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SHAKESPEARE and the LANGUAGE of VIOLENCE Juliet SHAKESPEARE AND THE LANGUAGE OF VIOLENCE Juliet Heather Wightman Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy English Studies University of Stirling September 2003 ProQuest Number: 13916326 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 13916326 Published by ProQuest LLC(2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Contents Page Abstract ii Declaration iv Acknowledgements v List of Illustrations vi Introduction 1 I ‘The strong reign of commanding words’ 13 II ‘Men are but blankes where pow’r doth write her lust’ 58 III ‘This helpless smoke of words’: Titus Andronicus and The Tape 95 o f Lucrece IV ‘Death made an end of them’: I Henry V I 138 V ‘All the world is but a bearbaiting’: ‘Why stay we to be 180 baited?’: Coriolanus VI ‘The surest way to charme a womans tongue is break her 221 neck’: A Yorkshire Tragedy Conclusion 271 Bibliography 275 Abstract Focusing on a selection of Shakespeare’s plays and narrative poems, I examine the way in which violence is articulated in language and argue that language not only figures acts of violence but is also violent in itself. I begin by situating my argument historically, exploring perceptions of language and its effects in Renaissance England, and demonstrate that there was a keen sense of the materiality of language. Following on from this, I outline the theoretical insights that inform my argument, highlighting the way in which Marx’s assertion that the subject is socially constructed can be usefully considered in conjunction with Lacan’s conception of the role of language in the development of the subject. I argue that because language precedes our entry into it, it effects a violent circumscription of the limits of the subject. I examine the representations of sexual violence in Titus Andronicus and The Tape o f Hucrece and identify the ways in which assumptions about gender difference are encoded within language, producing a female subject position largely shaped by patriarchal imperatives. In Chapter Four, I discuss executions as a highly visible form of state violence during the period and suggest that as a recurring spectacle, they contributed to the changing attitudes towards death. Paying particular attention to the representations of death in / Henry IH, I consider the way in which the production of history occurs at the level of language and emerges out of violent contestation. The violence of the bear-pit provides the focus for Chapter Five, and I offer a reading of Coriolanus which interrogates the significance of the metaphors of bearbaiting found throughout the play. I argue that the paradigm of unremitting violence offered by the sport addresses aspects of an anxious subjectivity neglected by the teleological form of tragedy. Finally, I discuss domestic violence in relation to A Yorkshire Tragedy , emphasising that the violent potentiality embodied within linguistic structures is often the agent of violence inflicted within the domestic sphere. Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own work and that all critical and other sources (literary and electronic) have been specifically and properly acknowledged, as and when they occur in the body of my text. Signed: September 2003 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the Students Awards Agency for Scotland for awarding me the Major Studentship that enabled me to undertake this research. I am also very grateful to the Department of English Studies at Stirling for providing additional financial support in the form of conference funding. I am greatly indebted to my supervisor Professor John Drakakis, for his tireless support and advice and for being consistently generous with his time and knowledge. His encouragement and erudition have been instrumental at all stages of the production of this dissertation. I would also like to thank Tim Lovering, Struan Mackenzie and Jo Venkov for their helpful comments on sections of the dissertation. Finally, I must acknowledge the generosity and support of my family, particularly of my mother and father. My brothers, Ruaridh and Campbell, have, in their own inimitable way, encouraged and motivated me throughout. My special thanks go to Tim. vi List of Illustrations Page ‘The Evill Tongue’ 1635 33 ‘The Triumph of Chastity’ 1488 95 Bear ward with bear 180 ‘A New Yeares Gift for Shrews’c. 1620 234 Introduction I - Shakespeare and the Language of Violence The works of Shakespeare have, since the publication of the first folio, functioned collectively as a privileged signifier of English, and subsequently British, culture. In his verses ‘To the Memory of ... the author Mr. William Shakespeare’, Ben Jonson writes, ‘Triumph my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,/ To whom all scenes of Europe owe’ (1954: 286) and Leonard Digges, in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems, praises his ‘language exquisite’ (Kermode 1965: 38). The elevated position afforded to Shakespeare’s works exemplifies the common equation of language with ‘high’ culture. Violence, in contrast, is frequendy perceived as a menacing presence, traversing the margins of culture. I disagree profoundly with this perceived opposition. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that violence and culture are in fact inextricably linked, and specifically, to argue that because the relationships which constitute ‘culture’ take place within language, violence and language are inextricably linked. My argument necessarily forms part of a larger challenge to the inherited idea that Shakespeare’s works exist in a vacuum, unaffected by the conditions in which they were produced, and interpreted by an audience and readership that remain equally detached from their cultural moment. This idea, which has proved remarkably persistent, contributes to a perception that Shakespearean literature and drama transcends its historical bounds, and promotes an abstracted notion of ‘Shakespeare’ and in particular ‘Shakespearean language’ which is upheld as the ultimate example of, and appropriated in the name of, elite culture. Frank Kermode claims to be able to pinpoint c[t]he years 1599- 1600’ as the time when Shakespeare’s language ascends ‘to a new level of achievement and difficulty’ (2000: ix). Harold Bloom even suggests, in an argument which if nothing else tacitly acknowledges language as the place in which the social subject is produced, that Shakespeare invented ‘what has become the most accepted mode for representing character and personality in language’ and ‘thereby invented the human as we know it’ (1999: 714). These kinds of suggestions perpetuate a conception of Shakespeare as an ultimate authority, the source of a fixed and coherent body of meanings. Recent scholarship, particularly that of the last three decades, has done much to dismantle the essentialist framework which underpins these ideas, interrogating the way in which texts become and remain canonical, insisting upon a critical engagement with texts which recognises the importance of the cultures in which they are embedded, and radically problematising any notion of stabilised meaning.1 John Drakakis notes that ‘the way to displace ‘Shakespeare’ from his pedestal as a supreme icon of English culture is to return him to context’ (1996: 243). A significant contribution to this process has been made by a number of works 1 Critics such as Catherine Belsey, Jonathan Dollimore, John Drakakis, Stephen Greenblatt, Terrence Hawkes and Alan Sinfield have been instrumental to this process. which foreground issues of violence that have previously been taboo for the study of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. R.A. Foakes’ study, Shakespeare and Violence , is characterised by his suspicion of the current trends in critical thinking; nevertheless, he concedes that £[v]iolence is culturally constructed in different ways in different ages’ (2003: 17), and provides a useful introductory section outlining the paradigms of violence in circulation during the Renaissance. However, Foakes reinforces the conception of violence as ‘other’, suggesting that it is a disruptive element which culture works unsuccessfully to contain. He contends that violence is an ‘unruly dimension that cannot be contained by the concepts of culture, and ... may be related to the deepest instincts in human beings, especially in males’ (1993: 17). Rather than speculating about the biological determinants of violence and aggression, Derek Cohen understands violence as integral to the structures and agency of power, arguing that it is ‘an inherent feature of the political system of patriarchal authority’, and asserting that ‘[a]cts of violence belong to patriarchy as surely as fathers do’ (1993: 1). He examines the ways in which patriarchy both produces and condemns violence, and, affirming that ‘female chastity is the cornerstone of patriarchy’, pays particular attention to the way in which violence impacts upon women. In his important study, The Culture of Violence, Francis Barker places a similar emphasis upon the ways in which
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