic.2 It is a book 6 that treats Shakespeare as a ‘living thinker’, one whose dramatic 7 explorations of spirituality can make a real contribution to 8 contemporary debates and life. Much recent work on Shake- 9 speare and early modern literature has filtered spirituality 40111 through the variegated light of religious difference.3 Distinc- 4111 tions between Catholicism and Protestantism, Christianity and Introduction 3 1111 Islam, and so on, will play their part in what follows, but the 2 collection also has critical and theoretical claims to make 3 about spirituality as such. Perhaps most controversially, Spiritual 4 Shakespeares argues that a fresh consideration of spirituality might 5111 reinvigorate and strengthen politically progressive materialist 6 criticism. 7111 All the instances I began with are charged to an extra- 8 ordinary, even astonishing degree with ‘otherness’, which 9 (in different forms) has been the defining preoccupation of 1011 contemporary critics. From the more orthodoxly Christian 1 imaginings of Clarence, Lear and Othello, to Cleopatra’s excep- 2 tional humanism and the heterodox experiences of Bottom and 3111 Hermione, each example conjures another life – in the theatre 4 of divine judgement, on a cosmically larger scale, as trans- 5 cendent sex, as a voice in harmony with the universal choir, 6 as simply renewed mortality. That the most powerful Shake- 7 spearean instances of being otherwise are explicitly spiritual 8 has largely escaped attention. In 1 Henry VI, when the Countess 9 Auvergne scorns the hero she has trapped in her house, he 20111 answers: 1 2 You are deceived; my substance is not here. 3 4 For what you see is but the smallest part 5 And least proportion of humanity. 6 I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here, 7 It is of such a spacious lofty pitch 8 Your roof were not sufficient to contain’t. 4 9 (2.3.51–6) 30111 1 Talbot’s assertion of a colossally elevated spiritual subjectivity 2 begs attention in the context of more predictable discussions 3 of alternative identity in terms of the social varieties of differ- 4 ence. In spite of the long-standing critical prejudice against 5 ‘essentialism’, specifically spiritual alterity is aesthetically and 6 theoretically interesting because it is configured not just as 7 totally different from ordinary life but also as ultimately signifi- 8 cant and real. Spirituality affords a credible alternative, or rather 9 a range of such alternatives. It has a special power to break 40111 the illusion of what all-too-often is taken to be ‘this world’s 4111 eternity’ (2 Henry VI, 2.4.91). The conviction that an alternative 4 Ewan Fernie 1111 world is more desirable as well as somehow more profoundly 2 real than this one can motivate a hermit-like withdrawal from 3 the world as it is, but it can also inspire positive revolutionary 4 change. As Gerard Winstanley said, ‘Why may not we have 5111 our heaven here?’ (quoted in Hill 1968: 60).5 6 Shakespeare at least once conceived of his art as having the 17 broadly ‘spiritual’ function of materialising another world. 8 Theseus famously describes the ‘poet’s eye in a fine frenzy 9 rolling’ between heaven and earth as he (or she) brings forth 1011 ‘the forms of things unknown’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1 5.1.12ff.). Poetry and spirituality are kin in that both traffic 2 beyond the known world; they are alike, too, in their disputed 3111 relation to what is real. If both are sometimes thought to reach 4 through the world of mere appearances into the heart of reality, 5 they are equally often regarded as empty-headed distractions 6 from what really is. It depends on whether ‘the forms of things 7 unknown’ are revelations or illusions. Shakespeare conveys the 8 epistemological insecurity of poetry and spirituality via Theseus’s 19 association of poetry’s spiritual reach with the doubtful states 20111 of mind of the lover and lunatic, and by filtering some of the 1 most profound spiritual experiences in his plays through the 2 rich but unstable medium of dreams. Poetry and spirituality 3 both promise no less than another world. But this promise 4 may be hollow, which only makes them the more sensation- 5 ally interesting.6 Shakespeare deliberately mixes the promise 6 and unlikelihood of poetry and spirituality into something rich 7 and strange in the last scene of The Winter’s Tale. Even if 8 Hermione’s revival is a simple trick, it is infused with the aura 9 of resurrection. 30111 Theseus speaks of poetry, not plays, and some of the 1 examples I started with could be said to exert only a secondary, 2 purely verbal pressure within an art-form that at its most 3 convincing fuses verbal with physical form. But the dreamy 4 union of Bottom and Titania is acted out in full view of the 5 audience and the staging of Hermione’s ‘resurrection’ is 6 the great coup de théâtre of The Winter’s Tale and perhaps of all 7 the late plays. Hermione’s reanimation is also a ‘recognition 8 scene’ for the process of incarnation whereby Shakespearean 9 drama generally brings its characters to life: everyone on stage 40111 watching the ‘miracle’ is witnessing the strange secret of their 4111 own creation as well, for they as much as Hermione have Introduction 5 1111 sprung into life by the magical grace of the playwright and the 2 theatre company. And if humanity can be recreated on stage, 3 perhaps it can be renovated off stage as well? 4 Theseus and The Winter’s Tale encourage us to consider the 5111 plays as a real or fantasised advent of the beyond within reality. 6 But it is clear from the speeches and experiences of Talbot, 7111 Clarence, Bottom, Cleopatra etc. that Shakespearean drama is 8 also sufficiently ‘real’ to be haunted by spiritual alterity from 9 within. Sometimes this fourth dimension seems only obscurely 1011 to inhabit quotidian character or action, but such ‘sightless 1 substances’ as Lady Macbeth speaks of can exert powerful 2 spiritual pressure (Macbeth, 1.5.47). Richmond is too obviously 3111 the vehicle of Tudor providence to be convincingly himself, 4 but when Othello looks down for Iago’s cloven feet, the absol- 5 ute isn’t so easily identified or ‘earthed’; the infernal energies 6 that course through the tragedy are frighteningly, uncon- 7 trollably obscure, as is intimated in the ‘hell’ that gapes in 8 the centre of Othello’s name and the ‘demon’ snugly smiling 9 in Desdemona’s.7 In such cases, we are tempted to feel that 20111 we could scratch the play’s surface to reveal another, perhaps 1 more terrible drama going on beneath but are doomed to 2 discover we can’t. As a result, we as much as the protagonists 3 themselves are stranded between the particular and ultimate, 4 between an accidental world of misplaced hankies and a terrible 5 threat of absolute judgement. The sense of simultaneous 6 spiritual urgency and disorientation is crystallised by Othello’s 7 trope of the wilderness – ‘antres vast and deserts idle, rough 8 quarries, rocks and hills’ (1.3.139–40) – where meaninglessness 9 and the fullness of revelation traditionally contend for human 30111 souls, as in Christ’s temptation in the wilderness or the careers 1 of the so-called Desert Fathers.8 2 If the spirituality of the plays has scandalised the materialism 3 of contemporary thought, it has also often been depreciated or 4 ignored because the truth-claims it involves are presumed 5 to be at odds with Shakespeare’s theatrical polyphony. It is 6 certainly the case that spiritual utterances or experiences are 7 often ironised by the plays. Thus Lorenzo’s rhapsody on 8 harmony is partly wrecked by the sullen resistance, then edgy 9 silence it elicits from Jessica, reminding us of her relinquished 40111 Jewish faith and father, and highlighting the coercive power 4111 of a metaphysics that tames all but the most reprobate and 6 Ewan Fernie 1111 wild creatures. But the ironic power of spiritual truth itself 2 has been underestimated in recent criticism. Although it retains 3 a glittering Venetian materialism in its heavenly vision of 4 ‘patens of bright gold’, Lorenzo’s verse of universal concord 5111 soars beyond the divisive theologies of the play to expose him, 6 exclusive Belmont and his complacently corrupt ‘Christian’ 17 community far more than Jessica’s sullen resistance does. 8 Lorenzo, who can’t even manage a real conversation with his 9 bride-to-be, has insufficient harmony in his soul. He is damned 1011 out of his own mouth: ‘Let no such man be trusted.’ Nor is it 1 any wonder that celestial harmonies are inaudible in ‘a naughty 2 world’ where a fraudulent peace and unity have been secured 3111 by a forced conversion. And yet, the merest echo of them indi- 4 cates how bitterly far from heaven the happiness of Belmont 5 is. The touch of spirituality threatens the cruelly provisional 6 ‘realities’ of the plays. In his more tragic idiom, Lear expects 7 the ‘great gods’ he feels bestirring themselves in the storm on 8 the heath to break the moulds and forms of things as they are 19 (King Lear, 3.2.48). 20111 Shakespeare’s protagonists are often ruined by spiritual 1 crisis. Stephen Greenblatt’s explanations of Clarence’s dream, 2 Richard III’s supernatural forebodings before Bosworth Field, 3 the apparition of Ceasar’s ghost to the doomed Brutus and the 4 posthumous appearance of ‘blood-baltered Banquo’ to Macbeth 5 are a touch too mundane (Greenblatt 2001: 180ff.). Conducted 6 in terms of ‘deep psychic disturbance’, ‘history’s nightmare’, ‘the 7 poetic or tragic structure of history’ and ‘good theatre’, they 8 acknowledge but step quickly around the fact that the revenant 9 murder-victims who appear to Clarence, Richard, Brutus and 30111 Macbeth are accusing figures of guilt disclosing (to the audience 1 as well as the murderers themselves) what Greenblatt calls ‘an 2 ineradicable, embodied objective power’ so far pathetically 3 evaded and ignored (Greenblatt 2001: 180). The alternative 4 reality of ethics invades the fantasy-lives of megalomaniac 5 dreamers, thus partly prophesying, partly effecting the ruination 6 of their tyrannical plans to shape reality to their own desire. 7 They are left, to paraphrase Richard II, self-affrighted, trembling 8 at their sin (Richard II, 3.2.49). 9 But, in order to do justice to Shakespeare’s heterodoxy, it 40111 must quickly be said that Richard III and Macbeth are simul- 4111 taneously cloaked in a countervailing devilish charisma and Introduction 7 1111 resolve. As the range of contributions to this volume suggests, 2 Shakespearean spirituality cuts both ways, and more. Unlike 3 Dante or Milton, Shakespeare isn’t an orthodox or systematic 4 religious thinker. It is necessary to think in terms not so much 5111 of spiritual truth as truths. For a drama cut loose of its medieval 6 moorings in an epoch of religious fission and the emergence 7111 of scepticism, spirituality is not a secure given, so much as a 8 questionable and open structure of being and experience. 9 Shakespeare’s is the drama of the possibility of spirituality. 1011 Shakespearean pluralism involves competition between possible 1 absolutes, and resistance to the absolute as well. This leads us 2 into territory as existentially and ethically treacherous and 3111 exciting as experience itself.9 4 For example, a sensation of the ultimate seems to release 5 Hamlet’s trigger-hand, but what is the status of this ‘divine’ 6 transaction? Is it an experience of the opaque, compelling effi- 7 ciency of ideology at its purest? Or does it access a higher 8 sphere beyond ideology that motivates or compels action in 9 the world? Is Hamlet’s subjectivity lost in his last, eschatological 20111 act, or is it there exactly that he finds himself at last? Macbeth 1 seems to make a selfish choice through which radical evil oper- 2 ates. Or is his mundane choice of ‘mine own good’ already 3 demonic (Macbeth, 3.4.134)? What does it mean to ‘jump the 4 life to come’ (1.7.7)? Is the master-narrative of ‘The Scottish 5 Play’ simply commitment politics imbued with and refigured 6 as spirituality? In Measure for Measure, Isabella confronts Angelo’s 7 secular absolutism with her own religious commitment; or 8 perhaps two forms of egotism meet under cover of this conflict. 9 In any case, both are subverted by the Duke’s providential 30111 ideology, while cynics such as Lucio and Barnardine reject all 1 transcendence. There are puzzling spiritual tensions between 2 individual plays as well. What is the relationship between 3 Hamlet’s ‘divinity’ of ‘rashness’ and the ‘supernatural soliciting’ 4 that starts Macbeth on his career of violence (Hamlet, 5.2.11, 7; 5 Macbeth, 1.3.129)? How does any of this relate to the spirituality 6 of specifically brutish sexual congress in Bottom’s dream? Or 7 to the spirituality of female generativity that emerges when a 8 mother is ‘resurrected’ by a female Paul and reunited with her 9 resplendent daughter in The Winter’s Tale? 40111 By playing up the ludic qualities of Shakespeare’s plays, 4111 recent criticism has obscured their agonistic intensity. Tragedies 8 Ewan Fernie 1111 and comedies alike are struggles between more or less ‘mighty 2 opposites’ (Hamlet, 5.2.63). They take up fundamental questions 3 of human ontology and ethics and offer competing answers. 4 Liberal relativism is only one of the possibilities that stands a 5111 fighting chance in Shakespeare. The plays are more liberal 6 than liberalism, which cannot allow for the kind of overriding 17 commitment that threatens liberal freedoms. They are also 8 more compellingly involving. Agonistic drama makes liberal 9 tolerance look more like indifference. Shakespeare’s is not post- 1011 modern shadow play avant la lettre but serious, sometimes bloody 1 play for real stakes that has more in common with dialectical 2 politics. Dramatic tension and interest depends crucially on 3111 two factors: that one or more characters (Shylock, Falstaff, 4 Cleopatra, Timon, etc.) might be right; and that out of the 5 struggle new values and social formations might evolve. This, 6 as much as delight in disorder, keeps us reading or watching 7 the plays. Re-experiencing their spiritual intensities may lead 8 us back to dramatic intensity itself. 19 20111 1 II 2 3 Time for a definition: spirituality is (or purports to be) the 4 experience or knowledge of what is other and is ultimate, and 5 the sense of identity and ‘mission’ that may arise from or be 6 vested in that experience.10 Recent Shakespeare studies have 7 tended to miss spirituality’s investment in otherness and have, 8 therefore, typically dismissed it as a form of essentialism that 9 operates, at best, as a distraction from history and, at worst, 30111 as justification for pernicious hierarchies of race, gender and 1 class. But, as I have suggested already, such scepticism has 2 resulted in serious neglect not only of important metaphysical 3 dimensions of Shakespeare’s text, but also of ideas of emanci- 4 pation and an alternative world that have real political 5 potential.11 6 Precisely because it isn’t just ideology by a prettier name, 7 spirituality can function as an effective cover for ideology. 8 Henry V uses religion as wartime propaganda. But the exces- 9 sive otherness of spirituality subverts such ideological uses, and 40111 spirituality comes back to haunt King Henry in the speech 4111 Williams casts in his face: Introduction 9 1111 [I]f the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy 2 reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads 3 chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day 4 and cry all ‘We died at such a place’ – some swearing, 5111 some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor 6 behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon 7111 their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well 8 that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of 9 anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men 1011 do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King, that 1 led them to it – who to disobey were against all proportion 2 of subjection. 3111 (Henry V, 4.1.128–38) 4 5 This powerfully material evocation of spiritual judgement is a 6 useful reminder that spirituality and materialism should not be 7 simply opposed. It hardly needs saying that after the Iraq war 8 and the tragic farce of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, the 9 values of the speech have been powerfully renewed. 20111 Because it is committed to an extraordinary world of value 1 beyond particular political interests, spirituality never coincides 2 perfectly with ideology. As Queen Katherine says to her royal 3 husband’s spin-doctors, ‘Heaven is above all yet – there sits 4 a judge/That no king can corrupt’ (Henry VIII, 3.1.99–100). 5 Where there’s no tension between ideology and the spirituality 6 through which it operates – as, for example, with the descent 7 of Jupiter in Cymbeline – only the form or mechanism of spiritu- 8 ality is involved. This is frustratingly the case in Measure for 9 Measure, where the Duke goes undercover as a friar and brings 30111 Angelo to judgement. The spiritualised exposure of power, and 1 Angelo’s painful liberation from it, are immediately absorbed 2 into the consolidation of Vincentio’s original regime. Had the 3 Duke submitted to the spirituality he wields, it would have 4 made an opening for real change. 5 Nor is spirituality just the same as religion. Though it is 6 religion’s heart and inspiration, spirituality precedes religion 7 and may well take place outside it. Spirituality is an experi- 8 ence of truth, and of living in accordance with truth, but it is 9 concerned with the truth not of this world but of a world that 40111 has not yet and perhaps never will come to be. Spirituality is 4111 a mode of opposition to what is. Sometimes it is especially 10 Ewan Fernie 1111 opposed to the body and the material world – and what could 2 be more oppositional than that? But there are forms of spiritual 3 materialism (for example, in ‘new-age religion’) where physical 4 life is seen as ultimately valuable and real by comparison with 5111 the conventions of social life.12 6 Indeed, as a structure of thought and possibility, spirituality 17 may be a necessary supplement for radical materialism, which, 8 after all, has its roots in Hegelian spiritual ‘dialectic’. A salient 9 terminological shift in recent criticism begs attention here: as 1011 a result of admittedly complex intellectual upheavals, ‘dialec- 1 tical materialism’ became ‘cultural materialism’, which has 2 recently become the study of ‘material culture’, implying a 3111 degenerative tendency whereby the world-transforming ambi- 4 tion of Marxist materialism is progressively lost.13 After new 5 historicism and cultural materialism, history is now the far 6 horizon and sole explanatory hypothesis in contemporary criti- 7 cism to the extent that conceiving of and accounting for 8 resistance to history has become a familiar problem. Subversion 19 is notoriously always contained for the Greenblatt of Shake- 20111 spearean Negotiations (1988). Cultural materialists have managed 1 to evade this hopeless position by emphasising that history is 2 always fractured and divided. Alan Sinfield, for instance, finds 3 a way of combining a commitment to historical determinism 4 with the possibility of resistance to the dominant culture in the 5 notion of ‘subcultures’ (see Sinfield 1992: 35–48). But while 6 the efforts of radical critics to find counter-histories within the 7 history that prevailed are instructive, they are not very inspira- 8 tional. Spirituality holds out the hope of a more positive leap 9 into a revolutionary alternative. 30111 This book asks whether radical materialism might not be 1 regenerated by rethinking spirituality, if not by returning to its 2 own spiritual source in Hegel? According to Jürgen Habermas, 3 spirituality remains ‘indispensable’ in enabling ‘discourse with 4 the extraordinary’ (Habermas 1992: 51, 145). One premise of 5 Spiritual Shakespeares is that the speculative freedom and phenom- 6 enological appeal of imaginative literature offer special oppor- 7 tunities for the study of spirituality before it has hardened into 8 institutional religious forms. 9 Two things in particular opened the way for Spiritual 40111 Shakespeares. First, the celebrated Shakespeare critic, Stephen 4111 Greenblatt, and the most important contemporary philosopher, Introduction 11 1111 the late Jacques Derrida, broke ranks with materialism narrowly 2 conceived to publish surprising accounts of the spirituality of 3 Hamlet. Both thinkers were captivated by the powerful alterity 4 of Shakespeare’s ghost. At the beginning of Hamlet in Purgatory, 5111 Greenblatt remarks: 6 7111 The ghost in Hamlet is like none other. . . . It does not have 8 very many lines – it appears in three scenes and speaks only 9 in two – but it is amazingly disturbing and vivid. I wanted 1011 to let the feeling of this vividness wash over me . . . 1 (Greenblatt 2001: 4) 2 3111 None of Greenblatt’s subsequent rationalisation explains away 4 the origins of Hamlet in Purgatory in what seems to be some- 5 thing like a spiritual encounter.14 Before Greenblatt, Derrida 6 derived a novel form of spirituality from his own, similarly 7 intense encounter with the ghost in Specters of Marx. This 8 made Shakespeare a surprisingly pivotal figure in the spiritual 9 or religious ‘turn’ in contemporary thought (Derrida 1994). 20111 Spiritual Shakespeares is the first book to ask what the Bard really 1 has to say in this context. 2 Derrida presents the spirituality he finds in Hamlet as nothing 3 less than ‘another concept of the political’ (Derrida 1994: 44). 4 The second opening for Spiritual Shakespeares within contempor- 5 ary culture is the increasing association of religion and politics. 6 ‘The end of history’ and the triumph of the Western liberal 7 democratic system were proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama in 8 1992 and, in the same year, Zygmunt Bauman lamented ‘living 9 without an alternative’ in a global situation where, with com- 30111 munism vanquished, the West seemed free to do as it liked 1 (Fukuyama 1992; Bauman 1992: 175). But, by 2002, Tariq 2 Ali was in no doubt that what he calls American ‘imperialist 3 fundamentalism’ had inspired the insurgency of an opposing 4 Islamic fundamentalism. That a central component of Ameri- 5 can ‘imperialist fundamentalism’ is Christian fundamentalism 6 is clear after the re-election of President Bush in 2004. In The 7 Clash of Fundamentalisms, Ali recommends ‘an Islamic Reforma- 8 tion’ as the way beyond the ‘fundamentalist’ double-bind (Ali 9 2002).15 In their groundbreaking post-Marxist manifesto, Hege- 40111 mony and Socialist Strategy (1985), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal 4111 Mouffe urged Marxists to align themselves with the new protest 12 Ewan Fernie 1111 movements that were emerging around the globe, even though 2 they didn’t conform to classical Marxist ideas of what revolu- 3 tionary movements should be. Partly in response to Specters of 4 Marx but also as a way of adapting to a new political world, 5111 other prominent post-Marxist thinkers have extended this 6 strategy to embrace religious dissidence. Slavoj Zˇ izˇek endorses 17 Hegel’s dictum, ‘It is a modern folly to alter a corrupt ethical 8 system, its constitution and legislation, without changing the 9 religion, to have a revolution without a reformation’ (Hegel 1011 1959: 436; quoted in Zˇ izˇek 2003: 5). Zˇ izˇek also startlingly 1 proclaims that ‘to become a true dialectical materialist, one 2 must go through the Christian experience’ (Zˇ izˇek 2003: 6). 3111 This is because, as Alain Badiou says, ‘Christ’s death sets up an 4 immanentization of the spirit’ (Badiou 2003: 69), empowering what 5 Zˇ izˇek calls ‘a fighting collective’ to make an absolute difference 6 to the material status quo (Zˇ izˇek 2003: 130). 7 We live in a world much changed from that of Jean-François 8 Lyotard’s ‘postmodern condition’ (Lyotard 1984). For Zˇ izˇek, 19 the return to religion has renewed political commitment within 20111 the post-ideological world of a capitalist monoculture. The 1 Christian Right has essentially brokered a deal with culturally 2 aggressive capitalism in the United States. But it is also true 3 that, after the collapse of Soviet communism and the terrible 4 events of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bali and Madrid, the domin- 5 ant and representative form of political resistance to Western 6 capitalism is religious. For Bush and Blair and Al Qaeda, a 7 transcendent cause matters more than ethics and the lives of 8 innocent people. ‘It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul’ (Othello, 9 5.2.1ff.): Shakespeare conveys the seduction of such thinking 30111 through the driving rhythm and grand vocabulary; but he 1 suggests its potential for insane idiocy through the bitter irony 2 that Othello is on his way to kill his innocent wife. 3 At this historical juncture, any intellectual engagement 4 with militant spirituality risks being misinterpreted as an 5 endorsement of terrorism. But it’s a danger that Zˇ izˇek, for one, 6 is prepared to risk: 7 8 The proper politically correct attitude is to emphasise, with 9 symptomatic insistence, how the terrorist attacks have 40111 nothing to do with the real Islam, that great and sublime 4111 religion – would it not be more appropriate to recognise Introduction 13 1111 Islam’s resistance to modernization? And, rather than 2 bemoaning the fact that Islam, of all the great religions, is 3 the most resistant to modernization, we should, rather, con- 4 ceive of this resistance as an open chance, as ‘undecidable’: 5111 this resistance does not necessarily lead to ‘Islamo-Facism’, 6 it could also be articulated into a socialist project. Precisely 7111 because Islam harbours the ‘worst’ potentials of the Facist 8 answer to our present predicament, it could also turn out 9 to be the site for the ‘best’. 1011 (Zˇ izˇek 2002: 133–4) 1 2 In spite of the Christian Right, Zˇ izˇek celebrates the political 3111 potential of Christian advent. In spite of Islamist terrorism, he 4 insists on the positive possibilities of Islamic resistance. 5 In the context of such religious, political and intellectual 6 ructions, the Shakespearean spirituality that is one of Derrida’s 7 most surprising legacies is a genuinely hot topic. According to 8 some, spirituality should be reformed; according to others, it 9 should be stamped out. But it can no longer be dismissed as 20111 irrelevant. 1 2 3 III 4 5 In Specters of Marx (first published in French in 1993), Derrida 6 presents Shakespearean spirituality as powerfully threatening 7 to the material status quo. For Derrida, Shakespeare’s ghost is 8 an uncanny revelation of Karl Marx and his arresting 9 demand that we meet our historical responsibilities. It is also 30111 a manifestation of the figure of ‘the Other’, who has long 1 haunted Derrida’s thought. Derrida regards Hamlet as ethically 2 exemplary because he recognises (he cannot but recognise) the 3 otherness of the ghost. In light of this, Derrida recasts all ethics 4 as essentially spiritual, because in any ethical encounter the 5 Other must remain other – respected, not conquered, possessed 6 or known; spectrally out of reach. Following the Prince of 7 Denmark’s example, Derrida extends political responsibility to 8 ‘spirits’ – not just of the deceased, but also of those who are 9 not yet born. The spirituality he derives from Shakespeare 40111 involves conversion from a narrow investment in the self 4111 and what is, to an infinite openness: what his great forebear 14 Ewan Fernie 1111 Emmanuel Levinas called ‘the spirituality of the soul, ceaselessly 2 aroused from its state of soul’ (Levinas 1989: 170). Derrida 3 describes this as a ‘messianic’ expectation of what is always ‘to 4 come’ and, elsewhere, as ‘the experience of what we are unable 5111 to experience’ (Derrida 2002: 244). Thus, Zˇ izˇek points out, 6 ‘Derrida can indulge in all kinds of paradoxes, claiming, among 17 other things, that it is only atheists who truly pray – precisely 8 by refusing to address God as a positive entity, they silently 9 address the pure Messianic Otherness’ (Zˇ izˇek 2003: 139). 1011 According to Derrida, democracy falls within this messianic, 1 spiritual ‘structure of experience’ (Derrida 1994: 168). For 2 democracy is still ‘to come’. It can never be perfectly realised. 3111 Instead, it exercises a magnetic force from beyond to keep us 4 striving towards it. 5 Shakespeare’s Ghost has played John the Baptist to Derrida’s 6 hooded Messiah. It’s a remarkable development that exemplifies 7 the theoretical potency and richness of literature itself. But is 8 Shakespearean spirituality really Derridean? Lowell Gallagher, 19 Julia Reinhard Lupton and Ken Jackson have improvised a 20111 fruitful spiritual conversation between the late great philoso- 1 pher and Shakespeare.16 Many of the chapters that follow are 2 cued by or resonate with Derrida’s work. And there is scope for 3 more Derridean interpretation of Shakespearean spirituality. 4 For instance, the spirituality of deconstruction is anticipated in 5 the famous ‘Our revels now are ended’ speech (The Tempest, 6 4.1.146–58). Dissolution is given a specifically spiritual twist 7 when Prospero says, ‘These our actors,/As I foretold you, were 8 all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air’. Presumably 9 Prospero tells Ferdinand to be ‘cheerful’, not downcast, because 30111 the comparable evanescence of the material world will make 1 way for something else to occur. As Howard Felperin proposes: 2 3 Before identifying overhastily that ‘something else’, let us 4 consider its characteristics. All that is clear is that it will not 5 be more of the same, history as usual and as we have come 6 to know it, the recurrent nightmare. Prospero’s invocation 7 of last things, of an ultimate collective destiny, effectively 8 brackets human history within a containing structure of 9 radical indeterminacy and a containing discourse of radical 40111 unknowing. 4111 (Felperin 1995: 58) Introduction 15 1111 This suggests that what Derrida calls ‘the messianic’ may be 2 working as a positive political force through the apparent 3 nihilism of Shakespeare’s plays, just as it operates through the 4 seeming pessimism of deconstruction itself. An approach 5111 informed by Specters of Marx could also delineate Shakespear- 6 ean fantasies of the afterlife (Claudio’s, Hamlet’s) as intense 7111 experiences of the foreignness of the self: of its simultaneously 8 thrilling and frightening non-coincidence with itself. It has 9 become a cliché of modern criticism to interpret the happy 1011 endings of the comedies as bitterly ironic, but Derrida could 1 help us to recognise that they also raise the hope of a ‘messianic’ 2 promesse de bonheur.17 Which begs the question: is spirituality 3111 an unrealisable ‘divine comedy’ dialectically related to the 4 tragedies of life? 5 After Specters of Marx, poststructuralist spirituality seemed 6 for a while to be the only theoretically credible option. But 7 Badiou and Zˇ izˇek have now challenged Derrida in a series of 8 books that has given spirituality a sharper political edge in an 9 epoch of ‘terror’.18 Contra Derrida’s spirituality of deferral, 20111 these thinkers declare, after Jacques Lacan, that ‘the impos- 1 sible happens’: that is, it really is possible to bring the beyond 2 19 3 absolutely into the world now. As part of the ‘widespread search for a new militant figure’ after communism, Badiou 4 ˇ 5 scandalously prefers St Paul (Badiou 2003: 17). Zizˇek glosses 6 his choice as follows: 7 8 [A]lthough St Paul’s particular message is no longer 9 operative for us, the very terms in which he formulates 30111 the operative mode of the Christian religion do possess a 1 universal scope as relevant for every Truth-Event; every 2 Truth-Event leads to a kind of ‘Resurrection’, through 3 fidelity to it and a labour of Love on its behalf, one enters 4 another dimension. 5 (Zˇ izˇek 2000a: 143) 6 7 A new self is secured here in a new relation to the absolute. 8 One of the most Pauline moments in Shakespeare is in As You 9 Like It when Oliver repents his jealous attempt on his brother 40111 Orlando’s life. Looking back on his earlier, unregenerate self, 4111 Oliver comments: 16 Ewan Fernie 1111 ’Twas I, but ’tis not I. I do not shame 2 To tell you what I was, since my conversion 3 So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am. 4 (4.3.134–6) 5111 6 His old self is completely alien to him. He has been reborn. 17 For Badiou, real subjectivity as opposed to ‘mere being’ is 8 attained when the human agent becomes the militant bearer 9 of a truth (see Badiou 2001). But whereas poststructuralism 1011 displaces spiritual realisation into an impossible future, Badiou 1 and Zˇ izˇek advocate the spirituality of a real advent: a flash of 2 lightning that may, at any point, strike and transfigure the 3111 world of history. In the midst of terrorist attacks and what 4 Søren Kierkegaard calls ‘the teleological suspension of the 5 ethical’ (Kierkegaard 1983), the controversial and provocative 6 nature of this will be readily apparent. Badiou and Zˇ izˇek also 7 compare Paul with Lenin.20 8 For these thinkers as for Derrida, spirituality is a structure 19 of experience and possibility, rather than a revelation of the 20111 one true dogma. But Badiou and Zˇ izˇek are opposed to the 1 ultimately undetermined spirituality of otherness that Derrida 2 advocates. As we have seen, Zˇ izˇek’s revolutionary desire to 3 bring the beyond into the world expresses itself as enthusiasm 4 for both Islamic resistance and Christian advent. This more 5 committed and manifest spirituality is relevant to Shakespeare. 6 Drama happens: only exceptionally is the action of a play 7 deferred, and the power of withholding the action, as in Love’s 8 Labour’s Lost and Hamlet, derives from the seemingly unstoppable 9 imminence of the dramatic event or advent. The impossible 30111 assumes specific form and invades the reality of the poems and 1 plays time and again. Oliver’s spirituality is not deferred but 2 achieved absolutely. For Theseus, poetry brings ‘the forms of 3 things unknown’ into the world from a specifically metaphys- 4 ical region, and T. G. Bishop calls Shakespeare’s ‘a poetics 5 of incarnation’ (Bishop 1996: 15). Of all Shakespeare’s works, 6 potentially most scandalous to Derrideans is ‘The Phoenix 7 and Turtle’, which celebrates an actual (if admittedly short- 8 lived) dissolution of difference in a flamingly intense spiritual 9 union. 40111 The impossible happens, too, when France throws his lot in 4111 with the discarded and disgraced Cordelia: Introduction 17 1111 Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; 2 Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised: 3 Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon. 4 Be it lawful, I take up what’s cast away. 5111 (King Lear, 1.1.251–4) 6 7111 Of course, it would be touchingly romantic if France had fallen 8 in love with his bride in spite of her disgrace, but he actually 9 falls for her because of it – her disgrace makes her beautiful to him. 1011 And clearly this isn’t a perverse sentiment that cynically respects 1 the values it transgresses. As Zˇ izˇek asserts, the ‘true interven- 2 tion of Eternity in Time’ occurs when such moments don’t 3111 ‘stand just for a passing carnivalesque suspension of Order . . . 4 but start to function as a founding figure of a New Order’ 5 (Zˇ izˇek 2003: 91). Cordelia’s disgrace is a revelation to France. 6 His plunge into love for his abject bride discovers different 7 values. That this new model of love is required by the ‘cold’st 8 neglect’ of the ‘gods’ (1.1.242) underlines that it specifically 9 offers a spirituality beyond conventional religion.21 20111 Lear later says to his daughter, ‘You are a spirit, I know’ 1 (4.7.49), and spirituality is linked with worldly shame and 2 dispossession in this extraordinary exchange when a frightened 3 fool runs out of a hovel: 4 5 Fool: Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit. 6 Help me, help me! 7 Kent: Give me thy hand. Who’s there? 8 Fool: A spirit, a spirit! He says his name’s poor Tom. 9 (King Lear, 3.4.40–4) 30111 1 Poor Tom is the spirit of utter poverty but as Edgar he will 2 ascend the throne. If there’s a spiritual injunction in this, it’s a 3 political lesson as well. In the words of Terry Eagleton, ‘cling 4 to your faith that the deathly emptiness of the dispossessed is 5 the only source from which a more jubilant, self-delighting 6 existence can ultimately spring’ (Eagleton 2003: 296).22 As we 7 shall see by the end of this volume, spirituality gleams with a 8 worrying political edge when Hamlet’s mystical experience per- 9 suades him that ‘The readiness is all’ (Hamlet, 5.2.169).23 40111 Of course much of the above chimes with Derrida’s inter- 4111 pretation of Shakespeare, but to the extent that it discloses 18 Ewan Fernie 1111 something like heaven on earth – something to see in a theatre! 2 – it contravenes the French thinker’s fastidious deferral of the 3 absolute into a region beyond the real world of history. 4 Shakespeare resonates with Derrida’s esoteric political spiritu- 5111 ality of hope and with Badiou’s and Zˇ izˇek’s more ‘adventist’ 6 political spirituality. Even though each spiritual moment in 17 Shakespeare involves a specific determination of the ultimate, 8 Shakespearean spirituality should not be reified as any one 9 thing. In this it accords with what Derrida calls ‘religion without 1011 religion’: an openness to spiritual possibility that stops short of 1 exclusive dogma. But insofar as the plays involve spiritual struggle 2 they equally accord with Badiou’s and Zˇ izˇek’s emphasis on 3111 ultimate commitment. A postmodern reading of Shakespeare 4 frees up the Badiou and Zˇ izˇek vs. Derrida debate, restaging it 5 more creatively by putting opposed positions into play. 6 7 8 IV 19 20111 From the perspective of this volume, Shakespearean spirituality 1 promiscuously, irresistibly breeds with the spiritual possibilities 2 3 of our own time. Of course the spiritual range of the plays is 4 broader than the controversies surrounding Derrida’s ‘religious 5 turn’. For instance, the kind of stance which ‘[f]inds tongues 6 in trees, books in the running brooks,/Sermons in stones, and 7 good in every thing’ (As You Like It, 2.1.16–17) corresponds 8 more closely with ‘new-age’ approaches to religion than to the 9 ‘religious turn’ in theory. The simultaneously fey and full- 30111 blooded spirituality of sex and nature in A Midsummer Night’s 1 Dream is begging for a full-scale new-age treatment.24 And there 2 is no single contemporary reference point for much of what 3 Shakespeare does: that’s why he has something else to bring to 4 contemporary debates. In their effort to lay hold of Shake- 5 spearean spirituality in the present, the chapters that follow 6 avail themselves of a full complement of critical equipment 7 and techniques. In retrieving some of the spiritual possibilities 8 of the plays, they simultaneously discover much that is of 9 theoretical interest and bring back some of the force of experi- 40111 ence that Shakespearean drama conveys. Kiernan Ryan dives 4111 directly into All’s Well That Ends Well and confronts head-on Introduction 19

1111 the promise and the violence of spirituality that Spiritual 2 Shakespeares explores. In Ryan’s reading, the dream of salvation 3 trumps cynical materialism. But All’s Well is a ‘materialist miracle 4 play’ (my emphasis), where hope disrobes at the dead-end of 5111 despair as utopian political vision. And yet, as Ryan acknow- 6 ledges, ‘a miracle is also a form of terrorism, an arbitrary 7111 manifestation of omnipotence, before which mere mortals are 8 helpless’. Ryan contends that the play nonetheless reserves and 9 calls for an as-yet-unrealised spirituality of hope, which 1011 resonates with a larger critical project that significantly antic- 1 ipated Specters of Marx.25 2 In ‘Harry’s (in)human face’, David Ruiter sets his compass 3111 by Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. Patiently tracking 4 Hal through the second Henriad, Ruiter discovers that the 5 future Henry V’s heroic destiny is simultaneously a process of 6 abject spiritual shrivelling. ‘The strange truth of spirituality’, 7 Ruiter discovers, ‘is that when we look in the mirror we should 8 see someone else.’ Thus ‘Hal is in the end all-too-human and, as 9 a result, not really human at all, because bereft of that extra, 20111 precious, spiritual element which defines humanity and yet is 1 engendered in a vital response to ordinary life.’ Ordinary life 2 3 is an insistent theme of this volume. Ryan calls that ‘poor 4 fellow’ Lavatch the ‘spiritus rector’ of All’s Well That Ends Well; 5 and it is a casual conversation in a bar that particularly illu- 6 minates the spirituality of the second Henriad for Ruiter. 7 In ‘Waiting for Gobbo’, Lowell Gallagher demonstrates 8 how the comical double-act of The Merchant of Venice manage 9 haplessly to anticipate, and magically act out, the vexed twenty- 30111 first-century debates on the scope of spiritual possibility. In 1 Gallagher’s reading, Shakespeare’s clowns – Gobbo père et fils 2 – beckon in an incarnate spirituality that would transcend the 3 exclusionary religious politics of the early modern period and 4 our own. 5 The incarnational, paradoxically materialist temper of 6 Spiritual Shakespeares is further intensified by Philippa Berry’s 7 chapter. Berry discerns in the baroque language-games of Love’s 8 Labour’s Lost a ‘heterodox meditation upon the grace and 9 salvation that may – or may not – follow man’s mortal end’. 40111 The distinctly feminine version of salvation she teases out of 4111 the play has Marian elements but is best epitomised by ‘greasy 20 Ewan Fernie 1111 Joan’ in the play’s final song of Hiems. Its medium is palpably 2 erotic, its effect to expose the men of the play to the awful 3 alterity of the phenomenal world, which especially confounds 4 narrowly rational, ‘academic’ attempts to discipline and make 5111 sense of it. 6 Spirit materialises once more in Lisa Freinkel’s essay. 17 Drawing on a range of classic and contemporary treatments 8 of the fetish, Freinkel tells how the critique of fetishism as 9 benighted idolatry was informed by Reformation iconoclasm, 1011 facilitated Western cultural imperialism, and was powerfully 1 appropriated by Freud. But after Shakespeare and, to a lesser 2 extent, Luther, Freinkel reclaims the fetish in spite of the 3111 Freudian critique. Her reading of the remarkable reversals of 4 Sonnet 20 reveals that the young man, within the poet’s very 5 fantasy of his creation, is castrated only to be re-endowed. His 6 penis therefore is a fetish already, and is no more ‘his’ than it 7 belongs to the feminised figure of Nature who dotingly supplies 8 it. The trauma of deprivation and lack is incorporated into a 19 positive efflorescence of human creativity. Freinkel concludes 20111 that ‘the Shakespearean fetish’ is not an idol to vanish in the 1 cold, humiliating dawn of reason, but a position where ‘spirit 2 finally matters’. 3 In the context of contemporary critical thought, Spiritual 4 Shakespeares proffers a striking spiritual materialism, where 5 spirituality is not so much an escape from material reality as 6 an immanent chance for something better. John J. Joughin’s 7 chapter establishes the interplay between the material and 8 spiritual as the inherent dialectic of dramatic form. Joughin 9 points to the director Peter Brook’s conception of ‘Holy 30111 Theatre’ or ‘The Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible’, which 1 makes its metaphysics out of ‘common sense’. Like Theodor 2 Adorno, Joughin insists on the political implications of the fact 3 that a play necessarily brings another world to bear on this 4 one by crudely physical means and effects: a stage, a curtain, 5 the materiality of generic conventions and language. He holds 6 up Bottom’s dream as a singular epitome of Shakespeare’s rest- 7 less traffic between the human and divine. But Shakespeare 8 doesn’t domesticate the spirit so much as he makes the everyday 9 mysterious, as Stephen Greenblatt also avows.26 What Joughin 40111 terms ‘Bottom’s secret’ reminds us of the comical, unfathom- 4111 able strangeness of the everyday. Drawing also on the statue Introduction 21 1111 scene in The Winter’s Tale, Joughin argues for Shakespeare’s 2 rhapsodic power to transport us beyond the losses and narrow 3 identifications of history to a new place where we must ‘begin 4 again’. 5111 Spiritual Shakespeares concludes with two new essays on Hamlet. 6 The philosopher Richard Kearney begins with the disarmingly 7111 simple recognition that ‘Hamlet is a play about spirits’. He 8 considers psychoanalytic explanations of Jacques Lacan and 9 others, the existential account of Søren Kierkegaard, the decon- 1011 structive descant of Derrida and the theologically inclined 1 reading of René Girard. Although his philosophical purview 2 doesn’t take in Hamlet in Purgatory (2001), Kearney’s conclusion 3111 that Shakespeare’s tragedy is not a monument to the ‘majesty 4 of melancholy’ but ‘a miracle of mourning’ chimes with 5 Greenblatt’s view. However, Kearney’s irreducible ‘miracle’ 6 separates him from Greenblatt. The philosopher leaves us with 7 a vision of universal political significance: ‘an eschatological 8 end to the bitter cycle of repetition and revenge’ that is all the 9 more appealing amid the turbulence of contemporary global 20111 politics. 1 My own chapter on Hamlet takes a different line, arguing 2 that any overriding preoccupation with mourning and the ghost 3 fails to see that the play transcends them in favour of an 4 ambiguous metaphysics of ‘rashness’. In an exact reversal of 5 what we might expect, Hamlet’s mystical experience turns him 6 from a kind of conscientious objector into the activist who says, 7 ‘The readiness is all’. In our present, Hamlet’s supposed trans- 8 cendence of ethics has a sinister flavour of terrorism and the 9 ‘War on Terror’. But I argue that Shakespeare’s play suggests 30111 nonetheless that the present is the place where all time – the 1 legacy of the past and the hopes of the future – can 2 and perhaps must be consummated in action. Perhaps such a 3 metaphysics of rashness is the natural spirituality of drama? 4 5 6 V 7 8 Preoccupied with death and the oppressive nightmares of 9 history, recent Shakespeare scholarship has typically sounded 40111 a melancholy and depressing note.27 Spiritual Shakespeares is 4111 more optimistic. It presents spirituality as an excess of life, as 22 Ewan Fernie 1111 overbrimming fullness, as the transcendence of given material 2 conditions. Consider the following passage from The Tempest: 3 4 Miranda: What is’t? A spirit? 5111 Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, 6 It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit. 17 Prospero: No, wench, it eats and sleeps, and hath such senses 8 As we have – such. The gallant which thou seest 9 Was in the wreck, and but he’s something stained 1011 With grief, that’s beauty’s canker, thou might’st call him 1 A goodly person. He hath lost his fellows, 2 And strays about to find ’em. 3111 Miranda: I might call him 4 A thing divine, for nothing natural 5 I ever saw so noble. 6 Prospero:[aside] It goes on, I see, 7 As my soul prompts it. [To ARIEL] Spirit, fine spirit, I’ll 8 free thee 19 Within two days for this. 20111 Ferdinand: Most sure, the goddess 1 On whom these airs attend. [To MIRANDA] Vouchsafe 2 3 my prayer 4 May know if you remain upon this island, 5 And that you will some good instruction give 6 How I may bear me here. My prime request, 7 Which I do last pronounce is – O you wonder – 8 If you be maid or no? 9 (1.2.410–29) 30111 1 There is an extraordinary existential intensity in a scene 2 that dramatically isolates human being and says, ‘What is’t?’ 3 Miranda suggests Ferdinand is ‘a spirit’. Then she affirms that 4 guess: ‘Believe me . . . ’tis a spirit’. Undeterred by her father’s 5 demystifying explanations – ‘it eats and sleeps, and has such 6 senses as we have’ – she insists he is ‘divine’, ‘nothing natural’. 7 Prospero’s scepticism seems misleading at first. After all, the 8 instant flourishing of love between Miranda and Ferdinand is 9 instigated by his ‘soul’ and by Ariel, whom the magus calls ‘Spirit, 40111 fine spirit’. But ideology is involved in Prospero’s ambivalence. 4111 The mage at least partly wants Miranda and Ferdinand to come Introduction 23 1111 together for personal and political reasons, but they exceed these 2 purposes by activating the amorous and spiritual content that are 3 the means of Prospero’s self-interested promptings. Perhaps it is 4 this as much as paternal anxiety that wrong-foots Prospero into 5111 opposing the very spirituality he says he inspired. 6 In fact, Prospero is not really directing the scene, though 7111 no doubt he’d like to be. He is pushed aside by the spiritual 8 conjunction of Ferdinand and Miranda. Even as Miranda is 9 captured by his aura, Ferdinand sees her as a ‘goddess’. Having 1011 blundered into her realm, he prays she may teach him how 1 to comport himself there. He is beside himself, ecstatic: ‘O you 2 wonder’. Filtered though it is through a worldly patriarchal 3111 expectation of female chastity, his concluding question intimates 4 desire to be one with her. And Miranda isn’t some Marlovian 5 conjuration of Helen but a real, substantial woman who wants 6 Ferdinand back. An instructive pun is at work in Ferdinand’s 7 question: Miranda may be ‘a maid’, but she is also ‘made’ 8 in the sense of being physically in existence, incarnate. We 9 are dealing with neither the deferral (Derrida) nor the advent 20111 (Zˇ izˇek) of the beyond, nor with its recovery at a more pro- 1 foundly natural level (new-age religion). The distance between 2 3 the spirituality that Miranda and Ferdinand perceive and 4 normal life is nil, nothing like the magical superiority Prospero 5 enjoys. The beyond is here already, spirituality an indwelling 6 excess inalienable from being (and that this holds for Caliban 7 as much as any other character is plain from his exquisite 28 8 dreams and visions earlier in the play). 9 Ferdinand is both the thing that eats and sleeps and the spirit 30111 Miranda recognises. Such double-vision isn’t a trick of love’s 1 drunkenness, as is confirmed at the end when the ideal alterity 2 of human society as such is revealed to Prospero’s daughter: 3 4 O, wonder! 5 How many goodly creatures are there here! 6 How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, 7 That has such people in’t! 8 (5.1.184–7) 9 40111 Of course, this meets a sceptical paternal put-down, but it is 4111 a half-hearted one that can’t quite break the spell of Miranda’s 24 Ewan Fernie 1111 words. The alternative world of spiritual ultimacy shimmers in 2 her eyes as the other, potential face of our real world. Like 3 Shakespeare, Prospero knows spirituality is just a possibility. 4 But surely the possibility that human beings may thrillingly 5111 surpass what we have taken for reality is aesthetically, intel- 6 lectually and politically irresistible? As Leontes says in The 17 Winter’s Tale, 8 9 No settled senses of the world can match 1011 The pleasures of that madness. 1 (The Winter’s Tale, 5.3.72–3) 2 3111 4 Notes 5 1 For a comprehensive account of how new historicism and cultural 6 materialism have avoided considerations of religion and spirituality 7 or silently converted them into terms more amenable to materialist thought, see Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti (2004). The new 8 ‘turn’ towards religion in criticism described by Jackson and Marotti 19 is predominantly historicist. A large number of critical works – to 20111 give just a few examples: Shuger 1990, 1994 and 2001, Diehl 1997, 1 Shell 1999, Dolan 1999 and 2002, Knapp 2002, Lake 2002 and 2 McCoy 2002 – have treated religion as a complex reality of the early 3 modern period and an important dimension of its historical alterity 4 in relation to our own times. 2 For more on ‘presentism’, see Grady 1991, 1996 and 2002, Hawkes 5 2002 and Fernie 2005. A few pioneers, including Jackson and a 6 number of contributors to this volume, have begun a theoretical 7 recovery of spirituality as an existential, ethical or epistemological 8 experience pertinent, in several ways, to the present: see especially Berry 9 1999 and 2004, Freinkel 2002, Gallagher 1991, Girard 1991, Jackson 30111 2001, Lupton 1997, 2000a and 2000b, Taylor 2001 and Wilson 2004. 1 As well as surveying the field, Jackson and Marotti attempt to further and consolidate this initiative ( Jackson and Marotti 2004). Out 2 of a fastidious respect for the otherness of the past, they fight shy of 3 presentism, but the connections they perceive between early modern 4 religion and postmodern theory belie this – and Jackson is acutely 5 sensitive to the extraordinary resonance between early modern belief 6 and postmodern theory in other work ( Jackson 2001). Jackson and 7 Marotti are right to be wary of glibly translating early modern religion 8 into ‘acceptable modern forms conformable to our own cultural assumptions’ but they don’t consider the positive possibility that a 9 presentist criticism might deliberately seek out, and dialectically profit 40111 from, the alterity of the past and of literature (see Grady 2002 and 4111 Fernie 2005). This collection not only explores the strange connec- Introduction 25

1111 tions between the spiritual vitality of the plays and our contemporary 2 moment, but it also enjoys the recalcitrant challenges that Shake- 3 spearean spirituality offers the present. For more on the ‘religious turn’ in postmodern culture, see, for instance, Berry and Wernick 4 1992, de Vries 2002 and Caputo 2001 and 2002. See also Badiou 5111 2001 and 2003, Derrida 2002, Irigaray 1993, Joy et al. 2002 and 6 Zˇ izˇek 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002 and 2003. 7111 3 On Catholicism see, for instance, Lake 1989, Finlayson 1983, Shell 8 1999, Marotti 1999, Dolan 1999 and 2002 as well as Dutton et al. 9 2004a and 2004b and Wilson 2004. For a consideration of religious 1011 difference with real purchase on the present, see Lupton 1997. 4 See also Newell 2003: 1. It’s instructive that a non-academic book 1 picks up on the existential intensity of Talbot’s speech. 2 5 Speaking for the political Left, Fredric Jameson has written of such 3111 radical religious figures, ‘These dead belong to us’ ( Jameson 1981b: 4 319). 5 6 This connection between literature and spirituality isn’t just a 6 Shakespearean archaism. It has been asserted by notable thinkers 7 and writers throughout the modern era. For instance, Martin Heidegger writes, ‘Poetic thinking is being in the presence of . . . 8 and for the god’ (see Caputo 2002: 66). Echoing Theseus, Salman 9 Rushdie has written more recently that art ‘is the third principle that 20111 mediates between the material and spiritual worlds’ (Rushdie 1991: 1 415ff.). Richard Rorty has called for ‘a religion of literature in which 2 works of the secular imagination replace Scripture as the prin- 3 ciple source of inspiration and hope for the new generation’ (Rorty 4 1996: 15). 7 Similarly in Macbeth, according to Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Shakespeare 5 achieves the remarkable effect of a nebulous infection, a bleeding of 6 the spectral into the secular and the secular into the spectral’ 7 (Greenblatt 2001: 194). 8 8 I am indebted here to Tom Bishop’s excellent unpublished essay, 9 ‘Othello in the Wilderness’, part of his current monograph-in- 30111 progress: Shakespeare’s Scriptures. 9 Knapp 2002 has stressed the spiritual openness of Shakespearean 1 drama. But reading Shakespearean drama ‘in conformity with the 2 Erasmian spirit of the English religious settlement – a spirit of uncon- 3 tentiousness and impartiality, according to its defenders, of apathy 4 and evasiveness, to its enemies’ neglects the agonistic intensity and 5 spiritual struggle of the plays that I want to bring out (169). 6 10 For a more theological definition, see Sheldrake 1992. My definition 7 is meant to be general and inclusive in order to facilitate the broadest possible consideration of spirituality in Shakespeare. 8 11 Fredric Jameson stressed such potential some years ago, attempting 9 to ‘rewrite certain religious concepts – most notably Christian histori- 40111 cism and the “concept” of providence – as anticipatory fore- 4111 shadowings of historical materialism’ ( Jameson 1981a: 285). 26 Ewan Fernie

1111 12 A good description of the new-age movement is provided by Heelas 2 1996. 3 13 Dympna Callaghan puts her finger on the way in which this shift 4 has disabled traditional Marxist materialism in Callaghan 2001. See also Bruster 2001 and Stallybrass 2002. 5111 14 For a fuller consideration of Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory, see 6 Chapter 8. 17 15 Muslim intellectuals like Ziauddin Sardar have long advocated Islamic 8 resistance to globalisation and corporate culture (see Sardar 1979: 9 230). 1011 16 Gallagher 1991, Lupton 2000b and Jackson 2001. 1 17 This point has already been well made by Kiernan Ryan: 2 The culminating moments of concord, ‘When earthly things made 3111 even/Atone together’ (As You Like It, 5.4.109–10), also bristle with 4 estrangement effects. These demand that the denouement be 5 grasped as a symbolic fiction, whose mood is subjunctive rather 6 than indicative, and whose satisfactions therefore lie beyond the 7 reach of contemporary society. 8 (Ryan 2002: 118) 19 18 See Badiou 2001 and 2003 and Zˇ izˇek 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002 and 20111 2003. 1 19 Derrida says: 2 He is coming now; the messianic does not wait. This is a way of 3 waiting for the future, right now. The responsibilities that are 4 assigned to us by this messianic structure are responsibilities for 5 here and now. The Messiah is not some future present; it is 6 imminent and it is this imminence that I am describing under 7 the name of messianic structure. 8 (Derrida 1997: 24) 9 But to the extent that the Messiah is always ‘to come’, by contrast 30111 with Zˇ izˇek’s and Badiou’s, Derrida’s remains a spirituality of the 1 beyond. 2 20 Badiou admits that Zˇ izˇek made the comparison first (Badiou 2003: 2). 3 21 I am grateful to Patrick Cheney for stressing this point. 4 22 In a typically elegant and suggestive treatment, Greenblatt rationalises 5 these moments of spiritual pressure in King Lear so much that he 6 drains them of their aesthetically and intellectually compelling power 7 to intimate another, more ultimate world that overlaps with the more familiar world of the play (Greenblatt 2001: 185ff.). 8 23 Wilson argues that the historical Shakespeare was ‘a member of one 9 of the most militant recusant families in a town which was a bastion 40111 of Elizabethan papist resistance’ (Wilson 2004: 1). He brings this into 4111 conjunction with contemporary culture when he writes: Introduction 27

1111 And the return of fundamentalism has taught us never again to 2 conflate spirituality with humanism, or to euphemise Protestant- 3 ism, in the old Left tradition, as ‘hardly religion at all, but a kind 4 of Christian anarchy’. We know so much more about religious violence than critics before 11 September 2001. For as I write 5111 this, on the site of Shakespeare’s Gatehouse, the ‘Ring of Steel’ 6 around Blackfriars and the City, first erected to counter the 7111 Catholic IRA, is being reinforced, to seal the precinct even more 8 securely from a world elsewhere. 9 (Wilson 2004: 7) 1011 24 See Heelas 1996. 1 25 Ryan 2002 originally appeared in 1989. The political philosophy of 2 hope that Ryan develops out of Shakespeare bears comparison with 3111 Derrida’s conception of ‘the messianic’ as well as with the work 4 of Ernst Bloch. 5 26 See Greenblatt 2001. 6 27 Terry Eagleton writes in The Ideology of the Aesthetic: ‘[F]ew literary 7 texts are likely to make it nowadays into the new historicist canon 8 unless they contain at least one mutilated body’ (1990: 7). 28 Zˇ izˇek is interested in the possibility of such immanence. In Zˇ izˇek 9 2003, he quotes Christ in St Thomas’s Gospel, ‘That (resurrection) 20111 which you are awaiting has (already) come, but you do not recognize 1 it’, and comments, ‘This is the key “Hegelian” point of Christianity: 2 the resurrection of the dead is not a “real event” which will take 3 place sometime in the future, but something that is already here – 4 we merely have to shift our subject position’ (86–7). Yet even this 5 depends on the paradigmatic advent that is the incarnation; spiritu- ˇ 6 ality always is more violently eruptive in Zizˇek than at this point in 7 The Tempest. Better theoretical bearings here could be taken from French feminist theoreticians of spirituality, especially Luce Irigaray’s 8 notions of a ‘sensible transcendental’ and ‘becoming divine’ (see 9 Irigaray 1993 and Joy et al. 2002). 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 1 6 17 ‘Where hope is coldest’ 8 9 All’s Well That Ends Well 1011 Kiernan Ryan 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2111 I 3 4 In the opening scene of Act II of All’s Well That Ends Well the 5 heroine, Helen, steps into the timeless, archetypal realm of folk- 6 lore and fairy tale, and turns into the Clever Wench who stakes 7 her life on curing the King. His scepticism quelled by the force 8 of her conviction, the King wonders whether Helen is possessed 9 by a higher power: 30111 1 Methinks in thee some blessèd spirit doth speak, 2 His powerful sound within an organ weak; 3 And what impossibility would slay 4 In common sense, sense saves another way. 5 (2.1.174–7) 6 7 Things that common sense would dismiss as impossible may 8 be perfectly plausible in another sense, which owes nothing to 9 realism or rationality. So flagrantly do such phenomena break 40111 the laws of likelihood that they bespeak the intervention in our 4111 world of spiritual forces beyond human understanding. ‘Where hope is coldest’ 29

1111 Impalpable powers are repeatedly invoked in All’s Well to 2 accomplish or account for the incredible. The first striking 3 instance occurs in the speech with which Helen, determined 4 to bridge the chasm of class that divides her from her beloved 5111 Bertram, concludes the opening scene of the play: 6 7111 Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie 8 Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky 9 Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull 1011 Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. 1 What power is it which mounts my love so high, 2 That makes me see and cannot feed mine eye? 3111 The mightiest space in fortune nature brings 4 To join like likes and kiss like native things. 5 Impossible be strange attempts to those 6 That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose 7 What hath been cannot be. 8 (1.1.199–209) 9 Helen begins by refusing to shift the responsibility for our 20111 destiny to divine providence or astrological influence. But her 1 assertion of autonomy is swiftly eclipsed by her sense that 2 she is nonetheless in the grip of a power she cannot name or 3 comprehend. This thought prompts the reflection that nature 4 finds ways of dissolving huge disparities of wealth and rank. 5 And that reflection triggers the contention, echoed in the 6 next act by the King, that extraordinary endeavours (‘strange 7 attempts’) seem futile only to those who try them in the court 8 of common sense and judge them to be not worth the ‘pains’ 9 they would cost. 30111 All’s Well That Ends Well stacks the deck from the start against 1 its characters and the dictates of comedy. The play begins in 2 the shadow of the death of old Count Roussillon, with the 3 Countess, Bertram, Helen and Lafeu dressed in black, and the 4 gloom is deepened by the impending death of the King: 5 6 Countess: What hope is there of his majesty’s amendment? 7 Lafeu: He hath abandoned his physicians, madam, under 8 whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, 9 and finds no other advantage in the process but only 40111 the losing of hope by time. 4111 (1.1.11–15) 30 Kiernan Ryan 1111 The hopelessness of the King’s plight is underlined by the fact 2 that the only doctor who could have healed him – Helen’s 3 father, Gérard de Narbonne – has recently died as well, despite 4 possessing skills almost great enough to vanquish death itself. 5111 His daughter regards her secret love for the dead Count’s son 6 as equally hopeless: 17 8 ’Twere all one 9 That I should love a bright particular star 1011 And think to wed it, he is so above me. 1 In his bright radiance and collateral light 2 Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. 3111 Th’ambition in my love thus plagues itself. 4 The hind that would be mated by the lion 5 Must die for love. 6 (1.1.80–7) 7 8 When the Countess presses her to confess her feelings for 19 Bertram, however, Helen finds sublime solace in the futility 20111 of her desire, which she transmutes into a state of spiritual 1 exaltation: 2 3 I know I love in vain, strive against hope; 4 Yet in this captious and intenable sieve 5 I still pour in the waters of my love 6 And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like, 7 Religious in mine error, I adore 8 The sun that looks upon his worshipper 9 But knows of him no more. . . . 30111 . . . then give pity 1 To her whose state is such that cannot choose 2 But lend and give where she is sure to lose, 3 That seeks to find not that her search implies, 4 But riddle-like lives sweetly where she dies. 5 (1.3.185–91, 197–201) 6 7 The very act of striving against hope releases intimations of 8 plenitude and ecstasy that turn lack and loss into fulfilment 9 and death into exquisite life. The last four lines of the speech 40111 slip into couplets that charge them with the vatic resonance 4111 such riddles require. Their effect, amplified by the switch from ‘Where hope is coldest’ 31 1111 the first person to the third, is to make Helen sound as though 2 a remote, impersonal voice, whose origin is as obscure as its 3 import, is indeed speaking through her, as the King later 4 suspects. Beneath the surface of the speech, which revels in its 5111 thraldom to despair, deeper tides are stirring. 6 The strange fecundity of that despair, its power to summon 7111 salvation from the void into which it stares, is borne out at 8 once by Helen’s revelation that her father has bequeathed 9 her ‘a remedy, approved, set down,/To cure the desperate 1011 languishings whereof/The King is rendered lost’ (1.3.214–16). 1 The means to cure the King, which will provide in turn the 2 means to win Bertram’s hand, does not derive its potency, 3111 however, from its deviser’s genius or its medicinal properties 4 alone, as Helen explains to the Countess: 5 6 There’s something in’t 7 More than my father’s skill, which was the great’st 8 Of his profession, that his good receipt 9 Shall for my legacy be sanctified 20111 By th’ luckiest stars in heaven . . . 1 (1.3.228–32) 2 3 What that something more is, and whether the celestial realm 4 that sanctifies the ‘receipt’ is Christian or pagan, Shakespeare 5 declines to divulge. Of its startling supernatural virtues, how- 6 ever, Lafeu stands in no doubt when he sets about cajoling the 7 King into trying the elixir on himself: 8 9 I have seen a medicine 30111 That’s able to breathe life into a stone, 1 Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary 2 With sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch 3 Is powerful to araise King Pépin, nay, 4 To give great Charlemagne a pen in’s hand, 5 And write to her a love-line. 6 (2.1.70–6) 7 8 But before ‘Doctor She’ (2.1.78) can raise her own sovereign 9 from the dead and revive his virility, she must persuade him 40111 to place his trust in the cure he spurns as ‘A senseless help, 4111 when help past sense we deem’ (2.1.122). To this end she 32 Kiernan Ryan 1111 adduces divine precedents furnished by the Bible, conscripting 2 couplets again to lift her reasoning to another plane: 3 4 He that of greatest works is finisher 5111 Oft does them by the weakest minister. 6 So holy writ in babes hath judgement shown 17 When judges have been babes; great floods have flow’n 8 From simple sources, and great seas have dried 9 When miracles have by th’ great’st been denied. 1011 Oft expectation fails, and most oft there 1 Where most it promises, and oft it hits 2 Where hope is coldest and despair most fits. 3111 (2.1.134–43) 4 5 Helen’s allusions to the precocious wisdom of Daniel and Jesus 6 as children, and to the miracles wrought by Moses when he 7 struck water from the rock and caused the Red Sea to part, are 8 veiled, but the inference they invite the King to draw is clear: 19 Helen is the instrument of ‘him that all things knows’ and can 20111 count on ‘The help of heaven’ to effect what lies beyond ‘the 1 act of men’ (2.1.148, 151). Such miracles materialize, however, 2 Helen is at pains to stress, not when we expect them to, but 3 precisely at the point of utter despair, ‘Where hope is coldest’ 4 and thus, inexplicably, at its most powerful. 5 Up to this point, Helen’s plea to heal the lethal fistula 6 that afflicts his highness has been couched in Christian terms, 7 but the incantation into which she glides to predict the cure’s 8 duration springs from another place altogether: 9 30111 Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring 1 Their fiery coacher his diurnal ring, 2 Ere twice in murk and occidental damp 3 Moist Hesperus hath quenched her sleepy lamp, 4 Or four-and-twenty times the pilot’s glass 5 Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, 6 What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, 7 Health shall live free, and sickness freely die. 8 (2.1.160–7) 9 40111 The universe this spell conjures up with no sense of incongruity 4111 is pagan. Its chanting rhythms, chiming rhymes and ritual ‘Where hope is coldest’ 33 1111 repetitions would not sound amiss on the lips of Oberon or 2 Prospero. Helen metamorphoses from ‘the weakest minister’ 3 of the Almighty into a formidable sorceress, and her readiness 4 to lose her own life should she fail clinches the King’s consent. 5111 The curing of the King is displaced from the stage by a 6 bout of parodic badinage between the Countess and her fool, 7111 Lavatch. The masking of the act magnifies its mystery. What 8 takes place between the sovereign and the ‘Sweet practiser’ 9 (2.1.184) to cure his ‘past-cure malady’ (2.1.119), and whether 1011 the potion, Christian prayer, pagan rite or Helen’s sexual allure 1 is responsible for his restoration, is left open to surmise. Indeed, 2 the desire to explain things that defy explanation is made the 3111 object of Lafeu’s scorn immediately after the King’s recovery: 4 ‘They say miracles are past, and we have our philosophical 5 persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural 6 and causeless’ (2.3.1–3). Lafeu is adamant that, far from 7 being commonplace (‘modern’), what has transpired is unprece- 8 dented, ‘a novelty to the world’ (2.3.19), which reveals the 9 ‘Very hand of heaven’ (2.3.30). That Lafeu’s view of the matter 20111 is already enshrined in the title of the ballad he reads out – 1 ‘A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor’ (2.3.22–3) 2 – qualifies it as a cliché, as does its parroting by Paroles in 3 his eagerness to ingratiate himself: ‘Why,’ opines the shallow 4 braggart, ‘’tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot 5 out in our latter times’, manifesting in a ‘debile minister great 6 power, great transcendence’ (2.3.6–7, 33). But this whiff of 7 irony at the expense of the miraculous is not enough to dispel 8 the atmosphere of awe that fills the stage as the resurrected 9 King enters with his redeemer, who states with simple certainty, 30111 ‘Heaven hath through me restored the King to health’ (2.3.61). 1 For a time, of course, the miracle seems to have misfired as 2 far as Helen’s ulterior ‘project’ (1.1.211) is concerned. Her 3 reward for summoning ‘great power, great transcendence’ to 4 slay impossibility is to find herself not the fairy-tale bride of 5 the young lord she adores, but publicly reviled by an aristo- 6 crat so appalled at being forced to wed ‘A poor physician’s 7 daughter’, who ‘had her breeding at [his] father’s charge’ 8 (2.3.110–11), that he abandons her for the Tuscan wars rather 9 than consummate the marriage. 40111 But the doctor’s child is not long deterred by Bertram’s 4111 brutal rejection, which his own mother deplores as ‘the 34 Kiernan Ryan 1111 misprizing of a maid too virtuous/For the contempt of 2 empire’ (3.2.30–1). The ‘dreadful sentence’ (3.2.59) Bertram 3 sends her seems to set the seal on the futility of her love and 4 the hopelessness of her plight all over again: 5111 6 When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never 17 shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body 8 that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a 9 ‘then’ I write a ‘never’. 1011 (3.2.55–8) 1 2 Yet as before, by some occult logic that remains opaque, 3111 impossibility and the abjection it breeds engender their anti- 4 thesis. In the grip of a Griselda-like swoon of self-sacrifice, Helen 5 steals away in the dark like a ‘poor thief’ (3.2.129), so that 6 Bertram will feel free to return safe from the wars. But no 7 sooner has she exiled herself than a brighter note is discreetly 8 struck by the speech of the Duke of Florence to Bertram that 19 opens the next scene, the mathematical centre and turning 20111 point of the play: ‘we,/Great in our hope, lay our best love 1 and credence/Upon thy promising fortune’ (3.3.1–3). Without 2 rational warrant, hope rears up again out of hopelessness and, 3 moments later in stage time, the Countess receives a poetic 4 epistle from ‘Saint Jaques’ pilgrim’ (3.4.4). Helen’s penitential 5 sonnet adopts the same posture of self-abnegation as the speech 6 in which she portrayed herself as one who ‘riddle-like lives 7 sweetly where she dies’. But this time the obtrusive artifice of 8 the verse, read to the Countess by Reynaldo, renders its author 9 even more remote and rarefied; its piety is pronounced and 30111 unquestionably Christian (‘barefoot plod I the cold ground 1 upon/With sainted vow my faults to have amended’ (3.4.6–7)); 2 and the final couplet succumbs less ambiguously to extinction, 3 though with the same paradoxical rush of delight: ‘He is too 4 good and fair for death and me;/Whom I myself embrace 5 to set him free’ (3.4.16–17). 6 The death Helen embraces, however, is equally figurative 7 this time, unlike the real death from which she rescued the 8 King. In fact, in this case it is astutely feigned, a subterfuge 9 cooked up with the help of Diana, Diana’s mother and ‘the 40111 rector of the place’ (4.3.57) in Saint Jaques le Grand, where 4111 she supposedly died of grief. Yet the fact that her death is ‘Where hope is coldest’ 35 1111 virtual does not make what ensues less uncanny than it 2 would have been if Helen had died for real. Helen’s fabricated 3 death to the world empowers her to devise the means of 4 her deliverance from its adversities, the bed-trick that dupes 5111 Bertram into completing their union and making her pregnant. 6 The tenor of that trick, which belongs entirely to the enchanted 7111 realm of folk tale, demands a Delphic conundrum to contain 8 its glaring contradictions: 9 1011 Let us essay our plot, which if it speed 1 Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed 2 And lawful meaning in a wicked act, 3111 Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact. 4 (3.7.44–7) 5 6 The bed-trick is further mystified, like the curing of the King, 7 by the creation of a smokescreen, in this case the entrapment 8 of Paroles, which harbours obvious parallels with his master’s 9 fate in Diana’s bedroom. Diana keeps Helen’s fictitious corpse 20111 subliminally in focus by her demeanour and diction. ‘You are 1 no maiden but a monument’, Bertram complains at their first 2 tryst, ‘When you are dead you should be such a one/As you 3 are now’ (4.2.6–8). After he departs, Diana even pushes the 4 charade so far as to flirt with the idea of necrophilia: ‘He had 5 sworn to marry me/When his wife’s dead; therefore I’ll lie with 6 him/When I am buried’ (4.2.72–4). 7 Helen’s absence from most of the last two acts reinforces 8 the delusion that she is indeed dead. So do the recurrent 9 laments for her demise and the subtextual echoes of it, such 30111 as ‘When you have spoken it ’tis dead, and I am the grave of 1 it’ (4.3.12–13). Their concerted effect is so strong that it takes 2 a conscious effort in the last scene to remind oneself that the 3 King, the Countess, Bertram and Lafeu are deceived, and their 4 indecent haste to hitch Bertram to Lafeu’s daughter, ‘fair 5 Maudlin’ (5.3.69) – ‘Be this sweet Helen’s knell, and now forget 6 her’ (5.3.68) – is misbegotten. Shakespeare’s purpose is plain: 7 to amplify the impact on the characters and the audience when 8 ‘Helen that’s dead’ (5.3.78) rises from her grave and material- 9 izes in the court at the eleventh hour to solve Diana’s riddle. 40111 The last scene pulls out all the stops to make us feel as though 4111 Helen has truly returned from the dead. The barrage of 36 Kiernan Ryan 1111 contradictions with which Diana assaults common sense baffles 2 us into consorting with another sort of sense and surrendering 3 to a transcendent theatrical wonder: 4 5111 He knows himself my bed he hath defiled, 6 And at that time he got his wife with child. 17 Dead though she be she feels her young one kick. 8 So there’s my riddle; one that’s dead is quick. 9 And now behold the meaning. 1011 Enter HELEN and WIDOW 1 King: Is there no exorcist 2 Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes? 3111 Is’t real that I see? 4 Helen: No, my good lord, 5 ’Tis but the shadow of a wife you see, 6 The name and not the thing. 7 Bertram: Both, both. O, pardon! 8 (5.3.297–305) 19 20111 Unlike the King, we witness Helen’s resurrection in full posses- 1 sion of the truth. Yet the existence of a rational explanation 2 does not dispel our impression that something ‘supernatural 3 and causeless’ has taken place that cannot be reasoned away. 4 The King’s suspicion that Helen’s spirit has been raised by 5 sorcery, and that what he beholds is unreal, is not contradicted 6 by Helen’s reply, ‘’Tis but the shadow of a wife you see,/The 7 name and not the thing’, and Bertram’s ‘Both, both’ is not 8 enough to exorcise the ghost of the tragic heroine Helen might 9 have been. 30111 1 2 II 3 4 From this account of All’s Well That Ends Well it might be 5 tempting to conclude that the comedy is an early modern 6 miracle play. At every turn it begs to be read as a parable of 7 self-mortification and blind faith rewarded by grace, redemp- 8 tion and the promised conquest of death itself. And nothing 9 would seem to endorse that reading more than the store the 40111 play sets by the power of hope, which rises time and again 4111 from the ashes of its annihilation. It would certainly be simpler ‘Where hope is coldest’ 37 1111 to turn All’s Well back into the dramatic act of piety early 2 twentieth-century Christian critics believed it to be. But the 3 comedy is too complex to tolerate such simplifications. It is 4 equally impervious, however, to profane approaches that repress 5111 its recourse to the discourse of spirituality in order to shackle 6 it to some new historicist precept or poststructuralist creed. 7111 All’s Well is clearly not a religious play in the sense that 8 it demonstrates and demands belief in Christian doctrine. It 9 deploys the narrative templates, affective lexicon and master 1011 tropes of Christianity, but it does so neither consistently nor 1 exclusively. The ease with which Helen can slip from citing 2 the Old and New Testaments as God’s ‘weakest minister’ to 3111 fusing the pagan lore of pre-Christian Britain with the exotic 4 rites of the ancient world is ample evidence of that. Moreover, 5 All’s Well has plenty of room alongside these metaphysical 6 models of reality for more earthbound conjectures about the 7 mainsprings of human destiny. If we return to the speech in 8 the opening scene where Helen muses on these matters, it is 9 arresting, after all the marvels confidently credited to higher 20111 powers, to hear her aver with equal confidence: ‘Our remedies 1 oft in ourselves do lie/Which we ascribe to heaven.’ She revises 2 that proposition in favour of the notion that what makes us 3 tick is a double act, a tug of war between celestial constraint 4 and individual volition: ‘The fated sky/Gives us free scope, 5 only doth backward pull/Our slow designs when we ourselves 6 are dull.’ In the process, the ambiguously Christian ‘heaven’ 7 turns into an unambiguously pagan ‘fated sky’, which mutates 8 in the next sentence into a nameless ‘power’, neither Christian 9 nor pagan, whose imperatives Helen must obey. 30111 The provision with which Helen prefaces her healing charm 1 – ‘The great’st grace lending grace’ (2.1.159) – is no less vague 2 about the source of that grace, notwithstanding the Christian 3 tint of the word. A similar evasiveness marks the King’s ascrip- 4 tion of Helen’s assurance to ‘some blessèd spirit’. When we 5 add to these considerations the light burlesque of the miraculous 6 in Paroles’s echoes of Lafeu, the play’s detachment from its 7 eclectic spiritual discourse can scarcely be overlooked. The 8 strongest proof of that detachment is Shakespeare’s concern to 9 keep everything that confounds ‘common sense’ intelligible 40111 in sublunary terms. Unlike the romances for which it paves 4111 the way, All’s Well concocts no spectacular theophany like that 38 Kiernan Ryan 1111 of Jupiter in Cymbeline to confirm its protagonists’ faith in divine 2 intercession. Whatever the characters say, the miracles worked 3 by Helen can also be attributed to material, mortal causes: to 4 the pharmaceutical skill of her father in the first case, and 5111 to her own ingenuity in the second. 6 This is not to undermine or understate the spiritual 17 dimension of All’s Well That Ends Well, but rather to redefine 8 its role in the comedy as revolutionary rather than religious, 9 as a means to the end of a play obsessed with means and ends. 1011 By framing the play’s religious discourse as figurative rather 1 than factual, Shakespeare declutches it from dogma, releasing 2 its resources to serve the secular agenda that religion secretes. 3111 The dream of salvation, of the self and the world redeemed, 4 doubles as a metaphor for forms of emancipation that as yet 5 can find expression in no other way. The Christian’s hope for 6 grace and resurrection houses the indomitable human hope 7 for freedom from misery, injustice and oppression – a hope 8 anchored in realism rather than revelation, a hope that thrives 19 on disappointment and defeat. And the play fosters faith in 20111 miracles, not as the props of revealed religion, but as testaments 1 to the poverty of rationality and realism, as mockeries of the 2 empirical mind that sustains the status quo and kills trans- 3 formation in the cradle. The cynical materialism of those who 4 claim ‘miracles are past’ is doomed to remain in thrall to the 5 past, from which it draws its conclusions about the limits of 6 possibility. Whereas the spiritual idealism of those who believe 7 that ‘what impossibility would slay/In common sense, sense 8 saves another way’ is incorrigibly prospective, propelled toward 9 the transcendence of the present by the radical difference 30111 of the future it foresees. 1 For proof that the revolutionary spirit of utopian hope 2 governs All’s Well, we need look no further than its scandalous 3 central premise. In no other play by Shakespeare does such a 4 wide social gulf yawn between heroine and hero, a gulf that 5 early modern men and women would have found formidably 6 difficult to cross. The breadth and depth of that class divide 7 are brought painfully home to Helen in Bertram’s response to 8 her choice of him as her prize for curing the King: ‘But follows 9 it, my lord, to bring me down/Must answer for your raising?’ 40111 (2.3.108–9). However, not only does the penniless doctor’s 4111 daughter succeed in hooking a husband far above her station, ‘Where hope is coldest’ 39 1111 but she does so by taking the sexual initiative from start to 2 finish, in a reversal of patriarchal roles that has no parallel in 3 Shakespearean comedy. So unseemly did Helen’s frank desire 4 and forwardness appear to the Victorians that they doctored 5111 her part in the play’s upending of The Taming of the Shrew to 6 make her more demure. 7111 Nor is this inversion of gender roles, which makes a man 8 the helpless object of a woman’s choice, the only generic heresy 9 of which All’s Well is guilty. The parental elders of the play, 1011 the Countess, the King and Lafeu, whom convention should 1 have cast as obstacles to such an irregular union, shatter the 2 stereotype epitomized by Egeus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 3111 Far from being stony pillars of conformity, this truly sage trio 4 backs Helen and her cause to the hilt. Indeed, so incensed is 5 the Countess by her son’s snubbing of his bride that she disowns 6 him and adopts Helen in his stead: ‘He was my son,/But I do 7 wash his name out of my blood,/And thou art all my child’ 8 (3.2.64–6). 9 Blood is also the theme of an astounding speech placed in 20111 the mouth of the King, whose advocacy of Helen’s cause 1 subverts the foundations of his own sovereignty. When Bertram 2 rebuffs his bride-to-be, the King rebukes him: 3 4 ’Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which 5 I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods, 6 Of colour, weight, and heat, poured all together, 7 Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off 8 In differences so mighty. If she be 9 All that is virtuous, save what thou dislik’st – 30111 ‘A poor physician’s daughter’– thou dislik’st 1 Of virtue for the name. But do not so. 2 From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, 3 The place is dignified by th’ doer’s deed. 4 Where great additions swell’s, and virtue none, 5 It is a dropsied honour. Good alone 6 Is good without a name, vileness is so: 7 The property by what it is should go, 8 Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair. 9 In these to nature she’s immediate heir, 40111 And these breed honour. That is honour’s scorn 4111 Which challenges itself as honour’s born 40 Kiernan Ryan 1111 And is not like the sire; honours thrive 2 When rather from our acts we them derive 3 Than our foregoers. The mere word’s a slave, 4 Debauched on every tomb, on every grave 5111 A lying trophy, and as oft is dumb 6 Where dust and dammed oblivion is the tomb 17 Of honoured bones indeed. 8 (2.3.113–37) 9 1011 To hear such Falstaffian contempt for honour and titles as 1 mere ornaments of rank voiced by royalty is disarming enough. 2 But this commendable attitude is dwarfed by the King’s admis- 3111 sion that the ‘differences so mighty’ over which he presides as 4 a monarch have no basis in human physiology, which ‘Would 5 quite confound distinction’ were we to found society on the 6 facts of nature rather than the fictions of culture. The fragility 7 of those fictions is underscored by the Epilogue, when the actor 8 who has played the King steps forward and declares, ‘The 19 King’s a beggar now the play is done.’ 20111 Furthermore, by endowing his heroine with the power not 1 only to leap the barriers of class and gender, but also to bridle 2 mortality itself, Shakespeare suggests something far more dis- 3 concerting: that deliverance from our subjection to death may 4 depend on our deliverance from structures of social subjection 5 that feed on the fear of extinction. Certainly the faculty Helen 6 inherits from her father is described as one which, ‘had it 7 stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death 8 should have play for lack of work’ (1.1.18–19). The full signifi- 9 cance of that dream of natural immortality, of death robbed 30111 of its terror and made redundant by human art, must be left 1 to readers and spectators of the distant future to decipher. 2 The surest guide to the play’s seditious vision is its spiritus 3 rector, Lavatch. In his first line he reminds his mistress that he 4 is but ‘a poor fellow’, and, when the Countess responds with 5 an innocuous ‘Well, sir?’, he pounces on the word worked so 6 hard by the title of the play: ‘No, madam, ’tis not so well that 7 I am poor, though many of the rich are damned. But if I may 8 have your ladyship’s good will to go to the world, Isbel the 9 woman and I will do as we may’ (1.3.11–16). Lavatch’s pre- 40111 emptive mimicry of Helen’s marital ambition weds it to the 4111 damnation of the rich, implying that both share the same ‘Where hope is coldest’ 41 1111 rationale. His confession that his connubial desire is ‘driven on 2 by the flesh’ and ‘the devil’ (1.3.24–5), to whom his ‘other holy 3 reasons’ (1.3.27) play second fiddle, discloses the carnal core 4 of Helen’s motives, first glimpsed in her ribald quibbling with 5111 Paroles about the best way a woman might lose her virginity 6 ‘to her own liking’ (1.1.140). One of Lavatch’s chief tasks as 7111 the play’s irreverent raisonneur is to flesh out its ethereal energies. 8 At the end of her round of repartee with Paroles, Helen laments 9 ‘That wishing well had not a body in’t/Which might be felt’ 1011 to aid ‘the poorer born,/Whose baser stars do shut us up in 1 wishes’ (1.1.168–70). Lavatch supplies that body to ensure that 2 the longings of ‘the poorer born’ in this play are viewed as 3111 incarnate rather than incorporeal. 4 Lavatch’s mock-religious iteration of the phrase ‘flesh and 5 blood’ (1.3.31, 41–3) in praise of cuckoldry is crowned by a 6 quip that seeks common ground between the rival tribes of 7 Christianity while debunking the divisiveness of both: ‘For 8 young Chairbonne the puritan and old Poisson the papist, 9 howsome’er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads 20111 are both one: they may jowl horns together like any deer i’th’ 1 herd’ (1.3.45–8). Shortly afterwards, Lavatch tacks another 2 poke at the Puritans onto an ironic exclamation that spotlights 3 the anti-patriarchal thrust of the plot: ‘That man should be at 4 woman’s command, and yet no hurt done! Though honesty 5 be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice 6 of humility over the black gown of a big heart’ (1.3.81–4). 7 When the Countess upbraids her fool for being ‘a foul-mouthed 8 and calumnious knave’, he protests that he is ‘A prophet’, 9 adding ‘and I speak the truth the next way’ (1.3.51–2). In one 30111 sense he speaks the truth anything but ‘the next way’, prefer- 1 ring the byways of obliquity to the highway of blunt statement. 2 But in another sense he does deal directly with issues of which 3 the play he glosses fights shy. He is thus like a prophet in his 4 role as revealer of concealed truths, but he also has the vatic 5 task of foreshadowing the ultimate objective of the play. 6 Consider, for example, the next encounter between the 7 Countess and the Clown, which supplants the miraculous 8 curing of the King. While Helen rejuvenates her monarch off- 9 stage, the Countess puts Lavatch to the proof of his boast that 40111 he has ‘an answer will serve all men’ (2.2.11–12). The basic 4111 butt of Lavatch’s ridicule is the vacuous idiolect of the fatuous 42 Kiernan Ryan

1111 courtier, anxious to deflect questions with his catch-all cry, 2 ‘O Lord, sir!’ (2.2.36). But the torrent of gross analogies the 3 Clown unleashes to commend this reply – ‘as the nun’s lip to 4 the friar’s mouth, nay as the pudding to his skin’ (2.2.22–3) – 5111 insinuates that the sovereign’s virility is what is really at stake 6 in the occluded scene. Moreover, these lewd shafts of plebeian 17 derision are fired at the court from a standpoint that collapses 8 class distinctions in the name of universal community. The 9 answer that will serve all men ‘is like a barber’s chair that fits 1011 all buttocks’ (2.2.14), says Lavatch. ‘From beyond your duke to 1 beneath your constable, it will fit any question’ (2.2.26–7). The 2 whole scene synchronizes, and thus conflates, the miracle that 3111 empowers the poor doctor’s girl with the utopian materialism 4 of Lavatch’s comic fantasy. 5 Two scenes later, the misprized maid and the lugubrious 6 fool are overtly allied, when it is Helen’s turn to prompt Lavatch 7 to worry the word ‘well’ to death, this time by inquiring of the 8 Countess, ‘Is she well?’ The two reasons why ‘she’s not very 19 well’ despite being ‘very well indeed’ are, Lavatch explains: 20111 ‘One that she’s not in heaven, whither God send her quickly. 1 The other, that she’s in earth, from whence God send her 2 3 quickly’ (2.4.1, 9–11). The Clown’s equivocation warns us again 4 to treat the term ‘well’ in the titular proverb, and in Helen’s 5 repeated appeals to it, with the utmost circumspection. But it 6 also adapts a routine piety to vent an aggressive contemptus mundi 7 on the Countess. This subterranean strain of class animosity 8 camouflaged as Christianity becomes more salient as the play 9 proceeds. It peaks in Lavatch’s sermon joyeux to his betters on 30111 ‘the prince of darkness, alias the devil’ (4.5.36–7), who is, the 1 fool informs Lafeu, ‘as great a prince as you are’ (30–1): 2 3 I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great fire, 4 and the master I speak of ever keeps a good fire. But since 5 he is the prince of the world, let the nobility remain in’s 6 court; I am for the house with the narrow gate, which I 7 take to be too little for pomp to enter. Some that humble 8 themselves may, but the many will be too chill and tender, 9 and they’ll be for the flow’ry way that leads to the broad 40111 gate and the great fire. 4111 (40–6) ‘Where hope is coldest’ 43 1111 It is no coincidence that Helen’s comic counterpart enlists 2 Matthew 7:13–14 – ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is 3 the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction’ – 4 to launch his final attack on ‘pomp’ and ‘nobility’ in the name 5111 of the ‘humble’ just as the ‘poor unlearnèd virgin’ (1.3.226) 6 and her female companions are converging on Roussillon to 7111 rout the noble lord who abhors her. 8 9 1011 III 1 2 Lavatch binds the numinous vision of All’s Well That Ends Well 3111 to the materialist critique of rank and patriarchy that shadows 4 it. He embodies the points at which the transcendental and 5 the terrestrial, the yearnings of the soul and the claims of the 6 body, fuse in a perspective that incorporates both. All’s Well 7 understands that the miraculous is meaningless unless it is made 8 flesh through the transmutation of human lives in the material 9 world of history. It is equally adamant, however, that sheer 20111 materialism, bereft of the spiritual and the prospect of trans- 1 cendence, immures men and women in a retrospective present, 2 from which all hope of transfiguration has been banished. 3 But if Lavatch highlights the alliance of radical humanism 4 and religion that turns All’s Well into a materialist miracle play, 5 he also bears witness to the anger and hostility that animate 6 that alliance, to the dark side of the dream of Shakespearean 7 comedy. Like its predecessors and successors in the canon, All’s 8 Well whets our hunger for a new dispensation and excites our 9 hope that it can be created, that what we have been told is 30111 unattainable is within our reach. It does so through a theatrical 1 parable in which a poor, despised woman overcomes social 2 and sexual prejudice and fulfils her heart’s desire with the help 3 of other women. At the same time, All’s Well is acutely aware 4 that the spirit of utopia that possesses it and procures its 5 radiant denouement must also be as ruthless as the hope that 6 spurs it on. 7 Helen hints as much when she tells the King, ‘Oft 8 expectation fails, and most oft there/Where most it promises, 9 and oft it hits/Where hope is coldest and despair most fits’, 40111 which suggests that hope is strongest not only at its lowest ebb, 4111 but also at its most cold-blooded. The most revealing remark 44 Kiernan Ryan 1111 in this regard is made by Lafeu. Immediately after the curing 2 of the King, as we have seen, Lafeu decries those ‘philosoph- 3 ical persons’ who ‘say miracles are past’ and attempt to explain 4 away ‘things supernatural and causeless’. But his next sentence 5111 makes clear that by miracles Lafeu means something quite 6 different from comforting proof of divine providence: ‘Hence 17 is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into 8 seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an 9 unknown fear’ (2.3.3–5). With these words an abyss opens 1011 beneath the comedy that Lafeu’s resort to pious platitudes 1 cannot close. Lafeu’s reflection invites us to wonder whether 2 our true response to miracles should be terrified submission to 3111 a nameless fear of the unknown. However benign its effects may 4 be, a miracle is also a form of terrorism, an arbitrary manifesta- 5 tion of omnipotence, before which mere mortals are helpless. 6 The miraculous is autocratic and coercive: it brooks neither 7 doubt nor discussion, but imposes its will by pure force. 8 The ‘sweet practiser’ who performs the miracles of healing 19 and reunion in All’s Well achieves her goal, after all, through 20111 blind obsession and the inflexible exertion of her will. That 1 much she makes plain in the lines that close the first scene of 2 the play: ‘The King’s disease – my project may deceive me,/ 3 But my intents are fixed and will not leave me’ (1.1.211–12). 4 She saves the King, whose doctors could not save him, not for 5 the King’s sake, but as a means to secure the power to make 6 Bertram marry her. The suppressed ferocity of the heroine 7 beatified by Coleridge as Shakespeare’s ‘loveliest character’ 8 (Coleridge 1930: 113) and praised by Hazlitt for her ‘great 9 sweetness and delicacy’ (Hazlitt 1930: 329) suffuses the speech 30111 in which she stakes her life: 1 2 Tax of impudence, 3 A strumpet’s boldness, a divulgèd shame; 4 Traduced by odious ballads, my maiden’s name 5 Seared otherwise, nay – worse of worst – extended 6 With vilest torture let my life be ended. 7 (2.1.169–73) 8 9 Bertram’s public and private revulsion from his wife – he cannot 40111 even stoop to kiss her goodbye – leaves Helen wounded but 4111 fundamentally undaunted and finally determined to exact by ‘Where hope is coldest’ 45 1111 guile what Bertram refuses to give freely. That her gratuitous 2 passion for Bertram remains unreciprocated does not restrain 3 her from duping him into cementing their marriage by means 4 of what she admits is ‘a wicked act’ and ‘a sinful fact’ 5111 (3.7.46, 47). 6 Helen comforts herself and her accomplices by quoting the 7111 play’s title, inflating it by rephrasing it until it fills a couplet: 8 ‘All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown./Whate’er 9 the course, the end is the renown’ (4.4.35–6). But, however 1011 often she recites her mantra, it cannot disguise the fact that 1 her ‘course’ has been to fake her own death and practise a 2 grotesque deceit on a man constrained to wed her. When she 3111 next invokes the adage, she glances directly at the dubiousness 4 of her methods: ‘All’s well that ends well yet,/Though time 5 seem so adverse, and means unfit’ (5.1.27–8). And she returns 6 a few lines later to pick compulsively at the word that troubles 7 her as much as ‘well’ nettles Lavatch: ‘I will come after you 8 with what good speed/Our means will make us means’ 9 (5.1.36–7). For once, Hazlitt could not have been wider of the 20111 mark when he insisted: ‘There is not one thought or action 1 that ought to bring a blush to her cheeks, or that for a moment 2 lessens her in our esteem’ (Hazlitt 1930: 329). 3 Even after she has brought Bertram to heel and the comedy 4 to a close, Helen’s repressed rage still resonates in her final 5 speech: ‘If it appear not plain and prove untrue,/Deadly 6 divorce step between me and you’ (5.3.314–15). The unpalat- 7 able truth of the matter is that the miracle play of All’s Well 8 cradles a revenge comedy fuelled by ressentiment. If Helen is 9 an angel of redemption, she is also an avenging angel, an 30111 implacable base-born fury unleashed on Bertram, the arrogant 1 ruling-class rake, to pursue him the way men pursue women, 2 and to make him pay for refusing to love her by lashing him 3 to her forever. Alongside its more uplifting satisfactions, All’s 4 Well offers us the unsavoury pleasure of seeing Bertram 5 bamboozled and brought to his knees by a woman who had 6 her breeding at his father’s charge. 7 In his commentary on the play, Dr Johnson wrote: 8 9 I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram, a man noble without 40111 generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helen as 4111 a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead 46 Kiernan Ryan 1111 by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, 2 is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends 3 himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness. 4 ( Johnson 1968: 404) 5111 6 But part of the point of Bertram’s undesirability is to expose 17 the callous indifference of Helen’s desire as she hunts down 8 and corners her aristocratic quarry. As Johnson’s superb phrase 9 ‘dismissed to happiness’ suggests, Bertram’s feelings are of no 1011 consequence to his persecutor or the playwright. Bertram 1 is not there, as sentimental moralists suppose, to be redeemed 2 by love, but to be unmanned and unmasked as a despicable 3111 object of undeserved love. The trapping and humiliation of 4 Bertram’s partner in crime, Paroles, are cross-cut with Bertram’s 5 seduction by Diana and the bed-trick to hammer the point 6 home. The prolonging of Bertram’s torment in the final scene, 7 where he is arrested on suspicion of murdering Helen and 8 publicly shamed as a lewd, spineless liar, puts the punitive 19 aspect of Helen’s plot beyond doubt. 20111 Thinking of All’s Well as a social and sexual revenge 1 comedy, in which the epitome of patrician misogyny gets his 2 comeuppance, throws light on the Countess’s cryptic remark 3 about Helen early on in the play, a remark that proves as 4 prophetic as the gnomic wisecracks of her fool: ‘she herself 5 without other advantage may lawfully make title to as much 6 love as she finds. There is more owing her than is paid, and 7 more shall be paid her than she’ll demand’ (1.3.90–2). How 8 deeply or consciously Shakespeare identified with Helen must 9 remain speculative. But it does not seem too far-fetched to 30111 surmise that the glove-maker’s lad from the sticks who con- 1 quered the London stage, won the patronage of the Crown, 2 acquired a coat of arms, and – as the Sonnets attest – knew 3 the pain of loving ‘a bright particular star’ out of his orbit, had 4 good grounds for empathizing with his heroine’s plight and 5 her nailing of Bertram through her own native wit. This surmise 6 is strengthened by the care the dramatist takes to insulate 7 Helen from the slur of vulgar opportunism and vindictiveness 8 her actions threaten to attract. She is partly immunized by her 9 portrayal as a seraphic alien from the parallel universe of folk 40111 myth. But she is doubly indemnified by the presence in the 4111 play of Paroles, who is, like Helen’s other secret self, Lavatch, ‘Where hope is coldest’ 47 1111 a character wholly of Shakespeare’s invention. A brazen arriviste 2 parasitically attached to Bertram, Paroles is coupled with Helen 3 from their saucy banter about virginity in the first scene to his 4 vital betrayal of Bertram in the final moments of the play. 5111 The animus Helen’s transgressive triumph might arouse, 6 and whatever guilt Shakespeare felt for letting her flout rank 7111 and female decorum, are deflected onto the fawning upstart, 8 Paroles. Hence the King’s scolding of Bertram for snobbery 9 and demand that he marry Helen are followed by Lafeu’s 1011 vitriolic abuse of the bogus gallant, on whom the play can 1 discharge its covert aversion to its heroine. And when Paroles 2 is baited and crushed by his fellow soldiers, his affliction serves 3111 not only as a mirror of Bertram’s fate at Diana’s hands, but 4 also as a punishment of Helen by proxy for what she achieves 5 with impunity. If Lavatch unlocks the utopian import of Helen’s 6 apotheosis, then Paroles is the lightning rod for the loathing 7 the parvenu inspires in any hierarchical culture. That Paroles, 8 as his name proclaims, is also the personification of the words 9 the play is forged from makes clear, moreover, the complicity 20111 of the wordsmith himself in the coercive wiles of All’s Well. In 1 so far as Shakespeare perceives in Helen and Paroles caricatures 2 of his own ambition and the art by which he achieved it, 3 his portrayal of ‘the manifold linguist’ (4.3.224) and ‘double- 4 meaning prophesier’ (4.3.96) as ‘A very tainted fellow, and full 5 of wickedness’ (3.2.87) speaks volumes about what comedy has 6 obliged his language to connive in. 7 In the end, in spite of his collusion with her, Shakespeare’s 8 thaumaturgic heroine cannot remain unsoiled by the world in 9 which she works her miracles. Nor can the utopian spirit and 30111 the principle of hope she embodies escape contamination 1 by the culture of division, subjection and injustice they seek to 2 destroy. On the contrary, as the creatures of that culture they 3 leave the imprint of its violence and malice on every scene 4 of All’s Well That Ends Well, as it broods on the means and 5 ends of human happiness. Even the perfunctory formalities 6 of farewell are infected: ‘I grow to you,’ Bertram assures his 7 comrades, ‘And our parting is a tortured body’ (2.1.36–7). The 8 play whose title acknowledges the devil’s deal struck by comedy 9 knows the cost of the providential closure it contrives, and 40111 incriminates itself by virtue of the language it commands. If 4111 the ‘blessèd spirit’ that the King hears speak ‘His powerful 48 Kiernan Ryan 1111 sound within an organ weak’ is Shakespeare, so is the demonic 2 dramatist who stalks All’s Well, making it a thing of darkness 3 as well as a child of light. 4 That dramatist ensures that disavowal is not an option for 5111 the play’s spectators either, by hooking them into its utopian 6 realism. Helen herself reminds us not only that the fulfilment 17 of her fantasy is double-edged, but also that it hangs by a 8 syllable, by a single thread of the language disparaged in the 9 figure of Paroles: 1011 1 Yet, I pray you – 2 But with that word the time will bring on summer, 3111 When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns, 4 And be as sweet as sharp. 5 (4.4.30–3) 6 7 ‘Yet’ is made to bear enormous weight here, as both adverb 8 and conjunction, for it stresses the play’s unresolved openness 19 to the future in which it places its faith, and asks us to place 20111 ours. The fragility of the resolution is accentuated by an equally 1 potent slip of a word, ‘if’, which fronts its conditional clauses, 2 as in Bertram’s last lines: ‘If she, my liege, can make me know 3 this clearly/I’ll love her dearly, ever ever dearly’ (5.3.312–13). 4 Indeed, ‘yet’ and ‘if’ team up in the final couplet of the comedy, 5 spoken by the King, to strand the ending in the subjunctive 6 mood, at the mercy of reversal: 7 8 All yet seems well; and if it end so meet, 9 The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. 30111 (5.3.329–30) 1 2 The axiomatic truth maintained by the title is betrayed by 3 deferral and exposed as a hypothesis, whose validity only the 4 future beyond the play can verify. 5 That future belongs to the world the audience inhabits, as 6 the Epilogue, addressed to us by the actor who has played the 7 King, compels us to recognize: 8 9 The King’s a beggar now the play is done. 40111 All is well ended if this suit be won: 4111 That you express content, which we will pay ‘Where hope is coldest’ 49 1111 With strife to please you, day exceeding day. 2 Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts: 3 Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts. 4 (Epil., 1–6) 5111 6 The first line dissolves the difference between beggar and king 7111 in the democratic spirit by which the King of this comedy has 8 been possessed. Then the second line recycles the penultimate 9 line of the play, but this time to snare the spectators in its 1011 circumspect syntax and the dilemmas it has dramatized. The 1 Epilogue makes the audience – and all the audiences that will 2 succeed it – accountable for the satisfactory resolution of what 3111 it has witnessed. It redefines ending well as an unending 4 endeavour, stretching off into an indefinite future: ‘which we 5 will pay/With strife to please you, day exceeding day’. And 6 the closing couplet leaves us in command of that endeavour 7 by reversing the roles of actors and audience. It puts us on the 8 stage in their place with their hearts, and turns them into 9 witnesses of our struggle to make their fairy tale come true. 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 2 6 17 Harry’s (in)human face 8 David Ruiter 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 Harry, Prince Hal, Henry V: he’s quite a character. And in 2 the end – whereas many of Shakespeare’s principals trespass 3 strangely into the sphere of the human – a character is all Hal 4 becomes. This chapter examines him through two philosoph- 5 ical lenses: the first provided by Martin Buber’s paradigm 6 of the “I-You, I-It” duality of human, relational existence, and 7 the second taken from Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of “face” 8 and “character.” Both of these theories, Levinas’ knowingly 9 following Buber’s, understand humanity and the possible 30111 creation of authentic human existence in terms of relational 1 opportunity and responsibility. My main aim is simply to see 2 how Hal/Henry V relates to others – even to “the Other.” I 3 start with his easily overlooked dealings with Francis, the 4 apprentice drawer at the tavern, whose limited but repeated 5 appearance in the Henry IV plays provides a template upon 6 which to begin mapping the Prince’s relational life, which is 7 what life essentially – yes, essentially – is according to Buber 8 and Levinas. Ethics for these thinkers has a numinous coloring. 9 As what is other to habitually selfish life and what is ultimately 40111 significant and valuable, it is, to use the terms of this volume, 4111 their version of spirituality.1 Harry’s (in)human face 51 1111 Most critics who examine Hal ultimately determine whether 2 he treats Falstaff ethically, especially when the newly crowned 3 Henry V chooses a very public rejection for the fat knight. We 4 learn later that this rejection “kills” Falstaff (Henry V, 2.1.110ff., 5111 4.7.37ff.), but the same act seems to open the door for the 6 new, improved Hal to become “the mirror of all Christian 7111 kings” (Henry V, 2.0.6). Of course, the rejection of Falstaff, no 8 matter how one views it, is just one moment in Hal’s dramatic 9 life, but that it is traditionally taken to be the moment is a 1011 reminder that we are compellingly confronted with the ethics 1 of Shakespeare’s plays and with the ethical choices of Prince 2 Hal in particular.2 3111 Paul Dean writes: 4 5 Shakespeare seems to show, in the Histories, and above all 6 in the figure of Prince Hal in Henry IV and Henry V, some- 7 thing contrary to the determinism of contemporary theory: 8 that it is what we do and wish to be which shapes the 9 universe we live in. 20111 (1997: 35) 1 2 Individual identity is more complex than simply the “is” and 3 “was” of existence. It entails the hope of what “could be” and 4 even the wish to live up to what “should be.” These aspira- 5 tions are achieved or fail in action – with, as Dean emphasizes, 6 real consequences for the world. Criticism should pay heed to 7 Hugh Grady’s recommendation of a more “Machiavellian” 8 understanding of character, which begins with what characters 9 are rather than what they should be.3 But Shakespeare drama- 30111 tizes Hal’s potential for becoming something else, for finding 1 the ethical mode which is, as Levinas would say, “otherwise 2 than being” (Levinas 1981). I will describe Hal’s relational exist- 3 ence as it is before going on to what should be, but “could” 4 and “should” do become inevitable because seeing Hal’s ethical 5 potentiality creates a reasonable curiosity as to whether and 6 how that potential will be realized, which contributes richly 7 and involvingly to the drama. 8 As mentioned, I use the Hal–Francis relationship as a 9 foundation for my argument. The ordinariness of Hal’s contact 40111 with a barman seems to me especially revealing of his ethical 4111 and even spiritual conditions: another main contention of this 52 David Ruiter 1111 chapter is – God is or isn’t in the details, as it were. There 2 has been a relative abundance of criticism on the basic (ir)rele- 3 vance of the short scenes with Hal and Francis. For example, 4 several critics, including Fredson Bowers (1975–6: 18–20), 5111 Joseph Porter (1979: 69–70), J. McLaverty (1981: 107), and Lois 6 Potter (1999: 289–90) see Francis as relevant in the sense that 17 he is a representation, in miniature, of Hotspur, because of the 8 linguistic monotony each demonstrates – Francis shouting, 9 “Anon, anon,” and Hotspur equally committed to repeating 1011 the name “Mortimer”; thus both appear to be single- and 1 simple-minded in comparison to Hal. J. D. Shuchter offers a 2 more elaborate comparison, one that shows Francis as a puny 3111 Hal in his paralysis created by “conflicting obligations,” and 4 as a tiny Hotspur in terms of his potential rebellion against a 5 master (1968: 130). In each of these cases, Francis is inter- 6 preted as a figure for someone else. G. L. Kittredge sees the 7 relationship between the waiter and the Prince as essentially 8 pointless, except in terms of fun (in Bowers 1975–6: 139). 19 Eugene Wright, similarly, sees the Francis scenes as aesthetic- 20111 ally useless, except for filling time until Falstaff arrives (1975–6: 1 65–7). More pertinently to my emphasis on relationship and 2 responsibility, Stephen Greenblatt sees significance in the histor- 3 ical politics of the interaction, writing, “the prince is implicated 4 in the production of this oppressive order [and] in the impulse 5 to abrogate it” in his conversation with Francis (1985: 44). Also 6 speaking historically, Charles Whitney asks, “what does the 7 truant Prince Hal have in common with the many apprentices 8 who in the 1590’s were regularly committed to Bridewell for 9 tavern-haunting?” (1999: 455). But Greenblatt and Whitney 30111 take it for granted that Francis has no interest in himself, which 1 is ethically and politically questionable and which, I argue, is 2 precisely what is at stake in Hal’s reactions to him. 3 4 When we first encounter Prince Hal in the Boar’s Head 5 Tavern, he is aglow with enthusiasm for his newly established 6 relationship with the “drawers,” the tavern’s apprentice tapsters 7 and waiters (1 Henry IV, 2.5). It is a complex moment dramatic- 8 ally, partly because the Prince is discussing his relationship to 9 his supposed social and political inferiors, the drawers, with 40111 another of his supposed inferiors, Poins. Moreover, the discus- 4111 sion occurs after Hal has delivered his “I know you all, and Harry’s (in)human face 53 1111 will awhile uphold/The unyoked humour of your idleness” 2 speech, in which he promises to use the Boar’s Head com- 3 munity – including Poins and Falstaff – for political advantage 4 (1.2.173–95). These factors complicate what can be gathered 5111 about Hal’s relationships from the following lines. He says that 6 he’s been: 7111 8 With three or four loggerheads amongst three or fourscore 9 hogsheads. I have sounded the very bass-string of humility. 1011 Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can 1 call them all by their christen names, as “Tom”, “Dick”, 2 and “Francis”. They take it already, upon their salvation, 3111 that though I be but Prince of Wales yet I am the king of 4 courtesy, and tell me flatly I am no proud jack like Falstaff, 5 but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy – by the 6 Lord, so they call me; and when I am King of England 7 I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap. They 8 call drinking deep “dyeing scarlet”, and when you breathe 9 in your watering they cry “Hem!” and bid you “Play it 20111 off!” To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter 1 of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own 2 language during my life. I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost 3 much honour that thou wert not with me in this action. 4 But, sweet Ned – to sweeten which name of Ned I give 5 thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapped even now into my 6 hand by an underskinker, one that never spake other 7 English in his life than “Eight shillings and sixpence”, and 8 “You are welcome”, with this shrill addition, “Anon, 9 anon, sir! Score a pint of bastard in the Half-Moon!” or 30111 so. But, Ned, to drive away the time till Falstaff come, I 1 prithee do thou stand in some by-room, while I question 2 my puny drawer to what end he gave me the sugar, and 3 do thou never leave calling “Francis!”, that his tale to me 4 may be nothing but “Anon!” Step aside, and I’ll show thee 5 a precedent. 6 (2.5.4–29) 7 8 The Prince speaks first of some “loggerheads”, but he then 9 potentially gives the members of that group personal identi- 40111 ties, calling them by their supposed “christen names of ‘Tom’, 4111 ‘Dick’, and ‘Francis’.” There is a question, of course, as 54 David Ruiter 1111 to whether “Tom” and “Dick” are the actual names of the 2 other apprentices, or whether the Prince is jocularly using an 3 identity-denying cliché – every “Tom, Dick, and Harry” – but 4 substituting the name of the actual “Francis” for his own, as 5111 Kiernan Ryan suggests (1995: 108).4 On the other hand, at 6 least one of the trio, Francis – the very one who breaks the 17 “Tom, Dick, and Harry” cliché – is in the tavern and will 8 shortly appear. Hal’s throwaway line seems casually to credit 9 the possibility of Francis’ singularity at the same time as it 1011 undermines it. 1 In his complicated attempts to establish his own identity in 2 relation to Francis and the drawers, Hal fluctuates between 3111 two relational positions that exemplify precisely the dialectical 4 condition that Martin Buber describes as inherent to human, 5 relational existence. Hal is demonstrably “human” in Buber’s 6 terms; however, despite the Prince’s seeming desire to relate 7 in the mode of what Buber calls the “I-You,” he fails really to 8 acknowledge Francis. And his bluff contempt for supposed 19 inferiors surely rebounds on Poins; in fact, in calling Poins 20111 “Ned,” Hal again signals the particular and generic identity 1 of one of his Boar’s Head associates, as “Ned” is both an abbre- 2 viation of “Edward” and a general label for a petty criminal.5 3 Recognition of and responsibility for the Other is what Levinas 4 posits as necessary for the achievement of ethical subjectivity. 5 While Hal manages to demonstrate his human potential 6 through his dual attitude to others throughout the Second 7 Henriad, his being human is frustratingly impeded by his failure 8 to fulfill the ethical life he can imagine and has opportunity to 9 attain. The pathos of this is not blunted but sharpened by the 30111 humdrum quality of a barroom encounter, which suggests that 1 the most important issues of human ethics and ontology are 2 dramatized and decided in the infinite series of forgettable 3 moments that comprise the everyday. 4 After naming the drawers, Hal sways again towards the 5 conglomerate perspective of apprenticeship, repeatedly refer- 6 ring to the drawers as “they” – “so they call me,” “They call 7 drinking deep ‘dying scarlet’,” etc. But even while speaking of 8 the apprentices en bloc, Hal seems genuinely excited by the 9 sense that the experiences he shares with them prove his ability 40111 to relate: “To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one 4111 quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own Harry’s (in)human face 55 1111 language during my life.”6 But this enthusiasm is complicated, 2 most notably when Hal says: 3 4 They take it already, upon their salvation, that though I 5111 be but Prince of Wales yet I am the king of courtesy, and 6 tell me flatly I am no proud jack like Falstaff, but a 7111 Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy – by the Lord, so 8 they call me; and when I am King of England I shall 9 command all the good lads in Eastcheap. 1011 1 The apprentices’ appraisal of Hal as being “a lad of mettle, a 2 good boy” might be authentic praise or simple flattery; either 3111 way, Hal appears to take it as an extended hand, an invita- 4 tion to join their group. But if it is such an invitation – rather 5 than just a means of enjoying an evening on the Prince’s tab, 6 utilization of others not being exclusively available to the power- 7 ful, as Nina Levine makes clear (Levine 2000: 414–15) – Hal 8 nonetheless sees the apprentices’ utility to him. The serious- 9 ness of his apparent casualness is always explicitly an issue after 20111 “I know you all” (1.2.173–95) and here it emerges powerfully, 1 even brutally. Says Hal in effect, “I am Prince of Wales; while 2 I drink with them, they think that I am a good boy and a peer 3 of sorts: all the better to rule them with – when I am King I 4 will command such ‘good lads’ as these”. As Jeffrey Knapp 5 demonstrates, this political method contrasts starkly with that 6 of Henry IV: 7 8 While Hal’s father Henry IV ineffectually struggles to 9 resolve “intestine” conflict by reminding his people of the 30111 Crusades and their lapsed duty to Christendom, Hal finds 1 companionship in an alehouse, and then finds a way 2 through the alehouse to rid England of civil war, recover 3 its empire, and strike a “Christian-like accord” with France 4 – all as the “king of good fellows.” 5 (Knapp 2002: 57) 6 7 Here, Hal’s method is only beginning to take shape, but it does 8 appear to be working: the “good lads” name him a “good 9 boy”; he places them as affectionate future subjects.7 40111 However, as soon as we realize the political benefits of 4111 Hal’s relationship with this group, he turns his attention to one 56 David Ruiter 1111 of its individual members. Only at this moment do we realize 2 for sure that “Tom-Dick-and-Francis” is not simply a mocking 3 cliché for the apprentices, but that there is an actual “Francis” 4 at work in the Boar’s Head; this same Francis will also be the 5111 butt of Hal’s attempted joke. Shortly, the Prince calls Francis 6 to his table and seems to take an interest in him – asking how 17 much time remains to serve out the terms of his apprentice- 8 ship, suggesting that Francis might be interested in breaking 9 this bond and running away, inquiring after the waiter’s age 1011 (2.5.37–49). Hal even promises extraordinarily generous reci- 1 procation for the gift of the sugar, saying, “but hark you, 2 Francis. For the sugar thou gavest me, ’twas a pennyworth, 3111 was’t not? [. . .] I will give thee for it a thousand pound. Ask 4 me when thou wilt, and thou shalt have it” (2.5.53–7). 5 This promise is fraught with difficulties of the kind that 6 Ken Jackson, building on the work of Marcel Mauss (1990) 7 and Coppélia Kahn (1987), discusses in his thoughtful essay 8 on Timon of Athens (2001). The reader might be willing to see 19 Hal’s apparently absurd generosity as matching that which 20111 Francis has shown; that is, given their economic difference, a 1 pennyworth of sugar to Francis may be similar to a thousand 2 pounds to the Prince. Or perhaps Hal’s generosity should be 3 seen as ethically and impressively excessive. But the economic 4 difference between prince and waiter is nonetheless highlighted, 5 and maybe even aggressively, as Hal not only makes the offer, 6 but also suggests the ease with which he can produce such a 7 handsome sum by encouraging the waiter to come and ask for 8 the thousand pounds at any time. Jackson would likely see this 9 gesture as an example of Mauss’s concept of “potlatching,” 30111 whereby a chief would provide a huge gift in order to “prevent 1 any reciprocation and establish his superiority [. . .] by demon- 2 strating his different social position in the exchange network” 3 (2001: 38). In this case, the fact that Hal (Big-Chief-in-Waiting) 4 doesn’t even produce the actual gift but only the offer of the 5 gift (a sort of rain check) turns Francis from a free gift-giving 6 agent into a supplicant; and it potentially subjects the waiter 7 to scorn and humiliation for believing a joke to be an honest 8 offer. This is not to suggest that Francis’ “gift” is entirely free 9 of “economy” – a situation Jacques Derrida argues is logically 40111 impossible (in Caputo 1997b: 140–51) and Ivo Kamps, relying 4111 on Marx, demonstrates to be historically so (1996: 96). But it Harry’s (in)human face 57 1111 would seem that we are encouraged to see Hal’s gift as 2 significantly poorer than the tapster’s.8 3 Still, Francis appears to take the Prince’s questions and offer 4 at face value, which only makes him all the more confused 5111 when Hal begins speaking his “leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, 6 knot-pated” nonsense (2.5.64–6). When the bewildered waiter 7111 asks what Hal means, the Prince roughly reminds him of his 8 subordinate position, saying, “Away, you rogue! Dost thou not 9 hear them call?” (2.5.73). Hal here treats Francis with the 1011 contempt of a royal customer towards an apprentice waiter. 1 When he next calls the waiter, Hal receives the customary, 2 waiterly response of, “Anon, anon, sir!” (2.5.90). This comment 3111 concludes the Hal–Francis interaction in 1 Henry IV with the 4 relational positions of each apparently clarified: Francis is the 5 waiter, Hal the master. 6 To summarize, in fewer than a hundred lines of text, Hal 7 happily describes his relationship with the drawers, makes clear 8 their political utility, enters into personal conversation with 9 Francis, then treats him in a manner that clarifies the difference 20111 between royal customer and apprentice waiter. The dramatic 1 situation is brief, involves four speakers (Hal, Poins, Francis, 2 and the vintner), is all prose, and is certainly not sentimental 3 moralizing; instead, it has both the tone and the significance 4 of real speech, of everyday language, right down to the barroom 5 specifics of drink orders and seating arrangements. Yet the lines 6 also repeatedly evoke the difference between treating others as 7 subjective individuals or as objects to be used for one’s own 8 advantage. I am arguing that the passage is, perhaps para- 9 doxically, more ethically compelling because it doesn’t involve 30111 any extraordinary “fear and trembling.” We can recognize 1 ourselves in this exchange, and in the ethics of casualness, of 2 relaxation, of contingent rather than ultimate situations that 3 define our lives. I also suggest that if any spiritual issues can 4 be shown to hang on Hal’s failed barroom joke, then spiritu- 5 ality may be more of an issue in ordinary life than we might 6 think. 7 At the end of these lines, it seems that Hal withdraws into 8 a view of Francis as a bought man rather than an individual. 9 But such a view will not hold entirely because Francis appears 40111 again in 2 Henry IV (2.4), and again he alone receives special 4111 attention as the only named person in a group of three drawers. 58 David Ruiter 1111 Though Hal this time does not exchange words with Francis, 2 he does borrow the waiter’s uniform and attempts to fill 3 Francis’ position. That is, Hal attempts in some way to be Francis 4 – though less than successfully. In this second situation, in which 5111 Francis again appears as individual and as member of the 6 apprenticeship conglomerate, the text explicitly replays Hal’s 17 dual attitude as if to underline that Hal’s relationship with 8 the apprentices, and with Francis in particular, is not reducible 9 to a single orientation. 1011 1 Prince Hal and Buber’s “I-You” paradigm 2 3111 Martin Buber’s I and Thou provides a helpful basic construct 4 by which to understand the natures of Hal’s relationships with 5 Francis and others.9 In his opening line – “The world is two- 6 fold for man in accordance with his twofold attitude” (Buber 7 1970: 53) – Buber suggests that humans live, essentially, in two 8 relational positions – the position of “experience/utility,” which 19 he characterizes as the “I-It,” and that of true relationship, 20111 which he calls the “I-You.” These positions are distinct but 1 are also simultaneously at work. The “I-It” position, says Buber, 2 is realized when a person 3 4 perceives the being that surrounds him, plain things and 5 beings as things; he perceives what happens around him, 6 plain processes and actions as processes, things that consist 7 of qualities and processes that consist of moments, things 8 recorded in terms of spatial coordinates and processes 9 recorded in terms of temporal coordinates, things and pro- 30111 cesses that are bounded by other things and processes and 1 capable of being measured against and compared with 2 those others – an ordered world, a detached world. This 3 world is somewhat reliable; it has density and duration; its 4 articulation can be surveyed; one can get it out again and 5 again; one recounts it with one’s eyes closed and then 6 checks with one’s eyes open. 7 (82) 8 9 This “I-It” position, I suggest, is the one from which Hal 40111 formulates his prodigal-prince-to-powerful-king prognostica- 4111 tion early in 1 Henry IV, and it is also from this relational Harry’s (in)human face 59 1111 position that Hal understands the political value of his 2 association with the apprentices as a group. The world is an 3 objective reality outside himself that Hal is going to refashion 4 for his own purposes. But that is not quite the whole story of 5111 the way he relates to the apprentices, as we have seen. 6 The “I-You” position is much different. Buber says that in 7111 this attitude a person 8 9 encounters being and becoming as what confronts him – 1011 always only one being and every thing only as a being. 1 What is there reveals itself to him in the occurrence, and 2 what occurs there happens to him as being. [. . .] The 3111 encounters do not order themselves to become a world, 4 but each is for you a sign of the world order. They have 5 no association with each other, but every one guarantees 6 your association with the world. The world that appears to 7 you in this way is unreliable, for it appears always new 8 to you, and you cannot take it by its word. [. . .] It cannot 9 be surveyed: if you try to make it surveyable, you lose it. 20111 [. . .] It does not stand outside you, it touches your ground; 1 [. . .] you can make it into an object for you and experi- 2 ence and use it – you must do that again and again – and 3 then you have no present any more. Between you and it 4 there is reciprocity of giving. 5 (83–4, Buber’s italics) 6 7 The shift from “him” to “you” exemplifies the interplay between 8 the two positions Buber describes. The “I-You” position is 9 evident in Hal’s questions regarding Francis’ apprenticeship 30111 and in his promised reciprocation for Francis’ gift of the sugar; 1 as seen in the quotation earlier, reciprocity of giving is, in fact, 2 the central ethical component of Buber’s “I-You” construction. 3 I suggested that Francis’ confusion results largely from his belief 4 in the authenticity of this aspect of his relationship with the 5 Prince. We may categorize this belief, and Francis himself, as 6 simple or even “mindless,” as does Bowers (Bowers 1975–6: 7 20). From one point of view, no doubt it is, but if we follow 8 Buber’s thought then the drawer’s belief is also indicative of 9 an ethically and existentially superior mode of being, one which 40111 stunningly reverses the positions of the prince and the pauper. 4111 Even if we choose to pass off Hal’s moment of generosity as 60 David Ruiter 1111 being ego or alcohol induced, the “I-You” position also comes 2 into view in Hal’s delight at being “sworn brothers” to the 3 drawers. Ultimately, through the seeming casualness and 4 insignificance of this dramatic moment in a pub, another 5111 dimension shows through. Our first real glimpse in this chapter, 6 perhaps, of spirit. 17 Still, it seems easy to decide that Hal’s “I-You” relationships 8 turn out to be phony or hypocritical. The shifting back and 9 forth from the personally engaged to the instrumentally polit- 1011 ical is really only symptomatic of Hal’s relationships with 1 everyone, and especially with Falstaff. But if Hal does reject 2 his “I-You” relationship with Falstaff, the Boar’s Head gang, 3111 Francis, and the drawers, then the “I-You” relationship does, 4 or at least did – or at least could – exist. I suggest that the 5 oscillation in Hal between “I-You” and “I-It,” between under- 6 standing and perhaps desiring true relationship with Francis 7 or Falstaff and utilizing them, creates a dramatic environment 8 that is less than completely, less than theoretically stable or 19 straightforward, but is convincingly, ambiguously human, in a 20111 way that would satisfy Buber.10 1 On relationship Buber writes in terms that take on a strong 2 spiritual and essentialist coloring: 3 4 [. . .] the longing for relation is primary, the cupped hand 5 into which the being that confronts us nestles; and the rela- 6 tion to that, which is a wordless anticipation of saying You, 7 comes second. [. . .] In the beginning is the relation – as 8 the category of being, as readiness, as a form that reaches 9 out to be filled, as a model of the soul, the a priori of 30111 relation; the innate You. 1 (1970: 78) 2 3 Such a desire imbues the speech I have focused on earlier. 4 Consider not only Hal’s warm exuberance, but also his value- 5 laden, sometimes explicitly spiritual diction: “humility,” “sworn 6 brother,” “christen,” “salvation,” “Corinthian,” “by the Lord,” 7 “drink with any tinker in his own language.” All of these 8 words and phrases are suggestive of relationship. For example, 9 brotherhood is a form of, often a synecdoche for, relationship, 40111 whereas drinking with a tinker in his native tongue suggests 4111 generous, other-directed solidarity. The dramatic setting for Harry’s (in)human face 61 1111 all this, let us recall, is the Boar’s Head. In a sense, the episode 2 is absurd, as it’s doubtless meant to be. But it also suggestively 3 plants what otherwise would only be mock-pious irrelevancies 4 in the soil of real existence. Here, as I have suggested, spirituality 5111 is another dimension of ordinary life itself. 6 Significantly, Hal’s personal conversation with Francis 7111 and later borrowing of Francis’ outfit occur in the context 8 of attempted jokes, indicating that the Prince is trivializing 9 his knowledge of the “I-You” relationship and clarifying his 1011 superior position by temporarily drawing close to the drawer. 1 Nonetheless, in order to be effective, each joke involves a certain 2 emptying out of that very superiority. That is, Hal has to step 3111 down from his princely position and into the place of Francis 4 and the other drawers. In the first instance, he does this by 5 attempting to learn the loggerheads’ “language.” In Part Two, 6 Poins indicates that all that is required to change from prince 7 to apprentice is costume – “leather jerkins and aprons” – and 8 professional behavior – “wait upon [Falstaff] at his table like 9 drawers” (2.2.149–50). Hal takes note of his stepping out of 20111 position, saying, “From a God to a bull – a heavy declension 1 – it was Jove’s case. From a prince to a prentice – a low trans- 2 formation – that shall be mine; for in everything the purpose 3 must weigh with the folly” (151–4). When the Prince mentions 4 the “purpose” of the joke, he once more highlights his tendency 5 toward utilization. But Jove descended into the form of a bull 6 from desire: the comparison keeps the possibility of relation- 7 ship in play.11 And the disguise offers an image of identification 8 and solidarity. In his transformations into a sort of everyman/ 9 drawer, Hal’s attempt to utilize is mixed up with an effort and 30111 a desire to relate that lean toward ethical/spiritual possibility 1 even in the midst of self-orchestrated political history. 2 On several other occasions, Hal demonstrates this desire 3 for true relationship. We might consider three of the most 4 memorable: 5 6 • Hal’s desire for small beer (2 Henry IV, 2.2.1–23). Is the 7 draw for the Prince really toward Falstaff and the old gang 8 (and beer), or away from his troubled relationship with his 9 father and the pressing politics of the kingdom? Most likely, 40111 both are the case. Hal utilizes Falstaff and his father, but 4111 he appears to desire relationship with both. As evidence, 62 David Ruiter 1111 moments later he wishes to show concern regarding his 2 father’s illness (2.2.29–54) – a desire which Poins might 3 not see as hypocritical if only the Prince had spent time 4 administering to his relationship with his father prior to 5111 this moment when the King’s death is so fully equated with 6 Hal’s rise to power. Once again it is in the complexity, the 17 detail, the “undecidability” of this moment that its ethical 8 credibility is felt. 9 • Henry V’s pain as the result of Scroop’s betrayal (Henry V, 1011 2.2.90–141). This moment is almost shocking in its 1 re-humanization of Hal/Henry V. After the rejection of 2 Falstaff, one senses that Hal has become the “Great User,” 3111 a perspective strengthened by his spurious spiritual sanc- 4 tion for a war with France – the battle abroad that his 5 father had suggested would end the British civil war. And 6 yet, Henry V asks us to believe that he is both stunned 7 and sorrowed by the fact that Scroop attempted to “ha’ 8 practiced on [the King]” (2.2.96). He even says that 19 Scroop’s treason “is like/Another fall of man” (2.2.138–9). 20111 If the first fall of man ended the perfect relationship 1 between humans, their environment, and God, this second 2 fall perhaps indicates the King’s near despair of authentic 3 relationship even on a limited basis. But has he not himself 4 created this twice-fallen world of the Second Henriad? 5 • Still, Henry continues to try to relate, as is evinced by his 6 desire to move among the soldiers on the night before 7 Agincourt (4.1.24–211). This effort fails but merits consid- 8 eration. Henry again disguises himself and attempts to 9 communicate with the common people, as he did in don- 30111 ning Francis’ apron at the tavern, but Bates and Williams 1 remind him that the King’s politics are inextricably bound 2 up with his and their personal and spiritual relationships: 3 if they die, they will leave wives and children behind, and 4 the King will be responsible. Henry strains to deny this 5 responsibility, but the burden of their words stays with him. 6 He cannot reach them, cannot authentically relate to them, 7 because he’s already using them for his kingly advantage. 8 9 As Hal moves through his politically successful kingship, he 40111 moves deeper and deeper into the more surveyable but inert 4111 landscape of what Buber calls the “I-It.” Buber says, “However Harry’s (in)human face 63 1111 the history of the individual and that of the human race may 2 diverge in other respects, they agree in this at least: both signify 3 a progressive increase of the It-world” (1970: 87); furthermore, 4 “the improvement of the capacity for experience and use 5111 generally involves a decrease in man’s power to relate” (89). 6 As we witness in Hal’s dismissal of Francis, his “crown-theft” 7111 while supposedly attending to his dying father (2 Henry IV, 8 4.3.150–311), the chilly deaths of Falstaff and Bardolph (Henry V, 9 2.1.73–116, 2.3.1–37; 3.6.89–103), and the ultimate disappear- 1011 ance of Francis and Poins, Henry’s increased “capacity for 1 experience and use” and decreased ability in the “power to 2 relate” is painfully evident. According to Buber, this makes 3111 him a paradigmatic figure of modernity.12 However, even so 4 late as in Henry’s late-night chat with Bates and Williams, 5 designed by the King as an “I-It” experience preparatory to the 6 battle, there remains a flicker of the urge to relate, uncomfort- 7 able now for Harry as Williams essentially forces the issue of 8 being understood as a “You,” rather than as one more soldierly 9 “It.” Though this urge is left unfulfilled in Henry, elsewhere in 20111 Shakespeare – for example, in Lear’s relationships, especially 1 2 with the Fool, and in Richard II with his last “friend” the 3 groom – it is possible for the “I-You” between king and subject 4 to be discovered or rediscovered after a period of latency. 5 Therefore, we see that Shakespeare’s texts tend to maintain 6 both relational integers, the “I-It” and the “I-You,” even in 7 obviously hierarchical contexts, although as Buber suggests, 8 “it is not as if these states took turns so neatly; often it is an 9 intricately entangled series of events that is tortuously dual” (69). 30111 1 Hal and Buber’s being-in-relationship 2 3 In Buber’s terms, Hal demonstrates the dual attitude indicative 4 of the divided human condition, as well as the requisite longing 5 for relationship, and these characteristics do much to vitalize 6 the drama. But we also remember how excited Hal was to be 7 viewed as a “good boy” and a “sworn brother” to the drawers, 8 terms that establish the desirability of sustained ethical rela- 9 tionships to others. There is more than just a desire simply to 40111 experience ethical life here. We seem instead to glimpse, even 4111 through Hal’s cynical humor, a desire to be ethical by moving 64 David Ruiter 1111 into what Buber calls the “lived actuality” of the concept of 2 being-in-relationship (136). 3 Buber’s “I-You, I-It” structure concedes the necessity of the 4 “I-It” world, largely because this is the world in which events 5111 and experiences can be psychologically, politically, and historic- 6 ally organized, and made generally reliable through a certain 17 detachment (82). There must be an accommodation of the “I- 8 It,” because it is simply not possible to live exclusively in the 9 “I-You” (83–4). However, Buber states of the two positions: 1011 “The It is the chrysalis, the You the butterfly” (69) and “without 1 It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that 2 is not human” (85) and is “buried in nothingness” (83). While 3111 Hal’s desire for true relationship appears time and again 4 throughout the tetralogy, there is the question of whether or 5 not the move towards true relationship is actualized at any 6 time, whether Hal unfurls into a fully human being, an example 7 to us all such as a “mirror of all Christian kings” might be. 8 If a moment of actualization does occur, it perhaps is found 19 in the Prince’s relationship with Falstaff. From the moment 20111 we first see these two in 1 Henry IV (1.2), there is a sense of at 1 least a verbal fraternity between them. Initially, their discussion 2 is mostly made up of light banter concerning whoring, thieving, 3 drinking, and eating: again, not a very promising starting-point 4 for a spiritualized ethics, we might think. But this banter, as is 5 the case in Shakespeare’s texts elsewhere (perhaps most notably 6 with Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado), does indicate a certain 7 closeness of feeling, a camaraderie, a desire for and pleasure 8 in the Other. The lines quoted below continue this significant 9 tone and begin to absorb more explicitly if ambiguously spiritual 30111 content: 1 2 Falstaff Thou hast the most unsavory similes, and art indeed 3 the most comparative, rascalliest sweet young Prince. But 4 Hal, I prithee trouble me no more with vanity. I would to 5 God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names 6 were to be bought. An old lord of the Council rated me 7 the other day in the street about you, sir, but I marked 8 him not; and yet he talked very wisely, but I regarded him 9 not; and yet he talked wisely, and in the street too. 40111 Prince Harry Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in streets, 4111 and no man regards it. Harry’s (in)human face 65 1111 Falstaff O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able 2 to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, 3 Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I 4 knew nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, 5111 little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this 6 life, and I will give it over. By the Lord, an I do not, I am 7111 a villain. I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in 8 Christendom. 9 Prince Harry Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack? 1011 Falstaff Zounds, where thou wilt, lad! I’ll make one; an I do 1 not, call me villain and baffle me. 2 Prince Harry I see a good amendment of life in thee, from 3111 praying to purse-taking. 4 Falstaff Why, Hal, ’tis my vocation, Hal. ’Tis no sin for a 5 man to labour in his vocation. 6 (1.2.70–93) 7 8 The familiar nicknames suggest a sort of easy “I-You” mode. 9 In addition, there is a relishing affection in Falstaff calling Hal 20111 the “rascalliest sweet young Prince” and “lad.” And, as with 1 Hal’s speech regarding the drawers, there are strange, even 2 overwhelming spiritual connotations: “God,” “wisdom cries out 3 13 4 in the streets,” “corrupt a saint,” “God forgive thee,” “By the 5 Lord,” “I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in Christendom,” 6 “Zounds,” “good amendment of life,” “praying,” and “sin.” 7 Though it dances in complex, not easily decipherable measures 8 with his humor and general audacity, Falstaff’s skewed, weird 9 but persistent spirituality appears from these first moments in 30111 1 Henry IV to the last we hear of him in Henry V, and it often 1 occurs in conversation with, or concerning his relationship 2 with, Hal. 3 Opportunity for the “I-You” again surrounds Hal here, 4 this time in the person of Falstaff, and in a performative and 5 improvised manner the Prince participates; shortly later, this 6 participation will be even more fully realized in their play-acting 7 scene (2.5). The earlier passage associates Falstaff with suffering 8 virtue and Hal with sin and temptation until they both join in 9 an enthusiastic spiritual “vocation” of thieving! What I am 40111 hinting at – what I am suggesting that the play hints at – is that 4111 the dramatic warmth and pathos of knockabout Falstaff and 66 David Ruiter 1111 Hal is a revelation of a strangely ethically and spiritually creative 2 mode of being that is not carried into Henry’s kingship and is 3 beyond conventional piety. 4 In their initial scene, Hal concludes their interaction with 5111 the “I know you all” speech; similarly, the play-acting ends 6 with Hal’s ominous “I do; I will” promise to banish Falstaff 17 (2.5.439). And what’s really unnerving is that Hal knows that 8 in banishing plump Jack he’s banishing all the world. And yet, 9 the fact that Hal is using Falstaff does not rule out the contin- 1011 uing chance for authentic relationship. Although Falstaff’s (like 1 Francis’) optimism for developing true relationship with Hal is 2 ultimately unrealized and even misplaced, his understanding 3111 of Hal’s human, relational being is nonetheless far from stupid: 4 in its unworldliness and reckless independence from the selfish 5 desire usually associated with Falstaff, it is even rather heroic. 6 As for Hal, the fact that he utilizes Falstaff and Francis and 7 others does not cancel the Prince’s potential to realize honest 8 relationship. 19 This potential is later enacted as the worried Henry V 20111 attempts to turn toward God. On the night before the battle 1 of Agincourt, immediately following his conversation with 2 3 Bates and Williams, Henry decides to pray, to (in Buber’s terms) 4 enter into the ultimate “I-You” relationship. In this attempt, 5 the King asks that God give his soldiers courage and that his 6 familial guilt for the death of Richard II not be considered at 7 this historical moment, for after all, Henry points out, he has 8 demonstrated great penitence for that death. But he ends the 9 prayer with the realization that his good works are worthless 30111 because he retains the kingship, the lasting benefit of Richard’s 1 murder (4.1.271–87). This allows us to see that Hal/Henry V, 2 who to some resembles Hamlet,14 is also related to the prayerful 3 Claudius. Like Henry, Claudius guiltily frets that his desire for 4 forgiveness and atonement with God will remain unrealized 5 because he retains the benefits of his murder of Old Hamlet. 6 And while Claudius suffers from “the primal eldest curse” 7 (3.3.37) – that is, Cain’s curse for having murdered Abel – 8 Hal’s inherited responsibility for the death of his cousin Richard 9 has a similar result. To gain a crown, Claudius killed a brother 40111 and thereby stifled his possible relationship to God. As heir 4111 to his father’s crown as well as to his guilt for the death of a Harry’s (in)human face 67 1111 kinsman, Henry finds himself frustrated in his efforts to realize 2 true relationship with his “sworn brothers,” his brothers-in- 3 arms, and God. 4 Hal’s attempt at prayer is also interesting when read more 5111 explicitly through Buber’s comments. Buber states: 6 7111 One cannot divide one’s life between an actual relationship 8 to God and an inactual I-It relationship to the world – 9 praying to God in truth and utilizing the world. Whoever 1011 knows the world as something to be utilized knows God 1 in the same way. His prayers are a way of unburdening 2 himself – and fall into the ears of the void. 3111 (156) 4 5 Buber’s concept of God is at least partly comprised in the idea 6 of “absolute relationship” or the “true You [. . .] that cannot 7 be restricted by any other and to whom [one] stands in rela- 8 tionship that includes all others” (127, 124). The philosopher 9 understands God as a kind of quintessence of personality. A 20111 relationship with God is implied and realized in ordinary ethical 1 life, and vice versa (172–82).15 This clearly has a bearing 2 3 on my “spiritual” reading of seemingly mundane moments 4 in the Second Henriad. If, as Hal does, one utilizes one’s 5 fellow humans and puts aside the actualization of the “I-You,” 6 then one does the same with God, both in the moment of 7 utility and when attempting to relate to God in prayer. And 8 this process of utilization is draining to one’s humanity; in 9 that respect, and considering Henry’s prayer as merely one 30111 more attempted “piece of shrewd diplomacy,” Una Ellis- 1 Fermor says: 2 3 Neither we the readers nor Henry himself nor his God 4 ever meets the individual that had once underlain the outer 5 crust that covers a Tudor monarch, for there is nothing 6 beneath the crust; all has been converted into it; all desires, 7 all impulses, all selfhood, all spirit. 8 (1946: 46) 9 40111 This idea is precisely realized as Henry finishes the prayer, 4111 now basically talking to himself (4.1.284–7). He clearly is not 68 David Ruiter 1111 transforming from chrysalis to butterfly, but instead is coming 2 to recognize the It-world as the world that presently matters to 3 him. It is an existentially fraught moment. To Buber, it would 4 signify a mere departure from the pole of ethics, but the 5111 dramatic spotlight shines so powerfully on Hal’s inwardness 6 here as to suggest that lasting damage has been done. In other 17 words, Henry’s distancing of relationship has corrupted and 8 degraded his being, his “I,” and reduced him to his utilitarian 9 value, his “It.” Disrespect for others manifests and results in a 1011 harmful disrespect for the nature of his own being, his being- 1 in-relationship. It is a failure by Henry V to achieve his own 2 inherent potentiality, to realize the fullness of the “I-You.” 3111 4 5 Hal and Emmanuel Levinas 6 Through the lens of Levinas, Hal’s failure is seen somewhat 7 differently – not simply as failure in self-actualization (a failure 8 of the “I”), but as failure for the Other (for the “You”). For 19 Buber, the “infinite” exists as personal potentiality (1970: 136, 20111 167), but for Levinas it exists as responsibility. 1 Before moving on briefly to consider Hal/Henry V in 2 relation to the ethics of Levinas, it is important to point out 3 16 4 that Levinas is acutely aware of Buber’s “I-You” paradigm, 5 and in significant ways values this model even while changing 6 both the terms and the ethical ideal it enshrines. As to the terms, 7 what Buber refers to as the “I-You, I-It” duality of humanity, 8 Levinas compasses under his theory of the Other. The Other 9 is experienced as either the “face” or as a “character,” which 30111 Levinas defines as follows: 1 2 The face is signification, and signification without context. 3 I mean that the Other, in the rectitude of his face, is not a 4 character within a context. Ordinarily, one is a “character”: 5 a professor at the Sorbonne, a Supreme Court justice, a 6 son of so-and-so, everything that is in one’s passport, the 7 manner of dressing, of presenting oneself. And all signifi- 8 cation in the usual sense of the term is relative to such a 9 context: the meaning of something is in its relations to 40111 another thing. Here, to the contrary, the face is meaning 4111 all by itself. You are you. In this sense one can say that the Harry’s (in)human face 69 1111 face is not “seen”. It is what cannot become a content, 2 which your thought would embrace; it is uncontainable, it 3 leads you beyond. 4 (Levinas 1985: 86–7) 5111 6 In Buber, the “I-You” is what is uncontainable, what leads 7111 one beyond, while the “I-It” is very much a content within a 8 context. But despite the similarity of their foundational terms, 9 it is apparent even at this cursory level that Levinas’ ethics are 1011 differently focused, not so much oriented toward the develop- 1 ment of the “I” as to the responsibility for the Other. In this 2 respect, while Buber focuses on the issue of reciprocation in 3111 relationship for full development of the “I,” Levinas focuses on 4 response to and responsibility for what is outside the self. 5 Although Levinas makes clear that the desire for what he 6 also calls the “Infinite,” for authentic relationship (1985: 82), 7 is as crucial as Buber claims it to be, Levinas also believes that 8 this desire “nourishes itself on its own hungers and is augmented 9 by its satisfaction” (92). This may explain how relational desire 20111 appears to decline in Hal over the course of the tetralogy. That 1 is, as Hal turns away from authentic relationship with his father, 2 Falstaff, Francis, Poins, Scroop, and others, his desire for actual- 3 izing authentic relationship begins to wane, and while he may 4 have the impulse towards the “Infinite,” his longing for true 5 relationship is consistently smothered by his commitment to 6 utilizing others as “characters” within his ultimately socio- 7 symbolic network, rather than responding to them as “faces,” 8 as what immediately confronts his subjectivity in and even as 9 the Other below or above any social description. 30111 Levinas believes that in taking note of the existence of the 1 “face,” one immediately becomes responsible “for him, without 2 even having taken on responsibilities in his regard; his respons- 3 ibility is incumbent on me” (96, his italics). The reason for this, 4 in Levinas’ view, is that “subjectivity is not for itself; it is [. . .] 5 initially for another” (96). In fact, says Levinas, “[f ]or every 6 man, assuming responsibility for the Other is a way of testifying 7 to the glory of the Infinite, and of being inspired” (113). In 8 this regard, Hal’s dismissal of opportunities for authentic rela- 9 tionship is not just a matter of failing to achieve his potentiality. 40111 Rather, this pattern of turning away is grossly irresponsible. 4111 By desiring true relationship, longing for the “I-You” – even 70 David Ruiter 1111 while living in the “I-It” – Hal demonstrates that he has the 2 dual attitude inherent to humans, but by refusing responsibility 3 for the Other, by not responding to the “face,” he becomes 4 buried in nothingness and fails to achieve a subjective, ethical 5111 agency. 6 Nowhere is this lack of humanity more pronounced than in 17 Henry V’s last moments in the tetralogy, the scene of his 8 “wooing” of Catherine (5.2). Here, Henry’s instrumentaliza- 9 tion of others manifests itself once again, and he has now 1011 become so brazen in this relational mode as to refer to his 1 future wife – in front of both herself and her parents – as “our 2 capital demand” (5.2.95–7). In addition, he decides to act the 3111 part of a plain soldier with Catherine (5.2.145–62) even though 4 this role does not square with our experience of Hal/Henry V 5 throughout the larger part of the tetralogy. When Catherine 6 leaves the room after Henry’s most flagrant failure to relate, 7 the King attempts to keep up his bluff soldierly role when he 8 speaks with Burgundy, but this “character” quickly fades to be 19 replaced by something akin to the Boar’s Head Hal, who 20111 roughly banters about the similarity between women and 1 flies (5.2.262–94). Here, at the closing of the Second Henriad, 2 having reduced everyone else to the function of “character” in 3 his personal political drama, and having played a vast array 4 of roles himself, Hal confirms that he has ultimately buried his 5 own ability to respond to the “face,” buried the responsibility 6 for the Other, and therefore his own humanity, lost his own 7 face and become a mere “character.” 8 Maybe this loss is in some ways inevitable for Hal/Henry V, 9 as kingship in Shakespeare appears generally to result in 30111 greater utilization of others and a reduced ability to relate and 1 respond; in that regard, along the way I have mentioned 2 Richard II, Lear, and Claudius, and other ready examples might 3 include Henry IV and Macbeth. But Hal is a special case, partly 4 because his opportunities to relate occur so frequently and 5 under a dramatic spotlight, and his turnings away, especially 6 from Falstaff, create a more devastating sense of what is lost in 7 the process of achieving abundant political gains. Despite his 8 many maneuverings as prince and king, Harry somehow always 9 seems on the verge of becoming, of entering or rediscovering 40111 a new mode of being-in-relationship. Although my emphasis 4111 has been on Hal’s ethical conditions in this chapter, I do not Harry’s (in)human face 71 1111 wish to oppose private ethics to public politics. A politics 2 of ethical responsibility toward all others is the “undecon- 3 structible” inspiration for deconstruction that many of the 4 chapters in this volume explore. God’s love for everything in 5111 creation may be the most concrete image of such politics.17 6 Henry V’s kingdom cannot compare. In the Second Henriad, 7111 Hal does demonstrate that he is a man, even has the necessary 8 “stuff” – potential, desire, and opportunity – to become an 9 ethical human being and ruler. But the roles that he chooses 1011 to play, those many “characters” – prince, thief, drinking 1 buddy, benefactor, son, brother, king, soldier, suitor, etc. – 2 while allowing for position and power, cost him his shot at the 3111 “Infinite.” Harry is in the end all-too-human and, as a result, 4 not really human at all, because bereft of that extra, precious, 5 spiritual element that defines humanity and yet is engendered 6 in a vital responsiveness to ordinary life. The strange truth of 7 spirituality is that when we look in the mirror we should see 8 someone else. Were this “Christian king” to look in the mirror, 9 he might well see one of his gratifyingly successful “characters” 20111 smiling smugly back at him, but he wouldn’t see a Levinasian 1 “face,” the face of the Other that is also his own, the mean- 2 ingful authentication of the “could be” and “should be” of 3 his life. 4 5 Notes 6 7 1 There has been no lack of interest in the religious issues of the 8 Second Henriad, especially in regard to the Catholic, Protestant, and 9 Reformation ideologies found within the plays. For interesting reading on these issues, see, among many others, Poole 1995, Hunt 1998, 30111 and Hamilton 2003. But I would distinguish this work from the sorts 1 of spiritual/ethical matters I am discussing here. 2 2 For a sampling of the variety of impressions concerning the ethics, 3 politics, and propriety of Hal’s rejection of Falstaff, see Bradley 1909, 4 Newman 1966, McGee 1984, Bloom 1998, and Amirthanayagam 5 1999. 6 3 See Grady 2000. 7 4 The OED notes the common use of the names “Tom”, “Dick”, and “Harry” both as nicknames for the Christian names of “Thomas”, 8 “Richard”, and “Henry” and as the generic naming “for any male 9 representative of the common people.” Shakespeare also uses the 40111 names of “Tom” and “Dick” in this generic way in Winter’s song at 4111 the conclusion of Love’s Labor’s Lost (5.2.887–902). 72 David Ruiter

1111 5 The OED includes other possibilities for “Ned,” as well, among them 2 “a general term of disapprobation.” 3 6 Steven Mullaney 1983 writes thoughtfully on the nature and utility 4 of Hal’s language lessons in the tavern. 5111 7 Harry Levin states, the Boar’s Head event demonstrates the politically useful idea that the “dissolute playboy seems at heart to be a fun- 6 loving boy-scout. [. . .] Harry’s youthful fraternization with Tom, 17 Dick, and Francis will have made him more humane as head of state 8 than his aloof and crafty father has been” (1981: 6–7). Eugene Wright 9 more bluntly asserts, “Hal is, and this scene proves it, a man who 1011 acts according to his present political needs [. . .]” (1975–6: 67). 1 8 Though outside of my parameters here, it is tempting to discuss 2 Derrida’s concept of the gift much further, especially as it is addressed 3111 by both Jackson 2001 and Caputo 1997b. Desire for the gift is 4 relevant to Hal’s interaction with Francis, and possibly with many 5 others in the Second Henriad. Derrida’s idea that gift (at least as an impossibility) and economy are always with us, and therefore demand 6 that decisions and choices are made in regard to both, has several 7 interesting parallels and intersections with Buber’s “I-You/I-It” 8 paradigm, and also, as Caputo suggests (150), with Levinas’ concept 19 of responsibility for the Other. 20111 9 For more on the spiritual and sociological implications of 1 Buber’s work, see Friedman 1955, Kohanski 1982, Murphy 1983, 2 and Silberstein 1989. I wish to thank Alfonso Morales for many 3 productive discussions on the sociological application of Buber. 4 10 See Buber 1970: 82. 5 11 I am indebted to Bruce Louden for discussion of Jove/Europa. See Books Two, Six, and Eight of the Metamorphoses (Ovid 1965). 6 12 For much more on the instrumentalization of others in Shakespeare 7 as part of the onset of modernity, see Grady’s Shakespeare’s Universal 8 Wolf, especially Chapter Three, “Othello and the Dialectic of 9 Enlightenment: Instrumental Reason, Will, and Subjectivity” (1996: 30111 95–136). 1 13 This phrase comes from Proverbs 1:20: “Wisdom crieth without; she 2 uttereth her voice in the streets.” 3 14 For some thoughtful comparisons between Hal and Hamlet, see 4 H. D. Janowitz 2000, H. MacLean 1987, and D. R. C. Marsh 1983. 5 15 These ideas are made especially clear in the referenced pages, which 6 were added by Buber in 1957 in his Afterword to the second edition. 16 For more on Levinas’ understanding of Buber, see Sean Hand’s The 7 Levinas Reader, especially Chapter Three, “Time and the Other,” and 8 Chapter Four, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge” (1989: 9 37–74). Correspondence between Buber and Levinas can be seen in 40111 Levinas 1976: 51–5. 4111 17 See Lupton 2000b. 1111 2 3 4 5111 3 6 7111 Waiting for Gobbo 8 Lowell Gallagher 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2111 The cascade of revelations at the close of The Merchant of Venice 3 achieves the effect of a cinematic close-up, calling attention, 4 one last time before morning dawns in Belmont, to the unsettled 5 semantic range and ideological mooring of gifts and gift- 6 exchange in the play-world at large. Three gifts appear, brought 7 forth from as many origins: happy coincidence (unexpected 8 news of the return of Antonio’s argosies); civil law (safe 9 conveyance of Shylock’s deed of gift to Lorenzo and Jessica); 30111 and providential care (Lorenzo’s grateful invocation of biblical 1 manna). However one judges the worth, and the cost, of these 2 gifts, there is more than meets the eye in the ensemble. There 3 is an absence: the Gobbo family, Old Gobbo and his son, 4 Launcelot. The absence is easy to overlook, for several reasons. 5 The Gobbos belong to the periphery of the play’s social world, 6 and what we know of the story of their lives dissolves into white 7 noise when pitched against the dominant key of the pre-marital 8 banter in the final act. Yet their absence discloses something 9 that anthropologically driven notions of the logic of the gift, 40111 which have dominated the subject of gift exchange in Merchant 4111 criticism, fail to see. 74 Lowell Gallagher 1111 For the Gobbos have their own forgotten gift to give. 2 Its vanishing tacitly proclaims the essential component of the 3 gift to be nothing – literally, no thing. In gift-giving, it’s the 4 thought that counts, the excessive, gratuitous spirit of the gift, 5111 not the thing itself. The gift soundlessly but persistently mocks 6 materialism’s investment in empirical and quantifiable meas- 17 ures of the real. By no coincidence, the most telling indicators 8 of this provocation surface in the Gobbos’ forays into the main 9 action. Their comic wordplay generates intuitions of the gift 1011 that challenge the play’s dominant religious, ethnic, and social 1 partitions (Christian/Jewish enclaves, landed vs. mercantile 2 economies, and the shifting choreography of friends, lovers, 3111 neighbors, rivals, and enemies). 4 Taking its cue from the Gobbos’ accidental insights and 5 suggestions, this chapter examines the radical nature of Merchant’s 6 rendering of the spirit of the gift. To this end, it follows the ques- 7 tion of the gift’s intangible essence into the contested peninsula 8 of twentieth-century philosophical thought on the gift – outside 19 the play’s local frames of reference – where contemporary 20111 phenomenologies of religion and incarnational theologies con- 1 verge. The Gobbos’ wayward exchanges, I argue, find illumin- 2 ating counterparts in the philosophical debates between Jacques 3 Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Levinas, and Alain 4 Badiou over the defining terms of the gift and its conditions of 5 possibility. 6 7 Beyond gift exchange 8 9 Where mainstream Shakespeare scholarship is concerned, the 30111 four thinkers just named occupy a place strangely reminiscent 1 of the Gobbos’ in the final tableau of Merchant. Though 2 acknowledged as significant participants in the community of 3 discourse on the gift, their speculative labors have by and large 4 gone unrecognized in Merchant criticism. This is so, in part, 5 because of the visceral immediacy of the play’s depiction of an 6 urban, and urbane, social world and the raw urgency of its 7 antagonisms. No wonder the play has lent itself with such ease 8 to materialist inquiry and to sociological and anthropological 9 theories of gift exchange: these are the prevailing critical idioms 40111 for addressing the immanence of the real. However, the quarry 4111 I seek – the imaginary place where the Gobbos’ witticisms Waiting for Gobbo 75 1111 speak to the arguments of Continental philosophers of the gift 2 – does not lie as far afield as one might think. 3 The route opens from an established crossroads in Merchant 4 criticism. The play’s reiterated oscillations between a concocted 5111 memory of feudal usury and a waking dream of mercantile 6 capitalism evince prescient intuitions of one of Marcel Mauss’s 7111 foundational contributions to anthropological discourse on the 8 gift: the distinction between gift and commodity. For Mauss 9 the distinction turned on a surplus element he found to be 1011 characteristic of the gift rather than the commodity (unlike 1 Karl Marx, who famously discovered “the secret of surplus 2 value” in the capitalist system of commodity exchange (Yan 3111 1996: 5)). On Mauss’s account, the surplus element – the 4 spirit (hau) of the gift – generates relations of exchange and 5 reciprocity, without being reducible to them. By and large, 6 subsequent anthropological writing rejected Mauss’s intuition 7 of the spirit of the gift, erecting in its place a logic of immanent 8 reciprocity, as in Bronislaw Malinowski’s “principle of give and 9 take” (Yan 1996: 6), and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s gift economy, 20111 in which the exchange of women constitutes both origin and 1 paradigm of sociality. In a well-known essay on the dynamics 2 of gift exchange in Merchant, Karen Newman accounts for the 3 legibility of the Lévi-Straussian “traffic in women” paradigm 4 model in the play, even as she contests its viability.1 What is 5 striking about the critique, from the standpoint of Mauss’s 6 legacy of thought on the gift, is what it passes over in silence: 7 notably, the vexed relation between legible structures of 8 reciprocity or exchange and the gift’s “spirit” or unquantifiable 9 surplus. 30111 1 Discerning excess 2 3 Mauss’s thought is strategically important to my argument 4 because it gives rise to two basic questions on the gift: does 5 the gift appear only in acts of reciprocity (however diffused 6 these might be over space and time), and does the component 7 of reciprocity nullify any conceivable surplus to the gift?2 8 Merchant raises these questions, too. Their impact can be felt 9 not only in the eye-catching spectacles of the casket scenes and 40111 the pound of flesh but also, more tellingly, in the suburbs 4111 of the main action – the Gobbos’ world – where encounters of 76 Lowell Gallagher 1111 little consequence nonetheless appear charged with implication. 2 Consider, for example, the strange career of the gift Old Gobbo 3 produces in Act II, the “dish of doves” (2.2.134). We will return 4 to this scene later, but for the moment I want to indicate 5111 how some of the subliminal provocations produced by Gobbo’s 6 gift help redirect the basic questions arising from Mauss’s 17 anthropological horizon. 8 Carried in a basket, the dish of doves hardly seems an 9 ostentatious gift, though in view of the likelihood that Gobbo 1011 is not a wealthy man it seems fair to say that the gift is not 1 nothing, either. Materialist inquiry would first seek to ground 2 the reference in a relevant historical context by assembling 3111 data from Renaissance cookbooks and food practices, but such 4 information alone does not account for what happens to the 5 dish of doves in the scene: its drift into the elusive domain of 6 “no thing.” We should recall here that Old Gobbo’s first 7 mention of the gift identifies it as a “present” (2.2.89) for 8 Shylock and that Launcelot, appalled at the thought of giving 19 any present to “a very Jew” (2.2.93), orders his father to give 20111 the dish of doves to Bassanio instead. Given Launcelot’s earlier 1 decision to change masters, trading Shylock for Bassanio, it is 2 easy enough to assume that the gift has tactical value from 3 Launcelot’s standpoint. He says as much, voicing the hope that 4 Bassanio will reciprocate by hiring him as a servant (giving 5 him one of his “rare new liveries” (2.2.97)). Launcelot’s candor 6 (or naked ambition) raises more questions than it answers, 7 however. Does the integrity of the gift – its freely given 8 character – depend on the extent to which the gift’s conformity 9 to a rule of reciprocity is not known – that is, not given to 30111 consciousness? If so, whose knowledge is at issue: the giver’s, 1 the recipient’s, the onlooker’s? Is the gift Old Gobbo prepares 2 to give Bassanio the same gift he intended to give Shylock? 3 The material substance – the cooked dish – is unchanged at 4 the end of the scene, but it is far from clear how many – or 5 whether any – gifts have actually transpired. 6 The questions raised by Gobbo’s gift are not confined 7 to anthropology’s investment in mapping patterns of social 8 behavior. They also speak to phenomenology’s project to 9 describe the “given” character of the world and to discern the 40111 range of perceptual frames or horizons through which specific, 4111 more than material events – such as gifts, or love, or terror – Waiting for Gobbo 77 1111 come to be recognized as such.3 In addition, these questions 2 are susceptible to theological inflection, insofar as theology is 3 expressly concerned with the gifts of creation and divine pres- 4 ence and involvement in human affairs. The fact that Gobbo’s 5111 dish is made of doves is not without interest here, given that 6 doves figure conspicuously as covenantal signs of divine care 7111 in both Jewish and Christian traditions. Gobbo’s dish of doves, 8 then, provides a suggestive index of what we can expect to 9 find at large in the world of the Gobbos. Not only do we find 1011 an interrogation of the nature of the gift and of its ties to 1 “no thing.” We find this by observing how the manner of the 2 interrogation – the Gobbos’ farcical misadventures and mis- 3111 communications – exposes the fault line, the shifting and 4 uncertain boundary, between phenomenological and theological 5 concerns with givenness.4 6 To better grasp the shape of this concern in the Gobbos’ 7 world, I turn to a crucial parting of ways between Jacques 8 Derrida’s and Jean-Luc Marion’s respective thoughts on the 9 essential character of the gift.5 Both thinkers are inclined to 20111 discount the role of reciprocity and to rekindle interest in the 1 speculative question of the gift’s surplus element. But their 2 ways of framing the question diverge significantly. For Derrida, 3 the gift crucially transcends its material conditions. From this 4 follows Derrida’s controversial aporia of the gift: the “con- 5 ditions of possibility of the gift . . . designate simultaneously the 6 conditions of impossibility of the gift . . . For there to be gift, 7 it is necessary that the gift not even appear, that it not be 8 perceived or received as gift” (Derrida 1992: 12, 16). If the 9 gift were to appear as such, this would only generate indebt- 30111 edness, raising the expectation of repayment and nullifying 1 its character as gift. In the 1997 Villanova roundtable discus- 2 sion on the gift, Derrida tries to quell the confusion apt to 3 arise from such logical sleight-of-hand by insisting that the state- 4 ment “the gift as such is impossible” does not mean that there 5 is no gift (Caputo and Scanlon 1999: 60). Rather, it attributes 6 to the word “gift” a spirit, a “no thing,” that transpires in 7 excess of knowledge, “beyond” the “economic circle” of gift 8 exchange and beyond what can be seen or put into words 9 (ibid.: 60). 40111 As we have already seen, this is the basic problem posed by 4111 the dish of doves. But the problem has two faces: it addresses 78 Lowell Gallagher 1111 both Derrida’s concerns and those of his main interlocutor at 2 the Villanova roundtable, Jean-Luc Marion. For Derrida, the 3 gift’s spirit is a subtraction or withdrawal from our everyday 4 phenomenal world.6 Yet precisely because it is not an appre- 5111 hendable thing – because it is, strictly speaking, impossible – 6 it creates a space from which new things or events may emerge. 17 The transcendent trajectory of the gift pulls towards a different 8 and better future. For Marion, the gift’s impossible excess works 9 otherwise: not by withdrawing from the world, but by exposing 1011 it to a “new horizon,” one of unconditioned, superabundant 1 givenness (Caputo and Scanlon 1999: 61). Through this gesture, 2 the gift enters the domain of what Marion calls the “saturated 3111 phenomenon.” Such a phenomenon can be seen, heard, tasted, 4 touched, or smelled, and it can be thought or made present 5 to consciousness. But it cannot be comprehended by any of 6 these horizons, because its essential trait is nothing other than 7 its capacity to give “more, indeed immeasurably more” than either 8 mind or body can grasp (Marion 2002: 197). By definition, 19 then, the saturated phenomenon is irreducible to description 20111 either as object or thing or as being. Nonetheless, saturated 1 phenomena surround us, Marion explains, in the inexhaustible 2 3 character of historical events and works of art, in the profound 4 intimacy of the human sensorium with its environment, in the 5 elusive constitution of interpersonal relations, in the giving of 6 time, of one’s attention, one’s word, one’s life, and, crucially, 7 in the possibility of divine revelation. 8 Both Derrida’s and Marion’s accounts of the gift’s im- 9 possibility see beyond the habitual determinism of cultural 30111 history, whether by imagining a deferred or a manifest excess 1 in lived experience. To judge from their standoff at Villanova, 2 however, the difference between the deferred and the mani- 3 fest appears irreconcilable, not least because Derrida’s “no 4 thing” lies outside sociality and representation, to the point of 5 abstraction, whereas Marion’s not only saturates the world 6 of appearances but also appears ultimately to do so on behalf 7 of a particular religious tradition.7 The standoff warrants 8 mention because Merchant, too, aligns the question of the gift 9 with the logic of a zero-sum game. Think again of the conun- 40111 drum posed by the dish of doves, which seems to mutate into 4111 either too many gifts or none at all. Crucially, however, Merchant Waiting for Gobbo 79

1111 also sees beyond such divisive maneuvers – that is, it asks 2 whether the gift’s essential trait resides precisely in its capacity 3 to incarnate, within the social lineaments of gift exchange, the 4 profound intimacy between opposing dimensions of the gift’s 5111 “no thing” – between what remains categorically out of sight 6 and mind, and what is so immediately present as to confound 7111 comprehension. Such insight, as the Gobbos’ misadventures 8 suggest, seeks to reawaken wonder at the strangeness and 9 vulnerability of what is given in the world. 1011 To indicate more precisely what is at stake in this line of 1 inquiry, I turn to two thinkers who were not present at the 2 Villanova roundtable, Emmanuel Levinas and Alain Badiou. 3111 Ethics, rather than the question of the gift per se, is their prin- 4 cipal concern, and their respective accounts of the ethical 5 relation could not be more different, if you consider Badiou’s 6 well-known objections to Levinas’s ethics of alterity, which on 7 Badiou’s account mistakenly privileges the transcendence of the 8 Other and underestimates the ethical solvency of conditions of 9 likeness and solidarity – the sphere of the Same (Badiou 2001: 20111 18–19). Nevertheless, these thinkers’ respective meditations 1 on eschatology and universalism fruitfully expose a common 2 3 intuition – which the Gobbos share – of the profound connec- 4 tion between the gift’s impossibility and the possibility of a 5 radical ethics: an ethics not content with dutiful observance of 6 given norms but mindful, instead, of the “no thing” that subsists 7 in social relations and challenges all settled forms of knowledge 8 and behavior. 9 For Levinas, eschatology refers not to a stage in history (a 30111 messianic “End-time,” for example) but to the sudden breach 1 made in totality by the “infinity” of desire and responsibility 2 for the Other (Levinas 1969: 23). As Richard Kearney reminds 3 us, Levinas “confronts us with the paradox of the infinite which 4 is inscribed within our historical experience of totality,” within 5 the warp and woof of the everyday (Kearney 2001: 63). Hence 6 the ambiguity of one of Levinas’s key terms for the event that 7 gives eschatological desire its ethical charge: the “face” of the 8 other. Rather than simply denoting physical features, “face” 9 calls attention to what is singular in the face-to-face encounter 40111 and thus irreducible to the horizons of objectivity and being. 4111 By “exceeding the idea of the other in me,” the “face” issues 80 Lowell Gallagher

1111 a call to compassion and care which is both inexhaustible and 2 fragile: impossibly present, one could say, yet easily ignored 3 (Levinas 1969: 50). In sum, to encounter the “face” of the other 4 is to discover that the social other – whether neighbor, stranger, 5111 or kin – compels attention because it eludes cognitive mastery, 6 though it may be mastered in other ways. Shylock, for example, 17 is mastered by the Venetian court: he is brought into a deter- 8 minate civic identity whose prerequisite is religious conversion. 9 Yet Launcelot’s astonishment at the dish of doves Old Gobbo 1011 intends, without explanation, for Shylock – an impossible gift 1 – suggests that Gobbo’s gesture acknowledges, however fleet- 2 ingly, the “face” of Shylock, an aspect that does not coincide 3111 with any of the names used to define him ( Jew, usurer, father, 4 alien, etc.) but rather belongs to and indicates his singular, 5 irreducible personality. 6 Badiou mounts a comparable provocation by drawing out 7 the ethical and political challenge of the visionary thinker whose 8 writings constitute a significant proof text for Merchant: St Paul. 19 It should be said that the Paul at issue here is not the Paul 20111 known as the font of Christian orthodoxy and tacitly presented 1 as such in the confessional antagonisms informing the main 2 3 plot of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, Badiou’s Paul is a non- 4 denominational thinker of the gift. We might call this Paul 5 the patron saint of the Gobbos, in the sense that the Gobbos’ 6 antics, performed on the margins of Christian, Jewish, and 7 mercantile Venice, express a core insight remarkably similar 8 to what Badiou finds in Paul. At the heart of Paul’s thought, 9 Badiou discovers a radical intuition: that universality is “organic- 30111 ally bound to the contingency of what happens to us, which is 1 the senseless superabundance of grace” (Badiou 2003: 81). 2 Badiou’s reading of a key passage from Romans develops the 3 implications of this intuition: “‘for you are not under law, but 4 under grace’ (Rom. 6:14)” (Badiou 2003: 63). The statement 5 indicates that grace is “neither a bequest, nor a tradition, nor 6 a teaching,” because these belong to the domain of law, which 7 is “always predicative, particular, and partial,” whereas grace 8 is “supernumerary relative to all this and presents itself as pure 9 givenness” (Badiou 2003: 76, 63). In consequence, the division 40111 indicated by the “not . . . but” turn of phrase occurs not between 4111 social, ethnic, or religious groups (the divisions with which Waiting for Gobbo 81 1111 contemporary thought has been so preoccupied, and which the 2 trial scene in Merchant famously broods over), but within the 3 subject of grace. Indeed, this division constitutes the subject. 4 Badiou and Levinas share with Paul (as do Derrida and 5111 Marion) the conviction that subjectivity is not, as it is for cultural 6 historicism, socially determined: it is exactly what exceeds social 7111 determination. In other words, the subject is “no thing” other 8 than the process through which the sheer excessiveness of grace 9 disrupts and alters the entire field of the given – the received 1011 horizons of everyday experience, the realm of the possible. 1 And it is this very process, born of the “suddenly emerging 2 singularity” of grace, which founds the universal – that is, the 3111 categorical possibility for everyone of unmooring from social 4 conditions (Badiou 2003: 36). On this account, the event of 5 grace is necessarily unrelated both to the historical Jesus (whom 6 Paul did not know) and to the Christ of ecclesiological and 7 doctrinal history (who postdates Paul). As Badiou puts it, Jesus 8 is “the name for what happens to us universally,” and what 9 happens is not induction into a new way of marking sectarian 20111 differences, but fidelity to what Badiou calls the “strong, simple 1 idea that every existence can one day be seized by what happens 2 3 to it and subsequently devote itself to that which is valid for 4 all” (Badiou 2003: 60, 66). 5 Fidelity to the truth of a “pure event,” to its charisma, may 6 be a strong, simple idea with heroic associations beyond a 7 couple of Shakespearean antics, but it is also a precarious one. 8 In fact, Paul’s discourse on grace insists on the contradiction: 8 9 “whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:11). 30111 Strength resides in the “completely precarious having-taken- 1 place” of the event of grace, detached from the “logic of signs 2 and proofs,” so that its “real content,” its truth, will be “nothing 3 but what each can see and hear” (Badiou 2003: 54, 53). But 4 what can this “real content” be, since it clearly has nothing to 5 do with empirically or logically verifiable knowledge or received 6 opinion? The gist of Paul’s argument is that what can be seen 7 and heard is nothing – no thing – but the excess, or “charism,” 8 of the received gift, which interrupts the horizons of object- 9 ivity, being, and constituted knowledge. As Paul says, this is 40111 the treasure held “in clay jars” (2 Cor. 4:7), in vulnerable 4111 embodiment. 82 Lowell Gallagher 1111 Kenosis 2 One of the running jokes in Merchant has the Gobbos repeatedly 3 stumbling across the “no thing” to which Paul’s image of the 4 treasure held in “clay jars” alludes. To get the joke, however, 5111 we must recognize that Merchant harbors a memory of another 6 Pauline word for the gift’s impossibility, and that the play’s 17 most challenging insights on the gift turn on the ways in which 8 varied implications of this word are deployed. The word, from 9 Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, is kenosis. 1011 1 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also 2 on the things of other men. Let the same mind be in you 3111 that was even in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of 4 God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God: But he 5 made himself of no reputation [heauton ekenosen, “emptied 6 himself ”], and took on him the form of a servant, and was 7 made like unto men, and was found in shape as a man. 8 He humbled himself, and became obedient unto the death, 19 even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God hath also 20111 highly exalted him, and given him a Name above every 1 name. 2 (Phil. 2:4–9)9 3 4 For Paul, kenosis, the gesture of self-emptying, describes the 5 ultimate theological gift: the descent of God into human form. 6 It also constitutes a radically selfless new ethics. The depiction 7 of Christ’s person as exalted in self-emptying discloses an altered 8 concept of personhood, where personhood refers not to a 9 historically determinate set of properties, but instead to an 30111 ongoing process of separation from familiar contours of iden- 1 tity, and consequent exposure to further, unexpected vistas of 2 responsiveness and responsibility.10 The Merchant of Venice offers 3 its own fraught comedy of kenosis when Launcelot outrageously 4 tells his blind father his son Launcelot has died, and then has 5 to struggle to persuade him that he is Launcelot himself. In 6 between, Launcelot is deprived of all the social specifics of his 7 accustomed identity. He plummets into a condition of bare or 8 pure personhood, from which he must renegotiate his position 9 in the world. It is a theme Shakespeare will take up again 40111 in King Lear, when Edgar loses his identity as his father’s son 4111 and is obliged to forge a new one out of sheer destitution. Waiting for Gobbo 83 1111 In both cases, tragic and comic, I am arguing that the shocking 2 appearance of the destitute human being is also a positive mani- 3 festation of human being as such, as it is given before and 4 beyond socialization. 5111 It is no accident that Derrida, Marion, Levinas, and Badiou 6 should all invoke the word kenosis in their ruminations on the 7111 gift, for the event it describes – the enigmatic crossing of desti- 8 tution and plenitude – speaks to their common ambition to 9 describe the challenge to thought (whether in social, political, 1011 aesthetic, or spiritual domains) generated by the gift’s impos- 1 sible “no thing.” With the possible exception of Marion, none 2 of these thinkers writes from Paul’s presumed Christological 3111 perspective, yet collectively they maintain the arc of Paul’s 4 thought on kenosis by testifying to the word’s continuing power 5 to evoke a generosity of vision and action, which is given body 6 – made operative – through a counterintuitive grasp of the 7 real.11 Kenosis strips the social specifics of identity, to reveal 8 that which is essentially unexplainable, unwarranted, a gift. 9 Merchant’s investment in the thought of kenosis is closer 20111 in spirit to these thinkers than it is to the word’s early modern 1 reception. While the incarnational mystery suggested by the 2 Philippians passage text was much rehearsed and debated in 3 sixteenth-century Christology, contemporary English devotional 4 cultures retained only something of the ethical intuition couched 5 in Philippians, partly because most vernacular translations (like 6 the text from the Geneva Bible cited earlier) deflected the theo- 7 logical conundrum of the emptying deity by emphasizing the 8 more legible act of humility.12 To claim that such emphasis 9 did no more than endorse ostensibly Christ-like acquiescence 30111 to social hierarchies would be reductive, yet even modern 1 discussions of humility – to say nothing of their early modern 2 antecedents – are marked by a normalizing ethos that does 3 little to indicate how the spirit of kenosis might actually undo 4 existing social hierarchies in the service of a broader vision of 5 sociality.13 This, however, is the very question posed by the 6 four philosophers we have considered. And by the Gobbos. 7 8 What’s in a name? 9 40111 In a classic essay on Merchant, Walter Cohen observes the 4111 purpose of Launcelot Gobbo’s designated role as master of 84 Lowell Gallagher 1111 malapropisms: “On the one hand, his nonsense parodically 2 demystifies; on the other, it uniquely combines archaic memories 3 and utopian vistas” (Coyle (ed.) 1998: 60). With only slight 4 adjustment, Cohen’s assessment points up Launcelot’s unique 5111 contribution to the question of the gift. Parodic demystification, 6 archaic memories, and utopian vistas name mutually interpen- 17 etrating parts of a single constellation of wit, but the whole 8 makes of Launcelot the unwitting vessel of a searching inquiry 9 into the very limits of what the thought of kenosis can bear. 1011 Consider, for starters, his two names. In “Launcelot Gobbo” 1 the ineffable and the commonplace converge, which is to say 2 that the name alone spells out the essential grammar of the 3111 incarnational theology housed in the Philippians passage. 4 “Launcelot” harbors a memory of the Grail legends woven 5 into Arthurian romance, certain strands of which read incar- 6 national and, more pointedly, Eucharistic significance into the 7 Grail.14 The Arthurian Launcelot is arguably more closely 8 linked with Guinevere than with theological speculation, but 19 the patronymic of Merchant’s Launcelot brings the latter ques- 20111 tion into focus. If the colloquial word “gob,” conjuring a 1 mouthful of food or stash of money, points up the ambiguity 2 of Launcelot’s social reality – is he ravenous from hunger or 3 greed, or both? – the cognate “gobbet” raises the stakes. 4 “Gobbet,” which means “raw flesh,” belongs to the reformist 5 lexicon of slurs on the Eucharistic doctrine of transubstantia- 6 tion.15 Launcelot’s name, in other words, is provocatively 7 invested with a specifically Eucharistic variant of the incarna- 8 tional question: Where is the body of Christ? As the semantics 9 of “gob”/“gobbet” suggest, contemporary answers to the ques- 30111 tion favored the partisan logic of “either/or,” claiming Christic 1 presence to be manifested either in the sacramental bread or 2 in the believing community.16 3 Launcelot’s first malapropism, in his comically tormented 4 effort to find moral sanction for running away from Shylock 5 (2.2.1–25), discovers an answer literally unthinkable to religious 6 orthodoxy, which is to say thinkable only as nonsense. He 7 names “the Jew . . . the very devil incarnation” (2.2.21–2) 8 instead of the devil incarnate. Principally, the conjunction 9 of “incarnation,” “devil,” and “the Jew” confects a garbled 40111 memory of the equation of Jews with devils in the vice tradi- 4111 tion, where the word “incarnation” can only make sense as a Waiting for Gobbo 85 1111 mangled attempt to assert the self-evidence or sheer givenness 2 of the equation – that which is incarnate being for all eyes to 3 see. But Launcelot’s accidental foray into incarnational theology 4 also expresses further nuances to the questions already lodged 5111 in his name: How does the person of Christ manifest itself? 6 What are the attributes of Christic identity?17 By suggesting a 7111 secret proximity between Christ’s kenosis and regions associ- 8 ated paradigmatically in Christian orthodoxy with the refusal 9 of grace (“the fiend,” “the Jew”), Launcelot’s tongue, fabricator 1011 of perverse affinities, briefly – and daringly – suspends the 1 historical and theological justifications for confessional antagon- 2 ism and communitarian partisanship which are axiomatic in 3111 the play-world and in Shakespeare’s culture at large. Astonish- 4 ingly, Launcelot’s nonsense revives or reinvents the gift of grace 5 as that which extends universally, even to an identification with 6 “the very devil.”18 7 8 Fathers and sons 9 20111 For all that, Launcelot’s tongue is also barbed in obvious ways. 1 The most flagrant, perhaps, appear in his several rehearsals 2 of the play’s sedimented anti-Judaism, beginning with the 3 intended attack on Shylock just described and ending with 4 the sobering advice he gives Jessica concerning her prospects 5 as a viable Christian (3.5.1–21). These incidents document 6 Launcelot’s function as casual witness to the play’s regnant 7 Same/Other dichotomy. But Launcelot’s nonsense consistently 8 works to undo this structure of thought. In Launcelot’s world, 9 otherness is not simply synonymous with social or religious 30111 difference; it is what animates and sustains sameness, beyond 1 all considerations of difference. It is the excess of the given. 2 Consider the joke Launcelot plays on Old Gobbo. After he 3 sees that his “sand-blind” father has failed to recognize him, 4 Launcelot seizes the opportunity to “try confusions,” (2.2.29–30) 5 by claiming that the son the father seeks has died. While the 6 joke no doubt carries an edge of oedipal aggression, what should 7 give pause is the full measure of “confusions” triggered by 8 Gobbo’s turning a blind eye, so to speak, to Launcelot’s ensuing 9 efforts to drive home the joke’s punch line – to stage his resur- 40111 rection, as planned, and reclaim his “true” identity as Gobbo’s 4111 son. In the unsettled moments of comedy and panic before 86 Lowell Gallagher 1111 Launcelot finds his way out of the inadvertent trap he has 2 sprung, the thought of kenosis takes visceral shape, by reducing 3 the objectifying force of biological and culturally legible orders 4 of filiation. While Launcelot helplessly watches and hears 5111 Gobbo mourn the loss of his son, categories of father and son 6 are emptied of given, normative significance in a way that is 17 reminiscent of Badiou’s reading of Paul. 8 What, indeed, is a father, or a son? Launcelot restores viable 9 communication with his father only through exasperated and 1011 uncalculated proclamation of equivalent intimacy with a Jewish 1 paternal body and a Christian maternal body : “I am Launcelot, 2 the Jew’s man, and I am sure Margery your wife is my mother” 3111 (2.2.90). The identity Launcelot seeks here owes its life to a 4 bond and a kinship deemed, from the point of view of Christian 5 patriarchal social order, either contingent and undesirable or 6 relatively inconsequential. Two bodies are also summoned into 7 a glancing type of union that would be dubious at best from 8 the play’s anthropological horizon, given its admixture of 19 Christian triumphalism and atavistic horror at the thought of 20111 reversion from Christian to Jewish dispensations. Launcelot’s 1 “born-again” identity equalizes and dissolves salient differences 2 between Christian and Jew, employer and employee, male and 3 female. It is vested not just in the patriarch but also in the 4 webbed givenness of all relationship. 5 Perhaps Launcelot’s transient disorientation expresses an 6 involuntary memory of Paul’s use of the word “son” to mean 7 “apostle” or messenger: the discourse of the son is the posi- 8 tion taken up by the subject of grace who gives apostolic witness 9 to the (Pauline) truth of the resurrection, where resurrection 30111 refers not to a biological event in defiance of the “law” of 1 nature, but to subjective exposure to an unsought intuition 2 of what it takes to be reborn – that is, detachment from all 3 the social specifics we think of as the substance of our selves.19 4 Accordingly, while Launcelot and Gobbo do not come to see 5 quite the same thing, their face-to-face encounter rediscovers 6 the thrilling ethical charge of kenosis: its capacity to disclose 7 the transfiguring claims of the Other within the Same, a 8 perception which undermines the legislation of social, ethnic, 9 or confessional difference. Bereft of his conventional identity, 40111 the play’s most conspicuous clown flashes for a moment with 4111 a more precious and essential kind of being. Had this Waiting for Gobbo 87 1111 enlightenment not been excluded from the play as a whole, 2 Shylock’s fate might have been very different. 3 4 Doves and more 5111 6 The kenotic subtext to Launcelot’s joke assumes an even wider 7111 compass in the career of the dish of doves. Leo Rockas is right 8 to observe that the gift Gobbo carries with him appears in, 9 and as, the play’s “most inconsequential” moment (Rockas 1011 1973: 348). As we found in my initial review of Gobbo’s gift, 1 it is perhaps best thought of as a vanishing event, where diverse 2 intuitions of gift-giving cross each other without coalescing into 3111 a stable entity. Pre-eminent among these are the gospel 4 accounts of the revelation at the baptism of Jesus, where the 5 “Spirit of God” descends from the heavens in the form of a 6 dove, while the voice of the Father identifies Jesus as the 7 “beloved Son” (Matt 3:16–17).20 Given the specific trajectory 8 of Gobbo’s gift, doves carry collateral significance as metonyms 9 of the anti-Judaizing edge to the gospel accounts of Jesus’s 20111 repudiation of Second Temple sacrificial practices: the over- 1 turning of the money changers’ tables and the “seats of those 2 who sold doves” (Mark 11:15).21 What is overturned in Merchant, 3 as noted earlier, is Gobbo’s intention to give the doves to 4 Shylock. Launcelot substitutes Bassanio for Shylock, voicing 5 the hope that his prospects for hire by a new, Christian master 6 will be enhanced by the grace note of a gift. 7 It is easy enough to see in the substitution the elemental 8 figure of the play’s ambivalent narrative of Christian triumphal- 9 ism, whereby the Jewish body is both expelled from and 30111 incorporated into the Christian fold. But the play’s triumphalist 1 gesture is not everything. In this case, its alignment with 2 Launcelot’s caprice shows more than the play can say. What 3 remains unsaid is the spirit of Gobbo’s gift. It would be tempting 4 to say that what Gobbo offers is the gift of simple kindness. But 5 kindness is rarely simple, not least because it translates readily 6 into liberal humanist complacency. So, rather than calling it 7 simple, let’s call it impossible. The spirit of Gobbo’s gift is the 8 impossible thought of unconditioned giving. It is a thought 9 harbored by Christian agape – Paul’s word for the animating 40111 power of love – and by agape’s parent, the Levitical instructions 4111 to love the neighbor as well as oneself. Without question, this 88 Lowell Gallagher 1111 thought can be construed merely as an index of social interest 2 in the symbolic capital to be accrued by gift-giving (this is the 3 anthropological argument on behalf of reciprocity), or as symp- 4 tom of the mystifying subtleties of Christianity’s supersessionist 5111 ambition (consider the manifold ironies of Portia’s legal dis- 6 course on mercy). But it is irreducible to these prescriptive 17 imperatives. 8 One detail conveys the point. From where Gobbo stands, 9 the dish of doves is no more and no less of a gift for Bassanio 1011 than it would have been for Shylock. Nominally, Gobbo’s 1 “suit” (2.2.121) is to appease Launcelot’s master, whoever he 2 may be. But Launcelot’s confused tongue – calling the suit 3111 “impertinent” (2.2.122) instead of “pertinent” – discerns 4 the truth of the matter. As Bassanio indicates, the suit is in- 5 deed impertinent, because Shylock and Bassanio have already 6 worked out the details of the transaction. The intended suit 7 shears off from the gift, and with it goes the determinative 8 character of the master–servant bond. The dish of doves 19 fades from view, but not before its self-evident fields of 20111 reference – the master–servant bond, as well as the confes- 1 sional and social differences known as “Christian” and “Jew” 2 – have been vacated, if only for a moment. In that moment 3 flickers the mystery of giving – not as servants currying favor 4 with their master, not as Christians mollifying a superior 5 Jew, but for its own sake. The dish of doves, still visible as object 6 but only uncertainly so as gift, expresses the precarious prox- 7 imity of Derrida’s and Marion’s opposing views of the gift’s 8 impossible surplus. Is the dish no more than a standing but 9 strangely empty promise of the gift, as Derrida might say? 30111 Does its identity as gift thoroughly saturate its material 1 form to the effect that it is indistinguishable from it, as Marion 2 would have it? Each prospect sees a future worth striving 3 toward, the former by holding fast to the thought that its 4 advent is not here, not yet, and the latter by soundlessly 5 descending into what is already at hand, needing only the 6 further impulse of grace (Paul’s “not . . . but”) to be revealed 7 and declared. Merchant does not, perhaps cannot, choose 8 between the two. Indeed, it is precisely the indeterminacy of 9 the dish of doves that enables it to disclose the gift’s excess as 40111 a “no thing” charged with eschatological and ecumenical desire: 4111 the possibility of impossibility. Waiting for Gobbo 89 1111 The prickly exchange between Launcelot and Lorenzo in 2 Act 3 ventures even further into this domain. Jessica has just 3 repeated to her husband the lesson Launcelot has taught her: 4 that their marriage is anathema in every imaginable way. 5111 Lorenzo’s attempt to chastise the meddlesome servant takes 6 the form of a reminder that Launcelot has trespassed the bounds 7111 of propriety and decency by consorting with the Moor and, 8 through “the getting up of the Negro’s belly” (3.5.32), giving 9 body to the specter of miscegenation. Launcelot’s laughing reply 1011 to the accusation: “It is much that the Moor should be more 1 than reason; but if she be less than an honest woman, she is 2 indeed more than I took her for” (3.5.34–6). 3111 The aim of recent commentaries on the pun has been to 4 quarry the ideological ironies of Launcelot’s quibble on “Moor” 5 and “more,” as in Kim Hall’s reading of the manner in which 6 the quibble exacerbates rather than neutralizes the cultural 7 anxieties driving the accusation. On this account, Launcelot’s 8 pun conjures the “image of the black woman as both consum- 9 ing and expanding” (Coyle (ed.) 1998: 97). The depicted 20111 intimacy of these contrasting actions says more about the unre- 1 solved contradictions informing the triumphalist narrative, 2 whether Christian or colonialist, than Lorenzo can bear to 3 listen to. The Moor’s pregnant body promises “not resolution, 4 but the potential disruption of Europe’s imperial text, because 5 in Merchant’s Venice – and Elizabeth’s England – the possi- 6 bility of wealth only exists within the dangers of cultural 7 exchange” (Coyle (ed.) 1998: 110). 8 Though compelling, this approach maintains the figural 9 scope of the Moor’s body under the material conditions of 30111 the triumphalist gaze and its structural antagonisms. On these 1 grounds, the conclusion that the “possibility of wealth only 2 exists within the dangers of cultural exchange” would likely see 3 its theoretical endgame in the anthropological emphasis on 4 reciprocity as the key to the gift. Which is to say that it would 5 not likely push the question of “cultural exchange” into the 6 phenomenological hinterlands of “possibility” and “wealth” all 7 too often discounted by materialist critical practice. 8 Yet Launcelot’s pun invites just such an excursion. The 9 proposed consanguinity of “Moor” and “more” recognizes 40111 more than the perturbation to the Venetian state caused by 4111 the visible sight of the Moor’s pregnant body. Playing on the 90 Lowell Gallagher 1111 extensive mental and interlocutory exercise of the adjective 2 “pregnant” in the early modern lexicon (quickness of wit, 3 imaginative resourcefulness, and sheer receptivity), Launcelot’s 4 pun figures the nature of his personal relation to the Moor as 5111 well. The “more” factor conjures up the capacity of interper- 6 sonal relations to be aerated by the excess, or charism, of a 17 “no thing.” In other words, the pun proposes that the ultimate 8 paradigm of the excluded relation in Venice carries particular 9 evidence of the gift’s impossibility. The pun remembers the 1011 “face,” the irreducibly personal singularity, of the unnamed 1 Moor. 2 The pun also reminds us of the profound kinship between 3111 the Levinasian face, Marion’s saturated phenomenon, and the 4 grammar of kenosis, which transfigures the shape of the real 5 by emptying the given of its familiar horizons so as to uncover 6 the plenitude and infinity of “no thing.” Where least expected, 7 in Launcelot’s scorned sexual relations with “the Moor,” 8 Shakespeare’s text recognizes that eschatological desire does 19 not concern a distant utopian vista, but rather the present, 20111 active “work of love.”22 1 And it recognizes in such work the presence of the Eucharist. 2 This is not the Eucharist of theological debate and liturgical 3 practice, and it is owned by no particular religious denomina- 4 tion or tradition. It is not owned, period. It is found in the 5 genuinely radical implication of kenosis, which is the thought 6 that the Other and the Same subsist in a profound though 7 precarious intimacy, within each social group, each particu- 8 larity, and each person. The name for this intimacy is the 9 universal: the “no thing” that is given to all and that makes 30111 possible, universally, a transfigured perception of the real, out- 1 side the bounds of what can be incorporated or manipulated 2 as knowledge. 3 From this perspective, it is no accident that the exchange 4 between Lorenzo and Launcelot concludes with a comic 5 Eucharistic allusion: they reconcile by quibbling over the proper 6 way to “prepare for dinner” (3.5.46). In Merchant’s Venice, 7 where the question of hunger is never far from the question 8 of excess, whether gourmandizing or cannibalizing, the banter 9 touches more than one nerve. Transposed to matters of state 40111 polity, the essential question raised by the banter is this: can 4111 all, without exception, receive the spirit of the gift? The question Waiting for Gobbo 91

1111 gives way to the trial scene’s revelation of the impossible 2 literalism of the pound of flesh, and to the ensuing disavowals 3 of the universality of that revelation. Hence the partisan force 4 of the “difference” the Duke shows in the Christian’s “spirit” 5111 (4.1.363), by commuting Shylock’s death sentence while making 6 the pardon contingent on the exchange of Antonio’s pound of 7111 flesh for Shylock’s forced conversion and the Venetian state’s 8 de facto extortion of the deed of gift. 9 Yet in Act 3, before dinner is served, Launcelot’s quibbling 1011 art once again, and for one last time, sees past the seductions 1 of the play’s historical and anthropological horizons and the 2 differences these horizons insist upon to articulate their domains 3111 of knowledge. “Prepare,” he insists, is not quite the right word; 4 “‘cover’ is the word” (3.5.44). “Cover” is the word because it 5 allows Launcelot to disclose several different senses in which 6 to prepare for dinner: setting the table, wearing proper head- 7 gear, keeping meat warm before dinner is served. But “cover” 8 is also exactly the right word in the sense that it suggests 9 the play of concealment and disclosure whereby the spirit or 20111 excess of the Eucharist – the spirit of the gift – makes itself 1 felt through the material “accidents” of a communal meal, of 2 3 supper, of bread and wine. “Cover” knows the substance of 4 what it means to be brought to the table and to eat. It knows 5 that what is substantial sustains and turns on what is unapparent 6 in embodiment, and given unconditionally. 7 That such insight in Merchant remains for the most part 8 “covered” in a further sense – isolated from the principal 9 concerns of the plot – indicates the particular historical and 30111 cultural circumstances which both shape and limit the play’s 1 field of vision. Not least among these is the emergent logic 2 of the mercantile spirit, which partly accounts for the ease 3 with which Antonio, at play’s end, equates “life” with “living” 4 in giving thanks for the unexpected bounty of the returned 5 argosies, just as Lorenzo, moments later, sees “manna” in the 6 deed of gift’s promise of solvency (5.1.284–5, 293). The equiva- 7 lencies drawn by Antonio and Lorenzo pre-emptively cast the 8 spirit of the gift in material and measurable terms. But it cannot 9 be said that their seemingly instinctive interpretive preference 40111 is confined to Shakespeare’s early modern location. 4111 The meat on Lorenzo’s table is still covered. 92 Lowell Gallagher 1111 Notes 2 1 I refer to Newman’s second version of this essay (Newman 1996). 3 The earlier appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly: 38 (1987): 19–33. 4 2 See the concise account of these issues in Horner 2001: 12–14. 5111 3 A helpful review of the central preoccupations of phenomenology’s 6 key figures, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, is in Horner 17 2001: 19–44. 8 4 From this vantage point, Merchant speaks to a pressing question in our current epoch of globalization: whether intuitions of the “spirit” 9 of the gift can be meaningfully translated across specific cultural and 1011 confessional traditions without being converted into instruments of a 1 hegemonic drive toward mere uniformity (as the “spirit” of capital 2 would suggest, for example). 3111 5 For an argument that advances interests broadly sympathetic to mine, 4 though different in focus, see Jackson 2001. Jackson brilliantly traces 5 the secret affinity between Derrida’s aporia of the gift, as shaped by 6 Derrida’s readings of Søren Kierkegaard and Jan Patocˇka in The Gift of Death (see Derrida 1995b), and the crisis of gift-giving in Timon of 7 Athens. 8 6 Derrida recurrently identifies the gift’s excess with what he calls khora, 19 one of his favorite names for the “absolutely universal place” (or, 20111 more accurately, non-place) that comes before all distinctions between 1 presence and absence (Caputo and Scanlon 1999: 76). 2 7 Derrida, to be sure, is not alone in questioning the “theological turn” 3 in phenomenology. See Janicaud, et al. (2000). An impressive, and more sympathetic, review of the issues is in Horner (2001). 4 8 Unless otherwise indicated, biblical citations are from the NRSV, 5 Metzger and Murphy (1994). 6 9 Geneva Bible (1599 ed.) at http://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.html 7 (28 June 2004). 8 10 The word’s currency in contemporary philosophy is directly related 9 to the word’s position as matrix of thought in the history of incar- 30111 national, Trinitarian, and Eucharistic theologies, to say nothing of the concept’s deployment in the grammar of sublation in Hegelian 1 dialectic, and its genetic link to “death of God” a-theologies in 2 modernity. Lucid accounts of these developments are in Coakley 3 1996, Ward 1998, and Ward 1999. 4 11 Representative examples of each thinker’s use of the image of kenosis 5 are in Derrida 1995a: 50; Marion 2004: 62, 78; Levinas 1994: 114–15, 6 126; Levinas 1998: 53–5; and Badiou 2003: 110. 7 12 The 1582 Rheims New Testament tries to preserve the theological 8 notion of emptying through the use of a neologism concocted from the Latin term for kenosis in the Vulgate. Thus Phil. 2:8 reads “He 9 exinanited himself.” 40111 13 Important contributions to the debate within feminist theology over 4111 the relative merits of an ethics of humility are in Hampson 1996, Waiting for Gobbo 93

1111 and Frascati-Lochhead 1998: 149–209. Levinas’ remarks on the 2 relation between kenosis and humility are relevant here (Levinas 1998: 3 53–60). 4 14 Loomis 1991: 28–9, 60–1. 15 OED, “gob,” n. 1.2, “A large sum of money”; n. 1.3a, “A lump or 5111 large mouthful of food”; “gobbet” n. 1b, “A piece of raw flesh.” A 6 secondary sense, from the Italian “gobbo,” suggests the hunchback’s 7111 deformity. OED “gobbet” n. 1b, “A piece of raw flesh.” Famously, 8 in the den of Errour, Spenser’s Redcrosse Knight discovers the 9 monstrous figure of Errour spewing poison “Full of great lumps of 1011 flesh and gobbets raw” (Spenser 1977 1.1.20). For a discussion of the 1 scene’s Eucharistic argument, see Gregerson 1995: 96. 16 The presiding force of such logic partly explains why the central 2 antagonism in Merchant (Shylock vs. Antonio) has lent itself to a double 3111 reading, as reflection of the historical division between Jewish and 4 Christian orthodoxies and as symptom of further divisions within 5 the Christian church wrought by Reformation controversies over the 6 nature of the Eucharist. A helpful account of the fundamental issues 7 in Eucharistic debates, from patristic culture to modernity, is in 8 Milbank 2003: 122–37. 17 For a lucid account of the theological range to these questions in 9 Christian discourse on kenosis, see Coakley 1996. 20111 18 The well-known prohibitions of sacramental and theological repre- 1 sentation on the early modern English stage virtually guarantee that 2 Merchant’s investment in theological argument will be oblique. The 3 more germane point, however, is that the factor of obliqueness also 4 enables the play’s turn from historical horizons to phenomenological 5 intuitions of the “no thing” which kenotic theologies contemplate as well. 6 19 See Badiou 2003: 42–5. 7 20 Further gospel proof-texts: Mark 1:9–11, Luke 3:21–2, John 1:31–4. 8 While the Trinitarian implications of Gobbo’s dish of doves do not 9 rise to the level of theological argument in the play, the Trinitarian 30111 element suggests how the idea of thirdness marries well with the gift’s 1 impossible surplus. Thirdness is what disrupts the closed field or 2 restricted economy of binary relations. An account of the important 3 relation between Trinitarian theology and kenosis is in Ward 1998. On a different register, Salerio’s impatient and cynical mention of 4 the erotic caprice of “Venus’ pigeons” (2.6.5) reasserts the fragility, 5 if not the aporia, of the gift, transposed to the lexicon of humanist 6 mythography. 7 21 See also Mark 11:15, John 2:13–16. 8 22 Zˇ izˇek 2000b: 129–30. 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 4 6 17 ‘Salving the mail’ 8 9 Perjury, grace and the disorder of 1011 things in Love’s Labour’s Lost 1 2 Philippa Berry 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 I 2 3 Often described as Shakespeare’s most courtly but also most 4 obscure play, Love’s Labour’s Lost is much preoccupied with the 5 riddling word-games that appear to have been fashionable at 6 the Elizabethan court in its last decade. The comedy’s explicit 7 posing of textual ‘enigmas’ has famously prompted several 8 critics to pillage it in search of secrets, in the form of allegor- 9 ical references to contemporary aristocrats as well as writers 30111 and thinkers; since the 1970s, however, it is the secondary 1 meanings that appear to be secreted in the text’s wordplay that 2 have attracted most critical attention. In its focus upon the 3 play’s evident interest in the affinity between the materiality of 4 signification and bodily desire, my chapter owes an important 5 debt to the latter kind of study, in particular to Patrica Parker’s 6 essay, ‘Preposterous Reversals’ (Parker 1993). But in the specific 7 context of this collection, my aim is to foreground how Shake- 8 speare’s ‘pleasant conceited Comedie’ (as it is described in 9 the quarto of 1598) invites us to look beyond its self-conscious 40111 staging of solipsistic word-games, together with the amorous 4111 courtships undertaken by its love-struck male characters, and ‘Salving the mail’ 95 1111 to reflect upon what kind of ‘end’, natural or unnatural, may 2 follow or come after ‘the posterior’ or latter end of man’s brief 3 play-time. 4 Biron confirms in Act 5 that ‘Our wooing doth not end like 5111 an old play./Jack hath not Jill’ (5.2.851–2). And in its obstruc- 6 tion of the lords’ quest for erotic gratification, the play’s closing 7111 deferral of comedic resolution also emphasises the ambiguous 8 affinity between the ostensibly different ‘ends’ of sexuality and 9 mortality. At the start of the play, significantly, it is a mortal 1011 ‘end’, rather than sexual consummation, that is anticipated by 1 Navarre in his appeal to his male courtiers to join him in 2 studious seclusion: ‘Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,/ 3111 Live registered upon our brazen tombs,/And then grace us in 4 the disgrace of death’ (1.1.1–3). Navarre evokes a tomb that 5 he aspires to have posthumously dignified by a ‘registered’, 6 textually recorded form of ‘grace’: specifically, that of intel- 7 lectual fame. But this is a worldly ‘grace’ whose value the plot 8 of Love’s Labour’s Lost explicitly questions, in part through insist- 9 ent repetition of the word. In its concluding act, the shallowness 20111 of the lords’ language-games is exposed as ‘maggot ostenta- 1 tion’ (5.2.409), while the inherent corruption of scholarly 2 memory that converts the ‘registered’ fame of dead heroes to 3 unintentional comedy is emphasised by the concluding pageant 4 of the Nine Worthies. 5 Parker has brilliantly explicated the sexual and scatological 6 implications of the ‘preposterous’ trope of coming after that is 7 introduced in the first scene of the play (Parker 1993). Yet 8 in reconsidering the comedy’s implicit question of what kind of 9 grace may follow man’s surrender to ‘sin’ (here associated with 30111 a breaking of oaths due to erotic desire), I read the play as 1 intertwining the comedic motif of courtship with a distinctive 2 dimension of sacrality.1 And my contention is that the self- 3 referential materiality of Shakespeare’s play-text is imbricated 4 with a riddling and distinctly heterodox meditation upon the 5 grace and salvation that may – or may not – follow man’s 6 mortal ‘end’. In this respect Love’s Labour’s Lost can be read as 7 anticipating or achronically intersecting with late modern or 8 postmodern meditations upon subjectivity – as a being-in-the- 9 world that discovers, in the very materiality of that experience, 40111 an opening to non-human modes of alterity. In anticipation of 4111 thinkers who have written in the wake of phenomenology, the 96 Philippa Berry 1111 play substitutes for the abstract study proposed in its opening 2 scene a different, phenomenal or ‘natural’ model of knowledge, 3 allied to both desire and death. In this ‘end of study’ the puta- 4 tive stability and singularity of the human is unsettled – stirred 5111 or ‘keeled’, like the ‘pot’ evoked in the final song of Hiems 6 – through a fuller engagement with the mutability of the 17 phenomenal world, and specifically, with what Michel Foucault 8 identified as the order of things.2 This redefinition of courtly 9 grace through talking ‘greasily’ (4.1.133), or with bawdy word- 1011 play, undoes the seeming oppositions of courtly and non-courtly, 1 grace and grease, cerebral and bodily, salvation and sin. 2 The exaggerated self-referentiality of this early comedy has 3111 a notably metadramatic dimension, expressed not simply in the 4 form of the courtly and rustic entertainments that are staged 5 in the last act of the play, but also in the play’s striking pre- 6 occupation with using texts as props. The circulation of multiple 7 texts within the plot draws insistent attention to the work’s 8 status as a play-text. These textual props include a written 19 ‘schedule’, the petition presented to the King by the Princess, 20111 numerous love-letters, Nathaniel’s ‘table-book’ or common- 1 place book, and the ‘paper’ that is the script for the pageant 2 of the Nine Worthies. Yet the simultaneous substantiality and 3 mobility of words in this play, which attests to their implica- 4 tion in the mutable world of material things, is given further 5 emphasis by the figurative imbrication of these textual props 6 within an extensive network of other material or non-human 7 objects. Here it is the disorder of things that reveals the 8 limitations of ‘taffeta phrases’ (5.2.406). For like the misdirected 9 letters of Biron and Don Armado, each of these things – 30111 plants, animals, birds, coins and favours, ointments, shields 1 and scutcheons, and textiles including smocks and shirts – has 2 a mobile, and sometimes even an uncanny, potency. And as a 3 nexus of puns reveals, and briefly elides, the porosity not just 4 of bodies but also of things, the oscillating significance of the 5 play’s cluster of inorganic and organic objects produces mean- 6 ings that are both material and suggestively metaphysical. The 7 phenomenologist Martin Heidegger called for ‘the step back 8 from the thinking that merely represents – that is, explains – 9 [things] to the thinking that responds and recalls’, declaring in 40111 a riddling idiom of his own that as ‘the thing things world’, 4111 and we know its ‘nearness’, then ‘earth and heaven’, ‘divinities ‘Salving the mail’ 97 1111 and mortals’ are no longer experienced as separate, but as 2 joined (Heidegger 1971: 181). Heidegger coined the term a 3 ‘gathering’ for the expanded significance that can inform the 4 things that touch us, and through which we are touched, not 5111 simply by others, but by the difference of the inorganic, of the 6 everyday world. 7111 To Biron’s question in the first scene – ‘What is the end of 8 study, let me know?’ – the King replies, ‘Why, that to know 9 which else we should not know’. Biron explicates and supple- 1011 ments this definition with ‘Things hid and barred, you mean, 1 from common sense?’ (1.1.55–7, my emphasis). A decade or so 2 after the publication of Love’s Labour’s Lost, in the works of 3111 seventeenth-century philosophers such as René Descartes and 4 Sir Francis Bacon, a reassertion of the distinction between 5 matter and human intellection was posited as the key to a 6 new order of knowledge. Both these writers placed particular 7 emphasis upon the objective empirical truths afforded by 8 ‘things’. Of his opposition between res extensa, raw matter, and 9 res cogitans, thinking substance, Descartes comments that ‘there 20111 being only one truth of each thing whoever finds it knows as 1 much about it as can be known about it’ (cited in Benjamin 2 1993: 54). But in the cultural ferment of the 1590s, when the 3 accelerating expansion of English commodity-culture was being 4 paralleled by the equally rapid augmentation of the English 5 vernacular, the excessive and often grotesque rhetoric of authors 6 such as Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey was stimulating a 7 vogue for literary interrogations of the curious effects of things 8 – or objects – upon human subjects. In establishing strange 9 affinities between humans and ‘things’, the literary texts of the 30111 1590s appear to anticipate a strikingly anti-Cartesian comment 1 by Blaise Pascal, in which complex variety is seen as a prop- 2 erty common both to the human soul and to ‘things’: ‘Things 3 have diverse qualities, and the soul diverse inclinations, for 4 nothing of that which is offered to the soul is simple and the 5 soul never offers anything simple to any subject’ (cited in 6 Benjamin 1993: 75). 7 In its comedy of mistaken props, Love’s Labour’s Lost can be 8 read as affording an interesting parallel to the chiasmic reci- 9 procity of Pascal’s notion of the soul as a thing and the thing 40111 as soul-like. In the simple yet shrewd mind of the rustic Costard, 4111 the Spanish knight Don Armado’s letter to Jaquenetta becomes 98 Philippa Berry 1111 a ‘mail’ (3.1.63); this was a bag in which ointment was carried 2 by a ‘quacksalver’, but the word also homophonically evokes 3 the amorous male. In the imagination of Biron, woman is like 4 a German clock ‘never going aright’ (3.1.175–6), and the dark 5111 Rosaline is also compared to ebony – ‘O wood divine!’ (4.3.244). 6 In the concluding courtship scene, when the masquerading 17 Lords have been condemned as perjurers once again by the 8 ladies’ misplacing of their favours, Biron imagines his ‘silken 9 terms precise’ as a luxurious range of fabrics that have corrup- 1011 ted his core humanity, like maggots breeding in the wool of 1 sheep: 2 3111 Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, 4 Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, 5 Figures pedantical – these summer flies 6 Have blown me full of maggot ostentation. 7 I do forswear them, and I here protest, 8 By this white glove – how white the hand, God 19 knows! – 20111 Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed 1 In russet yeas and honest kersey noes. 2 (5.2.406–13) 3 4 A few lines later, Biron warns the mercurial Boyet, who has 5 mocked their page, ‘Die when you will, a smock shall be your 6 shroud’ (5.2.479). And this motif of repentance or purgation 7 as a return to the simple things and materials that denote our 8 bare humanity reappears at the end of the pageant of the Nine 9 Worthies, when Costard wants to fight Armado in his ‘shirt’, 30111 only to find that Armado has no shirt at all. 1 The timeliness of redirecting critical attention to the 2 materiality of objects within Renaissance culture, and simul- 3 taneously of beginning to articulate new relations between 4 subjects and objects, was emphasised in Subject and Object in 5 Renaissance Culture, edited by Margreta de Grazia, Maureen 6 Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass. In their introduction to this 7 volume the editors suggest that: 8 9 Reading ‘ob’ as ‘before’ allows us to assign the object a 40111 prior status, suggesting its temporal, spatial and even causal 4111 coming before . . . So defined, the term renders more apparent ‘Salving the mail’ 99 1111 the way material things – land, clothes, tools – might 2 constitute subjects who in turn own, use, and transform 3 them. The form/matter relation of Aristotelian metaphysics 4 is thereby provisionally reversed: it is the material object 5111 that impresses its texture and contour upon the noumenal 6 subject. And this reversal is curiously upheld by the 7111 ambiguity of the word ‘sub-ject’, that which is thrown under, 8 in this case – in order to receive an imprint. 9 (de Grazia et al. 1996: 5) 1011 1 However, my reading of Shakespeare’s paronomastic explora- 2 tion of things, and of the human’s relations both to and through 3111 them, differs from that of these critics in its emphasis, first, upon 4 the perceived mutability of things (not simply as props, but also 5 as imagined and reconfigured solely by language); and second, 6 upon the subtle, implicitly uncanny and even soul-related, 7 effects that are attributed to the supplementary slipperiness – 8 or the ‘greasiness’ – of these mutable objects, as they reveal 9 hidden flaws in the human subject. 20111 In the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx wrote of the 1 ‘mystical’ character and the strangely spectral secrecy of the 2 commodity-form, which Jacques Derrida redescribed as ‘it 3 ghosts’ (Es spukt) (Derrida 1994: ch. 5). In Love’s Labour’s Lost, 4 the uncanny affinity of things with a ‘ghostly’ set of meanings 5 that can affect man’s spiritual destiny is indicated from the 6 very start of the play, when the ‘schedule’ signed by the King 7 and his lords allies literary signification (both writing and 8 the ‘study’ of books) with a spiritual version of legality: this 9 is the quasi-monastic oath of three years’ celibate study that is 30111 taken by the group. Subsequently, each of the numerous texts 1 embedded within the play emphasises the affinity between the 2 textual attempt to fix meaning and some form of vow, debt or 3 obligation that results in deviation or transgression. Like the 4 love-letters on the one hand or Armado’s missing shirt on the 5 other, the play’s interest in the recurrent errancy of trivial 6 ‘things’ exposes a ‘naked’ human fallibility that does not merit 7 grace, but hopes for it none the less. So Armado finally admits: 8 ‘The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. I go woolward for 9 penance’ (5.2.694–5). 40111 In the first scene of the play, Biron voices his scepticism 4111 about the four noblemen’s heroic pledge to oppose ‘the huge 100 Philippa Berry 1111 army of the world’s desires’ by studying in Navarre’s ‘little 2 academe’ (1.1.10, 13): ‘For every man with his affects is born,/ 3 Not by might mastered, but by special grace’ (1.1.149–50). As 4 a result of their rapid enslavement to erotic desire, neither 5111 Navarre and his companions, nor Costard or Armado, are able 6 to keep this oath even for a day. In consequence of their perjured 17 oaths – but also because of their gracelessness in the arts of 8 amorous courtship – the lords gradually discovery their mistaken 9 relationship to both words and things, as they admit to needing 1011 ‘some salve for perjury’ (4.3.284). It quickly becomes clear, there- 1 fore, that the entire community lacks Biron’s ‘special grace’, 2 which plausibly alludes to the Calvinist conception of ‘partic- 3111 ular’ grace, or election. The European and implicitly Catholic 4 character of this all-male community (especially given its quasi- 5 monastic character) appears thereby to be highlighted.3 But in 6 spite of its seeming topical reference to the recent conversion 7 to Catholicism (in 1593) of the French king, Henri IV (formerly 8 King of Navarre), the comedy cannot simply be read as a 19 critique of Catholicism. The play’s structural opposition between 20111 ‘his grace’ and ‘her grace’ – that is, between the King of 1 Navarre’s entourage and that of the Princess of France, who 2 ends the play as ‘Queen’ – accords figurative and material shape 3 to a heterodox mode of grace, natural as well as supernatural, 4 whose supplementary (Marian?) character seems far more 5 Catholic than Protestant, as does its metonymic association with 6 the play’s female characters. 7 On her first entrance to sue for the restoration of Aquitaine, 8 Boyet praises the Princess of France as a repository not just of 9 all the graces (in a reference to the female Graces of classical 30111 culture) but of a ‘dear grace’ that is apparently unique. Yet he 1 appeals to her to bestow this grace ‘prodigally’, or lavishly: 2 3 Be now as prodigal of all dear grace 4 As nature was in making graces dear 5 When she did starve the general world beside 6 And prodigally gave them all to you. 7 (2.1.9–12) 8 9 Christ as the word of God was defined by St Paul as the 40111 free gift of love that suspends the (letter of the) law of divine 4111 judgement: ‘Salving the mail’ 101 1111 In that yee are manifest, to be the Epistle of Christ, 2 ministred by vs, and written, not with yncke, but with the 3 Spirite of the liuing God, not in tables of stone, but in 4 fleshly tables of the heart. And such trust haue we through 5111 Christ to God: Not that we are sufficient of our selues, to 6 thinke any thing, as of our selues: but our sufficiencie is of 7111 God, Who also hath made vs able ministers of the Newe 8 testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirite: for the letter 9 killeth, but the Spirite giueth life. 1011 (2 Cor.3: 3–6)4 1 2 In Love’s Labour’s Lost, however, it is a feminised and sexualised 3111 model of grace that initiates the revelatory process which shows 4 the limitations both of the men’s law and of their letters, and 5 ends by imposing a different law upon them. 6 7 8 II 9 20111 The complicated relationship between textuality and different 1 forms and temporal contexts of ‘salving’, or healing, is a 2 dominant, albeit puzzling, trope in the comedy’s central scene 3 and act. Here a sequence of cryptic puns seems to foreground 4 5 a textualised as well as sexualised form of supplementary grace: 6 this is evoked by the rustic Costard’s enigmatic allusion to ‘no 7 salve in the mail’ (3.1.63), which anticipates the Lords’ desire 8 for ‘some salve for perjury’ after the breaking of their oaths. 9 In this riddling exchange between Costard (identified in the 30111 play-text as either a swain or a clown), the ‘man of fire-new 1 words’ (1.1.176), Armado, and his page Mote, masculine subjec- 2 tivity is troped as wounded or fallen – as ‘broken in a s[h]in’ 3 (3.1.61), but also as much preoccupied with an ambivalent 4 conception of end(s). Although a lowly ‘swain’, Costard carries 5 a heavy weight of allegorical significance in this play, since his 6 name was not only the slang term for a ‘head’ but also signi- 7 fied a rib as well as an apple. Thus not only does he appear 8 to personify man’s Adamic nature on the point of a sexual fall 9 (in the production of Eve from his rib and the temptation by 40111 the apple); Costard also parodies the intellectual pretensions 4111 that make Navarre and his courtier-scholars liable to a second 102 Philippa Berry 1111 fall. Through interlingual punning, the central scene equates 2 a love-letter with a medical salve, via the Latin for a greeting, 3 ‘salve’. But Costard’s assertion that there is ‘no salve in the 4 mail’ initiates a witty discussion about the beginnings and 5111 endings of texts that seems to pose a question about appro- 6 priate healing for the soul as well as for the body. Mistakenly 17 identified by Costard with a ‘l’envoi’ – part of a literary text 8 that comes not before but after – his ‘salve’ initiates a medi- 9 tation upon endings that concludes by alluding to concepts of 1011 ‘purgation’, ‘enfreedoming’ and ‘remuneration’ which have an 1 obvious spiritual as well as a bodily and sexual implication. 2 The pivotal passage begins some 70 lines into Act 3, when 3111 Mote enters with Costard, who is to be an ‘envoi’ or messenger 4 for Armado. Costard has been apprehended in the opening 5 scene of the play for ‘following’ the country wench, Jaquenetta. 6 Now he is in a physically and emotionally distressed state, seem- 7 ingly because of his love for the same wench to whom Armado 8 is sending his love-letter: 19 20111 Mote A wonder, master! Here’s a costard broken in a shin. 1 Armado Some enigma, some riddle; Come, thy l’envoi. Begin. 2 3 Costard No egma, no riddle, no l’envoi, no salve in the mail, 4 sir. O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! No l’envoi, no 5 l’envoi, no salve, sir, but a plantain! 6 Armado By virtue, thou enforcest laughter – thy silly thought 7 my spleen. The heaving of my lungs provokes me to 8 ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the 9 inconsiderate take salve for l’envoi and the word ‘l’envoi’ 30111 for a salve? 1 Mote Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve? 2 Armado No, page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain 3 Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain. 4 I will example it: 5 The fox, the ape and the humble-bee 6 Were still at odds, being but three. 7 There’s the moral. Now the l’envoi. 8 Mote I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again. 9 Armado 40111 The fox, the ape and the humble-bee 4111 Were still at odds, being but three. ‘Salving the mail’ 103 1111 Mote 2 Until the goose came out of door, 3 And stayed the odds by adding four. 4 ... 5111 A good envoi, ending in the goose. Would you desire more? 6 Costard The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat. 7111 Sir, your pennyworth is good an your goose be fat. 8 To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose. 9 Let me see: a fat l’envoi – ay, that’s a fat goose. 1011 Armado Come hither, come hither. How did this argument 1 begin? 2 Mote By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. 3111 Then called you for the l’envoi. 4 Costard True, and I for a plantain: thus came your argument 5 in. Then the boy’s fat l’envoi, the goose that you bought, 6 and he ended the market. 7 Armado But tell me, how was there a costard broken in a shin? 8 Mote I will tell you sensibly. 9 Costard Thou hast no feeling of it, Mote. I will speak that 20111 l’envoi. 1 I, Costard, running out, that was safely within, 2 Fell over the threshold, and broke my shin. 3 Armado We will talk no more of this matter. 4 Costard Till there be more matter in the shin. 5 Armado Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee. 6 Costard O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some l’envoi, 7 some goose in this. 8 Armado By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfree- 9 doming thy person. Thou wert immured, restrained, 30111 captivated, bound. 1 Costard True, true, and now you will be my purgation, and 2 let me loose. 3 (3.1.61–116) 4 5 In this intricate allusion to the ways in which texts aspire 6 to touch upon the most intimate of bodily matters, Costard 7 makes overt reference to different kinds of medical as well as 8 literary innovation. His initial mishearing of the word ‘l’envoi’, 9 in conjunction with the Greek enigma, converts an artful literary 40111 device into a ‘salve in the mail’. Possibly misunderstanding 4111 ‘enigma’ as another Greek word, enema, Costard may also 104 Philippa Berry 1111 mishear ‘l’envoi’ as ‘lenify’, a verb first imported from Latin in 2 1568.5 The word alludes to the softening or mitigation of a 3 physical condition, often through the application of a purga- 4 tive substance that lenifies or softens, and that is applied 5111 inwardly or outwardly as a lenitive or ‘salve’. Thus a literary 6 greeting at the text’s end is converted, through the pun on salve 17 (Latin for ‘hello’), into an ointment carried in a bag or ‘mail’ 8 by a ‘quacksalver’ or mountebank, whose basic constituent 9 would be grease, and which could be applied inside the body, 1011 in the form of a clyster or enema, or externally, to a wound.6 1 Salves could be made from a single herb or ‘simple’, but in 2 the Paracelsan or ‘chemical’ medicine that was then the subject 3111 of fierce debate, they were typically prepared from chemical 4 compounds.7 It is this practice that Costard initially rejects 5 when he calls instead for ‘a plain plantain’; this herbal remedy 6 for bruising may also connote that Costard wants a ‘plain’, or 7 sexual, treatment for his ambiguous ‘broken shin’.8 8 But the wordplay in this scene also draws our attention to 19 the self-referentiality of Love’s Labour’s Lost, through its use 20111 of the literary device of the envoi or tornada. Derived both from 1 the Italian canzone and from French troubadour verse, the envoi 2 was enjoying renewed popularity in English verse of the mid- 3 1590s, where it was appropriated by learned poets such as 4 Edmund Spenser and George Chapman as well as by Gabriel 5 Harvey and Thomas Nashe. Equated with the closing lines or 6 final stanza of a poem, the envoi was a literary device through 7 which the poet, in turning inwards and self-consciously com- 8 menting upon his text, could also speak directly to his addressee 9 or to other poets. This conflation of inside and outside, text 30111 and recipient, figuratively anticipated the process of the poem’s 1 transmission in the world, and thus the question of literary 2 ends.9 In Shakespeare’s text, however, the structural singularity 3 of the envoi is significantly multiplied. Not only does an envoi 4 make a paradoxical appearance in the middle of the play-text 5 (albeit at the end of the witty exchange), as the last two lines 6 of a brief beast-fable involving fox, ape, ‘humble-bee’ and 7 ‘ending in the goose’; a doubled envoi is also used to end the 8 play, in the two songs of the owl and cuckoo. At both junctures, 9 a human ‘envoi’ or messenger is used to personify and implicitly 40111 to comment upon the literary envoi’s meaning. 4111 In Act 3 Costard is eventually reconciled to ‘l’envoi’ as the ‘Salving the mail’ 105 1111 witty completion of an act of communication, along with the 2 mysteriously material and greasy benefits – ‘remuneration’ – 3 that are seemingly encoded in and attendant upon it: ‘Let me 4 see: a fat l’envoi – ay, that’s a fat goose’. The interlingual pun 5111 on the ‘oi’ ending of ‘l’envoi’ alludes to the French word for 6 goose, oie, in seeming reference to the male’s ‘end’ or objective 7111 of obtaining sexual favours in the form of a greasy greeting or 8 reception from a ‘fat goose’ – a fertile or sexually available 9 woman. Goose grease was frequently used in the preparation 1011 of salves, but was also commonly used to lubricate bodily orifices 1 (whether vaginal or anal) for sexual intercourse. Armado’s 2 ‘l’envoi’ ‘ending in the goose’ may additionally pun on the Latin 3111 for goose, anser, since ‘goose’ is the answer to his riddle. (Indeed, 4 when Armado’s letter is delivered to the Princess’ entourage 5 after it has been mistakenly substituted for that of Biron, its 6 feathery metamorphosis is completed, since it is received as a 7 ‘capon’ whose ‘neck’ or seal must be broken and which must 8 be carved in order to be read (4.1.56–9).) 9 Like the greasiness of the ‘fat goose’, the capacity of salves, 20111 plasters, or enemas to be externally or internally applied to the 1 human body depended primarily upon their greasy contents. 2 And in its additional play upon the release of secret ‘matters’, 3 as discharges or secretions, from the greasy ends of humans as 4 well as things, this central scene reconfigures the materiality 5 of everydayness, investing it not simply with a shifting, multi- 6 faceted character, but also with a suggestive dimension of 7 hiddenness that may imply pollution, given the possible allusion 8 to syphilis in ‘goose’ and ‘shin’.10 Indeed, the wordplay in 9 Act 3 seems also, more ambitiously, to be reopening – or tenting 30111 – a painful and highly contemporary set of spiritual wounds, 1 in an allusion to theological concerns about the relative merits 2 of Calvinist theories of special grace or predestination versus 3 Catholic concepts of penance and purgation. Although the 4 precise date of Love’s Labour’s Lost is not certain, it now seems 5 likely to have been written after 1594, in a period when Shake- 6 speare was to quibble explicitly on the doubtfulness of grace 7 as ‘prologue’, when Falstaff comments to Hal in 1 Henry IV 8 that ‘grace thou wilt have none . . . not so much as will serve 9 to be prologue to an egg and butter’ (1.2.15–18). 40111 In the Lambeth articles of 1595, the Church of England 4111 had adopted strict Calvinist doctrine on election and ‘absolute 106 Philippa Berry 1111 predestination’. But during this decade predestination was also 2 beginning to be vocally challenged by anti-Calvinist divines 3 who anticipated Arminianism in arguing for universal grace.11 4 On the other hand, among Elizabethan Catholics belief survived 5111 in grace, not as prologue, but as epilogue to man’s life, in 6 doctrines of the efficacy of penance, Purgatory and the merciful 17 intercession of the saints – above all, in the intercession of the 8 Blessed Virgin. Eamon Duffy observes: 9 1011 The Mother of Mercy was one of Mary’s most resonant 1 medieval titles, unforgettably carved, painted or engraved, 2 extending her sheltering cloak over the suppliant faithful 3111 and enshrined in the most haunting of Marian prayers, the 4 ‘Salve Regina’. All over Europe the singing of the ‘Salve’ 5 each night after Compline had become a popular devo- 6 tion, and English testators left bequests for lights, incense, 7 and musical accompaniment to dignify this most tender of 8 tributes to the Virgin Mary. 19 (Duffy 1992: 264) 20111 1 Invoked in the ‘Salve Maria’ or ‘Hail Mary’ that begins the 2 rosary prayers, Mary was also greeted at the end of the rosary 3 prayers with an especial ‘l’envoi’, a recitation of the antiphon 4 of the ‘Salve Regina’, which appealed to Mary as a holy queen. 5 Like use of the rosary, the singing of the ‘Salve Regina’ and 6 all other traces of the cult of the Virgin Mary had been banned 7 by Archbishop Cranmer in 1547. 8 By inviting us to anticipate a ‘salve’ that is not a ‘salve’ – 9 a greeting that paradoxically comes at the end, and that is 30111 both like and unlike a healing ointment, the comedy connects 1 erotic courtship with man’s quest for salvation, in a heterodox 2 meditation upon the temporality of grace and the possible 3 destination of the soul. And in anticipating the lords’ desire for 4 ‘some salve for perjury’ the artful ‘salving’ or healing that is 5 viewed so dubiously by Costard glances proleptically toward 6 the play’s equally curious conclusion, which makes repeated 7 reference to the terminus of death. The name of Mercadé, the 8 French envoi who arrives bearing news of another king’s death, 9 evokes not only the god Mercury, as messenger and psycho- 40111 pomp of souls, but also the Latin word merces, meaning reward, 4111 price, recompense, remuneration or punishment (magna mercede ‘Salving the mail’ 107 1111 meant ‘at great cost’) and hence death as the ironic reward or 2 ‘remuneration’ that is accorded to fallen man. In this respect 3 this second human envoi has an obscure relationship to the first 4 envoi in the play, Costard, the punning significance of whose 5111 name seems to denote the fall of man in relation to the temp- 6 tations of (sexual) knowledge. But it is a literary envoi that 7111 concludes the play, in the songs of Ver and Hiems. Here 8 riddling allusions to two ‘fowls’ or birds foreground the marked 9 ambivalence of the play’s conclusion. For the cuckoo and the 1011 owl emblematise both the uncertainty of marital endings (which 1 are implied to be vulnerable to the mutability, the ‘foulness’ 2 or ‘greasiness’ of an errant female agency that can manifest at 3111 either ‘end’ of the year), and also the uncertain meaning of 4 life’s beginning and end. While the song of Ver alludes to the 5 fear of female erotic infidelity that haunts the married man, in 6 the final song, that of Hiems, a dense sequence of non-human 7 objects – a wall, a nail, logs, a hall, milk, a pail, a pot, crabs 8 and a bowl – is figuratively allied with the deviation and frustra- 9 tion of erotic desire. Each verse of the owl’s song culminates 20111 with the otherworldly, folkloric image of ‘greasy Joan’ and the 1 cooking ‘pot’, that she is ‘keeling’ – stirring or skimming in 2 order to cool: ‘a merry note,/While greasy Joan doth keel the 3 pot’ (5.2.893–4, 901–2). Given earlier references in the play to 4 Joan as a non-courtly object of desire, this pot seems figura- 5 tively to correspond to that greasy feminine end, or ‘fat goose’, 6 in and through which Costard earlier hoped to be ‘enfran- 7 chised’. But like the penalty-imposing ladies of France, the 8 materiality of a pleasure-affording feminine end is here invested 9 with a purgative or punitive quality, in an imposed cooling of 30111 desire that parallels the ladies’ refusal of ‘courtesy’ to their male 1 suitors. Given the lords’ painful awareness of their double 2 perjury, these forms of female-directed ‘keeling’ or purgation 3 appear to correspond to a process of supernatural judgement 4 that is also, paradoxically, an intimation of the future possi- 5 bility of grace. Indirectly identified, in the central scene, with 6 man’s eventual ‘remuneration’ or receipt of a ‘guerdon’ for 7 good works or penance (3.1.120ff.), the feminine grace in ques- 8 tion seems to require above all a quasi-theological, 9 quasi-medical purgation of the graceful or witty language of the 40111 male courtier and humanist scholar. Through the mutating 4111 meanings of ostensibly stable things in this play – as Armado’s 108 Philippa Berry 1111 letter mutates into l’envoi, ‘salve’, ‘mail’, ‘goose’, and finally, on 2 its receipt by the ladies, ‘capon’ – we are reminded of the 3 seeming inevitability of deviations from and of the word. 4 Thereby, both the noblemen’s perjury (which may imply a 5111 rejection of justification by faith) and the ‘miscarrying’ of the 6 language of desire (in the form of the love-letters soon to be 17 misdelivered by Costard) are implied to be an inevitable 8 process. 9 The quasi-culinary agent of this natural grace is not the 1011 poet, however, but rather the strangely emblematic figure of 1 ‘greasy Joan’. She is imaged as substituting for the erotic touch 2 a paradoxical act of stirring which implies that both pleasure 3111 and purgation, both the incitement to and the obligatory 4 cooling of sexual desire, are necessary ingredients in the poet’s 5 figurative concoction of a textual salve. This is a ‘fowl’ or 6 ‘greasy’ mode of salvation, to be dispensed by a female or femi- 7 nine source of mercy whose future ‘remuneration’ or ‘guerdon’ 8 is seemingly both sacred and profane. For this errant feminine 19 salve is also implied to be closely allied to the peculiar effects 20111 that are engendered by the disorder of things. 1 2 3 Notes 4 1 In this preoccupation with the ambiguity of bodily ends, my chapter 5 builds upon the argument set out in Berry 1999. 6 2 The redisposition of ‘things’ in the modern episteme was brilliantly 7 anatomized by Michel Foucault in Foucault 1991. 8 3 ‘For why is one person more excellent than another? Is it not to 9 display in common nature God’s special grace, which in passing many by, declares itself bound to none?’ (Calvin 1961: 276). 30111 4 The reference is taken from the Geneva Bible. 1 5 See the New Penguin edition of John Kerrigan (Shakespeare 1982). 2 6 The OED lists the first usage of ‘mail bag’, as a bag of letters, as 3 1670 (Mail sb. 3 2), but it seems clear that Shakespeare is using the 4 word in this sense, as well as in reference to a bag holding ointment. 5 7 See Hoeniger 1992. 6 8 See Rubinstein 1989 for the possible bawdy overtones of ‘plain’, ‘shin’ 7 and ‘matter’. 9 For an account of the function of this device in troubadour verse, 8 see Phan 1991. I am indebted to Bill Burgwinkle for directing me to 9 this essay. 40111 10 See Williams 1997. 4111 11 For details of this opposition, see Tyacke 1987. 1111 2 3 4 5111 5 6 7111 The Shakespearean fetish 8 Lisa Freinkel 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2111 What Freud discovers in the fetish is the emptiness of the object. 3 Freud, in this at least, is the true heir of Protestantism. 4 (Stallybrass and Jones 2000: 32)1 5 6 7 For an astonishingly long time in the contentious modern 8 history of literary criticism – for a full quarter century, an entire 9 lit-critter generation – we’ve been telling ourselves essentially 30111 the same story about psychoanalysis, gender, religion and 1 Renaissance lyric poetry. 2 The story is a powerful one; it explicates “Petrarch’s char- 3 acteristic descriptive moves – fragmentation and reification” 4 (Vickers 1985: 112) by way of the self-consciously idolatrous 5 stance of the poet-lover. The Petrarchan lover’s praise unfolds 6 in rime sparse, in “scattered rhymes,” parceling out the beloved 7 in emblazoned bits “of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow” 8 – piecing out upon a pedestal the catalog that Shakespeare 9 calls “the blazon of sweet beauty’s best” (Sonnet 106: 5–6). 40111 And, as we’ve further come to understand, such idolatrous 4111 fragmentation amounts to nothing less than fetishism. 110 Lisa Freinkel 1111 It behooves us, however – we chroniclers of “spiritual 2 Shakespeares” in particular – to consider this story of the 3 Petrarchan fetish a bit more carefully: especially given our disci- 4 pline’s current surge of interest in what’s coming to be known 5111 as “the new materialism.”2 For a number of recent critics, the 6 cultural history of fetishism has afforded an important vantage 17 point from which to re-assess early modern materialities. Peter 8 Stallybrass’ and Ann Rosalind Jones’ discussions have been 9 exemplary in this vein, and have proved singularly influential 1011 in foregrounding the cultural critic William Pietz’s work on the 1 history of fetishism.3 2 Pietz charts the evolution of the pidgin term fetisso from 3111 its sixteenth-century origins in the intercultural context of the 4 West African gold and slave trades, to the modern day concept 5 of the fetish as used in anthropology, political economy and 6 psychoanalysis (see Pietz 1985, 1987, 1988). As Pietz demon- 7 strates, the origin of the term is difficult to characterize. The 8 complex of usages comprised by the word cannot be simply 19 derived from the nearest etymological root (namely, the Portu- 20111 guese characterization of West African religion as witchcraft, 1 or feitiçaria). Nor can we trace the array of discrete cultural 2 artifacts that fetisso comes to designate, back to a single con- 3 ceptual or discursive field – or even to a single colonial power 4 or colonized people. Instead, the fetisso only evolves in the 5 course of translation and transaction across competing cultures, 6 practices, spiritualities. Fetisso mediates between Portuguese 7 Catholic, Iberian Jew, Dutch Calvinist, Islamicized as well as 8 non-Islamicized African. 9 For scholars like Stallybrass and Jones, Pietz’s account offers 30111 a chapter in the history of the modern individual as “private” 1 or privé self: i.e. as disencumbered, as deprived of material entail- 2 ments.4 According to this account, the fetisso helps a nascent 3 European capitalism define itself and its commodities, over and 4 against a benighted ethnic Other: an Other incapable of recog- 5 nizing the “true” value of objects. For the European, the fetisso 6 emerges somewhat paradoxically as the expression of an inex- 7 pressive materiality – of the material world in all its brute and 8 meaningless density. It is this literally stupid world that the 9 savages venerate, and thus their fetissos, defined by the 40111 Europeans as worthless stuff, enable a critique of unsublimated 4111 materiality. As Pietz explains, the truth of the fetisso “resides in The Shakespearean fetish 111 1111 its status as a material embodiment.” Importantly, the fetisso is 2 hence no idol, “for the idol’s truth lies in its relation of iconic 3 resemblance to some immaterial model or entity” (Pietz 1985: 4 8). In contrast, the fetisso resists spirit, resists the “elsewhere” 5111 of the material world. The fetisso finds itself, then, on the other 6 side of the emerging classical divide between mind and body, 7111 participating in the new discourse of the classical subject. By 8 the eighteenth century, it will come to epitomize all that a self 9 must bracket, in order to realize “his” disembodied and fully 1011 rational autonomy. In this manner, the early modern fetisso 1 paves the way for the Enlightenment. The secularization that 2 fetisso bespeaks, augurs progress – albeit a progress only 3111 achieved at the expense of a demonized Other. As Pietz argues: 4 “The discourse of the fetish has always been a critical discourse 5 about the false objective values of a culture from which the 6 speaker is personally distanced” (Pietz 1985: 14). 7 For critics who are critical of this Enlightenment critique, 8 the reappraisal of fetishism – the effort, as Stallybrass and Jones 9 put it, to find “the utopian moment of the fetish” (Stallybrass 20111 and Jones 2000: 32) – proves uniquely helpful. The question 1 of the fetish lies at the intersection of matter and spirit; to study 2 the history of fetish is to study the very question of sublima- 3 tion itself, of spiritual transcendence. Its reappraisal is essential 4 not only for scholars of the “new materialism” but also for 5 those of us intent on a newly “spirited,” as it were, discourse. 6 Nonetheless, I remain dubious of utopian fetishism – if only 7 for the simple reason that, logically speaking, there can be no 8 positive discourse of fetishism: the discourse of the fetish is irre- 9 ducibly and originally negative. As Pietz argues, the discourse 30111 “always posits this double consciousness of absorbed credulity 1 and degraded or distanced incredulity” (Pietz 1985: 14). In 2 the twentieth-century psychoanalytic language of fetish, this 3 doubled consciousness finds its theory within the psyche, in the 4 “double attitude” of Freudian Verleugnen, or disavowal: a simul- 5 taneous denial and asseveration (Freud [1927] 1957: 203). 6 I argue that the fetish is better understood as the vehicle of 7 a triangulated perspective – not a doubled one. Indeed, its 8 discourse of critique, I argue, always entails three positions: (1) 9 the stance of the fully credulous; (2) the stance of the disillu- 40111 sioned; and (3) that of the disillusioned who nevertheless 4111 suspend their disbelief.5 It is only this last position that embodies 112 Lisa Freinkel 1111 the doubleness of Verleugnen, but such duality logically entails 2 the first two dichotomous positions of total credulity, on the 3 one hand, and unremitting skepticism on the other. Moreover, 4 it is just this triangulation in the context of belief that the 5111 Protestant Reformation brings to a traditional iconoclast 6 discourse. Pace Stallybrass and Jones, it is not Protestantism per 17 se that supplies the appropriate perspective on the fetish, but 8 rather the triangulated viewpoint of Luther’s Protestantism in 9 particular. For Luther, the world of the faithful is split into 1011 three camps: the naively idolatrous Papists; the skeptically icon- 1 oclast radicals; and the true believers (like him) who recognize 2 iconoclasm as idolatry in another guise. Indeed, according to 3111 Luther, the iconoclasts are the worst idolators of all, since their 4 fanatical destruction of images now entails an absolute – if 5 absolutely negative – investment in material form. 6 In other words, Luther triangulates a traditional discourse 7 of idolatry – and in so doing, I argue, he generates an early 8 modern precursor to fetish discourse. In the final section of this 19 chapter, with my reading of Shakespeare’s “thing” – “that one 20111 thing to my purpose nothing” (20:12) – it is toward such triangula- 1 tion, and toward the decidedly non-utopian “something- 2 nothing” at its center, that my reappraisal of the fetish will turn.6 3 Shakespeare’s “thing,” I will suggest, also splits the world into 4 three camps: the haves; the have-nots; and those who have 5 enough to know that they have not. 6 7 Silencing Diana . . . 8 9 At stake in discussions of Petrarchan fetishism is the alignment 30111 between rhetorical strategies, spiritual pieties, and gender 1 politics. Specifically at stake is the logic of “descriptive dismem- 2 berment” (Vickers 1982: 109) that Nancy Vickers identified 3 so cogently and influentially more than twenty years ago. 4 Vickers built upon arguments advanced in the 1970s by Robert 5 Durling, John Freccero and Giuseppe Mazzotta – arguments 6 that accounted for Petrarch’s “poetics of fragmentation” (the 7 phrase is Mazzotta’s) in terms of the poet-lover’s self-conscious 8 idolatry.7 Freccero’s formulations are notably pithy: the “funda- 9 mental strategy of the Canzoniere,” he writes, is to transform 40111 “the thematics of idolatry . . . into the poetics of presence” 4111 (Freccero 1986: 31). No matter how self-abasing it may seem, The Shakespearean fetish 113 1111 the idolatrous love of Laura proves poetically efficacious. 2 Tracing out a laudatory circle from Laura to lauro (laurel), the 3 poet effectively crowns himself poet laureate. Thematic self- 4 abasement translates into rhetorical self-promotion. 5111 At the same time, the self-reference of Petrarch’s rhetoric 6 precisely mirrors a patristic analysis of the semiotics of sin.8 7111 In a universe where the Word of God is both origin and 8 eschaton – both that divine intention that precedes all creation 9 and that transcendental signified that secures its final mean- 1011 ing – the idolator’s error is to mistake signs for things. He eschews 1 the rightful referentiality of the Creator’s creatures, enjoying 2 as a thingly end-in-itself that which rightly only signifies the 3111 one true End. The idolator errs, in other words, by refusing 4 signification; he literally re-ifies, makes thing-like (res), the 5 signs (signa) of God.9 Here, Freccero’s formulations are again 6 noteworthy: 7 8 [I]f the gentiles, in the Jews’ interpretation of them, sought 9 to make their gods present by reifying their signs, then we 20111 might say that Petrarch sought to reify his signs, objectify 1 his poetic work, by making his ‘god,’ the lady Laura, the 2 object of his worship. 3 (Freccero 1986: 27) 4 5 Petrarch’s reified signs, no less than the idols of the pagan gods, 6 thus pervert an incarnational logic. Instead of salvation, these 7 signs-made-thing offer what Freccero calls “a kind of fetishism”: 8 they offer, that is, the worship of a “sign” that has been voided 9 of all significance. In turn, such fetishes can only yield a poetry 30111 of fragments: to treat signs as things is to disarticulate them 1 from that “principle of intelligibility” (ibid.: 29) which transforms 2 a collection of parts into a unified whole. Without reference to 3 the divine Signified – to God as Word, as telos or summum bonum 4 – Petrarch’s Laura quite literally dis-integrates. 5 The Petrarchan fetish is thus a part without a whole. It is 6 a member disarticulated from its body, joint by joint.10 And 7 yet, such dismemberment just may be the price of immortality. 8 9 So it is with Laura. Her virtues and her beauties are 40111 scattered like the objects of fetish worship: her eyes and 4111 hair are like gold and topaz on the snow, while the outline 114 Lisa Freinkel 1111 of her face is lost; her fingers are like ivory and roses or 2 oriental pearls. . . . Like the poetry that celebrates her, she 3 gains immortality at the price of vitality and historicity. 4 (ibid.: 29) 5111 6 We’re at the core of the idolatry argument now. Let’s push 17 this logic a bit further yet. To say that Laura is “fetishized” is 8 not to say in any simple way that she has been “objectified,” 9 treated as an object to be used rather than as an end in herself. 1011 Such instrumentalization, after all, is precisely what should 1 happen in an Augustinian universe of signs. But instead, 2 precisely, the poet refuses to objectify Laura in this sense; he 3111 rejects the use of Laura as sign, hoarding the nuggets of a well- 4 mined semantic field as if the lifeless hunks of earth were in 5 and of themselves things of value. Gold, topaz, ivory, pearl. In 6 their dead weight, wrenched from their living and historical 7 context, such signs “forget” their use, and instead are scattered 8 “like the objects of fetish worship.” 19 And so the Petrarchan idolator is also a hoarder: one who 20111 lays up his treasure in this world. His problem isn’t that he 1 won’t defer his pleasure; the idolator differs, in that respect, 2 from the glutton. Rather, the idolator seems to take pleasure 3 in deferral itself. Thus, for instance, the shivery erotic charge 4 delivered by the fetish of Rime 52: that delicate metonym of 5 the pretty little veil, the leggiadretto velo watched as it’s washed 6 in a mountain stream. Non al suo amante più Diana piacque....11 7 The poet surveys the scene in delight, no less pleased by this 8 rustic laundry vision, than Acteon was by his chance glimpse 9 of Diana naked in the pool. And yet, it is not nakedness that 30111 pleases here. As metonym – as synecdoche, even – the veil 1 pleases by obscuring. It is simultaneously representation and 2 impediment; it signifies by displacement. Instead of Laura 3 herself, the poem’s metonymic chain yields a signifier at least 4 three removes distant from the Lady: a “cruel” shepherdess 5 keeps us from the graceful veil while she protectively bathes 6 it; the veil itself stands between the lovely blond head of hair 7 and the breeze; and finally, il vago et biondo capel, the lovely 8 blond head itself, stands in for the Lady in her own, whole 9 person. And yet even so, trembling with an “amorous chill,” 40111 the poet avails himself of this chance encounter with a thrice- 4111 removed signifier, taking delight in that distance which precisely The Shakespearean fetish 115 1111 should impede his pleasure.12 The mediation of signs becomes 2 itself a source of immediate gratification. Petrarch’s veil thus 3 “functions as a fetish, an erotic signifier of a referent whose 4 absence the lover refuses to acknowledge” (ibid.: 31). Insofar 5111 as the idolator takes pleasure in that which should forestall 6 pleasure, his sin reveals itself as erotic perversion. Theology 7111 unveils itself as psychoanalysis. 8 When Nancy Vickers, for her part, picks up the thread 9 of this narrative, she establishes an even clearer reference to 1011 psychoanalysis. Reminding us of Rime 52’s opening conceit 1 (Diana didn’t please her lover more . . .), Vickers addresses the analogy 2 between Acteon’s “voyeuristic pleasure” and the speaker’s 3111 “fetishistic” delight. The two satisfactions are not as incongru- 4 ous as they might seem; what links the poem’s two stories is 5 in fact a third story: the mythic scenario of taboo and trans- 6 gression at the heart of the castration complex. In this light, 7 as Vickers explains, the Acteon–Diana encounter 8 9 reenacts a scene fundamental to theorizing about fetishistic 20111 perversion: the troubling encounter of a male child with 1 intolerable female nudity, with a body lacking parts present 2 3 in his own, with a body that suggests the possibility of 4 dismemberment. Woman’s body, albeit divine, is displayed 5 to Actaeon, and his body, as a consequence, is literally 6 taken apart. 7 (Vickers 1981: 273) 8 9 That amoroso gielo of Rime 52, that amorous chill of vision, is as 30111 much shudder as orgasmic release; if it marks arousal, it also 1 registers shock and horror. This is a vision that both pleases 2 and petrifies, as if the price of delight were destruction. And 3 indeed, so it is, within the castration narrative that Vickers 4 recounts, where the longed-for vision is quite literally the site 5 or sight of trauma. Yet, at least in fantasy, the possibility 6 remains of holding a space open between longing and trauma, 7 between prohibited seeing and threatened dismemberment. 8 The Rime sparse, Vickers argues, hold open just that “median 9 time” (ibid.: 270) by projecting the threat of dismemberment 40111 on to the vision itself. Disarticulated into the language of fetish, 4111 the body of woman enables man to articulate himself. 116 Lisa Freinkel 1111 Vickers’ argument is a potent one, made all the more 2 intuitive by its tacit appeal to a now-familiar critique of modern 3 visual culture. Let us make no mistake: for Vickers, Petrarch’s 4 gaze doesn’t merely reprise that of an Acteon; more import- 5111 antly, it prefigures “the gaze” of a Laura Mulvey.13 When 6 Vickers invokes the “theorizing about fetishistic perversion,” 17 the theorizing she has in mind has already been focused through 8 the lens of “psychoanalytically influenced feminist theory” 9 (Mulvey 1993: 3). All the same, and despite the fact that Vickers’ 1011 reading of the Canzoniere has become all but canonical, her debt 1 to feminist psychoanalytic theory has remained unchallenged 2 and untheorized – even though she herself is explicit about 3111 her assumptions: “Silencing Diana is an emblematic gesture; 4 it suppresses a voice, and it casts generations of would-be Lauras 5 in a role predicated upon the muteness of its player” (ibid.: 6 278–9). Vickers leaves no room for doubt here: in her view, 7 to read Petrarch aptly is to read him emblematically. It is to 8 interpret his terms from the standpoint of the future: from the 19 vantage of generations of always-already silenced women. 20111 The problem with Vickers’ account is not simply the 1 hermeneutic circle it entails – that circle of the always-already, 2 where the vantage point of the women who will have been 3 silenced determines the poetry’s “original” status as emblem. 4 Far more problematic than the paradoxes of the future anterior, 5 is the logical hole at the argument’s center. On the one hand, 6 Vickers explicitly builds upon the account of Freccero and 7 others, for whom the Petrarchan fetish is vestigial: an idol 8 or relic that metonymically signifes, as Freccero puts it, an 9 “absence the lover refuses to acknowledge” (Freccero 1986: 31). 30111 At the same time, and on the other hand, Vickers invokes the 1 fetish as Freud comes to understand it: as a monument that 2 fills the amnesiac void of trauma, memorializing the horror of 3 castration. Vickers’ argument requires both accounts, yet offers 4 no bridge between them. Indeed, in the last analysis, what 5 remains most problematically untheorized in her argument is 6 not her use of theory, but instead this gulf at the heart of her 7 theory: the gap that lies between vestige and trauma – between 8 relic and monument. Nonetheless, what her discussion thereby 9 neatly reveals is the very same hole at the center of the history 40111 of fetish: that epistemic break that, for William Pietz for 4111 instance, separates a pre-modern discourse of idolatry from a modern discourse of fetish.14 The Shakespearean fetish 117 1111 Curiously enough, we find the same hole at the heart of 2 Freud’s discussion of fetish. It is the break that separates his 3 early writings on the subject from his later ones. 4 5111 6 When the fetish comes to life . . . 7111 In Freud’s earliest discussions (e.g. 1905–10), the fetish functions 8 a bit like a religious relic: its power and its value can be traced 9 back to a specific moment in early childhood – i.e. a partic- 1011 ular sexual encounter or impression – with which the future 1 fetish was originally associated, and for which it will later be 2 substituted. The fetish, in other words, is a metonym: linked to 3111 the original sexual object by the tenuous threads of contiguity 4 and contingency, its allure is both easily dismissed and easily 5 understood (see Freud [1905] 1975: 19). It’s only, after all, a 6 pretty little veil . . . ah, yes, but it’s Laura’s veil!15 The fetish, 7 properly considered, belongs somewhere – belongs to someone. 8 No matter how “inappropriate” the object is for the aims of 9 sexuality, a sense of property – of where and to whom it belongs 20111 – tempers its impropriety. 1 And thus, it comes as little surprise that in his 1905 account 2 Freud is unable to draw a clear distinction between normality 3 and pathology: “A certain degree of fetishism is . . . habitually 4 present in normal love, especially in those stages of it in which 5 the normal sexual aim seems unattainable or its fulfillment 6 prevented.” Significantly, Freud illustrates this point with a 7 quote that summons Petrarchan categories in all their glitter- 8 ing, apostate allure. He quotes Goethe’s Faust, fresh from the 9 Witches’ Kitchen: “Get me a scarf from her breast, or the garter 30111 of my love’s desire!” (Freud [1905] 1975: 20). If the lover is 1 sufficiently deluded (Faust has just been given a love potion) 2 3 so that the beloved is sufficiently overvalued (as Mephistopheles 4 tells us: Faust will now see Helen of Troy in every woman) 5 – in other words, if one’s discourse is sufficiently Petrarchan – 6 then it’s only normal to fetishize. In a pinch, any Gretchen 7 can become a Helen, and any old garter or scarf will serve 8 your Liebeslust quite nicely. 9 Garter, scarf or little veil: Freud’s early theory of fetish 40111 explicates the utility of such Petrarchan part-objects very well. 4111 Like the material fragments of sacred history (“the comb of Mary Magdalene, the fingernails of St. Sebastian . . . the bloody 118 Lisa Freinkel

1111 and lice-infested hair shirt of Thomas Becket”)16 – fragments 2 around which a reliquary of precious metals might be fashioned, 3 and a cathedral built to house it; so, too, do the metonymic 4 relics of Petrarchism become a break point for our investments, 5111 damming up and redirecting libido like a kayaker’s “cushion”: 6 that bulge of water that builds up over river rock.17 The fetish 17 thus conceived articulates the semiotics of idolatry perfectly: as 8 relic, the fetish becomes the cultic locus of our enjoyment, 9 rather than the mediating sign that directs us to that enjoy- 1011 ment. Nonetheless, from Freud’s account of the fetish-relic, it 1 would seem that such idolatry is not necessarily perverse – 2 if by “perversion” we mean behavior that departs from (and 3111 doesn’t merely delay) normative sexual aims. A certain degree 4 of fetishism, Freud here suggests, is not merely “habitually” 5 but indeed quite essentially entailed in the “normal” course of 6 things, thanks to the “psychologically essential overvaluation 7 of the sexual object, which inevitably extends to everything 8 that is associated with it” (ibid.: 20). We’re all, ultimately, 19 Petrarchists. 20111 Or so we would be, if Freud’s story ended here. That ending 1 would leave us with the idolatrous logic of the reliquary, but 2 3 without that “scene fundamental to theorizing about fetishistic 4 perversion” (Vickers 1981: 273): the primal scene of the castra- 5 tion complex. It isn’t until Freud develops the concept of 6 disavowal (Verleugnung) in the 1920s that he’s able to articulate 7 a coherent theory of the fetish as “memorial” or “monument” 8 – as Denkmal – to the “horror of castration” (Freud [1927] 9 1957: 200). In the earlier theory, the fetish-character of the 30111 object derived from the historical weight of its moment of 1 origin: from that original sexual encounter and sexual object, 2 in all their possible specificity and detail. Registering the “after- 3 effect” (Freud [1905] 1975: 20) of this intense immediacy, the 4 fetish-as-relic takes the place of this historical whole (e.g. the 5 body of the beloved); the member replaces the body, to which 6 it once literally belonged. 7 8 What is substituted for the sexual object is some part of 9 the body . . . or some inanimate object which bears an 40111 assignable relation to the person whom it replaces and 4111 preferably to that person’s sexuality (e.g. a piece of clothing The Shakespearean fetish 119 1111 or underlinen). Such substitutes are with some justice 2 likened to the fetishes in which savages believe that their 3 gods are embodied. 4 (Freud [1905] 1975: 19) 5111 6 Now, in the later 1927 discussion, the fetish object also bears 7111 an “assignable relation” to that which it replaces; the principle 8 of the object’s selection is still metonymic, following a logic of 9 spatial contiguity. “Thus,” as Freud tells us in that later essay, 1011 “the foot or shoe owes its attraction as a fetish” to the fact 1 that the curious little boy used to “peer up the woman’s legs 2 towards her genitals” (Freud [1927] 1957: 201). But, even so, 3111 now our efforts to trace this metonymic chain back to its origin 4 will fail. The pun is unforgivable, but irresistible: at the origin 5 of this chain of metonymies is a hole instead of a whole. The 6 fetish as Freud finally comes to define it, is memorial instead 7 of relic, and further, it is a memorial that commemorates quite 8 literally nothing. It erects itself as Denkmal (both memorial and 9 monument) to an event that cannot be remembered (e.g. the 20111 traumatic sight of castration), and to a loss that we can never 1 lose (e.g. the missing maternal penis). 2 More specifically, Freud explains that the monumental/ 3 memorializing fetish emerges to negotiate a compromise 4 between avoidance and acknowledgement of the mother’s lost 5 penis. The boy, of course, is unwilling to see the “fact” of his 6 own possible castration, but he is also unable simply to 7 obliterate what he’s seen – in part because there’s literally 8 nothing to obliterate. The boy has not seen a thing. The only 9 possible compromise is, somehow, to adopt both positions: to 30111 see and not to see. As Penisersatz, the fetish substitutes for a 1 missing penis that was never lost. “[T]he fetish is a substitute 2 for the woman’s (mother’s) phallus which the little boy once 3 believed in and does not wish to forego” (ibid.: 191). At the 4 same time, however, this replacement part can’t help but fore- 5 ground the fact that there’s nothing to replace. Freud explains: 6 “The horror of castration sets up a sort of permanent memorial 7 to itself by creating this substitute” (ibid.: 200). The fetish serves 8 as castration’s Denkmal neither in spite of, nor alongside, 9 its role as penis-replacement. Indeed, it is precisely because it 40111 replaces nothing that the fetish is the perfect memorial. As a 4111 monument that literally stands for nothing, the fetish cannot 120 Lisa Freinkel 1111 help but memorialize that loss it hopes to lose. As Denkmal the 2 fetish, then, is perhaps less relevant to us for the meaning it 3 bears – i.e. as a sign or a symbol – than it is for the meaning 4 it performs. The Denkmal, with its interpellating name (Denk mal! 5111 Just think! ), prompts, points, marks. . . . It functions, that is to 6 say, at the level of its utterance: as performative. As Denkmal 17 the fetish is a speech-act. A disavowal, in short: simultaneously 8 a denial and an admission. 9 If the Denkmal defines the fetish as signifying form, its 1011 signifying content takes shape as the Penisersatz: the replace- 1 ment piece that is neither dildo nor prosthesis. The logic that 2 governs the substitutions of this substitute-penis, is not, exactly, 3111 mimetic; not, exactly, representational; not even, exactly, a 4 matter of distribution or compensation. There’s nothing absent 5 to be re-presented; nothing hidden that must be re-produced; 6 nothing out of balance that must be set right. 7 8 One would expect that the organs or objects selected as 19 substitutes for the penis whose presence is missed in the 20111 woman would be such as act as symbols for the penis 1 in other respects. This may happen occasionally but is 2 certainly not the determining factor. It seems rather that 3 when the fetish comes to life, so to speak, some process 4 has been suddenly interrupted – it reminds one of the 5 abrupt halt made by memory in traumatic amnesias. In 6 the case of the fetish, too, interest is held up at a certain 7 point – what is possibly the last impression received before 8 the uncanny traumatic one is preserved as fetish. 9 (ibid.: 201) 30111 1 Freud’s Penisersatz is not a symbol, although occasionally and 2 coincidentally it may look like one. The object in which that 3 last impression is preserved may, sheerly by coincidence, be the 4 sort of object that in other contexts would act as penis-symbol. 5 But in this context, those semantic links are interrupted. 6 So, the Penisersatz is not a symbol. But it certainly is a figure, 7 since its emergence marks a moment of displacement and 8 substitution (Ersetzen): a moment of trope. And yet this moment 9 is strangely asymmetrical, oddly static; the moment is devitalized 40111 and frozen, almost before it begins. It seems that when the fetish 4111 comes to life ...some process has been suddenly interrupted....the last The Shakespearean fetish 121 1111 impression ...is preserved as fetish. . . . The problem, of course, is 2 that in general, symbolic discourse works by presenting one 3 thing in the place of another. Symbols (let’s just call them signs) 4 stand in for things in their absence; but what that truism really 5111 means – at least from our standpoint, we makers and readers 6 of signs – is somewhat more balletic: as x comes to stand for 7111 y, y fades out, and x pulsates into view. In fact, it is this dance 8 of scintillating presence that drives the engine in a universe of 9 signs, insuring that the presence of what is keeps passing from 1011 us, even as what is not, dances into view. But the Penisersatz 1 wakes into presence, and has nowhere to go. It is not a penis- 2 symbol; not a prosthesis. It is not meant to replace a penis that 3111 is absent. Instead, as Freud so carefully explains, this fetish is 4 a substitute for a penis whose absence is missing.18 5 Classical rhetoric offers us a ready way to understand the 6 oddities of this trope. As a substitution for nothing, the figure 7 at work in Freud’s fetish looks a bit like metonym – a bit like 8 Laura’s veil or the scarf of Faust’s Gretchen. But if this is 9 metonym, it is acephalic metonym: headless metonym. Where 20111 we expect to find the origin-cause of trauma’s rippling after- 1 effects, where the displacements of trope should find their 2 closure: instead, we find a void. Amnesia. A process that simply 3 comes to a halt. On the other hand, because of this hole at 4 the heart of signification, the substitution entailed by Freud’s 5 Penisersatz demands a certain leap across semantic discontinuity: 6 a synaptic spark arcing across disparate points. In this sense, 7 the rhetorical structure of the Penisersatz looks a bit like the 8 flash of metaphor. 9 The figure I have in mind here is neither, strictly speaking, 30111 a form of metaphor nor of metonymy. If it is anything, it is 1 the figure that arises when metaphor crashes into metonymy, 2 and vice versa. It is the figure called catachresis by the Greek 3 rhetors, or abusio in Latin. In George Puttenham’s Elizabethan 4 English, this is the “figure of abuse”: 5 6 [I]f for lacke of naturall and proper terme or worde we 7 take another, neither naturall nor proper and do vntruly 8 applie it to the thing which we would seeme to expresse 9 . . . it is not then spoken by this figure Metaphore ... but 40111 by plaine abuse. 4111 (Puttenham 1589: 3.17.9) 122 Lisa Freinkel 1111 For Puttenham – who follows Quintilian closely in this 2 respect – catachresis marks an abuse of language, a misapplica- 3 tion of a name, although the abuse may well be commendable. 4 Catachresis acts in the absence of a “naturall and proper 5111 terme”; it fills the gaps in a lacking lexicon, “adapting the 6 nearest available term to describe something for which no 17 actual term exists” (Quintilian [88] 1959: 8.6.34). Catachresis 8 thereby names an abuse that is practically unavoidable; it 9 tropes the lacunae of a symbolic order into neologism. In this 1011 way, the figure that is not metaphor, nonetheless functions like 1 it. Like metaphor – or translatio, as the Latin rhetors call it, 2 from the past participle of transfero – catachresis transfers a proper 3111 name from one object to another. At the same time, however, 4 catachresis also functions like metonym, since the principle that 5 guides the transfer is one of contiguity or propinquity – adapt 6 the “nearest available term” – rather than mimetic likeness. 7 If the rhetorical structure of Freud’s monumental fetish is 8 catachrestic, it is so because it too “vntruly applies” the ersatz 19 where the natural should be – and yet, it does so almost 20111 commendably, since, indeed, there is nothing “naturall and 1 proper” to be found in place beforehand. The Penisersatz fills 2 a signifying gap not because it takes the place of something 3 else, but because it takes the place of the gap itself. Like all good 4 catachreses, the Penisersatz substitutes for nothing. 5 6 That one thing to my purpose nothing . . . 7 8 Elsewhere I have argued that Shakespeare’s response to the 9 traditional Petrarchan blazon – to those “lip, eye, brow” 30111 catalogs that he mocks in Sonnet 106 – is the kind of catachresis 1 we see in his most triumphant, most highly anthologized lyric 2 image: “thy eternal summer shall not fade” (18: 9).19 The image 3 is “vntruly applied” (as Puttenham might say): neither the young 4 man’s beauty, nor a summer’s day, is eternal, for as Sonnet 18 5 also tells us: “every fair from fair sometime declines” (18: 7). 6 Nothing beautiful lasts forever. And yet, what is beauty if not 7 an ideal, and as such unchanging and immortal? And so, despite 8 the blatant untruth that Sonnet 18 advances – “thy eternal 9 summer shall not fade!”20 – the sonnet does speak true: beauty 40111 is not beauty that alters when it alteration finds. In a world 4111 where all that lives must die, and where everything holds in The Shakespearean fetish 123 1111 perfection but a little moment, the proper name for beauty 2 is already “vntrue.” Neither “naturall nor proper,” our most 3 direct designations of beauty are already figures of speech, for 4 they ascribe eternity to that which is bound to time. Every fair 5111 from fair declines: beauty is, indeed, also not beauty. Thus, if 6 Shakespeare’s version of the Petrarchan blazon looks a bit 7111 perverse, if the poet offers denials and negations as readily 8 as affirmations – e.g. “every fair from fair sometime declines” 9 or “my love is as fair/As any mother’s child, though not so 1011 bright/As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air” (21: 11–12) 1 or “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” – if he disavows, 2 in other words, his own visions of beauty, he does so because 3111 his sonneteering has shifted from a logic of relic to a logic of 4 memorial – from holy vestige, to monumental loss. 5 I am, in short, suggesting that we simply take Shakespeare 6 at his word. When he exhorts, “Let not my love be called 7 idolatry” (105: 1), we should listen. Shakespeare’s desire is not, 8 strictly speaking, Petrarchan; it is not, that is to say, structured 9 metonymically. His beloveds, whether fair or dark, leave no 20111 trace behind; they do not “show” as idols (105: 2). In place of 1 the reliquaries of traditional Petrarchan verse (those sonnets 2 built like pretty rooms to house a veil here, a golden hair there), 3 Shakespeare gives us a poetry without icon. My mistress’ eyes are 4 nothing like the sun. . . . Shakespeare’s desire thus takes the rhetor- 5 ical form of abuse – of abusio. His love is catachrestic. It is the 6 love of – or, more precisely, love as – fetish. 7 In place of a decisive proof of this claim, or even a full- 8 fledged exposition of it, I will offer a single close reading: an 9 “emblematic” reading, as Nancy Vickers might say. The poem 30111 I turn to in closing has been positioned, for well over two 1 hundred years, at the ground-zero of debates over Shake- 2 spearean sexuality and gender.21 All the more remarkable, then, 3 that one of the most obvious readings of the poem has, up 4 until now, escaped notice. 5 6 A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted 7 Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; 8 A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted 9 With shifting change as is false women’s fashion; 40111 An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, 4111 Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; 124 Lisa Freinkel 1111 A man in hue, all hues in his controlling, 2 Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. 3 And for a woman wert thou first created, 4 Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting, 5111 And by addition me of thee defeated 6 By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. 17 But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, 8 Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure. 9 1011 Sonnet 20, we all know, is a just-so story: the story of how the 1 young man got “pricked.” However, in our focus on the story 2 of this “one thing” we have put ourselves in the position of 3111 the women in line 14: we’ve been unable to take our eyes off 4 this treasure. And, accordingly, we’ve missed the sense in which 5 the sonnet presents a somewhat different creation story. At 6 stake in this poem is not so much the story of the penis, but 7 the story of the Penisersatz: of the part that replaces nothing. 8 Understood as an allegory of the fetish, the celebratedly 19 indeterminate volta of the poem now offers a quite pointed 20111 reading. “And for a woman wert thou first created”: as count- 1 less readers have noted, thanks to the ambiguous preposition 2 “for,” we can’t help but read this line twice. “For” can either 3 denote intention (“intended for”) or representation (e.g. “pansies, 4 that’s for thoughts”). The argument of the octave, however, has 5 set us up for the first denotation: you’ve combined the best of both 6 worlds; you’re as beautiful as a woman and as constant as a man; you’re 7 as alluring as both sexes, and alluring to both sexes. . . . And yet, you 8 were created only for one sex: you were intended for a woman’s pleasure. 9 Of course, no sooner do we reach the next line, than we realize 30111 that we’ve been set up: “Till nature as she wrought thee fell 1 a-doting. . . .” Oh, I see, Nature wanted you for (denoting ‘intention’) 2 herself.... But at first she created you ‘as’ a woman: ‘for’ denoting ‘in 3 imitation or representation of’. . . . And so, the just-so story unfolds. 4 Most typically readers dismiss the doubleness of “for” as just 5 another of Shakespeare’s fatal cleopatras – just another quibble. 6 But the carefully structured sequence of readings here enforces 7 the “double attitude” of the fetish. After all, this is not The 8 Crying Game. Instead of being surprised by the phallus, the 9 octave makes us expect a phallic woman from the very start. 40111 You have the best of both worlds. In this context, the quibble on 4111 “for” takes us through the castration scenario, taking away The Shakespearean fetish 125 1111 what it had appeared to grant. What we discover, as the just- 2 so story unfolds, is not the unsettling presence of a penis, but 3 its far more uncanny absence. This is a story of the castration 4 trauma. 5111 And yet, of course, this poem is not actually traumatic. 6 Instead of the horrified, amnesiac little boy of Freud’s 1927 7111 account, we have the infatuated – but also generative – folly 8 of a female figure: Nature. And instead of the “overvalued” 9 fetish object, we find in Sonnet 20 that “one thing to my 1011 purpose nothing.” Indeed, ultimately, instead of Freud’s 1 familiar “double attitude,” Sonnet 20 gives us a triangulated struc- 2 ture of desire where disappointment is a trap in its own right. 3111 The story of the lost object, we learn, is mitigated by the prior 4 recognition of our own loss. Just as the young man himself 5 manages to straddle both sexes – managing to be both pricked 6 and unpricked, both created for a woman’s pleasure, and 7 created as a woman – so too is the poet simultaneously with 8 and without. For that matter, however, so are we. If the poem 9 tempts us with our own desire for the phallus, thereby aligning 20111 us with the women of line 14, it equally aligns us, like the poet, 1 with a particular woman: Nature. Like the poet, we are all quite 2 capable of crafting the image of our desire. Like Nature, we 3 want the phallus: penis, offspring, Galatea-like beloved. And 4 like Nature, we already have one, wrought from and as our 5 own desire. The penis is already a fetish. 6 Shakespeare’s story of the fetish is not the story of trauma 7 because, as it turns out, we are already fitted with one. Or, to 8 put the same point another way: Shakespeare is telling a version 9 of Freud’s story, but he does so neither from the credulous 30111 standpoint of belief (the little boy before he sees) nor from the 1 skeptical standpoint of disillusion (the little boy after). Shake- 2 speare tells his story instead from the apex of the triangle: from 3 the position where spirit finally matters. This is where the fetishist 4 stands. 5 Alternatively, it is the position of the analyst. 6 7 8 Notes 9 Shorter versions of this argument were presented at the Shakespeare 40111 Association of America and the American Comparative Literature 4111 Association conventions in 2004. I am grateful to my fellow seminarians 126 Lisa Freinkel

1111 at both conferences for their incisive feedback. I’d also like to thank John 2 Parker for his generous and helpful comments on fetishism and 3 materialism in his own work, and for sharing with me an advance copy 4 of his essay “What a Piece of Work is Man: Shakespearean Drama as 5111 Marxian Fetish, the Fetish as Sacramental Sublime” (The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Fall 2004 34: 643–72)). Finally, I am 6 indebted to Richard Halpern and, especially, to my colleague Ben 17 Saunders, whose comments and critique at various stages of the project 8 have been invaluable. 9 1011 1 James Kearney argues the Reformation brings a new element to the 1 centuries-old discourse of Christian iconoclasm: namely, a “demysti- 2 fying and trivializing discourse [of the religious icon as] trinket” 3111 (J. Kearney 2002: 4). For Kearney as for Stallybrass, through its 4 castigations of Roman Catholic and heathen religious forms as paltry 5 “trinkets,” Protestantism prefigures “the modern conception of the 6 fetish” (ibid.). 2 For the term “new materialism” see Bruster (2001). Examples of this 7 so-called new materialist criticism abound. Even as I write these 8 words, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies goes to press 19 with a special issue on the “Marxist Premodern” (Fall 2004); the 20111 question of material culture was in the air everywhere at the April 1 2004 convention of the Shakespeare Association of America; and 2 a spate of essays and anthologies have sought to interrogate our 3 field’s emphasis on emerging subjectivities, arguing instead for the 4 importance of sustained focus on early modern objects. The pivotal 5 anthology in this latter regard is the 1996 Subject and Object in Renaissance 6 Literature, edited by Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass. 7 3 Would it be too extreme to cite a Penn Fetish in this recent 8 publishing trend? Much of the recent fetish-oriented work in early 9 modern studies has been generated by faculty associated with the 30111 University of Pennsylvania (e.g. Stallybrass, Jones, de Grazia) and by 1 their former students (e.g. John Parker, James Kearney). 2 4 See for instance Stallybrass and Jones’ (2000) characterizations of the 3 modern “individual” as dematerialized and hence indivisible, because 4 abstracted from a body that has been reduced to mere object, i.e. 5 fetish. 6 5 The third position – where “simple truth” is suppressed (see Sonnet 138) – corresponds to Manonni’s famous “je sais bien, mais quand 7 même”: the rhetorical stance of the fetishist. See Manonni 1969. 8 According to Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, of course, this is the position of all ideo- 9 logical belief. See Zˇ izˇek 1989. Our relation to the Big Other of 40111 ideology is like our relationship to Santa Claus: we all know that he 4111 doesn’t exist – but we’ll keep up appearances “for the kids.” The Shakespearean fetish 127

1111 6 “For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold/That nothing me, a 2 something sweet to thee:/Make but my name thy love, and love that 3 still,/And then thou lovest me, for my name is ‘Will’” (136: 11–14). 4 – A fuller account of the Shakespearean fetish, and of its relation- ship both to Luther’s triangulated reform, as well as to an emerging 5111 discourse of commodity, appears in my forthcoming study: The Use 6 of Shakespeare. 7111 7 The crucial essays are Durling 1971, Freccero [1975] 1986 and 8 Mazzotta 1978. See also Durling’s “Introduction” to his bilingual 9 edition of Petrarch’s poems (1976). All references to and translations 1011 of the Rime sparse as in this edition. 1 8 For Augustine – and with him, Petrarch – idol worship is at the heart 2 of all sin as such; it defines the fundamental error of fallen man. The point may seem obvious – and indeed, it passes for self-evident in 3111 Freccero’s account – but this represents a profound commitment to 4 Platonism. It is precisely this commitment to a rationalist, platonic 5 metaphysics that will be called into question by the sixteenth-century 6 reformers and counter-reformers. 7 9 Augustine’s distinction between signum and res – the cornerstone of 8 his “Christian doctrine” – is also the linchpin of this orthodox critique 9 of idolatry. See Augustine [397] 1958: 1.2.2ff. 20111 10 Cf. Rime 15: “[C]ome posson queste membra/da lo spirito lor viver 1 lontane. . . .” 2 11 Non al suo amante più Diana piacque 3 quando per tal ventura tutta ignuda 4 la vide in mezza de le gelide acque, ch’a me la pastorella alpestra et cruda 5 posta a bagnar un leggiadretto vel 6 ch’a l’aura il vago et biondo capel chiuda; 7 tal che mi fece, or quan’egli arde ‘l cielo, 8 tutto tremar d’un amoroso gielo. 9 12 It would be useful to explore Petrarch’s veil as an example of Lacan’s 30111 objet petit a. Recently Henry Krips (1999) has explicated the relation- 1 ship between the objet a and the logic of fetishism; in a complementary 2 discussion, Richard Halpern (2002) has explored the early modern 3 conception of sodomy in terms of the Lacanian Thing. Both Krips 4 and Halpern offer extraordinary glosses of Lacan, but their readings 5 can be misleading if applied to the early modern fetish. The logic 6 of the objet a is in fact the logic of idolatry; missing from the discus- 7 sion is precisely that “double attitude” that the concept of disavowal brings to Freud’s 1927 “Fetishism” essay. 8 13 In particular, Vickers cites the two now-classic analyses of spectator- 9 ship, gender and pleasure: Berger 1977 and Mulvey 1975. 40111 14 “Far from representing a continuation of the idea of idolatry, the 4111 emergence of the distinct notion of fetish marks a breakdown of the 128 Lisa Freinkel

1111 adequacy of the earlier discourse under quite specific historical condi- 2 tions and social forces” (Pietz 1985: 6). 3 15 If time allowed, it would be helpful here to consider Rime 16, where 4 another little piece of fabric – St Veronica’s handkerchief – reveals in quite literal terms the relationship between religious relic or icon 5111 (Veronica as verum ikon), and the Petrarchan “fetish.” 6 16 I’m citing Peter Stallybrass’ discussion of the medieval relic (2002: 17 178). For Stallybrass, the great problem with modernity – a problem 8 he sees, as I’ve already suggested, articulated in the history of the 9 fetish – is the disavowal of materiality. It would seem that the pre- 1011 modern cult of the relic marks one version of what Stallybrass and 1 Jones call elsewhere the “utopian moment of the fetish.” 2 17 The image of a “damming up of libido” (Libidostauung) is Freud’s, and can connote either a healthy retention/redirection of libidinal energy 3111 (e.g. the civilizing effects of sublimation), or the pathogenic frustra- 4 tion of libido that only finds discharge in, for instance, a neurotic 5 symptom. 6 18 For Freud, what truly horrifies in the castration scenario is not, in 7 other words, the sight of an amputation, but rather the perception 8 that there is nothing to be amputated. It is this uncanny sight – the 19 uncanny site of the vagina as absolute void or no thing – that consti- 20111 tutes the trauma per se. The logic here is well known in Hollywood; I’m reminded of the only truly frightening sequence in the Wachowski 1 brothers’ Matrix films. These films are dense with invaginating images, 2 but only one of these achieves the uncanny pitch of horror. When 3 “Mr Anderson” is first interrogated by Agent Smith, his efforts to 4 resist by screaming are thwarted when his lips melt together and his 5 mouth dissolves into a disgusting, gummy goo. The sight is unpleasant, 6 but the moment only becomes nightmarish when the goo disappears: 7 then, there isn’t even the absence of a mouth. What terrifies, finally, 8 is not the gash, but the smooth, impassive blank where the wound 9 used to be. The missing mouth is now uncannily missing. 19 See my discussion of catachresis and the young man sonnets in 30111 Freinkel 2002. 1 20 The full thought of the sonnet is, of course, somewhat more complex 2 than I’ve rendered it: “thy eternal summer shall not fade . . . when in 3 eternal lines to time thou grow’st” (etc.). At first sight, what seems 4 to mitigate the untruth of the “eternal summer” is the vision of future 5 readers who give life and breath to the written word. But since Sonnet 6 17 has just demonstrated the ways in which literature itself is subject 7 to time and decay (“So should my papers, yellowed with their age,/Be scorned. . .” (17: 9–10)), Sonnet 18’s concluding image of the book 8 only manages to shift the catachresis slightly. “Eternal lines” is, of 9 course, every bit as much a figure of abuse as “eternal summer” was. 40111 21 The lines of this debate have been, from the start, perhaps all too 4111 clear: established, as Stallybrass has cogently argued, by the polarized The Shakespearean fetish 129

1111 terms of Shakespeare’s eighteenth-century editors. Steevens’ famous 2 1766 protestation (“it is impossible to read this fulsome panegyrick, 3 addressed to a male object, without an equal mixture of disgust and 4 indignation”) – along with Malone’s 1780 response (“such addresses to men . . . were customary in our author’s time, and neither imported 5111 criminality, nor were esteemed indecorous”) – have, between them, 6 crafted what now seems to be an inescapable critical legacy (see 7111 Stallybrass 1999: 86, 84). 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 6 17 Bottom’s secret . . . 8 John J. Joughin 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2111 I need help in my state of bliss. For I am well practised 3 in the arts of resignation and in the prayer that they 4 provoke. O God, take away this pain, this punishment – 5 prayer in adversity. Yet I have no liturgy for thanksgiving, 6 for praise, for consummation; for my well-being, love- 7 ability, or for a new sensation; a constant awareness of 8 existence, alone or in the company of others, imbued with 9 a silly palpability, a beauty at once tactile and visual – as 30111 if on each intake of breath one were immersing one’s hands 1 in the deep folds of some fine material saturated with 2 glorious colour. How to give this beauty back? . . . The 3 withdrawal of the abyss, the overwhelming plenitude of 4 every moment leaves me more vulnerable than the busy 5 tumult of distress: I have nothing to clutch, nothing to 6 point to as my burden, nothing from which to beg allevia- 7 tion. My soul is naked: it has lost its scaffolding of regret 8 and remorse or even repentance: it is turned: and the unex- 9 pected result is the sensation and the envelope of invisible 40111 and visible beauty. This does not make me ecstatic, unreal, 4111 unworldly: it returns me to the vocation of the everyday Bottom’s secret 131 1111 . . . but it needed some response, some way of singing its 2 mystery so that I can concentrate as ever on any fellowship 3 or fickleness which presents itself. 4 (Rose 1999: 21–2) 5111 6 In her final work Paradiso, the philosopher Gillian Rose faces 7111 what she terms ‘doxological terror’, as, on confronting a 8 terminal illness, amidst new-found bliss and serenity, she 9 contemplates the movement from a state of loss to a state of 1011 grace. 1 Fragments of an unfinished manuscript, Rose’s last words 2 on faith and philosophy constitute their own particular form 3111 of incomplete completeness; yet at this extreme they also offer 4 the defiance of self-creation, an absolute beginning without 5 preconditions – a lyrical act of autopoeisis (cf. Rose 1999: 6 45, 63). Where, in her previous Love’s Work (1995), her reader 7 was left in purgatory, emboldened to ‘keep your mind in hell 8 and despair not’, here, in her Paradiso, Rose embraces the 9 sublime in the pedestrian, her ecstasy as ordinary as it is myster- 20111 ious. Paradoxically, the ultimate gift of death resides in a 1 renewal of the infinite possibilities of the everyday. 2 In the face of misfortune, spiritual malaise and disenchant- 3 4 ment, recent criticism in the Humanities has suffered more 5 from resignation than hope. Ours tends to be a spectral criti- 6 cism ‘companioned by ghosts’ and beset by melancholia and 7 loss, which Rose describes in terms of the ‘interminable 8 mourning play and lament of postmodernity’ (Rose 1996: 64). 9 In Shakespeare studies there is certainly a current tendency 30111 to redeploy texts and characters in terms that demand 1 redemption but in forms that simultaneously refuse redress 2 (cf. Joughin 2000a: 14–17).1 In Hamlet in Purgatory, for example, 3 Stephen Greenblatt speaks explicitly of Shakespeare’s theatre 4 as ‘a cult of the dead’ (2001: 258). Indeed, in some sense, as 5 Greenblatt reminds us, our negotiation of old Hamlet’s 6 death is an exemplary case in point, insofar as it effectively 7 constitutes the singular act of witness or memorial, which will 8 continue to assure and maintain our literary critical life – ‘Thou 9 art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio . . .’ (Greenblatt 1997: 481). 40111 Questions of how we remember, of disenchantment and re- 4111 enchantment, of presence and absence, being and non-being, 132 John J. Joughin 1111 visibility and hiddenness, knowing and not knowing, are them- 2 selves necessarily linked in intricate ways to the inventive 3 capacity of what we might term the literary critical ‘event’. 4 Yet in Specters of Marx (during another negotiation with old 5111 Hamlet’s death) in speaking of and to apparitions, Jacques 6 Derrida speaks not just of those ‘who are no longer there, of 17 those who are no longer’, but also of those ‘who are not 8 yet present and living’ (Derrida 1994: xix), the ghosts of those 9 who are not yet born; reminding us that the gift of the appari- 1011 tional resides in speaking in a relation of absolute singularity 1 to others: 2 3111 Whether he knows it or not, Hamlet is speaking in the 4 space opened up by this question – the appeal of the gift, 5 singularity, the coming of the event, the excessive or 6 exceeded relation to the other – when he declares “The 7 time is out of joint.” And this question is no longer 8 dissociated from all those that Hamlet apprehends as such, 19 that of the specter-Thing and of the King, that of the event, 20111 of present-being, and of what there is to be, or not, what there 1 is to do, which means to think, to make do or let do, to make 2 or to let come, or to give, even if it be death. 3 4 (ibid.: 23) 5 6 If, with its own ‘scaffolding of regret’, our literary life is nothing 7 more or less than a preoccupation with perpetual mourning 8 and endless loss – purgatorio rather than paradiso – then in letting 9 lost ones go we ought to embrace the gift of death as a precipi- 30111 tation towards the opening up of new relations to others yet 1 to come. In turn the singularity of literature and its defiance of 2 extant modes of understanding, also resides in an utopian 3 or messianic impulse, in the ‘coming-to-be of that which is not 4 yet’ and its ‘incalculable novelty’.2 5 Littered with dreams, visions and a host of other apparitions 6 there can be no doubt that the world of Shakespeare’s drama 7 is, as Greenblatt puts it, ‘hyperanimated’ (Greenblatt 2001). For 8 his contemporary audience, witnessing the revival of ancient 9 spirits and the birth of things to come seems to have consti- 40111 tuted an everyday occurrence while also remaining a crucial 4111 component of the aesthetic experience of play-going itself. The Bottom’s secret 133 1111 relation between the phantasmatic power of the playwright 2 and its reliance on categories that are, or were, religious also 3 seems evident. However, insofar as it constitutes a site of 4 reincarnation and continual renewal, the revelationary capacity 5111 of Shakespeare’s stage is not just bound to a cult of mourning, 6 but also invites a singular encounter with singularity, a quasi- 7111 messianic apprehension of blissful new beginnings – an 8 anticipation of what Rose terms ‘the overwhelming plenitude 9 of every moment’. In this chapter, in pushing this relation 1011 between the sacred and the secret of the future-to-come, I want 1 to explore the paradoxical novelty of the apparitional as the 2 vocation of the everyday: ‘both invisible, hidden’ and quite 3111 ‘ordinarily [rudely?] visible’ (cf. Rose 1999: 19). 4 5 6 Bottom’s secret, or the visible-invisible of 7 apparitions 8 [I]n the temporal world God and I cannot talk together, we 9 have no common language . . . 20111 (Kierkegaard 1985: 64) 1 2 – I have had a most rare vision. I have had a 3 dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man 4 is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream. Me- 5 thought I was – there is no man can tell what. Methought 6 I was, and methought I had – but man is a patched 7 fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The 8 eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, 9 man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get 30111 Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be 1 called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom, and 2 I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. 3 Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing 4 it at her death. 5 (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 4.1.199–211) 6 7 Bottom’s mystery and the hidden wisdom whereof he speaks 8 threads together the aporia of the embodied and the non- 9 embodied, the visible and the non-visible – does the sanctity 40111 of theatrical performance and its communion (its secret) lie in 4111 an analogous hidden visibleness? 134 John J. Joughin 1111 As several critics have noted, Bottom’s account of his 2 ‘rare vision’ constitutes a deliberately botched re-joining of 3 the Pauline message of spiritual revelation as that which, in 4 being ‘past the wit of man’, cannot be spoken: 5111 6 [W]e speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden 17 wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our 8 glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for 9 had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord 1011 of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear 1 heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the 2 things which God hath prepared for them that love him. 3111 But God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the 4 Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 5 (1 Cor. 2:7–10) 6 7 Yet if Paul’s sense of the demonstration of the spirit equates 8 in some respect to the revelationary potential of Shakespearean 19 drama, the kinaesthetic confusion of the senses to which Bottom 20111 refers undoubtedly complicates that connection. Bottom’s mala- 1 propisms of sense aside, it cannot after all be a matter of 2 ‘knowing’ what Bottom knows, for as Paul adds: ‘[T]he natural 3 4 man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are 5 foolishness unto him: neither can he know them for they 6 are spiritually discerned’ (1 Cor. 2:14). 7 Bottom’s initiation into the world of the spirit foregoes the 8 conventional criteria for ‘knowing’; it is unrepeatable (‘no man 9 can tell what’), absolutely singular. The play reserves the term 30111 ‘translation’ for its interrogation of this form of epistemolog- 1 ical and ontological transformation, and once, and only here 2 in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the notion of being ‘transfigured’ 3 (cf. 5.1.24). How then can we translate Bottom’s astonishing 4 translation insofar as, as Kierkegaard puts it: ‘[I]n the temporal 5 world God and I cannot talk together, we have no common 6 language’? 7 As Peter Brook’s remarkable production demonstrated (at 8 Stratford, 1970) there is a sense in which the play’s proximity 9 to the visionary is not held in abeyance in some transcendent 40111 realm but is already hibernating within the everyday. In a 4111 production that deployed ladders, a catwalk and fairies flying Bottom’s secret 135 1111 on trapezes, Brook hurled himself trustingly into the absurd. 2 Crucially, there was no attempt to conceal the mechanics of 3 flying, so that, as one critic noted, in making the invisible ordin- 4 arily visible, Brook had successfully invented: ‘an environment 5111 for the Dream which removes the sense of being earthbound: 6 it is natural here for characters to fly’ (Griffiths 1996: 67–9). 7111 In this, arguably the most Kierkegaardian of Shakespeare’s 8 plays, the sublime and the pedestrian are bound up together, 9 and credulity is unwitting and commonplace, precisely the 1011 provenance of Kierkegaard’s ‘Knight of Faith’ who remains 1 open to the ‘astonishing nature of what is normally expected’ 2 (cf. Rose 1999: 18 and Kierkegaard 1985) – rather than that 3111 of Paul’s ‘princes of this world’, for whom knowing is construed 4 as certainty. In turn, one might say that Brook’s production 5 was ‘Shakespearean’ insofar as it understood the apparitional 6 quality of the play as a form of discovering what is ‘the very 7 least we need before understanding can be reached’ (Brook 8 1990: 55). As such the play exemplifies what the director terms 9 ‘Holy Theatre’ or ‘The Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible’ 20111 where ‘we can try to capture the invisible but we must not 1 2 lose touch with common sense . . .’ (Brook 1990: 69, 47–72). 3 Crucially, and in contrast to what Brook terms the ‘deadly 4 theatre’, where we rush to give things a prescriptive ‘label’ 5 (ibid.: 15), the ‘Holy Theatre’ embraces the potential of a 6 ‘Happening’: 7 8 A powerful invention. ...A happening can be anywhere, 9 any time, of any duration: nothing is required, nothing is 30111 taboo. The theory of happening is that a spectator can be 1 jolted into new sight, so that he wakes to the life around 2 him . . . this visible-invisible cannot be seen automatically 3 – it can only be seen given certain conditions. The condi- 4 tions can relate to certain states or to a certain under- 5 standing. In any event, to comprehend the visibility of the 6 invisible is a life’s work. Holy art is an aid to this, and so 7 we arrive at a definition of a holy theatre. A holy theatre 8 not only presents the invisible but also offers conditions 9 that make its perception possible. The Happening could 40111 be related to all of this, but the present inadequacy of the 4111 Happening is that it refuses to examine deeply the problem 136 John J. Joughin 1111 of perception. Naively it believes that the cry ‘Wake up!’ is 2 enough: that the call ‘Live!’ brings life. Of course more 3 is needed. But what? 4 (Brook 1990: 61–3) 5111 6 Brook’s sense of a ‘happening’ theatre is a variant of what I 17 have characterised elsewhere as an ‘aesthetic attitude’ – where 8 one is willing to embrace a form of critical thinking which 9 remains ‘eventful’ insofar as it refuses to be prescribed by pre- 1011 determined categories and remains open to: ‘imagining the 1 possibility that the world and its objects might be otherwise 2 than they are’ ( Joughin 2000b; cf. Docherty 2003: 31). Where 3111 conventional understandings of the emergence of a ‘representa- 4 tional’ theatre prescribe a fixed field of vision – a place of the 5 visibly present where that which is secret or hidden is only so 6 in the sense that all remains to be revealed – an aesthetic atti- 7 tude implies a willingness to remain open to the truth-potential 8 of the particular transformation wrought by aesthetic experi- 19 ence itself, where the distinctive articulation of truth in works 20111 of art ‘discloses’ the world in new ways rather than copying or 1 representing what is known to be already there (cf. Joughin 2 2000a: 65–7 and Bowie 1997: 5, 301). In contrast, by adhering 3 4 to a correspondence model of self-evident truths and in failing to see ‘more in things than they are’, traditionalist critics confuse 5 3 6 the apparitional with the merely empirical. This is not quite 7 right, for as Adorno reminds us, in the process of entering the 8 realm of their secular transcendence artworks already ‘posit a 9 more as what appears’ indeed ‘artworks become artworks in 30111 the production of this more: they produce their own tran- 1 scendence’ (Adorno 1997: 78). Crucially, as Adorno goes on 2 to suggest, insofar as such artworks become actual, ‘in appear- 3 ing empirically’ they are simultaneously ‘liberated from the 4 burden of the empirical’ (ibid.: 81). In a section of Aesthetic 5 Theory dealing with ‘Art Beauty’ he develops this distinction 6 further by comparing artwork’s apparitional potential to 7 fireworks, observing that: 8 9 The phenomenon of fireworks is prototypical for artworks, 40111 though because of its fleetingness and status as empty 4111 entertainment it has scarcely ever been acknowledged by Bottom’s secret 137 1111 theoretical consideration . . . Fireworks are apparition . . .: 2 They appear empirically yet are liberated from the burden 3 of the empirical, which is the obligation of duration; they 4 are a sign from heaven yet artifactual, an ominous warning, a 5111 script that flashes up, vanishes, and indeed cannot be read 6 for its meaning. The segregation of the aesthetic sphere by 7111 means of the complete afunctionality of what is thoroughly 8 ephemeral is no formal definition of aesthetics. It is not 9 through a higher perfection that artworks separate from 1011 the fallibly existent but rather by becoming actual, like fire- 1 works, incandescently in an expressive appearance. They 2 are not only the other of the empirical world: Everything 3111 in them becomes other. 4 (ibid.: 81, my emphasis) 5 6 As Isobel Armstrong notes, glossing Adorno: 7 8 [Artworks/fireworks] are at once artefactual, actual and 9 other to the empirical world – a magical phenomenon 20111 which is not a higher truth but an astonishment and a 1 wonder, intellectual delight and kinaesthetic happening. . . . 2 3 But ultimately it [the artwork/firework] never transcends 4 empirical reality; it needs the sensuous, the brute physical 5 existence of the material world, and depends on crude 6 mechanism for its very nature as apparition. 7 (Armstrong 2000: 180–2) 8 9 Rather than existing in an ephemeral domain then artworks 30111 are fallibly existent. And in reminding us of the sensuous need 1 on which apparition simultaneously relies for its visionary 2 power (for its ‘very nature as apparition’), Adorno’s theorisation 3 of aesthetic transcendence and disenchantment thus simul- 4 taneously draws us back to what he terms an ‘art-alien’ layer 5 – the material antecedent of all that is ‘spiritual’ in art, which 6 he proceeds to discuss in terms that are teasingly reminiscent 7 of Brook’s sense that the extraordinary is already secreted in 8 the ordinary: 9 40111 It is not so much that artworks possess ideality as that 4111 by virtue of their spiritualization they promise a blocked or 138 John J. Joughin

1111 denied sensuality. That quality can be comprehended in 2 those phenomena from which artistic experience emanci- 3 pated itself, in the relics of an art-alien art, as it were, the 4 justly or unjustly so-called lower arts such as the circus. . . . 5111 Art becomes an image not directly but by becoming an 6 apparition but only through the counter-tendency to it. The 17 preartistic level of art is at the same time the memento 8 of its anticultural character, its suspicion of its antithesis to 9 the empirical world that leaves this world untouched. 1011 Important artworks nevertheless seek to incorporate this 1 art-alien layer. When, suspected of being infantile, it is 2 absent from art, when the last trace of the vagrant fiddler 3111 disappears from the spiritual chamber musician and the 4 illusionless drama has lost the magic of the stage, art has 5 capitulated. The curtain lifts expectantly even at the begin- 6 ning of Beckett’s Endgame; plays and stagings that eliminate 7 the curtain fumble with a shallow trick. The instant the 8 curtain goes up is the expectation of the apparition. 19 (Adorno 1997: 81) 20111 1 In its becoming apparitional then the artwork retains 2 its common touch. Here again, as Isobel Armstrong notes, 3 4 Adorno’s dialectic begins ‘to swing back against itself’ as para- 5 doxically ‘the very rapture of spirit conjures its antithesis, a 6 blocked corporeal existence. To be outside the empirical world 7 is to leave it untouched, and thus to be physical image, naïve 8 illusion, is art’s way of belonging to the world’ (Armstrong 9 2000: 180). When the magic of the circus eventually disap- 30111 pears from drama and it sheds its ‘art-alien layer’ (Adorno 1 1997: 81) then ‘apparition will be displaced by the dry, trans- 2 parent artwork which is essentially dead’ (cf. Armstrong 2000: 3 180), or, to coin Brook’s term for the same process – theatre 4 will have become deadly. 5 Adorno’s eventual summary of his position on the appari- 6 tional quality of art – ‘In each genuine artwork something 7 appears that does not exist’ (Adorno 1997: 82) – could be 8 extended to a quasi-Cavellian understanding of the ontology 9 of drama. Amidst the dissymmetry of performance, as Cavell 40111 reminds us, in occupying the same time as the characters, we 4111 effectively ‘live through’ a sequence of moments with them, Bottom’s secret 139 1111 even though characters do not exist as things in the world do. 2 This means that while, in one sense, we cannot put ourselves 3 in the ‘presence’ of characters during performance (where we 4 are absent), in ‘another sense’, in acknowledging characters 5111 specificity as particular individuals: ‘we are in, or can put 6 ourselves in, their present’ (see Cavell 1987, esp. 108, Cavell’s 7111 emphasis). Here again although ‘we do not share the same 8 space’ in performance ‘we share the same time’ (cf. Hammer 9 2002: 90), the apparitional brings something into our world – 1011 something that ‘does not exist’ and yet is simultaneously tied 1 to its situation and to history. We can’t know what the other 2 knows – in that sense making contact with the actors’ world 3111 is impossible – but in another sense our relation to what takes 4 place on stage cannot be dismissed as a mere illusion. 5 For Cavell of course the obverse side of detached incredulity 6 and scepticism is the wrong type of credulity. And in his seminal 7 essay on Othello he reminds us of the yokel who on attend- 8 ing a performance of the play and in mistaking Othello 9 strangling Desdemona for the real thing, leaps onto the stage 20111 and attempts to intervene (cf. Cavell 1976 and Hammer 2002: 1 89). Curiously of course, the link between these apparent 2 3 extremes is evoked by the mechanicals’ interlude that in drama- 4 tising the conditions of the theatre also reminds us that the 5 aloof aristocrats are already cast, by the mechanicals at least, 6 as credulous yokels who might fear the spectacle of a lion 7 roaring. For their part the aristocrats are in turn exposed to 8 the actual danger of confusing kindness with stupidity. In short 9 there is already both more and less to this scene than meets 30111 the eye and we will need to return to it later. 1 Bottom’s experience of the visionary ‘hath no bottom’, which 2 is to say that it is itself without foundation or prior fixity and 3 yet as his pun on ‘no bottom’ infers it is also bottomless because 4 ‘unfathomably profound’.4 But of course we must not lose touch 5 with common sense. For all that it is ‘out of body’ Bottom’s 6 name is itself a type of ‘open secret’ – a reminder that the 7 experience of the spiritual secretes the ‘promise of a blocked 8 or denied sensuality’. Still, Bottom’s experience is no doubt of 9 a singular nature. He is touched. And I mean that not just in 40111 the sense of the superlunary madness that pervades the play 4111 (though let us not forget that paradise is always on the other 140 John J. Joughin 1111 side of the moon) but also in the sense that in being touched 2 Bottom is also singled out and blessed. In an analogous fashion 3 one might say that drawing close to the artwork’s utopian/ 4 messianic impulse implies another type of contact at a distance 5111 – where what touches us (however common) necessarily remains 6 itself untouchable. If, like Bottom’s dream, theatre is cast as tout 17 autre, wholly other (or ‘in another sense’), then here too we are 8 suspended without support, and this encountered otherness 9 ensures that the viewing subject experiences an analogous sense 1011 of ungrounding and disorientation – he/she hath no bottom. 1 Inevitably then, in performance, there is also always a 2 sharing of the secret without sharing it. In this respect, however 3111 complex and tangled it becomes, the analogy between a secular 4 theatre and Bottom’s experience of an untranslatable mysterium 5 tremendum proves sustainable. Each seems to adhere to a logic 6 of a surplus economy (this is true of course, as Walter Benjamin 7 and others remind us, of translation per se) where the true 8 nature of the sharing or the communion in question remains 19 secret. In a sense then ‘nothing is untranslatable’ (there is always 20111 more) but like Bottom’s ‘more’, the ‘more’ of performance 1 simultaneously remains ‘in another sense’, where everything is 2 untranslatable.5 Yet, in coming close, our share of the secret 3 simultaneously raises ethical and political issues concerning the 4 possibility of community and credulity, even credence. How 5 then does one actually apprehend more? More than cool reason 6 ever comprehends? What further ‘sense’ can be made, in other 7 words, of Bottom’s garbled memory of the Pauline text (1 Cor. 8 2:9), with its messianic expectation of a spirit that transfigures 9 sense? In seeking an answer and in lieu of spiritual discern- 30111 ment it will be necessary to learn to discern spirits, where one 1 apprehends both more and less. 2 3 Learning to live with apparitions 4 5 I cannot close my eyes and hurl myself trustingly into the absurd, for me it is impossible, but I do not praise myself on that 6 account. I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for 7 me a pristine lyrical validity. When it is present to me I am 8 unspeakably happy, when it is absent I yearn for it more 9 intensely than the lover for the beloved; but I do not have faith; 40111 this courage I lack. God’s love is for me, both in a direct and 4111 inverse sense, incommensurable with the whole of reality. I am Bottom’s secret 141

1111 not coward enough to whimper and moan on that account, 2 but neither am I underhand enough to deny that faith is some- 3 thing far higher. 4 (Kierkegaard 1985: 63) 5111 It is requir’d/You do awake your faith. 6 (The Winter’s Tale, 5.3. 94–5) 7111 8 A spirit that transfigures sense? Barely discernible? ‘Something 9 epiphenomenal’? In our apprehension of the visionary or the 1011 secret, then as Derrida reminds us: 1 2 We tremble in that strange repetition that ties an irrefutable 3111 past (a shock has been felt, a traumatism has already 4 affected us) to a future that cannot be anticipated; antici- 5 6 pated but unpredictable; apprehended, but, and this is why 7 there is a future, apprehended precisely as unforeseeable, 8 unpredictable; approached as unapproachable. Even if one 9 thinks one knows what is going to happen, the new instant 20111 of that happening remains untouched, still unaccessible, in 1 fact unlivable....Hence I tremble because I am still afraid 2 of what already makes me afraid, of what I can neither 3 see nor foresee. I tremble at what exceeds my seeing and 4 my knowing [mon voir et mon savoir] although it concerns the 5 innermost parts of me, right down to my soul, down to 6 the bone, as we say. 7 (Derrida 1995b: 54) 8 9 These untimely disorientating repetitions that transgress con- 30111 ventions, approached in fear and trembling (‘you’ll think –/ 1 Which I protest against – I am assisted/By wicked powers’ 2 (The Winter’s Tale, 5.3.89–91)) are a feature (a family trait?) of 3 unlikely scenes of apparition. In the statue scene (5.3) at the 4 end of The Winter’s Tale (exactly an irrefutable past tied to a 5 future that cannot be anticipated), apprehension is seeing as, 6 where, even if one thinks one knows what is going to happen, 7 the ‘new instant of that happening remains untouched’. Instead, 8 something comes to be seen as something in a new way 9 – something that ‘happens’ outside an a priori grid of expec- 40111 tations and refuses the foreclosure of traditional attempts to 4111 explain it away.6 142 John J. Joughin

1111 Apprehension, here and elsewhere (in being apprehended 2 as unforeseeable), is a type of blind – but then isn’t love, isn’t 3 faith, always touchingly so? What exceeds ‘my seeing and 4 knowing’ produces a longing to touch, or at least to seal (to 5111 heal?), touching with a kiss, or even to caress the hand (that 6 organ of touch and healing) with a kiss: 17 8 Perdita Give me that hand of yours to kiss. 9 (5.3.46) 1011 1 Leontes Let no man mock me, 2 For I will kiss her. 3111 (5.3.79–80) 4 5 Eventually, by Paulina’s instruction, that which remains 6 untouched – 7 8 Paulina O patience! 19 The statue is but newly fix’d, the colour’s 20111 Not dry. 1 (5.3.47–9) 2 Paulina Good my lord, forbear: 3 The ruddiness upon her lip is wet. 4 You’ll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own 5 With oily painting . . . 6 (5.3.80–83) 7 8 – is also, eventually, a re-joining, a leading by the hand: 9 30111 Paulina Nay present your hand 1 When she was young, you woo’d her. Now, in age, 2 Is she beome the suitor? 3 Leontes O, she’s warm! 4 If this be magic, let it be art 5 Lawful as eating. 6 (5.3.107–11) 7 8 The extraordinary brings us back to the staple diet of the 9 everyday. 40111 Touch then, but touch only as trait, the remarking of absence 4111 and presence. Insofar as they reside in another sense, we cannot Bottom’s secret 143 1111 touch the players though they come ‘something near’ (5.3.23). 2 In the very instant or event of transfiguration, Leontes’ own 3 ‘rare vision’ or translation, is bound to be untranslatable, his 4 kinaesthetic confusion wholly akin to rapture: 5111 6 Paulina My lord’s almost so far transported that 7111 He’ll think anon it lives 8 Leontes O sweet Paulina 9 Make me to think so twenty years together! 1011 No settled senses of the world can match 1 The pleasure of that madness. 2 (5.3.68–72) 3111 4 The tremor repeats itself precisely ‘in anticipation of what is to 5 come’ as ‘a preliminary and visible agitation’ (again cf. Derrida 6 1995b: 53–4): 7 8 Paulina I have thus far stirr’d you; but 9 I could afflict you farther. 20111 Leontes Do, Paulina, 1 For this affliction has a taste as sweet. 2 As any cordial comfort. Still methinks 3 There is an air comes from her. What fine chisel 4 Could ever yet cut breath? 5 (5.3.74–9) 6 7 Barely holding breath (where the body inhales and expires) in 8 this air of apprehension, a theatre of wonder actually rests on 9 the appearance of the everyday and of what is already ‘being’ 30111 (strange but true). As if the vestige of another discourse is 1 still hibernating (a winter’s tail?) within the ordinary. Another 2 metaphysics then, the very one we need ‘in order to cognize 3 and transform the one we routinely inhabit’.7 Our experience 4 of Shakespeare’s drollery of the statue is no less wonderful 5 and commonplace than Autolycus’ ballads – the silly songs 6 of spring to Paulina’s winter’s tale – ‘very true’ (4.4.257) yet 7 overheard and overseen in mocking aloofness (do not mock), 8 beyond reason, yet still more wonderful, for their all their 9 ‘silly palpability’ (Rose epigraph), palpable gross silliness, ‘the 40111 silliest stuff that ever I heard’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 4111 5.1.207): 144 John J. Joughin 1111 Autolycus My clown, who wants something to be a reasonable 2 Man, grew so in love with the wenches’ song, that he 3 would not stir his pettitoes till he had both time and 4 words, which so drew the rest of the herd to me that 5111 all their other senses stuck in ears. You might have 6 pinched a placket, it was senseless . . . 17 (4.4.592–7; my emphasis) 8 9 ——————————— 1011 1 Paulina It is requir’d 2 You do awake your faith. Then, all stand still . . . 3111 Leon Proceed. 4 No foot shall stir. 5 (5.3.94–8; my emphasis) 6 7 In stillness and faith and growing in love, the mystery of music, 8 visibility and their hiddenness. 19 Yet the moment of reunion and revelation will always remain 20111 a mixed blessing – what’s lost as well as found: 1 2 3 Third Gentleman . . . their joy waded in tears. There was 4 casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with 5 countenance of such distraction that they were to be 6 known by garment, not by favour. . . . But O, the 7 noble combat that ’twixt joy and sorrow was 8 fought in Paulina! 9 She had one eye declined for the loss of her 30111 husband, another elevated that the Oracle was 1 fulfilled . . . 2 (5.2.41–4; 66–9) 3 4 Cross-eyed Paulina finds herself positioned between the ‘trans- 5 lation’ of the secular and the sacred – (‘The poet’s eye, in a fine 6 frenzy rolling,/Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth 7 to heaven . . .?’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.12ff.)). 8 So then how is all this to be divined? In the discrepancy 9 between seeing and telling? For if by secondhand report ‘then 40111 have you lost a sight, which was to be seen, cannot be spoken’ 4111 (5.2.38–9). When it eventually arrives the revelation of the secret Bottom’s secret 145 1111 lies in learning to live in the instant ‘it appears she lives,/Though 2 yet she speak not’ (5.3.118–19). Remaining ‘unspeakably happy’ 3 (Kierkegaard, above) the revelation of the secret resides in 4 ‘tongue-tied simplicity’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.104); it 5111 cannot be spoken or divined. In fact, in its unknowability Leontes’ 6 ‘conversion’ secretes an almost Abrahamic paradox of faith.8 In 7111 Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard’s narrator Johannes de Silentio 8 reminds us of Abraham’s bewildering silence concerning the 9 sacrifice of his son Issac: 1011 1 All along he [Abraham] had faith, he believed that God 2 would not demand Isaac of him, while still he was willing 3111 to offer him if that was indeed what was demanded. He 4 believed on the strength of the absurd, for there could be 5 no question of human calculation, and it was indeed absurd 6 that God who demanded this of him should in the next 7 instant withdraw the demand. He climbed the mountain, 8 even in that moment when the knife gleamed he believed – 9 that God would not demand. Certainly he was surprised by 20111 the outcome, but by means of a double movement he had 1 come back to his original position and therefore received 2 Isaac more joyfully than the first time. Let us go further. We 3 let Isaac be sacrificed. Abraham had faith. His faith was not 4 that he should be happy sometime in the hereafter but that 5 he should find blessed happiness here in this world. God 6 could give him a new Isaac, bring the sacrificial offer back 7 to life. He believed on the strength of the absurd, for all 8 human calculation had long since been suspended. 9 (Kierkegaard 1985: 65) 30111 1 Eventually Leontes’ overcoming of self-imposed solitude and 2 perpetual mourning – ‘Once a day I’ll visit/The chapel where 3 they lie, and tears shed there/Shall be my recreation’ 4 (3.2.236–8) – like Abraham’s sacrifice resides in undertaking the 5 movement from loss and resignation to a state of grace; so that 6 now, against all probability, he believes that, impossibly, God 7 gives back that which is simultaneously beyond reparation – 8 ‘stol’n from the dead!’ (5.3.116). Learning to live with wonders 9 means moving beyond erotic disappointment and yearning, as, 40111 in embracing the movement of faith, Leontes finally learns how 4111 to let go of loss. 146 John J. Joughin 1111 Again in any conventional sense there is no sound basis for 2 knowledge here. Like Abraham, like Leontes, we are each led 3 like the blind, so that, as Derrida comments: 4 5111 God sees in secret he knows. But it is as if he didn’t know 6 what Abraham was going to do, or decide, or decide to 17 do. He gives him back his son after assuring himself that 8 Abraham has trembled, renounced all hope . . . 9 (Derrida 1995b: 95) 1011 1 In the interim there is only the voice of another – Paulina, 2 the intermediary who (like the converted Apostle Paul) has 3111 herself embraced faith and now ‘speaks between’, so that, even 4 when she speaks of the non-narratable disclosure of apparition, 5 she understands that it is only in being apart that something 6 still comes something near: 7 8 I like your silence, it the more shows off 19 Your wonder. But yet speak; first you, my liege. 20111 Comes it not something near? 1 (5. 3. 21–3) 2 3 Because it is a shared relation in which we unknowingly share, 4 there is always a sacrificial component in the absolute secret – 5 again, what touches us itself remains untouchable. In unpacking 6 our self-possession, theatre invites us to join (in our disposses- 7 sion) with the other. Coming close, the proximity of performance 8 takes care, often in not touching – ‘Good my lord, forbear./The 9 ruddiness upon her lip is wet./You’ll mar it if you kiss it . . .’ 30111 (5.3.80–2) – to remind us of the capacity for rejoining that 1 which was apart or sundered; if only in wishing and dreaming 2 (as Kierkegaard’s ‘Knight of Faith’ does in Fear and Trembling) 3 in unwitting naivety that things could be other than they are. 4 As such, faith is an interior relation beyond the comprehen- 5 sion of an exterior from which those who view it could never 6 know the truth (cf. Derrida 1995b: 63 and 108). It follows then 7 that Leontes too is seen without seeing, for in the economy of 8 the apparitional and in the revelation of the secret, there is, 9 as Derrida reminds us: ‘a dissymmetry of looks that cannot 9 40111 be exchanged’ (ibid.: 93). Under this gaze we can’t ‘know’ in 4111 any conventional sense either what we see or that which is apparently looking at us. It might even be Hermione. . . . Bottom’s secret 147 1111 We are in the remove here of a God (albeit now a deus ex 2 machina) who sees more – always more than we do. One might 3 say that the theatre itself holds us in regard. 4 5111 6 To see in secret 7111 To see in secret – what can that mean? 8 (Derrida 1995b: 88) 9 1011 I see a voice . . . 1 (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.190) 2 3111 For German Romanticism, Shakespeare’s translative combin- 4 ation of the visionary and the everyday quickly became a 5 metaphor for the singularity of the playwright’s aesthetic 6 achievement and his capacity for poetic invention, so that as 7 Schlegel observes: 8 9 In The Midsummer Night’s Dream [sic], there flows a luxuriant 20111 vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most 1 extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredi- 2 ents seems to have been brought about without effort by 3 some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours are 4 of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the 5 variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The 6 fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces 7 of arabesque, where little genii with butterfly wings rise, 8 half embodied, above the flower-cups. 9 (Schlegel 1846 cited in Bate 1997: 470) 30111 1 Schlegel’s evocation of a twilight zone of diaphanous folds and 2 ‘poetic enchantment’ is echoed elsewhere by Keats in several 3 of his poems including ‘Ode to Psyche’; evoking a world of 4 liminal states between waking and dreaming – one which offers 5 6 a non-saturable context for prospective vision, inspiration and 7 further translation: a bower of bliss where the poet presides as 8 Priest pleading pardon ‘that thy [Psyche’s] secrets should be 9 sung’ (Keats 1983). Keats, Schlegel and others hint at a rich 40111 kinaesthetic experience that is always already reliant on a 4111 material antecedent, a weave of the sensible (albeit one ‘blown away with a breath’). 148 John J. Joughin 1111 Yet even for Romanticism, this sense of the Dream’s poetic 2 reverie still tends to occupy a delimited field of vision – where 3 that which is barely concealed will eventually be revealed. For 4 his part, Schlegel goes on to complain that ‘the droll wonder 5111 of Bottom’s translation [as an ass] is merely the translation of 6 a metaphor in its literal sense’, while the mechanicals’ inter- 17 lude is another piece of knowing disenchantment, a barely 8 concealed spoof of Romeo and Juliet wherein: 9 1011 Pyramus and Thisbe is not unmeaningly chosen as the 1 grotesque play within the play; it is exactly like the pathetic 2 part of the piece, a secret meeting of two lovers in the 3111 forest, and their separation by an unfortunate accident, 4 and closes the whole with the most amusing parody. 5 (Schlegel 1846 cited in Bate 1997: 470–1) 6 7 In many ways of course amidst claims and counter-claims 8 for the apparitional, the mechanicals’ scene quickly situates a 19 crux of interpretation for the play and in a rather different 20111 vein, having assimilated the non-illusionary theatre of Artaud, 1 Brecht and Beckett, many critics would now readily agree with 2 Schlegel’s sense of Shakespeare’s ‘not unmeaningful’ parody. 3 As such the play within a play is cast as an ‘acknowledgement 4 of the limitations of theatrical illusion’ which in turn only serves 5 to enhance Shakespeare’s powers as a playwright in differen- 6 tiating him ‘from inept attempts to leave nothing to be supplied 7 by the imagination’ (cf. Marshall 1982: 545); in other words, 8 as David Young puts it still more succinctly: ‘Where the 9 mechanicals fail at dramatic illusion . . . A Midsummer Night’s 30111 Dream succeeds.’ (Young 1966: 105 also cited in Marshall 1 1982: 545). 2 Yet of course these and other distinctions actually sell the 3 play’s apparitional potential short. The tendency to read the 4 mechanicals’ scene as a knowing form of unknowing, ungener- 5 ously misses the point of a visionary theatre where, as Bottom 6 himself puts it, we must first ‘look to our eyes’ (cf. 1.2.20) – 7 and which in some sense escapes the field of vision altogether, 8 insofar as it proceeds to undo the relation between seeing and 9 knowing. 40111 There are, after all, as Derrida reminds us, ‘two ways’ in 4111 which the invisible can be understood: Bottom’s secret 149 1111 There is . . . an invisible of the order of the visible that 2 I can keep in secret by keeping it out of sight. This invisible 3 can be artificially kept from sight while remaining within 4 what one can call exteriority (if I hide a nuclear arsenal 5111 in underground silos in a cache, there is a visible surface 6 involved . . . whatever one conceals in this way becomes 7111 invisible but remains within the order of visibility, it remains 8 constitutively visible. . . . But there is also absolute invisi- 9 bility, the absolute non-visible that falls to whatever falls 1011 outside of the register of sight, namely, the sonorous, the 1 musical, the vocal or phonic (and hence the phonological 2 or discursive in the strict sense), but also the tactile and 3111 odoriferous . . . 4 (Derrida 1995b: 90) 5 6 No doubt each of these two forms of invisibility inform the 7 other, but it is the latter that prevails during the mechanicals’ 8 scene – an implicit emphasis on listening, smelling and touch- 9 ing, accessible to senses other than sight, odoriferous and sweet: 20111 ‘O sweet’ (like incense?). Allowing for the absurd within the sens- 1 ible (listen(ing) to the moon, see(ing) a voice) the mechanicals 2 return us to the untranslatable synaesthesia of Bottom’s vision, 3 reminding us insistently of that which is lost from sight. 4 In fact the kinaesthetic confusion of the mechanicals’ scene 5 bears an uncanny resemblance to Peter Brook’s exercise for 6 actors as, in his striving for a ‘Holy Theatre’, the director experi- 7 ments with an interior beyond exterior relation. The aim, Brook 8 notes, was 9 30111 to discover what was the very least he [the actor] needed: 1 was it a sound, a movement, a rhythm – and were these 2 interchangeable – or had each its special strengths and 3 limitations?. . . . We worked by imposing drastic condi- 4 tions. An actor must communicate an idea – the start must 5 always be a thought or a wish that he has to project – but 6 he has only, say, one finger, one tone of voice a cry, or 7 the capacity to whistle at his disposal. 8 (Brook 1990: 55–6) 9 40111 At times Brook observes it was ‘like crossing an abyss on a 4111 tightrope . . .’ in their reliance on different wordless languages 150 John J. Joughin 1111 (‘we took an event, a fragment of experience and made exercises 2 that turned them into forms that could be shared . . .’ (ibid.: 3 58)) the actors in Brook’s exercise are never allowed to touch, 4 no realistic contact can take place, instead: ‘the actor found that 5111 to communicate his invisible meanings he needed concentra- 6 tion, he needed will; he needed to summon all his emotional 17 reserves; he needed courage; he needed clear thought’ (ibid.: 8 57). In communicating invisible meanings Brook ‘experiments’ 9 with silence, or, as he puts it himself: ‘we set out to discover 1011 the relations between silence and duration . . .’ (ibid.: 58). 1 A faith in the absurd, beyond knowledge in any conventional 2 sense, entails a touching without touching, sharing without 3111 sharing, remaining responsive to the irreducible otherness of 4 the other, in an encounter with alterity, a ‘dis-figuring’ that 5 refuses categorisation and which foregoes philosophical know- 6 ing – if that ‘knowing’ is construed in the narrower sense of 7 mere objectification (see Levinas 1991, passim and cf. Bruns 8 1990, esp. 619–20). In an ethical sense that which joins us 19 in singularity to the absolute singularity of the other is this 20111 exposure to ‘another sense’. And howsoever immersed they are 1 in their parts actors themselves occupy an analogous ‘space of 2 risk or sacrifice’ remaining together and open to interchange- 3 ability only in their acceptance of being apart (cf. Derrida 4 1995b, esp. 68). They discover that ‘to be an actor’ is as David 5 Marshall puts it: 6 7 [T]o double and divide oneself, both the part and not the 8 part. The mechanicals feel compelled to acknowledge this 9 on stage: “tell them that I Pyramus am not Pyramus” (III, 30111 I, 19) says Bottom the weaver; and so Snout the tinker 1 declares himself Snout and a wall, and the lion insists that 2 he is the lion and Snug the joiner . . . 3 (Marshall 1982: 563) 4 5 Or, as Peter Quince puts it even more succinctly, ‘We are not 6 here’ (5.1.115). The uncanniness of the ordinary.... 7 Yet curiously of course it is precisely in not knowing who 8 they are, that within a loss of self-possession the mechanicals 9 also rediscover their capacity for ‘joining’,10 demonstrating an 40111 ‘infinite capacity for self-creation and response to [their] fellow 4111 self-creators’ (Rose 1999: 63). In ‘conning’ their parts (cf. 1.2.82) Bottom’s secret 151 1111 they might truly be said to ‘learn by heart’. This comes close 2 to the ‘learning by heart’ of a craft or mystery (and this is the 3 actor’s craft too) where ‘beyond semantic . . . comprehension 4 one gives without knowing’, and where ‘to share a secret is not 5111 to know or reveal the secret, it is to share we know not what, 6 a secret: nothing that can be determined’ (cf. Derrida 1995: 7111 97, 80).11 In our experience of playing, both as audience and 8 players, we share this condition of being apart together (the 9 same way that ‘sharers’ in a theatrical company owe every bit 1011 to every bit of the other?). Even as they enact a tale of erotic 1 loss and disappointment the mechanicals accept ‘the conditions 2 of being sundered and being joined’ – a ‘union in partition’ 3111 perhaps best exemplified by the roughcast wall (cf. Marshall 4 1982): ‘Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe,/Did 5 whisper often, very secretly . . .’ (5. 1. 158–9) and which itself, 6 in ‘being sensible’, also constitutes a literal embodiment of our 7 own remove. 8 9 No epilogue, I pray you 20111 1 In Puck’s epilogue this play on ‘sundering and joining’ 2 (cf. Marshall 1982) is finally recast around another invitation 3 to ‘join hands’, not by touching, but by accepting disenchant- 4 ment as a necessary accomplice to dreaming – pardoning 5 the remove and re-joining (or ‘mending’), that which in another 6 sense must remain sundered (epilogue). Yet for his part, 7 Bottom’s promise of an epilogue (or is it a lament?) in ‘the 8 latter end of a play’, Peter Quince’s ‘ballad’, is never fulfilled 9 (5.2.390ff); for in Bottom’s play there can be no end, only ‘true 30111 beginning’ (5.1.111). 1 Likewise, in his own brief ‘Epilogue’ to Fear and Trembling 2 Kierkegaard’s narrator Johannes de Silentio ‘begins again’ by 3 reminding us that there can be no epilogue and that every 4 generation begins afresh in faith and love: 5 6 However much one generation learns from another, it can 7 never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human 8 factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh, has 9 no task other than that of any previous generation, and 40111 comes no further, provided the latter hasn’t shirked its task 4111 and deceived itself. This authentically human factor is 152 John J. Joughin 1111 passion, in which the one generation also fully understands 2 the other understands itself. Thus no generation has learned 3 from another how to love, no generation can begin other 4 than at the beginning, the task of no later generation is 5111 shorter than its predecessor’s, and if someone, unlike the 6 previous generation, is unwilling to stay with love but wants 17 to go further, then this is simply idle and foolish talk. 8 (Kierkegaard 1985: 145) 9 1011 There is no counting on ancestors, rather ‘faith must be started 1 over by each generation’ (cf. Derrida 1995b: 80). This senti- 2 ment of course is all too apparent at the end of The Winter’s 3111 Tale and is also partly echoed in the last lines of Lear where in 4 the play’s epilogue, in ‘coming after’ another new generation 5 nevertheless has to learn for itself how to go on and begin again: 6 7 The weight of this sad time we must obey; 8 Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. 19 The oldest hath borne most; we that are young 20111 Shall never see so much, nor live so long. 1 Exeunt with a dead march. 2 (5.3.322–5) 3 4 Notably, in the closing lines of the play ‘feeling’ and ‘speaking’ 5 rather than feeling and seeing, are cast in tantalising proximity. 6 And again this is a form of obligation, a ‘speaking’ that even- 7 tually comes from the heart. If, in the old regime, Goneril and 8 Regan ‘spoke dutifully what they ought to say’ (see Foakes 1997: 9 392; Foakes’ emphasis, and cf. Lear 1.1) now there is a duty 30111 which exceeds mere public duty and lies beyond the empty 1 rhetoric that attended the official investment of power and 2 authority at the beginning of the play. As a new beginning this 3 outcome is discordant yet it also re-marks a recognition that 4 ‘the obligations imposed by the dead are the obligations we 5 discover and renegotiate in life’12 – a form of ethical demand 6 that lives on in ordinary day-to-day commitments and continues 7 to inform our relations with others. A duty beyond duty – a 8 response in part exemplified earlier on in the play by what Rose 9 would call the ‘love-ability’ of Cordelia’s childish ‘learning by 40111 heart’, which, despite its unhappiness, refused to heave its heart 4111 into its mouth (1.1.90–1) and offered instead an unjustifiable, Bottom’s secret 153 1111 yet loving and dutiful silence – and in doing so kept its secret 2 (cf. Joughin 2002: 79–81). 3 In learning to let go of loss, Shakespearean comedy and 4 tragedy-comedy alike embraces the possibility of ‘reinventing 5111 tradition’ and beginning again. All this happens without prece- 6 dent and without cause, only by improbable creation. In 7111 learning the lesson of love there is no time left for lament or 8 mourning. As such, just as resignation is often the accomplice 9 of maturity, the passion of faith lies in embracing the task in 1011 hand anew with childlike credulity, demonstrating a willing- 1 ness to overcome weariness, for, as Kierkegaard adds: 2 3111 So long as the generation only worries about its task, which 4 is the highest it can attain to, it cannot grow weary. That 5 task is always enough for a human lifetime. When children 6 on holiday get through all their games by noon and then 7 ask impatiently, ‘Can’t anyone think of a new game?’, does 8 this show that they are more developed and advanced than 9 children of the same generation who could make the games 20111 they already know last the whole day? Or does it not rather 1 show that those children lack what I would call the good- 2 natured seriousness that belongs to play? 3 (Kierkegaard 1985: 146) 4 5 The analogy to ‘play’ here evokes a precise form of cogni- 6 tive re-negotiation, in that, as Isobel Armstrong reminds us, 7 children’s play itself achieves a special inversion: 8 9 Play achieves an extraordinary reversal, a transformation 30111 of the very structure of perception. When one thing begins 1 to stand for another (a stick for a horse) the thing becomes 2 a ‘pivot’ for severing the idea of a horse from the concrete 3 existence of the horse, [lantern, dog, and bush of thorn 4 presenteth Moonshine?] and the rule-bound game is deter- 5 mined by ideas, not by objects. Play liberates the child into 6 ideas, into an understanding of categories and their relation 7 to objects . . . play is liberating through its capacity to be 8 interactive: because the child can create an alienated 9 meaning within the constraints of a specific, concrete situ- 40111 ation, play occupies ‘the realm of spontaneity and freedom’. 4111 (Armstrong 2000: 38) 154 John J. Joughin 1111 Tied to actuality, in ways that cannot be reduced to the empir- 2 ical or verifiable, the experience of ‘play’ allows instead for the 3 creation of new possible worlds. In its interactivity it encour- 4 ages us to explore, to respect and to learn to live together, 5111 exploring the boundaries of blissful boundless love. Open to 6 new perceptions, immersed in childlike, silly palpability . . . 17 8 In contrast, within our own loss-laden philosophical and polit- 9 ical maturity, the infinite movement of faith has never been 1011 harder to accomplish. Or more wearisome. In no small part 1 of course, this is because (amid ‘state of the art’ surveillance) 2 politicians wilfully misconstrue the nature of the secret. The 3111 original lack of faith that now finds Tony Blair conceding that 4 weapons of mass destruction (WOMD) may never be found 5 in Iraq – ‘I do not know is the answer . . . I believe that we 6 will [find WOMD] but I agree there were many people who 7 thought we were going to find this [sic] in the course of the 8 actual operation’ – betrays a ‘wait and see’ policy that itself 19 remains constitutively visible, and finally, in the name of 20111 ‘justice’, can only ever claim its alibi in the form of an ‘open’ 1 ‘objective’ verification: 2 3 I can assure you I have no intention of hiding away from 4 this at all . . . On the contrary, I am enthusiastic about 5 being at long last able to debate these issues on the basis 6 of an objective, independent judgment by a judge, rather 7 than speculation.13 8 9 In failing to understand that acts of faith lie ‘beyond the 30111 economy of the terrestrial visible or sensible’ Blair (who himself 1 professes Christianity) would ‘take possession of the secret’ 2 (Derrida 1995b: 87, 98). But his disingenuous admission that 3 he no longer believes confirms a betrayal of faith that is both 4 ancient and modern. Whether or not Bush and Blair pray 5 together, their vision for the future congregates alongside all 6 the other mad monotheisms within the current crisis of faith. 7 As such it constitutes a dogmatic and totalising response to the 8 ‘emergency’ – a crusading faith that stakes its claim for certainty 9 around ‘homeland security’. In the wake of these destructive 40111 alliances with God, Derrida calls instead for general messianic 4111 end to the ‘determinate faiths . . . that divide humanity into Bottom’s secret 155 1111 warring parties’ and make ‘war on the other’ (see Caputo 1997a: 2 195) calling instead for a ‘nondogmatic doublet of dogma . . . 3 a thinking that “repeats” the possibility of religion without reli- 4 gion . . . at bottom [Derrida suggests] this list has no limit’.14 5111 In its infinite capacity for constant renewal and absolute 6 beginnings, Shakespeare’s drama (which itself could not openly 7111 speak of God) offers us an analogous taste of, and for, the 8 invention of the wholly other. As such, its open secret resides 9 in joining and sundering and learning to live together apart, 1011 sharing (we know not what) in the sacramental relation of the 1 visible-invisible of apparitions. Partaking in the good-natured 2 seriousness that belongs to play. Resisting the maturity of gener- 3111 ational conflict and embracing love-ability. 4 Enjoining us to begin again . . . 5 6 Notes 7 8 1 Constituting a notable exception to the rule, Kiernan Ryan, a fellow 9 contributor to this volume, urges us instead to embrace the future, 20111 asking: 1 What if the changing meaning of the most valuable [Shake- 2 spearean] works is not held in the gravitational grip of the past 3 or the present, but is printed into their form and texture by the 4 pressure of futurity, by the secret contract with a dispensation that might do justice to our dreams? 5 (Ryan 2002: 175–6) 6 7 2 See Derek Attridge (2004), The Singularity of Literature (passim) and cf. 8 esp. p. 151 where he cites Badiou 2001. 3 For the time being it is worth noting that in attempting to discrim- 9 inate between reality and illusion in these terms critics necessarily 30111 remain complicit with a claim for universal validity that as Derrida 1 and others remind us ‘inspires philosophy and ethics in their most 2 powerful and coercive forms’. Bound as it is to a schema of identity 3 thinking empirical-idealist variants of lit-crit reinstall a request for 4 truth, where as Derrida comments ‘the manifest is given priority over 5 the hidden or secret’ and where ‘there are finally no secrets for phil- 6 osophy, ethics or politics’ (cf. Derrida 1995b: 63). 4 See Brooks 2001: cxvii. I owe this reference to Geza Kallay. 7 5 Again compare Derrida, this time on translation: ‘In a sense, nothing 8 is untranslatable; but in another sense, everything is untranslatable; trans- 9 lation is another name for the impossible’ (Derrida, 1998: 56–7). 40111 6 For more on ‘seeing as’ and a discussion of the revelationary poten- 4111 tial of aesthetic disclosure during the statue scene see Joughin 2000b. 156 John J. Joughin

1111 7 Again, see Joughin 2000b and also compare Bernstein 1992: 9. 2 8 Did God originally impart a secret to Leontes? – we will never know. 3 9 Cf. Derrida 1995b: ‘It is dissymmetrical: this gaze that sees me without 4 my seeing it looking at me . . . a gaze that sees me without my seeing it’ (91, 93). 5111 10 As Marshall notes, the mechanicals are all concerned with ‘some 6 form or manner of joining. Carpenter, joiner, weaver, bellows 17 mender, tinker, tailor’ as such he adds ‘their occupations enact the 8 preoccupations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. . . . All join together 9 what is apart or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered’ 1011 (Marshall 1982: 562). 1 11 In speaking of the secret Derrida reminds us: 2 It is a matter of learning ‘by heart’ beyond any semantic compre- 3111 hension. In fact God asks that one give without knowing, without 4 calculating, reckoning, or hoping, for one must give without 5 counting, and that is what takes it outside of sense. 6 (Derrida 1995b: 97) 7 12 I owe this formulation to Wendy Wheeler (1999: 78) though I should 8 note that both Wheeler and I are indebted in turn to Gillian Rose, 19 cf. esp. Rose 1996. 20111 13 These soundbites from Blair are taken from The Guardian, 12 January 2004. 1 14 Derrida 1995b: 49 my emphasis, though I owe the translation and 2 the illumination to Caputo 1997a: 195. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 7 6 7111 Spectres of Hamlet 8 Richard Kearney 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 Before religious dread comes ‘daemonic dread’ with its queer 2 perversion, a sort of abortive offshoot, the ‘dread of ghosts’. It 3 first begins to stir in the feeling of ‘something uncanny’, ‘eerie’, 4 or ‘weird’. It is this feeling which, emerging in the mind of 5 primeval man, forms the starting point for the entire religious 6 development in history. 7 (Otto 1958: 14) 8 9 30111 Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play about spirits. But how should 1 this be read – theologically, aesthetically, psychoanalytically? 2 This is a question that has preoccupied many thinkers from 3 Kierkegaard and Lacan to Girard and Derrida. In what follows 4 I propose to revisit some of the most significant philosophical 5 interpretations of Hamlet’s phantoms from a contemporary 6 perspective. I will begin with a brief presentation of Hamlet as 7 a play about a crisis of narrative memory, before then going on to 8 review how several theorists have sought to interrogate its role 9 as a drama of holy and unholy ghosts. I will look at four main 40111 readings: (1) the psychoanalytic paradigm of phantom-as- 4111 unconscious; (2) the existential paradigm of phantom-as-failure; 158 Richard Kearney 1111 (3) the deconstructive paradigm of phantom-as-erasure; and (4) 2 the theological paradigm of phantom-as-conscience. 3 Hamlet is a play that opens with a spectre enjoining the 4 protagonist to remember something that cannot be remem- 5111 bered. From the opening scene we find ourselves embroiled in 6 a play about the terrible impossibility – yet inescapability – of 17 memory. ‘Remember me’, says the ghost of King Hamlet to 8 his son (1.5.91). Tell my tale and transmit my memory to future 9 generations so that my role in history – abruptly cut off – can 1011 be restored. It is common in Shakespearean plays to find kings 1 bidding their children to inherit their secret story, blessing or 2 birthright. And was not young Hamlet born for this? To tell 3111 his father’s story to the people of the Union: the Union of two 4 nations, Denmark and Norway, sealed with the pearl won by 5 his father in the famous duel with Fortinbras the Elder. (A duel 6 fought, as is later recalled by the gravedigger, the same day that 7 young Prince Hamlet entered this world.) Was not Prince 8 Hamlet born, then, to respond to the summons of his father’s 19 spirit – namely, to carry on his father’s history and avenge his 20111 murder? 1 But there’s a rub. First, we cannot be sure who speaks when 2 the spectre speaks. There is a profound ambivalence about the 3 origin and character of the ghost. Hamlet’s friend Horatio says 4 ‘tis but our fantasy’ (1.1.21). Or worse ‘a guilty thing’ (1.2.129). 5 At best a ‘spirit’ (1.2.135), one moment there, one moment 6 gone, there and not there, present and absent, the past-as- 7 present. And when the sepulchral phantasm finally talks, after 8 much equivocation, he claims he is a creature come, not back 9 from Heaven (as we would expect for such a noble father), but 30111 from Hell or Purgatory: from ‘sulphrous and tormenting flames’ 1 (1.5.3). He is indeed a ‘questionable shape’ (1.4.24). So, from 2 the very outset of the play, it would appear that religious ques- 3 tions of guilt, sin, repentance, redemption and the afterlife 4 deeply inform Hamlet’s dilemma. 5 But there’s another rub. If we can’t be sure who the ghost 6 is, neither can we be sure of what he is trying to say. He bids 7 his son, ‘remember!’ Yes. But what is he to remember? His father’s 8 glories as illustrious monarch, faithful to his people, spouse and 9 son? Or the exact hidden details of his untimely murder? No. 40111 The irony is that the first thing father tells son is what he cannot 4111 tell him. Recall the actual words spoken in Act 1, scene 5: Spectres of Hamlet 159 1111 I am thy father’s spirit, 2 Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, 3 And for the days confined to fast in fires 4 Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 5111 Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid 6 To tell the secrets of my prison house, 7111 I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 8 Would harrow up thy soul . . . 9 (1.5.9–16) 1011 1 In other words, the very secret that the father is bidding his 2 son to remember is a ‘tale’ that the father is actually forbidden to 3111 tell! No wonder the young Prince is going to experience – like 4 most other characters in the play – a crisis of narrative memory. 5 But there are further problems. King Hamlet’s ghost 6 proceeds to command his son to prevent the ‘royal bed of 7 Denmark’ from being ‘a couch . . . of damned incest’ (1.5.82–3). 8 Here again the Prince is thrown into disarray, for his father’s 9 spirit immediately adds: ‘nor let thy soul contrive against thy 20111 mother aught’ (1.5.85–6). In other words, Hamlet is confronted 1 with another contradictory injunction. First: Remember 2 me/remember me not. Second: intervene/don’t intervene. The 3 paralysis of narrative memory is thus doubled as a paralysis of 4 moral action. 5 In this light, the spectre’s opening injunction – ‘Remember 6 me!’ – can be reread as a double command: (1) to commem- 7 orate the ghost’s memory by honouring his summons to avenge; 8 and (2) to recall what ‘foul crimes’ the Ghost-King actually 9 committed in his own youth, if he could only recount them 30111 (which alas he is ‘forbid’). This self-contradicting summons 1 represents what we might best describe as a tragedy of narrative 2 memory. Hamlet has a history to express, and to vindicate in 3 action, but cannot express it; and he cannot express it because 4 he is not permitted to remember it. 5 6 Hamlet, then, is a play (an enacted story) about the simulta- 7 neous necessity and impossibility of stories. And without stories, 8 there are no histories. For histories too are narrated memories. 9 Ophelia cannot tell her story until she goes mad (when she 40111 tells everything but is no longer herself: ‘There’s rosemary, 4111 that’s for remembrance’ (4.5.173)). Claudius cannot tell his 160 Richard Kearney 1111 story, even in the confessional, and so it has to be acted out 2 for him by the play-within-the-play. Gertrude cannot tell her 3 story because she is ignorant of it (she does not know that 4 Claudius killed the King). Polonius and his fellow courtiers – 5111 Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric – cannot tell their stories 6 either since they contrive only to serve others’ versions of events. 17 But most dramatically, of course, Prince Hamlet cannot tell his 8 story for as long as conscience makes a coward of him. Not, 9 that is, until dying of a fatal rapier wound he begs his friend 1011 Horatio: ‘[a]bsent thee from felicity awhile . . . [t]o tell my 1 story’ (5.2.289–91). All of which means that this is a play where 2 no one actually tells their story, where no one truly remem- 3111 bers. Until Prince Fortinbras arrives too late on the scene, and 4 announces: ‘I have some rights of memory in this kingdom/ 5 Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me’ (5.2.333–4; 6 my emphasis). 7 What exactly these rights of ‘memory’ are, Shakespeare never 8 tells us. And if he could have told us the play would probably 19 not have survived the first act. In other words, the play is about 20111 a cover-up, the concealment of a crime (but which? whose? 1 King Hamlet’s or Claudius’s?) that the hero is trying to uncover 2 – and ultimately recover from. And the way in which Hamlet 3 seeks to do this is by having his story told, even if it is after 4 his demise. Only thus, it seems, may the disjunction of time, 5 signalled by the anachronistic return of the Ghost, be finally 6 addressed. For the telling of the tale is an attempt to respond 7 to the time being ‘out of joint’ (2.1.189), to bring concordance 8 back, to synthesise the heterogeneous. But the matter is not 9 simple. The Ghost is not about to yield his secret easily. Hamlet 30111 will have to pay a tragic price for the recovery of this deeply 1 buried ‘crime’. 2 In short, the task of remembrance, staged here by 3 Shakespeare, is deeply paradoxical. Indeed, were it less so one 4 wonders if Shakespeare would have succeeded in turning a 5 standard revenge play into a spiritual masterpiece. It’s true ‘the 6 play’s the thing/Wherein [we’ll] catch the conscience of the 7 king’ (2.2.581–2). But which king are we speaking of? King 8 Hamlet, King Claudius or King Fortinbras? Who is the rightful 9 king in this whole sorry history of poison and betrayal? Who 40111 truly possesses the legitimate ‘rights of memory’? And who speaks 4111 when the Ghost speaks? Indeed, is the real crisis of memory – Spectres of Hamlet 161 1111 with which the play opens and closes – not itself a crisis of legit- 2 imacy that in turn expresses itself as a crisis of identity: the famous 3 ‘[t]o be, or not to be’ (3.1.58)? It is because there’s no quick 4 solution to these interlocking puzzles that Hamlet the play 5111 survives to this day and Hamlet the prince is the most written 6 about person in Western culture after Jesus and Napoleon. 7111 8 Psychoanalytic reading 9 1011 Freud, as we know from his famous comment on the play in 1 the Interpretation of Dreams, reads these paradoxes as sympto- 2 matic betrayals of Hamlet’s Oedipus Complex. Memory is 3111 playing tricks, he argues, because of Hamlet’s repressed desire 4 to destroy his father and possess his mother (Freud 1983: 365–8, 5 575–6). Certain followers of Freud go much further and deeper 6 than their mentor, however, in describing Hamlet’s double 7 injunctions as deep symptoms of loss and melancholy. But all 8 agree that the ghosts of Hamlet have less to do with a theology 9 of spirit than with a psychology of trauma. 20111 Jacques Lacan, for example, declares that Hamlet is, from 1 first to last, a play about mourning.1 And he relates this in turn 2 to the fact that the play should be read, at an ontological level, 3 as a ‘tragedy of desire’ – expressing the protagonist’s excessive 4 sense of his ‘lack of being’ (manque-à-être). Although Lacan does 5 not focus explicitly on the crisis of narrative provoked by the 6 breakdown of the father–son relation, with its attendant crises 7 of identity and legitimation, he does offer some fascinating 8 observations on the play’s obsession with doubles, ghosts and 9 the un-mourned dead. 30111 Lacan writes, ‘I know of no commentator who has ever 1 taken the trouble to make this remark, however hard it is to 2 overlook once it has been formulated: from one end of Hamlet 3 to the other, all anyone talks about is mourning’ (Lacan 1982: 4 38–9). He cites as prime evidence (1) Hamlet’s return to find 5 his father already buried without proper funeral rites; and (2) 6 Gertrude’s remark that the cause of Hamlet’s ‘distemper’ is 7 ‘[h]is father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage’ (2.2.55, 7). 8 The entire play, on this reading, revolves around the ‘rela- 9 tionship of the drama of desire to mourning’. The recurrence 40111 of the Ghost is attributed to the insufficiency of mourning 4111 (played out again in Hamlet’s hiding of Polonius’ dead body 162 Richard Kearney 1111 in the castle thereby preventing a proper funeral rite). And this 2 explains, furthermore, the intimate link between ‘the lack, skip- 3 ping or refusal of something in the satisfaction of the dead’ 4 and ‘the appearance of ghosts and spectres in the gap left by 5111 the omission of the significant rite’ (Lacan 1982: 39). This insuf- 6 ficiency of mourning is exacerbated by the fact that for Hamlet, 17 as for Oedipus – the two dramatic heroes who captivate the 8 imagination of psychoanalysis – there is an uncanny secret 9 behind the crisis of mourning. 1011 Lacan, and several of his followers, interpret the play accord- 1 ingly as a process of successive detachments from fetish-objects 2 of lure and illusion: what Lacan calls the ‘little a objects’ (objets 3111 petit a) that stand in for the missing phallus. This process even- 4 tually leads to the moment of truth when Hamlet confronts 5 the ‘real’ by meeting his own death – the ultimate act of detach- 6 ment – and so finally succeeds in mourning. It is only with the 7 decline of the Oedipus Complex, argues Lacan, that the phallus 8 (as stand-in for the original lost object) can be mourned. In 19 other words, it is only when ‘Hamlet’s hour’ finally comes at 20111 the moment of death, that he can act and accept the ‘hole in 1 being’ – the uncanny abyss of the Real anticipated by the 2 empty grave of Act 4. Until then, Hamlet is unable to act, a 3 paralysis most evident in his incapacity to avenge his father by 4 striking at the phallic substitute, Claudius. ‘It’s a question of 5 the phallus’, says Lacan, ‘and that’s why he (Hamlet) will never 6 be able to strike it, until the moment when he has made the 7 complete sacrifice . . . of all narcissistic attachments, i.e., when 8 he is mortally wounded and knows it’ (ibid.: 51). In this light, 9 Lacan construes the entire drama as a critique of the power 30111 of the phallus – and its passage towards ‘symbolic castration’ 1 via a progressive disillusionment with the various objets petit a 2 supplements. In other words, the play interrogates the phallic 3 compulsion to draw agents into imaginary identifications 4 with the phallic to the point of psychotic splitting and doubling 5 – a point epitomised by the upsurge of spectral visitations and 6 voices. 7 Prince Hamlet’s arduous journey through the ‘guts of a 8 beggar’ (4.3.31) is interpreted thus as a progressive disenchant- 9 ment with the claims of the illusory fetish-phallus: (1) the Ghost’s 40111 appeal to a fallacious paternal authority and vengeance; (2) 4111 Claudius’ link to a ‘divinity [that] doth hedge a king’ (4.5.100) Spectres of Hamlet 163 1111 (reinforced by the erotic desire of Gertrude); (3) Ophelia’s incar- 2 nation of phallic substitution; (4) Laertes’ rival phallic passion 3 that represents the ‘desire of the other’ and sets the phallic 4 signifier in motion. 5111 Only when Hamlet finally undergoes symbolic castration in 6 the hour of death, liberated at last from the desire of the other 7111 and its endless fetishistic signifiers, can Hamlet become his own 8 subject and accept the ‘real’: namely, the truth that the phallus 9 is ‘nothing’ and that the ‘readiness [to accept this] is all’ 1011 (5.2.100). Hamlet may well be a melancholic neurotic for most 1 of the play; but when he dies, he dies ‘cured’. It is then he 2 realises that the phallus does not exist – or, in Hamlet’s own 3111 words, that ‘the King is a thing – . . . of nothing’ (4.3.26–8). 4 In short, it is only when Hamlet faces the true strangeness of 5 death, and sees through the paralysing estrangement of the 6 Ghost (his father’s returned double), that he is freed from illu- 7 sory attachments to the phallus, qua spectral phantom, and 8 from the mimetic cycles that hold him in thrall. But, sadly, 9 Hamlet only comes into his own desire posthumously, when it 20111 is too late. His desire dawns in the moment of dying, which 1 is why his desire is tragic. 2 3 In an essay entitled the ‘The Phantom of Hamlet’, Nicolas 4 Abraham takes this psychoanalytic line of argument in a some- 5 what different direction when he claims that what haunts 6 Hamlet is an ‘unspeakable’ event that has been buried and 7 entombed. Abraham reads the whole crisis of narrative memory 8 as a symptom of the gap left in Hamlet by the untold secrets 9 of those who came before him. What the ‘phantom’ objectifies 30111 is the cavity carved within the unconscious ‘by the concealment 1 of some part of a love object’s life’ (Abraham 1988a: 171). 2 Abraham advances the following bold hypothesis: 3 4 The appearance of the Father’s ghost at the start of the play 5 objectifies the son’s awareness-unawareness. Awareness- 6 unawareness of what? Of his own uneasiness due to a cir- 7 cumstance not to be doubted: the late King must have taken 8 a secret with him to the grave. Does the ghost appear in 9 order to lift the state of unawareness? If that were the case, 40111 the ghost’s objectification would have no more object than 4111 Hamlet’s own dubious ‘madness of doubt’. A ghost returns 164 Richard Kearney 1111 to haunt with the intent of lying: its would-be ‘revelations’ 2 are false by nature. 3 (Abraham 1988b: 188) 4 5111 Abraham concludes that what audiences and critics have gener- 6 ally ignored for over four centuries is that the so-called ‘secret’ 17 revealed by the ghost – that he has been murdered and so 8 must be avenged – is itself but a subterfuge for another more 9 secret secret: ‘this one genuine and truthful, but resulting from 1011 an infamy which the father, unbenown to his son, has on his 1 conscience’ (ibid.: 189). Read in this manner, Hamlet provokes 2 the phantom effect of a repressed generational secret encrypted 3111 in the ‘spirit’ of Hamlet’s father. The Ghost is a symptom of 4 blocked memory. A phantasmatic past repeating itself as present 5 through its absence. In sum, a phantom. 6 Abraham argues that the aim of Shakespeare’s play ‘is to 7 cancel the secret buried in the unconscious and to display it 8 in its initial openness’ (ibid.: 189). But how can such a secret 19 be exposed given that the shame and guilt attached to it persist? 20111 Their exorcism, suggests Abraham, leads not to the punish- 1 ment, real or imagined, of the other, but rather to a ‘higher 2 wisdom about oneself and the world of humans at large’ (ibid.). 3 But to exorcise the phantom, to lay the ghost, is to ‘reduce the 4 sin attached to someone else’s secret and state it in acceptable 5 terms so as to defy, circumvent, or domesticate the phantom’s 6 (and our) resistances, its (and our) refusals, gaining acceptance 7 for a higher degree of “truth”’ (ibid.). 8 Abraham proceeds, accordingly and rather brazenly, to write 9 a fictional sixth act to the play in which Hamlet and Fortinbras 30111 become reconciled. In this supplementary act, the two enemy 1 sons acknowledge their respective fathers’ secrets and ‘restore 2 to Poland the kingdom which their fathers had stolen from it 3 . . . even returning the usurped Pole, Polonius, to his native 4 Poland for proper burial!’ (ibid.). 5 A related psychoanalytic perspective on spectral represen- 6 tation in Hamlet is offered by André Green in his pioneering 7 book, Hamlet et Hamlet (1982), where he claims that the whole 8 play is a theatrical uncovering of the buried, covered-up 9 memory of murder. For Green, it is precisely the play as form 40111 (rather than content) that functions as disclosure. Theatrical repre- 4111 sentation itself becomes, in Shakespeare’s ingenious experiment Spectres of Hamlet 165 1111 with dramatic fantasy, an operation of proto-psychoanalytic 2 ‘showing’ of the unshowable primal scene. And this, in turn, 3 serves a therapeutic-cathartic role for audiences. This of course 4 gives extra weight to Hamlet’s throwaway line after his staging 5111 of the play-within-the-play – ‘The play’s the thing/Wherein 6 I’ll catch the conscience of the king’. In sum, Green’s basic 7111 hypothesis is that Shakespeare’s drama actually succeeds in 8 staging the unconscious and enables us to show/say what 9 cannot otherwise by shown/said at a purely conscious, and 1011 therefore censored, level.2 1 What Lacan’s reading fails to sufficiently appreciate, it seems, 2 is that Hamlet’s tragedy also comprises narrative catharsis. 3111 If the phantom has the first word, it does not have the last. 4 The spirit as haunting spectre is finally overcome by another 5 kind of spirit, the spirit of surrender to a ‘divinity that shapes 6 our ends/Rough-hew them how we will’ (5.2.10–11). In the 7 terminal scene, after all, Denmark is saved from its ‘rotten- 8 ness’, and the memory of Hamlet’s successful (if tragic) 9 overcoming of phantoms lives on, thanks to the testimony of 20111 Horatio who absents himself from felicity to tell his story. And 1 thanks also, we should not forget, to Hamlet’s supposed rival, 2 Fortinbras-the-son, who, himself ultimately liberated from the 3 cycle of mimetic desire and revenge, ensures that Hamlet-the- 4 son has the proper mourning and burial that Hamlet the father 5 never received. 6 It appears that Shakespeare is aware of a healing power that 7 escapes Lacan and his apocalyptic apostles of ‘nothing’: namely, 8 the power of narrative memory and imagination. Hamlet, I would 9 argue, can teach contemporary culture – crippled as it is with 30111 phantasmatic crises of desire, identification and legitimation – 1 that spirits can be holy or unholy, allies or adversaries, and that 2 some sons can truthfully acknowledge the secrets of their fathers. 3 In sum, that certain stories heal. When one considers the vast 4 number of contemporary tales – literary, cybernetic and cine- 5 matic – dealing with the collapse of the father–son relation 6 (Ulysses, Magnolia, American Beauty, Star Wars etc.), one appreci- 7 ates that if the Hamlet narrative is indeed perennial it is especially 8 pertinent to our postmodern predicament of paralysis, simula- 9 tion and psychosis. Wherever the logic of doubling rules, 40111 phantoms proliferate; and where phantoms proliferate, the story 4111 of Hamlet needs to be re-told and re-enacted, again and again. 166 Richard Kearney 1111 Existential reading: Kierkegaard 2 While psychoanalytic readings construe the paradoxical injunc- 3 tions of the ‘spirit/spectre’ in terms of repressed memory or 4 blocked desire, Søren Kierkegaard signals a more existential 5111 6 and dialectical interpretation. In an appendix to Stages on 17 Life’s Way, entitled ‘A Side-Glance at Shakespeare’s Hamlet’, 8 Kierkegaard raises the question of Hamlet as a religious play. 9 The pseudonymous narrator, Father Taciturnus, confesses that he is ‘engrossed’ by the claim that ‘Hamlet is a Christian drama’ 1011 3 1 (Kierkegaard 1988: 453). This claim is attributed to a certain 2 Borne who shares the determination, in common with two of 3111 his contemporaries, Heine and Feuerbach, to have nothing to 4 do with the ‘religious’. But precisely because of this, says 5 Taciturnus, such thinkers can often offer us a unique insight 6 into the religious. Just as a jealous lover can know as much 7 about the erotic as a happy one, so those offended by the reli- 8 gious can be just as insightful about it as believers. And in an 19 age where great believers are few and far between, we should 20111 be grateful that we have at least ‘a few really clever people 1 who are offended (by religion)’ (ibid.: 452). 2 After this mischievous preparatory remark, the author comes 3 to his main statement on the matter: ‘Borne says of Hamlet: “It 4 is a Christian drama”. To my mind this is a most excellent 5 comment. I substitute only the word a “religious” drama, and 6 then declare its fault to be not that it is that but that it did not 7 become that or, rather, that it ought not to be drama at all’ 8 (ibid.). Once unpacked, this dense formulation seems to be 9 saying that Hamlet should be really considered a failed religious 30111 drama. Or to be more precise, Hamlet is a work that should have 1 been properly religious, and therefore not an aesthetic drama 2 at all. Or else, it should have been properly aesthetic and there- 3 fore not a religious work at all. The fact is, however, that it is 4 neither. It falls between the religious and aesthetic stools and 5 so, as T.S. Eliot would famously pronounce a half century later, 6 Hamlet is a dramatic failure (Eliot 1951). This is not, of course, to 7 deny that it is the most fascinating drama ever written. Hamlet, 8 as both Kierkegaard and Eliot were aware, is the literary char- 9 acter who most fascinates modern minds. 40111 Kierkegaard’s pseudonym spells out his evaluation of Hamlet 4111 as a failed religious play as follows. If Shakespeare deprives Spectres of Hamlet 167 1111 Prince Hamlet of religious presuppositions and doubts that 2 conspire against him and prevent him from acting, then he is 3 merely a ‘vacillator’ in a comedy. In other words, if Hamlet 4 is not paralysed with genuinely religious visions and moral- 5111 spiritual misgivings there is no good reason for him not to 6 proceed with the summons to avenge his father’s murder and 7111 restore Denmark to its former state. But Kierkegaard does not 8 think that Shakespeare does make Hamlet religious in this 9 manner. And the play fails to be the great religious drama it 1011 could have been. 1 So how should Shakespeare have written this play according 2 to the author of the ‘Side-glance’? Well, first, Hamlet’s grand- 3111 iose plan to become the avenger to whom vengeance belongs 4 should have been confronted from the start with the religious 5 prohibition on revenge killing. But since one does not see 6 Hamlet sink religiously under his revenge plan, his conscience 7 stricken by biblical prohibitions, one expects quick action as 8 in a normal revenge tragedy where one deals only with 9 ‘external’ obstacles. Alas, however, in the case of Hamlet there 20111 seem to be neither internal subjective religious doubts nor 1 external objective obstacles to action – yet Hamlet fails to act. 2 And as a result the whole vacillating, procrastinating drama 3 becomes one huge introspective psychodrama where Hamlet’s 4 misgivings take on a purely psychological form of ‘dialectical 5 repentance’ – a non-religious and ultimately unfounded repen- 6 tance that, in Taciturnus’ reckoning, ‘comes too early’. As a 7 result, Hamlet comes across as simply ‘morbidly reflective’. In 8 short, for Kierkegaard, Hamlet is not a genuinely religious 9 drama because the genuine act of ‘repentance’ is lacking. 30111 Returning to the guiding idea of a Revenge Plan that Hamlet 1 sets himself but fails to realise, Taciturnus argues as follows: 2 3 If the plan remains fixed, then Hamlet is a kind of loiterer 4 who does not know how to act; if the plan does not remain 5 fixed, he is a kind of self-torturer who torments himself for 6 and with wanting to be something great. Neither of these 7 involves the tragic. 8 (Kierkegaard 1988: 453) 9 40111 In short, without the presence of the religious, Hamlet simply 4111 degenerates into (1) a revenge hero who cannot live up to his 168 Richard Kearney 1111 purpose; or (2) a reflective melancholic with no real purpose 2 at all who analyses himself to death in the name of some empty 3 (i.e. areligious, amoral) imago. Taciturnus then goes on to 4 repeat his argument, for a second time, that Hamlet is neither 5111 properly aesthetic nor properly religious. (Anticipations of Derrida’s 6 concepts of ‘aporia’ and ‘undecidability’ perhaps?) 17 8 If Hamlet is kept in purely esthetic categories, then what 9 one wants to see is that he has the demonic power to carry 1011 out such a resolution. His misgivings have no interest what- 1 soever; his procrastination and temporizing, his postponing 2 and his self-deluding enjoyment in the renewed intention 3111 at the same time as there is no outside hindrance merely 4 diminish him, so that he does not become an esthetic hero, 5 and then he becomes a nonentity. 6 (ibid.) 7 8 On the other hand, says the author, ‘if he is religiously 19 oriented, his misgivings are extremely interesting, because they 20111 give assurance that he is a religious hero’. But this, were it the 1 case, would not lead to good drama either because it would 2 belong to the order of the ‘interior being’ where alone such 3 4 religious misgivings could have their ‘essential significance’ 5 (ibid.: 454). In sum, trying to make a good drama out of the 6 religious struggles of subjective inwardness is like trying to make 7 a silk purse from a sow’s ear. It simply cannot be done. If it 8 could be done, Kierkegaard seems to be saying (via his pseu- 9 donym) that he, SK, might well have tried his hand at religious 30111 drama himself ! But religious drama is, according to the above 1 logic, a contradiction in terms – at least for our modern age 2 of Reformed Christianity where the religious gravitates inwards 3 toward subjective solitude and away from external action. 4 Father Taciturnus contrasts this to Medieval Catholicism where 5 a zealous believer could become a tragic hero for the sake of 6 the Church. In other words, for pre-modern Roman Catholics 7 the idea of being a militant actor on behalf of a religious 8 messianic politics – i.e. a saintly agitator, crusader, missionary 9 or martyr – was still a possibility. Were Shakespeare a religious 40111 author in the Medieval Catholic Church, attuned to Aristotelian 4111 poetics and missionary militancy, he might indeed have written Spectres of Hamlet 169 1111 a genuinely religious-aesthetic drama. But he was not; and, for 2 Kierkegaard, those days are gone. 3 4 Yet Taciturnus has not totally given up. In the same ‘Side- 5111 Glance’ appendix, he tries a third tack. What, he asks, if 6 Shakespeare had allowed Hamlet to carry out his plan of action 7111 – in keeping with the dramatic demands of the aesthetic model 8 – and then, having murdered Claudius (and perhaps Gertrude 9 too), realised his sin and collapsed back into an attitude of 1011 genuine religious repentance after the event? First the evil 1 action, then the good reaction. First the aesthetic (imitation of 2 an action), then the religious (pardon and peace). It could thus 3111 be argued that Hamlet exposes the folly of mimetic desire and 4 sacrificial revenge in favour of a true Christian revelation: No 5 to revenge, yes to providence! This is how Kierkegaard has his 6 pseudonym, Taciturnus, tease out his final, yet still self-defeating 7 attempt to save Hamlet as religious drama: 8 9 If Hamlet is to be interpreted religiously, one must either 20111 allow him to have conceived the plan, and then the reli- 1 gious doubts divest him of it, or do what to my mind 2 better illuminates the religious (for in the first case there 3 could possibly be some doubt as to whether he was capable 4 of carrying out his plan) – and give him the demonic 5 power resolutely and masterfully to carry out his plan 6 and then let him collapse into himself and into the reli- 7 gious until he finds peace there. A drama, of course, can 8 never come from this; a poet cannot use this subject, 9 which should begin with the last and let the first shine out 30111 through it. 1 (ibid.: 454) 2 3 Thus this third scenario is also impossible, for no matter 4 how subtly and dialectically one might try to manage such a 5 move, it would ultimately make for a moralising-sermonising 6 tract where the aesthetic action of revenge is used merely to 7 make a religious point. In that instance, the drama would be 8 no more than a means towards an end, a pretext for a pre- 9 established doctrine, the moral of the story having been set 40111 from the start – rendering the action of the drama entirely 4111 redundant. In short, the only way such a scenario could work 170 Richard Kearney 1111 would be as religious propaganda. And this prospect is unpalat- 2 able for Kierkegaard. 3 So it would seem that, for Kierkegaard, Hamlet is neither 4 a religious activist nor an aesthetic (tragic) actor but something 5111 in between. Neither fish nor fowl. A hybrid creature. In short 6 an aesthetic-religious mess. Perhaps not unlike Kierkegaard 17 himself. 8 9 In the piece immediately following the ‘Side-Glance’, Taci- 1011 turnus makes a supplementary and useful distinction between 1 the two kinds of hero. By way of trying to get a final fix (if 2 that were possible) on what Kierkegaard is really getting at, 3111 I think it might be worthwhile bearing with Taciturnus on 4 this ostensibly laboured point. So let’s take one last spin of the 5 dialectical wheel. The tragic-aesthetic hero is, we are now told, 6 great by suffering in such a way that he conquers in the external 7 – which is what ‘uplifts the spectator while he weeps for the 8 dying one’ (ibid.: 455). As such the suffering of the tragic 19 hero ‘must arouse fear and cleanse the passions’, provoking the 20111 spectator’s sympathies, which differ within the various views 1 of the world (ibid.: 454, 636). No surprises here, standard 2 Aristotelian poetics. Now, by contrast, the religious hero is great 3 by suffering without conquering in the external, and therefore 4 without inviting the spectator to be purified (as Aristotle put 5 it) through pity and fear. The religious hero, in other words, 6 is someone ‘emancipated from externals’ and from the tragic 7 world of actions and passions. But precisely because of this, 8 he is uniquely capable of that ‘qualitative qualification that is 9 reserved for the religious, where a farthing is worth just as 30111 much as kingdoms and countries’ (ibid.: 455). One thinks 1 here not only of the Gospel allusions to the widow and her 2 farthing or the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed, but also 3 of the passages in Hamlet itself where the hero observes how 4 important it is ‘to find quarrel in a straw’ (4.4.9.45), or to 5 realise ‘when our deep plots do pall(fail)’ that ‘there’s a divinity 6 that shapes our ends,/Rough-hew them how we will’ (5.2.9–11). 7 But, Kierkegaard insists, Hamlet does not ultimately pass 8 muster when it comes to the religious category. Why? Because 9 as we learn from a journal entry of 1844 (deleted from the 40111 ‘Side-Glance’ appendix to Stages on Life’s Way): ‘The mistake in 4111 Shakespeare is precisely that Hamlet does not have religious Spectres of Hamlet 171 1111 doubts. If he does not have them, then it is sheer nonsense 2 and indecision if he does not settle the matter straight away’ 3 (Kierkegaard 1967: journal entry 1561). 4 Since (according to Kierkegaard) Hamlet does not have reli- 5111 gious doubts, he does not qualify as a religious hero; and 6 because he does not settle the matter straight away in a dramatic 7111 act, he does not qualify as a tragic hero. So what, we might 8 ask at this point, is Hamlet to Kierkegaard that he should weep 9 for him? Apart from the fact that both are morbidly reflective 1011 Danes – enough perhaps in itself to justify the connection – 1 there would seem to be other, less avowed, reasons. 2 First, it would seem obvious that Kierkegaard himself had 3111 keen concerns during the writing of Stages on Life’s Way in 4 1844–5 about his own vocation as a religious individual. Indeed, 5 his view of himself is probably not much different from that 6 of Hamlet: namely, that he is (1) too interior, subjective, shut- 7 up and inactive to be properly tragic, provoking sympathy and 8 fear in his readers; and (2) too full of morbid reflection ever 9 to be able to make a proper leap of faith! In short, Kierkegaard 20111 sees in his compatriot Hamlet a symptomatic embodiment of 1 the in-between condition he once confessed to – namely, being 2 too religious to fit into the aesthetic category of Climacus 3 but not religious enough to meet the religious category of 4 Anti-Climacus (Kierkegaard 1967: journal entries 6431, 6433). 5 Second, Kierkegaard appears to identify with Goethe’s 6 remark about Hamlet that in ‘relation to his body his soul was 7 an acorn planted in a flower pot which at last breaks the 8 container’ (quoted in Kierkegaard 1959: 209). The Dane of 9 Copenhagen seems to have shared with the Dane of Elsinore 30111 a deep sense not only of being ill-fitted for his task in life, inca- 1 pable of heroic action or passionate love, but also of being 2 shackled with a summons to amend a wrong that cannot be 3 atoned for. (I am thinking here of Kierkegaard’s father’s cursing 4 of God and misbehaviour with his maid; and of Hamlet’s 5 father’s ‘foul deed done in his days of nature’ and his mother’s 6 incestuous relations with Claudius.) Indeed, Kierkegaard must 7 have been fascinated by the way in which Hamlet is caught 8 in the paralysing bind of his father’s double injunction: 9 remember me/I cannot tell you what to remember. 40111 It could be said that this is not entirely dissimilar to Kierke- 4111 gaard’s own personal sense of paralysis and paradox following 172 Richard Kearney 1111 his famous Easter conversion experience of 1848: he initially 2 believed he had received a direct summons from God to 3 ‘speak out’ – only to revert subsequently to the aesthetic and 4 pseudonymous ploys of ‘indirect communication’ once again. 5111 Reflecting upon the event afterwards, Kierkegaard was horri- 6 fied by his own demonic hubris at supposing himself 17 to be a chosen martyr of God – like the medieval hero-martyrs 8 he considers so anachronistic in ‘Side-Glance’. This critical 9 reflection was later to be corroborated by his disapproval 1011 of the self-proclamation of Pastor Adler as chosen advocate of 1 divine mission, recorded at length in the pages of Kierkegaard’s 2 Authority and Revelation (1848). Kierkegaard’s ultimate sentiment 3111 seems to have been that of the spectator of tragic aberration: 4 ‘there but for the grace of God go I . . .’ 5 The fact, moreover, that for both Kierkegaard and Hamlet 6 the legacies of their heavenly father and their ghostly father 7 were at times so diabolically intermixed, made their lan- 8 guage, and their lives, a process of inevitable and ineluctable 19 vacillation. 20111 Third, and finally, it is almost certain that Kierkegaard saw 1 in Hamlet’s relationship to Ophelia a mirror-image of his 2 own relationship to Regina Olsen. The vehemence of Kierke- 3 gaard’s criticism of Hamlet in this regard – as failing to live 4 up to his ‘secret’ religious mission by distracting himself with 5 Ophelia and loving her almost by default – surely betrays a 6 veiled criticism of his own behaviour. The analogy between 7 Kierkegaard–Regina and Hamlet–Ophelia is not explicitly 8 mentioned in Stages on Life’s Way but it surfaces in the following 9 entry to his journal. Let us read the passage deliberately in 30111 light of our above hypothesis: 1 2 Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet cannot be regarded as really 3 being in love with Ophelia. It must not be interpreted in 4 this way, even though psychologically it is quite true that 5 a person who is going about hatching a great plan is the 6 very one who needs momentary relaxation and therefore 7 can well use a love affair. Yet I do not believe that Hamlet 8 is to be interpreted this way. No, what is indefensible in 9 Hamlet is that, intriguing in grand style as he is, he uses 40111 a relationship to Ophelia to take the attention away from 4111 what he actually is keeping hidden. He misuses Ophelia. Spectres of Hamlet 173 1111 This is how it should be interpreted, and one can also add 2 that precisely because he is so overstrained he almost goes 3 so far that momentarily he actually is in love. 4 (Kierkegaard 1967: journal entry 5111 1562 entitled ‘Hamlet’) 6 7111 And yet in spite of all, and especially in spite of Kierkegaard’s 8 complaint about how ‘incredible’ he finds it that ‘Goethe has 9 taken such great pains to uphold Hamlet’ (Kierkegaard 1988: 1011 635), Kierkegaard himself feels compelled to conclude with this 1 admission: 2 3111 On a specific point, one may have a doubt . . . and yet 4 agree on the one opinion that has been the opinion of one 5 and two and three centuries – that Shakespeare stands 6 unrivalled, despite the progress the world will make, that 7 one can always learn from him, and the more one reads 8 him, the more one learns. 9 (ibid.: 454) 20111 1 That this final admission is ostensibly inconsistent with all the 2 criticisms of Hamlet that precede it, is typical of a point of view 3 so deeply contradictory that it begins to look like a decon- 4 structive aporia. 5 6 Deconstructive reading 7 8 No analysis of philosophical readings of Hamlet’s ghosts should 9 ignore Derrida’s allusions to this theme in Spectres of Marx. For 30111 Hamlet, the spectre in question was his own father. For Derrida, 1 it is the less personal surrogate father figure of Marx (as well 2 as Shakespeare himself). In spite of this obvious difference, the 3 logic of posthumous influence is, Derrida suggests, similar in 4 both cases. It is, as he says in the Exordium, the ‘non-contem- 5 poraneity with itself of the living present’ (Derrida 1994: xix). 6 One is prompted, in the light of our analysis of Kierkegaard’s 7 ‘Side-Glance’, to think here of what the latter had to say about 8 the out-of-kilter temporality of Shakespeare’s failed attempt at 9 a religious drama (where the end informs the beginning); or 40111 again, of his comments about ‘ventriloquism’ as the eruption 4111 of non-continuous time. 174 Richard Kearney 1111 But before teasing out such matters, let’s see what Derrida 2 himself has to say about this spectral temporality – or what he 3 calls ‘spectropoetics’. The context is that of trying to do justice 4 to those who are no longer – or not yet – part of the ‘living 5111 present’; and the passage in question culminates, tellingly for 6 our purposes, with a reflection on Hamlet: ‘To be just: beyond 17 the living present in general – and beyond its simple negative 8 reversal. A spectral moment, a moment that no longer belongs 9 to time, if one understands by this word the linking of modalised 1011 presents (past, present, actual present: “now”, future present). 1 We are questioning in this instant, we are asking ourselves 2 about this instant that is not docile to time, at least to what 3111 we call time. Furtive and untimely, the apparition of the 4 spectre does not belong to that time, it does not give time, not 5 that one: “Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost” 6 (Hamlet)’ (Derrida 1994: xx). 7 Derrida’s first chapter, entitled ‘Injunctions of Marx’, opens 8 with an explicit citation from Act I, scene V of Hamlet. The 19 passage in question concerns the episode where Hamlet and 20111 his companions are sworn to silence by the Ghost; yet we know, 1 2 since it is the opening act of the play, that the matter will not 3 rest there. Though Hamlet does indeed admonish his guards, 4 ‘And still your fingers on your lips, I pray’ (2.1.188), he goes 5 on immediately to state his deep unease at the fact that while 6 he is not responsible for what has occurred, he is obliged 7 nonetheless to ‘set it right’. The voice from the past is sum- 8 moning him to his future. ‘The time is out of joint: Oh cursed 9 spite,/That ever I was born to set it right’ (2.1.189–91). Derrida 30111 then proceeds to invoke the opening reference to another ghost, 1 this time in Marx’s Communist Manifesto – ‘A spectre is haunting 2 Europe – the spectre of communism’. He suggests the following 3 analogy between the two kinds of ghost: 4 5 As in Hamlet, the Prince of a rotten State, everything 6 begins by the apparition of a spectre. More precisely by 7 the waiting for this apparition. The anticipation is at once 8 impatient, anxious, and fascinated: this, the thing (‘this 9 thing’) will end up coming. The revenant is going to 40111 come. It won’t be long. But how long it is taking. Still 4111 more precisely, everything begins in the imminence of a Spectres of Hamlet 175 1111 reapparition, but a reapparition of the specter as appari- 2 tion for the first time in the play. 3 (Derrida 1994: 4) 4 5111 Derrida does not hesitate to suggest that ‘in the shadow of 6 a filial memory, Shakespeare will have often inspired Marxian 7111 theatricalization’ (ibid.: 5). A strange use of the future anterior 8 tense here! Or as he puts it, invoking Valéry’s famous text on 9 the ‘European Hamlet’, ‘Shakespeare qui genuit Marx . . . (and 1011 a few others)’ (ibid.). (We are inclined to include Kierkegaard 1 and Derrida himself, of course, among these other few, but 2 more of that anon.) What the spectre represents for Hamlet, 3111 as later for Marx and others, is a ‘Thing that is not a thing’. 4 Or as Derrida says: ‘One does not know what it is’ (ibid.: 6). 5 One does not know if it corresponds to a name or an essence 6 or any specific identity; and yet this invisible thing looks at us 7 even though we cannot look at it. ‘The Thing meanwhile looks 8 at us and sees us not see it even when it is there. A spectral 9 asymmetry interrupts here all specularity. It de-synchronizes, 20111 it recalls us to anachrony’ (ibid.: 6–7). Derrida calls this the 1 ‘visor effect’, namely, the impression that ‘we do not see who 2 looks at us’. Or more specifically in the case of Hamlet’s father, 3 ‘Even though in his ghost the King looks like himself (‘As thou 4 art to thy selfe’, says Horatio), that does not prevent him from 5 looking without being seen: his apparition makes him appear 6 still invisible beneath his armor’ (ibid.). Derrida claims that this 7 definition of the visor effect will be presupposed by everything 8 he, Derrida, has to say on the subject of the spectre in general. 9 And as will become more obvious later in the book, what is 30111 at issue is not just Marx and Marxism but the whole ‘spec- 1 tropoetics’ of messianicity in general. This is the very religious 2 structure of existence as what Derrida calls ‘religion without 3 religion’, which, broadly speaking, is the form of religion 4 without any predetermined, dogmatic content: an openness to 5 whatever is beyond. 6 Now replace the spectres of Hamlet or Marx with the Holy 7 Ghost of messianic Christianity, and we are no longer a million 8 miles away from Kierkegaard. Indeed, if we compare (1) what 9 Kierkegaard has to say about Hamlet not being sufficiently 40111 ‘religious’ in his doubts, with (2) Kierkegaard’s contrasting 4111 analysis of his true religious hero, Abraham, in Fear and 176 Richard Kearney 1111 Trembling, we can read the entire analysis of spectral logic in 2 a more evidently Kierkegaardian light. The following descrip- 3 tion by Derrida of Hamlet’s response to his ghostly father could, 4 I submit, as easily have been written about Abraham’s response 5111 to the voice of the angel in Fear and Trembling (or, for that 6 matter, about Levinas’ religious response to the summons of 17 the infinite Other): ‘This spectral someone other looks at us, 8 we feel ourselves being looked at by it, outside of any synchrony, 9 even before and beyond any look on our part, according to 1011 an absolute anteriority . . . and asymmetry, according to an 1 absolutely unmasterable disproportion’ (ibid.). More specific- 2 ally, we might consider the relevance of this analysis for the 3111 notion of messianic commitment or summons – the very thing 4 which, according to Kierkegaard, Hamlet would have had to 5 be more struck by if he were to be a properly religious character: 6 7 Here anachrony makes the law. To feel ourselves seen by 8 a look which it will always be impossible to cross, that is 19 the visor effect on the basis of which we inherited from 20111 the law. Since we do not see the one who sees us, and 1 who makes the law, who delivers the injunction (which is, 2 moreover, a contradictory injunction), since we do not see 3 the one who orders ‘swear’, we cannot identify it in all 4 certainty, we must fall back on its voice. The one who says 5 ‘I am thy Father’s Spirit’ can only be taken at his word. 6 An essentially blind submission to his secret, to the secret 7 of his origin: this is a first obedience to the injunction. It 8 will condition all the others. It may always be a case of 9 still someone else. Another can always lie, he can disguise 30111 himself as a ghost, another ghost may also be passing 1 himself off for this one . . . 2 (ibid.: 8–9) 3 4 In short, how can we ever be sure which kind of ghost, holy 5 or unholy, is here before us? Especially if, as Derrida often 6 says: ‘every other is every (bit) other’ (tout autre est tout autre)? 7 And the simple answer is: we can’t be sure. 8 Moreover, this question of the undecidability of the spectral 9 injunction is in turn related, for Derrida, to the dilemma of 40111 mourning. Here we find curious echoes of the psychoanalytic 4111 reading. Nothing is worse for the work of mourning, notes Spectres of Hamlet 177 1111 Derrida, than confusion about the identity of the one dead and 2 gone. ‘One has to know who is buried where – and it is neces- 3 sary (to know – to make certain) that, in what remains of him, 4 he remain there. Let him stay there and move no more’ 5111 (Derrida 1994: 9). Or as the prayer for those finally buried 6 goes: requiescat in pace. May they rest in peace! Now Hamlet, 7111 as we know, is notorious as someone who cannot properly 8 mourn his dead father precisely because he cannot pro- 9 perly identify his father’s nature or his past (e.g. ‘those foul 1011 deeds committed in [his] days of nature whose very tale would 1 harrow up [his, Hamlet’s] soul’ etc. (1.5.12 ff.)). It is, of course, 2 natural for anyone who has lost a loved one at sea or in some 3111 natural disaster to want to recover and identify the body so 4 that the work of mourning can take place. But this is experi- 5 enced as an even deeper anxiety by Hamlet. For not only has 6 he missed his father’s burial (he returned too late from 7 Wittenburg), but he can’t even be sure that the paternal spectre 8 who is summoning him to murder his uncle is really his father 9 at all – or at least the father he thought he knew! Hamlet, like 20111 the Ghost who confronts him, is riven with undecidability – 1 and so he is unable to mourn (his father), to love (his mother), 2 to desire (Ophelia) or to act (by taking revenge on Claudius). 3 But, in Kierkegaard’s reading, this undecidability is even more 4 accentuated. For we recall Taciturnus’s view that Hamlet is 5 not only confused by the undecidable vision of an invisible 6 ghost – a thing that is nothing; he is doubly confused in that 7 he has no real religious experience of a God who forbids 8 revenge (e.g. ‘Vengeance is mine says the Lord!’ (Rom. 12:19)). 9 In short, Kierkegaard’s Hamlet is deprived of both an earthly 30111 father and a divine one. And the same might – who knows? 1 – have been true of Kierkegaard himself in certain ‘non- 2 religious’ moments of vacillation, inaction or faithlessness – 3 moments almost too disturbing to be acknowledged. For 4 remember, not only did Kierkegaard have a most troubled 5 relation with his own father (who cursed God and crushed his 6 own son), he also experienced moments of deep hesitation and 7 confusion, especially prior to his Easter conversion. (An experi- 8 ence during which he felt summoned by God to speak out and 9 write directly in his own name and voice. And why one might 40111 legitimately ask, was it a ‘conversion’, if he was already 4111 converted?) 178 Richard Kearney 1111 But there is, I think, another key point at which the Kierke- 2 gaardian and Derridean readings of Hamlet overlap. Derrida 3 concludes the second chapter of his Marx book by stating that 4 the ‘deconstructive procedure’ he practices attempts to put into 5111 question our inherited ‘onto-theological’ notions of historical 6 time by way of thinking another kind of temporality or 17 ‘historicity’. This, says Derrida, would allow us to think ‘another 8 opening of event-ness as historicity that permitted one not to 9 renounce, but on the contrary to open up access to an affirm- 1011 ative thinking of the messianic and emancipatory promise as 1 promise’ (1994: 74–5). As promise, insists Derrida, and ‘not as 2 onto-theological or teleo-eschatological program or design’ 3111 (ibid.). Derrida’s deconstructive thinking seeks to preserve this 4 very promise by inscribing the ‘possibility of the reference to 5 the other, and thus of radical alterity and heterogeneity (i.e. 6 of differance)’. And this in turn signals the impossibility of 7 the present ever being fully contemporaneous or identical with 8 itself (ibid.). Deconstruction maintains the indestructability of 19 ‘emancipatory desire’, which is, Derrida concludes, the very 20111 condition of ‘re-politicisation’, or perhaps even of ‘another 1 concept of the political’ (ibid.). In light of this rather ‘up-beat’ 2 deconstructive reading of Hamlet’s undecidability, we can, 3 I submit, reinterpret Kierkegaard’s verdict on Hamlet in a 4 variety of ways. Let me outline at least three. 5 First hypothesis: Kierkegaard was incapable of moving 6 from a traditional Christian understanding of the religious to 7 a deconstructive understanding of religion-without-religion 8 as ‘messianicity’ – and so he was unable to appreciate the 9 positive implications of Hamlet’s failure as a ‘religious hero’ 30111 (in the traditional sense). In other words, the problem with 1 Kierkegaard, on this score, would be that he hadn’t read 2 Derrida. Or to put it more plainly, he wasn’t deconstructive 3 enough – that is, sufficiently to realise that Hamlet’s undecid- 4 able reflectiveness is actually a very good and profoundly 5 religious thing, once one accepts the notion of ‘religion without 6 religion’. 7 Second hypothesis: Kierkegaard failed to move beyond the 8 old alternatives of the aesthetic versus the religious to embrace 9 a new category of the political. There is not one mention of 40111 the political in all of Kierkegaard’s references to Hamlet. While, 4111 contrariwise, one might note that there is not one of Derrida’s Spectres of Hamlet 179 1111 references to Hamlet in Specters of Marx that is not political. Had 2 Kierkegaard espoused such a new concept of the political 3 he might have been able to escape the paralysing either/or of 4 aesthetic versus religious options to which he condemns 5111 Hamlet. 6 Third hypothesis: Kierkegaard is prefiguring, in his ‘Side- 7111 Glance at Hamlet’ and other texts, Derrida’s rethinking of the 8 religious and the political. Read in this manner, in tune with 9 commentators like John Caputo, Kierkegaard may be construed 1011 as a ‘radical hermeneut’ whose deconstructive reading of 1 Hamlet as neither aesthetic nor religious in strictu sensu is already 2 opening up a new sense of that very ‘event-ness as historicity’ 3111 that Derrida sees as the precondition of emancipatory desire.4 4 By this account, Works of Love and other signed works, may be 5 seen as anticipating the possibility of just such a new politics. 6 Such a deconstructive politics might, I suggest, signal the 7 following six features: (1) a commitment to action in fear and 8 trembling – that is, in tolerance and vigilance; (2) a way of 9 acting and suffering in the world so that the inwardly subjec- 20111 tive and reflective is never sacrificed to the dictates of the purely 1 ‘objective’ and impersonal imperatives of the global techno- 2 capitalist network; (3) a way of reflecting and acting ‘religiously’ 3 – that is, ‘messianically’ in Derrida’s terms, or ‘in light of the 4 Kingdom’ in Kierkergaard’s terms – so that the impossible 5 tasks of justice, pardon and hospitality (the three great 6 works of love) become more and more possible in each instant 7 of decision and commitment; (4) a deconstructive-existential 8 hermeneutic that tempers our instinctive rush to judgement 9 and condemnation in favour of more refined deliberation; (5) 30111 a new political practice based on Hamlet’s insight that ‘memory’ 1 is indispensable and that amnesty can never be founded upon 2 amnesia: for the ‘story’ of the father needs to be told, the adver- 3 sary’s ‘rights of memory’ needs to be honoured, so that the 4 repetitive cycles of mimetic desire and revenge may be over- 5 come; (7) an acknowledgement, finally, that the best kind of 6 politics is one open to both endless responsibility and the 7 surprise of the unexpected – the possibility of the impossible. 8 Read in this proto-deconstructive way, Kierkegaard may be 9 conceived as a kind of Derrida avant la lettre. Maybe. It’s possible. 40111 But I’m not certain. The ghost of Hamlet that migrated into 4111 Kierkegaard’s reading of Hamlet is not, I think, identical to 180 Richard Kearney 1111 the one that migrated into Derrida’s – however similar on ques- 2 tions of non-synchronous time, undecidability and the logic of 3 the spectral. For when it comes to spectres and spirits, as 4 Derrida reminds us, ‘there is more than one of them and they 5111 are heterogenous’ (Derrida 1994: 75). This irreducible hetero- 6 geneity of ghosts is perhaps itself a guarantee of the 17 heterogeneity of Kierkegaardian and Derridean readings. That 8 question remains open. But one thing is sure: new concepts of 9 the ‘religious’ and the ‘political’ urgently need to be opened 1011 up and thought through in our postmodern age of growing 1 indifference and indifferentiation. And if either Kierkegaard (as 2 read through Derrida) or Derrida (as read through Kierkegaard) 3111 can help us in this task, which I suspect they can, we must be 4 grateful. 5 6 Theological reading 7 8 While Kierkegaard and Derrida argue that Hamlet is neither 19 aesthetic nor religious but something undecidable between the 20111 two, there are other thinkers who claim that Hamlet is in fact 1 a deeply theological play – and that when Shakespeare 2 talks about spirits, he sometimes means just that: ‘spiritual 3 spirits’! In his bold reading in A Theater of Envy (1991), René 4 Girard argues that Hamlet is nothing less than a profoundly 5 religious rewriting of a revenge play (Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy), 6 converting it into a drama of eschatological wisdom and 7 peace.5 The ambiguities and ambivalences of the psycho- 8 analytic, existential and deconstructive readings here give way 9 to a theological solution. 30111 Everyone in the play, notes Girard, is ‘to double business 1 bound’ (3.3.41). All are symptoms of an original forgetfulness that 2 has blighted the kingdom. No character escapes the mimetic 3 cycle of compulsive repetition and revenge, epitomised by the 4 return of the ghostly phantom and covered over with a rhetoric 5 of ‘seems’ and ceremony. Until, that is, reality is confronted at 6 the end of the play and young Fortinbras enters the scene to 7 reclaim his ‘rights of memory’ to the kingdom. Thus while 8 Girard’s diagnosis of the play as a pathological tragedy of desire 9 confirms in some measure the psychoanalytic perspective, his 40111 conclusion is radically different: he moves from a hermeneutic of 4111 suspicion to one of eschatological affirmation. Spectres of Hamlet 181 1111 Girard begins with a critical reading of Hamlet’s imprison- 2 ment in the doubling mechanism of mimetic desire. He inter- 3 prets the play as a literary attempt to go beyond the stifling 4 logic of rivalry and sexual betrayal – a logic that he attributes 5111 to Shakespeare’s ‘originary traumatism’ of the ‘cuckold bawd’ 6 experience (Ann Hathaway’s betrayal with Shakespeare’s 7111 brother alleged by Joyce). Hamlet is a parody of a revenge play, 8 says Girard, pointing to the disclosure at the play’s outset that 9 the one to be avenged – King Hamlet – is no innocent victim 1011 but someone who is now purging his own ‘foul crimes’ in 1 Purgatory. In short, the fact that the assassinated victim (King 2 Hamlet) was himself an assassin undermines the whole revenge- 3111 sacrifice mechanism. The exposure of this inner mechanism, 4 argues Girard, reveals Claudius’s crime to be just one more 5 loop in a chain of revenge-murders which the young Hamlet 6 will simply continue if he kills Claudius in turn, as he is 7 commanded to do by his father’s ghost. 8 Shakespeare’s play dramatises the way in which the mimetic 9 cycle of desire, imitation and revenge has led to a ‘crisis of 20111 indifferentiation’ where each character loses his identity and 1 becomes the mirror-image of the other. This inability to distin- 2 guish one murderer from the next is powerfully expressed in 3 the boudoir scene where Hamlet presents his mother with 4 two portraits – one of his father, the other of Claudius – only 5 to show, in spite of himself, that there is more of a symmetry 6 between the two brothers than he wishes to admit. The 7 alarming symmetry (non-difference) is further revealed by 8 Gertrude’s inability to distinguish between the two. It is not 9 the Lady that doth protest too much, however, but the Prince 30111 himself who is becoming increasingly aware of how ‘undiffer- 1 entiated’ his father and his uncle actually were. The 2 interchangeability of those caught in the revenge cycle – the 3 ‘crisis of indifferentiation’ – is also evident in the scene by the 4 graveside where Hamlet and Laertes are presented as twin- 5 images of each other. 6 For Girard, Hamlet is a play that re-enacts and subverts the 7 sacrificial logic of mimetic violence at the heart not only of 8 society but, at a more symbolic and originary level, of theatrical 9 culture itself. It serves as a dramatisation of drama exposing 40111 the hidden structures of theatrical pretence and cover-up. Like 4111 The Mousetrap play-within-the-play, Hamlet too tries to ‘catch 182 Richard Kearney 1111 the conscience of the king’ – and of the rest of us as well. In 2 this respect, concludes Girard, Hamlet should be read as a quin- 3 tessentially moral and Christian play that endeavours to expose 4 the long repressed truth of the repetitive sacrificial logic upon 5111 which most human societies, and not just Denmark, are 6 founded. The only way to answer the spirit of pathological 17 doubling and return, signalled by the demonic Ghost, is by 8 invoking a Holy Ghost that redeems us from mimetic revenge 9 and emancipates us into pardon and letting-go – a spiritual 1011 ‘divinity that shapes our ends’. This is finally the difference 1 between the two Hamlets: (1) a ghostly father caught in the 2 reiterative cycles of the past; and (2) an ultimately, if tragically, 3111 enlightened son who opens up a future of forgiveness. 4 For any theological reading of the play, the graveyard scene 5 is of course pivotal. The moral recovery of the original cover- 6 up is already prepared for in the graveyard scene where Hamlet, 7 who was unable to properly mourn his own father, comes to 8 mourn his surrogate father, Yorick. A skull is thrown up by 19 the gravediggers – ‘as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the 20111 first murder’ (5.1.71–2; my emphasis). But of course, Yorick is a 1 2 foster-father who has managed, through play-acting and 3 humour, to escape the mark of Cain, which condemns most 4 other characters in the play to a cycle of fratricide. And in so 5 doing he, the King’s jester, has proved capable of genuine 6 paternity towards Hamlet – ‘here hung those lips that I have 7 kissed/I know not how oft’ (5.1.174–5). Now he can be 8 mourned as a father after the event (nachträglich). 9 In the grave scene, Hamlet confronts the real. He comes to 30111 acknowledge death. This acceptance of separation and loss 1 amounts, as noted earlier, to what Lacan and other psycho- 2 analytic readers of the play call ‘symbolic castration’. This 3 exposure of the ‘real’ is symbolised not only in the exhuming 4 of dead skulls – in particular that of Yorick – but also in a 5 whole metaphorics of vanity and ashes running through the 6 exchanges between Hamlet and the gravediggers. These include 7 jokes about how such mighty figures as Alexander and Caesar 8 were finally ‘turned to clay’ (5.1.196); and perhaps most point- 9 edly, Hamlet’s command to the skull that it go to the ‘lady’s 40111 chamber and, tell her, let her paint an inch thick/To this 4111 favour she must come’ (5.2.178–9). The grave episode teaches Spectres of Hamlet 183 1111 Hamlet that no matter how much we cover over our earthly 2 origins we must all undergo the ‘fine revolution’ that returns 3 us to the ‘base uses’ of a ‘sexton’s spade’ (5.1.82–3, 187). 4 Ornamental pomp and make-up count for nought. 5111 But arguably the most telling disclosure of the graveyard 6 scene is that Hamlet was born on the very day his father fought 7111 the duel with King Fortinbras thirty years previously. This fact 8 is recalled by the gravedigger since he, coincidentally, became 9 a gravedigger that same day. So, the message seems to be that 1011 this gravedigger’s uncovering of skulls reminds Hamlet of two 1 forgotten facts of paternity: (1) the crucial role played by his 2 foster-father Yorick (whom he now belatedly mourns); and (2) 3111 the dispatching of King Fortinbras by his actual father on the 4 day of his birth. So we may reasonably suppose, may we not, 5 that the body the gravedigger committed to the ground on that 6 first day of his employment, coinciding with Hamlet’s birthday, 7 was the corpse of King Fortinbras? And we may surmise, by 8 extension, that it is to the recovery of his father’s body that 9 Fortinbras the younger refers in his closing allusion to his ‘rights 20111 of memory in this kingdom’? 1 2 The ‘primal secret’ (or ‘sin’ in Girard’s reading) is what 3 King Hamlet did to King Fortinbras – and what Claudius does 4 to both Hamlets: namely, poison them to secure the rights of 5 kingship. The ‘rights of memory’ restored by young Fortinbras 6 in the last act would refer therefore to the final righting of the 7 wrong committed against Fortinbras’ own father by Hamlet’s 8 father. And the fact that King Hamlet’s ‘foul crime’ occurred 9 on Hamlet’s birthday becomes central to the un-concealing 30111 plot: a crucial revelation confirming the Prince’s opening 1 invocation of the ‘dram of evil’ – that ‘vicious mole of nature 2 in (particular men),/as in their birth, wherein they are not 3 guilty,/since nature cannot chose his origin . . .’(1.4.18.8–10). 4 Only by passing through the guts of a beggar can Hamlet come 5 to his own self. By mourning his surrogate father (Yorick), and 6 then embracing his own death in Act V, Hamlet ultimately 7 undergoes – after the passage of much time – the spiritual 8 mourning and letting-go of his ghostly father. A letting-go that 9 sets him free. Hamlet gives up the ghost in every sense. 40111 Such religious surrender itself coincides, finally, with the 4111 young Fortinbras’ claim to realise his own right/rite of 184 Richard Kearney 1111 commemoration at his father’s grave. Some four thousand lines 2 after the ghost of King Hamlet bids his son to ‘remember’, we 3 find another son remembering his deceased father with cath- 4 artic mourning. Young Fortinbras, Hamlet’s princely double, 5111 completes the latter’s insufficient mourning. And by mourning 6 Hamlet in turn – instead of gloating at his demise – Fortinbras 17 brings an eschatological end to the bitter cycle of repetition 8 and revenge. 9 1011 Conclusion 1 2 In Hamlet Shakespeare transforms a revenge tragedy into a play 3111 of cathartic remembering. He stages the working through of the 4 immemorial until it yields peace. This transfiguring of melancholy 5 – or what I call ‘impossible memory’ – into epiphanic mourning 6 is powerfully expressed in Hamlet’s final acceptance of the reality 7 of mortality. So much so that one has good reason to suspect 8 that if the Ghost were to return in the last act, he would be 19 given short shrift by his son. Indeed, were this to happen, the 20111 mature and illusion-less Prince would, logically, neither hear 1 nor see the spectre. Why? Because his mourning would have 2 been activated. Moreover, I would claim that it is Hamlet’s final 3 passage from melancholy to mourning that not only enables 4 him to face death but to preserve life. And if not his own life 5 (since he must literally lose it to regain it) then at least that of 6 others after him. This is why Hamlet’s parting words to Horatio 7 are so crucial. He begs him to renounce suicide in order to 8 heal his (Hamlet’s) ‘wounded name’ by living on to serve as his 9 memorialist. ‘Absent thee from felicity awhile’, pleads the dying 30111 Prince, ‘[t]o tell my story’ (5.2.286, 289–91). 1 Against the standard view that Hamlet marks the ‘majesty of 2 melancholy’, I prefer to read the play accordingly as a meta- 3 morphosis of melancholy into a miracle of mourning. Shake- 4 speare moves beyond a play of compulsive rivalry and revenge 5 6 to one of deep spiritual enlightenment by staging one of the 7 finest dramas of narrative memory in Western literature. 8 9 Notes 40111 For an earlier formulation of the opening section of this chapter, see 4111 R. Kearney 2002. Spectres of Hamlet 185

1111 1 See Lacan 1982. For an elaboration of this psychoanalytic thesis see 2 the entry on ‘Hamlet’ in Dictionnaire de la Psychanalyse (Chemama 1993: 3 60–2). 4 2 See Green 1982. 3 For a more extensive treatment of this subject see Kearney 2003. 5111 4 See Caputo 1987. 6 5 See Girard 1991: 271–89. 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 8 6 17 The last act 8 9 Presentism, spirituality and 1011 the politics of Hamlet 1 2 Ewan Fernie 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 In recent Shakespeare studies, ‘presentism’, a deliberate strategy 2 of interpreting texts in relation to current affairs, has emerged 3 to challenge the dominant fashion of reading Shakespeare 4 historically.1 Presentism relinquishes the fantasy of restoring 5 ‘Shakespeare’s artistry to the earliest conditions of its realisa- 6 tion’ in favour of embracing its true historicity as something 7 irreversibly changing in time.2 As Terence Hawkes writes in 8 Shakespeare in the Present (2002), ‘none of us can step beyond 9 time. It can’t be drained out of our experience’. Hawkes recom- 30111 mends presentism as the form of criticism whose ‘centre of 1 gravity is accordingly “now”, rather than “then”’ (Hawkes 2 2002: 3, 22). In this temporally specific sense, presentism 3 presents Shakespeare as he is. The reception of presentism, to 4 date, has been mixed. According to Helen Moore writing in 5 the Times Literary Supplement, ‘Presentism is the new kid on the 6 Shakespearean block’ (Moore 2003). But although presentism 7 has ‘arrived’, it is often criticised, at conferences and in print, 8 for eliding or dissolving historical difference.3 9 David Scott Kastan asserts that we must begin with 40111 Shakespeare’s ‘difference from us’ (Kastan 1999: 16). This 4111 matters to the extent that we have a moral responsibility to The last act 187 1111 the past. Moreover, the difference of history offers a standpoint 2 from which to challenge the present. But, as this latter point 3 concedes, our primary and most urgent responsibility is to the 4 present not the past. And backward-looking historicism is in 5111 no position fully to exploit what difference the past can make 6 now. I have argued elsewhere for a form of presentism more 7111 deliberately attuned to the challenging strangeness of literature 8 – which I characterised in terms not just of historical alterity 9 but also of the extra, unforeseeable difference literature makes 1011 to history.4 This chapter analyses the strange spirituality of the 1 last act of Hamlet as a striking epitome of literary difference 2 that speaks powerfully and provocatively in favour of a complete 3111 commitment to the present. 4 The present isn’t a closed and coherent structure. Shake- 5 speare’s presence in the present is itself an excellent example 6 of this. I will begin by exploring the surprising scope for reading 7 Shakespeare spiritually in the present in Stephen Greenblatt’s 8 Hamlet in Purgatory (2001) and Jacques Derrida’s Hamlet- 9 inspired Specters of Marx (1994). But I also take off from the fact 20111 that, for Greenblatt and especially for Derrida, spirituality 1 breaches the present from beyond. Derrida writes, ‘Hegemony 2 still organizes the repression and thus the confirmation of a 3 certain haunting’ (Derrida 1994: 37). Greenblatt spiritual- 4 ised historicism when he famously cast it as speaking to the 5 dead (Greenblatt 1988: 1ff.). If this first formulation seemed 6 whimsical, Hamlet in Purgatory lends it more weight. There 7 Greenblatt analyses Purgatory as the institution that kept 8 the living in touch with the departed.5 He sees Hamlet as the 9 inheritor of that cultural function. It’s easy to share Hawkes’s 30111 objection to Greenblatt that criticism should speak not to 1 the dead but to the living; but the danger for presentist criti- 2 cism is that, unless it’s exposed to difference, it will tell 3 the living what they already know.6 Derrida interprets the erup- 4 tion of Old Hamlet’s spirit as a revelation of ‘the 5 non-contemporanaeity with itself of the living present’ (Derrida 6 1994: xix): a disclosure of the difference of the past that intim- 7 ates the difference of the future and even the pure idea of 8 difference itself. The time, for Derrida, is always out of joint, 9 the present thoroughly ruptured by all kinds of difference. A 40111 presentist criticism that wishes to avoid historical complacency 4111 will nourish itself and thrive on such differences. 188 Ewan Fernie 1111 After Specters of Marx, spirituality recommends itself to critical 2 attention as a particularly direct and rich experience of other- 3 ness, alterity, etc. But ghosts fall short of fully manifesting 4 spirituality as what is not just other but also ultimately signifi- 5111 cant and valuable. In Specters of Marx, Derrida finally develops 6 out of Hamlet a novel spirituality of the absolute difference that 17 never appears in history. This operates like a metaphysical 8 magnet, drawing humanity towards a different future. It’s as 9 if postmodernism had discovered its own repressed belief and 1011 truth; so much for the end of ‘grand narratives’. And yet, in 1 the startling fifth act of Hamlet what is spiritually other and 2 ultimate is not beyond but immanent in events (such as ‘the fall 3111 of a sparrow’ (5.2.157–8)) and action or ‘rashness’ (5.2.7). 4 Shakespeare’s most famous play ultimately dramatises a kind 5 of eschatological presentism that suggests that our present is 6 the place – the only and, therefore, the absolute place – of 7 agency and decision where all time may and perhaps must 8 be consummated. 19 20111 Greenblatt in Purgatory 1 2 As well as confessing that he ‘began with a desire to speak 3 with the dead’, the Greenblatt of Shakespearean Negotiations wrote 4 that ‘literature professors are salaried middle-class shamans’ 5 (Greenblatt 1988: 1). Though the spiritual colouring is less 6 exotic, Hamlet in Purgatory brings him full circle. Greenblatt is 7 frankly drawn to Hamlet, and the traditions of Purgatory, as a 8 way of saying kaddish for and laying to rest the ‘ghost’ of his 9 own father. Kaddish is a Jewish prayer of thanksgiving and 30111 praise, part of the daily life of the Synagogue but specially 1 recited by orphaned mourners. Greenblatt observes that the 2 Jewish ritual ‘originated precisely at the time that Christianity 3 in the West formalized the practice of praying for the dead in 4 order to alleviate their sufferings in Purgatory’ and suspects it 5 was derived from the Christian tradition (Greenblatt 2001: 9). 6 It seems clear he identifies with Hamlet as the son of a dead 7 father, and even envies the tragic hero his chance of a super- 8 natural encounter with Old Hamlet’s spirit: 9 40111 Anyone who has experienced the death of a close friend or 4111 relative knows the feeling: not only the pain of irrevocable The last act 189 1111 loss but also the strange, irrational expectation of recovery. 2 The telephone rings, and you are suddenly certain that 3 your dead friend is on the other end of the line; the ele- 4 vator door opens, and you expect your father to step out 5111 into the hallway, brushing the snow from the shoulders 6 of his coat. 7111 (Greenblatt 2001: 102) 8 9 Greenblatt’s desire to contact the dead has become urgently 1011 personal. The historical alterity of Shakespeare’s drama of 1 death is certainly not erased (much of the book offers an 2 extended cultural history of Purgatory) but it is charged with 3111 Greenblatt’s particular, twenty-first-century, Jewish-American 4 experience. The father expected in the elevator has come in 5 from the battlements. The ‘cultural poetics’ of death of the late medieval and early modern periods assuage the pains of death 6 7 7 in the present. Greenblatt’s bereavement, and the filial inten- 8 sities it evokes, probably carry over into his recent Shakespeare 9 biography. Will in the World’s attempt to capture Shakespeare’s 20111 ghost is largely staked on a new reading of Hamlet in terms of Shakespeare’s grief for his son, Hamnet, and anticipation of 1 8 2 his father’s death. 3 The last chapter of Hamlet in Purgatory ends as follows: 4 With the doctrine of Purgatory and the elaborate practices 5 that grew up around it, the church had provided a powerful 6 method of negotiating with the dead, or, rather, with those 7 who were at once dead and yet, since they could still speak, 8 appeal, and appall, not completely dead. The Protestant 9 attack on ‘the middle state of souls’ and the middle place 30111 those souls inhabited destroyed this method for most people 1 in England, but it did not destroy the longings and fears 2 that Catholic doctrine had exploited. Instead . . . the space 3 of Purgatory becomes the space of the stage where old 4 Hamlet’s ghost is doomed for a certain term to walk the 5 night. That term has now lasted some four hundred years 6 and it has brought with it a cult of the dead that I and 7 the readers of this book have been serving. 8 (Greenblatt 2001: 256–7) 9 40111 Typically for Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory is a richly unsys- 4111 tematic book but this crystallises its essential thesis: a ‘structure 190 Ewan Fernie 1111 of feeling’ – ‘a powerful method of negotiating with the dead’ 2 – is embodied in Purgatory and survives in the continuing 3 life of Shakespeare’s play.9 Hamlet supplies an important spiri- 4 tual supplement, a secret ‘cult of the dead’, to mainstream 5111 English Protestant culture and the later Western secular culture 6 of our own time. 17 In Marlowe’s most celebrated play, Faustus tells Mephisto- 8 pheles that Hell’s a fable. It’s a pretty silly thing to say to a 9 devil, and Mephistopheles responds, ‘Ay, think so still, till 1011 experience change thy mind’ (Doctor Faustus (1616 text), Mar- 1 lowe 1999: 2.1.132). In respect of Purgatory, Greenblatt 2 manages to take up both Faustian and Mephistophelean posi- 3111 tions at the same time. That is, the middle station of souls is 4 an invented place – as, by implication, are the upper and lower 5 chambers of the afterlife. And yet, to the extent that it shaped 6 the life and the selves of Christendom, Purgatory was very real 7 indeed. Greenblatt presents the disestablishment of Purgatory 8 as an historical trauma involving a massive deportation of 19 spirits and a second bereavement for the living, as their dead 20111 kin passed utterly beyond the scope of their indulgent love 1 – as well as their more negative emotions of guilt and anger. 2 This evocation of exile is doubtless influenced by Greenblatt’s 3 earlier reflections on Jewish and postcolonial themes.10 Purg- 4 atory also provided an imagined buffer zone before the finality 5 of death for the living. But, most importantly for this bereaved 6 son, by institutionalising the felt proximity of the dear departed, 7 Purgatory met what is understood in Hamlet in Purgatory as a 8 transhistorical, fundamental human need to relate to and make 9 peace with them.11 30111 Greenblatt’s new reading of Hamlet unfolds from a recog- 1 nition of the plain but routinely overlooked fact that the ghost 2 asks not so much to be revenged as remembered. The spirit of 3 Hamlet’s father is seen in relation to the old supplicating spirits 4 of Catholic England. Noting John Shakespeare’s supposed 5 recusancy, Greenblatt even imagines the Bard subjected to the 6 purgatorial pleadings of his deceased parent. This resonates 7 with his own felt duty to say kaddish. Greenblatt presents 8 Shakespeare’s tragedy as dramatising the progressive forgetting 9 of the father, thus particularising and allegorising the cultural 40111 forgetting of Purgatory that he has narrated already and 4111 perhaps exorcising his own ghost. The last act 191 1111 The spiritual content of Hamlet in Purgatory thus essentially 2 falls under the rubric of what Derrida (after Freud) calls ‘the 3 work of mourning’. The aim of such labour for Greenblatt is 4 ‘organizing, articulating and making sense of a tangle of intense, 5111 intimate feelings in the wake of a loved one’s death: longing, 6 regret, guilt, fear, anger, and grief’ (Greenblatt 2001: 132). For 7111 the mourner or mourners, this is more important than the 8 physical burial of the corpse, for only this will liberate them 9 from overwhelming grief and the chains of memory and restore 1011 them to the living present. From such a perspective, speaking 1 to the dead must come to an end, which seems to admit the 2 limitations of historicism and our primary responsibility for 3111 what is happening now. Greenblatt’s book shows how Purg- 4 atory provided institutional conventions and a cosmic station 5 for the work of mourning, a kind of waiting-room where the 6 dead are polite enough to linger until those they have bereaved 7 are ready to dispatch them and resume their own obstructed 8 lives. Greenblatt opposes ‘cold memory’ to ‘warm memory’ or 9 what Shakespeare calls ‘green’ memory. He writes of the ‘fading 20111 of remembrance’ in Hamlet (Greenblatt 2001: 143, 218ff.). In 1 his account, Shakespeare’s play as much as Purgatory addresses 2 the process of bereavement. Both keep lines of communication 3 with the dead open for a certain time in order to allow for a 4 more complete leave-taking. At the same time, each takes 5 the edge off the fear of death by making it more gradual, less 6 absolute. 7 Spirituality in Hamlet in Purgatory thus serves a remarkably 8 presentist function. It takes the specific form of an ancestor 9 cult: a common territory for mourners and historians that brings 30111 together Greenblatt’s personal and professional concerns. 1 It serves a purpose in the ordinary world by enabling the living 2 to come to terms with the past and face their own deaths more 3 bravely. It is, in a word, therapeutic, more self-centred than 4 ethical or political. As the harbour of dead souls in the experi- 5 ence of the living, the spiritual experience that Greenblatt 6 evokes constitutes an experience of ultimacy but not of ulti- 7 mate values. It intimates a wider human community, but it 8 doesn’t really entail any vision of an alternative society such 9 as Christ expresses in the Gospel of John: ‘My kingdom is not 40111 of this world’ ( John 18.36). Greenblatt is sensitive to the suffer- 4111 ings of the dead and recognizes their traditional origins in sin, 192 Ewan Fernie 1111 but Purgatory’s crucial position in the theatre of judgement 2 and salvation – to which Shakespeare’s ghost clearly and fright- 3 eningly testifies (1.5.9ff.) – is eclipsed by the main theme of 4 bereavement and remembrance.12 5111 There is something insinuatingly unsatisfying about Green- 6 blatt’s title. Who is in Purgatory? Not Hamlet. Presumably 17 Greenblatt means to refer to Hamlet’s father, but it would 8 be customary to call him Old Hamlet to distinguish him 9 from the tragic hero. Another implication might be that Hamlet- 1011 the-play is in Purgatory, but Greenblatt’s argument is more 1 that Purgatory’s in the play. In a sense, it is true to say that 2 Greenblatt’s in Purgatory. Suspended between this world and 3111 the next, Purgatory facilitates but also defers final judge- 4 ment. In its comparable deferral of the ethics and politics of 5 spirituality, Hamlet in Purgatory affords a troubling image of our 6 own seminal Shakespeare critic himself languishing there. 7 8 Paradise postponed 19 20111 Before Hamlet in Purgatory, and outside mainstream Shakespeare 1 studies, Jacques Derrida’s engagement with Shakespeare’s 2 tragedy had already conjured up a spiritual Shakespeare with 3 an urgent message on his lips. Specters of Marx (1994) is consid- 4 ered in Richard Kearney’s essay in this volume; its insights are 5 diffused throughout the book. My purpose with it is to show 6 how Derrida opens the ethical and political dimension of 7 spirituality in Hamlet that remains obscure in Greenblatt.13 8 I will then argue that both Greenblatt and Derrida neglect 9 the last act of the play, with crucial critical and theoretical 30111 consequences. 1 Derrida is more in tune with Shakespeare’s play than the 2 father of new historicism in one crucial respect. In his humane 3 responsiveness to his father’s spirit, Greenblatt is identifiable 4 with a more pragmatic Hamlet always aware of the necessity 5 of coming to terms with grief. By contrast, Derrida is like 6 the Hamlet, who, according to Claudius’s worldly measure of 7 mourning (1.2.87ff.), exhibits an exorbitant responsiveness and 8 accountability. Derrida suggests: 9 40111 It is necessary to speak of the ghost, indeed to the ghost 4111 and with it, from the moment that no ethics, no politics, The last act 193 1111 whether revolutionary or not, seems possible and thinkable 2 and just that does not recognize in its principle the respect 3 for others who are no longer or for those others who are 4 not yet there, presently living, whether they are already 5111 dead or not born. 6 (Derrida 1994: xix) 7111 8 This puts intercourse with the dead at the centre of human 9 life and recalls, even more than Hamlet in Purgatory, the shamanic 1011 Greenblatt of Shakespearean Negotiations. It’s tempting to say that 1 Specters of Marx provides a belated rationale for the new histori- 2 cist project in terms of responsibility for the absent historical 3111 Other. To the extent that the Greenblatt in Hamlet in Purgatory 4 wants to speak with the dead to complete the work of mourn- 5 ing, he is moving through history in the direction of presen- 6 tism. But Derrida contends we cannot, should not lay our ghosts 7 to rest. 8 Shakespeare’s ghost is in being but also beyond. The purely 9 spiritual, Derrida implies, is that which is not at all present, 20111 whereas the spectral hovers uncannily between presence and 1 absence as embodied spirit. Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost 2 is a primal scene of ethics: an experience of the irreducible 3 alterity of the other. As Derrida plainly puts it, ‘One does not 4 know what it is’ (Derrida 1994: 7). All others are ultimately 5 beyond knowledge. Moreover, because identities are deter- 6 mined by the free play of difference, nothing has more than 7 a flickering and passing presence: ‘the phenomenal form of the 8 world itself is spectral’, ‘the phenomenal ego (Me, You, and so 9 forth) is a specter’ (Derrida 1994: 135). It is a question not of 30111 ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’, then, but of being-in-between, as Hamlet 1 powerfully dramatises. In encountering the ghost, Derrida 2 suggests, Hamlet comes face to face with the ghastliness of his 3 own self, which affords one reason for what Greenblatt calls the 4 ‘magical intensity’ of the tragedy and partly elucidates the 5 Prince’s strange and repeated utterance that draws Greenblatt’s 6 attention, ‘I am dead’ (Greenblatt 2001: 4, 229). The ghost is 7 an avatar of the Other that additionally reveals the fleeting- 8 ness and dependency of human being as such. In exemplifying 9 our own ‘lack-in-being’, mortality and difference, it encourages 40111 solidarity not just with the living but equally with the dead 4111 and unborn. 194 Ewan Fernie 1111 Reading Hamlet therefore opens up a spiritual horizon for 2 deconstruction in terms of the Prince of Denmark’s traumatic 3 reorientation towards otherness, but Derrida pushes beyond 4 the only partial absence and otherness of the ghost towards a 5111 strange new notion of ‘the messianic’. Whereas the ghost arrives 6 and is recognised, Derrida’s Messiah is absolutely, unimagin- 17 ably other because it is always absent or ‘to come’. The ghost 8 summons Hamlet into specific engagement with itself, but 9 the messianic is an opening towards unpredictable difference 1011 – because we simply can’t know who or what the coming 1 Messiah will be. Openness to the unforeseeable difference of 2 this shadowy figure is openness to difference as such and 3111 it generates an openness to all particular differences: out of 4 Derrida’s novel spiritual conception a political vision of ‘a 5 universalizable culture of singularities’ unfurls (Derrida 2002: 6 57). Unlike Marx’s utopia, Derrida’s is not the communist 7 fruition of teleological history but the ‘messianic promise’ of a 8 perfect democracy, a state of perfect responsibility to all that 19 will never be realised.14 But, far from being hopeless, this un- 20111 realisable dream – ‘life beyond life, life against life, but always 1 in life and for life’ – elevates human beings above mere biology, 2 supplying the ecstatic, aspirational energy of human history 3 (Derrida 2002: 289). 4 For Derrida, nothing is present in the present – not even 5 the present itself, which is defined by its difference from other 6 times. Derrida’s present is where we respond to difference. He 7 portrays a Hamlet who is dutifully responsive to the other that 8 is the ghost, but whose responsibility to others in general prevents 9 him from committing revenge. This Hamlet protests in the 30111 name of (other-directed) responsibility against the (self-centred) 1 law of right, looking towards a day outside time when justice 2 would no longer be embroiled in the partisanship and fatality 3 of vengeance. His eyes are locked on an alien ‘messianic 4 extremity’, an ‘eskhaton’ of purified justice that ruptures histor- 5 ical complacency and ushers us towards a different future 6 (Derrida 1994: 37). It is an astonishing response to Shake- 7 speare’s tragedy. But at the end of Hamlet ‘divinity’ (5.2.10) 8 is immanently present in the present, which is charged with 9 ‘a special providence’ (5.2.157–8). The Prince is called not 40111 to relate fastidiously to the beyond but to the ‘rashness’ of a 4111 spontaneous intervention. The last act 195 1111 There are more things in heaven and earth 2 than are dreamt of in your philosophy 3 Greenblatt and Derrida’s responses to Hamlet are in tune with 4 the Prince’s remark to Horatio. In the context of prevailingly 5111 6 materialist criticism, Hamlet in Purgatory plugs back into the 7111 power of Shakespeare’s tragedy to move and even heal us by 8 exploring themes that most post-Enlightenment thought has 9 completely neglected. Derrida, too, reads Shakespeare against 1011 materialism, finding in the seemingly archaic and superstitious 1 figure of the ghost a revelation of the primal scene of ethics. 2 Moreover, the ghost provokes a new poststructuralist spiritu- 3111 ality that is also ‘another concept of the political’ (Derrida 1994: 4 44). And yet, what Hamlet says to Horatio seems equally to 5 critique Greenblatt and Derrida, who both quickly tame the 6 sublime content they identify in Hamlet with interpretation. In 7 Shakespeare’s tragedy, the ghost speaks and, such is the magni- 8 ficent horror of his presence, Hamlet listens. For all their 9 disarming eagerness to relate, Greenblatt and Derrida don’t 20111 listen to the ghost so much as place it at the centre of their 1 own respective systems of significance: for Greenblatt, the 2 historical loss of Purgatory itself as a way of experiencing and 3 coming to terms with death; for Derrida, his whole philosophy 4 of différance.15 The terrifying strangeness of the ghost is thus at 5 least partly dissipated. Remember it ‘harrows’ Horatio ‘with 6 fear and wonder’ (1.1.42), and poor Marcellus and Barnardo 7 it ‘distill[s]/Almost to jelly with the act of fear’ (1.2.204–5). It 8 is said to have been vomited up from the grave: 9 30111 Making night hideous, and we fools of nature 1 So horridly to shake our disposition 2 With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls . . . 3 (1.4.33–5) 4 5 Later it tells the Prince that it ‘could a tale unfold’ whose 6 ‘lightest word’ would induce a number of startling physical 7 convulsions except that ‘this eternal blazon must not be/To 8 ears of flesh and blood’ (1.5.15–22). 9 Derrida has said something genuinely new about Hamlet, 40111 ethics and spirituality, but Shakespeare has things to say back 4111 to him. The French philosopher admits that thinking ‘continues 196 Ewan Fernie 1111 to do battle against ghosts’, that ‘formulation throws up barri- 2 cades, or digs trenches, surrounds itself with barriers, increases 3 the fortifications’ (Derrida 1994: 165). By making the ghost an 4 avatar of difference, he has allegorised it, crucially stripping 5111 it of the uncanny sameness that is a main source of its terrify- 6 ing power. Hamlet says of his father, ‘I shall not look upon 17 his like again’ (1.2.187): shockingly, he does. What ‘harrows’ 8 Horatio is that the ghost is ‘most like’ Old Hamlet (1.1.42). 9 Barnardo sees it coming ‘[i]n the same figure like the king 1011 that’s dead’ (1.1.39). With its strugglingly ponderous expres- 1 sion, this evokes a mind-bending prospect of death-defying 2 sameness. Marcellus asks, ‘Is it not like the king?’, to which 3111 Horatio answers, ‘As thou art to thyself’ (1.1.57–8), which at 4 once reduces difference to sameness and alienates self from self. 5 The following description perhaps best expresses the ghost’s 6 disruptive, questionable identity with the dead monarch: ‘These 7 hands are not more like’ (1.2.212).16 8 Of course, the ghost is crucially different from ordinary 19 mortals. But if encountering it reveals the primal scene of ethics, 20111 then sameness should figure in that scenario too. The same- 1 ness of the other is what encroaches on and threatens the 2 autonomy of the self, particularly in the case of a father and 3 son both called simply ‘Hamlet’: Hamlet’s identity is disestab- 4 lished and imperilled by the unlooked for return of the other, 5 previous Hamlet. And Old Hamlet has come to claim, indeed 6 to possess his son because his identity, throne and queen have 7 been usurped by the next male family member, his brother 8 Claudius. But if the sameness of the other provokes unethical 9 self-assertion and revenge, identification and solidarity enables 30111 Hamlet’s responsibility towards his father. A natural, familial 1 ethics of sameness is generalised in his experience of the 2 undoing of differences in death in the graveyard scene. That 3 difference is the essence of ethics, as Emmanuel Levinas as 4 much as Derrida suggests, isn’t beyond dispute:17 indeed, Alain 5 Badiou has scandalously announced, ‘the whole ethical predi- 6 cation based on recognition of the Other should be purely and 7 simply abandoned’ (Badiou 2001: 25). This is because, 8 according to Badiou, the status quo is defined by differences 9 – of race, gender and class, etc. What would really change 40111 things is the advent of a universal truth that deposed or even 4111 abolished such differences. The last act 197 1111 But the chief limitation of Greenblatt and Derrida on the 2 spirituality of Hamlet is not so much that they idealise the ghost 3 as that they each begin and end with it. Greenblatt recognises 4 that the trajectory of the play describes the Prince’s gradual 5111 forgetting of the ghost, but it does so as he proceeds towards 6 an apprehension in the fifth act of ‘a divinity that shapes our 7111 ends’ (5.2.10) and ‘a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ 8 (5.2.157–8). Kearney (this volume) and Girard (1991; discussed 9 by Kearney) also pass over this, although they remark on the 1011 transcendence of mourning. The relevant speeches occur in the 1 graveyard scene. In the first case, Hamlet is telling Horatio that, 2 when his ship for England was assailed by pirates, he replaced 3111 Claudius’s warrant for his death with a similar warrant for 4 Rozencrantz and Guildenstern. ‘[L]et us know’, he goes on, 5 6 Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well 7 When our deep plots do pall, and that should teach us 8 There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, 9 Rough hew them how we will – 20111 (5.2.7–12) 1 2 It’s an aside but its very offhand casualness serves only to 3 heighten the shocking access of metaphysical confidence and 4 security in this erstwhile prince of doubters: ‘let us know’, ‘and 5 that should teach us’. Hamlet declares that ‘divinity’ perfects 6 spontaneous, awkward human action. He locates this divine 7 force specifically in the killing of his erstwhile friends; he 8 perceives ‘heaven’s ordinance’ in having to hand his father’s 9 royal signet ring with which to seal their deaths (5.2.49). We 30111 should put this together with his retroactively casting himself 1 as heaven’s ‘scourge and minister’ after slaying Polonius 2 (3.4.159). ‘[P]raised be rashness for it’ (5.2.7): within the 3 famously overwhelming atmosphere of mortality in the grave- 4 yard scene as a whole, Hamlet invokes a god of ‘casual 5 slaughter’ (see 5.2.326). 6 He subsequently associates ‘a special providence’ with a 7 dubious prospect. Osric has brought him the King’s challenge 8 to duel with Laertes. Hamlet accepts this, despite being invaded 9 with a malaise evidently intended as a premonition of his own 40111 death. A troubled Horatio says he will catch up with Osric 4111 and cancel the bout. Hamlet responds as follows: 198 Ewan Fernie 1111 Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence 2 in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If 3 it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it 4 will come. The readiness is all. Since no man knows aught 5111 of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. 6 (5.2.157–61)18 17 8 Again, in what is said, as well as in the short, declarative 9 sentences in which Hamlet says it, there is the same surprising 1011 note of absolute assurance. But it is matched here by the 1 sheer inscrutability of the statement. The fall of a sparrow? 2 Does this imply Hamlet’s own death? Or, since sparrows were 3111 associated with lechery, Claudius’s? What will be now or to 4 come or not? And what would it mean to be ready for it? By 5 the penultimate sentence, Hamlet seems to be contemplating 6 death as valediction. To what ‘Let be’ refers is less clear. The 7 central focus of the speech brings together the humble, random 8 specificity of a tumbling sparrow with the entire generality of 19 ‘it’. Both are vehicles for ‘a special providence’, suggesting each 20111 and every event is inhabited by some kind of divine excess and 1 that history is ultimately beyond human ken. Hamlet submits 2 to history and the coming event in a strange spirit of passive 3 readiness. As Roger Starling suggests, it is as if he is opening 4 up to the Derridean ‘messianic’ (Starling 1997/8: 207–8). But 5 what is to come in Hamlet makes way for an actual tragic climax 6 now, which encompasses a number of deaths, including 7 Hamlet’s own. 8 Hamlet’s god of ‘rashness’ is certainly more ‘other’ than 9 Shakespeare’s patriarchal ghost which, for all its uncanniness, 30111 is very much an emanation of the social status quo – indeed, 1 responsibility to such a ghostly father could as easily be cast 2 in terms of conservative ideology as progressive politics. At 3 this juncture in the play, A. C. Bradley, still one of the most 4 subtly responsive critics of the spirituality of Hamlet, identifies 5 an intense ‘feeling of a supreme power or destiny’ and ‘a partic- 6 ular tone which may be called, in a sense, religious’. But Bradley 7 admits ‘I cannot make my meaning clear without using 8 language too definite to describe truly the imaginative impres- 9 sion produced’ (Bradley 1971: 140). The irreducible opacity 40111 of Hamlet’s god suggests its inexpressible otherness: for Søren 4111 Kierkegaard, the ‘Knight of Faith’ speaks not in any human The last act 199 1111 language but ‘in tongues’.19 Yet, as Bradley recognises, Hamlet 2 says enough to distinguish his ‘divinity’ from the Christian God. 3 Where St Paul is visited by a suffering Jesus (Acts 9.4), Hamlet 4 bears witness to a divine force more active and less personal. 5111 As a god not of being and the beyond but of becoming and 6 history, Hamlet’s ‘divinity’ evokes the theology of the incar- 7111 nation.20 As a ‘special providence’, it recalls the specifically 8 Calvinist theology of ‘predestination’: Alan Sinfield points to 9 parallels between Hamlet’s phrasing here and Calvin’s in the 1011 Institutes (Sinfield 1992: 226).21 According to Sinfield, Hamlet’s 1 indifference to his ‘special providence’ fatally undermines and 2 weakens it: I will return to indifference later. 3111 In fact, much more subversive of Christian orthodoxy is the 4 pure violence of a ‘divinity’ that Hamlet speaks of only in 5 contexts of hoisting friends with their own petard and agreeing 6 to take part in a suspicious sword-fight that turns into some- 7 thing like an orgy of death. The violence of ‘rashness’ is the 8 Kierkegaardian violence of seemingly unwarranted action, of 9 spontaneous, reckless choice, of pure historical agency – ‘I just 20111 did it’ – which bursts beyond custom and expectation into an 1 incalculable future. Hamlet ‘defies augury’: knowing he is likely 2 to lose, intuiting that – like the sparrow – he will die, he goes 3 ahead anyway. His sudden metaphysics of rashness goes further 4 (or madder) than Kierkegaard, who proposed that ‘rashness’ 5 might in special cases be justified by a ‘special providence’ 6 beyond ordinary ethics, by finding ‘divinity’ solely in ‘rashness’22. 7 ‘[P]raised be rashness’: in that shocking utterance, rashness 8 seems to be the very name of Hamlet’s god. 9 Greenblatt is convinced that ‘nothing comes of nothing, even 30111 in Shakespeare’ (Greenblatt 2001: 4) but no context – certainly 1 not Purgatory’s cultural history – is totally adequate to Hamlet’s 2 last act. Kierkegaard is right that Hamlet is not a religious play 3 in any conventional sense (see Kearney, this volume). Hamlet’s 4 faith in a ‘divinity’ or ‘providence’ that expresses itself through 5 worldly events and actions in time is suggestive, to a certain 6 extent, of ‘the hour’ in which time is divinely fulfilled in the 7 Gospel of John: ‘The hour is come that the Son of Man should 8 be glorified’ (12:23); ‘for this cause came I unto this hour’ 9 (12:27); ‘his hour was come that he should depart out of this 40111 world unto the father’ (13:1), etc. But, strange though it is to 4111 say, Hamlet’s sudden spiritual confidence in rashness resonates 200 Ewan Fernie

1111 more powerfully with the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. In the 2 Gita, Arjuna is hesitating to fight in an agony of compassion 3 when the god Krishna addresses him as follows: 4 5111 Simply because it ought to be done, when action 6 That is religiously required is performed, Arjuna, 17 Abandoning attachment and fruit, 8 That abandonment is held to be of goodness. 9 1011 He loathes not disagreeable action, 1 Nor does he cling to agreeable (action), 2 The man of abandonment who is filled with goodness, 3111 Wise, whose doubts are destroyed. 4 (Bhagavad Gita 1944: 2.47, 18.9–10) 5 6 Arjuna responds, ‘I stand firm, with doubts dispersed;/I shall 7 do thy word’ (ibid.: 73); and he joins the fray. Against the run 8 of the play, Hamlet shares Arjuna’s enabling assurance. A 19 breath of metaphysical irony returns via the biblical resonances 20111 of ‘a fall of a sparrow’ in Matthew 10:28–32 and Luke 12:4–7. 1 These parallel texts are disturbingly ambiguous. They cultivate 2 religious comfort. Matthew’s version reads: 3 4 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them 5 shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the 6 very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not 7 therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. 8 (Matt. 10:30–2) 9 30111 But at the same time they provoke anxiety. Matthew again: 1 2 [F]ear not them which kill the body, but are not able to 3 kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy 4 both soul and body in hell. 5 (Matt. 10:28) 6 7 The prospect of Hell is a reminder that rashness may be demon- 8 ically inspired, as Hamlet feared in relation to the promptings 9 of the ghost from the first (‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin 40111 damned . . .’ (1.4.21)). For Kierkegaard, nothing – nothing 4111 humanly discernible – separates the saint from the psychopath: The last act 201 1111 rashnessis a terrible wager.23 But, apart from the unsettling 2 biblical reverberation, irony and anxiety do not undermine 3 Hamlet’s rashness, not so much because he has dispersed his 4 doubts, like Krishna disperses Arjuna’s, as because he has 5111 engrossed them into himself and his deed in advance – by means 6 of his ‘antic disposition’ (2.1.173) and his obsessive mental 7111 rehearsal of action. As a result of this anticipation of irony, 8 Hamlet’s rashness is actually more convincing than that of 9 confirmed Shakespearean action-men like Pyrrhus, Laertes and 1011 Fortinbras, even Coriolanus.24 1 Where does this leave us in relation to Derrida on Hamlet? 2 Too often criticism is theory’s latecomer and parasite when, 3111 as a less systematic, more phenomenological and responsive 4 form of thinking, it is in a position to make a creative contrib- 5 ution to theory. Richard Halpern has provided an engaging 6 materialist critique of Derrida’s reading of Hamlet already, 7 pitting the gravedigger and Yorick’s skull against Derridean 8 ‘spectropoetics’. He concludes, ‘If Derrida really wants to play 9 the Gravedigger in Hamlet, as he claims, it is necessary to put 20111 off his princely fastidiousness, curtail his project of endless 1 “filtering” and purgation, and delve in the sometimes 2 unpleasant muck of real history’ (Halpern 2001: 51). By contrast 3 with Halpern, I develop in what follows a materialist critique 4 of Derrida paradoxically grounded in the novel spirituality of 5 immanence that Hamlet develops in its last act. Such spiritu- 6 ality is not only compatible with the graveyard where it is 7 revealed, it is a spirituality of the graveyard – of time, mortality 8 and the event. I propose that the graveyard scene, and the 9 confrontation with human finitude it represents, snuffs out the 30111 ghost, but that at the same time spirituality is transfused into 1 material life, being absorbed into becoming. 2 Hamlet’s god of ‘rashness’ challenges Derrida in at least 3 three ways. First, the manifestation to the Prince of a ‘divinity’ 4 immanently involved in experience and action contravenes 5 Derrida’s structure of messianic deferral. Slavoj Zˇ izˇek has 6 written that the 7 8 fundamental lesson of postmodernist politics is that there is 9 no Event, that ‘nothing really happens’, that the Truth-Event 40111 is a passing, illusory short-circuit, a false identification to 4111 be dispelled sooner or later by the reassertion of difference 202 Ewan Fernie 1111 or, at best, the fleeting promise of the Redemption-to-come, 2 towards which we have to maintain a proper distance in 3 order to avoid the catastrophic ‘totalitarian’ consequences. 4 (Zˇ izˇek 2000a: 135) 5111 6 But Zˇ izˇek opposes this ‘structural scepticism’, insisting, after 17 Jacques Lacan and Badiou, that ‘miracles do happen’(Zˇ izˇek 2000a: 8 135). According to Hamlet, they happen through the very 9 meanness and contingency of life – criminal confusion at sea, 1011 a dodgy sword-fight, and so on. This manifestation of the 1 absolute through dubious means precipitates, within the play, 2 the overthrow of a corrupt regime. To this extent, in place of 3111 Derrida’s Marx of messianic expectation, Hamlet seems to give 4 us back the Marx of material intervention. In an exact reversal 5 of what we might expect, Hamlet’s mystical experience turns 6 him from a kind of conscientious objector into an activist who 7 says, ‘The readiness is all’ (5.2.169). Joyce saw this when he 8 wrote, ‘Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to shoot’ ( Joyce 1992: 19 239–40). What Hamlet achieves is what Michael Witmore calls 20111 ‘a form of quasi-agency’, ‘a cooperation with divine providence 1 which, paradoxically, allows him to fulfil the ghost’s charge for 2 revenge’ (Witmore 2001: 109). And yet, I would add, because 3 Hamlet’s act is inspired by the absolute rather than his affronted 4 father, it transcends revenge in the direction of justice. 5 The existential dimension of this immersion of divinity in 6 the messy human element entails a more substantial human 7 spirituality than either Greenblatt or Derrida describe. Hamlet 8 has been pained by the degrading contradiction between the 9 transcendent qualities of human being and what Greenblatt 30111 calls ‘the material leftover’ (Greenblatt 2001: 242): ‘What a 1 piece of work is a man! how noble in reason, how infinite in 2 faculty. . . . And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust’ 3 (2.2.293–8).25 But, as Greenblatt does not recognise, Hamlet’s 4 recognition that ‘there’s a divinity that shapes our ends’ now 5 teaches him that mere physical life is already caught up into 6 divine life. This, as it were, reverses Hamlet’s earlier thought: 7 ‘What a quintessence of dust is a man. . . . And yet, to me, 8 how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, etc.’ As Zˇ izˇek 9 writes, ‘[h]uman life is never just life, it is always sustained by 40111 an excess of life’ (Zˇ izˇek 2001: 104–5). For Derrida and his 4111 disciples, this ‘excess’ is the messianic expectation – but that The last act 203 1111 defers and displaces life into the future. Hamlet’s revelation 2 and theology suggests instead that ‘divinity’ irradiates and oper- 3 ates through the very imperfections of existence. This enables 4 him to act in favour of the absolute even as a compromised 5111 agent in a compromised world. 6 If Hamlet’s avowal of a politically enabling ‘immanentiza- 7111 tion of spirit’ (see Badiou 2003: 69) defies Derrida’s messianic 8 structure of expectation and possibility, then his commitment 9 to his god of ‘rashness’ also contravenes Derrida’s ethical spiritu- 1011 ality of a universal responsiveness to difference. Perhaps partly 1 because of his thesis that ‘[t]he tragic hero remains within the 2 ethical’, partly because he was suffering from Bloomian ‘anxiety 3111 of influence’, Kierkegaard explicitly missed the Shakespearean 4 transcendence of ethics in Hamlet. He writes in suspiciously 5 bardolatrous tones, ‘Thanks be to thee, great Shakespeare, who 6 art able to express everything, absolutely everything, precisely 7 as it is – and yet why didst thou never pronounce this pang?’ 8 (Kierkegaard 1955: 69, 72). But, in his religiously inspired 9 violence, Hamlet achieves the very ‘teleological suspension of 20111 the ethical’ that Kierkegaard discovered in the biblical story of 1 the sacrifice of Isaac. In his consideration of Kierkegaard’s Fear 2 and Trembling, Derrida observes, ‘Abraham is faithful to God 3 only in his absolute treachery, in the betrayal of his own and 4 the uniqueness of each one of them, exemplified in his beloved 5 son’. This means in general terms: ‘I cannot respond to the 6 call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another 7 without sacrificing the other other, the other others’ (Derrida 8 1995b: 68). In Specters of Marx, Derrida had already written in 9 relation to Shakespeare: 30111 1 How to distinguish between two disadjustments, between 2 the disjuncture of the unjust [i.e. the betrayal of others in 3 favour of some one] and the [disjuncture] that opens up 4 the infinite asymmetry of the relation to the other [i.e. of 5 ultimate responsibility to the one in spite of everything and 6 all others]. Whether one knows it or not, Hamlet is speaking 7 in the space opened up by this question. 8 (Derrida 1994: 22) 9 40111 But, like much literary criticism, Specters of Marx is stuck 4111 with the impotent Hamlet who is prevented by ethical scruples 204 Ewan Fernie 1111 from committing revenge. Once Hamlet has committed himself 2 to ‘divinity’ rather than the furious spirit of a murdered father, 3 the play dramatises the enabling power of a complete commit- 4 ment. After his mystical experience, Hamlet, like Abraham, is 5111 willing to do whatever is required, and without Abraham’s 6 ‘pang’ – which suggests Shakespeare went further than Kierke- 17 gaard beyond ordinary good and evil.26 As if to stress the 8 historical potential of spirituality, Hamlet’s mystical commit- 9 ment to a ‘special providence’ is inseparable from a com- 1011 mitment to intervening in time. His god of ‘rashness’ plunges 1 ethical idealism into the flux and chance of history, abolishing 2 a separate sphere of ethics. 3111 Only a pledge to the absolute can combine the violence of 4 a specific commitment with the assurance of doing right. The 5 other side of Hamlet’s unconditional engagement is his achieve- 6 ment of what seems to be a kind of inspired, militant 7 indifference. This too challenges Derrida’s ethics of difference 8 and is the third count in which the play offers grounds for 19 critiquing poststructuralism. In Hamlet, justice is not achieved 20111 by exposure to difference as in Derrida’s prescription for it. 1 Hamlet is devoted to difference before Act Five: he wants to 2 be different from the world; he wants ‘man’ to be different 3 from ‘woman’ and his own mortality; he desperately asserts 4 the distinction of his father. But this just gets him more stuck 5 in the system of differences (of individuality, of gender, of class) 6 that constitutes social life. It is Hamlet’s engagement with the 7 absolute that decidedly lifts him out of this system of differ- 8 ences and enables him to see and, more crucially, to act 9 disinterestedly. 30111 No one to my knowledge has placed Hamlet’s crucial tran- 1 sition from ‘To be, or not to be’ (3.1.58) to ‘Let be’ in the 2 context of the rich history of indifference and letting-be in the 3 history of ideas in the Western tradition. The medieval German 4 mystic Meister Eckhardt (1270–1327) characterised true reli- 5 gion as the relinquishing of self-centred being in order to let 6 God be.27 As Hans Urs von Balthasar points out, the Thomist 7 tradition in theology explains the spiritual worth of indiffer- 8 ence by saying that the ‘part’ should love the ‘whole’ more 9 than itself, while Augustinian, Anselmian and Franciscan 40111 thoughts hold that the right should be desired for its rightness 4111 regardless of subjective considerations. Balthasar himself writes The last act 205 1111 of a ‘new and deeper’ virtue of ‘indifference’ able to let the 2 Good be without trying to acquire it (Balthasar 1988: 212–13). 3 In philosophy, the later Heidegger appropriated this theolog- 4 ical tradition in his own crucial notion of Gelassenheit (Heidegger 5111 1966). This is thinking as the renouncing of willing, especially 6 of that utilitarian instrumentality which drives the advance of 7111 technology; it is pure contemplation, free from desire to master 8 the world. All these accounts present indifference as the subjec- 9 tive path to ethical truth. Most recently, Badiou has approached 1011 the matter from the other side, stressing that truth is indifferent 1 to subjective differences (Badiou 2001). Indifference, letting-be, 2 Gelassenheit: all these correspond to the ‘mysterious and beau- 3111 tiful disinterestedness’ Harold Bloom attributes to the fifth-act 4 Hamlet (Bloom 1989: 57). 5 Hamlet cannot do justice in his own behalf, especially as he 6 is the son of the victim. As Kant saw, justice must be performed 7 in the name of transcendental objectivity.28 ‘If it be now, ’tis 8 not to come. If it be not to come it will be now’ is illuminated 9 by unselfish indifference: whether ‘it’ is Hamlet’s or Claudius’s 20111 death or any other event, it’s all one to Hamlet. In this context, 1 the confusing generality of the Prince’s ‘Let be’ begins to look 2 more like gracious largesse. It suggests resignation to ‘a special 3 providence’ and acceptance of his own imperfection. It seems 4 to make peace with the world, bearing fruit in courtesy to 5 Gertrude, solidarity with Laertes and communion in death 6 with both – and even with Claudius, whom Hamlet forces 7 to drink from the poisoned cup with the strange words sug- 8 gestive of the Eucharist, ‘Is thy union here?’ (5.2.268). But far 9 from preventing him from passing violent judgement on the 30111 world, such peaceful resignation enables Hamlet to channel 1 ‘a special providence’ purely and knowingly, with a self- 2 transcending, missionary conviction that he is acting in favour 3 of the absolute. As it turns out, this involves not just killing 4 but suicidally surrendering himself to the judgement he recog- 5 nises in chance and death as well. Such is his defiance of 6 ‘augury’ and his own best interests. It might still be hard 7 to see how Hamlet’s distant and strange serenity facilitates 8 decisive action but, in Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Zˇ izˇek 9 quotes G. K. Chesterton to bring out the militant potential 40111 of indifference: ‘A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to 4111 cut his way out. . . . must seek his life in a spirit of curious 206 Ewan Fernie 1111 indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink 2 death like wine’ (Chesterton 1995: 9; quoted in Zˇ izˇek 2002: 3 89–90). As any athlete or actor knows, you’ve got to be suffi- 4 ciently relaxed to spring powerfully into action. 5111 From his sudden indifference to life, Hamlet gets life back: 6 ‘He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life 17 in this world shall keep it unto life eternal’ ( John 12.25). He 8 receives the power to act not from his father but from else- 9 where. And yet his sudden faith that ‘divinity’ is absorbed in 1011 the mess and chance of history enables him to live and die 1 confidently and unanxiously. His indifference and belated 2 enactment of his heroic role are intimately related. 3111 Indifference in Hamlet involves what Zˇ izˇek describes as 4 ‘unplugging’ from the symbolic order (Zˇ izˇek 2000b: 123ff.). 5 Hamlet’s ‘unplugging’ extends to his removal from the Danish 6 succession. Hamlet doesn’t succeed Hamlet, and never looks 7 like doing so: he certainly doesn’t kill Claudius in order to gain 8 the Danish throne. Hamlet is also removed from marriage and 19 even sexual relations. Is he a virgin? It would intensify the pity 20111 and fear. That the thought is somehow unbearable is suggested 1 by Kenneth Branagh’s flashback in his 1996 film of the 2 play placing Hamlet in Ophelia’s bed. Manly Old Hamlet is 3 more appropriately succeeded by the straightforwardly potent 4 Fortinbras. Lapsed as a lover, passed over for Fortinbras, Hamlet 5 is effectively emasculated by the play. More positively, he seems 6 to move beyond cultural conditioning and more or less arrive 7 on the other side of social and sexual difference, thereby furnishing 8 an important counter-example to criticism that sees character 9 as wholly culturally determined. 30111 Perhaps most importantly in the context of current criticism, 1 Hamlet’s deed suggests the possibility of an authentic act not 2 determined by prevailing conventions, in this case of revenge. 3 The deterministic historicism of contemporary intellectual life 4 has weakened the credit and perhaps even the scope for indi- 5 vidual agency and resistance.29 But Hamlet’s divinely inspired 6 act breaks the deadlock of the prevailing situation. Through it, 7 in the most unlikely circumstances, an extraneous justice takes 8 the place of partisan revenge, not in the name of Hamlet’s father 9 but as it is disposed by ‘divinity’ and a ‘special providence’. 40111 But what sort of justice is achieved at the end of Hamlet? 4111 Rough justice, certainly. The fratricidal usurper, Claudius, is The last act 207 1111 dead. As is his (previously the murder victim’s) queen. The 2 degree of Gertrude’s guilt is disputed.30 She recognises some 3 (3.4.78–81) and is surely involved in Claudius’s, but does she 4 deserve to die? Laertes, who has conspired with Claudius to 5111 kill Hamlet, is dead. Polonius is dead already: he schemed with 6 the wrongful king and (to the detriment of especially his 7111 daughter) was superficial and a tedious talker. Hamlet, who 8 killed Polonius, is dead. By his own morally strenuous account, 9 he is guilty of more offences than we have words to put them 1011 in (3.1.125ff.) – among them must be numbered vacillating 1 with bloody consequences, as well as mistreating Ophelia 2 and killing her father, which causes her death. And Hamlet 3111 was supposedly the best person in the play: ‘O what a noble 4 mind is here o’erthrown!/The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s 5 eye, tongue, sword’ etc. (3.1.149ff.). According to the Prince, 6 all are guilty – all of the above, and all others as well – which 7 would validate universal punishment. 8 The justice of the last act remains finally undecidable. 9 Hamlet, as Sinfield writes, ‘plays with Osric (this scene seems 20111 purposefully desultory), competes recklessly with Laertes, makes 1 no plan against the king. The final killing occurs in a burst of 2 passionate inspiration’ (Sinfield 1992: 228). And yet, Hamlet 3 has prepared us for rough justice beyond human scope by 4 testifying that ‘a special providence’ operates through exactly 5 such ‘rashness’ and seemingly random contingency. Bradley 6 suggests that 7 8 in all that happens or is done we seem to apprehend some 9 vaster power. We do not define it, or even name it, or 30111 perhaps even say to ourselves that it is there; but our 1 imagination is haunted by the sense of it, as it works its 2 way through the deeds or the delays of men to its inevit- 3 able end. 4 (Bradley 1971: 139) 5 6 I have said that Hamlet engrosses irony into his long-awaited 7 action to the effect that, when finally he performs it, it is less 8 susceptible to deconstruction. But so obscure is the last act 9 of the play, so wide is the gap between its ‘accidental judge- 40111 ments’ and ‘casual slaughters’ (5.2.326) and the significance 4111 Hamlet claims for accidents, that it’s even more than usually 208 Ewan Fernie 1111 true to say that interpretation cannot be definitive. As in 2 Kierkegaard, we ultimately don’t know. Hamlet proclaims we 3 must act without knowing. Of course, it is possible that his indif- 4 ference is a screen for his interest. Perhaps Hamlet exposes action 5111 as a form of passivity, and we should take the equation between 6 action and letting-be at face value? Perhaps Hamlet really 17 achieves agency in the refusal to act that he sadly relinquishes 8 at the end? Again, Bradley seems most apt because he is 9 most sensitive to the ambiguities. He writes, ‘the Hamlet of the 1011 Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, 1 as if he secretly despaired of forcing himself to action, and 2 were ready to leave his duty to some other power than his 3111 own’. But Bradley immediately havers in this interpretation, 4 confessing there is ‘[s]omething noble in [Hamlet’s] careless- 5 ness’, and then reverting to bemused wonder at the strange 6 power he insists is moving through the action (Bradley 1971: 7 116–17, 141). 8 I maintain that the spirituality of rashness discussed earlier 19 is a major, intellectually and politically provocative implica- 20111 tion of the immanent operation of the ultimate in the play. 1 It is inherent in the structure of Hamlet and of drama itself. 2 A theatrical pun is at work in that Hamlet’s act ends the last 3 act of the play, and with the specific act expected with 4 increasing intensity from the beginning. Hamlet’s act is a last 5 or ultimate, an eschatological act, because it’s performed in 6 the name of the absolute, because it’s the last thing he does 7 and because it entails his own death. Action is the distinguishing 8 feature of dramatic art. Rashness is action denuded of reason, 9 action that surges ahead of words and thinking in a shameless 30111 overstepping of ‘the modesty of nature’ (3.2.17–18) – in other 1 words, pure action: action itself. Hamlet’s god of rashness is 2 therefore the god of drama even more than it’s a god of history, 3 and it enables a simultaneously aesthetic and spiritual resolu- 4 tion. Witmore suggests that Hamlet is a ‘trial’ challenging its 5 audience to recognise theatre’s ‘reigning provisional deity’ 6 (Witmore 2001: 109). After all the Prince’s sustained recoil 7 from action and, as a result, from the very medium of theatre 8 in which he finds himself stranded, Shakespeare’s play impro- 9 vises a new ontology of being-in-action, an ontology that doesn’t 40111 so much drag the present into the artifice of eternity as it drags 4111 eternity into the mess and artifice of the present. The last act 209 1111 What are we to make of this in our present? At Riverside 2 Studios in London 2004, Sulayman Al-bassam’s award-winning 3 The Al-Hamlet Summit (2004) cast Hamlet as a diffident, Euro- 4 peanised Arabic playboy. Its most stunning moment was the 5111 Prince’s reappearance in the robes of Islamic fundamentalism.31 6 Perhaps we should recall here that in our contemporary world, 7111 after the collapse of Soviet communism, the dominant and repre- 8 sentative form of political resistance to Western capitalism is 9 religious. As the subject of an ambiguous otherworldly act, 1011 Hamlet seems disturbingly like a contemporary terrorist. Does 1 Shakespeare’s play propose that invoking the absolute in order 2 to act might facilitate good as well as evil? The unfocused ‘War 3111 on Terror’ sometimes seems like a neurotic, itself terroristically 4 pre-emptive clampdown on any resistance to conventional 5 Anglo-American culture. Can we imagine a peaceful revolu- 6 tion? With Fortinbras waiting in the wings, few commentators 7 would be optimistic about the political future suggested by 8 Shakespeare’s tragedy. But, in the vivid present of its own event, 9 Shakespeare’s play epitomises a metaphysics of rashness – an 20111 absolute now – wherein everything is gathered and staked upon 1 2 a deed. 3 4 Notes 5 6 1 Presentism’s most important exponents are Hugh Grady and Terence 7 Hawkes. See especially Grady 1991, 1996 and 2002 and Hawkes 2002. 8 2 See Kastan 1999: 17. 9 3 This, for example, was the basis of Margreta de Grazia’s critique of 30111 presentism in a 2004 Shakespeare Association of America session in 1 New Orleans titled ‘Missing Links: Historicism, Presentism, and the 2 Limits of the Modern’. Kastan writes against presentism in similar 3 terms (Kastan 1999: 17). For a more detailed critique, see Wells 2000a 4 and 2000b. See also Pechter 2003, especially pp. 521–2. For a more 5 positive account, see Fernie 2005. For overviews, see Moore 2003 and 6 Brown 2004. 7 4 See Fernie 2005. 5 According to a review article by David Schalkwyk, Hamlet in Purg- 8 atory ‘strikes at the heart of the most fundamental of Materialist 9 dogmas’ – ‘the primacy of the material’ – by showing how an 40111 imagined spiritual space produced an immense material apparatus 4111 (Schalkwyk 2002). 210 Ewan Fernie

1111 6 See Hawkes 2002: 4. 2 7 For a sophisticated and illuminating discussion of how new historicism, 3 and especially Hamlet in Purgatory, meet ‘present needs and interests’, 4 see Schalkwyk 2004. 8 See Greenblatt 2004. 5111 9 Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000 assert that the unsystematic empiri- 6 cism of new historicist thought is a distinct advantage. 17 10 Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000 includes reflections on Jewishness. 8 Greenblatt 2000 addresses the subject autobiographically. On post- 9 colonial themes, see especially Greenblatt 1992. 1011 11 It may be that Greenblatt’s concern with death and bereavement is 1 focused and sharpened by the thought of the Holocaust. In the 2 prologue to Hamlet in Purgatory, Greenblatt recalls that the book was partly written at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and that ‘the fact that 3111 Berlin is haunted by ghosts was itself a powerful inducement to reflect 4 on the claims of the dead and the obligations of the living’ (Greenblatt 5 2001: xi). Greenblatt 2000 evokes a visit with his younger son to his 6 ancestral homeland where he contemplated the massacre of the Vilna 7 Jews. 8 12 For an astute historical and theological perspective on the narrow- 19 ness of Greenblatt’s treatments of Purgatory and Hamlet, see Sarah 20111 Beckwith 2003. Beckwith details Greenblatt’s exclusion of ‘justice, judgement and reconciliation’ and ‘the incarnation of performance’ 1 in terms of his failure to consider the medieval sacrament of penance. 2 In the same volume, David Aers critiques Greenblatt’s handling of 3 the Eucharist in Practicing New Historicism (Aers 2003). 4 13 For a positive account of Derrida’s reading of Shakespeare’s play, 5 see Starling 1997/8. For a more sceptical treatment, see Halpern 6 2001. 7 14 See Derrida 1997 for much discussion of the place of this notion in 8 Derrida’s thought. 9 15 The verbal clue here is that Greenblatt desires to speak to the dead; and although Derrida says it is needful to speak to, of and with the 30111 ghost and ghosts, that still isn’t exactly listening. 1 16 Greenblatt can productively be read against Derrida here. He too 2 reflects on the uncanny likeness that the text stresses (Greenblatt 3 2001: 210ff.). 4 17 For an introduction to Levinas’s thought, see Levinas 1985 and 1989. 5 18 I follow the Oxford editor (and most others) here in including ‘Let 6 be’ which is not in the Folio text. See Shakespeare 1987. 7 19 See Kierkegaard 1955. 20 See Swinburne 1994 for a recent consideration of the doctrine of 8 incarnation. 9 21 For a more subtle treatment of Hamlet in terms of Protestant provi- 40111 dentialism and theatrical aesthetics, see Witmore 2001. My argument 4111 below intersects with Witmore’s in a number of ways but, to my The last act 211

1111 mind, Witmore underplays the extent to which Hamlet’s theology 2 of ‘accident’ is also a theology of ‘rashness’. Witmore’s emphasis 3 is metatheatrical. He suggests that through Hamlet’s avowals of 4 ‘providence’ Shakespeare is prompting recognition of his own author- ship. I focus instead on the existential and metaphysical implications 5111 of a spirituality of accident and rashness for Hamlet himself and for 6 agency in general. 7111 22 See Kierkegaard 1955. 8 23 Ibid. 9 24 In Shakespeare’s play, this more resolute and heroic Hamlet force- 1011 fully supplants the wan and fainting figure of critical tradition from 1 Goethe onwards (Goethe 1989: 146). 2 25 See also Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000: 141. 26 For more on Kierkegaard and Hamlet, see Kearney’s essay, this 3111 volume. 4 27 See Eckhardt 1941: 127. 5 28 Kant writes, ‘I ought never to act except in such a way that I could 6 also will that my maxim should become a universal law’ (Kant 1997: 7 402). 8 29 Greenblatt’s avowal that subversion is always contained is the locus 9 classicus of such hopelessness (Greenblatt 1988: 65). The history of 20111 politically ambitious cultural materialism can be cast in terms of a struggle with the pessimistic determinism suggested by its own name. 1 As Claire Colebrook observes, ‘Because of the problematisation of 2 the humanist subject and the Marxist economic base, post-Marxist 3 criticism has struggled to find a legitimating ground from which its 4 political critique can be launched’ (Colebrook 1997: 194). 5 30 See, for instance, Ouditt 1996 and Smith 1980. 6 31 This reworking of Hamlet produced by Zaoum Theatre from an Arabic 7 viewpoint and in a non-specific Arabic setting won a Fringe First 8 Award at Edinburgh in 2002 before coming to London. 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 6 17 Afterword 8 Jonathan Dollimore 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 There is, of course, feel-good spirituality, as in the advice once 2 given me by a Californian new-ager: ‘choose the kind of spir- 3 ituality you feel most comfortable with’. And then there is its 4 opposite, spirituality of the anguished kind wherein conscious- 5 ness is tormented by loss, lack, guilt, conflict and finitude, and 6 always and restlessly searching for something other. 7 It is to their credit that the contributors to this volume eschew 8 feel-good spirituality while at the same time avoiding the histri- 9 onic gestures of its agonised opposite. Readers will find here an 30111 engagement with both Shakespeare and spirituality that is intel- 1 ligent, original, and challengingly optimistic, one that surely 2 succeeds in its wish to ‘reinvigorate and strengthen politically 3 progressive materialist criticism’ (Introduction: 3). Haunting is 4 just one of its intriguing themes, and I want to suggest that a 5 collection such as this, precisely because of its intelligence and 6 commitment, must be haunted by that darker, agonised spiritu- 7 ality that was a driving force of early modern culture, and 8 indeed of Western culture more generally, right up to and 9 including the present. 40111 Tragedy, and especially Renaissance tragedy, presupposes 4111 anguished spirituality even or especially when it is irreligious. Afterword 213 1111 The famous Chorus Sacerdotum from Fulke Greville’s Mustapha 2 suggests how the agonised spirituality of the West is potentially 3 also politically dangerous: 4 5111 Oh wearisome condition of humanity! 6 Born under one law, to another bound: 7111 Vainly begot yet forbidden vanity, 8 Created sick, commanded to be sound: 9 What meaneth nature by these diverse laws? 1011 Passion and reason self-division cause: 1 Is it the mark or majesty of power 2 To make offences that it may forgive?1 3111 4 Shakespeare’s sonnet (129) ‘The expense of spirit in a waste 5 of shame’ is perhaps the most famous dramatisation of the ‘self- 6 division’ consequent on the conflict between ‘passion and 7 reason’, but there are many more from this period. And the 8 fact that ‘spirit’ here links semen and soul via the notion of 9 vital energy is a reminder of how inclusive the early modern 20111 spiritual sensibility could be. 1 The editor of this volume is surely right in saying that histor- 2 ical/materialist approaches to Shakespearean drama have been 3 unable to handle its spiritual dimensions. Consider something 4 obsessively central to both spirituality and tragedy, namely 5 death. The historical approach to death insists that it is not 6 some essential thing, but a socio-historical construct; it tells us 7 that to look for the transhistorical continuities in the human 8 experience of death is fundamentally misguided; on the con- 9 trary, we must understand death as something that changes 30111 across time within any one culture and that fundamentally 1 differs between cultures (and religions). So, in the latter case 2 there will be, e.g. a Buddhist conception of death, and a Chris- 3 tian one; in the former, there will be a medieval way of dying 4 and a Victorian one, and so on. Difference is all. 5 This is true, as far as it goes. But as is often the case, the 6 agreeable truth (diversity and difference) is used to evade the 7 less agreeable (the anguish of mortality). Historicism performs 8 this evasion not just with respect to specific topics such as 9 death, but in its very methodology, and especially in its assump- 40111 tion that anything in the past can be explained if its full his- 4111 tory can be retrieved. Of course, historicism knows that full 214 Jonathan Dollimore 1111 history is rarely if ever retrievable, but the assumption that all 2 would be revealed if it were, is the ideal to which the histor- 3 ian aspires. In other words, nothing of itself, and in relation 4 to us, is inexplicable in principle, only in practice. Nothing 5111 more than inadequate historical data stands between us and 6 a full understanding of the past. To the extent that this assump- 17 tion pervades historicism of all kinds, it entails a certain irony: 8 this most empirical of procedures has at its methodological 9 heart something of the a priori. By contrast, a spiritual pers- 1011 pective might (for example) accept in principle that the object 1 of its understanding may be ultimately incomprehensible, or 2 comprehended fully only at the cost of undermining what 3111 currently counts as understanding. 4 Not surprisingly, then, the contemporary encounter with 5 spirituality proceeds via deconstruction and postmodernism. To 6 the extent that this entails finding spirituality where it might 7 least be expected, it is encouraging: the most interesting forms 8 of the spirit are always the unexpected ones. But the urbane 19 complexities that characterise both deconstruction and post- 20111 modernism, at least in their academic forms, are as likely as 1 historicism to obscure the less palatable truth with the more 2 agreeable one. 3 Why are the most interesting forms of spirit the unexpected 4 ones? Partly because spirituality survives most interestingly via 5 a kind of radical continuity – that is, a continuity arising from 6 negation. Something is negated but survives by mutating into 7 the form of its opposite; so, for example, spirituality survives 8 in and as unbelief (only the sacrilegious truly understand the 9 sacred). 30111 Thus Freud, who professed himself the unbelieving scientist, 1 redramatised human interiority – the very space of spirituality 2 – by enlarging its domain, elaborating its complexity and 3 intensifying its conflicts. Psychoanalysis became a new religion, 4 or at least was embraced by those who might otherwise have 5 been religious, or for whom unbelief made religion proper 6 untenable. Not for nothing does Anthony Burgess in Earthly 7 Powers have a prospective Pope remark in 1938 that Freud 8 could still be a good Jewish theologian if only he would stop 9 inventing words like ‘id’ (Burgess 1981: 394). 40111 But it is Nietzsche who is most significant here. He who 4111 pronounces the death of God is the greatest of spiritual Afterword 215 1111 modernists, and never more so than when he is castigating all 2 religion and especially Christianity; his anguished conscious- 3 ness, his desperate quest for intellectual truth and an authen- 4 ticity of self, his sense of supreme effort (will to power) born 5111 of lack, and, above all, his acute sense of conflict as the 6 very condition of being, make him the heir of Western spir- 7111 ituality. And like Renaissance writers before him, Nietzsche 8 realised that tragedy at its most challenging derives from spiri- 9 tual dissatisfaction – specifically the convergence of forbidden 1011 knowledge and dissident desire. 1 Milton’s Adam and Eve are told: ‘know to know no more’ 2 (Paradise Lost 4. 775).2 They disobey, and their transgressive 3111 desire for forbidden knowledge brings death into the world, 4 into desire. In other words, transgressive desire is inseparable 5 from forbidden knowledge and together they kick-start history 6 and become the stuff of tragedy. 7 For those like Milton this produces a state of spiritual alien- 8 ation as terrible as it is deplorable. But for Nietzsche we are 9 most ourselves when in this destructive and suffering state of 20111 knowing and desiring more than we should. This is one aspect 1 of his transvaluation of values (continuity through negation), 2 the upshot of which is a survival in him of a specifically Chris- 3 tian sense of free will: we retain the capacity to violate the 4 restraints of the history that has produced us, even if at a 5 terrible cost. This was also a view that Nietzsche attributed to 6 Shakespeare. The rationalist typically regards the accumula- 7 tion of knowledge as a progressive and irreversible consolidation 8 of civilisation. But Nietzsche affirms another kind of know- 9 ledge, one that does not consolidate civilisation, but threatens 30111 it. It is the knowledge that civilisation itself is at heart illusory. 1 ‘Illusory’ here refers not to some residual superstitions, soon to 2 be swept away by the march of rational progress, but to the 3 very structure of ‘rational’ civilisation; anticipating Freud, 4 Nietzsche believes that human civilisation requires illusion in 5 order to be what it is. (Later Freud would elaborate this idea 6 in terms of repression, disavowal and sublimation.) To know 7 that this is so makes one a spiritual outcast from society, under- 8 standing too much from a spiritual position ‘beyond good 9 and evil’. 40111 This is Nietzsche’s reading of Hamlet – he has ‘seen through’ 4111 the illusions by which his culture maintains itself; inaction 216 Jonathan Dollimore 1111 derives not from confusion and doubt, but from too much 2 knowledge. Likewise with Macbeth, but with him it is also 3 about affirming what has been repressed – of desublimating 4 the life force itself, turning it against civilised morality, and 5111 celebrating its destructive power. So it’s a mistake, says 6 Nietzsche, to think that Shakespeare’s theatre was aiming for 17 a moral effect. In this regard Macbeth does not warn against 8 hubris and ambition; on the contrary it affirms their attrac- 9 tion. And the fact that Macbeth ‘perishes by his passions’ is 1011 part of his ‘daemonic attraction’. By ‘daemonic’ (dämonisch) 1 Nietzsche means ‘in defiance against life and advantage for the 2 sake of a drive and idea’ (Gedankens und Triebes). He adds: 3111 4 Do you suppose that Tristan and Isolde are preaching 5 against adultery when they both perish by it? This would 6 be to stand the poets on their head: they, and especially 7 Shakespeare, are enamoured of the passions as such and 8 not least of their death-welcoming moods. 19 20111 Shakespeare, like other tragic poets, ‘speaks . . . out of a rest- 1 less, vigorous age which is half-drunk and stupefied by its excess 2 of blood and energy – out of a wickeder age than ours is’. But 3 the guardians of high culture in our own day disavow this: 4 they seek to ‘adjust and justify the goal of a Shakespearean 5 drama’ precisely in order that they (and we) ‘not understand 6 it’ (Nietzsche 1982: 140–1). 7 Thus Shakespeare and his guardians fall on opposite sides of 8 Nietzsche’s great divide between, on the one hand, those who 9 affirm the life force, and on the other those who turn away 30111 from it – between, in other words, the daemonic and the 1 humanitarian. In The Gay Science this distinction is expressed in 2 terms of two distinct kinds of sufferer – those who suffer from 3 a superabundance of life and those who suffer from an impov- 4 erishment of life. The former live with a spiritual intensity, 5 wanting ‘a Dionysian art as well as a tragic outlook and insight 6 into life’, and willingly confront ‘the terrible and questionable 7 . . . every luxury of destruction, decomposition, negation’; while 8 the latter avoid that same intensity, choosing instead ‘mild- 9 ness, peacefulness, goodness in thought and in deed . . . a 40111 certain warm, fear-averting confinement and enclosure within 4111 optimistic horizons’ (Nietzsche 2001: 234). Afterword 217 1111 All this is to the point, although Nietzsche wilfully miscon- 2 strues Macbeth. This play is indeed a profound exploration of 3 the daemonic, but its tragedy is the recalcitrant conflict between 4 the daemonic and the humane, between the Macbeths’ ‘black 5111 and deep desires’ and the ‘milk of human kindness’ (1.4.51, 6 1.5.15). And if this type of conflict is the focus of many of the 7111 most memorable tragedies, it is also embedded in the history 8 of human civilisation, and one reason why tragedy is widely 9 regarded as the most profound of all literary genres. But 1011 Nietzsche’s view of the artist and philosopher as knowing too 1 much, of seeing through, demystifying and maybe undermining 2 the ideological, religious and cultural ‘fictions’ of society, and 3111 thereby ‘de-repressing’ subversive desires – all this is clearly 4 relevant to Shakespeare, whose own heroes, anti-heroes, lovers 5 and malcontents are already doing something similar. Similar 6 but perhaps with even darker implications: if Nietzsche revels 7 in the idea that Macbeth ‘perishes by his passions’, these plays 8 dramatise the agony, the violence and the psychological conflict 9 generated by the destructive and illicit desires that the Macbeths 20111 entertain. On the one side is the world of humane values, 1 expressed most vividly in the imagery of nurturing the depen- 2 dent infant, and whose condition is repression, suppression, 3 exclusion and disavowal, these being the preconditions for civil- 4 isation itself. On the other, the dangerous knowledge that 5 understands the price being paid for the humane, and the trans- 6 gressive desire that knowledge permits and incites, and that 7 will not pay the price even if the consequence is a terrible 8 inhumanity: courage screwed to the sticking place in a will to 9 power (spirit as ‘undaunted mettle’ (1.1.73)) that would will- 30111 ingly dash out the brains of the sucking infant rather than fail. 1 Black and deep desires can only be free of the humane in and 2 through its deepest violation, which means of course that they 3 can never be free. Macbeth shows how the threat of the daemonic 4 derives not from a pure, pre-social nature or instinct, clearly 5 distinct from the culture it threatens, but from the return of 6 repressed desire so inextricably bound up with culture it is 7 impossible anymore to distinguish between the two. This is 8 why only the highly civilised can become truly daemonic. Early 9 modern writers knew well that ‘corrupted’ reason was capable 40111 of an intensity of evil unknown to the non- or irrational; lilies 4111 that fester smell far worse than weeds. Thus the return of the 218 Jonathan Dollimore 1111 repressed has a virulence that is not the opposite of civilisa- 2 tion but its inversion; not unfettered pre-social libido indifferent 3 to the civilising restraint it has escaped, but, on the contrary, 4 desire returning via the ‘civilising’ mechanisms of its repres- 5111 sion, mechanisms it is still inseparable from, even as it violates 6 them. Thus Lady Macbeth’s image of herself dashing out the 17 brains of her own child. 8 Is Nietzsche right about the ‘death-welcoming’ moods of 9 artists such as Shakespeare? His was a religious culture whose 1011 more extreme forms were death-obsessed; thus Richard 1 Crashaw, writing in the seventeenth century about St Teresa 2 and martyrdom: ‘Such thirsts to die, as dares drink up/A thou- 3111 sand cold deaths in one cup’ (‘A Hymn to the Name and 4 Honor of the Admirable Sainte Teresa’, 37–8).3 Truly, a thirst 5 for annihilation. And Shakespeare’s is a theatre in which those 6 who desire most illicitly not only die, but also seem to embrace 7 death. One reason is to be found in that early modern (spiritual) 8 sensibility for which death was at once the enemy of desire (it 19 destroys what we love) but also that which guarantees the end 20111 of desire; both cause of and release from pain. A diligent 1 researcher (ungraciously I have forgotten who – such diligence 2 deserves better) once counted more than two hundred suicides 3 in around one hundred plays between 1580 and 1640; appar- 4 ently Shakespeare has no less than fifty-two – remarkable 5 indeed for a society in which suicide was severely demonised. 6 If in real life suicide is most often a desperate escape from 7 wretched suffering, in literature it is most often a profoundly 8 spiritual expression of the suffering born of dangerous know- 9 ledge and/or dissident desire. 30111 Nietzsche paid with his sanity for trying to live just such a 1 spirituality, at once austerely severe and romantically exces- 2 sive. I suspect that had he remained sane, he would have killed 3 himself. 4 5 Notes 6 7 1 Greville 1973. 8 2 Milton 1971. 9 3 Crashaw 1968: 318. 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 Bibliography 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 Abraham, N. (1988a) ‘Notes on the Phantom: A Complement to Freud’s 4 Metapsychology’, Diacritics 18: 171–6. 5 Abraham, N. (1988b) ‘The Phantom of Hamlet or the Sixth Act’, Diacritics 6 18: 187–205. 7 Adorno, T. W. (1997) Aesthetic Theory, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor, London: 8 Athlone Press. Aers, D. (2003) ‘New Historicism and the Eucharist’, Journal of Medieval 9 and Early Modern Studies 33: 241–59. 20111 Ali, T. (2002) The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, 1 London and New York: Verso. 2 Amirthanayagam, D. P. (1999) ‘“I Know Thee Not Old Man”: The 3 Renunciation of Falstaff’, in Literary Imagination, Ancient and Modern: 4 Essays in Honor of David Grene, ed. T. Breyfogle, Chicago: University 5 of Chicago Press. 6 Armstrong, I. (2000) The Radical Aesthetic, Oxford: Blackwell. 7 Attridge, D. (2004) The Singularity of Literature, London: Routledge. Augustine ([397] 1958) On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr, 8 New York: Macmillan. 9 Badiou, A. (2001) Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. 30111 P. Hallward, London and New York: Verso. 1 –––– (2003) Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. R. Brassier, 2 Stanford: Stanford University Press. 3 Balthasar, H. U. von (1988) Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, 4 vol. 1: Prolegomena, trans. G. Harrison, San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 5 Bate, J. (ed.) (1997) The Romantics on Shakespeare, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 6 Baudrillard, J. (1995) The Gulf War Never Happened, Oxford: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity, London and New York: 7 Routledge. 8 Beckwith, S. (2003) ‘Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet and the Forms of 9 Oblivion’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33: 261–80. 40111 Benjamin, A. (1993) The Plural Event: Descartes, Hegel, Heidegger, London 4111 and New York: Routledge. 220 Bibliography

1111 Benjamin, W. (1968) Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt, trans. H. Zohn, New 2 York: Schocken. 3 Berger, J. (1977) Ways of Seeing, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 4 Berger, P. L. (ed.) (1970) A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. 5111 –––– (2000) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World 6 Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 17 Bernstein, J. M. (1992) The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida 8 and Adorno, Oxford: Polity Press. 9 Berry, P. (1999) Shakespeare’s Feminine Endings: Disfiguring Death in the 1011 Tragedies, London and New York: Routledge. 1 –––– (2004) ‘Nomadic Eros: Remapping Knowledge in A Midummer Night’s 2 Dream’, in Forgetting in Early Modern English Literature and Culture: Lethe’s Legacies, ed. C. Ivic and G. Williams, London and New York: 3111 Routledge. 4 –––– and A. Wernick (eds) (1992) Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion, 5 London and New York: Routledge. 6 Bhagavad Gita (1944) trans. F. Edgerton, New York: Harper & 7 Row. 8 Bishop, T. G. (1996) Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder, Cambridge: 19 Cambridge University Press. 20111 Bloom, H. (1989) Ruin the Sacred Truths, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1 –––– (1998) Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, New York: Riverhead 2 Books. 3 Bowers, F. (1975–6) ‘Hal and Francis in King Henry IV, Part I ’, McNeese 4 Review 22: 62–9. 5 Bowie, A. (1997) From Romanticism to Critical Theory, London: Routledge. 6 Bradley, A. C. (1909) ‘The Rejection of Falstaff’, in Oxford Lectures on 7 Poetry, London: Macmillan. 8 –––– (1971) Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan. Brook, D. (1994) The Shifting Point: 1946–1987, New York: Theatre 9 Communications Group. 30111 Brook, P. (1990) The Empty Space, London: Penguin. 1 Brooks, H. F. (2001) ‘Introduction’, in W. Shakespeare, A Midsummer 2 Night’s Dream, ed. H. F. Brooks, Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson 3 & Sons. 4 Brown, M. (2004) ‘Literature in Time’, Modern Language Quarterly 65: 1–5. 5 Bruns, G. (1990) ‘Stanley Cavell’s Shakespeare’, Critical Inquiry 16: 6 612–32. 7 Bruster, D. (2001) ‘The New Materialism in Renaissance Studies’, in Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 8 ed. C. Perry, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. 9 Buber, M. (1970) I and Thou, trans. W. Kaufman, New York: Touchstone. 40111 Burgess, A. (1981) Earthly Powers, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 4111 Callaghan, D. (2001) ‘Body Problems’, Shakespeare Studies 29: 70–1. Bibliography 221

1111 Calvin, J. (1961) Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, ed. J. T. McNeill, 2 trans. F. L. Battles, London: SCM Press. 3 Caputo, J. D. (1987) ‘Repetition and Kinesis: Kierkegaard on the 4 Foundering of Metaphysics’, in Radical Hermeneutics, ed. John Caputo, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 5111 –––– (1997a) The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion, 6 Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 7111 –––– (ed.) (1997b) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques 8 Derrida, New York: Fordham University Press. 9 –––– (2000) ‘For the Love of the Things Themselves: Derrida’s Phenom- 1011 enology of the Hyper-Real’, Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory 1, 1 www.jcrt.org. 2 –––– (2001) On Religion, London and New York: Routledge. –––– (ed.) (2002) The Religious, Oxford: Blackwell. 3111 –––– and M. J. Scanlon (eds) (1999) God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, 4 Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 5 Cavell, S. (1976) Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays, Cambridge: 6 Cambridge University Press. 7 –––– (1987) Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare, Cambridge: 8 Cambridge University Press. 9 Chemama, R. (ed.) (1993) Dictionnaire de la Psychanalyse, Paris: Larousse. 20111 Chesterton, G. K. (1995) Orthodoxy, San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Coakley, S. (1996) ‘Keno¯sis and Subversion: On the Repression of 1 “Vulnerability” in Christian Feminist Writing’, in Hampson 1996. 2 Cohen, W. (1982) ‘The Merchant of Venice and the Possibilities of Historical 3 Criticism’, reprinted in Coyle 1998. 4 Colebrook, C. (1997) New Literary Histories: New Historicism and Contemporary 5 Criticism, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. 6 Coleridge, S. T. (1930) Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism, vol. 1, ed. T. M. 7 Raysor, London: Constable. 8 Coyle, M. (ed.) (1998) New Casebooks: The Merchant of Venice, New York: 9 St Martin’s. Crashaw, R. (1968) The Poems English, Latin and Greek of Richard Crashaw, 30111 ed. L. C. Martin, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1 Dean, P. (1997) ‘Shakespeare’s Historical Imagination’, Renaissance Studies 2 11: 27–40. 3 de Grazia, M., M. Quilligan and P. Stallybrass (1996) ‘Introduction’, in 4 Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, ed. P. Stallybrass, M. de Grazia 5 and M. Quilligan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6 Derrida, J. (1972) Positions, trans. A. Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago 7 Press. –––– (1992) Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kamuf, Chicago: 8 University of Chicago Press. 9 –––– (1994) Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, 40111 and the New International, trans. P. Kamuf, London and New York: 4111 Routledge. 222 Bibliography

1111 –––– (1995a) On the Name, ed. T. Dutoit, trans. D. Wood, J. P. Leavey 2 Jr. and I. McLeod, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 3 –––– (1995b) The Gift of Death, trans. D. Wills, Chicago and London: 4 University of Chicago Press. –––– (1997) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, 5111 ed. J. D. Caputo, New York: Fordham University Press. 6 –––– (1998) Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. 17 P. Mensah, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 8 –––– (2002) Acts of Religion, ed. G. Andijar, London: Routledge. 9 de Vries, H. (2002) Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Baltimore: Johns 1011 Hopkins University Press. 1 Diehl, H. (1997) Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular 2 Theater in Early Modern England, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. 3111 Docherty, T. (2003) ‘Aesthetic Education and the Demise of Experience’, 4 in Joughin and Malpas 2003. 5 Dolan, F. (1999) Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-century 6 Print Culture, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. 7 –––– (2002) ‘Gender and the “Lost” Spaces of Catholicism’, Journal of 8 Interdisciplinary Study 32: 641–65. 19 Duffy, E. (1992) The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 20111 1400–1580, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Durling, R. M. (1971) ‘Petrarch’s “Giovene donna sotto un verde lauro”’, 1 Modern Language Notes 86: 1–20. 2 –––– (1976) ‘Introduction’, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and 3 Other Lyrics, trans. and ed. R. M. Durling, Cambridge, MA: Harvard 4 University Press. 5 Dutton, R., A. G. Findlay and R. Wilson (eds) (2004a) Theater and Religion: 6 Lancastrian Shakespeare, Manchester: Manchester University Press. 7 –––– (2004b) Region, Religion and Patronage: Lancastrian Shakespeare, 8 Manchester: Manchester University Press. 9 Eagleton, T. (1990) The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford: Blackwell. –––– (2003) Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic, Oxford: Blackwell. 30111 Eckhardt, Meister (1941) Meister Eckhardt, ed. R. Blakney, New York: 1 Harper & Row. 2 Eco, E. (1989) The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce, 3 trans. E. Esrock, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 4 Eliot, T. S. (1951) ‘Hamlet’, in Selected Essays, London: Faber & Faber. 5 Ellis-Fermor, U. (1946) The Frontiers of Drama, New York: Oxford 6 University Press. 7 Felperin, H. (1995) ‘Political Criticism at the Crossroads: The Utopian Historicism of The Tempest’, in The Tempest: Theory in Practice, ed. N. 8 Wood, Buckingham: Open University Press. 9 Fernie, E. (2002) Shame in Shakespeare, London and New York: Routledge. 40111 –––– (2005) ‘Shakespeare and the Prospect of Presentism’, Shakespeare 4111 Survey 58: 169–84. Bibliography 223

1111 Finlayson, M. G. (1983) Historians, Puritanism, and the English Revolution: 2 The Religious Factor in English Politics before and after the Interregnum, 3 Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. 4 Foakes, R. A. (1997) ‘Introduction’, in W. Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. 5111 R. A. Foakes, Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson & Sons. Foucault, M. (1991) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 6 London and New York: Routledge. 7111 Frascati-Lochhead, M. (1998) Kenosis and Feminist Theology: The Challenge 8 of Gianni Vattimo, New York: SUNY Press. 9 Freccero, J. ([1975] 1986) ‘The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Petrarch’s 1011 Poetics’, in Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, ed. P. Parker and D. Quint, 1 Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. 2 Freinkel, L. (2002) Reading Shakespeare’s Will: A Theology of Figure From 3111 Augustine to the Sonnets, New York: Columbia University Press. 4 Freud, S. ([1927] 1957) ‘Fetishism’, The Standard Edition of the Complete 5 Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 5, London: Hogarth Press. –––– ([1905] 1975) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans. James 6 Strachey, New York: Basic Books. 7 –––– (1983) The Interpretation of Dreams, New York: Pelican. 8 Friedman, M. S. (1955) Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, Chicago: 9 University of Chicago Press. 20111 Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, London: Hamish 1 Hamilton. 2 Gallagher, C. and S. Greenblatt (2000) Practicing New Historicism, Chicago 3 and London: University of Chicago Press. 4 Gallagher, L. (1991) Medusa’s Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance, 5 Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 6 Gardner, L., D. Moss, B. Quash and G. Ward (eds) (1999) Balthasar at the End of Modernity, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 7 Geneva Bible, A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition (1969) Madison, WI: University 8 of Wisconsin Press. 9 Girard, R. (1991) A Theater of Envy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 30111 Goethe, J. W. von (1989) Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, trans. E. Blackall, 1 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2 Grady, H. (1991) The Modernist Shakespeare: Critical Texts in a Material World, 3 Oxford: Clarendon Press. 4 –––– (1996) Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf: Studies in Early Modern Reification, 5 Oxford: Clarendon Press. 6 –––– (2000) ‘Shakespeare’s Links to Machiavelli and Montaigne: Constructing Intellectual Modernity in Early Modern Europe’, 7 Comparative Literature 52: 119–42. 8 –––– (2002) Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from 9 Richard II to Hamlet, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 40111 Green, A. (1982) Hamlet et Hamlet: Une Interprétation Psychoanalytique de la 4111 Représentation, Paris: Balland. 224 Bibliography

1111 Greenblatt, S. (1985) ‘Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its 2 Subversion’, in Shakespeare’s ‘Rough Magic’: Essays in Honor of C. L. 3 Barber, ed. P. Erickson and C. Kahn, Newark: University of Delaware 4 Press. –––– (1988) Shakespearean Negotiations, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 5111 –––– (1992) Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, Chicago: 6 University of Chicago Press. 17 –––– (1997) ‘What is the History of Literature?’, Critical Inquiry 23: 460–81. 8 –––– (2000) ‘The Inevitable Pit: On Becoming American’, London Review 9 of Books 21 November: 8–13. 1011 –––– (2001) Hamlet in Purgatory, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1 –––– (2004) Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, London: 2 Cape. Gregerson, L. (1995) The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the 3111 English Protestant Epic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4 Greville, F. (1973) ‘Mustapha’, in Selected Writings, ed. J. Rees, London: 5 Athlone. 6 Griffiths, T. R. (1996) Shakespeare in Production: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 7 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 8 Habermas, J. (1992) Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. W. 19 M. Hohengarten, Cambridge: Polity. 20111 Hall, K. (1992) ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Colonisation and Miscegenation in The Merchant of Venice’, reprinted in Coyle 1998. 1 Halpern, R. (2001) ‘An Impure History of Ghosts: Derrida, Marx, Shake- 2 speare’, in Marxist Shakespeares, ed. J. E. Howard and S. Cutler 3 Shershow, London and New York: Routledge. 4 –––– (2002) Shakespeare’s Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde, 5 Freud, and Lacan, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 6 Hamilton, G. (2003) ‘Mocking Oldcastle: Notes Towards Exploring a 7 Catholic Presence in Shakespeare’s Henriad’, in Shakespeare and the 8 Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, ed. D. Taylor and 9 D. Beauregard, New York: Fordham University Press. Hammer, E. (2002) Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity and the Ordinary, 30111 Cambridge: Polity Press. 1 Hampson, D. (ed.) (1996) Swallowing the Fishbone: Feminist Theologians Debate 2 Christianity, London: SPCK. 3 Hand, S. (ed.) (1989) The Levinas Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. 4 Hawkes, T. (2002) Shakespeare in the Present, London and New York: 5 Routledge. 6 Hazlitt, W. (1930) The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, vol. 4, ed. P. P. 7 Howe, London and Toronto: Dent. Heelas, P. (1996) The New Age Movement: The Celebration of Self and the 8 Sacralization of Modernity, Oxford: Blackwell. 9 –––– (ed.) (1998) Religion, Modernity, and Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell. 40111 Hegel, G. W. F. (1959) Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 4111 Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Bibliography 225

1111 Heidegger, M. (1966) Discourse on Thinking, trans. J. M. Anderson and 2 E. H. Freud, New York: Harper & Row. 3 –––– (1971) ‘The Thing’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter, 4 New York: Harper & Row. 5111 Hill, C. (1968) Puritanism and Revolution, London: Panther. Hoeniger, D. F. (1992) Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance, 6 Newark: University of Delaware Press. 7111 Horner, R. (2001) Rethinking God as Gift: Marion, Derrida, and the Limits of 8 Phenomenology, New York: Fordham University Press. 9 Hunt, M. (1998) ‘The Hybrid Reformations of Shakespeare’s Second 1011 Henriad’, Comparative Drama 32: 176–206. 1 Irigaray, L. (1993) Sex and Genealogies, trans. G. C. Gill, New York: 2 Columbia University Press. 3111 Jackson, K. (2001) ‘“One Wish” or the Possibility of the Impossible: 4 Derrida, the Gift, and God in Timon of Athens’, Shakespeare Quarterly 5 52: 34–66. –––– and A. F. Marotti (2004) ‘The Turn to Religion in Early Modern 6 English Studies’, Criticism 46: 167–90. 7 Jameson, F. (1981a) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic 8 Act, London: Routledge. 9 –––– (1981b) ‘Religion and Ideology: A Political Reading of Paradise Lost’, 20111 in 1642: Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century, Proceedings of 1 the Essex Conference in the Sociology of Literature July 1980, eds 2 F. Barker, J. Bernstein, J. Coombes, P. Hulme, J. Stone, J. Stratton, 3 Colchester, Department of Literature: University of Essex. 4 Janicaud, D., J. F. Courtine, J. L. Chrétien et al. (2000) Phenomenology and 5 the ‘Theological Turn’, trans. B. G. Prusak and J. L. Kosky, New York: 6 Fordham University Press. Janik, A. A. (2003) ‘Allan Janik Talks to Knut Olav Amas’, www.eurozine. 7 com/article/2003-10-06-janik-en.html. 8 Janowitz, H. D. (2000) ‘Prince Hamlet and Prince Hal: The Trial of 9 Crowns’, The Shakespeare Newsletter 50: 21. 30111 Johnson, S. (1968) The Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 7: Johnson on Shakespeare, 1 ed. A. Sherbo, New Haven: Yale University Press. 2 Joughin, J. J. (ed.) (2000a) Philosophical Shakespeares, London and New 3 York: Routledge. 4 –––– (2000b) ‘Shakespeare, Modernity and the Aesthetic: Art, Truth and 5 Judgement in The Winter’s Tale’, in Shakespeare and Modernity, ed. H. 6 Grady, London and New York: Routledge. –––– (2002) ‘Lear’s Afterlife’, Shakespeare Survey 55: 67–81. 7 –––– and S. Malpas (eds) (2003) The New Aestheticism, Manchester: 8 Manchester University Press. 9 Joy, M., K. O’Grady and J. L. Poxon (eds) (2002) French Feminists on 40111 Religion: A Reader, London and New York: Routledge. 4111 Joyce, J. (1992) Ulysses, London: Penguin. 226 Bibliography

1111 Kahn, C. (1987) ‘“Magic of Bounty”: Timon of Athens, Jacobean Patronage, 2 and Maternal Power’, Shakespeare Quarterly 38: 34–57. 3 Kamps, I. (1996) Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama, Cambridge: 4 Cambridge University Press. 5111 Kant, I. (1997) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6 Kastan, D. S. (1999) Shakespeare after Theory, New York and London: 17 Routledge. 8 Kearney, J. (2002) ‘The Book and the Fetish: The Materiality of 9 Prospero’s Text’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.3: 1011 433–68. 1 Kearney, R. (moderator) (1999) ‘On the Gift: A Discussion between 2 Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion’, in Caputo and Scanlon 1999. 3111 –––– (2001) The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion, Bloomington, 4 IN: Indiana University Press. 5 –––– (2002) Strangers, Gods and Monsters, London and New York, Routledge. 6 –––– (2003) ‘Kierkegaard on Hamlet: Between Art and Religion’ in The 7 New Kierkegaard, ed. Elsbet Jepstrup, Bloomington, IN: Indiana 8 University Press. 19 Keats, J. (1983) The Complete Poems, ed. John Barnard, 2nd edn, 20111 Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1 Kierkegaard, S. (1955) Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, trans. 2 W. Lowrie, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 3 –––– (1959) Either/Or, vol. 1, trans. D. F. Swenson and L. M. Swenson, 4 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 5 –––– (1966) On Authority and Revelation, trans. W. Lowrie, New York: 6 Harper Torchbook. –––– (1967) Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. 7 Hong, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 8 –––– (1983) Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. and trans. H. V. Hong 9 and E. H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 30111 –––– (1985) Fear and Trembling, trans. A. Hannay, London: Penguin. 1 –––– (1988) Stages on Life’s Way, ed. and trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. 2 Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 3 Knapp, J. (2002) Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance 4 England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 5 Kohanski, A. S. (1982) Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Interhuman Relation: 6 A Response to the Human Problematic of Our Time, Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press. 7 Krips, H. (1999) Fetish: An Erotics of Culture, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 8 Press. 9 Lacan, J. (1982) ‘Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet’, in 40111 Literature and Psychoanalysis, ed. S. Felman, Baltimore, MD and London: 4111 Johns Hopkins University Press. Bibliography 227

1111 Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a 2 Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. 3 Lake, P. (1989) ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Conflict 4 in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–1642, ed. 5111 R. Cust and A. Hughes, London and New York: Longman. –––– with M. Questier (2002) The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists 6 & Players in Post-Reformation England, New Haven, CT and London: 7111 Yale University Press. 8 Levin, H. (1981) ‘Falstaff’s Encore’, Shakespeare Quarterly 32: 5–17. 9 Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. 1011 A. Lingis, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 1 –––– (1976) Noms Propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana. 2 –––– (1981) Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis, The 3111 Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 4 –––– (1985) Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Phillippe Nemo, trans. R. 5 A. Cohen, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. –––– (1989) The Levinas Reader, ed. S. Hand, Oxford and Malden, MA: 6 Blackwell. 7 –––– (1991) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis, 8 London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 9 –––– (1994) In the Time of the Nations, trans. M. B. Smith, Bloomington, 20111 IN: Indiana University Press. 1 –––– (1998) Entre nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. M. B. Smith and 2 B. Harshaw, New York: Columbia University Press. 3 Levine, N. (2000) ‘Extending Credit in the Henry IV Plays’, Shakespeare 4 Quarterly 51: 403–31. 5 Loomis, R. S. (1991) The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, 6 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lupton, J. Reinhard (1997) ‘Othello Circumcised: Shakespeare and the 7 Pauline Discourse of Nations’, Representations 57: 73–89. 8 –––– (2000a) ‘Exegesis, Mimesis, and the Future of Humanism in The 9 Merchant of Venice’, Religion and Literature 32: 123–39. 30111 –––– (2000b) ‘Creature Caliban’, Shakespeare Quarterly 51: 1–23. 1 Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. 2 G. Bennington and B. Massumi, Minneapolis, MN: University of 3 Minnesota Press. 4 McCoy, R. C. (2002) Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English 5 Reformation, New York: Columbia University Press. 6 McGee, C. E. (1984) ‘2 Henry IV: The Last Tudor Royal Entry’, in Mirror Up to Nature: Essays in Honour of G. R. Hibbard, ed. J. C. Gray, Toronto: 7 University of Toronto Press. 8 McLaverty, J. (1981) ‘No Abuse: The Prince and Falstaff in the Tavern 9 Scenes of Henry IV’, Shakespeare Survey 34: 105–10. 40111 MacLean, H. (1987) ‘“Looking Before and After”: Hal and Hamlet Once 4111 More’, Papers on Language and Literature 23: 273–89. 228 Bibliography

1111 Manonni, O. (1969) ‘Je sais bien, mais quand même’, in Clefs pour 2 l’imaginaire, ou l’autre scène, Paris: Éditions du Seuil. 3 Marion, J.-L. (2002) Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. 4 J. L. Kosky, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. –––– (2004) The Crossing of the Visible, trans. J. K. A. Smith, Stanford, 5111 CA: Stanford University Press. 6 Marlowe, C. (1999) The Complete Plays, ed. Mark Thornton Burnett, 17 London: Dent. 8 Marotti, A. F. (ed.) (1999) Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern 9 English Texts, Basingstoke: Macmillan. 1011 Marsh, D. R. C. (1983) ‘Hal and Hamlet: The Loneliness of Integrity’, 1 in Jonson and Shakespeare, ed. I. Donaldson, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: 2 Humanities Press. Marshall, D. (1982) ‘Exchanging Visions: Reading A Midsummer Night’s 3111 Dream’, English Literary History 49: 543–75. 4 Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic 5 Societies, trans. W. D. Halls, New York: W. W. Norton. 6 Mazzotta, G. (1978) ‘The Canzoniere and the Language of the Self’, 7 Studies in Philology 75: 271–96. 8 Metzger, B. M. and R. E. Murphy (eds) (1994) The New Oxford Annotated 19 Bible (NRSV), New York: Oxford University Press. 20111 Milbank, J. (2003) Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, New York: 1 Routledge. Milton, J. (1991) Paradise Lost, ed. A. Fowler, London: Longman. 2 Moore, H. (2003) ‘Present and Correct’, Times Literary Supplement 15 3 August: 22. 4 Mullaney, S. (1983) ‘Strange Things, Gross Terms, Curious Customs: 5 The Rehearsal of Cultures in the Late Renaissance’, Representations 6 3: 40–67. 7 Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16: 8 6–18. 9 –––– (1993) ‘Some Thoughts on Theories of Fetishism in the Context of Contemporary Culture’, October 65: 3–20. 30111 Murphy, J. W. (1983) The Social Philosophy of Martin Buber: The Social World 1 as a Human Dimension, Washington, DC: University Press of America. 2 Newell, P. (2003) Shakespeare and the Human Mystery, London: Azure. 3 Newman, F. B. (1966) ‘The Rejection of Falstaff and the Rigorous Charity 4 of the King’, Shakespeare Studies 2: 153–61. 5 Newman, K. (1996) ‘Reprise: Gender, Sexuality and Theories of 6 Exchange’, in The Merchant of Venice, ed. N. Wood, Buckingham: Open 7 University Press. Nietzsche, F. ([1889/1895] 1968) Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, 8 trans. and intro. by R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 9 –––– ([1881] 1982) Daybreak: thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. 40111 R. J. Hollingdale, intro. M. Tanner, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 4111 sity Press. Bibliography 229

1111 –––– ([1882/1887] 2001) The Gay Science, ed. B. Williams, trans. 2 J. Nauckhoff, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3 Otto, R. (1958) The Idea of the Holy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 4 Ouditt, S. (1996) ‘Explaining Woman’s Frailty: Feminist Readings of Gertrude’, in Hamlet, ed. Peter J. Smith and Nigel Wood, Buckingham: 5111 Open University Press. 6 Ovid (1965) Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation 1567, ed. 7111 J. F. Nims, New York: Macmillan. 8 Parker, P. (1993) ‘Preposterous Reversals: Love’s Labour’s Lost’, Modern 9 Language Quarterly 54: 435–82. 1011 –––– (1996) Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context, Chicago: 1 University of Chicago Press. 2 Pechter, E. (2003) ‘What’s Wrong with Literature?’, Textual Practice 17: 505–26. 3111 Petrarch (1976) Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. 4 and ed. R. M. Durling, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 5 Phan, C. (1991) ‘La tornada et l’envoi: fonctions structurelles et pöié- 6 tiques’, Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale XXXIV: 57–61. 7 Pietz, W. (1985) ‘The Problem of the Fetish, I’, Res 9: 5–17. 8 –––– (1987) ‘The Problem of the Fetish, II’, Res 13: 23–45. 9 –––– (1988) ‘The Problem of the Fetish, IIIa’, Res 16: 105–23. 20111 Poole, K. (1995) ‘Saints Alive! Falstaff, Martin Marprelate, and the Staging of Puritanism’, Shakespeare Quarterly 46: 47–75. 1 Porter, J. (1979) The Drama of Speech Acts: Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy, 2 Berkeley: University of California Press. 3 Potter, L. (1999) ‘Humor Out of Breath: Francis Gentleman and the 4 Henry IV Plays’, in Shakespeare Text and Theater: Essays in Honor of Jay 5 Halio, ed. L. Potter and A. F. Kinney, Newark: University of Delaware 6 Press. 7 Puttenham, G. (1589) The Arte of English Poesie, London: Richard Field, 8 Short Title Catalogue 20519. 9 Quintilian ([88] 1959) Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 30111 Rheim’s New Testament (1582) Rheim: John Fogny. 1 Rockas, L. (1973) ‘“A Dish of Doves”: The Merchant of Venice’, English 2 Literary History 40: 339–51. 3 Rorty, R. (1996) ‘The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature’, 4 Raritan 16: 8–17. 5 Rose, G. (1995) Love’s Work, London: Chatto & Windus. 6 –––– (1996) Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation, Cam- 7 bridge: Cambridge University Press. –––– (1999) Paradiso, London: Menard Press. 8 Rubinstein, F. (1989) A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their 9 Significance, 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Macmillan. 40111 Rushdie, S. (1991) ‘Is Nothing Sacred?’, in Imaginary Homelands, London: 4111 Granta. 230 Bibliography

1111 Ryan, K. (1995) ‘The Future of History in Henry IV’, in Henry IV, Parts 2 One and Two, ed. N. Wood, Buckingham: Open University Press. 3 –––– (2002) Shakespeare, 3rd edn, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 4 Sardar, Z. (1979) The Future of Muslim Civilisation, London: Croom Helm. Schalkwyk, D. (2002) ‘Historicism in Purgatory’, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural 5111 Studies 11: 75–92. 6 –––– (2004) Literature and the Touch of the Real, Newark, DE: University of 17 Delaware Press. 8 Schlegel, A. W. (1846) A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 9 revised by A. J. W. Morrison, in Bate 1997. 1011 Shakespeare, W. (1982) The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint, ed. J. Kerrigan, 1 The New Penguin Shakespeare, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 2 –––– (1987) Hamlet, ed. G. R. Hibbard, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sheldrake, P. (1992) Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretation and 3111 Method, New York: Crossroad. 4 Shell, A. (1999) Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 5 1558–1660, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6 Shuchter, J. D. (1968) ‘Prince Hal and Francis: The Imitation of An 7 Action’, Shakespeare Studies 3: 129–37. 8 Shuger, D. (1990) Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, 19 and the Dominant Culture, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 20111 –––– (1994) The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity, Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press. 1 –––– (2001) Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State 2 in Measure for Measure, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 3 Silberstein, L. J. (1989) Martin Buber’s Social and Religious Thought: Aliena- 4 tion and the Quest for Meaning, New York: New York University Press. 5 Sinfield, A. (1992) Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident 6 Reading, Oxford: Clarendon. 7 Smith, R. (1980) ‘“A Heart Cleft in Twain”: The Dilemma of Shake- 8 speare’s Gertrude’, in The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, 9 ed. C. R. S. Lenz, G. Greene and C. Thomas Neely, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 30111 Spenser, E. (1977) ‘The Faerie Queene’, in Spenser: Poetical Works, ed. J. C. 1 Smith and E. de Selincourt, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2 Stallybrass, P. (1999) ‘Editing as Cultural Formation: The Sexing of 3 Shakespeare’s Sonnets’, in The Sonnets: Critical Essays, ed. James Schiffer, 4 New York and London: Garland Publishing. 5 –––– (2002) ‘The Value of Culture and the Disavowal of Things’, in The 6 Culture of Capital: Property, Cities, and Knowledge in Early Modern England, 7 ed. H. S. Turner, New York and London: Routledge. –––– and A. R. Jones (2000), ‘Fetishisms and Renaissances’, in Historicism, 8 Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture, ed. C. Mazzio and D. Trevor, 9 New York and London: Routledge. 40111 ––––, M. de Grazia and M. Quilligan (eds) (1996) Subject and Object in 4111 Renaissance Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bibliography 231

1111 Starling, R. (1997/8) ‘Shakespeare’s Haunt: The Translations of Hamlet 2 in Derrida’s Specters of Marx’, Actes de langue française et de linguistine (ALFA) 3 10/11: 193–213. 4 Swinburne, R. (1994) The Christian God, Oxford: Clarendon. Taylor, G. (2001) ‘Divine [ ]sences’, Shakespeare Survey 54: 13–30. 5111 Taylor, M. C. (2003) The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture, 6 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 7111 –––– (2004) Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption, 8 Chicago; University of Chicago Press. 9 Tyacke, N. (1987) Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c.1590– 1011 1640, Oxford: Clarendon. 1 Vickers, N. (1981) ‘Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered 2 Rhyme’, Critical Inquiry 8.2: 265–79. –––– (1982) ‘The Body Re-Membered: Petrarchan Lyric and the Strategies 3111 of Description’, in Mimesis: From Mirror to Method, Augustine to Descartes, 4 ed. S. G. Nichols Jr, Hanover, NH: University Presses of New England. 5 –––– (1985) ‘“The Blazon of Sweet Beauty’s Best”: Shakespeare’s 6 Lucrece’, in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. P. Parker and G. 7 Hartman, New York and London: Methuen. 8 Ward, G. (1998) ‘Kenosis and Naming: Beyond Analogy and Towards 9 Allegoria Amoris’, in Heelas 1998. 20111 –––– (1999) ‘Kenosis: Death, Discourse and Resurrection’, in L. Gardner, D. Moss, B. Quash and G. Ward 1999. 1 Wells, R. Headlam (2000a) ‘Historicism and “Presentism” in Early 2 Modern Studies’, The Cambridge Quarterly 29: 37–60. 3 –––– (2000b) Shakespeare on Masculinity, Cambridge: Cambridge University 4 Press. 5 Wheeler, W. (1999) ‘Melancholic Modernity and Contemporary Grief: 6 The Novels of Graham Swift’, in Literature and the Contemporary: Fictions 7 and Theories of the Present, ed. R. Luckhurst and P. Marks, Harlow: 8 Longman. 9 Whitney, C. (1999) ‘“Usually in the werking Daies”: Playgoing Journey- men, Apprentices, and Servants in Guild Records, 1582–1592’, 30111 Shakespeare Quarterly 50: 433–58. 1 Williams, G. (1997) A Glossary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language, London: 2 Athlone. 3 Wilson, R. (2004) Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance, 4 Manchester: Manchester University Press. 5 Witmore, M. (2001) Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern 6 England, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 7 Wright, E. P. (1975–6) ‘Hal and Francis in King Henry IV, Part I: Another View’, McNeese Review 22: 62–9. 8 Yan, Y. (1996) The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese 9 Village, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 40111 Young, D. P. (1966) Something of Great Constancy: The Art of A Midsummer 4111 Night’s Dream, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 232 Bibliography

1111 Zˇ izˇek, S. (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso. 2 –––– (2000a) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, 3 London and New York: Verso. 4 –––– (2000b) The Fragile Absolute – Or, Why Is The Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, London: Verso. 5111 –––– (2001) On Belief, London and New York: Routledge. 6 –––– (2002) Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 17 and Related Dates, London and New York: Verso. 8 –––– (2003) The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, 9 Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 19 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111 1111 2 3 4 5111 Index 6 7111 8 9 1011 1 2 Abraham, Nicolas 163–4 205; Saint Paul: The Foundation of 3111 absolute xvii, 7, 15, 18, 202–4, Universalism 12, 25 n.2, 26 n.18, 4 208 80, 81, 92 n.11, 93 n.19, 211 5 Adam 101 n.2 6 Adorno, Theodor, W. Aesthetic Balthasar, Hans Urs von 204–5 7 Theory 136–8 Bate, Jonathan 147–8 8 Aers, David 210 n.12 Baudrillard, Jean xviii 9 aesthetics 136–8, 147–51, 157; Bauman, Zygmunt 11 20111 and religion 166–73, 178–80 Beckett, Samuel 148; Endgame 138 1 Ali, Tariq 11 Beckwith, Sarah 210 n.12 All’s Well That Ends Well 18, 19, Benjamin, Andrew 97 2 28–49 Benjamin, Walter 140 3 Amirthanayagam, David P. 71 n.2 Berger, John 127 n.14 4 anthropology 74–6 Bernstein, Jay M. 156 n.7 5 Antony and Cleopatra 2, 3, 5, 8, 124 Berry, Philippa 25 n.2, 19–20, 6 apparition and artworks 135–8, 94–108 7 140–51; and messianic Bhagavad Gita 200–1 8 commitment or summons 176; Bible 32 9 and otherness 132–3; of spectre Bishop, T.G. 16, 25 n.8 175–6; (see also ghost/phantom; Blair, Tony 12, 154, 156 n.13 30111 spectre/s); and visor effect 175 Bloch, Ernst 27 n.25 1 Aristotle 168, 170 Bloom, Harold 71 n.2, 205 2 Arminianism 106 Bowers, Fredson 52, 59 3 Armstrong, Isobel 137, 153 Bowie, Andrew 136 4 Artaud, Antonin 148 Bradley, A.C. 71 n.2, 198–9, 5 As You Like It 15, 16, 18, 26 n.17 207–8 6 Attridge, Derek 155 n.2 Brecht, Bertolt 148 7 Augustine 127 n.9, 127 n.10 Brook, Peter xvii, 20, 134–8, 149, 155 n.4 8 Bacon, Francis 97 Brown, Marshall 209 n.3 9 Badiou, Alain Ethics: An Essay on Bruns, Gerald 150 40111 the Understanding of Evil 16, 25 Bruster, Douglas 10 n.13, 110 4111 n.2, 26 n.18, 79, 155 n.2, 196, n.2 234 Index

1111 Buber, Martin 19, 50, 72 n.9, 72 210 n.15, 213–18; 2 n.16; I and Thou 58–60, 62–6, acknowledgement of 182; 3 69 in All’s Well That Ends Well 4 Buddhism 213 29–31, 34–6; of Christ 12; Burgess, Anthony 214 (see also Derrida, Jacques); and 5111 Bush, George 11–12, 154 difference and sameness 196; 6 gift of 131–2 ; of God xvii, 92 17 Callaghan, Dympna 26 n.13 n.10; and the Holocaust 191, 8 Calvinism 100, 108 n.3, 105, 110, 210 n.11; and life 152, 192–3; 9 199; (see also Reformation) (see also spirituality; and 1011 Caputo, John D. xvii–xix, 25 mourning); and Nietzsche 1 n.2, 25 n.6, 56, 72 n.8, 77–8, 214–18; of Old Hamlet 131–2, 2 92 n.6, 185 n.4 188–9; of Richard II 66–7; and Catholicism xvii, 2, 25 n.3, 71 social subjection 40; and 3111 n.1, 100, 105, 110, 190; tragedy 213 4 Medieval 168; Roman 126 n.1 deconstruction 14–15, 21, 158, 5 Cavell, Stanley 138–9 173–180, 214 6 Chapman, George 104 de Grazia, Margreta 98–9, 126 7 Cheney, Patrick 26 n.21 n.2, 126 n.3, 209 n.3 8 Chesterton, Gilbert K. 205 Derrida, Jacques xix, 11, 16–17, 19 Christ 5, 27 n.28, 81–2, 84, 27 n.25, 210 n.13, 210 n.15; 20111 100–1, 191; (see also Acts of Religion 14, 25 n.2, 194; Christianity; God; Jesus) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A 1 Christianity 2, 6, 12, 15, 16, 27 Conversation with Jacques Derrida 2 n.23, 27 n.28, 31–2, 34, 37–8, 210 n.14; The Gift of Death 3, 92 3 41–2, 55, 74, 77, 85–9, 93 n.16, n.5, 92 n.6, 141, 143, 146–9, 4 127 n.10, 154, 166, 168, 178, 152, 156 n.9, 156 n.14; Given 5 182, 188, 215; (see also Christ Time: 1. Counterfeit Money 77; 6 and iconoclasm 126 n.1; Jesus); Monolingualism of the Other; or, 7 and orthodoxy 199 the Prosthesis of Origin 155 n.5; 8 Coakley, Sarah 92 n.10, 93 n.17 On the Name 92 n.11; Positions 9 Cohen, Walter 83 xvii; Specters of Marx 11–15, Colebrook, Claire 211 n.31 17–19, 21, 23, 56, 99, 132, 30111 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 44 173–80, 187, 192–7, 201–4, 1 communism 15 210 n.16 2 Coriolanus 201 Descartes, René 97 3 Coyle, Martin 84, 89 de Vries, Hent 25 n.2 4 Cranmer, Thomas 106 Diehl, Huston 24 n.1 5 Crawshaw, Richard 218, 218 n.3 Docherty, Thomas 136 6 Cymbeline 9, 38 Dolan, Frances E. 25 n.3 7 Duffy, Eamon 106 Daniel 32 Durling, Robert 112, 127 n.8 8 Dante 7 Dutton, Richard 25 n.3 9 Dean, Paul 51 40111 death/the dead 184, 188–90, 191, Eagleton, Terry 17, 27 n.27 4111 193, 195, 196, 205–7, Eckhardt, Meister 204, 211 n.29 Index 235

1111 Eco, Umberto xviii Freud, Sigmund 20, 117–19, 2 Eliot, T.S. 166 122, 128 n.19, 214, 215; and 3 Ellis-Fermor, Una 67 fetishism 111, 118, 119, 120, 4 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 89; 121, 127 n.13; Interpretation of court of 94 Dreams 161; Libidostauung 128 5111 Enlightenment 111 n.18; Penisersatz 120–2, 124; 6 Erasmus 25 n.9 Three Essays on the Theory of 7111 essentialism xix, 3, 8 Sexuality 117, 118, 119; 8 Eucharist 92 n.10, 93 n.5, 93 Verleugnen 111, 118; (see also 9 n.16, 210 n.12, 205 fetishism) 1011 Eve 101 Friedman, Maurice S. 72 1 existentialism 166–73, 202 n.9 2 Fukuyama, Francis 11 Felperin, Howard 14 fundamentalism 27 n.23; 3111 feminism 116, 27 n.28; (see also (see also Islam) 4 gender) 5 Fernie, Ewan 24 n.2, 209 n.3, 209 Gallagher, Lowell 24 n.2, 19, 6 n.4, 186–211 73–93, 127 n.9, 210 n.9, 210 7 fetishism 109–29; and the dish of n.10 8 doves (The Merchant of Venice) gender 7, 8, 22–3, 38–40, 45–7, 9 87–91; and kenosis (The 101, 105–8, 115–16, 119–20, 20111 Merchant of Venice) 82–7; and 206; (see also feminism) metonymy 117; negative ghost/phantom 157–85, 186–211; 1 discourse of 111; and objects of and awareness-unawareness 2 lure and illusion 162; and 163; as conscience 158; (see 3 original sexual object 117–18; also dead/death); demonic 182; 4 and otherness 110–11; and and the divine 165; and 5 Petrarch 112–17; and the doubling 165; -as-erasure 158; 6 phallus 162–3; pre-modern -as failure 157; and healing 7 discourse of idolatry and 165; heterogeneity of 180; 8 modern discourse of 116; and holy/unholy 157, 175, 182; 9 Reformation iconoclasm, and in Marx’s Communist Manifesto idolatry 20, 112; as religious 174–5; and memory 165–6, 30111 relic 117; and secularization 190; and mourning 21, 1 and a demonized Other 111; 161–2, 183–4, 176–7; (see 2 and the Sonnets 122–5 also spirituality: and mourning); 3 Feuerbach, Ludwig xvii and narrative catharsis 184; 4 Finlayson, Michael 25 n.3 and other/difference 13, 163–4, 5 Foakes, R. A. 152 176, 193, 196; (see also 6 Foucault, Michel 96, 108 n.2 spirituality: and otherness/ 7 Frascati-Lochhead, Marta 93 difference/alterity/the beyond); n.13 and phantom effect 164; as- 8 Freccero, John 112, 127 n.8, 127 unconscious 157; and the 9 n.9 self 193 40111 Freinkel, Lisa 24 n.2, 20, 109–29, Girard, René 21, 24 n.2, 157, 4111 128 n.20 184, 185 n.5, 197 236 Index

1111 God xvii, xviii, 42, 52, 66–7, 82, 1 Henry VI 3, 5 2 87, 100–1, 113, 134, 140, 2 Henry VI 3 3 145, 154, 171–2, 177, 199, Henry V 8, 51, 62, 63, 65, 67–8, 4 200, 214 70 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Henry VIII 9 5111 171, 173, 211 n.25 historicism 187, 191, 206, 209 6 Grady, Hugh 24 n.2, 51, 72 n.12 n.3, 213–14; new historicism 17 Green, André 164, 185 n.2 24 n.1, 27 n.27, 37, 210 n.7, 8 Greenblatt, Stephen 26 n.19, 210 210 n.9 9 n.9, 210 n.10, 211 n.26; Hamlet Hoeniger, David F. 108 n.7 1011 in Purgatory 11, 20–1, 26 n.22, Horner, Robyn 92 n.2, 92 n.3, 92 1 131–2, 187–93, 199, 202, 210 n.7 2 n.7, 210 n.11, 210 n.12, 210 humanism 93 n.20, 211 n.31; n.16; The Inevitable Pit: On liberal 87 3111 Becoming American 210 n.11; Hunt, Maurice 71 n.1 4 Shakespearean Negotiations 10, 188, Husserl, Edmund 92 n.3 5 193, 206 n.31; Will in the World 6 189, 189 n.8 ideology 7–8, 12, 23, 198, 217; (see 7 Gregerson, Linda 93 n.15 also spirituality: and ideology) 8 Greville, Fulke Mustapha 213, 218 Irigaray, Luce 25 n.2, 27 n.28 19 n.1 Islam 3, 16, 26 n.15; 20111 fundamentalism xviii, 11, 209; Habermas, Jürgen 10 and terror 12–13 1 Hall, Kim 89 2 Halpern, Richard 127 n.13, Jackson, Ken 24 n.1, 26 n.16, 56, 3 201 72 n.8, 77 n.5 4 Hamilton, Gary 71 n.1 Jameson, Frederic 25 n.5, 25 n.11 5 Hamlet xvii, 7, 8, 13, 16, 17, 21, Janicaud, Dominique 92 n.7 6 66, 157–85, 186–211, 211 Janik, Allan A. xvii 7 n.22; (see also Greenblatt, Janowitz, H.D. 72 n.14 8 Stephen; Hamlet in Purgatory) Jesus 32, 81, 87, 161, 199; 9 Hammer, Espen 139 (see also Christ; Christianity; Hampson, Daphne 93 n.13 God) 30111 Hand, Sean 72 n.16 Jews/Jewishness/Judaism 5, 74, 1 Harvey, Gabriel 97, 104 77, 80, 84–8, 93 n.16, 110, 113, 2 Hawkes, Terence 186, 206 n.6, 188–90 3 209 n.1 John, Gospel of/ Saint 93 n.20, 4 Hazlitt, William 44–5 93 n.21, 199, 206 5 Heelas, Paul 26 n.12, 27 n.24 Johnson, Samuel 45–6 6 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Jones, Ann Rosalind 109–12, 126 7 10, 12, 27 n.28, 92 n.10 n.3 Heidegger, Martin 25 n.6, 92 n.3, Joughin, John J. 20, 130–56, 155 8 96–7, 205; (see also n.6, 156 n.7 9 phenomenology) Joy, Morny 25 n.2, 27 n.28 40111 1 Henry IV 57, 58, 63–6, 105 Joyce, James xviii, 181, 202 4111 2 Henry IV 57, 61–3, 70–1 Julius Caesar 6 Index 237

1111 Kahn, Coppélia 56 Luke, Gospel of/St 93 n.20, 2 Kamps, Ivo 56 200 3 Kant, Immanuel 205, 211 n.30 Lupton, Julia Reinhard 24 n.2, 24 4 Kastan, David Scott 186, 209 n.2, n.3, 26 n.16, 72 n.17 209 n.3 Luther, Martin 20, 112, 127 n.7 5111 Kearney, James 126 n.1, 126 n.3 Lyotard, Jean-François 12 6 Kearney, Richard 21, 79, 157–85, 7111 185 n.3, 197, 199 Macbeth 5–7, 25 n.7, 70, 216–18 8 Keats, John 147 McCoy, Richard 24 n.1 9 Kerrigan, John 108 n.5, McGee, C. E. 71 n.2 1011 Kierkegaard, Søren 16, 21, 134–5, Machiavelli, Niccolò 51 1 141, 153, 157, 177, 178; On McLaverty, James 52 2 Authority and Revelation 172; Fear MacLean, Hugh 72 n.14 and Trembling 145, 151–3, Malinowski, Bronislaw 75 3111 175–6, 180, 198–201, 203, 208, Malone, Edmund 123 n.22 4 210 n.19, 211 n.23, 211 n.24; Manonni, O. 126 n.5 5 Stages on Life’s Way 166–73 Marion, Jean-Luc 74, 78, 83, 88, 6 King Lear 2, 6, 16–17, 63, 70, 82, 90, 92 n.11 7 152–3 Mark, Gospel of/St 93 n.20, 93 8 Kittredge, G. L. 52 n.21 9 Knapp, Jeffrey 24 n.1, 25 n.9, 55 Marlowe, Christopher 190 20111 Kohanski, Alexander S. 72 n.9 Marotti, Arthur F. 24 n.1, 24 n.2, Krips, Henry 127 n.13 25 n.3 1 Marsh D. R. C. 72 n.14 2 Lacan, Jacques 15, 21, 127 n.13, Marshall, David 148, 150–1, 156 3 157, 161–2, 165, 182, 185 n.1, n.10 4 202 Marx, Karl xvii, 13, 56, 75, 5 Laclau, Ernesto 11 173–5, 194, 202 6 Lake, Peter 25 n.1, 25 n.3 Marxism 10–12, 26 n.13, 175 7 Lenin, Vladimir 16 materialism xviii, 2, 3, 5, 10, 19, 8 Levin, Harry 72 n.7 21 n.1, 74, 76, 89, 95, 195, 9 Levinas, Emmanuel 14, 19, 50, 72 201, 209 n.5, 212; cultural 10, n.16, 74, 79, 83, 90, 176; Entre 24 n.1; dialectical 10, 12; 30111 nous: Thinking-of-the Other 92 Marxist 10; the new 1 n.11, 93 n.13; Ethics and Infinity: materialism 110, 126 n.2; of 2 Conversations with Phillippe Nemo objects 98; secular xix 3 68–9, 210 n.17; Otherwise than Matthew, Gospel of/St 43, 87, 4 Being or Beyond Essence 51; In the 200 5 Time of the Nations 92 n.11; Mauss, Marcel 56, 75–6 6 Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Mazzotta, Giuseppe 112, 127 7 Exteriority 79–80, 150 n.8 Levine, Nina 55 Measure for Measure 7, 9 8 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 75 The Merchant of Venice 1–2, 5–6, 19, 9 Loomis, Roger Sherman 93 n.14 73–93, 92 n.4, 93 n.16, 93 40111 Love’s Labour’s Lost 16, 71 n.4, n.18, 93 n.20 4111 94–108 Messiah 26 n.19, 194 238 Index

1111 messianic 14–15, 27 n.25, 79, phenomenology 74, 76, 77, 89, 92 2 133, 140, 154, 168, 175, 178, n.3, 92n.7, 93 n.18, 95–6, 201; 3 194, 198, 201–2 (see also Heidegger, Martin) 4 metaphysics 96, 143 philosophy xvii, xix, 21, 74, 97, Metzger, Bruce M. 92 n.8 131, 157, 173 5111 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1, ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ 16 6 3–4, 5, 7, 16, 18, 20, 25 n.6, Pietz, William 110–11, 116, 127 17 33, 39, 130–56, 133, 134, n.15 8 139–40, 144, 147, 156 n.10, Platonism 127 n.9 9 151 poetry 4, 6; (see also spirituality: 1011 Milbank, John 93 n.16 and poetry) 1 Milton, John 7, 215, 218 n.2 Poole, Kristen 71 n.1 2 modernism 215 Porter, Joseph 52 Moore, Helen 186, 209 n.3 postcolonialism 190, 210 n.10 3111 Morales, Alberto 72 n.9 post-Enlightenment 195 4 Moses 32 post-Marxism 11–2, 211 n.31 5 Mouffe, Chantal 11–2 postmodernism xvii, xviii, 8, 18, 6 Much Ado About Nothing 64 24 n.2, 25 n.2, 95, 131, 165, 7 Mullaney, Steven 72 n.6 180, 188, 201 8 Mulvey, Laura 116, 127 n.14 poststructuralism 15, 16, 37, 204 19 Murphy, John W. 72 n.9 Potter, Lois 52 20111 Murphy, Roland E. 92 n.8 pre-Copernicus xviii presentism 24 n.2, 186, 186 n.3, 1 Nashe, Thomas 97, 104 208 2 Newell, Philip 25 n.4 Protestantism 2, 27 n.23, 71 n.1, 3 Nietzsche, Friedrich xviii, 214–18 100, 109, 126 n.1,189–90, 210 4 Newman, Franklin B. 71 n.2 n.22; (see also Reformation) 5 Newman, Karen 75 psychoanalysis 21, 109, 115–16, 6 157, 161–4, 180, 214 7 Othello 2–3, 5, 12 Puritans 41 8 Otto, Rudolf 157 Puttenham, George 121–2 9 Ouditt, Sharon 211 n.32 Ovid: Metamorphoses 72 n.11 Quilligan, Maureen 98–9, 162 n.2 30111 1 pagan 31–2, 37 realism xix 2 Parker, John 126 n.3 Reformation 50 n.1, 84 n.16; (see 3 Parker, Patricia 94–5 also Calvinism; Protestantism) 4 Pascal, Blaise 97 religion 2, 8, 11–12, 19, 43, 71 5 Patocka, Jan 92 n.5 n.1, 74, 78, 80, 84, 109, 117, 6 Paul, Gospel of/St 15, 80–3, 157, 166–80, 198, 200, 212, 7 86–8, 100, 134–5, 140, 199 217; (see also Christianity; God; Pechter, Edward 209 n.3 Jesus; Jews/Jewishness/ 8 Petrarch 109, 112–13, 128 n.16, Judaism; spirituality: and 9 118, 122–3, 127 n.8, 127 n.13, religion) 40111 128 n.16 Renaissance 76, 98, 109, 212, 215 4111 Phan, Chantal 108 n.9 Richard II 6, 70 Index 239

1111 Richard III 1, 3, 5, 6 theatre 2–8, 16, 18, 20–1, 24, 2 Rockas, Leo 87 25 n.9, 132, 136–8, 140, 150, 3 Romanticism 147–8 181–182, 187; (see also 4 Romeo and Juliet 148 spirituality: and ‘Holy Rorty, Richard 25 n.6 Theatre’); and alienation 215; 5111 Rose, Gillian 131, 135, 150, 156 anguished 212–13; and the 6 n.12 apparitional/visionary 132–4; 7111 Rubinstein, Frankie 108 n.8 (see also apparition; 8 Ruiter, David 19, 50–72 ghost/phantom; spectre/s); 9 Rushdie, Salman 25 n.6 beyond good and evil 215; and 1011 Ryan, Kiernan 18–19, 26 n.17, 27 bodily life 10, 23, 43, 102, 105, 1 n.25, 28–49, 155 n.1 139, 200; and contemporary 2 debates 2, 9, 12, 19, 21, 27 Sardar, Ziauddin 26 n.15 n.23, 209, 212; and continuity 3111 Scanlon, Michael J. 77–8, 92 n.6 arising from negation 214–15; 4 Schalkwyk, David 209 n.5, 210 and crisis/tension/struggle 6, 7, 5 n.7 18; and death 106–7; (see also 6 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von death); of deconstruction 14–15; 7 147–8 deferral of ethics and politics in 8 Sheldrake, Philip 25 n.10 Hamlet in Purgatory 192; 9 Shell, Alison 24 n.1, 25 n.3 definition of 8, 21, 25 n.10; and 20111 Shuchter, J.D. 52 Derrida 11, 13–14; (see also Shuger, Deborah 24 n.1 Derrida, Jacques: Specters of 1 Silberstein, Laurence J. 72 n.9 Marx); and dispossession 17; 2 Sinfield, Alan 10, 199, 207 and dissatisfaction 215; and 3 Smith, Rebecca 211 n.32 doubling 182; and the early 4 sociology 74 modern 213; and experience 7, 5 The Sonnets 20, 109, 122–5, 126 24 n.2; feel good 212; of female 6 n.5, 128 n.21 generativity 7; French feminist 7 spectre/s (see also apparition); of theoreticians of 27 n.28; (see also 8 communism 174; and a crisis feminism; gender); and fetishism 9 of narrative memory 159–61; 109–27; (see also fetish); and and difference/otherness 163, gift/gift exchange 56–7, 73–93, 30111 176, 181; (see also ghost/ 77–8, 81, 85; and God or the 1 phantom); of Hamlet 157–85; divine 82–3, 113, 134, 165, 2 and phenomenal ego 193; 177, 182, 198–200, 202; (see also 3 and phenomenal form of the God; spirituality: and 4 world 193; and spirituality transcendence); and grace 19, 5 180 (see also spirituality: and 80–1, 85, 87–8, 95, 99–101, 6 spectre/s); and theatrical 105–8, 145; of the graveyard 7 culture 181; and visor effect 201; and Hamlet and ethics 195; 175 historical potential of 204; holy 8 Spenser, Edmund 104 The Faerie or unholy 165; and ‘Holy 9 Queene 93 n.15 Theatre’ 20, 135–6, 149–50; 40111 spirituality 1, 19, 25 n.10; and and humanism 27 n.23; and 4111 aesthetics/artworks/drama/ ideology 9; (see also ideology); 240 Index

1111 and indifference 204; of tragedy 212–3; and 2 immanence 188, 201; and transcendence 43–4, 46–7, 3 intensity 216; and literature 25 49–51, 54, 64, 69–71, 78–81, 4 n.6; (see also poetry; spirituality: 85–6, 90–1, 111, 136, 191, 197, and poetry); and materialism 3, 202–3, 205; (see also spirituality: 5111 9–10, 20, 74, 187 n.5; (see also and God or the divine); and 6 materialism); militant 12–13; truth 6, 7, 9; (see also truth); as 17 and miracle or resurrection 19, ultimate 18, 24, 26 n.22, 188, 8 27 n.23, 32–3, 36, 38, 41–4; as 191; and urgency 5; version 9 mode of opposition 9–10; and of legality 99; and worldly 1011 mourning 21, 145, 153, 161, shame 17 1 176–7, 182–4, 188; (see also Stallybrass, Peter 26 n.13, 98–9, 2 dead/death; ghost/phantom); 109–10, 126 n.1, 126 n.2, 126 and ‘new age’ religion 10, 18, n.3, 128 n.17, 128 n.22 3111 23; Nietzschean 214–15; (see also Starling, Roger 198, 210 n.13 4 Nietzsche); as open structure Steevens, George 128 n.22 5 8–10; and ordinary life/ Subjectivity 3, 7, 15–16, 68–70, 6 everydayworld 20, 50–72, 81–2, 85–6, 95, 97–8, 101, 110, 7 59–61, 60, 71, 134, 137, 142–3, 126 n.2, 168, 196, 205, 214 8 150; otherness/difference/ Swinburne, Richard 210 n.21 19 alterity/the beyond xvii, xix, 20111 3–5, 6, 8, 13, 20, 26 n.19, The Taming of the Shrew 39 28–9, 33, 78–9, 90–1, 95, 111, Taylor, Gary 24 n.2 1 132, 133–6, 138, 140, 146, 150, Taylor, Mark C. xviii 2 154–5, 163–4, 175–8, 181, The Tempest 14, 22–3, 27 n.28, 33 3 187–8, 191, 193–6, 198, 199, terror 9, 12, 16, 19, 21, 43–4, 76, 4 203–6, 212; and poetry 4, 16; 154; (see also Islam: and terror) 5 (see also spirituality: and theology 2, 77, 84, 92 n.10, 93 6 literature; poetry); and political n.18, 93 n.20, 107, 115, 157–8, 7 history 61; and power 9; of 178, 180–4, 199, 203 8 rashness 21, 188, 194, 198–201, Thomas, Gospel of/St 27 n.28 9 199 n.22, 204; and relationship Timon of Athens 8, 56, 92 60, 61, 63–4, 70; and religion Trinitarian 93 n.20 30111 2, 9–10, 16–17, 30–2, 37, 38, truth xviii, 9, 97, 136, 164, 196, 1 42–3, 45, 65–7, 80, 82–4, 87–8, 201, 205, 213, 214; (see also 2 198; (see also religion); and spirituality: and truth) 3 revelation 134; and sacrality 95; Tyacke, Nicholas 108 n.11 4 and salvation 101–8, 165; 5 sexual 7; and the spectral 193; Vickers, Nancy 109, 112, 115, 6 (see also apparition; ghost/ 116, 118, 123, 127 n.14 7 phantom; spectre/s); and subjectivity 3, 19, 214; (see also Ward, Graham 92 n.10, 92 n.20 8 subjectivity); and suicide 218; Wells, Robin Headlam 209 n.3 9 and theology 2; and theory 2; Wernick, Andrew 25 n.2 40111 and things 96–9, 108, 113, Wheeler, Wendy 156 n.12 4111 119–21, 132, 175,177; and Whitney, Charles 52 Index 241

1111 Williams, Gordon 105 Absolute – Or, Why Is The 2 Wilson, Richard 24 n.2, 25 n.3, Christian Legacy Worth Fighting 3 26 n.23 For? 25 n.2, 26 n.18, 93 n.22, 4 The Winter’s Tale 2–5, 7, 21, 24, 206; The Puppet and the Dwarf: 141–6 152 The Perverse Core of Christianity 5111 Witmore, Michael 202, 211 n.22 12–14, 17, 25 n.2, 26 n.18, 27 6 Wright, Eugene 52, 72 n.7 n.28; The Sublime Object of 7111 Ideology 126 n.5; The Ticklish 8 Yan, Yunxiang 75 Subject: The Absent Centre of 9 Young, David 148 Political Ontology 15, 25 n.2, 26 1011 n.18, 201–2; Welcome to the Desert 1 ˛i≈ek, Slavoj 14–18, 23, 26 n.19, of the Real!: Five Essays on 2 26 n.20, 205–6; On Belief 25 September 11 and Related Dates n.2, 26 n.18, 202; The Fragile 12–14, 25 n.2, 26 n.18, 206 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 4111