Eclipse of Action: Tragedy and Political Economy

322 Pages·2017·1.32 MB·English

by  Richard Halpern

Eclipse of Action

Eclipse of Action
Tragedy and Political Economy
R I C H A R D H A L P E R N
The University of Chicago Press
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The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2017 by The University of Chicago
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Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
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isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 43365- 3 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 43379- 0 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226433790.001.0001
The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of
the Abraham and Rebecca Stein Faculty Publication Fund at New York University
toward the publication of this book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Halpern, Richard, 1954– author.
Title: Eclipse of action : tragedy and political economy / Richard Halpern.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016032545 | isbn 9780226433653 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9780226433790 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Tragedy—History and criticism. | Tragedy—Themes, motives. |
Economics in literature.
Classification: lcc pn 1892 .h23 2017 | ddc 809.2/512—dc23 lc record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032545
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48– 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Contents
Acknowledgments • vii
introduction • 1
chapter one • 29
“Thy Bloody and Invisible Hand”: Tragedy and Political Economy
chapter two • 75
Greek Tragedy and the Raptor Economy: The Oresteia
chapter three • 108
Marlowe’s Theater of Night: Doctor Faustus and Capital
chapter four • 138
Hamlet and the Work of Death
chapter five • 159
The Same Old Grind: Milton’s Samson as Subtragic Hero
chapter six • 181
Hegel, Marx, and the Novelization of Tragedy
chapter seven • 226
Beckett’s Tragic Pantry
postscript • 255
After Beckett
Notes • 273
Index • 303

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a
fellowship that contributed significantly to the completion of this book.
That fellowship was enhanced by the generosity of the Dean’s Office at
Johns Hopkins University. The Dean of Graduate Studies at New York Uni-
versity likewise provided much- needed relief from teaching.
My thanks to those who read and commented on chapters in various
stages, some dating back twelve years: Crystal Bartolovich, Jonathan Gold-
berg, Martin Harries, Julia Jarcho, Victoria Kahn, Christopher Kendrick, Jo-
seph Lowenstein, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Joanna Picciotto, Clifford Siskin,
and Connie You. I wish in addition to thank the anonymous readers for the
University of Chicago Press for their very helpful suggestions. Mark Griffith
of the Classics Department at Berkeley deserves special mention here. I
cold- called him years ago on the topic of Aeschylus, and he responded with
a truly stunning and memorable display of intellectual generosity. He is a
mensch. Dori Hale, Aaron Landsman, and Mary Poovey helped in their own
ways.
Connie, Annie, and Beau were (and are) a continual source of delight and
support.
* * *
Portions of chapters 1 and 4 originally appeared as “Eclipse of Action:
Hamlet and the Political Economy of Playing,” in Shakespeare Quarterly 59,
no. 4 (2008): 450– 82. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins Univer-
viii acknowledgments
sity Press. Copyright © 2008 Folger Shakespeare Library. An earlier ver-
sion of chapter 3 appeared as “Marlowe’s Theater of Night: Doctor Faustus
and Capital,” in English Literary History 71, no. 2 (2004): 455– 95. Copyright
© 2004 John Hopkins University Press. A portion of chapter 5 appeared as
“Samson’s Gospel of Sex: Failed Universals in Milton and Freud,” in Re-
thinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies: Gender, Race, and Sexuality, ed.
Ania Loomba and Melissa E. Sanchez (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2016), 187–
94. Copyright © 2016. And a portion of chapter 7 originally appeared in
PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014), published by the Modern Language Association of
America, as “Beckett’s Tragic Pantry: Endgame and the Deflation of the Act,”
742– 50. I thank the various publishers for permission to reproduce these
materials here.
introduction
i
As an influential narrative has it, the history of tragedy is itself tragic. Fol-
lowing a miraculous birth in fifth- century Athens and an equally brilliant
resurgence in the early modern period, tragic drama goes into an irreme-
diable decline. Such is the argument of George Steiner’s The Death of Trag-
edy (1961), perhaps the definitive statement of this position from within the
field of literary criticism. But Steiner’s claims would have been less influ-
ential had they not been backed up by a long pedigree. Much of the time,
his imposing erudition merely fleshes out an intellectual scaffolding that
can be traced back to Hegel and Nietzsche. Nietzsche pushes the decline
of tragedy back to the Greeks themselves, where Euripides and then, de-
finitively, Socrates kill the Dionysian spirit of music with their rationalism.
In his 1693 volume, A Short View of Tragedy: Its Original Excellence and Cor-
ruption, Thomas Rymer blames everyone from the Romans to Shakespeare
for defiling the Greek example. No matter the era, tragedy seems to be
ailing.
Stories of cultural and artistic decline appeal particularly to conserva-
tive minds, an impression reinforced by the roster of names in the previous
paragraph. It is perhaps telling that the most significant ripostes to Steiner
came from Marxists: Raymond Williams’s Modern Tragedy (1966) and Terry
Eagleton’s Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2003). But lest the drawing
up of political ranks seem too neat, a third Marxist, Alain Badiou, has more
recently declared that “For the moment, there exists no modern tragedy. . . .
Contemporary theatre desires the tragic, without for the moment disposing
of the means necessary for it.”1 Badiou’s repeated “for the moment” draws