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This Precious Book of Love: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative in the 19Th Century Catherine Ann Moore Lehigh University

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This Precious Book of Love: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative in the 19Th Century Catherine Ann Moore Lehigh University Lehigh University Lehigh Preserve Theses and Dissertations 2011 This precious Book of Love: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative in the 19th Century Catherine Ann Moore Lehigh University Follow this and additional works at: http://preserve.lehigh.edu/etd Recommended Citation Moore, Catherine Ann, "This precious Book of Love: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative in the 19th Century" (2011). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1370. This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “This precious Book of Love”: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative in the 19th Century by Catherine Bachochin Moore A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Lehigh University May 2011 © 2011 Copyright Catherine Bachochin Moore ii Approved and recommended for acceptance as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Catherine Bachochin Moore “This precious Book of Love”: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative in the 19th Century Dissertation Director Approved Date Committee Members: Rosemary Mundhenk Barbara Traister Elizabeth Dolan Augustine Ripa (Name of Committee Member) iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 1 Introduction: “This precious Book of Love”: Shakespeare, 2 Women, and Narrative Chapter 1: “The man behind the text”: Male Victorians 37 and Shakespeare Chapter 2: “You are now out of your text”: Textual 72 Engagement of Women Character Critics Chapter 3: Storying Imogen in the Gallery and Garden 118 Chapter 4: The “double process” of Acting: Fanny 191 Kemble, Ellen Terry, and Paradox Epilogue: “Books of Love” 228 Bibliography 233 Vita 244 iv ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the nineteenth-century character criticism written by women addressing Shakespeare’s female characters. The character criticism of actresses Helen Faucit, Fanny Kemble, Ellen Terry and authors Madeleine Leigh-Noel Elliott, Anna Jameson, and Mary Cowden Clarke reveals an emotional and textual engagement with Shakespeare’s characters that differs from the Romantic and Scientific criticism of their male counterparts such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, Edward Dowden, and Algernon Swinburne. Within the pages of their narratives, the female character critics record their personal, emotional, textual engagement with characters such as Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, and Imogen, and establish a communal and dialogic relationship of loving friendship with them. A narratological analysis illuminates this communion in the narrative by examining each critic’s reconstruction and re-imagination of Shakespeare’s play, mimetic staging of scenes, and representation of the consciousness of the character. The textual communion is enacted in the critic’s narrative in the same way that the actor, such as Terry or Kemble, psychologically unites with her character on stage. In their written works, both nineteenth-century character critics and actresses share this female communion with Shakespeare’s characters with other female readers. Rather than viewing such extra- textual accounts of Shakespeare’s play as the stuff of fantasy or dreams, this dissertation argues that the moments of communion between critic and character provide the female reader the ‘extra-textual’ space to envision Shakespeare’s character and herself differently from the ‘ideal’ woman of the Victorian age. 1 ! Introduction “This precious Book of Love”: Shakespeare, Women, and Narrative ! In these remaining days of May, 1884, you have braved the miserable weather and those “blighting East winds” to gain entry to the Royal Albert Hall at two o'clock in the afternoon, and you cannot wait to see The Shaksperean Show, “the most attractive and picturesque exhibitions of recent times,” as promised in the Daily News.1 Earlier in the month, the advertisement in The Graphic promised this event to be all about Shakespeare and all about charity for the women at the Chelsea Women’s Hospital: “The name of the Bard of Avon has been adopted as the text-word of the whole event, and an endeavour will be made to give the Show a value beyond its own object, by affording an instructive insight into the artistic beauties of Shakespeare.” The advertisement was right.2 You open your newly bought, “luxuriously printed,” and handsomely bound Show Book3 and read the note of Mr. J. S. Wood, the official “Showman” of The Shaksperean Show. He writes in the Show Book: ‘A book, oh rare one!’ I borrow from the Bard the words of Posthumous, not ‘in self-glorious pride,’ but ‘to do ample grace and honor’ to those !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 “The Shaksperean Show Book.” Daily News. Issue 11895. May 28, 1884. My opening second person narrative/account of The Shaksperean Show is constructed from this Daily News article, as well as two other articles: “The Shaksperean Show.” Daily News. Issue 11897. May 30, 1884. “The Shaksperean Show.” Daily News. Issue 11898. May 31, 1884. 2 “Shaksperean Show Advertisement.” The Graphic. Issue 754. May 10, 1884. 3 The Shaksperean Show Book was the official programme of The Shaksperean Show. Edited by J. S. Wood, the Secretary of the Chelsea Women’s Hospital, the Book was in album format and, according to the Daily News article, was printed on “rough tinted paper” and contained written “contributions by prominent workers in the fields of art and letters.” Though the May 31, 1884 Daily News article claims that the 7,000 copies of the Book were “rapidly approaching exhaustion,” only two copies, one at The British Library and another at The Folger Shakespeare Library, were consulted for this study. ! 2! ! ‘who hath writ’ ‘for Charity,’ ‘this precious Book of Love,’—for charity is love. Tis merely ‘a Beggar's Book’—a professional beggar indeed, a Hospital Secretary—but the rarity of it is that writers and artists ‘of good name and fame’ have ‘joined, with me, their servant,’ in the production of such a Book without fee or reward. The patients in this Hospital bear those sufferings which are the heritage of womankind, be they rich or poor, lowly or exalted. (Show Book 1) You close your Show Book, or “Book of Love,” and survey the sumptuous surroundings. Royal Albert Hall is transformed before your eyes: right in front of the magnificent pipe organ a reproduction of Stratford Church looms sedately over the arrangement of stalls with their Lady Stallkeepers. The Show begins with a “flourish of trumpets and the formal marshalling of the halberdiers ... in their beef-eater costumes.” You see Lord Cadogan “standing in front of the platform under the great organ,” and he announces the “great regret of the Prince and Princess of Wales at their unavoidable absence.” With tremendous feeling does Lord Cadogan speak of the Princess's sorrowful circumstance thirteen years ago4 and remind us that she “laid the foundation stone of the new hospital.” In the Show, eleven of your favorite plays are presented in tableaux vivants with “brief arguments” and “morals” in stalls arranged north to south on the circular floor. The “comely band of young ladies” who are selling the Show Book are clothed in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 In 1871 Princess Alexandra gave birth to her son, Prince Alexander John of Wales on April 6. He died one day later. The Chelsea Hospital for Women was founded in 1871. On July 16, 1880, the foundation stone was laid and the Princess of Wales was present at the ceremony (Daily News). Her remarks were: “We cannot conceive any object more worthy to be taken up or one more likely to be of benefit to a large suffering class in this country. Again, assuring you of the pleasure it gives us to be here, we willingly give our consent to your naming two wards in the New Hospital, the ‘Alexandra’ and the ‘Albert Edward’” (Shaksperean Show Book). ! 3! ! Elizabethan dress and are beautifully attired in “quaint Puritanical muslin caps, laced stomachers, and stone-coloured dresses, with ‘rolls’ upon the shoulders.” Regarding the opulent stalls and glancing at the “tinted paper” pages of your programme, you are reminded by the “Plan of the Show” that you should not “go to the Jews” for money at the Merchant of Venice stall, you are instructed not to “marry your deceased husband's brother or murder will out” at Hamlet's space, and you are advised to “let no family feud thwart pure young love” at Romeo and Juliet's area. Among the eleven stalls themselves, there are one hundred costumed men and women in different tableaux who present a distinct scenic moment from each play. You cannot believe that you can walk to “Capulet's Garden,” saunter to a “Street in London” from Richard III and then process to “Leonato's Garden” from Much Ado About Nothing. You then turn an about face to see “The Garter Inn” from The Merry Wives of Windsor sandwiched between “The Forest of Arden” from As You Like It and “The Cave and Cauldron” of Macbeth. Continuing around the other bank of stalls, you stroll before Hamlet's “Battlements” and “The Grand Square of St. Mark” from The Merchant of Venice, and then, visit the “Atrium in Paulina's House” from The Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure's “The City Gate,” and finally find yourself “Before the Walls of Angiers” from The Life and Death of King John. You admire the Lady Stallkeepers, who take time to “promenade and chat” with the other spectators in the crowd, and yes, although there are “visitors of both sexes” here filling the amphitheatre, the “ladies hav[e], as usual, decidedly the preponderance.” Look! There are Portia and Nerissa in their “grave forensic robes”! Juliet from Measure for Measure is radiant in her “white robes trimmed with gold” and her “crimson-lined hat with ostrich feathers.” Handsome costumes aside, what attention has ! 4! ! been given to the decorations in oil colour for the scenes! There so many beauties for your eye to behold, and the Stallkeepers with their “syren enticements” mingle among the throng with “multifarious objects on sale” for you to take home.
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