SHAKESPEARE’S EXISTENTIALISM CHARLOTTE KEYS Royal Holloway, University of London PhD Thesis DECLARATION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Charlotte Keys 2 ABSTRACT This thesis undertakes a fundamental reappraisal of Shakespeare's existentialism. The drama of Shakespeare and existentialist philosophy, I contend, are equally fascinated by issues such as inwardness, authenticity, freedom, and self-becoming. In recent years, Shakespearean criticism has shied away from these fundamental existentialist concerns reflected in his drama, preferring to investigate the historical and cultural conditioning of human subjectivity. However, as this thesis argues, a failure to acknowledge and address the existential problems and intensities at the heart of Shakespeare’s plays prevents a full appreciation of both the philosophical and the theatrical dimensions of his drama. This thesis treats Shakespeare as existentialism’s prolific precursor, as a writer who experimented with existentialist ideas in his own distinctive theatrical and poetic terms long before they were fully developed in the philosophical and literary terms of the twentieth century. The introductory chapter of this thesis provides a preliminary sketch of existentialist thought and surveys the influence of existentialism on readings of Shakespeare. This paves the way for the second chapter, which offers a historical account of the inception of existentialist thought in the early modern period. By identifying existentialist concerns and ideas in the work of writers such as Montaigne, Pico, Raleigh, Bacon, Donne and others, I argue that an embryonic form of existentialism was beginning to emerge in the literary, philosophical and religious discourses of the Renaissance. The third chapter suggests that Shakespeare and modern existentialist thinkers share a deep interest in the creative fusion of fiction and philosophy as the most faithful means of articulating the existentialist immediacy of experience and the philosophical quandaries that existence as a human being entails. The subsequent three chapters explore the existentialist predicaments and problems dramatised in three Shakespearean tragedies. My readings trace the broad trajectory of existentialist thought in these plays, firstly by looking at the ontological and subjective concerns of Hamlet, then by examining Shakespeare’s treatment of ethics in Coriolanus, and finally by considering the existential resonance of the politics in King Lear. 3 CONTENTS Acknowledgements A Note on References 1. Shakespeare’s Existentialism: An Introduction 2. Early Modern Existentialist Ideas 3. Literature as Philosophy; Philosophy as Literature 4. ‘a kind of fighting’: Subjective Life in Hamlet 5. ‘not / Of stronger earth than others’: Ethical Life in Coriolanus 6. ‘Freedom lives hence’: Political Life in King Lear 7. Conclusion Bibliography 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Royal Holloway for the generous funding provided for my PhD studies and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for awarding me a full scholarship for my Masters degree. I have benefited hugely from the lively and inspiring research environment at Royal Holloway, and I am indebted to a number of academics at the college who have taught me at various points during my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. My supervisor, Kiernan Ryan, has provided tremendous support and encouragement throughout this project. It has been a great privilege to work with him. His patience and invaluable insights have been essential to the completion of this thesis. I would also like to acknowledge my previous supervisor, Ewan Fernie, who provided the initial impetus for this research. I wish to thank my mother, Kristina Keys, my sister, Natalie Keys, and my partner, Joakim von Essen, for their continual kindness and support. A special note of thanks must also go to my father, Stephen Keys. Without his love, understanding and good spirits, this work would not have been possible. This thesis is dedicated to him. 5 A NOTE ON TEXTS AND REFERENCES Unless otherwise stated, quotations from Hamlet are from the Arden Shakespeare edition by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (London: Thomson Learning, 2006). Quotations from Coriolanus are from R. B. Parker’s edition in the Oxford Shakespeare series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Quotations from King Lear are from The History of King Lear, ed. Stanley Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), which is based on the Quarto and divides the text into scenes, omitting act divisions. All other quotations from Shakespeare’s plays and poetry are from The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al., 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008). All emphases in quotations are original unless otherwise indicated. 6 CHAPTER ONE SHAKESPEARE’S EXISTENTIALISM: AN INTRODUCTION Shakespeare and existentialists share a special philosophical kinship: both are fascinated by how human beings live in the world, how they experience themselves, and how they interact with and respond to other people. Shakespeare’s plays – and his tragedies in particular – are full of existentially painful and intense moments. Time and again, Shakespeare shows his interest in complex ontological and existential issues by presenting characters who experience themselves as divided, damaged, and even dissolved. Richard III’s syntactically disjointed speech after his nightmare on the eve of battle demonstrates Shakespeare’s particular aptitude for dramatising the disintegration of subjectivity: Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason. Why? Lest I revenge. Myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? O no, alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie: I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. (Richard III, V.v.135-46) ‘Richard loves Richard’: the narcissistic embrace of self is a desperate attempt by Richard to repair this internal fracturing and become self-identical, but the tight 7 rhetorical structure of the speech and the self-estranging use of the third person are literally and figuratively self-defeating. As Eric Langley notes, ‘Paradoxically, it is the language of self-assertion or definition that unravels in reflective repetition.’1 An act of self-identification becomes an act of self-annihilation for Richard. Rather than reaffirming his identity, his oscillations - ‘No. Yes, . I love myself . I rather hate myself . I am . I am not’ - cancel each other out and only succeed in intensifying and exacerbating his traumatic experience of self-loss. Throughout his work, Shakespeare frequently presents his characters as inwardly divided. In Troilus and Cressida, Cressida struggles to come to terms with her fragmented sense of self: Troilus. What offends you, lady? Cressida. Sir, mine own company. Troilus. You cannot shun yourself. Cressida. Let me go and try. I have a kind of self resides with you— But an unkind self, that itself will leave To be another’s fool. (III.ii.132-7) At such moments, Shakespeare compels his characters to sever their identity, their socially constructed self, from their subjectivity, their internal relationship with their immediate and intuitive sense of self. Linda Charnes suggests that, as a result of this gap between identity and subjectivity, ‘the possibility of indeterminacy, of dis- identification, as well as a fantasy of autonomous choice in thought, action, or emotion, becomes thinkable.’2 In these implicitly philosophical lines, Cressida explains to Troilus that her self is made up of multiple, conflicting selves, which can betray, deceive and mislead each other. As she declares her desire to distance herself from her self or selves, Shakespeare reveals his fascination with the workings of human consciousness. His plays repeatedly ask: what does it mean to have a relationship with your self? What faculty of the human mind makes conscious self-reflection and self-differentiation possible? Similar issues emerge in The Comedy of Errors, when Adriana mistakes Antipholus of Syracuse for her husband. She says: ‘O how comes it, / That thou art then estrangèd from thyself?— / Thy ‘self’ I call it, being strange to me / That, undividable, incorporate, / Am better than thy dear self’s better part’ (II.ii.119-23). As she addresses 1 Eric Langley, Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 20. 2 Linda Charnes, Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 8-9. 8 her husband’s identical twin brother, the product of a literal division of the self, Adriana plays on the idea of being estranged from oneself and from others. There is a strong sense in these lines that Shakespeare is posing fundamental questions about the nature of human subjectivity. The alienated and unstable subjectivity of Othello is another compelling example of Shakespeare’s interest in ruptured interiority. When Lodovico asks, ‘Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?’, Othello answers: ‘That’s he that was Othello. Here I am’ (V.ii.289-90). It is a strange, disconcerting statement, which suggests that Othello’s sense of himself is no longer linked to his social identity. He and I: Kiernan Ryan argues that ‘The