University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 5-2012 How Should I Act?: Shakespeare and the Theatrical Code of Conduct Ann E. Garner University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Garner, Ann E., "How Should I Act?: Shakespeare and the Theatrical Code of Conduct" (2012). Open Access Dissertations. 551. https://doi.org/10.7275/vf9r-cn29 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/551 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HOW SHOULD I ACT?: SHAKESPEARE AND THE THEATRICAL CODE OF CONDUCT A Dissertation Presented by ANN E. GARNER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2012 Department of English © Copyright by Ann E. Garner 2012 All Rights Reserved HOW SHOULD I ACT?: SHAKESPEARE AND THE THEATRICAL CODE OF CONDUCT A Dissertation Presented by ANN E. GARNER Approved as to style and content by Arthur F. Kinney, Chair Joseph L. Black, Member Harley Erdman, Member Joseph Bartolomeo, Chair English Department DEDICATION This work is dedicated to My parents who taught me the value of strong argumentation tempered by generous compromise, my siblings who showed me how to practice it, and their children who reminded me why it matters. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank, first and foremost, my dissertation committee, Professor Arthur F. Kinney, Professor Joseph L. Black and Professor Harley Erdman for their time, their careful reading of my work, their invaluable direction and suggestions, and their scholarly and personal generosity. Thanks are also due to the many excellent professors who have given me their attention throughout my graduate career and to the English department administrators for their expert assistance over the years. I thank all the people at the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development for their support, both financial and emotional, as well as the occasional gentle shove to get working. Thanks, too, to my fellow English graduate students whose good cheer sustained me. Special thanks to the Renaissance graduate students, especially those who were writing along with me; I would never have gotten here without our dissertation group. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my family, especially my parents, who offered me unqualified support over these many years, even at those times when I was distinctly unpleasant to be around. v ABSTRACT HOW SHOULD I ACT?: SHAKESPEARE AND THE THEATRICAL CODE OF CONDUCT MAY 2012 ANN E. GARNER, B.A., PROVIDENCE COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Arthur F. Kinney This dissertation examines the intersection of English Renaissance drama and conduct literature. Current scholarship on this intersection usually interprets plays as illustrations of cultural behavioral norms who find their model and justification in courtly norms. In this dissertation, I argue that plays present behavioral norms that emerge from this nascent profession and that were thus influenced by this profession and the concerns of the people who worked in it, rather than by the court. To do so, I examine three behavioral norms that were important to courtiers, specifically Disguise, Moderation and Wit through the work of the English Renaissance theater’s most celebrated professional, William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays evince a theatrical code of conduct that, rather than being an illustration of courtly norms, was sometimes in direct contrast to them and sometimes vi formed an alternate or lateral code. This code shows a distrust of disguise, a lack of interest in moderation and a belief in the need to eschew wit in favor of a happy ending. The modern theater has retained many of these essential behavioral norms, including the value of community above the self, the need for sympathy and compassion, and the willingness to risk. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................v ABSTRACT....................................................................................................vi 1.INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................1 Conduct Literature and the English Renaissance ...................................3 The Scholarly Narrative .......................................................................13 The Theater Community ......................................................................23 In the Following Chapters.................................................................... 38 2.DISGUISE.................................................................................................. 42 The Scholarly Conversation................................................................. 47 Actors are not courtiers, and courtiers are not actors. ..........................50 As You Like It ......................................................................................58 The Infelicity of Marked Performance .................................................68 3.MODERATION .........................................................................................75 Hamlet’s Advice to the Players and the Virtue of Moderation .............76 Immoderate Actors............................................................................... 92 Acting and Sympathy ........................................................................103 4.WIT ..........................................................................................................114 Defining Wit ......................................................................................117 The Central Figure of Ben Jonson .....................................................127 Resisting wit’s charms .......................................................................133 5.AFTER THE RENAISSANCE ................................................................157 New Influences, New Attitudes .........................................................159 What Remains the Same ....................................................................175 viii Community and the Sympathetic Impulse ................................175 Willingness to Risk ...................................................................184 A Prohibition Against Self-Aggrandizement ............................191 Final Thoughts ...................................................................................194 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................198 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION A couple of years ago, I was at a production of The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare & Company, a theater company in the Berkshires which has been offering interpretations of Shakespeare’s work for over thirty years. I like to show up early to Shake&Co shows because the setting is beautiful, and there’s usually something else happening out on their spacious lawn. This time, however, there seemed to be a lull in activity; on top of which, the sky was threatening rain. The upshot was I had quite a while to wander around the lobby of their Founders’ Theater, where it was impossible to avoid noticing huge posters dangling from the ceilings on invisible wires. These posters featured pictures of actors in their rawest moments and captions that asked: What does it mean to be alive? How must we act? What should I do? It struck me at the time, and has recurred to me several times since, that these are questions which the theater is particularly suited to answer in very complex ways. Obviously, they are not the purview of the theater alone, but the answers provided in the theater are unique to it as an profession. When the theater asks “How must we act?” or “What should I do?,” the question is obviously two-fold. The actors ask, “How should we act onstage?” but the plays seek to answer, “How should we behave in the world?” 1 How should I act? That question forms the nexus between drama and courtesy literature because both kinds of literature attempt to answer it. The problem, however, is that at times the answers provided by these different kinds of literature have been confused. Many scholars, especially in recent years, have looked at the concerns and attitudes of Renaissance courtesy literature and imagined that plays were illustrations of those concerns and attitudes.1 This confusion is exacerbated by the almost proverbial observation that the Renaissance in England was a “theatrical age.” Although in a pure sense, the word “theatrical” should simply mean “like the theater” or “having to do with the theater,” in reality, it is used almost exclusively to suggest some sort of performance in everyday life. Such performances are often interpreted through anthropological or sociological lenses as displays of power or political acts.2 Thus it has been easy to blur the lines between conduct literature and drama; it has been easy to imagine that when both kinds of texts are “theatrical,” then their motivations and attitudes must be similar. That idea