Four Shakespearean Period Pieces 9780226785363

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Four Shakespearean Period Pieces

Four Shakespearean Period Pieces

m a r g r e ta d e g r a z i a

The University of Chicago Press  ó Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2021 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2021 Printed in the United States of America 30  29  28  27  26  25  24  23  22  21  1  2  3  4  5 isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­78519-­6 (cloth) isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­78522-­6 (paper) isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­78536-­3 (e-­book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226785363.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: De Grazia, Margreta, author. Title: Four Shakespearean period pieces / Margreta de Grazia. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020051720 | isbn 9780226785196 (cloth) | isbn 9780226785226 (paperback) | isbn 9780226785363 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Criticism and interpretation. Classification: lcc pr2976 .d36 2021 | ddc 822.3/3—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051720 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

To Colin Thubron

Contents

List of Figures  ix



Introduction  1

1

Shakespeare’s First Anachronism  23

2

Shakespeare in Chronological Order  60

3

Period Drama in the Age of World Pictures  106

4

Secularity before Revelation  145 Acknowledgments  177   Notes 179   Bibliography 209 Index  239

Figures 1.1 The Somerset House Conference (1604)  30 1.2 Hector and Ajax in combat (1632)  32 1.3 Sinon and Thersites embracing (1632)  33 1.4 Diomedes and Cressida (1709)  35 1.5 Cressida’s commonplaces (1609)  55 2.1 Chronology at a glance (1972)  61 2.2 “A Catalogue” (1623)  72 2.3 Shakespeare as classic (1709)  75 2.4 Corneille as classic (1664)  76 2.5 Edmond Malone, chronology of forty-­three plays (1778)  83 2.6 An alternative chronology (1792)  90 3.1 Coriolanus à la Romaine (ca. 1750)  107 3.2 Roman Coriolanus (1803)  108 3.3 Roman Titus Andronicus (ca. 1600)  109 3.4 Coriolanus on Chinese porcelain punch bowl (1755–­1765)  112 3.5 Inigo Jones, a Roman figure (1614)  116

3.6 Inigo Jones, costume design for King Albanactus (1634)  117 3.7 Vignette print of bas-­relief by Anne Seymour Damer (1803)  122 3.8 Mr. Kemble in the Character of Coriolanus (1798)  124 3.9 Roman triumphal procession (1753)  126 4.1 Christ triumphant, detail (1596)  161 4.2 Possible staging of act 5, scene 3, The Tragedy of King Lear (1992)  163

Introduction In a certain way it is always too late to ask the question of time. j . d e r r i d a, Margins of Philosophy

A curious transvaluation is taking place in our study of the past. As key terms are being reappraised, negatives are becoming posi­ tives and vice versa. Anachronisms, previously condemned as er­ rors in the order of time, are being hailed as correctives or alterna­ tives to that order, features not to be extirpated but entertained, perhaps even cultivated. At the same time, the schema violated by anachronism, chronology, is on the defensive, as are the historical units of time we call  periods. Once the mainstay of  historical stud­ ies, chronology and periods are now suspected of  limiting and dis­ torting the past they were formerly entrusted to represent. Also on the decline is the master narrative of secularization they have been sustaining in which an epochal break from a devout past precipi­ tates an ever-­advancing trajectory toward secularity.  The explan­ atory force long enjoyed by that narrative is now being challenged if not rejected. Four Shakespearean Period Pieces begins by sketching out the alterations the four terms italicized above appear to be undergo­ ing. But this is only to prepare the way for the book’s focus: the work these terms have done in the study of Shakespeare. Each

2

Introduction

of them entered commentary on Shakespeare centuries after Shakespeare. And each of them is currently under reappraisal. The book begins with a chapter on anachronism, once an embar­ rassment in Shakespeare studies but now a plausible heuristic, and it proceeds with chapters on chronology, periods, and the secularization narrative, respectively, all formations once crucial to the reproduction and understanding of Shakespeare that are now under stress. Before turning to Shakespeare, however, we need first to rough out the larger epistemic overturn that is this book’s working postulate, beginning with the term that is no longer a simple marker of opprobrium: anachronism. We think we know what an anachronism is: an error in the or­ der of time. To be more specific, it is an error in the order of  “chro­ nology” imagined as advancing uniformly in one direction, like an arrow. It is also an error in the order of historical “periods”: self-­ contained totalities, enframed like pictures. Chronology and periods conjoin to form a diachronic time line sectioned into synchronic time frames; the former gives direction, the latter co­ herence. Anachronism foils both. It is no wonder, then, that red flags go up when anachronisms are detected.1 They disrupt the mainstays of history: chrono­ logical seriality and period integrity. We speak of them as if they were crimes, to be detected and exposed: those who commit them are said to be guilty. The offense is slight when the anachronism pertains to concrete things in the past, like events, persons, and objects; they are petty infractions, easily set right. The offense is more serious when the anachronism pertains to abstractions reflecting the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings of the past. Bound up with our own categories for apprehending the world, such anachronisms can be hard to identify and harder to reform. They are the bane of historical work because they violate the cardinal principle of historicism: the recognition of historical difference between periods of the past and, above all, between the present and the past. This is a methodological failure, to be sure: a col­ lapse of the distance that objectivity requires between the now of the historian and the then of the historical object. But it is also

Introduction

an ethical failure. With periods as with persons, we have an ob­ ligation to respect difference. In history as in anthropology, the reduction of the other to the same constitutes an effacement of the other, and for Levinas, of the self as well.2 Indeed, our way of talking about historical periods encourages us to think of them as persons. We anthropomorphize them, at­ tributing to each a distinctive character with distinguishing fea­ tures—­a spirit or a style, for example, or a temperament, even a pathology. Above all, periods, like persons, are said to have a particular way of viewing and experiencing the world, a Kantian Weltanschauung that translates variously as worldview, world pic­ ture, mindset, or episteme. And this is where problems arise. For the historian also belongs to a period and therefore holds its regu­ latory way of looking at the world.3 Anachronism occurs when a contemporary worldview is assumed to correspond with that of the period in question. It is not surprising, therefore, that the strongest critique of anachronism comes from the historian of worldviews or men­ talités. Lucien Febvre has urged that the study of any given past should restrict itself to the terms that period would itself have used and understood, especially in regard to mental processes. With­ out such a restraint, historians risk projecting their own concep­ tual categories onto the past, thereby committing “psychological anachronism . . . the most insidious and harmful of all.”4 Febvre singled out one particular anachronism for the strongest possible censure: the attribution of atheism or skepticism to an earlier age of faith. How was disbelief possible in what was, to his mind, an age of belief ? The offense was serious enough to provoke a hefty monograph condemning it.5 To assume secularity in a period steeped in Christianity was Febvre’s sole example of “the worst of all sins, the sin that cannot be forgiven—­anachronism.”6 With religion itself in the balance, the doctrinal severity of the charge is unmistakable: the unforgivable sin is the denial of the Holy Ghost, damnable and unpardonable, in this world and the next. And yet a change of critical opinion is in the air. No longer vilified, anachronisms are now being seen as productive, creative,

3

4

Introduction

and useful. A spate of recent titles reflects this turnabout: “The Return of Anachronism,” “The Rhetoric of Anachronism,” “The Sovereignty of Anachronism,” “Towards a New Model of Re­ naissance Anachronism,” “The Concept of Anachronism and the Historian’s Truth.”7 Each of these studies puts anachronism to positive use as a literary hermeneutic, as an adjudicator be­ tween the claims of formalist and historicist criticism, as a figure of the psychoanalytic symptom, as a new temporal dimension for past artifacts, and as a heuristic by which to enlarge historical possibility. A reversal appears to be occurring: the feature once thought to vitiate the study of the past is now beginning to show signs of promise. Anachronisms, it seems, are no longer the errors they used to be.

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