Shakespeare and Superheroes 9781942401773, 9781942401780

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There is a divide between the energy and joy with which the public engages in Shakespeare and what we do as academics. The Recreational Shakespeare series crosses this divide with a series of new, playful, and challenging voices that look at public engagements with Shakespeare in popular culture and education. Recreational Shakespeare has two emphases. The first is the study of the ways that artists have recreated Shakespeare and his texts on screen, stage, radio, the internet, in other performance media, and in novels, comics, and poetry. Adaptations, riffs, and reimaginings that are clearly inspired by Shakespeare and those that partly or completely hide their origins are in the purview of this series. The other “recreational” element emphasizes the ways these artifacts are consumed as people spend their money and free time enjoying them. Books in this series are quite short. Academic rigor is required. Academic language is not. Recreational Shakespeare books are fun. The General Editors invite new and established authors to contribute to the Recreational Shakespeare series. We are looking for writers of monographs and editors of anthologies. Please visit the website for a more technical introduction and all the contact information: https://arc-humanities.org/our-series/arc/ recs/#1476219418444-63593f1f-da0f. Jeffrey Kahan University of La Verne

Eric S. Mallin University of Texas, Austin

Michael P. Jensen Contributing Editor, Shakespeare Newsletter

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SHAKESPEARE AND SUPERHEROES

BY JEFFREY KAHAN

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library © 2018, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-​ NonCommercial-​NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. The author asserts their moral right to be identified as the author of their part of this work.

Permission to use brief excerpts from this work in scholarly and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is an exception or limitation covered by Article 5 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive (2001/​29/​EC) or would be determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page  2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94–​553) does not require the Publisher’s permission.

ISBN: 9781942401773 e-​ISBN:  9781942401780 https://arc-humanities.org

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1. “I have shot mine arrow o’er the house, /​And hurt my  brother”: Death and Redemption in Hamlet and Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 2. Of Guise and Gals: Wonder Woman and Shakespearean  Cross-​Dressing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Chapter 3. Tonight at the Improv: Comedians Slay!  Two Drink Minimum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Postscript: Comic Books and Literary Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

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This monograph is dedicated to my role models, literary and otherwise: Bruce Wayne Gandhi Sarah Silverman Ritchie Blackmore Jimmy Carter Daffy Duck Winston Churchill Flo James Marshall Mom Stan Lee Alvin Lee Becky Sharp Ben and Jerry Robert Goren Bill Gates Muhammad Ali Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my sounding boards, boosters, and abettors on this project, Nicola Imbracsio, Eric Mallin, Mike Jensen, Scott Fields, and Samantha Dressel, as well as my ARC editor, Erika Gaffney, and Eleri Pipien at Out of House Publishing.

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PREFACE

As a child, I read comic books incessantly. Every Monday, my local corner store would rack the new Marvel and DC Comics for the week. I’d go in, pick out those I liked best, Captain America, Thor, Batman, X-​Men, and stash them on a bottom rung, behind the unenticing Richie Rich, Disney, and Archie comics (though still a kid, I felt that I was already too big, too advanced, for those titles). Then I would wait until Friday; my mom would give me a dollar, and I would ride my bike back to the shop and retrieve my buried treasure. I would read each issue cover to cover, then bag and board them. It wasn’t the financial value that I was sealing up. I just wanted to keep and catalogue those issues, so that I could revisit them whenever I liked. Indeed, even as a kid, I understood that Marvel and DC were creating literary universes, and that any one story had an impact on the whole; storing back issues was just part and parcel of comic book reading. While I lacked the formal language of literary criticism, comic books taught me the Aristotelian basics: I learned about character flaw (hamartia); I became expert in anticipating a reversal of fortune (peripeteia), in sharing with the hero a moment of tragic recognition (anagnorisis), and, in the price paid to vanquish evil, a spiritual cleansing (catharsis). Then I grew up a bit, went to college and took classes that fixated on distinct authors, or distinct genres, or eras. But, as my reading progressed, the comic book instinct took over: I began to see how some ideas and approaches were cycled and recycled, how the canon itself was interconnected. Another persistent aspect of comic book culture: I’d save up as best as I could and rove the used books stores, looking for old Shakespeare editions, biographies, criticism, or editions of plays by his contemporaries. Now I’m 53, and I don’t much look like that kid on a bike or that grad student living off canned beans and beer, but I am still a collector, regularly trolling the web for criticism, old editions, and comics alike. What I have discovered is that these forms of literature are just that: varying forms of the literary experience. If that sounds unremarkable, I guess I was (and am) slow; slow to rid myself of literary assumptions, interests, and, yes, pretensions. I don’t, for example, get Harry Potter. But I do get that millions of people love those books, just as millions love Shakespeare and Spider-​Man. If you are the sort that can’t look beyond arbitrary boundaries of high and low culture, then you are unlikely to pick up this monograph, but for those who have,

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your openness and interest are appreciated. The chapters that follow are idiosyncratic, but my hope is that my insights or, in some cases, sheer passion, may pique your own literary interests. These essays are informed by a lifetime of reading, feeling, and thinking about two forms of influential literature:  Shakespeare, embraced for centuries by academics, theater goers, and ordinary readers; and superhero comic books, now, arguably, the dominant literary expression of our era. While making plenty of declarations, I  make no definitive statements. Sometimes, you get the seven year old on his bicycle, sometimes the academic behind his lectern, but always a reader who is attempting to connect one story to another, one character to another, attempting to build out of many lands and peoples a coherent literary landscape. More often than not, I surprise my various selves, discovering in the act of reading new ways of accessing Superman’s Fortress of Solitude or exiting Timon’s cave of misanthropy. A literary life can be a path that leads inward to our deepest selves or outward to the unacquainted; but, ultimately, all reading is like any other aspect of life: relational. In the pages that follow, my hope is that in reflecting on my interconnected interests and eccentricities, you will know that you are not alone in yours. Welcome to the family. Jeffrey Kahan, reading comic books and Shakespeare, 2018

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INTRODUCTION

On December 11, 2015, the pop culture news outlet the Nerdist reported on a new Kickstarter campaign: “Shakespeare Fights Crime Like Batman in NO HOLDS BARD.” The concept is simple. Take “everyone’s favorite literary hero even further, by portraying him as an actual superhero fighting crime in Elizabethan England. Game on!” Along the way, the bard, Pirandello-​like, will encounter and partner with his own characters. The enthusiasm for the project is in part based on the juxtaposition of literary and pulp materials. As one delighted academic commented on my Facebook reposting, “Shakespeare as a superhero! What a concept!” Similar to the aforementioned No Holds Bard, this short book will offer readers a series of thought experiments. The goal is not to popularize Shakespeare or valorize comic books—​in both regards, it’s difficult to imagine a more golden or brazen age1—​but to explore the values in both. Shakespeare and Superheroes does not argue that comic books (in all their media platforms: books, video games, newspaper serials, cartoons, TV and radio series, movies, etc.) can or should replace Shakespeare. Instead, the aim is to think of comics as allusively Shakespearean, 1 Comic books are generally listed historically as follows: Golden Age (1930–​1956); Silver Age (1956–​1985); Bronze Age (1985–​present). The ranking has little to do with popularity or even collectability. Aside from the original issues of Captain America, Batman, Wonder Woman, or Superman, the most valuable books are generally Silver Age, especially Marvel books from 1961–​1970. One might argue that we are now in a digital age, but downloaded comics have yet to replace printed copies. Judging by 2016 comic books sales, digital has a long way to go. At the latest count, digital downloads generated $90 million in sales annually; print generated $995 million in sales. “Yearly Sales,” Comichron.com, accessed November 11, 2017. Many comic book buyers generally see e-​comics as “gimmicky.” See “AXEL-​IN-​ CHARGE: SXSW Wrap Up, Digital Initiatives and Marvel’s New #1s,” Comic Book Resources, accessed March 14, 2014.

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Figure 0.1. Shakespeare and sidekick, Romeo. No Holds Bard (2015).

telling similar stories, expressing similar concerns, exploring similar values. But, to be clear, comics and Shakespeare are not the same or even separate but equal. You don’t buy Batman to study Macbeth. Not only are the aesthetics of the respective reading experiences very different, so too are the speeds with which we read these materials. Cultural dynamics dictate that we take our time reading Shakespeare—​ there is an inherent presumption of depth; the comic book panel is inherently more visceral; comics demand action, not reflection. That said, it is my contention that Shakespeare and comic books, however unequal, are at present in dialogue with each other. Those conversations, while real for our generation, are almost certainly ephemeral. Thinking about Hamlet and the television show Arrow will make perfect senses only to the current crop of comic book fans, movie goers, and gamers, and not simply because of the recent Shakespeare manga adaptations or the distressingly jejune but popular Kill Shakespeare graphic series. A seeming tsunami of adaptations, YouTube parodies, and daily Facebook memes have trained the computer literate to re-​contextualize and revitalize seemingly ordinary objects. Comics, while not changing Shakespeare’s words, are challenging our perceptions of his meaning, actively demonstrating that great art, or, rather, its influence, is always irrepressible and unpredictable. But there is no guarantee that this dialogue will continue or, if it continues, that it will be of any interest to a wider audience. Some discussions are cheek by jowl or moment by moment. Shakespeare and Superheroes is perhaps best understood as coming out of a relatively rare subspecies of criticism, what Joyce Carol Oates dubs the “bibliomemoir”—​a

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recent, intimate, and often irreverent form of autobiographical reading. Her examples include Geoff Dyer’s “very funny if despairing account of the writer’s failure to produce [a]‌sober, academic study” of D. H. Lawrence’s work; Christopher Beha’s “warmly personal account of a young man’s intensive reading of the Harvard Classics (51 volumes) amid a season of familial crisis and loss,” and Rick Gekoski’s chatty Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir, which traces the influence of 25 books on the English bookseller-​author’s life.”2 Not surprisingly, this subgenre also has its fair share of Shakespeare-​related confessionals: Herman Gollob’s Me and Shakespeare (2002), which includes his father’s profane impressions of the bard: “ ‘Son,’ he’d say, ‘when you grow up, you’re going to discover that the world is filled with mean selfish bastards like these vicious hombres in Shakespeare’ ”; Dominic Dromgoole’s Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (2006), in which the author, a well-​regarded English theatre director and writer, offers his story of “how I have stumbled, shambled and occasionally glided through life with Shakespeare as a guide”; and Jillian Keenan’s depressingly flaccid Sex With Shakespeare (2016), a memoir that purports to discuss “themes and events that reflect the Shakespeare canon” but often reads like a pseudo-​Elizabethan rewrite of Fifty Shades of Grey: King Lear winked. My skin crawled ... “Shut up, bitch,” I shouted at Lady Macbeth, fighting to free myself from the Friar’s grip. “You just want to watch the world burn.” “Deep down, isn’t that what you want, too?” Goneril purred. I froze.3

In terms of traditional academic studies, stylistically, Shakespeare and Superheroes is indebted to Theodora Papadopoulou and William McKenzie’s recent collection of essays, Shakespeare and I (2012), which eschews “familiar stylistic decorum,” and Judith Pascoe’s The Sarah Siddons Files (2013), which includes archival study, analysis, and anecdotes of doing the dishes.4 These works may seem idiosyncratic and intellectually uneven, but, collectively, their growing acceptance 2 Joyce Carol Oates, “Rebecca Mead’s ‘My Life in Middlemarch’,” Sunday Book Review section, New York Times, January 23, 2014. 3 Herman Gollob, Me and Shakespeare (New York: Random House, 2002), 10; Dominic Dromgoole, Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (London: Penguin Books, 2006), x; Jillian Keenan, memoir, Sex With Shakespeare (New York: William Morrow, 2016), 270–​71. 4 Theodora Papadopoulou and William McKenzie, “Introduction: The ‘I’ Has It,” Shakespeare and I (London: Continuum, 2012), 1; Judith Pascoe, The Sarah Siddons Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 20

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suggests an important stylistic turn in academia. By making themselves more relatable to their readers, the aforementioned authors are not dumbing down their thought processes; quite the opposite. They are complicating their (and our) sense of the interconnected, approaching the canonically sanctioned and, thus, culturally sacred, by way of the ordinary—​and, in the case of this study, what’s more ordinary than a comic book? Shakespeare and Superheroes seeks to re-​democratize criticism itself by encouraging all readers to engage in and to respond to literary arguments using their own common language. As explained by Wolfgang Iser, the task of reading critically consists in honing our “deciphering capacity,” in questioning “consistent patterns,” and in bringing “to the fore an element of our being of which we are not directly conscious.”5 This process demands that readers of Shakespeare and Superman alike reevaluate their assumptions and hierarchies; in some instances, it may call on both constituents (or, perhaps more accurately, loyalists) to unwind longstanding critical assumptions in favor of personal tastes, interests, or experiences. In all instances, the more readers trust themselves, the more they bring of themselves to the text or texts, “the greater the discovery.”6 The greater, in this instance, is synonymous with the intense or the particular, and the particular is never very far from the peculiar. In rereading the chapters of Shakespeare and Superheroes, I readily admit that the results are often less nuanced than most academic studies, but also more grandly operatic, tectonic, lion-hearted. An epic sweep can, potentially, dustbin traditional critical debate, but I doubt we need to worry inordinately here. Comic book readers, intrigued by what they encounter in Shakespeare and Superheroes, may well seek out alternative perspectives and explanations in both primary texts and supplementary studies. Likewise, if this monograph introduces traditional Shakespeare readers to a world of literature which they might have previously overlooked or snappily dismissed, it will also provide them with topics to engage a hitherto slighted readership. It’s probably best to think of this short book as a map, and a map is not a substitute for a journey. In the pages that follow, you’ll be required to put your superhero t-shirt on and read some Shakespeare, to watch some Arrow (especially Season 1!) and target some Hamlet, to thumb through some Wonder Woman and snap some literary selfies in a forest of cross-dressers; to explore Deadpool’s existential one-liners and reassess Iago’s comedic cruelties. All things are ready, if our minds be so.

5 Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), xiv, 294. 6 Iser, The Implied Reader, 39.

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Chapter 1

“I HAVE SHOT MINE ARROW O’ER THE HOUSE, /​ AND HURT MY BROTHER”: DEATH AND REDEMPTION IN HAMLET AND ARROW

“We are not who we thought we were.” –​Gord Downie, The Tragically Hip

Is there anything less Shakespearean, less heroic, than a to-​do list? And yet Hamlet and Oliver Queen (aka, Green Arrow or just “the Hood” on the CW’s popular, primetime TV show Arrow) both “live to say ‘this thing’s to do’ ” (Hamlet, Sc.14.41).1 In the case of Hamlet, it is to follow the Ghost’s order to kill his uncle; in the case of Oliver, it is to hunt down and kill the people whom his father has marked for death. Of course, many stories follow an avenger as he or she works down a list, but Arrow’s ongoing story arc is pointedly Hamlet-​driven, as revealed in this exchange, featured in Season 1, episode 3: FELICITY Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of some Shakespearean​family-​drama  thing. QUEEN What?

FELICITY Mr. Steel marrying your mom, Claudius, Gertrud,2 Hamlet …? QUEEN

[pretending to be feckless].I didn’t study Shakespeare in any of the four schools that I dropped out of …

While tracing Shakespearean quotation and situation is now a common scholarly task, Arrow, I think, is especially interesting because it raises Hamlet-​like situations but responds to those situations in ways that question and critique the original. Specifically, what interests me here are three things: 1. The extent to which neither protagonist is actually setting his own course. These so-​called heroes are more like errand-​boys who begin to question whether what they do is morally defensible;

1 All Shakespeare citations from Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terri Bourus, and Gabriel Egan, The New Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 2 Gertrud is commonly spelled “Gertrude,” but I am following The New Oxford Shakespeare.

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2. To what extent characters remain static. By marking names down, by turning life into a laundry list of acts to be completed, both Hamlet and Oliver treat people as if they were objects, things that are already dead. Hamlet’s ghost, in this respect, has a particular resonance. Ghosts never change; but the living do; and, 3. Above all, I am interested in the ways in which Arrow interrogates its originator.3

We can begin by looking at the similarities of our avenging protagonists. Hamlet seems to be a frat boy; his choice of school chums, Rosencrantz and Gyldensterne,4 is questionable; he fully admits that he likes to drink with his friends; I can easily imagine his University of Wittenberg dorm having the Early Modern era’s equivalent of a beer bong. He’s a prince, young and rich, but he’s also incredibly inept at masking his grief, alienates much of the court, treats his girlfriend with contempt, bullies his mom, stabs at curtains, gets into a fistfight at a funeral, and talks to himself a lot. As for Oliver Queen, he’s a drunken, amoral hedonist. His morally dubious lifestyle (which includes bedding his fiancé’s sister) is made possible through the corrupt business dealings of his father, who, among others, is intending to hold on to his disproportionate wealth and is actively plotting the deaths of millions – and, thereafter, to expropriate the poorer boroughs of the city for a huge land development deal. Oliver’s dad has second thoughts and carries a notebook listing his former partners. But to what end? He doesn’t seem to have a plan nor is he willing to go to jail for his role in this criminal plot. Instead, he continues to live in a ridiculously lavish style, which includes a mansion worthy of Bruce Wayne, and a yacht, the Queen’s Gambit, that might have come from a Carnival Cruise Lines fleet. But then disaster strikes:  the boat sinks. Father and son find themselves with the Captain afloat on raft well out to sea; they have no radio, no transmitter, no food, and the supply of potable water is running desperately low. Queen Sr. gives his son the notebook filled with the names of Starling City’s blue-​bloods, and confesses: “I’m not the man you think I am, son.” Queen then takes out a gun and shoots the 3 In making this argument, I  am limiting my discussion to the Hamlet-​like story-​arc of Season 1. Arrow’s later twists and turns do not maintain the same Shakespearean throughline. Ratings for the show have slipped correspondingly. Season 1 (the most Shakespearean in storyline) averaged 3.28 million views a week; by season 4, the least Shakespearean season so far, that number dropped to 2.9 million a week. See “Full 2013–​14 TV Season Rankings,” Deadline.com, accessed November 7, 2014, and “Full 2015–​16 TV Season Series Rankings,” Deadline.com, accessed May 27, 2016. 4 Following The New Oxford Shakespeare spelling here.

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Captain. The murder is not personal. There is only enough water for one of them, and Oliver must survive at all costs. The rationale here isn’t merely biological, though that clearly has something to do with it (a father protecting his son). The Captain must die because Oliver must live. Robert Queen must clear his name, if not his conscience, and only Oliver, his son, can right his wrongs. Robert Queen then commits suicide. The rest is silence. These acts leave Oliver with a mission, a reason to live; he has to kill, punish, blackmail, impoverish, or expose everyone on his father’s list; it also leaves him with some logistical issues. He finds himself, as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu put it, “desolate, at sea, adrift, without harbor.”5 Somehow, Oliver has to find safe haven, get back to civilization, and then kill some very powerful people, most of whom have professional security 24/​7. That’s a tall order for a kid in a rubber dingy lost at sea. But it also means that Oliver’s life is no longer his own. As he states in the aptly named episode, “Honor thy Father”:  “In his final moments, [my father] told me the truth: that our family’s wealth had been built upon the suffering of others; that he failed our city and that it was up to me to save it and right his wrongs” (Season 1, ep. 2). Oliver now lives solely to help his father out; or, put another way, he is now a Karmic janitor, cleaning up his father’s mess.6 This is unfair, of course; Oliver never asked for this task, and he’s ill-​equipped to carry it out. Nor is he likely to return to Starling City and, even if that were somehow possible, well … then what? Sleeping around and drinking too much champagne are hardly behaviors that can be weaponized. Just how is he supposed to complete his task? ***

Hamlet is pretty much in the same boat. Like Oliver, Hamlet’s father continues to run his life from beyond the grave. Did I say his life? That might be true if Hamlet were his own man, setting his own course. But that’s just not the case. Like Oliver, Hamlet was to the manor born, and that means that his high station in life paradoxically curtails his freedom. His relationship with Ophelia is a case in point. As the Prince of Denmark, the Reformation era’s most eligible bachelor, he can, presumably, have any girl he chooses. Or can he? When he dates and eventually has strong feelings for Ophelia, a counselor’s daughter, that same counselor forbids 5 He adds, “Everybody has something.” See Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, ed. Ursula K. Le Guin (New York: Penguin Random, 1998). 6 On this point, as it relates to Hamlet, see Louis Klein, who writes: “The vengeance of the son … must thus be the seal of the murder of the father.” See H. H. Furness Variorum, Hamlet (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), vol. 2: Appendix 298.

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the relationship. Polonius tells his daughter Ophelia that Hamlet is “out of thy star” (Sc.7.139)—socially in another league. Sure, Hamlet is free to date whomever he wants, but his marriage will be a dynastic affair among royal equals, and Ophelia, the daughter of a civil servant, is no equal for a prince. But love is only part of the equation. He’s sent away to school at Wittenberg, a college known for its Protestant views; the Danish court appears to be non-​secular, so it is safe to say that Hamlet’s notions of God, Heaven, Hell, and Redemption were basically set by his curriculum, not by his own free will. In fact, Wittenberg is the bedrock of Lutheranism, a form of Protestantism that, at least according to Hamlet, argues that each of our lives is scripted: “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all” (Sc.19.177–​79).7 Hence, individually or collectively, we are not responsible for our own acts, nor can our ignoble, immoral, or criminal acts be bought off with penance and indulgence. Even a Prince like Hamlet can’t buy his way into Heaven. The same obviously applies to his father, King Hamlet, who now haunts Elsinore nightly. That leaves Prince Hamlet in a quandary: if good acts do not get you into Heaven, then it is hard to justify his father’s (admittedly implicit) argument that he can get out of Purgatory quicker if someone would just avenge his murder. For starters, compounding a crime is hardly the same as cancelling it out; second, if you can’t buy your way out of Purgatory, then there isn’t any need for Purgatory, which essentially requires a fee of penance in exchange for a quick-​pass to the Pearly Gates. Of course, we might reverse this and say that if you can’t earn your way into Heaven, then Hamlet loses nothing in murdering Claudius. He’s destined either for Heaven or Hell—​that is true whether he murders anyone or everyone. Likewise, his odds of entry into Heaven or Hell remain exactly the same if he does nothing at all. Of course, if he chooses to do nothing, he’d be disappointing his father, but maybe the ghost isn’t the shade of the late King? Maybe it’s a devil in disguise.8 So he then looks for signs of Claudius’s guilt, proof that things are as they seem.9 But even if things were not as they seem, how would he confirm that, and what would it change? Befuddled by events beyond his control, Hamlet looks for something that is beyond doubt. He writes a teen-​angst-​laced poem to Ophelia, in which he declares 7 Shakespeare here may be confusing Lutheranism with Calvinism. 8 In the words of Eleanor Prosser, the apparition (ghostly or demonic) “is a creature that must be tested with extreme caution.” See her study Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 123. 9 On this point, Stephen Greenblatt writes: “Of course, within the play’s fiction, Hamlet does not know that Purgatory is a fiction ... On the contrary, he is desperate to establish the veracity of the Ghost’s tale.” See Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 253.

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his love in terms of science. Things that can be seen, he argues, are obviously objects and thus objectively verifiable: Doubt thou the stars are fire,  Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar,  But never doubt I love. (Sc.7.115–​18)

But here is the thing: The sun doesn’t move. The planets do. And that fact was discovered sometime between 1540 and 1543, about 50 years before Shakespeare’s era, but was still in cultural, if not scientific, dispute.10 If Hamlet’s senses cannot be trusted, if the stars cannot be trusted, if truth and falsehood are indistinguishable, then what can be trusted? Hamlet says, “Never doubt I love.” But, umm, so what? If like astronomy, love cannot be verified by observation (and we observe Hamlet treating Ophelia in a very unloving way), then by Hamlet’s own logic, his love is impossible to prove; it is conceptually insubstantial, doubtful, dubious. There is another problem: “never doubt I love.” Just who is this I? He’s Hamlet, and his father is also named Hamlet. Jeez, talk about a royal identity crisis! He’s a walking stand-​ in for his father with none of the payoffs of being a king.11 Really, he is just a shadow of his father, a shadow directed by his father’s shadow (a Renaissance synonym for ghost or spirit)—​and that hardly sounds like someone free to set his own course. All he can do is check his list of things to do and people to kill: “I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,/​… thy commandment all alone shall live/​Within the book and volume of my brain,/​Unmixed with baser matter” (Sc.5.98.101–​3). He then writes another note: “one

10 Lutherans had particular difficulty squaring the new math with scripture. Robert S. Westman writes: “Copernicus’s hypotheses quickly became the occasion for discussion and engagement among students of the heavens at Lutheran Wittenberg. The question was no longer merely whether prognostication of natural events could be accommodated to a Bible-​governed narrative, but rather what relevance the Bible had for conflicting hypotheses of celestial order in theoretical astronomy.” See his The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (Berkeley: University of California, 2011), 109. There is an (apocryphal) account of Luther rejecting Copernicus: “The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside down.” See Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution (1990. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications, 2001), 76. See her The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1972), 29. However, linking Wittenberg and Lutheranism directly to Hamlet is problematic. See note 7, above. 11 Robert N.  Watson writes:  “Hamlet attempts to sustain his father’s existence by identifying with him ... He wishes not to be himself, not to be alive.” See his The Rest is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 80.

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may smile and smile, and be a villain. /​At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark” (Sc.5.107–​8).12 That latter statement leads to still more doubts. In Denmark, no one can be trusted; that includes his uncle Claudius (who murdered Hamlet’s father), his mother (who is now married to Claudius), Polonius (Claudius’s right-​hand man), and Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia (who, by blood and circumstance, is obedient to her father’s whims). And, as we have already touched on, that uncertainty extends also to his father’s ghost, which might not be a ghost, and even to Hamlet himself, who wonders aloud: “Am I a coward?” (Sc.7.467) In the words of Paul A. Cantor, Hamlet’s once-​certain worldview is shattered; he is burdened with the “mysterious depths of human interiority” and the uncertainty of what, if anything, comes after death: “The most striking fact about the afterlife for Hamlet is that he cannot know with certainty what it will be like.”13 There is more here than just the self-​doubt, jitters, and knock-​knees of an inexperienced schoolboy turned avenger and regicide. Hamlet is raising a fundamental question concerning personal and spiritual autonomy: If your thoughts, your opinions, your knowledge are not your own, if your name is not your own, if your senses cannot be trusted, if reason itself is flawed with doubt, then everything and everyone must be judged provisionally. Moreover, if there is no single unchanging I, then who can do the judging? The Hamlet who loved Ophelia existed once; he does no longer.14 Neither version is true; neither is false, and though the actions of these Hamlets seem to be opposite, they are part of a continuum. That’s blazingly obvious every time we look at a family album or gather for a birthday, funeral, or holiday event. People change physically; they change intellectually; they change emotionally; they change behaviorally. So, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to hold anyone accountable for any action, just or unjust. The person who played that part no longer exists, at least not identically in the 12 John Dover Wilson argued that Hamlet’s mother has “poisoned his whole imagination” concerning women. If so, then both of Hamlet’s parents have shaped, perhaps even preset, their son’s behavior. See his classic What Happens in Hamlet (1935; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 101. 13 Paul A.  Cantor, Shakespeare: Hamlet (1989; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 45 and 42. Less violently, Stephen Booth suggests that the poem “allows its listener to hold … two contradictory meanings of ‘doubt’ in colloid-​like suspension … Truth is bigger than any one system of knowing.” See his Close Reading without Readings: Essays on Shakespeare and Others (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016), 181. 14 James Howe writes: “It is almost as if Shakespeare had decided to present an example of the Buddhist view of the ‘self’: its discontinuity, its status as a sequence of individual pictures rather than the smoothly consistent movie narrative that we invent from these pictures.” See his A Buddhist’s Shakespeare:  Affirming Self-​Deconstructions (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 1994), 172–​73.

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now.15 This problem comes to a head when Hamlet finds Claudius at prayer. This is his opportunity to kill an incestuous adulterer, a murderer, and usurper, the man who killed his father and “whored” (Hamlet’s word! Sc.19.64) his mother and revised the natural order of succession ... But those crimes don’t square with the outwardly penitent man on his knees, begging God to absolve him of his sins. It also doesn’t square with a populace roundly content with Claudius on the throne. So, we have, on the one hand, a sense that one’s life is not one’s own, and, on the other, a growing sense that people change over time and that punishment is impossible, since the guilty party committing the crime ceases to exist in the very act of committing the crime. No wonder Hamlet is paralyzed with doubts and fears. His moral certainty is nonexistent, and he likely understands that following his father’s commands will lead to personal and dynastic ruin. Yet, to act or not to act, to be or not to be, leads to the same outcome—​a change in self, one impermanence giving way to another, or what the Buddhists would call “samsara, an endless cycle of desire”; “disbelief,” “gaps,” and “instability.”16 ***

Back in the DC comics universe (or DCU), Oliver, stuck on his desert island, knows more about samsara than most. After having witnessed the (seeming) drowning of his fiancé’s sister, the murder of the ship’s captain (by his father!), followed by his father’s suicide, Oliver seems to be making up for a feckless life (or the universe seems to be conspiring to revise his ethical outlook). However, meditation on a life ill-​spent is not an immediate concern; first, he has to figure out how to survive. But he soon learns that the island, while savage, is far from deserted. It’s a slave labor camp, an apt, though extreme, representation of the exploitation of human capital that fueled the wealth of Queen Consolidated. Fortunately, he is mentored by other island castaways, a band of Kung Fu-​kicking, monk-​like survivalists: Yao Fei, his daughter Shado, and the laconic Slade Wilson. What follows—​years of torture, training, and physical suffering—​is ancillary to Queen’s inner transformation from drunken lecher to monastic warrior. In a Shakespearean sense, however, his transformation is not in the mold of Hamlet. It is, rather, in the contours of Claudius. Consider: Claudius commits incest by marrying his brother’s wife; Oliver sleeps 15 This idea is developed from the following sentence by Peter Mercer: “Since the beginning of the play almost everything that has most concerned him [Hamlet] has had to do with the changes that time has wrought in the living and the dead.” See his Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1987), 239. 16 Howe, A Buddhist’s Shakespeare, 49–​50.

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with his fiancé’s sister, and while sex and marriage are obviously different, the acts are akin, as are the political trajectories of both characters. Having returned to Starling City, Oliver is quickly caught up in the city’s politics and soon becomes mayor. And while Sarah (not dead after all!) briefly returns, she never becomes his wife. Instead, Oliver becomes father to a line of modern-​day Robin Hoods, who help him blackmail, rob, and murder those unlucky enough to have fallen into his crosshairs. All this suggests that Oliver’s actions, prior to his shipwreck, were villainous.  Even after his return, his exploits remain, in the eyes of many, criminal—he is certainly guilty of breaking and entering, theft, assault, kidnapping, torture, embezzlement, fraud, wiretapping, resisting arrest, destruction of public property, illegal purchase and use of unlicensed firearms, child endangerment, and murder (and that’s a typical episode). Disorders of time and experience, misperceptions of intent and action, are also reflected in Oliver’s adopted persona. In order to protect his heroic identity, Oliver has to pretend that he has not changed at all, that he is still a shameless playboy and worthless billionaire, a drunk, and a cad. According to episode 2, our hero was once a juvenile delinquent who assaulted a reporter, stole a taxi, and urinated on a cop. It might seem easy for Oliver to reassume that identity as a disguise, but in fact, it costs him emotionally. Diggle (hired as Oliver’s bodyguard) gets it. After his five years in Afghanistan, he knows that life changes you, but he also knows that geography dislocates, that it creates a time warp: when you come back, “everyone is trying to get you to open up, to make you into who your friends and family think you are, or want you still to be” (ep. 2). Hamlet experiences much the same thing. His mother, his uncle, and his friends all want to know why Hamlet has changed, and even Hamlet himself notices that he is in a time warp of sorts. Time, Hamlet notes, “is out of joint” (Sc.5.186). If Oliver presents his new self, those he loves will see him as changed and, thus, inauthentic—​not their Oliver. Yet, if he maintains his old persona, he is being untrue to himself and those around him. Reluctantly, he finds himself lying to the media and his friends and family: “I was a jerk, and now I am a damaged jerk” (ep. 2). In episode 4, he confesses to his sister, Thea: “I know it may not seem like it sometimes, but I am not the same person I used to be,” to which she replies: “So, show her [the betrayed Laurel]; be yourself … I mean your new self …” But that is impossible if Oliver is to carry out his father’s commands. So, to be true to the dead, he has to be untrue to the living. Of course, we can be more forgiving than Laurel, should we so wish. So, the question is, should we pardon Oliver? He’s been through Hell and back, after all—​ just look at his body; its scars and tattoos speak to a world that has made its mark in reshaping our hero—​or should Oliver continue to pay for his youthful sins?

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Oliver, despite punishing people for their old—​ sometimes decades old—​ crimes, seems to feel that he’s entitled to a second chance, especially with Laurel. But when Oliver sends her nonprofit law firm a much-​needed cash infusion, it feels wrong on two fronts: 1. Despite the fact that the money is given anonymously, it feels like he’s trying somehow to buy her off—​that Oliver’s redistribution of booty is somehow connected to a booty call;

2. The money comes from blackmailing someone on his father’s list. But blackmail is illegal, and, by giving the money to Laurel, he is, therefore, involving her in a criminal conspiracy.

From Oliver’s point of view, he’s being dutiful to his dad, helping out an old flame, and doing some good in supporting a nonprofit, and if that leads to a connubial quickie with Laurel, then that harmonious possibility suggests that this is Oliver’s way forward, that all systems are go, that the universe itself is aligning for and with Oliver. But if Oliver’s mission is to right all injustices by redistributing the wealth garnered from the vilest and wealthiest of the city, then why hasn’t Oliver started with some house cleaning of his own? He forces the scions of Starling City to give up their wealth, but he never sells his own shares in Queen Consolidated, never gives away his own fortune, amassed by his father’s corrupt dealings. And that leads to yet another problem: Queen Sr. never put his own name on that hit list. Apparently, being a whistleblower (or considering whistle-​blowing) was enough for the elder Queen. And it seems to be enough for Oliver as well. But it shouldn’t be. Oliver sees his father as a hero who died before he could enact his grand crusade against corporate greed and genocide. He, Oliver, is the weapon, his father’s arrow of vengeance. Fair and worthy enough. But his father’s list also suggests responsibility; that those cited must pay for their crimes. If so, Queen Sr.’s name should surely be marked alongside those of his co-​conspirators. But it is not merely an absence that is the issue here. If having committed a crime makes you guilty, then there must be an admission of guilt by the perpetrator, followed by punishment meted out by the state, and restitution made to the victim. Queen Sr.’s own change of heart indicates that, yes, reform is possible, people can change. The upshot is that Oliver worships his morally problematic father but punishes people for having done business with him. Thea sees through the fallacy: “Dead people don’t want anything. It’s one of the benefits of being dead.” Good point, Thea! But Hamlet and Oliver are not only dutiful sons to their dead fathers; they are also deeply attached to their living mothers. One of the common explanations for Hamlet’s delay in killing Claudius is that, deep down, Hamlet longs to do the very thing his uncle did—​i.e. take his father’s

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place in his mother’s bed.17 Oliver returns to Starling City and is likewise upset that his mother has shacked up with a corporate exec, the urbane Walter, and immediately assumes that her new lover was somehow responsible for the boat’s sinking and the suffering that ensued. He remains blind to his mother’s role. And yet, like his father, his mother is also part of Starling City’s illuminati of crime; in fact, the surname Queen suggests that the family sin is symbolically aligned with the female. But Oliver refuses to see it, at least initially, and when his mother finally owns up to her past (as well as recent events, including the kidnapping and torture of Oliver), he takes it as a sign of confession and remorse. Sure, she did some bad things, horrible things, but look, she’s changed; she regrets her actions. We will return to Hamlet and Gertrud in a bit. The essential point here is that Oliver plays favorites. Let’s imagine, for example, that Oliver were to befriend Adam Hunt, one of the wealthy capitalists on his hit list. Might he, in getting to know Adam, learn that, like his father and mother, Adam also has his doubts, that he has regrets, that he is in some way making amends? We never learn if this possibility is more than just that—​a possibility. Adam is not family, not a friend; he’s just another name on a list, just another criminal pierced by the sharp arrow of justice. The secret motivation of Malcolm Merlyn is a still better case in point. Oliver has known Malcolm his whole life, but what he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand is that Malcolm carries the guilt of his own wife’s murder around with him. As we may here recall from Season 1, Rebecca Merlyn was robbed and shot in the Glades, a large, crime-​ridden borough in Starling City. In her dying moments, she phoned Malcolm for help, but, unaware of the nature of Rebecca’s call, he turned his phone off; her plea for help went to voicemail. Whenever Malcolm needs to be reminded as to why he wants to destroy the Glades, he replays that message, noting not just every word spoken by his dying wife, but also the indifference of the crowds that walked passed her. Malcolm Merlyn assumes that their collective inaction is the same as indifference and, therefore, feels entirely justified in turning their silence into a death sentence. Of course, lots of innocent people will die. That’s fine, according to Merlyn; it is the Glades itself, its unchanging criminal environment, that is to blame. But if that is so, then why not change the Glades peacefully, put in some parks and fountains, build some new schools, hire some good teachers, pay for additional security for the neighborhood, and maybe gentrify the area with a few Starbucks? 17 For a traditional, Oedipal reading, see Ernest Jones:  “the more Hamlet reproaches his mother for sleeping with his uncle, the more powerfully does he stimulate to activity his own unconscious and ‘repressed’ complexes.” See his Hamlet and Oedipus (New York: Norton, 1949), 88.

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Those options seem constructive but are based on the same flawed foundation—​ that inaction by the current Glades residents equals indifference. What if the people who walked by that night were scared, rather than indifferent? What if, like Malcolm, they were not properly or fully aware of Rebecca’s predicament; what if, like Malcolm, they were too busy to notice what was right in front of them? What if, like Malcolm, they are still haunted by Rebecca’s cries for help? Would Malcolm still individually or collectively blame these people? Well, he could, but not without also damning himself. Instead, he carries that voicemail around with him, just as Oliver carries around his list. Both consult their messages from the dead when they need to be reminded of their duty. Likewise, back in Elsinore, Hamlet is reminded of his task, not only by the notes that he has set down but also by the hauntings of his micro-​managing father: Do not forget. This visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. But, look, amazement on thy mother sits. O, step between her and her fighting soul. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Speak to her, Hamlet. (Sc.11.106–​11)

That handful of words comes with a fistful of orders: look, step, speak, don’t upset your mom, and, above all, don’t forget to do what you’re told. Behind all this is a reproach: Why is Claudius still alive? ***

So, it would seem that, according to the Ghost, Hamlet, Malcolm, and Oliver, the guilty do not change. Once guilty, always guilty. But that is nonsense. After all, the guilty have to be guilty of something, ergo, they are shaped by experience. There must be a before-​and-​after moment that results in guilt. Not only is the logic of an unchanging populace flawed but, in the Arrow universe, the discrepancy in logic is magnified because there is another, obvious possibility staring them (and us) in the face: What if there are, rather, a variety of selves, each distinct from the other? If before and after exist, they exist both in relation and in distinction to each other. The Malcolm who turned off his cellphone is not the same man who is planning to blow up the Glades. The people who walked by Rebecca have changed, as has virtually everyone else in Oliver’s life: his ex, Laurel, is now dating his best friend Tommy; her father, Lance, was, briefly, an alcoholic; Oliver’s assistant, Felicity, is a former hacktivist; Roy, a new recruit on Team Arrow, is a former thug and thief; Oliver’s sister, Thea, is a former drug-​addict, and, obviously, Oliver himself has

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changed. As it happens, Malcolm’s own attempt to blow up the Glades proves him wrong. If these people really were the monsters he believes them to be, then why, faced with their own mortality, do so many stay behind to help others get to safety? Why are they acting like heroes? Likewise, Oliver’s judgment is off. For example, Oliver assumes that his friend Tommy is peddling drugs. But, as Tommy himself points out, Oliver has changed; so why is it so difficult to imagine that Tommy can change too (ep. 19)? Oliver also has an idealized sense of his parents. He first assumed that his father, Robert, had compiled the list of people to punish. It is only later that he realizes that Robert didn’t write the list at all. Still, he assumes that the error doesn’t really change anything. Diggle disagrees: “Wait a minute. Two months ago, we thought your father wrote down all those names. Who knows what else we’ve been wrong about.” Oliver counters, “I can be wrong; the list isn’t.” But more errors and assumptions are revealed. Oliver, for example, thought that his father was a perfect husband. But he comes to learn that Robert was unfaithful; likewise, he thinks that his mother Moira is beyond reproach: “She’s my mother Diggle, she wouldn’t be involved in anything illegal”; but Diggle disagrees: “You don’t really see straight when it comes to Laurel or your mom” (ep. 13). Thea also warns him: “You don’t want to believe it [that Moira is having an affair with Malcom] because you have this perfect image of mom in your head … that’s not who she is. She’s a liar and a cheater, and you really don’t know her at all” (ep. 11). By the end of episode 23, Oliver forms yet another deduction: “I’m pretty sure that my mom had my dad killed.” But he’s wrong again. Moira is a liar and a cheater: She had her own son tortured (ep. 1), embezzled $2.4 million from Queen Consolidated (ep. 4), supported Malcolm Merlyn’s plans, and even had her second husband, Walter, kidnapped (eps. 12–​13), but she was not involved in the destruction of the Queen’s Gambit or the related disappearance of Robert and Oliver at sea. When those facts are revealed, Oliver no longer knows what to believe: “I don’t know anything anymore” (ep. 23). Oliver thought that his father was a saint; he thought that his mother was a clueless homemaker; he thought that he knew what to do next—​wrong, wrong, wrong. But it’s not just Oliver’s logic that is flawed. One by one, his memories are also called in question. Oliver, like Hamlet (and the rest of us), forms opinions based on memories. Every time Oliver reflects on a memory, he inserts another memory, and then another and another, and so on. Pretty soon, the entire original memory is, if not completely erased, corrupted by this ongoing process of revision. In the coming pages, we will consider how an awareness of this process—​the experienced self re-​experiencing inexperience—​undermines certainty. Hamlet,

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all-​too-​aware that his “wit’s diseased” (Sc.9.286–​87) delays the murder of his uncle and seeks what he hopes is corroborative evidence; Queen, likewise, questions his certainties and, ultimately, his purpose in life.18

Interlude: Coriolanus and Career Self-​knowledge is not just central to Hamlet, it’s also a central concern in one of Shakespeare’s later plays, Coriolanus. Like Oliver, Coriolanus is a bad-​ass warrior, who comes off as a complete jerk. He insults friends and foes alike, alienates his fellow citizens, turns his back on his family, all out of a false sense that he is his own man. In response, the Romans boot him from town and tell him to never come back. Coriolanus feels that he has been unjustly treated, that everyone else is wrong, and that he alone knows who he is and what he deserves. But what has that strident thinking got him? His body is scarred from endless wars; he is friendless and impoverished. Faced with those circumstances, Coriolanus should probably do some soul searching. Put another way: his life is a wreck. But if he has to rebuild it, why not improve it? No one knows Coriolanus outside of Rome; as it happens, even the Volscis, whom Coriolanus has defeated a half dozen times, don’t know what he looks like without armor. When he walks the streets of a foreign city, no one knows him. What an opportunity! He can leave his life behind and become anyone, do anything. There is no one to impress, no promises to keep, no ghostly command to follow, no “to-​do” list. He could spend the rest of his life as a gardener, a dance instructor, a mechanic, whatever he wants! He could build an entirely new life for himself, shed his old self, and emerge as a new man, his own man.19 He could, in effect, embrace the reality that all of us change second by second. Coriolanus is now free to reinvent himself not by the confines of Roman custom but by the boundless stretches of the imagination. Yet, Coriolanus quickly discovers that 18 On the notion that revenge is commonly based on misplaced emotion, see Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S. Hallett, who argue that “highly charged emotion … can overthrow the reason and so interfere with judgment [to the extent] that the individual cannot function normally. In him [the revenger], all semblances of sanity disappear.” See their study, The Revenger’s Madness: A Study of Revenge Motifs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 46. 19 Harry Keyishian argues something close to this about Hamlet: “They [revengers] are wrenched from their normal ways of life and thrust by circumstance into new and unstable roles that overlie, without effacing, their earlier, ‘normal’ selves”; the critic, however, denies the possibility of spiritual growth or renewal, at least for the victim. Thus, Claudius deserves to die because he “represents the fundamental flaws of human nature, original sin itself.” See his The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vengeance, and Vindictiveness in Shakespeare (Atlantic Highlands: Humanity Books, 1995), 53, 66.

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leaving Rome is not the same as abjuring Roman identity. Coriolanus has been raised in Rome; his friends, family, wife, and child are left within its city walls. All he has known has been shaped by Roman tradition and its emphasis on confrontation. He is a warrior and, for a man so battle-​scarred, his pride remains an open wound. If he cannot make war in the name of Rome, he will make war on Rome. And I say, how pathetic. Coriolanus thinks he is free to make war on his enemies, but he’s a prisoner of his past, caged by his ego, tortured by thoughts that he has been unfairly treated, and that one day soon, he’ll show them all that they made a terrible mistake. Hamlet exhibits a similarly vengeful streak: I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. (Sc.8.121–​25)

But then, having escaped pirates, and knowing that he’s got a death sentence hanging over him, Hamlet suddenly has options. He can go anywhere, be anyone, so long as he stays away from Elsinore. So, what does he do? Yup, like Coriolanus, he can’t help himself: he goes home for a final showdown. That decision is more disappointing for us than it is for Hamlet. Our dazed and confused Dane may not know whom to trust among family and friends, but, after some misdoubts concerning his own mental stability, he returns from England with his head on straight. Claudius must die. The ghost gave him his orders. Why second-​guess or overly complicate things? But readers may not agree. From our perspective (or at least my perspective), the ghost raises more doubts than certainties. I am, for example, far from certain that Hamlet Sr. knows all the details concerning his death. ***

“Remember me,” the ghostly Hamlet Sr. instructs (Sc.5.90). But, as we have explored in relation to Hamlet and Oliver, memories are funny things. A memory is a record of the past, but that doesn’t mean that the record is accurate or complete. As we all know, memories, like bodies, change over time. There are also false and flawed memories, and—​more disconcertingly—​forgotten or lost memories. How many times have we come across an old photograph or letter or scrap of an essay and thought, I forgot all about this, or I have no memory of this happening? What we remember, how we remember, is out of our hands. And yet we assign praise, blame, or exact revenge based upon this bungling, chaotic system … Well, we might counter, what choice do we have? If there are faults in consciousness, recognizing them is not going to cure the problem. Knowing you are cold, for example, is not the same as having access to a thermostat or a warm

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sweater. Oliver has some blind spots, based on life experiences, memories real and false; he judges, idealizes, demonizes, as do we all. That also applies to the respective ghosts of Hamlet and Arrow, neither of whom are omniscient or implicitly trustworthy. In Hamlet, much of the ghost’s story (its memory of the past) is questionable. For example, the ghost tells Hamlet that: ’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forgèd process of my death Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown. (Sc.5.35–​40)

If the King is dead, then how can he know what is “given out,” unless he can monitor events from beyond the grave?20 This notion—​that the ghost is a witness to events—​is confirmed when the entity reappears to chide Hamlet for not obeying his orders (Sc.11.106–​7). But let’s review that first speech: while asleep, Hamlet Sr. was poisoned by Claudius. The logical question is, if Hamlet Sr. was asleep, then how does he know he was poisoned by his brother? By definition, he cannot be aware of what happened while he was asleep. Hamlet Sr. also states that he has to return to purgative fires during the day: I am thy father’s spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. (Sc.5.9–​13)

So, if he’s confined in Purgatory, how can he fully monitor daily events when he only has partial access? Does he have the equivalent of a nanny-​cam? In keeping with that same temporal logic, there is yet another sequence (also concerning ghostly memory) that we need to address: the seduction of Gertrud, Denmark’s “most seeming-​virtuous queen” (Sc.5.45). The ghost isn’t specific here in what he means by seeming-​virtuous, but we have two possibilities: 1. The ghost is merely suggesting that the widowed Gertrud, rather than mourn for her late husband, fell for the first guy who came her way. This possibility is explored in the “Mousetrap,” or play-​within-​the-​play that Hamlet has staged. In that work, the 20 Harry Keyishian argues that the ghost has overheard (witnessed) events on earth, even when others were unaware of his presence (The Shapes of Revenge, 55).

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queen is innocent and sexually clueless, no match for her drunken, murderous, and lecherous brother-​in-​law; 2. Claudius and Gertrud started an affair while the King was still very much alive, in which case the Queen may have conspired with Claudius in her husband’s death. This latter, complicated scenario far better fits the facts. Let’s review. When we first meet Prince Hamlet, he has been summoned to attend his father’s funeral; the funeral then becomes a catered wedding and a coronation, celebrated with city-​wide revels, cannon fire, and nightly debauch. No wonder Hamlet wears all black and is generally depressed! Not only has he lost his father, he has also been cheated of the crown. Hamlet says that Claudius “Popped in between th’election and my hopes” (Sc.19.65)—​i.e. his uncle somehow manipulated succession. Ask yourself, why would Claudius have a shot at the crown? True, Claudius is the King’s brother, but Hamlet is of age; he’s not a child after all. The guy’s at university! In a pinch, Gertrud might have ruled as protector or regent until Hamlet’s return. So, the only way Claudius could conceivably wrangle the crown away from the lineal successor and first-​born son is to marry the Queen and to convince her and the court that he is a better choice, at least in the present. Fine, that makes sense. But here is the kicker: Claudius would not have killed the King on the improbable hope that he might be able to seduce his grieving sister-​in-​law. Logically speaking, Claudius would have had to secure the love of Gertrud before killing the King. That, at any rate, is what Hamlet thinks happened. Confronting his mother, Hamlet hurls insult after insult (basically, he pegs his mom as a sex addict): You cannot call it love, for at your age The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble, And waits upon the judgement … O shame, where is thy blush? … Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty. (Sc.11.66–​68, 79,  91–​92)

But her sex life, while upsetting to him, is not enough to prompt a ghost to demand revenge, nor is it enough to justify Hamlet’s behavior here. Hamlet’s fury is prompted not just by his mother’s sexual activity or its bad timing—​taking a lover so soon after the death of her husband—​but also by what he assumes were her murderous and sexually motivated actions—​that is, “kill a king and marry with his brother” (Sc.11.27).21 From Hamlet’s point of view, distinct acts—​Claudius’ crime 21 As Susan Jacoby points out, infidelity was commonly associated with comedy; if we accept that premise, then an affair per se would not be enough to prompt the ghost’s return.

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and Gertrud’s sexual intemperance—​coalesce into a conspiratorial stew of adultery, homicide, and sedition.22 That’s odd, because when we meet Gertrud, she seems to be kind of a dope. But the accuracy of Hamlet’s statement is not the point. It is the accuracy of the memory that is at issue. Hamlet has changed the history of events into his memory of events. And the more he thinks of those events and comes to different conclusions about them, the more his memory evolves and changes.23 He might have it right (I suspect he does), but his take on events is not the same as what may or may not have actually happened. One thing is clear: Hamlet thinks that the entire world is against him—​ “How all occasions do inform [i.e., conspire] against me” (Sc.14.29)—​and dependent upon him—​“O cursèd spite/​That ever I was born to set it right” (Sc.5.186–​87). That is not quite the same thing as a false memory, but it is certainly not the same as an accurate history. ***

I have been arguing that a muddled memory undermines moral clarity, but it doesn’t, at least for Hamlet, derail the act of vengeance. Hamlet kills Claudius. But does he do so for the right reasons? As David Scott Kastan points out, Hamlet doesn’t kill Claudius for killing his father; he kills Claudius for accidentally killing his mother (Claudius poisons Hamlet’s wine, but Gertrud, not Hamlet, drinks from the poisoned cup).24 So, Hamlet, we might say, fulfills his destiny despite himself; we might also say that he kills Claudius in the instant for what Claudius has done See her Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 45. Generic revenge tragedy, in this case, the Ghost prompting Hamlet to seek revenge, therefore, requires murder. 22 On Gertrud’s possible complicity, “moral blindness” and, to a lesser extent, her “downright amorality,” see "Hamlet in Performance: The RSC and Beyond," in Hamlet, eds. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, part of The RSC Shakespeare series (New York: The Modern Library, 2008), 166–216; 208. The normally meticulous John Dover Wilson raises the question and then smothers it with an unlikely solution: “The Ghost does not enlighten Hamlet on the question of the Queen’s complicity. Perhaps Shakespeare meant us to suppose that the idea was too horrible for the dead King to contemplate” (What Happens, 47–​48). My personal view is that if Hamlet Sr. can handle “sulph’rous and tormenting flames” (Sc.5.3), he’s likely up to thinking about adultery and murder. 23 Lorna Hutson describes Hamlet as a “sequence of skeptical enquiries into likelihood,” a drama obsessed with “evidence-​gathering” (Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 141). But that presupposes that the evidence is being weighed objectively. 24 David Scott Kastan also argues that Hamlet is avenging his own death, but that seems out of keeping with a man who has been weighing the futility of action and the value of life. See his A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 140.

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in the instant.25 The new Hamlet does not kill the old Claudius for an old crime committed against the old king; he kills the new Claudius on the spot—​i.e., when blame is still obvious and guilt still clearly attached to the person in front of him. Hamlet here has acted for himself, not for his ghostly father. Oliver comes to exactly the same solution. Having put away his list, he still punishes but no longer acts on behalf of his damned father. Oliver learns that he can be his own man, set his own course. When he meets killers from the Russian Mob or the League of Shadows, they are often puzzled by the new Oliver—​lines like, “Oh, so you don’t kill anymore?” are common. And these various players from his past will often try to force Oliver into adopting an old persona, an identity that fits their memory of Oliver. But he always surprises them. He has changed, as has the world. Oh, he still rights injustices, and still thinks about the past (flashbacks are a huge part of the show), but his flashbacks are not just to a distant place or time; they direct us to another iteration of self. “To be or not to be” is no longer a question. Everyone is and is not at the same moment, coming into and out of being, born and reborn, instant by instant. That doesn’t render heroism pointless. Quite the opposite; the crimes these heroes avenge are for other Hamlets, other Olivers. Having shed a sense of self, their acts are impersonal. It is only through a recognition of samsara, the sorrow of impermanence, that justice is possible, because, once this philosophy is inculcated, the avenger acts on behalf of someone else, even if that someone else is a past or dead version of the self, a ghost. I can understand some seeing that as self-​serving. But let’s give our heroes the benefit of the doubt and assume that their actions are well intended. Heroism implies not just a furtherance of justice; it also entails a praiseworthy sacrifice—​ the hero’s martyrdom must meaningfully improve the world. By that standard, both Hamlet and Oliver are inept. Hamlet has one job—​kill the king. And instead of doing that one thing, he kills Polonius, drives Ophelia to suicide, stabs her brother, executes two school friends, gets his mom killed and, worst of all, leaves the kingdom without a hereditary ruler. Let’s imagine that Claudius dies, but Hamlet somehow survives and is crowned king. It remains far from certain that he has the experience or comportment to rule Denmark effectively. Perhaps the kingdom was better off with Claudius? Beloved by the queen, attended by an able civil service, respected by countries near and abroad, Claudius was, as G. Wilson Knight reminds 25 On this point, I am indebted to William Miller, who writes, “We are not to blame Hamlet because he does not promptly kill his uncle”; Hamlet “does not seriously apply himself to any method by which the truth may be discovered and the result attained—because he lets months, and even years, roll on as if he had no special duty and no special call.” William Miller, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Waste of Life (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1902), 36.

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us, good at his job.26 Denmark was peaceful and prosperous while Claudius ruled. Now look at Denmark after Hamlet gets his revenge: the royal family is dead, much of the civil service is gutted, and the country itself is invaded and turned into a fiefdom for Fortinbras, son of Old Fortinbras—​a cognomen that suggests that Fortinbras Jr. is also going through his own daddy-​dictated script. Claudius, at least, had a functional court; but once Hamlet comes to town, that court, government, even sovereignty itself, is sacrificed in the name of family honor. Oliver’s track record is almost as underwhelming. He is a self-​appointed judge, jury, and executioner. But those arrows never point to his own family or to the underlying and immoral wealth that fuels his father’s crusade. In a larger sense, isn’t Oliver just another elitist who uses his money and power to do what he wants? His nemesis, Malcolm Merlyn, thinks so. It is Oliver who has “failed this city” (ep. 23).27 Is Merlyn right? Many of his peers think he is: Detective Lance reminds Laurel that the city was relatively peaceful, stable, and prosperous until the Hood showed up. If the city was corrupt to the core, it was, nonetheless, effectively providing essential services (power, water, trash collection, etc.) to its millions of citizens. It is only after Oliver initiates his open crusade against the social order that things get worse. Even Oliver admits that his vendetta will not in fact change anything. In ep. 10, he confesses that the people on his list “aren’t going anywhere”—​i.e., they pose no immediate threat. If we believe him, then Oliver is not saving the city; he’s merely hunting people for crimes committed by earlier, less enlightened versions of themselves. ***

It seems pointless to grant clemency to someone other than the culprit, but there are limits to this sort of argument. Even 50-​plus years on, the pursuit of Nazis and SS-​guards continues, and few would argue that these people should not be tried and, if found guilty, punished. It is equally pointless, however, to think that punishment can afford peace of mind to survivors of war or crime. People change but, tragically, the so-​called heroes of Elsinore and Starling City must act as though those they punish are incapable of change, that they are somehow locked outside of time. It is here that Arrow really questions the logic of Hamlet. Prince Hamlet, as we recall, stabs or poisons just about everyone of importance. He sees himself as an agent of destiny, “born to set it right” (Sc.5.187); never mind that his plans go 26 On Claudius as a “good” king, see G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy (1930; repr., London: Routledge Classics, 2001), 37. 27 Spoiler alert: members of another vigilante group, calling themselves The Hoods, say the same thing to Oliver in Season 2, ep. 1.

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disastrously awry. In order to convince himself that all his actions are infallible, he has to become unrecognizable, even (or perhaps especially) to himself. As Oliver Queen says, in order to right his father’s wrongs, “I have to be someone else. I have to be something else” (Season 1, ep. 2). However, to kill his victims, he also has to believe that they are incapable of similar reinvention.28 Ironically, to instantiate the commands of these dead fathers, Hamlet and Oliver must treat the living as ghostly. For Hamlet, that means embracing a solution all too similar to Malcolm’s plan—​kill ’em all. Oliver’s eventual solution (Season 2 and beyond) is far more nuanced: by accepting that everyone can change, his role is to offer them the means by which to change. Training former criminals (hacktivists like Felicity, drug addicts and drunks like Laurel, Roy, and Thea, even murderers like the Huntress and Malcolm Merlyn) implicitly affirms that everyone can return—​not as ghosts, but as new beings, back from the dead, spiritually and physically reborn. And if anyone knows about coming back from the dead, it is Oliver. In the space of five years he has died (or is thought to have died) by flood, fire, bullets, knives, and arrows; he’s been drugged, tortured, starved, shot, and pushed off a cliff, and yet here he is, resurrected, or, rather, reincarnated. Oliver comes back to life, but what counts is the life to come. Hamlet may have also run through a gauntlet of slings and arrows and outrageous fortune, but by dedicating his life to a ghost, Prince Hamlet becomes an agent of death. Not so Oliver Queen: believing that people are more than what they have been, he chooses a life-​ affirming alternative. Hamlet deals in death; Oliver offers redemption.

28 I am here extending Jonathan Dollimore’s argument that the “closure [of the revenger’s] tragic death works to evade tragic insight” to include the targeted victims as well. See his Radical Tragedy, 2nd ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 50.

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Chapter 2

OF GUISE AND GALS:  WONDER WOMAN AND SHAKESPEAREAN CROSS-​DRESSING

Fidele: … you call’d me brother, When I was but your sister … (Cymbeline, 5.6.377–​78)1

Candy came from out on the island, In the backroom she was everybody’s darling, But she never lost her head Even when she was giving head She said, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side. Lou Reed, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side”

Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, we have all heard of, but Fidele? Who’s he? Well, he’s in the Shakespeare play Cymbeline, and his name suggests that we are to read him as an aptronym, that is, aptly named. Like Clown or Fool or Prince, Fidele is self-​evidently what he seems, faithful. The name derives from the Italian, Fedele, meaning “observant,” “faithful,” or “devoted”; the Italian is, in turn, based on the Latin, Fidelis, meaning “of the faith.” We might, therefore, say that the word carries other languages, other meanings within, and that many of those meanings clash with each other. To be “observant” is not at all the same as being “faithful” or “devoted.” To be “observant” is to follow the rules, but an outward display of compliance is not the same as inner faith, no more than placing a hand over your heart during the playing of the American anthem makes you a better or more patriotic American. 1 All Shakespeare citations from Taylor et al., The New Oxford Shakespeare.

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In Cymbeline, however, we have an added twist: Fidele, the seeming avatar of faithfulness, serves the Romans but only does so after deserting the Britons. He is, therefore, a traitor, unfaithful to king and country. That Fidele is also a member of the British royal family, the offspring of King Cymbeline, only deepens our sense of Fidele’s infidelity. But a bigger betrayal is about to be revealed: it turns out that Fidele isn’t a he at all, rather he is a she. And her name isn’t Fidele but Innogen.2 As such, she has not only been unfaithful to her family and her country, she has also betrayed her sex. ***

So what were women’s roles on the Shakespearean stage? Well, like everything in Shakespeare, it’s complicated. It was the law in Shakespeare’s day that professional theatrical companies had to use boy actors to play female roles. Four hundred years on, we’re still debating what that means: Jean Howard, for example, argues that cross-​dressing on stage was a “source of homoerotic attraction,” unleashing “deepseated fears” of a feminized self; Michael Shapiro agrees: “the known physical presence of male performers must have registered at some level in the spectators’ consciousness and thus raised questions about the stability of established gender roles, generally defined as male assertiveness and female submissiveness.”3 But as Shapiro also notes, given that it was the law that women could not appear on stage, there might be nothing sexy about any of this. Convention is, by definition, ordinary, not racy, and certainly not unconventional.4 Penciling a straight line between life and art is always a mistake. A costume party, for example, is not a place where we can draw easy and uncomplicated observations about the ordinary and every day. That said, we can’t deny that art is informed by life, and vice versa. Art, after all, is an experience, and experience shapes reality. But it’s a rendering of reality, a playful or poetical representation. What we can say with certainty is that, in Shakespeare’s era, there was growing uncertainty concerning dress codes. G. Blakemore Evans cites numerous examples of London men exploring the changing nature of costume and identity. In Ulpian Fulwell’s theatrical interlude Like Will to Like, Quoth the Devil to the Collier (composed circa. 1562–​1568), “Nichol Newfangle,” a tailor, boasts to Satan that he 2 “Innogen” is spelled as “Imogen” in some texts, but we are following the New Oxford edition. 3 Jean E.  Howard, “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 418–​40; 419 and 419n3; Michael Shapiro, Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 37. 4 Shapiro, Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage,  46–​47.

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has corrupted men’s souls by introducing them to soft and sensuous textiles, such as “Caps, hats, with all kinds of apparels ... /​Shoes, boots, buskins, with many pretty toys.” Likewise, Shakespeare’s sometime-​collaborator Thomas Nashe complained that the men of his era had abandoned the “plainness of thine ancestors” in favor of “outlandish habiliments.”5 Men, it seems, were a bit too interested in color-​coordinating outfits, or in just plain comfort. In Hic Muller, or The Man-​Woman (1620), the anonymous pamphleteer condemns cross-​dressing women but also argues that male attire can magically and permanently transform women mentally and even biologically: “in the augmentation of their deformities” they “are so much man in all things that they are neither men nor women.”6 ***

A baby is born. The doctor cuts the umbilical cord and announces the infant’s sex. “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” That declaration is based on a visual inspection. But the psycho-​sexual orientation of each of us is harder to define. After the doctor makes his/​her announcement, we swaddle the baby in blue (male) or pink (female), give one a tough-​sounding forename, the other a gentler name. We train one gender to play with toy guns and soldiers; to the other, we assign Barbie dolls and glitter.7

5 G. Blakemore Evans, Elizabethan-​Jacobean Drama: The Theatre in Its Time (New York: New Amsterdam, 1988; repr. pbk, 1990), 128. 6 Reprinted in Katherine U. Henderson and Barbara F. MacManus, Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy About Women in England, 1540–​1640 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 269–​70; emphasis added. 7 What I am describing here is often referred to as the “natural attitude” towards gender, as outlined by Harold Garfinkel’s 1958 case study of “Agnes,” a boy who started to dress as a woman when she/he turned seventeen: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

There are two and only two genders (male and female); Gender cannot switch naturally; you are always a male or a female; Genitals are the essential sign of gender; Everyone must be classified as either male or female; Whichever gender you are is unambiguously natural to you; Any exceptions to No. 3 or objections to No. 5 should be ignored as statistical anomalies or, worse, pathologies; 7. Being male or female is not dependent on any extraneous factors, hence cultural acts (for example, cross-​dressing) have nothing to do with gender.

Garfinkel’s schema is cited in Jacob Hale, “Are Lesbians Women?,” in The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006), 281–​99; 287. Literary Studies doyenne (apologies for gendered designation of that word) Judith Butler also uses Garfinkel’s work. See Hale, “Are Lesbians Women?,” 284.

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And yet, there have always been men who enjoy traditional (read: socially imposed) female activities (e.g. cooking or sewing, pedicures, shopping), or forms of cross-​dressing (this might cover everything from heeled boots, flamboyant dress, partial makeup, or full-​on transvestitism), or men who take no interest in sports or working on cars, just as there have always been women who might feel silly donning makeup or limiting their ambitions to rearing children and baking. Furthermore, we live in an era in which many traditional distinctions are no longer regulated by gender. No one remarks if a woman wears men’s work jeans or a man gets a manicure. On the factory floor, in the boardroom, at the gym, or in combat, women are doing jobs once barred to them (equal pay, however, continues to elude, and workplace sexual harassment remains a menace), and men are doing the same (taking jobs as secretaries, nurses, nannies, dental assistants, cosmetologists, and flight attendants, etc.). The point here is that, professionally and socially, all males and all females engage in (and have always engaged in) a bit of gender swapping. As Helen R. Friedman, a clinical psychologist in St. Louis who specializes in gender identity, states: “The truth is, gender does exist [but only] on a continuum”8; the real fiction is that we ever bought into the notion of “natural” sexual norms. Friedman, however, is not interested in mild shifts in labor and fashion. She’s an important voice in a new discussion of gender identity, what we commonly dub “Trans.” Definition: Trans. Latin (transcend; transfix); on this model, used with the meanings “across,” “beyond,” “through,” “changing thoroughly.”9

Trans behavior does not mean limiting yourself to one form of male or female behavior. While any concrete definition of a still-emergent term runs the danger of inexactitude (or worse, trivialization), I tend to think of gender fluidity by way of David Bowie’s “Station to Station”: Here are we, one magical movement From Kether to Malkuth There are, you drive like a demon From station to station.10

8 As quoted in Lisa Fields, “What It Means to Be Transgender,” WebMD.com, accessed July 30, 2017. 9 Definition provided by Merriam-​Webster.com, accessed February 27, 2018. 10 On inexatitude of definition: Judith Butler argues that even well-​intentioned “umbrella” definitions of trans are contentious:  “If ‘queer’ once sought to provide an umbrella term for nonconforming genders and various sexualities, ones that did not easily submit to categorization, it is now clearly embroiled in a battle of its own. Many trans people, or trans advocates, have argued that queer is exclusionary, that it does not include or describe trans

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Bowie’s “stations” suggest magical or transformative aspects of self (Kether to Malkuth are terms found in the ancient, esoteric text, the Kabbala). But moving from station to station also suggests starting and stopping points, for example, a trainline (the Trans-​Line?!); sometimes you come out at one station, sometimes another. In Shakespeare, the train to Transville is a popular comedic stop. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night we meet females who, in order to act freely in a patriarchal society, dress up as boys. In Merchant of Venice, Portia and her maid dress as men to plead in court, and Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, dresses as a man to elope with her Christian lover. And in Cymbeline, there is Fidele, the princess who dresses as a boy and later serves the Romans in their war against her king and father. Moreover, Shakespeare’s plays are top-​heavy with situations in which men visibly and willingly transfer their power to women: Coriolanus, an unstoppable juggernaut, stalls his attack on Rome because his mom tells him to; Macbeth reluctantly kills on behalf of (or while under pressure from) his scheming wife; Cymbeline gives into his Queen; Lear gives away his power to his daughters; even Claudius won’t kill Hamlet by decree because it would upset his wife. Shakespearean Trans would also include instances wherein woman carry more rank or social weight than men (a queen ordering about her male lords, for example). Shakespearean Trans might also include convolutions of masculine and feminine power or include rebellions of rank or social decorum. In As You Like It, we have a series of social violations: The older Duke is overthrown by his younger brother; Orlando refuses to follow the rule of primogeniture when he rails against Oliver; we have yet another violation of norms when Orlando defeats the elder and seemingly invincible Charles in a wrestling match; even before arriving at the Forest of Ardenne, Rosalind and Celia both abandon rank and social position; that they then dress as men is simply a further indication of their emancipation from the traditional social order.11 Of course, we are in danger of redefining Trans as synonymous with negotiations of power or just plainly awkward situations. But in Shakespeare, Trans can go beyond gender binaries, indeed, beyond traditional power binaries. A fully Trans society is, ultimately, a utopian ideal, a place where there is no labor, no experience.” We seem to be engaged in a “broadening struggle, the articulating of a more complex alliance that contests some of the older versions of ‘the collective.’ ” “Interview with Judith Butler,” Sexualities 19 (2016): 482–​92; 490. http://​journals.sagepub.com/​doi/​pdf/​ 10.1177/​1363460716629607. My thanks to colleague Alexa Alice Joubin for the reference. 11 Ardenne is spelled “Arden” in most editions. See notes 1 and 2, above.

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sovereignty, no crime, no war, no want. Such a place is described in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: All things in common nature should produce Without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, Would I not have; but nature should bring forth Of its own kind all foison, all abundance To feed my innocent people. (2.1.148–​53)

A labor-​free society, wherein food and drink run aplenty and everyone gets on. There is such a place: Paradise Island, home to the Amazons. ***

Wonder Woman is the Princess of the Amazons. That she is a Princess may seem like a tautology—​what else could she, a woman born into a royal and all-​female family, be? There are no princes on Paradise Island! Yet, Amazon, as we shall see, does not always refers to the female. In Classical Greek, the “Amazoi” translates as either “breast-​less,” or “not-​touching men.”12 The former refers to the alleged Amazonian practice of removing the right breast, so as not to impede the throwing of a spear or the drawing of a bow.13 The Greek historian Herodotus refers to the “Amazons” as “men slayers.”14 According to Pseudo-​Callisthenes’ History of Alexander the Great, the Amazons lived in seclusion, but one month a year, they invaded a local region and mated with men. The children were raised by their fathers until age seven, whereupon the female children were transferred to the Amazons for military training.15 The male explorers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915) expect to find something similar: “an undiscovered country of a strictly Amazonian nature,” which sustains itself through male-​rape, euphemistically referred to as “a sort of wedding call.”16 However, the band of explorers soon learn that the females 12 Greek mythos is notoriously transgendered. It seems to be the norm for Zeus and Apollo and the rest to desire both males and females. The later Roman text, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, which includes many stories of women transformed into men, suggests a sustained interest in androgyny: Iphis, a girl from the city of Candy, who is transformed into masculine flesh by Juno (Book IX) or the legend of a woman named Caeny. Neptune raped her but then granted her “one wish” (Book XII). She chose to become a man. Keep those tales in mind when, in the main text of this chapter, we encounter Etta Candy. 13 Albrecht Rosenthal, “The Isle of the Amazons:  A Marvel of Travellers,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1938): 257–​59; 257. 14 Herodotus, trans. Rev. William Beloe vol. 2 (London: A. J. Valpy, 1830), 192. 15 Rosenthal, “The Isle of the Amazons: A Marvel of Travellers,” 257. 16 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow-​Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings, ed. Denise D. Knight (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 7, 9.

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of Herland are capable of parthenogenesis. One of the males, Terry, considers this monstrous: “They aren’t human—they’re just a pack of Fe-​Fe-​Females!”17 Terry’s stutter suggests his distress with female auto-​conception. Visually and, in Gilman’s version, even biologically, the Amazons were the ancient world’s equivalent of a once-​common carnival act: the hermaphrodite, or the half-​man, half women. Shakespeare gives us an only slightly less startling definition. His Amazons are almost always female warriors. For example, Titania refers to Oberon’s mistress Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, as a cross-​dressing soldier, a “warrior love” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sc.3.71). In 3 Henry VI, when Queen Margaret decides to don armor, her enemies laughingly suggest that she will “play the Amazon” (3 Henry VI, Sc.14.104). When, in the tragedy Timon of Athens, a troupe of boy musicians appear as “Amazons” (Sc.2.115sd.), they are described as “madwomen” (Sc.2.118)—​i.e. out of their minds, acting inappropriately. In the prior paragraph, I referred to Amazons as “almost always female warriors.” So why almost always? Because not all of Shakespeare’s Amazons are female. (Man, this is getting complicated!) If you type “Amazon” into an online Shakespeare concordance, you will also get this description of a boyish Coriolanus, then 16 years old: “when with his Amazonian chin” he drove back the enemy (Coriolanus, 2.2.85; emphasis added). Coriolanus here is described as a woman, or, rather, half a woman, or still more accurately, only half a man: Amazon-​like; beardless, hairless. In Shakespeare, it seems safe to say, there are lots of gender fluidities. Sure, you’ve got men and women, boys and girls; but you also have references to or appearances by Amazon Queens (Hippolyta), Amazonian boys (Coriolanus), women dressed as boys (As You Like It, Twelfth Night, etc.), and women dressed as men (Merchant of Venice), or cross-​dressing women leading men into battle (1–​3 Henry VI, Cymbeline).18 Now, let’s compare those figures to the most famous Amazon of them all: Diana, Princess of the Amazons, aka, Wonder Woman. To begin with, Diana is, biologically speaking, neither a man nor a woman. Nor is Wonder Woman a traditional Amazon. As depicted in Wonder Woman #1 (Summer 1942), all the Amazons, with the exception of Diana, were instantiated when the Earth Mother deity, Gaea, discharged juices from her womb into the sea, from whence sprung the Amazons. But a lonely Queen Hippolyta wants a child and, with no other way of conceiving, carves a girl out of stone, and then prays to Aphrodite, who imbues it with life (Wonder Woman #1; Summer 1942). 17 Gilman, Herland, 81. 18 Simon Shepherd argues that the Amazons were often negatively coded because of their hostility to men and aberrant sexuality. See his Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth-​Century Drama (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981), 14.

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Figure 2.1. The Half-​Man, Half-​Woman, once a common act in carnivals and freak shows. Like the Amazons, only one side of the torso is pronouncedly female. Image from “The Half and Half,” Side Show World, www.sideshowworld.com/ 81-​SSPAlbumcover/​HH/​Half.html, accessed September 1, 2017.

The connection to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, is here vital, as she used to be a penis! Yup, the goddess of love was once the sex organ of Uranus, but when Uranus was chopped up into pieces by his son, Cronus, his penis was tossed into the foamy sea and out popped Aphrodite. You might also know that Ares, the god

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of war, and Aphrodite are lovers, which, in turn means that Ares is sleeping with a woman who is, paradoxically, all man.19 The take away here is that Diana/Wonder Woman is not all woman, and, thus, not all Amazon. Readers are reminded of this constantly. When out of costume, Princess Diana takes the name Diana Prince (note the masculinization). Further, when interacting with men, Diana Prince often dresses in a brown Khaki military uniform (see Figure 2.2 on next page), even though women were not officially allowed to serve in the military until 1948.20 This cross-​dressing choice suggests an attempt to pass not just as a mortal, but as a man, or at least close enough to a man that she is simultaneously ignored (just one of the guys!) and accepted. Princess Diana’s/​Diana Princess’s dual sexuality is perfectly encapsulated in her Justice Society of America’s initiation ceremony. The all-​male heroes celebrate her enrollment by singing, “For she’s a jolly good fellow” (All-​Star Comics #13; Oct–​Nov 1942; emphasis added). Another kink: Steve Trevor, who worships Diana, might be her military superior, but in another sense he’s her happy domestic/wife. In Wonder Woman #9 (Summer 1944), for example, Steve finds himself living among the ancient Atlanteans, a female-​dominated society in which men (feminized as “manlings”) do all the domestic chores. Steve does not rebel; he is delighted to learn that he’s a pretty good cook: “I like it already –​cooking’s my hobby.” But it’s not a hobby; it’s Steve’s socially appropriate job in female-​dominated Atlantis. ***

Would kids understand Wonder Woman’s gender fluidities? Maybe not, but after flipping through a few panels of the comic, mature readers likely understood that the themes here were progressive, even revolutionary, and certainly adult. The conservative, child psychologist Fredric Wertham opined that Wonder Woman 19 In one of Wonder Woman’s various re-​launches, Queen Hippolyta and her sisters go down to the beach and make a baby out of sand and water. They then pray to their female Titan and Olympian relations. The Goddesses reply: “I, Demeter, grant her power and strength like that of the earth itself.” “I, Aphrodite, give her great beauty and a loving heart.” “Athena, grant her wisdom!” “I, Artois, shall give her the eye of the hunter and the unity with the beast!” “I Hestia, grant her sisterhood with fire –​that it may open men’s hearts to her!”

But then something odd(er) happens. A cross-​dressing man gets involved: “I, Hermes, give her speed and the power of flight” (Wonder Woman vol. 2; February 1987). 20 See the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act (Pub.L. 80–​625, 62 Stat. 356, enacted June 12, 1948).

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Figure 2.2. Diana passing herself off as a soldier. Sensation Comics #95; January 1950.

was “plainly Lesbian”; “every normal-​minded young man would know there is something wrong with her.”21 His proof? “Wonder Woman has her own female following … Her followers are the ‘Holliday girls,’ i.e. the holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls. Wonder Woman refers to them as ‘my girls.’ ”22 21 Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (1953; repr., Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1972), 193, 234–​35. 22 Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 193.

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Gay girls … Wertham surely means here lesbians, right? Maybe—​he is, after all, arguing that Wonder Woman is “plainly lesbian”—​or maybe not, for as one of my scrupulous external readers pointed out: Gay as a synonym for homosexual was not established until the 1960s, according to the OED. You therefore make too much of the word “Gay.” In fact, a disclaimer that the word did not indicate homosexuality in March 1944 may be in order, though it is a lovely coincidence. If it was used this way in the early forties, I’d like to see a citation. The usual use, of course, was a cross between ‘fun’ and ‘delightful.’

One hates to cross the OED, that venerable go-​to for etymology, but newcomer Wikipedia offers a variety of examples from the nineteenth century wherein gay was a common catchphrase for sexual promiscuity. And then, just four years before Wonder Woman #1, Hollywood offered American audiences a new meaning of the word: Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. In a scene in which the Cary Grant character’s clothes have been sent to the cleaners, he is forced to wear a woman’s feather-​trimmed robe. When another character asks about his robe, he responds, ‘Because I just went gay all of a sudden!’23

Assuming Wertham was aware of popular culture, and his interest in comic books suggests that he was, his use of “gay” was pejorative—​a byword for homosexual activity and cross-​dressing. In addition, the term “holiday girls” may have also referred to the odd domestic life of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman’s creator ... As detailed in Jill Lepore’s book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, in 1915, William Moulton Marston married Elizabeth Holloway, a lawyer and scientist, but the marriage seems to have been highly unusual. Elizabeth often visited her husband’s gay aunt, Carolyn Marston Keatley, who ran a lesbian nudist club out of her apartment.24 Elizabeth eventually developed feelings for Olive Byrne, who moved in with the Marstons. William Moulton Marston’s role was that of sperm donor to the both of them. Later, Olive and Elizabeth left Marston and lived together with yet another woman, Marjorie Wilkes Huntley. It comes as no surprise that Olive Byrne never informed “her children that Marston was their father.”25 So, when Wertham refers to the gay girls and holiday girls in Marston’s work, he may have been taking a swipe at Marston’s wife, the gay girl, the 23 See Wikipedia entry for “Gay,” accessed February 27, 2018. 24 Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (New York: Vintage, 2015), 119. 25 Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, 273.

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Holloway girl. This theory depends on Marston being famous enough for his personal details to have filtered through to Wertham. I have no evidence that they ever met face to face, but both enjoyed national reputations in (admittedly differing) fields of psychological research. Fredric Wertham was educated at King’s College, London and the University of Würzburg, one of the oldest universities in Germany; he corresponded with Freud, and worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland and, later, at Bellevue, in New York City, where he built a reputation as one of the country’s preeminent child psychologists; William Moulton Marston, a Harvard graduate, was a professor at Tufts and was known nationally as a writer of essays in popular psychology. He was also the inventor of the lie detector, a device that made him famous. In 1938, Marston published a book on his device, The Lie Detector Test, and appeared in a Gillette company ad. The headline reads: “Now! Lie Detector Charts Emotional Effects of Shaving!” The copy that follows is too long to quote in full, but here’s the key excerpt: “Only those who dare to know the truth willingly submit to Dr. William M. Marston’s Lie Detector test … for the Lie Detector reveals the facts. That’s why Gillette engaged this eminent psychologist to make a scientific investigation of razor-​blade quality.”26 And, on top of that, Marston was the creator and writer of Wonder Woman. The academic world was and is cliquish, conservative, and often passive-​aggressive. Had Wertham heard something of Marston’s private life and decided to (cryptically) libel a colleague? ***

I am willing to concede that the use of holiday, so close to Holloway, may be a coincidence. On firmer ground, Wertham’s reference to the gay girls and holiday girls strongly suggests which Wonder Woman issue he was reading: In Sensation Comics #27 (March 1944), Wonder Woman befriends a lonely woman who has been badly treated by men. Her name is “Gay,” and Wonder Woman introduces her to her best friend, Etta Candy, a heavyset, independently minded leader of a sorority at the all-​ female Holliday College. Gay is enrolled as a “special student,” and her education is to consist exclusively of having “fun” with her new sorority sisters. A delighted Gay tells Etta that she has been converted to this all-​female lifestyle and promises to share the fun with other women: “Having fun has made a new girl of me –​It’ll [sic] do the same for others[.]‌I’m going to start a fun clinic” too! Candy’s gay vibe can be traced back to Wonder Woman #1 (Summer 1942): Diana asks Candy if she would ever consider marrying a man; Candy replies, 26 William Moulton Marston, The Lie Detector Test (New York: R. R. Smith, 1938); as for the Gillette ad, see the online pdf at Antipolygraph.org.

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“Who wants to? When you’ve got a man, there’s nothing you can do with him –​but Candy you can eat!” According to Noah Berlatsky, Candy is here subtly suggesting her availability to Diana, inviting her to eat Candy—​i.e., have oral sex with her.27 Likewise, in Sensation Comics #30 (May 1944), Diana Prince and Etta Candy attend a wedding, but the groom, “Dick,” is half an hour late. The bride is upset, but Candy counsels, “Don’t aggravate yourself honey –​No man is worth it.” There is, however, an alternative. If the jilted bride can go without “Dick,” she can always “Have some Candy!”—​i.e., some female sugar. In Sensation Comics #16 (April 1943), Candy wears what appears to be men’s clothes but shocks Diana with news: Candy is going to marry a man!—​but she feels like a “sissy” in a formal bridal gown. When the engagement is broken off, Candy is relieved: “I’m glad that’s over –​I’m sick of sissy clothes [bridal gown] and simpering saps [men]!” In lieu of sex with a man, she invites Diana to go on a “long ride”—​i.e., a horse ride, but the sexual undercurrent is clear. Candy has swapped out one form of riding, or, to be graphic, one form of clitoral stimulation, for another. Diana, at any rate, reacts to the offer of a ride with Candy as if it were a date: “Etta’s a game girl –​Diana mustn’t keep her waiting.” There are, too, a series of images that speak louder than words. In Wonder Woman #2 (Fall 1942), for example, Etta’s warm embrace of Diana strongly suggests the intimacy of lovers. (See Figure 2.3 on next page.) As the Wonder Woman mythos moves forward, Etta Candy is reintroduced as a Professor of Public Health, and the inventor of a female cure-​all pill, a “life vitamin,” which she calls, “L-​3.” (It’s spring water from Paradise Island, which is poisonous to humans, but Candy synthesizes it for female human consumption; L-​3, however, doesn’t work on men.) Metaphorically, L-​3 suggests an all-​female lifestyle—​a life-​ affirming experience of women saving or emancipating other women. Think of it as a lesbian cure-​all.28 In sum, Etta Candy is more than willing to reeducate women, but if that fails, she is ready to turn to chemistry in order to restore female life or extend feminist values. ***

Wertham thought that the sexual content of Wonder Woman was dangerous; I suggest that Marston agreed. The supposed dangers of these “holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls” are carefully enervated by an ivy-​towered setting: Holliday College is an Arcadian world of manicured lawns and endless games of tennis; 27 Noah Berlatsky, Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/​Peter Comics, 1941–​1948 (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2015), 128–​30; see also 209. 28 In point of fact, L-​3 was discovered in 1930 by Szent-​Györgyi; he won the Nobel Prize for it in 1937. Today, we more commonly refer to it as Vitamin C.

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Figure 2.3. Etta’s warm embrace of her friend suggests the intimacy of lovers. Wonder Woman #2; Fall 1942.

likewise, Paradise Island may have an inviting lifestyle but the island is remote, its exact location unknown. Shakespeare was, I suggest, likewise aware of the social dangers espoused in his plays and cautiously exiled his cross-dressers to isolated islands or enchanted lands of holiday: the Forest of Ardenne, the shores of Illyria, and the exotic city of Venice. The menace of Shakespearean androgyny is further mitigated by the cross-​ dressers themselves, who either: (A) remind the audience that they are merely playing with gender, not permanently reworking it, or (B) apologize for any gender confusion that their transvestitism may have caused; in both cases, the plays in question end with (C) a (seeming) reversion to traditional gender type and heterosexual marriage. Examples of (A): Julia, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, decides to disguise herself as a man so that she can pursue the unfaithful Proteus. When Lucetta suggests that she wear a codpiece, Julia replies: “That will be ill-​favoured”—​i.e., the Elizabethan jock strap is, in her view, an unnecessary and embarrassing accessory (2.7.54). Later in the play, she faints—​you know, because she’s a girl—​and when revived,

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regrets the necessity of having donned “immodest raiment” (5.4.104)—​i.e., masculine dress. Likewise, Viola, dressed in male attire, finds herself in a sword fight, but, terrified, confesses to the audience that it won’t take much for her to reveal her gender: “A little thing would make me tell them how much I lack of a man” (Twelfth Night, 3.4.251–​52). A standard gloss on the line is that thing here is a euphemism for penis. In effect, Viola is arguing that emotions (in this case bravery or bloodlust or a combination thereof) requires masculine genitalia. In As You Like It, Rosalind, lacking the requisite testosterone, would still prefer to “cry like a woman” (2.4.4) or invoke her femininity when it suits her: “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak” (3.2.212). Oliver also thinks that there is something essentially effeminate about her Ganymede-​guise: “You a man? You lack a man’s heart” (4.3.160). It comes, then, as no surprise that when Oliver shows Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, a napkin “Dyed” in Orlando’s blood, she/ he faints (As You Like It, 4.3.151–​53sd). As for (B) cross-​dressers apologizing for their behavior: In Twelfth Night, Viola, passing as the youthful Cesario, is surprised to learn that the Lady Olivia has fallen in love with her, but, short of discontinuing her pursuit of Orsino, all she can muster is a bland statement of regret: Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper false In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we! … O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me t’untie! (2.2.24–​8,  37–​38)

In As You Like It, a near-​identical knot is Gordianed by Rosalind herself. When Phoebe declares her love for Ganymede (the disguised Rosalind), Rosalind refuses to step out of character. Instead, she offers Phoebe a riddle: I pray you do not fall in love with me, For I am falser than vows made in wine. Besides, I like you not. (3.5.71–​73)

In other words, she suggests that there is a logical reason that they can’t be a couple, but leaves it for Phoebe to figure it out on her own. That leads us to (C), traditional marriage: in Act 5, scene 4, of As You Like It, the marriage god Hymen enters with Rosalind and Celia; both women are now wearing

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their traditional, gender-​appropriate garb.29 The heterosexual engagements that follow—​Orlando to Rosalind, Celia to Oliver, and Phoebe to Silvius—​suggest an end to holiday humors. Likewise, in Twelfth Night, Viola marries a man; so do Portia and Nerissa in Merchant; so does Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona. As for Innogen, she’s already married, but is, nonetheless, eager to clarify her gender: “You called me brother/​When I was but [read: actually] your sister” (Cymbeline, 5.6.377–​78). In all these instances, it would seem that females are simply reverting to type. But not so fast. Let’s revisit Rosalind’s riddle: “I am falser than vows made in wine. /​ Besides, I like you not.” This strikes me as akin to the Epimenides Paradox: “All the Cretans are liars.” But the author, Epimenides, is himself a Cretan and so must be a liar. But if he is a liar, then what he says can’t be true, which would prove that he’s a liar, which would mean that he’s telling the truth ... Likewise, Rosalind tells Phoebe that he, Ganymede, is a liar (“I am falser than vows”), and that “he” is telling the truth: “I like you not.” It’s no wonder that Phoebe interprets this as double-​talk, and possibly even an invitation to pursue “him.” A similar Trans vibe reverberates in Twelfth Night: Orsino may now know that the boy Cesario is actually the woman Viola in disguise, but he proposes to “her” while “she” is still dressed as a “he.” As for the cross-​dressing Julia, Portia, Nerissa, and Innogen, each may give up wearing britches, but their smarts suggests that they will continue to wear the pants in their respective relationships. Regarding Hymen’s appearance in As You Like It: we all recognize the hymen as part of the female anatomy, but, according to myth, Hymen was a man. The story has it that Hymen, “a [male] youth of such delicate beauty, that he might be taken for a girl,” fell in love with a maiden, who refused his advances.30 So, he disguised himself as a woman and followed his beloved to the festival of Demeter at Eleusis and was later betrothed to her. Things are going along fine, until the marriage night, when the roof of their bridal suite falls in on him and he is killed. Thereafter, the gods replicate and embed a miniature of Hymen in every woman. The upshot: within every woman is a little Hymen, i.e., a little guy who likes to cross-​dress. 29 In what seems to be the ideological heart of As You Like It, the play’s famous “Seven Ages of Man” speech, Jaques explains that life itself is a bit of a costume party: everyone adopts various roles depending on age, rank, and circumstance—​the puking infant, the whining school boy, the lover, the soldier, the mature man of means and judgment, the heavy-​set elder, and finally, the senile old man waiting for death. Jaques’s speech encapsulates the cycle of life—​and a variety of lives. Indeed, it seems like he is describing different, even opposite people here: the slow and fast (2.7.145, 150); the inarticulate and rambunctious (2.7.147 and 149); the fat and thin (2.7.153, 157), the young and old; the alive and dead (2.7.142, 165). 30 Sir William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology vol. 2 (London: J. Murray, 1872), 536.

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Indeed, many of “best” cross-​ dressers in Shakespeare boast of an inner Hymen—​ergo, wearing female clothing will not affect them behaviorally because they are biologically androgynous: Portia, for example, boasts of her manly stride (The Merchant of Venice, 3.4.68); in As You Like It, Rosalind has the makings of a man because she is “more than common tall” (1.3.104). And, still more complicatedly, what are we to make of a figure like Orlando, who after being schooled by the Trans Ganymede, now has about him certain female marks: “He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. A nun of winter’s sisterhood kisses not more religiously” (3.4.12–​13)?31

INTERLUDE: Batman and Robin, or The Competing Tales of Actors in Tights If disguises of identity are the norm in comics, then understanding identity (at least for the reader) is key. When it comes to Batman and Robin, the mystery of identity, especially sexual identify, was so powerful that when the comic book was remediated into a television series in 1966, the two male actors playing Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) felt the need to assert themselves as irreproachably hetero. The project had two key components for the actors: 1. Suggest that all women were powerless in their presence; 2. Try to out-masculinize the other.

(Note to self: Great idea for a “lost” Batman episode: Catwoman has a feline perfume that effeminizes Robin, but the ever-​prepared Batman carries a can of Bat-​ virility gas in his utility belt that reverses the effect. “Concentrate, old chum; you are the Boy Wonder!”) Let’s begin with Adam West, who played Batman on the 1966 TV show. In his memoir, Back to the Batcave, West boasts that Hollywood execs marketed his penis as overpoweringly attractive to both men and women. The posters for the Batman movie (1966) were captioned with lines like: “Beneath that Batcape –​he’s all 31 It gets more complicated (sigh!). Ganymede, in Greek myth, was Zeus’s boy lover. The poet Homer describes their relationship: [Ganymede’s] was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus’ wine-​pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals. (Homer, Richmond Lattimore trans., Iliad, bk. 20, ll. 233–​35)

From an outsider’s vantage, it may certainly seem like Shakespeare’s Ganymede is playing at being Zeus, the seducer of the clueless and inexperienced Orlando.

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man!” and “Men die! Women sigh!” and “See Batman in action out of costume! See Batman out of action –​in costume!”32 As for Burt Ward (Robin), he was dismissed by cast and crew as a sexually inexperienced “silly boy.”33 A far different story is related in Burt Ward’s competing memoir, Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights. Ward writes that Adam West was almost fired because, in formfitting tights, he displayed virtually no endowment. A Hollywood executive associated with the TV series was deflated when he saw some early outtakes: “He’s flat as a board!”34 Ward recalled: “I ran into Adam at a party, and he was a wreck. He denied that there was any truth to the story [that he was poorly endowed] and pleaded with me to join him in the rest room to prove its falsity … he wanted me to know he was perfectly normal in every way.”35 As for being a silly, inexperienced boy, Ward claims that he was the real Don Juan of the Batcave. Sure, he wore a yellow cape “made from double-​thick bridal satin,” but between his legs hung Priapus, the god of erections.36 He was so well endowed that he thought that tying up women would somehow help: Those scarves served another purpose. She had a tight, firm body. Too tight for the Boy Wonder, she couldn’t take it all. The scarves were a necessity ... I fully penetrated her. Our bodies were wet but our Mouths were dry. “Now I know why they call you the Boy Wonder,” she whispered.37

Gay men solicited him as well; Ward was such an irresistible hunk that even Adam West became enamored with him. In a scene that seems straight out of As You Like It, Ward, the boy, schools West, the man, on how to make love. The tutorials consist of West watching Ward bring woman after woman to orgasm (Ward casually mentions that he liked to have sex at least nine times a night. Fortunately, he has “the right tool for the right job.”38) It gets weirder: West is so aroused that, in one session, he tried to join in, but Ward ordered West to stand in a corner. West submitted and then masturbated while watching the more-​experienced-​but-​far-​ more-​youthful Casanova in action. Ward then connected these off-​screen sex acts to their onscreen relationship. Ward loved ordering West around; it was revenge for being Robin to his Batman: “HOLY ROLE REVERSAL! I was now the one in charge, and he had 32 Adam West, Back to the Batcave (New York: Berkley Book, 1994), 171. 33 West, Back to the Batcave, 178. 34 Burt Ward, Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights (Los Angeles: Logical Figments Books, 1995), 98. 35 Ward, Boy Wonder, 99. 36 Ward, Boy Wonder. 37 Ward, Boy Wonder, 87. 38 Ward, Boy Wonder, 123, 125.

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become the junior partner seeking permission.”39 Moreover, the donning of tights, at least in Ward’s view, allowed the dynamic duo to unveil their true passions for each other: Both TV superheroes constantly change clothes and identities, unusually in each other’s company, in bizarre fashion –​wrapping their legs around a long pole and sliding either up or down so that if the altitude change didn’t kill them, the friction might. Their costumes are so tight-​fitting that every bulge and ripple is accentuated. Hiding their true identities, there two males switch between personalities faster than you can say “Cross-​ dresser ... HOLY HOMOPHOBIA!”40

Regarding these competing accounts: it doesn’t much matter, in my view, who is telling the truth here. The more important point is that Ward and West’s respective costumes led them to question or to test their own sexuality and virility. But of the two, I feel worse for Ward, the pint-​sized Robin who has to seduce women at a James-​Bond-​esque clip to prove that he was a man. Yet, even after so many heterosexual conquests, the fear of going Trans persisted. Ward recalled that one night a woman entered his room dressed as Robin and demanded that he make love to her. “I’m yours Boy Wonder, take me.”41 This woman took some masculine delight in calling the shots: “Take me.” But she still emasculated Ward by calling him Boy Wonder. Still odder, she was demanding a heterosexual encounter with a man while dressed as a male. So was Ward having cross-​dressing sex, straight sex, or was he making love, narcissistically, to a version of himself? In the cases of both West and Ward, defining and proving masculinity merely reveals the impossibility of being straightforwardly straight. ***

Back to Frederic Wertham and his crusade to save American heterosexuality from a Diana-​led sisterhood. In 1953, Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, an alarmist study with a simple enough premise:  kids are influenced by what they read, and what they are reading in comic books is inappropriately violent, lurid, and promiscuous. Likely in part conditioned by McCarthyist fear-​mongering, the message resonated with parents, educators, and politicians across the country. If Wertham was right, then America would be overrun by pedophiles like Bruce Wayne and lesbians like Wonder Woman; birthrates would inevitably plummet. 39 Ward, Boy Wonder, 209 and 205; bold and italics in the original text. 40 Ward, Boy Wonder, 82; bold in the original text. 41 Ward, Boy Wonder, 85.

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And if that happened, who would fight the Red Menace of Soviet aggression? Something had to be done! Thus, the Comics Code was born. The industry agreed to a stringent code: no nudity, titillation or copulation, no depravity, perversity, excessive violence or bloodshed would be depicted. There were provisions to maintain the “value of the home,” and “the sanctity of marriage.” Slang and vernacular were also subject to censorship: “wherever possible good grammar shall be employed.” Certain advertisers were also barred from comic books. This included the medical and sanitary industries, specifically, products that came into contact with the erogenous zones: “Advertisement of medical, health, or toiletry products of questionable nature are to be rejected. Advertisements for medical, health or toiletry products endorsed by the American Medical Association, or the American Dental Association, shall be deemed acceptable if they conform with all other conditions of the advertising code.” To enforce these standards, the comics would be read by the newly formed and industry-​funded Comics Code Authority (CCA), and the approved work would carry a stamp of endorsement, akin to the then-​common “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” Above all, comics could not hint at homosexuality, labeled by the CAA as a “Sex perversion” to be “strictly forbidden.”42 The CAA, as Kahan and Stewart (2010) observe, resulted in an industry-​wide heterosexual revamp.43 In the case of Batman and Robin, for example, readers were introduced to Batman’s girlfriend (Detective Comics #233; July, 1956), Betty Kane/​Batwoman, who was eventually dropped in favor of a series of Batman love-​ interests, including Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman (first appearance Batman #1, Spring 1940, but fully developed as a love interest post-​Comics Code). As for Robin, he too was given a love interest, Batwoman’s niece, Bat-​Girl (Batman #139; April, 1961). But no superhero was more adversely affected by the Code than Wonder Woman. As Jill Lepore notes, Wonder Woman became a babysitter and a fashion model (a nod here to her sexy, bombshell looks), and the author of a “lonely-​hearts” newspaper advice column to young girls on how to catch and keep a man.44 Diana’s biologically problematic femininity was likewise revised. Her pre-​teen years were presented as the adventures of “Wonder Tot” (debut, Wonder Woman #122; May 1961); her teenage years were similarly aired as the exploits of “Wonder Girl” 42 Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, 270–​71. 43 Jeffrey Kahan and Stanley Stewart, Caped Crusaders 101: Composition Through Comic Books, 2nd ed. (Jefferson: McFarland, 2010), 93–​94. 44 Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, 271; also, see image on p. 272 and cover of Sensation Comics #97 (March 1950). In both, Diana is a Dear-​Abby-​style “Romance Editor”; in both, Steve reads her copy and smiles approvingly.

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(debut, Wonder Woman #105; April 1959).45 In the latter version, Diana is “visited by Aphrodite the Goddess of Love, who comes to wish the young Diana well, and tells the infant girl that she will grow to be the fairest maid in all the land”—i.e., a good catch for any man.46 As for Etta Candy, she was stripped of her supporting role as Diana’s educated, professorial pal. In the coming decades, this once strong-​willed, independent, highly educated scientist, inventor, and professor was revamped into a weak, even pathetic, quitter, who whines that she will never meet anyone who wants to marry her. Eventually, Etta was provided with a boyfriend, the nerdy Howard Huckaby (debut, Wonder Woman #315; May 1984). In a still more recent revamp, 2003, she is married off to Steve Trevor. As for her relationship with Diana, it turns toxic. Jealous of all the attention men pay to Diana, Etta Candy (whose surname was once a euphemism for oral sex) develops anorexia.47 ***

Wertham radically altered the comic book industry; no less pernicious was his effect upon traditional critics, many of whom trusted the respected child psychologist at his word. The drama critic Eric Bentley, for example, wrote: “I for one had not realized how ugly and nasty-​minded these books are until I read Dr. Wertham’s text and examined the illustrations. Comic books are bad art, and bad humanity, and therefore meager and possibly noxious food for the minds of the young –​or old.”48 Wertham’s gay-​bashing may be, in my view, loathsome and socially regressive, but let’s play devil’s advocate here. The notion that books of all sorts can put thoughts into your head is obvious. Many comic books (not just Wonder Woman) are about accidental encounters with aliens, or radiation, or a childhood trauma that transforms the ordinary person into someone different, freakish, alien, and, as a consequence, the transformed person is socially alienated, has to hide aspects of 45 Soon after, Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl were reintroduced as Diana’s adopted children (Wonder Woman #124). Together, with Grandmother Hippolyta, Diana and the girls go out on “fun family adventures.” See Tim Hanley, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), 144. These revisionary canards were introduced by Robert Kanigher. Marston’s writerly involvement with the character ended with Sensation Comics #82 (October 1948). 46 This is according to DC’s own database DC.Wikia.com, accessed June 11, 2017. 47 Scott Beatty, Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Guide to the Amazon Princess (New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2003), 49. It’s not entirely doom and gloom, in Wonder Woman vol. 3. (January 2008), we meet an anomalous version of Etta, a svelte secret agent. 48 Bentley objected when Wertham extended his analysis to condemn the “cruelties” of fairy tales. See his The Life of the Drama (New York: Atheneum, 1964), 221; emphasis added.

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the self, create a secret identity, and so on. If the comics themselves acknowledged that experience can remake identity, then the industry had a responsibility to present socially appropriate messaging. The same might be said of Shakespeare plays like The Taming of the Shrew or Othello, in which women are subject to domestic abuse, or The Merchant of Venice, a play that explores antisemitism. If taught or staged at all, these works have to be approached responsibly. By that same logic, Shakespeare’s cross-​dressing comedies may be deemed inappropriate for some children. Anecdotal evidence suggests that literary experiences can help foster sexual identity. The writer John Addington Symonds, for example, recalls that he established his sexual identity at around the age of ten while (and by) reading the Shakespeare poem, “Venus and Adonis”: “I yearned after him [Adonis] as an adorable object of passionate love ... I dreamed of falling back like her [Venus] upon the grass and folding the quick-​ panting lad in my embrace ... It [the poem] stimulated … my inborn craving after persons of my own sex.”49 In sum, both Shakespeare and Marston set up situations in which male and female characters exchange power roles with each other; these imaginative scenarios become the catalysts for far more ambitious adventures into possibility: an imagined paradise without want, a forest where men and women can re-​imagine and redefine their gender roles, a Mediterranean shore where women dress as boys to attract men, a secret island where Amazons make babies without semen. Sure, it’s fantasy, but let’s not pretend that fantasy has no effect on reality. In the words of Angela Robinson, director of the 2017 biopic, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women: “The Marstons were psychologists, and they really thought that if you could change hearts and minds, you could change the world. Marston called Wonder Woman ‘psychological propaganda’ to try to get young boys and men to respect powerful women and find their power attractive. And he had this notion that if women ran the world, the world would be a better place.”50 ***

Today, Wonder Woman’s Trans vibe is, like her plane, visible only in outline. In a 2011 reboot and in the 2017 film, Diana’s birth is revised. Her once miraculous birth is now a run-​of the-​mill heterosexual conception: Queen Hippolyta is impregnated by Zeus (Wonder Woman vol. 4 #1–​2). More bad news: DC continues 49 John Addington Symonds, The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds, ed. Phyllis Grosskurth (New York: Random House, 1984), 63. 50 Mekado Murphy, “Wonder Woman’s Surprising Back Story Has a Film of Its Own,” New York Times, accessed October 11, 2017.

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to find new ways to objectify Wonder Woman. For example, in Wonder Woman vol. 2 #195; October 2003, Diana writes a book of feminist philosophy, Reflections: A Collection of Essays and Speeches, but the publisher is more interested in her body than her brain. The proposed cover is of a naked Diana, posing sensuously under a single, thin bed sheet. Objectifying women, real or imaginary, is nothing new; most adults understand how corporate America uses sexuality to sell products or, worse, coerces women into body-​shaming themselves, exemplified by a recent ad campaign tying the

Figure 2.4. Reflections: A Collection of Essays and Speeches, retitled as Wonderful Words. Wonder Woman vol. 2 #195; October 2003.

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Figure 2.5. “Super Fat Wonder Woman” by dwcjester. Image found at Deviant Art.com, dwcjester, accessed May 11, 2017.

2017 Wonder Woman movie to a “think-​thin” campaign. But there is something in Wonder Woman that will not be co-​opted fully. Her fans reacted with outrage and sarcasm, perhaps best exemplified by this parodic drawing of the heroine.51 (See Figure 2.5, above.) Wonder Woman, here, denies her classic pinup status, which is all to the good, but at the same time this image has a darker subtext. In terms of audience zeitgeist, Wonder Woman swings both ways: a heterosexual goddess and a woman, like Candy, consumed by unhealthy and uncontrolled appetites.52 What has become increasingly clear (particularly in the 2017 movie) is that Wonder Woman, despite her hetero-​normative revamps, remains a figure of 51 For more tweeted reactions, see Greg Morabito, “Wonder Woman Is Selling Diet Bars and People Are Pissed,” Eater.com, accessed May 11, 2017. 52 I should add that there are multiple DC universes and versions, some of them running concurrently. In the alt-​Injustice universe, Wonder Woman is a warrior, repeatedly decapitating and torturing men, heroes, and gods, but she protects and coddles Superman as if he were an infant swaddled in diapers. In the graphic novel, DC: The New Frontier (2004), Diana is depicted as a freakishly tall, thickly limbed warrior who frees women from sexual slavery (think Boko Haram) and equips them with the weapons they need to execute their rapist-​captors.

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empowerment for some women, and a source of unease and fear for some men.53 In a run-​up for the film, DC Comics’ parent company Time Warner had a limited run of female-​only previews at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. Here is how the New York Times covered the event: On Wednesday, the Alamo’s Austin branch announced that it would hold a special screening for women on June 6, with proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. “Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying ‘No Guys Allowed,’ ” the announcement read. “And when we say ‘People Who Identify as Women only,’ we mean it.”

People Who Identify as Women: That sounds like something that Marston would have approved, and it certainly was an endorsement of the Trans community. But some men felt disrespected: “If you had a guys [sic] only screening of Thor 3 [sic] there’d be an uproar and you know it.”54 It is difficult to gauge how widespread (or how deeply) this resentment goes, but a number of male journalists reviewing the film went out of their way to dismiss a feminist—​much less a Trans—​ take on Wonder Woman. The Vulture’s David Edelstein, for example, bemoaned the fact that the film wasn’t shot as a softcore porn: “Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers.” This was especially disappointing because, in Edelstein’s view, Gal Gadot has the “perfect blend of superbabe-​ in-​ the-​ woods innocence and mouthiness”; Armond White, of the National Review, argued that that the film was ruined by female direction: “Jenkins is not an action director; clearly, she was hired only as a politically correct token.”55 DC Comics seems to agree. Despite the fact that the Wonder Woman movie is a global smash hit, the sequel will be about Wonder Woman’s lost brother! In short, rather than building out a safe space solely for women, DC is crowding that same space with men. As one feminist critic sarcastically put it: “Please, DC, stop trying to make Wonder Woman about a man. You already changed Diana’s parentage 53 Female sexuality remains a problem for DC Comics as well. Tim Hanley describes DC Comics’ penchant for killing women and stuffing them in refrigerators, a sly way of signaling to girls that overeating will lead to a solitary and short life. See his Wonder Woman Unbound, 237–​42. Hanley has a good eye for detail but something passes him by here: strong, emancipated women, you know, the ones who don’t need men, end up dead in refrigerators because they are cold to male sexual advances—​i.e., they deserve to die because they are frigid. 54 Andrew R.  Chow, “Women-​Only Screenings of ‘Wonder Woman’ Sell Out and Prompt Complaints,” New York Times, May 28, 2017. 55 For an overview of these negative and blatantly sexist reviews, see Marykate Jasper, “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, Which Man Wrote the Worst Wonder Woman Review of All,” The Mary Sue.com, June 3, 2017.

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from Aphrodite to Zeus ... The only audiences you’ll be pleasing with that are the types of cretins who think the Alamo Drafthouse is a sexist institution.”56 Self-​evidently, some men were uneasy with women gathering among themselves to celebrate being among themselves. Suffering Sappho! Just what do these guys fear? What do they think all those women are doing in the dark without them? As for men complaining that Wonder Woman is not sexy enough, or that female directors are not talented enough to cater to the heterosexual interests of men, it is tempting to see a female-​only Wonder Woman screening as an escape from the objectifying gaze of masculinity. This is, I think, where Shakespeare and Marston have to unhappily part. There is a good reason why Wonder Woman is unconvincing as an action hero (at least to some men), and in part we can lay the blame with Shakespeare, whose plays are dominated by masculine tropes. For example, swordplay in Shakespeare is almost exclusively masculine. As a consequence, even adventurous casting directors have to consider how little rehearsal time and, relatedly, skill, actresses typically have with swords and other weapons. Shakespeare’s plays may have the odd female warrior, but when it comes to staging war, women are typically sidelined. Rosalind fainting at the sight of blood just seems more socially acceptable than Queen Margaret leading her troops into battle.57 As media pundit Leslie Loftis submits, Wonder Woman films are rare because, after two millennia of male-​only parts dominating our various mythos, “Hollywood is simply having trouble figuring out how to write this female superhero.”58 ***

At the end of As You Like It, the boy actor playing Rosalind comes forward to remind the audience that “she” can be male or female, as circumstances dictate: “If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me.” The same boy actor also says that he will make “curtsy” (5.4.193–​94, 196). Should men interpret this attention as gay, hetero, or Trans? Cross-​dressing opens up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. 56 Vivian Kane, “DC Has No Idea What We Love About Wonder Woman, Introduces New Comic Arc About Diana’s Brother. No One Wants This,” The Mary Sue.com, accessed June 21, 2017. 57 In the case of Margaret, the play suggests her biological and spiritual rebellion. Margaret might wear a “woman’s face,” but her actions violate all norms of femininity: “Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; /​ Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless” (3 Henry VI, Sc. 4.141–​42). That she is later recast as a witch (in Richard III) merely underscores her transgression. 58 Leslie Loftis, “Here’s Why Wonder Woman Isn’t Getting a Movie Any Time Soon,” The Federalist.com, February 24, 2015.

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Of course, we don’t need a Rosalind to remind us that in everyday life, our sexual identities are in large measure socially constructed and conditioned. Plays like As You Like it, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline remind us that clothes label us. Heroes, actors, or even the people you see at school or at work, wear costumes that openly declare their acquiescence to or defiance of social norms. That Wonder Woman has different costumes (the brown khakis and conservative glasses of Diana Prince and the bustier and red leather boots of Wonder Woman) suggests that one outfit is not enough to reflect all of her personalities and proclivities. Whether on stage or page, cross-​dressers suggest that our traditional cultural fashionings are increasingly threadbare.

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Chapter 3

TONIGHT AT THE IMPROV: COMEDIANS SLAY! TWO DRINK MINIMUM

“What you know, you know.” –​ Iago.1 “All you need to know ... is that I exist.” –​Deadpool

Please welcome to the Improv stage, you’ve see them on HBO and at your marriage therapist’s office. He’s the comedian you love to hate, sounds like Gestapo, inamorato, and avocado, the man who is never incommunicado, and she’s the woman eager to feel ya, please welcome—​Iago and his partner Emilia! EMILIA I have a thing for you. IAGO

A thing for me? It is a common thing –​

EMILIA Ha? IAGO

To have a foolish wife.

EMILIA Well, you’re easy to fool. IAGO

There’s none so foul and foolish thereunto,

But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. EMILIA Are you calling yourself wise??? IAGO

A woman’s sole virtue is to suckle fools and chronicle small beer.

EMILIA What guy doesn’t like to a little suckle? [wink!]

IAGO

Ya, you’re a real wildcat in the bedroom … with the neighbor.

This skit is based on exchanges Iago has with his wife, Emilia, or with Othello’s wife, Desdemona, in Acts 2 and 3. All of the “jokes” center on infidelity. The language 1 Othello, 5.2.299; all citations from Taylor et al., The New Oxford Shakespeare.

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here can be difficult, so I will walk you through some of it: Iago says that his wife is overly common—​that she is a slutty expert with men’s “thing[s]‌” (obsolete slang for penis). Iago is not here suggesting that Emilia is giving him a penis (“I have thing for you”), when he responds that it must be a “common thing,” but, rather, that his wife has been stuffed by men so commonly that she’s, as a consequence, tainted and corrupted, lacking all nobility, virtue, and self-​restraint. The acrimony and misogyny in the jokes that follow are clear enough, and modern enough: Iago’s shtick is not much different than, say, that old Woody Allen chestnut: “My psychiatrist asked me if I thought sex was dirty; I said, ‘Only if it’s done right.’ ” Still worse are the routines of other comedians, for example, the unprintably misogynist humor of Andrew Dice Clay: “She’s a horny little animal. Look at her with her big t*ts.” This sort of “humor” doesn’t ask that we see the world as filled with the wondrous or the funny. These are off-​ramps to the vicious, mean, and cynical; cul de sacs of scurrility. This is Iago’s world—​filled with fools, whores, and watered-​down booze—​Desdemona accurately describes it as “malice” comingled with “heavy ignorance” (2.1.144, 141). This is the world that Othello will eventually see as his own. ***

There are two kinds of comedic entertainers: the comic and the comedian. You know the comic; he was the class clown in your high school, the guy who did anything for a laugh: poked himself in the eye, ate his own boogers, or farted on command. Comics of this sort never feature in Shakespeare. They are more like warm-​ups for the main act: The Clown in Titus Andronicus, a clueless idiot, enters with some pigeons and is executed; Dogberry, a genuinely incompetent policeman, delights the audience for two, maybe three, scenes; the Porter in Macbeth tells a few knock-​knock jokes and is seen no more. Another example of this comic type is the aptly named “Clown” in Othello. He first appears in Act 3, scene 1, and tells a few fart jokes: CLOWN Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i’ th’ nose thus? MUSICAN How, sir, how?

CLOWN Are these, I pray you, wind instruments? MUSICAN Ay, marry are they, sir.

CLOWN O, thereby hangs a tail.

MUSICAN Whereby hangs a tale, sir?

CLOWN Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. (3.1.3–​10)

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There is no great truth here. All the Clown is saying is you stink at playing your instruments. When the Clown returns in Act 3, scene 4, we get pretty much the same sort of joke: DESDEMONA Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies?

CLOWN I dare not say he lies anywhere ... To tell you where he lodges is to tell you where I lie. DESDEMONA Can anything be made of this?

CLOWN I know not where he lodges, and for me to devise a lodging and say he lies here, or he lies there, were to lie in mine own throat. (3.4.1–​2,  6–​9)

The humor here is in the dissonance between the clarity of the question and the seeming confusion of the response. Though playing with words, the Clown does not corrupt reality. We don’t think like the Clown after spending time with him; his influence never truly alters the actual. His humor merely suggests the ways in which people can merrily play with speech acts. Moreover, there is no reason for anyone to think very much about this clown; we don’t, for example, need to know his back story, if his dad hugged him, if he did his homework, if he had his teenage heart broken, or if he always wanted to be a comic. All we need know in this particular instance is that the Clown is supposed to be funny. In sum, these comic characters convey no new way of processing reality, no paradigm-​level reprogramming. A comedian, on the other hand, deals in personal stories, unflattering self-​ assessments, misunderstandings, rejections, failures, politics, race relations, and poverty; like Shelley’s ideal poet, the comedian functions as an unacknowledged legislator of the world. When we want to think less, we allow ourselves to be led by spokespersons, politicians, or authoritarians (think White House briefings); when we want to hear the truth, we listen to comedians (think Daily Show). We can apply the same formulation to Shakespeare’s comedians. In Twelfth Night, Feste, for example, is praised not for his wit but for his philosophy: “Anything that’s mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue” (1.5.38–​40). This is not a one-​liner, put down, or zinger. It’s an observation, and a deeply philosophical one—​all virtue has within it some underlying sin, just as all sin allows for the possibility of virtue. Furthermore, there are literary, and even economic, implications to be teased out: don’t judge a book by its cover; to see the poor (a man whose clothes are patched and ragged) as spiritually impoverished is a mistake, etc.

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Feste often relies on the common standup practice of interacting with and mercilessly denigrating his audience, known as “crowd work.” This usually involves asking people for information—​where they are from, their religion, personal relationships, their clothing—​and then mocking and embarrassing them. In the following passage, Feste takes issue with his patron, Olivia, who, dressed in black, mourns the death of her brother: FESTE

Good madonna, why mournest thou?

OLIVIA Good fool, for my brother’s death. FESTE

I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

OLIVIA I know his soul is in heaven, fool. FESTE

The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven. (1.5.54–​58)2

What should not be lost here is the public nature of the wit. Feste operates as more than just a wisenheimer; he is a spiritual counsellor of sorts, offering comfort in the mourning process. The mourner is re-​engaged with one of the healthiest of human expressions: laughter. And where there is laughter, there is life. Shakespeare writes: “Mirth cannot move a soul in agony” (Love’s Labour’s Lost, 5.2.817), and we can easily follow the logic here: If you can laugh, then the agonies and sorrows of loss, while not necessarily forgotten, are no longer immediate or paramount. With every chuckle, Olivia, sequestered in black, can no longer honestly say that she is in mourning. Her laughter is a social act, signaling that she is now ready to rejoin her community. In As You Like It and King Lear, we have fools that offer us a more political form of comedy. Touchstone, for example, makes Daily-​Show-​like observations on the follies of the rich, stupid, and libidinous. But there are risks in speaking truth to power: “The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly” (1.2.64–​65). The fool here suggests that his profession, truth teller, has a Cassandra-​like quality. The implication is that the world would be better off if it would heed his counsel, but, as we all know from our Greco-​Roman myth (or maybe from Shakespeare’s play, Troilus and Cressida), no one listens to Cassandra. Or, rather, people hear her; but they refuse to believe her. They think that she’s a pain in the neck and, more to the point, a bit funny in the head, hence, they see 2 The New Oxford uses the speech designation “CLOWN,” but that suggests a strong association with the aforementioned Clown in Othello, a reading which I reject. I have, therefore, reinstituted the far more common character designation, “FESTE.”

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her as a comic—​but she’s really a comedian, someone with something socially important to say. Indeed, if anyone were to listen to Touchstone, I mean really listen, the consequences would be dire. As Celia warns, “speak no more … you’ll be whipped for taxation one of these days” (As You Like It, 1.2.62–​63). King Lear’s Fool is cut from the same political motley. After taunting Lear with a series of egg and snail metaphors that suggest both his homeless state and his psychic condition—​Lear is cracked in the head; a snail without a shell, i.e., a mindless slug—​ the King warns the Fool that his act is becoming irksome and offensive: KING LEAR

FOOL

Take heed, sirrah: the whip.

Truth is a dog that must to kennel. He must be whipped out. (King Lear, Sc.4.89–​90)

The Fool isn’t just annoying to Lear. His bad jokes also annoy us. When Nahum Tate updated King Lear in 1681, he famously revised the play’s tragic ending, but, just as significantly, he cut the character of the Fool altogether. Likewise, when novelizing King Lear for the recent Hogarth/​Penguin series, Edward St. Aubyn decided that he had to “break with Shakespeare; [opting for] a Fool who was actually funny.” The Shakespearean original was, in St. Aubyn’s view, too serious, a philosopher who is also a complete “torment.”3 We will explore the function of painful humor in due course. Right here, right now, let’s continue looking at this comic-​comedian classification. There are, as we might imagine, some minor characters in Shakespeare which any pedant might pluck for counterargument. In A Winter’s Tale, we have a comedic conman, Autolycus, who is integral to the plot, but he is more of a vaudevillian, an entertainer, rather than comedian. He is certainly not a Feste- or Touchstone-​like fool: rather than rail against authority, he is happy enough to become a well-​paid part of the political establishment. There is, however, one character that presents more of a challenge to our taxonomy: Iago. ***

There’s an old theatrical chestnut by Charles Gildon (1694), that “the person that acted Iago [in Shakespeare’s lifetime] was in much esteem for a comedian.”4 The word comedian, in Gildon’s era, was often used interchangeably with actor, but, in 3 Interview with Edward St. Aubyn on his novel Dunbar. Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, Episode 84 (Folger Shakespeare Library, November 1, 2017), Folger.edu. Discussion on the Fool begins at the 19:10 mark. His host, Barbara Bagaev, approved of the revision: “What a relief!” 4 See Taylor et al., The New Oxford Shakespeare, 2114.

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this instance, that reading would be a tautology: Gildon would, in effect, be saying, “The actor who played Iago was an actor.” So, he almost assuredly means that the actor playing Iago was known for his comedy. The part is certainly meant of an actor with a gift of the gab. Iago is a well-​known, if low-​ranking, lifetime soldier; he knows how to crack a joke and hold his liquor; he makes friends easily with people of various backgrounds; he’s reliable and fun in small doses. In modern terms, he’s someone equally good in a bar fight or a card game, but he’s not on your speed dial; he’s more like everyone’s second best friend, or, less charitably, everyone’s second choice—​so much so that Iago simply assumes that he is even his wife’s second choice! Several times in the play Iago states that his wife has been unfaithful—​but not unfaithful enough to leave him. So, in his mind, she’s using him, sleeping in his bed, but not exclusively in his bed; eating his food, spending his money. We might add that Iago has it all wrong, but, psychologically, he lives in counterfactuals. When describing himself to us, his audience, he assures us that “I am not what I am” (1.1.63). This smacks of the Epimenides Paradox, explored in the last chapter, but the paradox here is not necessarily offered as a riddle without a solution. Shakespeare might be inviting us to enter into Iago’s mindset, to see the world from his counterfactual point of view. That’s a dark and ugly place to dwell, but it raises some logical questions: What if Iago were right about his wife; what if Emilia were cheating on him; why doesn’t he just leave her? The connection to Othello, who punishes his wife for a similarly imagined, counterfactual affair, is likely already coalescing in the reader’s mind. We will get there. For now, however, let’s return to the notion that Iago thinks that his wife is unfaithful, but he hasn’t the chutzpah to divorce her. In Shakespeare’s day, there was a word for this sort of guy—​a wittol—​a man who is aware and tolerant of his wife’s infidelity. Wittol is an obsolete comic term, but we recognize its modern-​day equivalents well enough: chump, dunce, fool, idiot, or shmuck. We can also add another comedic type to the list: coward. Some characters in Shakespeare are heroic, courageous, or virtuous, but Iago is more like Hamlet; he believes himself wronged, but he hasn’t the means or the audacity to deal with his anger or his enemies head-​on. And I am not just talking about Iago’s inability to deal with his bad marriage: Iago feels that he, not Cassio, should have been selected as Othello’s lieutenant. Missing out on a job promotion can be disappointing, to be sure, but Iago does not react with open rage. Instead, he slyly sabotages his enemies—​seeming to come to Othello’s aid when others want him arrested; offering advice to Cassio that he, Iago, then sabotages. In addition to acts of false friendship, he wounds intimates, acquaintances, and strangers alike with rapier wit, stabbing sarcasm, and, when these fail, sharp-​edged steel. We might here quibble that Iago is not sarcastic. In fact, we might argue that sarcasm is in some way morally uplifting. The sarcastic comedian is trying to

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shame us into recognizing the flaws of our own behavior. “Just be better” seems to be the underlining message of sarcasm: “The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.” –​George Bernard Shaw “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” –​Mark Twain

In this sense, sarcastic comedy forces the audience to see reality as it really is—​ warts and all. The process also suggests that the comedian must be both sanctimonious and perpetually optimistic; that he sees his task as essentially constructive. The rending of illusion inevitably fosters personal growth, or at least it should. In any case, traditional sarcasm does not map very well onto Iago. W. H. Auden describes Iago as a “Practical Joker,” but his main drive is “the infliction of suffering on others, or the exercise of power over others against their will.”5 Daniel Derrin argues that Iago’s “jests” stem from and empower his “insidious fictionalizations.”6 Stephen Greenblatt, likewise, argues that Iago uses improvisational methods and “comic narrative” to refashion “improbable possibilities” into “probable impossibilities.”7 Stephen Rogers argues that Iago uses a “kind of comedy” to impose “false identities on each of his victims and controls the ways in which each of them will perceive the others.”8 Phil Withington may describe Iago variously as a “bantering” comedian (Anyone here from Philly?) and “witty” (You seem to be a real wit, or at least half of one), but the character's intent is to “dominate and destroy everyone around” him.9 Iago is, then, inversing traditional sarcasm. He isn’t forcing others to see reality; he uses his comedy to warp it. Still more intriguingly, Iago has access to a meta-​ level sense of plotline. Oftentimes, he somehow “steps out” of the play to address the audience directly. 5 W. H.  Auden, “The Joker in the Pack,” The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (1948; repr., New York: Vintage, 1989), 246–​72; 253, 248. 6 Daniel Derrin, “Rethinking Iago’s Jests in Othello II.i: Honestas, Imports and Laughable Deformity,” Renaissance Studies 31 (2017): 365–​82; 380. 7 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-​Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 234. See also Stephen Orgel, who refers to the play as a “mass of impossibilities.” “Othello and the End of Comedy,” Shakespeare Survey 56 (2003): 105–​16; 114. 8 Stephen Rogers, “Othello: Comedy in Reverse,” Shakespeare Quarterly 24 (1973): 210–​20; 215–​16. In addition, Rogers suggests that the plot of the entire play reads like a comedy: “The lovers had surmounted the barriers of race, country, and social class … the possessiveness of [a]‌narrow-​minded father”—​in sum, the traditions of Roman comedy (212). 9 Phil Withington, “Honestas,” in Early Modern Theatricality: Oxford Twenty-​First Century Approaches to Literature, ed. Henry S. Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 516–​33; 530, 529.

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Meta-​awareness (in this case, knowing that you are a character in a play performed for an audience) is one of the reasons why Shakespeare’s characters often seem to be autonomous. By breaking the fourth wall, by talking not just to the characters in the play but also to the audience watching it, Iago seems ready to walk out of his world and into ours. But Iago, while having access to our domain, is incapable of altering the plotline within his own world. There are limits to his proto-​postmodernity. But what if there were a character capable not only of exiting his own story but also capable of revising it, changing plot, character, and genre to suit himself, someone who could play the hero or villain, the mastermind, or fool just as he wished? Now, that would be a real super power! Well, he exists, I guess because he wants to exist, and wants us to know that he exists. His name is Deadpool. ***

He calls himself “Wade Wilson,” but “Wade Wilson” is not sure if “Wade Wilson” is his real name or a false memory that he has somehow inserted into his own mind. He has fragments of memories, but again they may all be false: a mother who died when he was five, but also a mother who beat him as a teen; a father he hasn’t seen since he was a kid, and a father who shot him when he was seventeen. He has memories of being a teenage mercenary and of changing his name after each botched assignment (and there seems to have been many). At one point, he was living with a benefactor, Wade Wilson, and his wife, Mercedes. Coveting Mercedes (just as Iago covets Desdemona), he decides to kill Wade and take his place. (All very Oedipal.) Except he botches the job and kills Mercedes instead. In penance, he inexplicably adopts Wade’s identity anyway. He then learns that Mercedes is alive (another botched job!); nonetheless, he continues to pretend. Again, all of this is provisional; Wade has no way of knowing what is true and what is not. He then joins the Canadian army and is assigned to Canada’s Department K (what the K stands for is never explained). He gets cancer. To cure him, the Canadians inject him with various mutant DNA strands, including the Wolverine’s healing factor. (Wolverine, a fellow superhero, has a similar origin and a similar, sinking fear that his memories are false.) The cure is also bungled: he’s now an immortal, but his entire body, including his face, is unrecognizable, rotting, covered in welts, scars and open, bleeding sores. He’s so ugly that he showers with his mask on (Wolverine/​ Deadpool: The Decoy; September, 2011). Oh, and he still has stage-​4 cancer: I volunteered for the Weapon X program lookin’ for a cure. The docs inoculated me with the super-​healing DNA from that stuck-​up jerk-​face Wolverine. Joke was on me, though! My cancer got the healing factor too,

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so it’s a constant battle with my regular cells –​causing me to live on and on and on in never-​ending agony. (Deadpool Team-​Up #899; January 2010)

What strikes me about “Wade’s” backstory is not the why and how, but the where. On paper, Deadpool’s resumé sounds impressive enough:  he’s an expert with knifes, guns, explosives, hand-​to-​hand combat. But who trained him? U.S. Special Forces? Nope. A secret cult of Ninjas? Nope. The KGB? Nope. Mossad? Nope. He was trained to kill by the Canadians. The Canadians. You know, those savages who threaten other nations with universal healthcare and organic maple syrup?! Sure, Canada has an army, but it’s about as dangerous as the Cookie Monster. The dilapidated state of the equipment is no secret: submarines that don’t submerge, or need to be towed to port; 40-​year-​old planes maintained with parts borrowed from museums. Perhaps most comically, Canadian soldiers are only given 49 rounds of ammo a year; a single American M1A1 tank crew is issued about 11,000 rounds. A recent article in the Huffington Post described Canada's armed forces as an “embarrassment”; but, as a Canadian, I disagree. I would argue that most Canadians are proud that we are not an aggressive military power. That’s what makes Wade’s origin so funny!10 This immortal’s point of origin isn’t Transylvania; it’s the literary and the geo-​political equivilant of Sesame Street. ***

Wade has no family, no friends, no memories, no purpose, and stage 4 cancer. Immortality, it seems, is not all it’s cracked up to be. But Wade enjoys one upside: freedom. Deadpool feels that he is not really part of either humanity or the mutant community, and, therefore, feels free to act in any way he pleases. This self-​ direction also, inexplicably, gives him access to a meta-​level awareness akin to that enjoyed by Iago and other top-​shelf Shakespeare characters. In Amazing Spider-​ Man #611 (January 2010), Deadpool breaks the fourth wall, commenting on Ryan Reynolds playing him in the movie X-​Men Origins: Wolverine (2009): “Bienvenidos, Gents! Deadpool, mercenary for hire and big time Ryan Reynolds fan here!” This is a repeated motif in the Deadpool comic. In Deadpool Annual #2 (May 2014), Deadpool addresses his readers: Hey there, friends! My name is Deadpool –​the Merc with the Mouth! I am, like … a mercenary. I also have a mouth. But like … don’t most mercenaries? I like to use mine to spout a constant stream of jokes. And eat chimichangas.

10 See recent stories by the BBC and the Huffington Post: “Canada: Air Force Raids Museum for Spare Plane Parts,” BBC.com; “Why No One Should Join the Canadian Forces,” Huffington Post.ca, accessed February 27, 2018.

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Also, I have a healing factor –​which I also use to eat chimichangas … The good news is that’s all you need to know to enjoy this issue –​is that I exist.

Iago is aware of our world and speaks to us directly, but Deadpool does that and more. While Pirandello’s characters might search for their author, Deadpool not only finds his own author, he’ll often get into a war of words with him. In Deadpool and Cable #26 (April 2011), our hero says that he speaks “Rumekistanian”; the narrator interrupts Deadpool’s inner monologue: “You do not [speak Rumekistanian]”; Deadpool replies: “Do too! He [the president of Rumekistan] just said, ‘Take this squirrel to the William Shatner Festival and feed him gravy.’ ” In Deadpool and Cable #25 (June 2010), Deadpool demands more narrative filler because X-​Men fans “are going to be bugging you [the author] like crazy for the next 24 issues.” In such instances, Deadpool can seem like an origami master, refolding the script into unexpected forms. He can likewise warp other stories told by other authors. In Deadpool #21 (December 2016), our hero enters into a world populated entirely by Shakespeare’s characters. Almost all of them are intent upon murdering someone, but, hey, Deadpool is an assassin, so business is good. Juliet wants him to kill the Montagues; Goneril and Regan want him to kill Lear, and the Merry Wives are also willing to sleep with him if he will only kill on their behalf. But, while quoting Shakespeare—​“Angels and Ministers of grace defend us!”—​Deadpool turns the potentially tragic (the aforementioned line is from Hamlet) into the absurdly comedic: “Where did I learn to speak thus? Canada?” When Lady Macbeth invokes demons to possess her—​“Come to my woman’s breast, and make my milk for gall, you minster of murther base”—​Deadpool turns supernatural soliciting into farce: “Unsex thee? Drink thy milk? We have just met!”11 Likewise, when he meets Prospero, who gives him a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, Deadpool thanks him: “Thou sav’st me from a tempest of 11 Lady Macbeth is here misquoting the Shakespearean original:

 Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts. Unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-​full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up th’ accèss and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th’effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief. (Macbeth, 1.5.36–​46)

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trouble,” and then adds as an aside to his readers: “See ye what I did there?” When the ghost of Hamlet Sr. pops up, claiming to be his father, Deadpool refuses to play along and attempts to switch the story to a Star Wars theme: “Is this a galaxy far, far, away?” When the ghost tells him that his uncle murdered his father and now sleeps with his mother, Deadpool deadpans: “Such shocking news –​is this the ghost of Jerry Springer?” When told of how Claudius killed Hamlet Senior—​ poison in the ear—​Deadpool approves because Claudius has stumbled upon a juvenile gag: “Th’orginal wet willy.” As the one-​ liners suggest, there is an aspect of Deadpool that never changes: his sense of humor. Wade, an adult, is always playing the wisecracking kid, the juvenile delinquent, the sophomoric prankster in the back row armed with spitballs and stink bombs. When not blowing things up or killing people, our hero likes to graffiti “handlebar moustaches and oversized weenies” on walls (Amazing Spider-​Man Annual #38; June 2011) or to threaten incongruously: “I swear I’ll shave you like a French poodle” (Deadpool Giant Size #1; January 1997) or “I’m gonna Super-​Mario his sorry butt into a body cast” (Deadpool #1; January 1997), etc. If you are new to Deadpool comics, the novelty may seem fresh and funny, but the jokes get old … fast. As I will argue, that’s the point. Before we get there, another digression.

Interlude: The Joker’s Comedic Act When a set at a comedy club goes well, comedians often say that they “murdered” or “slayed” their audiences. Of course, they don’t mean that literally, but even metaphorically the language suggests a form of aggression. It is, generally speaking, the way a comedian convinces himself that he counts, that he exists and matters because what he does leaves a mark. In terms of pop cultural equivalencies, we can turn to the 2008 Batman movie, The Dark Knight, starring Heath Ledger as the story-​telling comedian, the Joker: My father was … a drinker. And a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself; he doesn’t like that. Not … one … bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me and he says, ‘Why so serious?’ He comes at me with the knife, ‘Why so serious?!’ He sticks the blade in my mouth, ‘Let’s put a smile on that face!’

But then the story changes. When meeting Rachel Dawes for the first time, he says: Oh, you look nervous. Is it the scars? Wanna know how I got 'em? [grabs her chin as she continuously tries to look away] C’mere, look at me. So, I had a

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wife, who was beautiful … like you, who tells me I worry too much, who tells me I oughta smile more, who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks … [she squirms, and he pulls her back] Hey. One day they carve her face. And we got no money for surgeries. She can’t take it. I just want to see her smile again. Hmmm? I just wanted to let her know that I don’t care about the scars. So, I stick a razor in my mouth and do this … to myself. And you know what? She can’t stand the sight of me! She leaves! Now I see the funny side. Now, I’m always smiling!

Still later in the film, the Joker starts up his narrative yet again: “It’s a funny world we live in. Speaking of which, do you know how I got these scars?” He’s soon interrupted, but by now we know that whatever he’s going to say is not going to match what has come before. The remarkable trumps the truth. That sounds a lot like Iago: When explaining why he hates Othello so much, Iago offers a variety of seemingly different explanations. To Roderigo, he says that he’s vengeful because Othello has promoted the inexperienced Cassio over him: He [Cassio] … must his lieutenant be, And I –​God bless the mark! –​his Moorship’s ensign [i.e., his flunky or servant]. (1.1.29–​30)

Sometimes, it’s because he thinks his wife has cheated on him: it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets He has done my office. I know not if’t be true, But I, for mere suspicion in that kind, Will do as if for surety. (1.3.358–​61)

That reason is reiterated later in the play, with one vital distinction—​what was merely rumored (i.e., “thought abroad”) by others is now internalized as an “I”-​statement: nothing can or shall content my soul Till I am evened with him, wife for wife. (2.1.272–​73)

You will note here that in all of these explanations there is one repeated motif: Iago cares deeply what others think of him. He hates Othello because he believes that on some level he has been disrespected, that everyone is laughing at him. That can only matter if he cares deeply what others think of him, or, more accurately, that others think of him—​that they acknowledge that he exists.

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But the joke is on him. His mission is to be recognized, not as a cuckold but as a schemer, a joker—​the sharpest card in the deck—​but his vengeance depends on his ability to pass as ordinary, innocuous—​just one of the gang. Despite (or because) of his meta-​level access to an ever-​present audience, Iago can never win at this game. His meta-​awareness already singles him out as special in our world, but he remains ordinary and second-​rate among his peers. Rather than an indication of his genius, his bungling attempt at playing the Joker makes him a fool in our world, and a dead man in his own. ***

Joker disgusts his captives. He’s physically and verbally repulsive, but at least his victims understand themselves to be victims—​i.e., they retain a sense of themselves. Iago’s act is far more insidious. He uses misogyny so effectively that he gets men to think like him. Let’s begin by looking at his encounter with Roderigo, a rich Venetian merchant, who is in love with Desdemona. That’s already the stuff of comedy. As W. H. Auden reminds us: When we first see Iago and Roderigo together, the situation is like that in a Ben Jonson comedy –​a clever rascal is gulling a rich fool who deserves to be gulled because his desire is no more moral than that of the more intelligent avowed rogue who cheats him of his money. Were the play a comedy, Rodrigo would finally realize that he had been cheated but would not dare appeal to the law because, if the whole truth were made public, he would cut a ridiculous or shameful figure.12

Auden argues that Roderigo is a “sort of Bertie Wooster”—​a well-​moneyed, innocent idiot.13 But Bertie, while harebrained, would never stoop to prostitution, much less murder. Rather, Roderigo thinks of himself as a reformed comic—​i.e., he had been a fool, but, a little wiser, if poorer of pocket, he now can see Iago for what he is: RODERIGO I will indeed no longer endure it, nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace what already I have foolishly suffered. IAGO

Will you hear me, Roderigo?

RODERIGO Faith, I have heard too much, and your words and performances are no kin together. (4.2.174–​79). 12 Auden, “The Joker in the Pack,” 252. 13 Auden, “The Joker in the Pack,” 260.

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Is he really any wiser? There  seem to be two Roderigos: The original Bertie-​like romantic with more money than sense (Roderigo 1.0), and Iago’s refashioned version—​morally degraded and financially ruined (Roderigo 2.0). What is the textual evidence is support of this doppelganger of dummydom effect? Well, we know that Roderigo loved Desdemona from afar, then he met Iago, who assured him that the only way to win a woman was to buy her. Roderigo’s thinking is now so tainted that his only complaint is that Iago has not come through on his end of the bargain: RODERIGO The jewels you have had from me to deliver [to] Desdemona would half have corrupted a votarist. You have told me she hath received them, and returned me expectations and comforts of sudden respect and acquaintance, but I find none. (4.2.182–​85)

Comically, he now wants a refund: IAGO

Very well.

RODERIGO I tell you ’tis not very well. I will make myself known to Desdemona. If she will return me my jewels, I will give over my suit and repent my unlawful solicitation. If not, assure yourself I will seek satisfaction of you. (4.2.190–​94)

But even here, even in recognizing that his suit was morally reprehensible, that he was attempting to corrupt his love—​i.e. to do to Desdemona what Iago had already done to him and is in the midst of doing to Othello—​even here, Iago retains full control. If Roderigo would simply kill Cassio, then Desdemona will be his: “If thou the next night following enjoy not Desdemona, take me from this world with treachery, and devise engines for my life” (4.2.205–​07). This makes no sense. Even if we concede that Cassio’s death removed one rival, it does not change the fact that, so far as Roderigo knows, Desdemona is happily married. Iago assures him that she will tire of her choice: “It cannot be long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor” (1.3.328–​29). But it does not at all figure that Roderigo would be a logical replacement for Othello, or that she would seek a replacement, or, if seeking one, that murdering Cassio would somehow win her over. And yet he suspends his reason, or more accurately, his reason has already been cashiered and corrupted by Iago. We can see much the same result in Iago’s dealings with Cassio.  Early on, we like and respect Cassio because he so clearly refuses to adopt Iago’s low opinion

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of women. I am thinking here of an exchange in 2.3. It begins with Iago reducing a wedded couple’s honeymoon to a night of carnal pleasure: CASSIO Welcome, Iago. We must to the watch.

IAGO

Not this hour, lieutenant. ’Tis not yet ten o’th’ clock. Our general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona, who let us not therefore blame. He hath not yet made wanton the night with her, and she is sport for Jove. (2.3.12–​16)

What follows is a war of worldviews: Cassio worships Desdemona as “perfection” incarnate (2.3.23)—​young, beautiful, modest, exquisite; but Iago just sees some tramp who is good in bed: CASSIO She’s a most exquisite lady. IAGO

And I’ll warrant her full of game.

CASSIO Indeed, she’s a most fresh and delicate creature. IAGO

What an eye she has! Methinks it sounds a parley to provocation.

CASSIO An inviting eye, and yet, methinks, right modest.

(2.3.17–​21)

Cassio is ultimately no match for Iago’s viral negativity. By the time we get to Act 4, Cassio falls into lockstep with Iago, referring to his girlfriend Bianca as a whore: IAGO

She gives it out that you shall marry her.

Do you intend it?

CASSIO Ha, ha, ha! … I marry? What, a customer [i.e., of a whore]? Prithee, bear some charity to my wit –​do not think it so unwholesome. Ha, ha, ha! (4.1.113–​14, 116–​17)

Yes, we do think that you’re “unwholesome,” Cassio—​because calling your partner a whore sounds like something Iago would say—​in fact that’s exactly what Iago called her (4.1.164). That same “joke” is repeated by Othello. After just a few discussions with wisecracking Iago, Othello no longer sees a world of adventure, fealty, and love; instead, he wanders a desolate and corrupted world of pimps and whores, goats and monkeys: LODOVICO I do beseech your lordship, call her back …

OTHELLO What would you with her, sir?

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LODOVICO Who, I, my lord?

OTHELLO Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn. Sir, she can turn and turn and yet go on, And turn again ... (4.1.231, 233, 234–​36)

Turn here is used in relation to inconstancy. Othello is calling his wife a slut or whore, a turning, whirling, or twerking dervish of sexual activity. He even jokes about it in 4.2: OTHELLO

Are not you a strumpet? [i.e., a whore]

DESDEMONA I am none. OTHELLO

What, not a whore?

DESDEMONA No, as I shall be saved. OTHELLO

Is’t possible?

DESDEMONA O God forgive us!

OTHELLO I cry you mercy then. I took you for that cunning whore of Venice That married with Othello. (4.2.78,  82–​88)

Bottom line: Othello is now Iago’s creature and lives in a world wherein cruelty and treachery are preferred over love and honesty. True, there are still hints, even after Iago’s contamination, of a faded grandeur:  the shrill trump[et], The spirit-​stirring drum, th’ear-​piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! (3.3.345–​48)

But this memory is all the more bitter because his once-​sunny confidence no longer matches his fallen, miserable state; Othello has become morally blinded by Iago and, consequently, sees the world through “subdued eyes” (5.2.346). ***

Much of the criticism on Iago concentrates on his evil:  “a devil in the flesh  … a fiend” capable of “unlimited, formless villainy”; the embodiment of the “Spirit of

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Evil”14; “a demi-​devil, that is, [a]‌half fallen angel”15; or his intelligence: a “magician-​manipulator”16; a master manipulator”17; a “superpure schemer”18; a “philosopher … who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity”19; a proto-​psychologist, operating with “the coolness of a preconceiving experimenter.”20 But if Iago is such a soul-​twisting manipulator, such a brilliant schemer, then why do the following things have to happen for him to succeed? 1. Cassio must be killed secretly by the untrained and unsoldierly Roderigo; 2. Bianca has to be blamed for the murder;

3. Roderigo must die (secretly by Iago’s hand); 4. Othello must kill his own wife; AND

5. remain silent as to Iago’s involvement;

6. AND all of this has to happen in the same hour.

Oh, and one more thing: Emilia has to remain silent. As we can clearly see, there is a lot that can go wrong, and, as we know, there is a lot that does go wrong. Even Iago admits that his chances of success are no better than a coin flip:  This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me quite. (5.1.127–​28)

At least part of the problem here is the generic restrictions that even Iago—​with all his meta-​narrative superpowers—​can’t rise above: When Iago leaves the outcome of his complicated plot to an idiot like Roderigo, a drunken Lothario ​like Cassio, and an enraged soldier of fortune like Othello, well, that’s a sign on Shakespeare’s part that the plan is simply and undeniably flawed. It’s not even a plan. It’s a desperate 14 Summary offered by Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of Othello (Berkeley: University of California, 1971), 166–​67. 15 Richard Raatzsch, The Apologetics of Evil: The Case of Iago (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 70. 16 Susan Snyder, The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 84. 17 Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Riverhead Books, 1994), 161. 18 Raatzsch, The Apologetics of Evil, 69. 19 William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (1817; London: J. M. Dent 1906), 42. 20 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in H. H. Furness, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Othello (1886; repr., New York: Dover, 1963), I.i.4.

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gamble, akin to someone mortgaging the farm to bet on the ponies.21 But even if Iago had a better plan, it wouldn’t make a difference. Iago fails not because of poor planning or ill-​fortune, but because he and his comic henchmen are incapable of overcoming the generic constraints of a tragedy.22 And yet, Othello can be read as an almost unending sequence of inversions—​ tragedy experienced as comedy. In a traditional tragedy, for example, death is a constant possibility, and that fragility creates openness and vulnerability. Think of Troilus and Cressida, two kids who love not for all time but intensely nonetheless because, in a world in which life can be snuffed out in an instant, love can only be measured in moments; no future can be assumed. But in comedy, we have a sense that things will work out, that the darkness may threaten but the forecast of warm and sunny remains far more likely than not. In Othello, those comedic elements are reorganized into their temporal and emotional opposites: the happy ending (marriage and honeymoon) is transposed to the beginning; the storm clouds that in comedy temporarily threaten rain turn, in Othello, to “downright violence and storm of fortunes” (1.3.243).23 It is one of the ironies of Othello that it is only after the threat seems to pass (Turkish invasion), that the real danger ensues. But even before Iago launches his scheme, we are alerted to the potential for a comedic switcheroo: “Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago” (1.1.55). We might say that Iago can never be Othello, but Othello can and does become another Iago: a liar, a misogynist, a violent predator, a psychopath. Let’s keep our eye on Othello for the instant. His sudden or monstrous transformation is also the stuff of comedy: Think of Bottom, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who is magically transformed into a donkey-​ man; Malvolio, in Twelfth Night, and Sly, in Taming of the Shrew, who are deluded into temporarily thinking of themselves as lords. A proximate modern example of the genre would be the Eddie Murphy/​Dan Aykroyd film Trading Places, in which a white, blue-​blooded, Ivy-​League-​educated, commodities trader trades places with a black, homeless man from Philadelphia. Even without trading places with Iago, Othello still strikes me as an inherently comic figure:  an older man who marries a younger woman; a foreigner unable to decipher the customs of a strange city; a man who marries above his station in life; a 21 The aforementioned Auden suggests that Iago is “addicted to practical jokes”—​i.e., is plagued by an underlying irrationality (“The Joker in the Pack,” 253). 22 William Hazlitt (1817) similarly argues “[Iago] is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passions ... He is an amateur of tragedy in real life”—​i.e., he is mistaken about how the world operates and his role in it (Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, 42). 23 On this point, Susan Snyder writes that “the whole story of comedy”—​i.e. courtship and marriage—​appears in Othello as a “preliminary to tragedy” (The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare’s Tragedies, 74).

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jealous husband; someone who loves and trusts one moment and hates and suspects the next. In terms of Othello’s dialogue, some of it sounds like the Theater of the Absurd. It’s hard not to think of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, or Harold Pinter when reading: DESDEMONA They are loves I bear to you.

OTHELLO

Ay, and for that thou diest. (5.2.41–​42)

If this short exchange seems ridiculous, it is, at any rate, just as irrational as Othello’s decision to kill his wife because of a lost handkerchief. As Thomas Rymer pointed out way back in 1693, Othello’s motivation for killing his wife better befits a “Bloody Farce”; “Why was not this call’d the Tragedy of the Handkerchief?”24 Stephen Orgel, one of our finest living critics, likewise reimagines Othello as a pure comedy: the “final sentence could very well be, ‘husband and wife are reconciled, and Othello promises not to be jealous any more.’ ”25 But we need not reimagine Othello to see its humor. Just read the fifth act. It begins with Desdemona, dying from Othello’s recent attack, falsely confessing that she has attempted suicide (though how one commits suicide by self-​smothering is a mystery). Othello then uses that last act of goodness—​what Henry Norman Hudson mawkishly describes as Desdemona’s “tender yearning to shield him, as far as she possibly can, from the dreadful retributions which await him”26—​as yet further proof that his wife is a liar: OTHELLO Why, how should she be murdered? EMILIA

Alas, who knows?

OTHELLO You heard her say herself it was not I. EMILIA

She said so, I must needs report the truth.

OTHELLO She’s like a liar, gone to burning hell. ’Twas I that killed her. (5.2.126–​30)

This isn’t a joke in the traditional sense, but is, rather, a further sign of Iago’s comedic influence. Othello sees his wife though the lens of Iago’s misogyny, so much so that any act of goodness on her part is proof that she’s faithless and false. 24 Thomas Rymer, from A Short View of Tragedy (1693), accessed June 9, 2017. 25 Stephen Orgel, “Othello and the End of Comedy,” Shakespeare Survey 56 (2003): 105–​16;  106. 26 Furness, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, V.ii, 163.

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More comedy ensues:

OTHELLO I did proceed upon just grounds To this extremity! Thy husband knew it all. EMILIA

My husband?

OTHELLO Thy husband. EMILIA

That she was false to wedlock?

OTHELLO Ay, with Cassio ... EMILIA

My husband?

OTHELLO Ay,’twas he that told me on her first. An honest man he is … EMILIA

My husband?

OTHELLO What needs this iterance? Woman, I say thy husband ... EMILIA

My husband say[s]‌that she was false?

(5.2.138–​41, 144–​46, 147–​48, 150; emphases my own)

And now the bit that always gets my ribs tickled: having repeated “My husband?” so often, Othello, still oblivious, treats Emilia as if she were deaf! You can almost see him cupping his hands like a bullhorn as he repeats himself yet again, hoping that Emilia will finally hear him. (I have taken some liberties with the syntax and stage directions, if only to underscore the comedic moments.) OTHELLO [slowly and loudly] He, woman. I say … Thy Husband. Dost … Un-​der-​stand the word? My … Friend … Thy hus-​band … Honest … Honest … Iago! (5.2.150–​52)

This exchange reminds me of the wide-​eyed, blithering James Carter (played by Chris Tucker) in the movie Rush Hour (2007), who speaks loudly to foreigners because he assumes that they are deaf: DETECTIVE CARTER [slowly and loudly] Do … You … Understand … the … Words … That Are … Com-​ing … Out of … My Mouth?

The additional comedic touch here is that Othello is a bit put out that Emilia’s mockery is interrupting his grand confession: “O gull, O dolt,/​As ignorant as dirt” (5.2.160–​61). A  gull is a fool; the rest is pretty clear: Emilia thinks that Othello is a blockhead, a buffoon, a nincompoop. In short, Othello thinks he’s giving a tragic funeral oration, but Emilia seems to think she’s in a comedy club, heckling the guy making the speech.

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Othello’s confession also reminds me of Borachio in Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing. As we may recall, he and Conrad are arrested for burglary, a crime neither of them has committed. They are then charged with manslaughter—​their slander (which they are never charged with) has resulted in Hero’s death, or so they think. Hero is actually alive and well. The errors continue to compound. Borachio then confesses and seeks punishment for a death that never took place: “The lady is dead upon mine and my master’s false accusation, and briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a villain” (5.1.211–​13). Othello wants, like Borachio, to take his lumps, to redeem (or at least to explain) himself. But whereas Borachio’s confession awakens our sympathy (because his confession is obviously penitent and sorrowful), Othello’s does not because he was never in on the actual plan. He was merely a dupe. So, the confession, while sincere, is ironically clueless, and, if not laugh-​out-​loud funny, then certainly unexpected. Moreover, it is completely unnecessary. After all, readers and playgoers are interested in Iago’s confession, not Othello’s. Victims don’t need to confess, only criminals do. But even after Othello’s confession, he remains a dupe. Let’s look at the implicitly Christian theme here: confession consists of admission, contrition, and absolution. By confessing, Othello may think of himself as virtuous, as rid of Iago’s “demi-​devil[ish]” (5.2.297) influence, but then he damns himself all over again by committing one of Christianity’s cardinal sins: suicide. This should be a moment of insight, what Aristotle called anagnorisis, the hero’s moment of knowledge, realization, and personal growth. But here, Othello blames Iago for his sins, and then condemns himself to Hell. Othello’s self-​description says it all. Character is destiny, and Othello at last knows what role he was born to play: “fool, fool, fool!” (5.2.321). Oh well, I guess some people never learn. And when I mean some people, I’m pointing the finger not only at Othello but also at Wade Wilson. In Deadpool Giant Size #1 (January 1997), our Merc with a Mouth meets his own Emilia—​a fur-​ covered mutant who isn’t afraid to tell him the truth: You can blame the Weapon X program, you can blame the cancer, or you can even blame the entire Canadian government for making you look like a monster. But no scientist twisted your soul! No doctor took away your sense of right and wrong! You’re a monster because you allowed anger and self-​pity to make your inside match your outside.

After hearing this, we would hope or expect Deadpool to be shamed into some sort of confession or at least an admission of fallibility. Instead, Deadpool turns it all into a joke: “It’s been me all along!:sniff: I’m the problem.:sniff: Thank you for showing me the light.” He then pulls out a gun and points it at his skull. So far, this seems to be following Othello’s last moments: contrition, confession, and

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suicide. But, then he purposefully misses his own head! “I’m a bad shot too, oopsie.” Likewise, in Deadpool Team-​Up #899 (January 2010), the legendary Hercules shares his lessons learned: “I learned that it’s my own frailty that proves my worth as a God –​that like humans themselves, I am constantly trying to overcome my own failings!” Since Deadpool can’t be killed (like Hercules, he’s immortal), we might here expect a similar insight. But Deadpool turns the moment into a joke: “I learned nothing.” ***

The wrap up: A good set at the comedy club for Iago would be to go on stage, tell a few stories and get everyone to agree with him or to think like him. Perhaps Iago is honest, in so far as he tells people what he actually thinks—​though we can never truly confirm that. What we can say is that Iago’s alleged honesty is never well intended. By the same logic, Iago may seem to be sarcastic, but he’s no comedian because he lacks moral clarity. Rather, he delights in making the world a little grayer, in making others more like him: cynical, derisive, pessimistic, misanthropic, vicious, and bad-​tempered; he poisons the well of good cheer even as he passes the bottle around. Given all of this, the real wonder is not that Iago has been passed over for career promotion, but, rather, that Iago has come as far in life as he has, that he has any friends at all. What saves Iago from complete misanthropy is his sense of humor; he is a funny guy, someone who, while not well-​liked, is discerning. “I am nothing,” he says, “if not critical” (2.1.119). He means “honest” or “unbiased” here, but that in itself is telling. Iago sees “honest” reality in terms of flaws, failings, or weak-​points. His sense of humor boils down to this: He thinks in terms of nothings, of deficiencies, not what is there but what is not. In this sense, Iago is a master of illusion, a bitterly comedic agent of falsehood. Iago tells us: “I am not what I am” (1.1.63), but his comedic ploy is to come across as other than he is, the glum loser who wants everyone to think that he’s a light-​hearted winner; conversely, Deadpool is not intent on ingratiating himself, in passing himself off as something other than what he is. Instead, he uses humor as a defense mechanism. “Wade” has never been his own man; his performance art is the outcome of what others have done to him. For a guy who has been syringed repeatedly, the only way to defend himself is to needle others. A good set for “Wade” is to be booed off stage, not because he wants to be hated, but because he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what all the other rats in the cage think. Iago cares very much what his audience thinks, so much so that he refuses to explain himself—​the equivalent of an actor guarding his process, a magician refusing to reveal the nature of his art:

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IAGO Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word. (5.2.299–​300)

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The result is yet another bizarre inversion: a whodunnit concluding with an unsolved mystery. To Othello and the Venetians (not to mention theater-​goers, and readers of all levels and distinctions), Iago’s silence remains inexplicable; yet on another level it is entirely inconsequential. He is, after all, an illogical man in an otherwise sane and orderly world. Deadpool, on the other hand, suggests that all life is inexplicable, but not because it’s a mystery, but because it’s an existential joke: “What’s it all mean? What’s the point? Who wants to exploit human misery if it’s so empty?” (Deadpool Giant Size #1; January 1997). Iago resists us by remaining silent; Deadpool annoys us by constantly flapping his gums. Despite their differences, both comedians are successful (at least in their own terms): Cassio, Gratiano, Lodovico, and Othello demand that Iago talk more, that he explain himself. Think of it as a curtain call. The opposite is true for Deadpool’s audience. Plain and simple, they hate his act: “You talk too much.” (New Mutants #98; February 1991); “Shut up Wade Wilson!” (Deadpool Giant Size #1; January 1997); “Shut up! Shut up!” (Fear Itself: Deadpool #3; August 17, 2011); “Please shut up” (Deadpool #26; February 2015).

Iago refuses to explain; Deadpool is all-​too-​eager to explain, but no one wants to hear the truth, or at least his truth: “Life is stupid. Laugh at it” (Wolverine Origins #24; June 2008).

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POSTSCRIPT: COMIC BOOKS AND LITERARY VALUES

Postscripts in literary studies always strike me as odd. They tend to summarize and, paradoxically, to enjoin fellow scholars to continue a particular line of inquiry. That is especially true of this short study, in which I have argued that the correspondences I am making are unique to my interests and life-​ experiences. Initially, that may seem pointlessly introspective; however, anecdotal conversations with students and fellow scholars have convinced me that what I am doing here is more than just engaging in Looney Tunes-​like flights of fancy. It is entirely normal to catalogue literary experiences, to align certain texts and characters with each other. For this writer, the process begins with a recognition of superficial plot points. In the case of Arrow and Hamlet, my argument is that both are errand boys with “things to do,” but their seemingly straightforward tasks are complicated by their diseased wits and unreliable moral compasses. Memories, both heroes come to understand, don’t always conform with reality. This insight leads to a series of philosophical inquiries concerning the nature of the self. If a person is changed by events, then it follows that the person who commits an act, whether heroic or heinous, no longer exists in the same state afterwards. Arrow and Hamlet, thus, find themselves continuously missing the mark, perpetually chasing down ghosts of the actual. In the case of Wonder Woman and Fidele, I have argued that both have a fluid understanding of gender. If biology is not a marker that defines sexual preference, to what extent are we living our own lives; to what extent are we merely playing out our socially appointed roles, and can we, and should we, self-​ liberate from the inherited habits and habiliments of our society? In the case of Iago and Deadpool, we see a similar, albeit darker, philosophical impulse: that core beliefs filter life experience. As Iago and Deadpool have no core beliefs, they have no meaningful experiences, and no way to connect with their communities. As

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I have argued, we often get a sense that these characters can step out of their worlds and into ours. Not that setting makes much of a difference; while seeking the spotlight, their staged personas suggest the emptiness of nonbeing. As a consequence, their lives are a series of existential farces, played out in cruel gags, puns, and put-​ons. Am I reading too much into comic books? A recent Chronicle of Higher Education op-​ed on the dangers of teaching Harry Potter to college kids suggests that I may be doing the profession (and my students) a disservice: The story of Satan’s rebellion in Paradise Lost is a complex meditation on freedom, monarchal authority, and the emergence of democracy. Moby-​Dick is an allegory of national expansion and slavery. The Harry Potter stories, meanwhile, are wonderful reflections on friendship, courage, and the dichotomies of good and evil –​which is to say that they’re great children’s literature. Why make them out to be more than that?1

I can recognize the logic—​and the stuffy self-​importance. Literature professors might not change reality with a keystroke, but we are, to give us our due, inheritors of a heritage that stretches back to at least Homer, the Odin-​like All-​Father of Western Literature. But there is another, more recent Homer, not the olive-​eyed poet of Bronze Age Greece, but the donut-​addicted modern everyman, Homer Simpson of Springfield, and if we want to preserve interest in the former, we have to admit the popular appeal of the latter. The job title of Shakespearean suggests that it is entirely natural to identify with Shakespeare or to admit the influence that he has had on the shaping of our character—​a word that entails not just moral and ethical values but also temperament. So, it is vital to ask ourselves, what inspires the current generation to buy super hero comics, figurines, t-​shirts, posters, movie tickets, video games; what inspires them to form online communities, to write fan fiction; what inspires them to travel to conventions, and to dress up as literary characters? Let me speak plainly. Studying Shakespeare does not make you heroic, nor does dressing up as Batman. If either of those scenarios were true, then Comic-​ Con would not be a convention; it would be an opportunity to fight crime, and security guards in banks could be replaced by poetic thespians armed with First Folios. The Shakespeare Association of America convention—​an annual gathering of about 1,000 Shakespeareans—​and the far more popular San Diego Comic-​ Con—​at last count, over 165,000 attendees—​are celebrations, unless, of course, 1 David Anthony, “Harry Potter and the Chair’s Dilemma,” Chronicle of Higher Education, accessed February 28, 2018.

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the participants involved forget the nature of play.2 And, if you agree with Stephen Greenblatt, an eminent Shakespearean critic, that, at least in the instance of formal literary study, is exactly what has happened: “my profession has become so oddly diffident and even phobic about literary power, so suspicious and tense, that it risks losing sight of—​or at least failing to articulate—​the whole reason anyone bothers with the enterprise in the first place.”3 Greenblatt’s own relationship with literature is complicated. On the one hand, it seems fetishistic. In his Pulitzer Prize-​winning book, The Swerve, he confesses that his early love of literature was stirred by an erotic impulse: When I was a student, I used to go at the end of the school year to the Yale Coop to see what I  could find to read over the summer. I  had very little pocket money, but the bookstore would routinely sell its unwanted titles for ridiculously small sums. They would be jumbled together in bins through which I would rummage, with nothing much in mind, waiting for something to catch my eye. On one of my forays, I was struck by an extremely odd paperback cover, a detail from a painting by the surrealist Max Ernst. Under a crescent moon, high above the earth, two pairs of legs—​the bodies were missing—​were engaged in what appeared to be an act of celestial coition.

This is pure Greenblatt, unapologetically personal, introspective; a modern-​ day Montaigne. The power of literature, he asserts, depends “on personal circumstances” and by personal, he means, in this instance, sexual: “art always penetrates the particular fissures in one’s psychic life.”4 So far, I mostly agree. Literature is vital to our personal development and, though not to orgasmic levels, I often feel pretty good when I read. On the other hand, where Greenblatt loses me is when he champions literature as a kind of social weapon, one capable of “confronting a global political landscape in which neither nationalism nor identity politics shows any intention of disappearing.”5 And then there is Harold Bloom, an entirely different breed of literary lion, who argues that the literary war is already lost. In his weighty book The Western Canon, he writes that “the art and passion of reading well and deeply ... was the foundation of our enterprise,” but the craft of criticism is now seemingly reduced 2 Shakespeare Association numbers are generally announced during the catered lunch and state of the profession lecture; Comic-​Con numbers listed on “San Diego Comic-​Con,” Wikipedia.com, accessed February 27, 2018. 3 Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4. 4 Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W. W. Norton /​ Kindle Edition, 2011), Locations 59–​65 and 86–​88; emphasis added. 5 Stephen Greenblatt, “Cultural Mobility: An Introduction,” in Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/​Kindle Edition, 2010), Location 101.

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to a political war against sexism, racism and inequalities of all sorts: “That is the rhetoric suitable for an occupied country, one that expects no liberation.” Bloom feels all misty and elegiac; he sees himself as a devotee of a dying literary cult. Like Sir Bedivere watching the dying King Arthur sail away to Avilion, he knows that his time is past: “The shadow lengthens in our evening land, and we approach the second millennium expecting further shadowing.” I am tempted to read Bloom mythographically: the dark shadow is Momus, the Greek God of Error. In this case, the error is that well-​meaning ideologues have turned an “individual” activity, i.e., reading, into the “basis for democratic education or for social improvement.” But what does Bloom prefer, and what is he mourning? As it turns out, not much. He writes that “Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything.” But, if we take him at his word, defending the “perfectly useless” seems like a quixotic reason for writing a 657-​page book. Don Quixote, the eponymic source for the word quixotic, is worth keeping in mind here. Having read too many Romances, Quixote mistakes himself for a noble knight and tilts at windmills, which he mistakes for dragons. Likewise, the confused Bloom asserts a nonpolitical space for the enjoyment of literature but then writes that “Literary criticism, as an art, always was and always will be an elitist phenomenon.”6 So, it’s personal, nonpolitical, and elitist?! Yet, isn’t the individual someone who hives himself off from the collective? Acts of isolation, both voluntary and involuntary, are essentially political acts. And all elitist assertions are by definition hierarchical and therefore oppressive. Bloom and Greenblatt both assert that criticism has lost its way. Despite my reservations, especially with Bloom, I agree, but it also follows that I provide some examples. I’m uncomfortable about doing so because it may open me to charges of narrow-​mindedness or illiberal intolerance. I am also uneasy because ripping someone creates a negative impulse, and, while I believe that criticism tends towards the negative—so much so that when we have something good to say about a work, we couch it with an adjectival proviso, as in, “I have some positive criticism for you”—​I also believe that our world is negative enough. So I will provide a primo example, but not cite the author. This came by way of my Shakespeare class, which met last night. Every time we start a new play, I ask the students to come in with a piece of criticism to discuss. It’s an exercise in building up a skeptical, independent voice; and it’s also a way of demonstrating how different generations find or reframe meaning in what they read. We were reading Titus Andronicus, and … 6 Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Riverhead Books, 1994), 16–​17.

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A brief aside: Titus Andronicus, if you have never read it, is a play in which a general’s daughter is gang raped; the rape occurs on top of the body of her murdered husband (so there is an added horror of necrophilia in this act), and, after she is raped, she is mutilated—​her hands are cut off and so too is her tongue. It’s really too terrible for my weak words. Now, I fully accept that Shakespeare has tiers of meaning. In Titus, in addition to being outrageously gross, Shakespeare is also drawing on an older classical work, Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Warren Chernaik offers the following dispassionate source history for Lavinia’s rape: In the “Ovidian narrative …, Philomela’s sister, comes to realize that her husband has raped and mutilated her sister and then the two women exact a horrible revenge by killing Itys, the child of Tereus and Procne, and feeding him to his father.”7 Perfectly acceptable and helpful; such critical passages suggest that there is a deeper meaning in Shakespeare’s text, but it is grounded in a like-​to-​like act. The gloss does not obscure what we are reading on the page or witnessing in the theater. Now, let’s look at a far less helpful passage, the one my student brought in to discuss: “Lavinia’s initial status as unmarried commodity suggests, more specifically, that her injuries address a bride’s right to consent to marriage.” (Note to self: Lavinia was already married to Bassianus when she was raped, but never mind …) The writer then argues that what we are reading or seeing is not really what we are reading or seeing: If, however, we acknowledge Lavinia as a symbol of Rome and factor in her suitors’ political motives, it becomes apparent that themes of political consent, the right of the people to consent to the authority of the monarch, find expression in the same ravished and mutilated body. Exploring both possibilities, this essay argues that in Titus Andronicus Shakespeare associates the right of a woman to consent to marriage with the ancient right of the social body to consent to the ruling power of the monarch. Because he figures the abrogation of those rights so violently, I contend that, in this early play, Shakespeare betrays republican leanings and sympathy for a constitutional form of government.

So while Lavinia is raped, she’s not really raped because her rape is merely a way for Shakespeare to convey to us what he’s really interested in, not this poor girl’s suffering and the inhumanity from which it arose and the coming chaos of Titus’s revenge; rather, Shakespeare wants us to think about “a constitutional form of government.” 7 Warren Chernaik, The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 72.

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I think most would admit that when watching this play in the theater, the sight of a raped, bloodied, mutilated girl does not lead one to naturally contemplate parliamentary procedure and the role of the judiciary. Yet this author further asserts that scholars “cannot resist the temptation to analyze” the work, and, presumably, what is offered is just the sort of analysis that we irresistibly and automatically generate when reading of Lavinia’s rape. Well, no—​not if we accept the meaning of the word analyze, as offered in Webster’s Dictionary: “a detailed examination of the elements or structure of something, typically as a basis for discussion or interpretation.” To analyze a work is to comment on the basic details of its structure, to discuss something foundational to our greater understanding, but seeing rape in terms of “republican leanings” is, at least in my view, misleading, peripheral, nonfoundational. We might counter and say that specialist journals offer a forum that goes beyond the introductory or foundational, but that is not what is written here. Rather, we are told that “scholars cannot resist” thinking about Lavina’s rape in this way—​to think of political elections and statecraft when seeing a woman, gang raped, tortured, and disfigured, emerge from the woods. This sort of published critique did not emerge in a vacuum. Academic interests shape and are shaped by the collective practices of the profession. Like any collective, homogeneity or perceived homogeneity can result. New readings generally conform to our sense of competence and, thus, are often not new at all. That’s the function of footnoting; it suggests that an article is built upon the foundational readings of others. But what the profession seems to have built here is a tower of rhetorical babble, one that has little value for common readers. We might wonder whether the problem is endemic to just Shakespeare Studies. Maybe there is something in the Shakespearean DNA that just lends itself to this stuff? Could we, for example, write similar guff when analyzing, say, the 2018 blockbuster film, Black Panther? We sure could!

Interlude: Power and Politics in Black Panther The following assumes that you have seen the film. I’m interested in the ending: T’Challa, addressing the nations of the world, promises that his country’s wealth will be shared. But what sort of wealth? Given that the entire movie was about protecting and secreting Wakanda’s weaponry, we can assume that T’Challa is not going to arm, as his rival attempted, various oppressed communities. If Wakanda does aid in a class struggle, it will be Gandhi-​like, peaceful. OK, what about Wakanda’s amazing medical technology? Well, it’s all powered by vibranium, and it’s inevitable that a rogue nation will harness or repurpose that peaceful tech for military application. So, that’s off the table too.

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Does T’Challa suggest that his country will become a donor nation, offering low-​interest loans or free money to impoverished nations? This is possible, though unlikely. Such programs already exist via the World Bank, and their efficacy is problematic. Usually, the aid comes with many strings attached, and the result is (commonly) a skyrocketing of debt. So, what’s left? Logically speaking, T’Challa likely means that Wakandian culture can be a model, a beacon for other nations. That theme is underscored by the King’s willingness to build an exchange in a poor, black American community. In one of the many admirable inversions in the film, it is an African nation that will now lend a helping hand to an American community. That exchange, however, seems to be more inspirational than practical. Because T’Challa’s nation has been at peace for thousands of years, it is literally generations ahead. While Europe plunged into a “Dark Age,” Wakanda continued to build on its legacy. The result is that while the West (and the rest of the world) has gone through various teardowns and rebuilds, Wakanda’s stability has resulted in exponential and uninterrupted advancements. Even if the West were somehow capable of understanding Wakandian tech, again, for reasons outlined above, there is no way that T’Challa would allow the export of vibranium to America or anywhere else. The world is just too primitive to handle this stuff. But this is merely to reiterate the question. The King has promised to share, but not everything. So what is he actually offering, besides afterschool programs in poor communities? Please note, I am not undervaluing that very worthy effort; but is there anything in that offer that is pointedly different than, say, efforts by Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or innumerable charities? If T’Challa argues that his nation has something new to share, it must be in form or in kind unique—​i.e., Wakandian. So, let’s explore some options. Is T’Challa suggesting that other nations or communities use Wakanda as a blueprint for political empowerment? Let’s hope not! The country is at best a constitutional monarchy—​ for example, we see Forrest Whittaker’s character, Zuri, point out that a challenge by royal blood must be acknowledged, resulting in physical combat. This winner-​take-​all system, a neo-​Darwinian survival of the fittest, is not only a dangerously unstable form of government (as the plot of Hamlet also suggests!), it also carries within it the imminent threat of mass arrests, executions, and political corruption. When Erik Killmonger displaces T’Challa as ruler, the royal family skedaddles to the mountains, where it foments a counterrevolution. M’Baku agrees to harbor the exiled ruler and his family, but that decision runs counter to his noble adherence to tradition. While initially refusing to provide an army, M’Baku and his tribe ride in, cavalry-​like, to save the day, and, more importantly, to reap the rewards. In short, when push comes to shove, 10,000 years of

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tradition are upended. M’Baku’s new station in the court suggests a quid pro quo of political expediency and (possibly) graft. And this, I stress, is the best case reading of Wakanda’s political structure. Now let’s explore the worst case—​not a constitutional monarchy but an absolute monarchy. When Killmonger takes power, he orders the destruction of the Black Panther flower, the execution of the rebellious T’Challa, and the arming of insurgents across the globe. Virtually everyone follows his orders. He’s the king and must be obeyed absolutely. That is not kingship, but tyranny. I am working from memory here, but the head of his honor guard, Okoye, says something to the effect, “You lack the heart to rule as king.” This suggests that ruling has more to do with justice than with brawn, but, given that Wakandians select their leaders literally by violent overthrow, Erik Killmonger or a ruler like him—​absolute, autocratic, ruthless—​is unavoidable. And let’s not overlook the Wakandian love of surveillance. Not only does the country have a global network of spies, these people spy so much that they have spies spying on their spies. We might here compare Wakanda’s spy agency to the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, which regularly paid or coerced people to spy on co-​workers, neighbors, friends, and family. This policy resulted in widespread paranoia. No one was entirely sure who was in the Stasi’s pay. As a consequence, the possibility was very real that a single family might have multiple agents, each secretly reporting on the other. If the Romans asked, “Who will guard the guards?” the Wakandian revision might read as “Who will spy on the spies?” and the answer is, more spies. Oh, and when not spying, the Wakandians also follow the lead of Israel’s notorious Shin Bet by assassinating foreign nationals. I’m not saying that the murderous (and dentally challenged) Ulysses Klaue doesn’t have it coming, just that he should have been arrested and tried by the rules of international law. That aforementioned Black Panther flower does more than just bestow super power: It acts as the de facto constitution of the society. A constitution is a set of cherished principles that are adhered to inter-​generationally—​in the case of the Wakandians, the flower serves that function. It mystically connects the present ruler to a spiritual senate or council of elders. The destruction of the flower means that access to that guiding force is lost. With no council and no rival, Erik Killmonger’s power is seemingly unassailable. Note, however, that this act of destruction is implicitly virtuous, since it means that, without further challenges, Killmonger can offer the kingdom decades of stability. Killmonger fails because his subjects disobey him; they save one last flower for T’Challa. But … doesn’t this mean that Killmonger was right to order the flower’s destruction? The fate of the flower has some serious consequences. If it is lost,

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then no one can challenge T’Challa; in which case, his usurping cousin did him and the nation a solid. If, on the other hand, the flower is again cultivated, then T’Challa can resume his conferences with the council of kings. But there will be a new addition to the council: Erik Killmonger—​and won’t those meetings be interesting? And one more thing about this spiritual council of former rulers. They’re all dudes. Sure, the women serve as the king’s guard; the scientists are all female to boot, and we even see a woman among the tribal leaders; nonetheless, the ultimate prize is reserved for men. So, if a king’s consort gives birth to a daughter, she is presumably passed over until a son is conceived. That might seem medieval to most people, and certainly no system you’d want to export to the modern world. As my former student (and budding fiction author) Francesca Terzano put it, “when I was watching the film, and they needed to beat Erik, I was like ‘and his sister can’t eat the plant because?’ ” So, not on offer: weapons, medical tech, money, political stability, or gender equality. At the film’s close, T’Challa never answers the question posed by the world powers—​“What can you offer?” But, to be fair, T’Challa may not have an answer. And he doesn’t have to answer. No one expects much from him; so, if he can’t solve the world’s problems, it’s not an epic fail. Maybe all he has to offer is hope: hope of tolerance and acceptance. Perhaps T’Challa sees social issues on a human scale; i.e., before nations can meet as equals, people need to meet as equals. But exchange does not run one way. If Wakanda opens itself to the world, it must be willing to accept new ideas, even those that challenge its values. Erik’s father, N’Jobu, is a case in point. He was quite happy to play by Wakandian rules, but once he saw how other people live, there was no going back. Putting more Wakandians in other countries will likely lead to similar questionings of national identity and loyalty.8 And so on … But I think that we’d all agree that it would be peculiar to engage the movie in this way, at least when watching it for the first time. And if you were to interrupt someone’s experience of the film to suggest that Black Panther isn’t an action movie, it is actually an analysis of absolute and constitutional monarchies, well, don’t be surprised if that someone dumps a box of popcorn on your head.9 ***

8 That review was part of a larger piece I wrote on the cultural resonance of the film. See “Politics, Power, and the Black Panther: A Commentary,” Sequart.com, March 5, 2018. 9 In a further sign of the times, my anonymous reader, looking over this section, linked my cursory reading of Black Panther to a legitimately good reading of Shakespeare: I really expected you to mention those few scenes in Shakespeare in which someone proposes to meet a representative of the enemy in hand to hand combat, the best known scene is probably that in 1Henry IV. In that play, wiser heads seem to prevail.

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This seems like a put up or shut up moment here. Having said that there is a problem with many recent critical essays, I should be able to counter by offering another reading of Titus Andronicus, one that is foundational. Well, I will and I won’t. I don’t think that literature has meaning, not in the conventional sense. Let’s say, for example, that I say that Titus Andronicus is about revenge, or that violence begets violence. Both statements would be true, but so what? If literature can be reduced to a bumper sticker, then it’s not worth reading. What, for example, is the message of Macbeth—​Don’t listen to your wife!—​or Romeo and Juliet—​Kids do dumb things!—​or Titus Andronicus, who, in revenge for what is done to his family, kidnaps and murders Lavinia’s rapists and then bakes them into a meat pie, which he then serves to their mother, Tamora—​Next time, order the fish??? If the function of literature is to get us to debate something other than the obvious—​i.e., the rape of Lavinia is designed to get us to discuss Roman politics, etc.—​then that seems like an amazingly inefficient way to initiate a discussion. If Shakespeare wanted to discuss Roman law, then wouldn’t he have been better off teaching Roman law? That way, he’d likely get people attending his discussions who were actually interested in the topic because THEY WOULD KNOW WHAT THE TOPIC IS. So we have a logical, clear-​cut choice. We can accept that many critics can decipher Shakespeare, but it also follows by that logic that Shakespeare needs deciphering; that the most profound and articulate man in the history of Western culture, a writer with the largest vocabulary in the English language, was unable to let us know basic things like, What is this play about? Or we can accept that the play’s function is not to convey any meaning, platitudinous or otherwise. If we accept that, then we have to ask, now for what seems the umpteenth time, so, what does literature do? ***

OK, here is my answer, but I begin with a negative. Literature doesn’t convey information to help us build better toilets and cars (we leave that to engineers); it doesn’t help us with constitutional issues (we have lawyers for that); it doesn’t make us taller or thinner or defeat cancer or male pattern baldness. Literature isn’t defined by its factual content but by its emotional engagement. And its function is to deepen our ability to see through the eyes of another, to look out on worlds King Henry tells Hal no, he may not duel with Hotspur, in part, I am sure, because he doubts that Hal would win. Guess what? They do meet in battle and Hal wins. Thus, many lives might have been saved. Oh, the undernoticed irony! I think that makes a fascinating contrast with Black Panther.

Thus, demonstrating how you can talk-shop nonsensically on almost anything ...

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that we don’t know and can never know otherwise. It puts us in touch with our feelings, drills down into the reservoir of tears. It makes us better, not because it cloisters us from the storms of reality; rather, its role is to put us in touch with our collective humanity. My favorite bits of Shakespeare do exactly this. In Macbeth, Ross and Malcom deliver some horrific news. Macbeth has killed MacDuff’s wife and slaughtered his children. Malcolm suggests that the cure to this inhumanity is more of the same. An eye for an eye: MACDUFF My children too? ROSS

Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

MACDUFF And I must be from thence? My wife killed too? ROSS

I have said.

MALCOLM Be comforted. Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief (4.3 212–​16)10

But Macduff’s reaction is to ponder Macbeth’s inhumanity: “He has no children” (4.2.217). Malcolm, who needs to motivate Macduff for the coming war, again attempts to turn tragedy into some sort of macho crusade: “Dispute it like a man” (4.3.221). But Macduff, who should really be an English Major, understands that all meaningful events in life strengthen our compassion, our capacity to see not just ourselves but others. Macduff’s line, “He has no children” is far more than a factual observation; it is his way of making sense of the otherwise senseless. Macbeth was only able to kill Macduff’s children because he has none of his own, and thus, has no real understanding of what he has done. Oh, Macbeth is still going to pay for his crimes; but Macduff rises above the cycle of reactionary violence by suggesting that on some level he pities his enemy. We get a similar moment in Titus Andronicus. Two of Titus’s sons are about to be executed, but Aaron arrives with an offer. If Titus would but cut off his hand, his two sons will be spared execution. Titus happily does so. But then a messenger comes in with a basket. In it, are the heads of his two sons and Titus’s severed hand, sent back in scorn. 10 As with prior chapters, all citations in this work are taken from Taylor et al., The New Oxford Shakespeare.

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What are we supposed to learn here? I would argue that there is no life lesson, not in the conventional sense. It’s not like we’re ever going to find ourselves in Titus’s exact position and think to ourselves: Right. My sons’ lives are forfeit. I’ve been asked to cut off my hand. But I see through all of this. I’ve read Titus Andronicus and am prepared! Good thing I became an English Major!

But let’s revisit the moment, keeping in mind not just what happened but also how it deepens our perspectives on nearly everyone present. A Messenger enters with a basket of body parts: MESSENGER Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid For that good hand thou sent’st the Emperor. Here are the heads of thy two noble sons, And here’s thy hand in scorn to thee sent back—​ Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mocked ... (Sc.4.233–​36)

The moment is not just about Titus, but also those around him. The Messenger continues: That woe is me to think upon thy woes More than remembrance of my father’s death. (Sc.4.233–​39; emphasis added)

We then get other perspectives on the same event, some good, some not so good. Lucius and Marcus, like Malcom, seek vengeance. But Lavinia, his daughter, who has just been raped, cries over the loss of her brothers. That seems somehow both normal and noble. Then we get two other reactions that seem odd, or, rather, arcing towards some sort of emotional discovery. Titus’s reaction reaction to this basket of grief? He laughs (Sc. 4.264). Marcus, his brother, can’t figure it out. It’s not appropriate, but Titus, another natural interpreter, can’t help but see the moment through the eyes of others; he gains perspective. He knows that he’s been the butt of a deadly practical joke. He laughs not because he’s happy, but because he imagines the reactions of enemies. He witnesses the event not just through his personally lensed pain but also through the eyes of his enemies. As it turns out, he was exactly right in his imaginings. As Titus was envisioning how Aaron would react, Aaron, unbeknownst to Titus, was hiding nearby. And Aaron’s reaction to Titus’s laughter is also to laugh:

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I played the cheater for thy father’s hand, And when I had it drew myself apart, And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter. (Sc.10.111–​13)

Postscript

Titus grows in the moment because he experiences reality from multiple perspectives; so too does the Messenger, who now understands that the painful loss of his father is an event that unites him with a stranger like Titus. These are literary events of the highest order. But Aaron’s reaction is of the lowest order; it reinforces his inhumanity because it suggests that he never sees or emotionally experiences Titus’s pain. Their seemingly identical reactions (laughter and tears) generate radically opposite emotions. Titus cries so hard that he begins to laugh: MARCUS Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with his hour. TITUS

Why, because I have not another tear to shed. (Sc.4.254–​55)

Aaron laughs so hard that he begins to cry:

I pried me through the crevice of a wall, When for his hand he had his two sons’ heads; Beheld his tears, and laughed so heartily That both mine eyes were rainy like to his … (Sc.10.114–​17)

Would a few English classes have cured Aaron of his psychopathic tendencies? The text suggests that some of us are beyond redemption. It’s not that Aaron is illiterate. He, for example, understands literary allusion.11 When Titus sends a gift of weapons to Chiron and Demetrius, his accompanying note makes a witty allusion to the verses of Horace. Aaron recognizes the allusion but reads it in terms of tactics; us against them: The old man hath found their guilt, And sends them weapons wrapped about with lines That wound beyond their feeling to the quick. (Sc.7.26–​28)

11 Well, at least that’s better than his wards, the near-​illiterate Chiron and Demetrius. In the BBC TV version (1985), they have no inkling what the verse means.

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Titus uses literary allusion to suggest that his pain is intelligible, relatable, even communal, but Aaron’s reactions suggest that while he’s read Horace, he hasn’t truly experienced Horace. Aaron has it wrong: Titus did not send the verses as a form of cryptic, psychological warfare. Literature can be weaponized—​anything can be—​but it is inherently not a weapon. We don’t survive encounters with it. We come out, or should come out, of a literary encounter better, kinder, more capable. The literary experience connects us; it does not alienate us or armor us with scar tissue.12 In this case, the quoting of Horace reaffirms Titus’s humanity, his Roman sense of self.13 Moreover, despite the atrocities he has and will commit against the Goths, Titus intuitively recognizes that literature is a social compact; it is a tool of peace, rather than a weapon of war. The sociability of literature remains a constant. But don’t take Shakespeare’s word for it, or mine. Instead, let’s trust Stan Lee, the creative architect behind Marvel Comics: Marvel has always been and always will be a reflection of the world right outside your window. That world may change and evolve, but the one thing that will never change is the way we tell our stories of heroism. Those stories have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, religion, or color of their skin. The only things we don’t have room for are hatred, intolerance, and bigotry. That man next to you, he’s your brother; that women over there, she’s your sister, and that kid walking by … Hey, who knows! He might have the proportionate strength of a spider. We’re all part of one big family. The human family. And we all come together in the body of Marvel. And you, you’re part of that family. You’re part of the Marvel Universe.14

12 We shouldn’t be surprised by such scenes. They are, at least according to the Romances, typically Shakespearean. The poet John Keats referred to Shakespeare’s “negative capability,” his unique talent for seeing life through the eyes of his characters; Coleridge described the playwright as “myriad-​minded Shakespeare”; William Hazlitt believed that Shakespeare became “all things, while ever remaining himself.” Nor should we be surprised that many of Shakespeare’s characters have exactly the same capacity. For an overview, see Marjorie B. Garber, Shakespeare and Modern Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), 131. 13 Writes Danielle A. St. Hilaire: “But rather than just serving as ‘source’ material for the play, as the implicit background that the alert reader can recognize, these older texts, Horace included, are recognized explicitly and invoked by the play’s characters themselves as the framework for the world in which they operate.” See her “Allusion and Sacrifice in Titus Andronicus,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, 49 (2009), 311–​31; 315–​16. 14 Stan Lee, content creator, former publisher and chairman, Marvel Comics, video FB posting “A Message from Stan Lee,” Marvel.com, October 5, 2017.

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Reading comic books isn’t about how the strong dominate the weak, or even about how good triumphs over evil. Like all great literature, super hero comic books bring us closer because they demonstrate that our suffering is common and our victories are fleeting. ***

It is, perhaps, inevitable that the longer we debate literary topics, the more entrenched we become. Perhaps one day Comic-​Con will become as political and ponderous as a Shakespeare Association of America meeting. My honest hope is that this is not the case. Rather, I hope that every Shakespearean visits a Comic-​Con and rediscovers the wonders and pleasures of fandom. Perhaps some Shakespeareans need to be reminded of something faster than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound—​but you know the rest … Sure, I am being a bit lofty, overdramatic, and maybe even silly. And there is certainly room to cut this argument down a bit. Stan Lee might say that we are welcome in the Marvel family, but how does one join? Well, you buy Marvel products. From this point of view, we are only part of the Marvel family so long as we pay to be part of it, so long as we are buying-​in. Marvel is a business, and Stan Lee knows this better than anyone. He’s been fired by Marvel, later sued the company that he built, and settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Money is a factor in what Lee has to say, but money isn’t the only entry fee here. As Lee points out, not all customers are welcome. It takes a certain temperament to read heroic fantasy; it also takes, in this age of digital ubiquity, a lively rebelliousness. Above all, comic book culture demands a capacity for joy, playfulness, and for those who visit comic conventions dressed as their heroes, theatricality. And while it is likely true that literary meetings of any sort are not going to resolve any of the very real material concerns facing human society and the planet, the interactive processes of comic book culture—​the meetings of likeminded fans at comic conventions—​are far from pointless. A comic book reader’s engagement with the literary world and the lives of its heroes is an expression of a collaborative culture, one that eschews the factionalism of party in favor of a new cooperative dynamic—​not hero worship, but fandom, a mutual admiration of and respect for our collective potential. As odd as it may seem, comic-​book culture may ultimately transcend our literary differences, but it will do so by sustaining our literary values.

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IN D EX

Addington, Symonds, 46 Arrow and Hamlet assessing criminality (Gertrud and Claudius), 20 avenger’s growing uncertainty, 9–​11, 16–​17, 18–​19, 21 identity and responsibility, 12–​15 Oliver and Hamlet, failures, 21–​23 Oliver’s solution, 22–​24 plot points, 5–​6 redemption, 14–​15, 78 reinvention, 17–​18 Auden, W.H., 65

Batman comic book, 44 TV show and actors, 41–​43 Bentley, Eric, 45 Bloom, Harold, 79–​80

comic and comedian (generic distinctions with examples) 54–​57 comic book collecting, xi, 1, n.1 Comics Code Authority (Comics Code or CAA), 44–​45

Deadpool and Iago (comedic variations) backstories, motivations (Iago), 58, 64–​65, (disputing his genius) 68–​7 0; (Deadpool) 60–​6 3 comedic contrition (similarly to Much Ado), 73

comic delivery, 53–​54, 72 farce, Theater of the Absurd, 71 meta-​awareness,  59–​63 Othello and Roderigo as dupes, 66, 70–​73 philosophers, 74–​75, 77–​78 practical joker (Iago), 59, (Iago vs. the Joker), 63–​64 satirical humor and its function, 58–​59 tragic inversions, 61, 70–​71 viral negativity, 54, 66–68

Gildon, Charles, 57 Greenblatt, Stephen, 79

Holloway, Elizabeth 35–​36, 46 Kill Shakespeare, 2

literary theory Aristotelian values, xi bibliomemoir, 2–​3 critical assumptions, 2, 77–​82, 90–​91 literary values, merits, failings, Macbeth, 87, Titus Andronicus 80–​82, 87–​90, Black Panther 82–​86 (see also entry for Deadpool and Iago, tragic inversions) Lee, Stan 90–​91 Lepore, Jill, 35, 44

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Index

Marston, William Moulton, 35–​36, 37, 46, 46, 50; see also entry, Holloway, Elizabeth St. Aubyn, Edward, 57

Terzano, Francesca, 85

Wertham, Frederic, 33–​35, 43, 45 Wonder Woman movie, 46, 48–​50 Wonder Woman and Shakespearean cross-​dressing As You Like It, 29, 31, 39–​41, 50, 51 classical and modern sources, 30–​32 Coriolanus, 29, 31 Cymbeline, 25, 40, 51 defining Trans, 28–​29 Etta Candy, 30, n.12, 36–​37, 45 gay pill (aka L-​3),  37

gay vibe, 34–​35, 46 (see also, within this sub-​list, Etta Candy and Holliday College) gender conventions and fluidities, 26–​31, 40–​41, 77 1-​3Henry  VI, 31 Holliday College, 36–​38 King Lear, 29 Macbeth, 29 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 31 Merchant of Venice, 29, 40, 46 stage conventions, 26–​27 Taming of the Shew, 46 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 38, 40 Timon of Athens, 31 Twelfth Night, 29, 39, 40, 51 Wonder Woman’s revamped origin and sexuality, 44–​45, 46–​47, see also Wonder Woman movie