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WRAP THESIS Scott 2005.Pdf University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/1198 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. 7ý Vy- anakespeare and The Idea of The Book One Volume Charlotte Scott Ph.D The Uhiversity of Warwick January 2005 Table of Contents Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abstract Abbreviations iv 1. Introduction: 'Give me that glass,and therein will I read' I 11. 'Sad stories chancedin the times of old': the book in performance in Titus Andronicus and Cymbeline 25 111. 'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet': The Taming of The Shrew and Love's Labour's Lost 65 IV. Richard H: 'Marked with a blot, damnedin the book of heaven' 125 V. 'Minding true things by what their mockeriesbe': forgetting and remembering in Hamlet 163 VI. 'Rather like a dream than an assurance':The Tempestand The Book of Illusions 200 VII. Conclusion: 'We turn'd o'er many books together' 235 Bibliography 244 Appendix 270 i Acknowledgments Foremostly I'd like to acknowledgeand sincerely thank JonathanBate. I'd also like to gratefully acknowledgethe support, interest and patience of Emma Lambe, Alice Hunt, Richard Scholar and David Margolise. ii Abstract Shakespeareand the Idea of the Book is about the book in Shakespeare'splays; the book as an object, wherein the article may disclosenarratives, corroborate stories, exposeversions of reality and perspectivesof presence;and the semiotic of the book, wherein the languageof the book, of holding, touching, turning leaves,opening pages,reading, revealing and closing may simulate an idea of the body or mind in motion. This thesisis about how the metaphoricaland material book appearson Shakespeare'sstage, and how the physical and figurative presenceof the book challengesthe imaginative and representationalconditions of theatre.Having chosen sevenplays for their particularly significant relationship to the book, I explore each play and its books for the demandsthey make of eachother and what such demands reveal. The Introduction outlines the argumentof the project and, drawing on a broad rangeof Shakespeare'splays, setsout the prevalenceof the 'book' and an awareness of the potential discoursesthrough which the object is beginningto move in the Elizabethanperiod. The thesisis then split into five chapters,the first two dealing with two plays each, Titus Andronicus and Cymbeline, and The Taming of The Shrew and Love's Labour's Lost. The following three chaptersdeal with individual plays, Richard II, Hamlet, and The Tempest.Although the thesisfollows, with the exception of Cymbeline,a chronology of the drama, I make no attempt to suggestthat Shakespeareforged a linear narrative in his evolving relationship with the book. Rather, my conclusion demonstrateshow the book's extraordinarysemantic scope resistsa continuum or progressiveevolution. The ever-changingcapacity of the book, its materiality and language,supports the stagein a quest to define and expandthe representationalrelationship betweenseeing and thinking,,moving and being. Shakespeare'sbooks are, I will argue, like Hamlet's players, 'the abstractsand brief chroniclesof the time', and, to that end, 'let them be well used). iii Abbreviations All first referenceswill be cited in full; thereafterthe following abbreviationswill apply: SQ ShakespeareQuarterly* OED Oxford English Dictionary EMDD Early Modem English Dictionary Database F First Folio Q Quarto,versions will be specified. SD stagedirection ed., edseditor, editors Shakespeare's works A YL As You Like It Luc The Rape ofLucrece 2 HT17King Henry Sixth Part 2 2 HIV King Henry Fourth Part 2 LLL Love's Labour's Lost TC Troilus and Cressida A4'WThe Merry Wives of Windsor AlflVDA Midsummer Night's Dream Venus VenusandAdonis * ShakespeareSurvey and ShakespeareStudies will be distinguished in full iv I 'Give me that glass, and therein will I read' In Shakespeare'sSonnet 23 the poet imagines what it is to be silenced by the needto speak.Comparing this feeling to an actor's stagefright, or 'some fierce thing replete with too much rage', he pleads for the written future of his voice. 'O'er chargedwith [the] burthen of mine own love's might', he declares: 0 let my books be then the eloquence And dumb presagersof my speaking breast, Who plead for love and look for recompense More than that tongue that more hath more expressed. Learn to read what silent love hath writ. To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. ' The sentiment is love, the image is the stage and the expression is the book. Even within the written form of the sonnet,the idea of the book becomesthe place in which not only can the tongue express more, but the inexpressible - the silence - will eventually be translatedinto pagesto be read and heard by the eyesof the beloved. Thesebooks reassurethe burdened poet and promise not only a definitive place of expression but 4recompense' The book both it .2 reflects and receivesa version of what represents. Sonnet23 maps an idea of the book onto the requisites of the stagewhere the acute relationship between an actor and his part replicatesthe relationship betweenthe voice and the heart. The sonnet's synthesis of the book and the stage provides a significant starting point from which to engagewith ideas and images of the communicable.Here, 1 StephenBooth (ed.), Shakespeare'sSonnets (New Haven and London: Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press,2000), 11.9-14. 2 The full hermeneutic potential of the relationship between Shakespeareand his texts is still in contention, but recent scholarship by Lukas Erne proposes an authoritative distinction between the quartos and the Folio, suggestingthat the length and cognitive demandsof the plays in the Folio were intended not for the stagebut for the page. If we accept Erne's thesis, Shakespeare'sidea of the book acquires an even deeper significance in the light of a conscious awarenessof the 'literary' text. Seealso Patrick Cheney, Shakespeare,National Poet-Playwright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2004), who argues that Shakespeare'ssonnets and poetry were not ancillary to his drama but part of the very processeswhich made his plays possible. I the book conjures a form through which the actor and the poet move in the hope of 3 compensationfor the inadequaciesof their responseto the present. As the sonnetshifts through some of the inexorable frailties of our relationship to expression- the stunned inarticulacy of fear, the suffocating weight of emotion, or the absolute desire for lucidity - his books, as ambiguousand elliptical as they are, alleviate the pressureof the moment. The books of sonnet23 celebratethe luxury of a secondchance, and promise, in all their shapelessness,an eloquent narrative of the soul. It is books like these,which speak, signify, shape and presage that Shakespeareplaces on the stage of his dramatic imagination. The purposeof this thesis is to explore the idea of the book within Shakespeare'splays. Specifically focusing on sevenof his plays I examinethe book, both materially and metaphorically, within the broader implications of Elizabethan discourse.The chapters are devisedchronologically to exposethe various definitions and significations through which the book moves during Shakespeare'sdramatic career.The vagaries,subtleties and paradoxes of interpretation and mimesis begin to emerge as we trace the interrelationshipsbetween two complex media of expressionand reflection. As the recentwork on the history of the book has shown, the book is central to the development 3, Presagers'is often considered an awkward description of the books' activity and has led to various re- readingsof 'books' for 'looks'; however, as StephenBooth explains, given the extended theatrical analogy through which the sonnet moves, it seemsthat books here operate in a similar way to prologues or choruses. SeeBooth (ed.), Shakespeare'sSonnets, p. 172. In other words, the books anticipate the narrative, establish the context or exposethe art. All these functions centralise both the dramatic and narrative role of the books, which signify their ability to both transcend and accommodatethe limitations of the stage and the 'speaking breast'. 4 The texts of the seven plays, which this thesis focuses on, will be based on the first folio. I am deeply consciousof the ongoing debate that surrounds the relationship between a Shakespeareantext, quarto, folio, fair-copy or foul paper, and ideas of authenticity, authorship and value, be it the single blotless genius, collaborative artist, or flawed memorial constructions of audiencemembers and actors. I have chosen to use the folio as my 'control text' not in the belief that those versions of the plays necessarily reflect a stable authorial or dramatic decision, but rather becausethe first folio is a book in which the culmination of Shakespeare'swork first became available as a material object, and as this thesis is about his theatrical books it seemedbest to start with the one in which all the others came to rest. I have, however, for easeof reference and style, chosen to use modem editions, rather than a facsimile of the folio itself. All deviations from the folio will be noted. 2 and disseminationof the human consciousnessand context, affecting almost every social and personalmovement that we make. In order to limit the scope of this subject I examinethe performanceand permutationsof the book as they emergeon Shakespeare's stage. Although the word 'book' appears, in some form, say as either a referent or passing reference, in almost every play (with the notable exception of two) I have chosen specific plays for the significant role that the book plays, and I have set theseplays together in order to explore the various and complex forms the book takes within Shakespeare'stheatre. The sevenplays that I focus on are foregroundedbecause of their particular and performative relationship to the book.
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