The Mythopoetics of Shakespeare's Warrior Queens
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
“Transfigured So Together”: The Mythopoetics of Shakespeare’s Warrior Queens The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Boit, Kathryn Louise. 2020. “Transfigured So Together”: The Mythopoetics of Shakespeare’s Warrior Queens. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37364874 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA “Transfigured so Together”: The Mythopoetics of Shakespeare’s Warrior Queens Kathryn Louise Boit A Thesis in the Field of English for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University March 2020 Copyright © 2020 Kathryn Louise Boit Abstract Shakespeare opens and closes his early comedy and late tragedy with Hippolyta and Cleopatra, the exotic and unruly matriarchal warrior queens who challenge conventional gender binaries, and control narrative power from the outset. They hold the male heroes hostage for sex, in the same way that men use women in the patriarchal system. However, despite critical views which would frame Shakespeare’s women as, “defeated”, or, “successfully contained”, in their respective endings of marriage, and death, this reading argues that Shakespeare gives his queens full mythopoetic power to avoid inscriptive entrapment, and thereby choose their own stories. Their poetry also bears the memory of the original speech-act of creation which unites heaven and earth, and lifts their Amazon archetypes into the mythological allegory of Venus, and the spiritual realm of Hesiod’s Gaia, Mother Nature, and the Christian Mother of God. Like the male heroes, Shakespeare’s militant matriarchs receive visions of this Essential Female, and lay down their weapons of destruction, and take up creative roles to imitate Her. Thus, the queens give literary birth to their heroes, as immortal gods, and so transfigure their worlds, together, through metaphors of love. iv Dedication I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Theoharis Constantine Theoharis for his careful guidance and patient instruction through all of my years of reading at Harvard. Chuck Houston and Mark Ouchida offered critical course advisement, and Dr. Talaya Delaney and Dr. Stephen Shoemaker launched the Thesis Proposal course which streamlined the early process for this paper. Reverend Dr. Stephanie Paulsell encouraged my focused study on religion in literature. Dr. Joyce Van Dyke taught me to listen for Shakespeare’s lyric and to champion these queens as warriors. My beloved spiritual father, Bishop Hierotheos, Effie, and Gerondissas Photini, and Silouani, as well as Archimandrite Zacharias and the monastics in Essex, modeled earthly patience and heavenly victory as true exemplars of the mystical marriage. And Fr. George Dragas reflected that angelic state of love in, and for the world. As carriers of the poetic muse, Tina Packer and Odds Bodkin gave voice to the cosmic force of the ancient, everyday, and eternal Female, in the dramatized myths, and emphasized the redemptive wisdom of respect for Her will. Professor Kimberley Patton and Dr. Bruce Beck inspired my efforts, along with Christina, and Rosemary, and Isabella, who embody Shakespeare’s indomitable female power. My long-suffering grandmothers passed that bold, but stifled spirit to me, and my mother exhorted me to transform it to action. Marshall, Helen, and especially Maria, urged me to trust, focus, and find the courage to articulate it. My sculling partner, Will Reimann, listened to my ideas for thousands of river miles. Dr. Mark Hyman, Kristin Boyt, and my team at v Sanoviv Hospital, supported me during the years of disabling Lyme disease, and Geoff Bryant and Chris Boit made my education possible. I could not have completed this task without each one of these inspirational teachers. I ask forgiveness for my failings, and pass on Shakespeare’s universal message to all of our children and grandchildren: you can bring heaven to earth, and earth to heaven through the pious speech-acts of love in your heart. vi Table of Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................... v Preface: An Antic Fable ..................................................................................................... ix Introduction On Earth as it is in Heaven ............................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 Background: The Bard Sings the Eternal Story .............................................. 25 A Note on Amazons .............................................................................................. 28 Cleopatra as an Amazon ....................................................................................... 30 Literature Review.................................................................................................. 35 Research Methods ................................................................................................. 72 Limitations ............................................................................................................ 74 Definition of Terms............................................................................................... 75 Chapter 2 Battlefields: These Lovers Seek a Place to Fight ........................................... 103 Hippolyta’s First Scene ....................................................................................... 110 Hippolyta’s Silence ............................................................................................. 128 Interpretive Choices for Hippolyta in Productions of Midsummer ..................... 132 Titania and Oberon ............................................................................................. 140 Cleopatra’s First Scene ....................................................................................... 147 Chapter 3 Bower and Barge: Love’s Paradox in the Womb/Tomb ................................ 176 Chapter 4 Monument and Mountaintop: The Queen’s View from On High .................. 193 Chapter 5 Such Tricks hath Strong Imagination: Tragical Mirth in Unlikely Weddings 217 Chapter 6 Eternally Knit: Speak Now, and Forever Hold your Peace ............................ 228 Simultaneous Dreams ......................................................................................... 236 vii Divine Speech Acts ............................................................................................. 245 Chapter 7 Immortal Longings: ’Til Death Do Us Part ................................................... 259 Conclusion. Her Passion Ends the Play ......................................................................... 303 Epilogue. Take Hands, All ............................................................................................ 315 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 332 viii Preface: An Antic Fable Once upon a time, in the beginning, when the Poet of Heaven first named and located itself in its creation, order and chaos “turned together” in the “universal” dance of creation. And, ever since, opposites continually conjoin to reinscribe Love’s original speech-act, and thus, remember the beloved Creator in sacred texts, or love poetry. These ritual performances reenact the naturally rhythmic inbreathing, and outpouring, of the Logos, or soul of love, in the liminal spaces surrounding the mysteries of creation, birth, and death. This is the mystical and mortal domain of lunatic lovers, as poets of Nature. As a fictional character, and a work of art, “made in the image and likeness” of the original uncreated artist, the poet’s eye apprehends visions of eternity in the lips and eyes of the beloved. The artist-lover recognizes the noble source of inspiration in the noble bringer of that joy, and yearns to return, repeatedly, to that secret space wherein the Poet of Heaven inscribes mortal members into the Book of Life and Remembrance. (Ps. 139:15; Ps. 56:9; Is. 4:3; Mal. 3:16; Ez. 9:2).1 Seething and sweating, in a fine Dionysian frenzy,2 the mortal poet’s “eye of the soul,” or “nous,” overjoys, and the eternal moment of ecstasy squeezes out through his pen. 1 In Ez. 9:2, the poet describes a scene where one of the celestial envoys “had the scribe’s inkhorn upon his loins.” This imagery evokes the phallic “horn” of male authority which contains the “ink” of blood, water, and semen, with which the inspired poet engraves his paternal testimony, as law. Shakespeare used the word, “inkhorn” in Henry VI (3.1.1330; 4.2.2411), and Much Ado (5.4.1635), in contexts that support this interpretation of the metaphor. I will add the symbols of pen and tongue, as similar instruments for writing. Also, as the Book of Life contains death and deathlessness, I will include swords, worms, crocodiles, and the ancient immortal serpent to the phallic imagery of the poet’s inkhorn. 2 Harold Brooks points out an important ironic inconsistency in Theseus’s speech. Like Antony’s exasperation over Cleopatra’s antagonism. Puttenham describes it as, “some divine instinct, the Platonicks call it furor” (3; Plato Phaedrus 245, 249 “madness or inspiration in poets and