Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism

308 Pages·1985·9.685 MB·English

by  Jonathan Dollimore, Alan Sinfield

Political Shakespeare

edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield
Political
Shakespeare
Essays in cultural materialism
second edition
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Copyright © Manchester University Press 1985, 1994
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University
Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1985 by Cornell University Press.
First published, Cornell Paperbacks, 1985.
Second Edition first published 1994 by Cornell University Press.
Second Edition, Cornell Paperbacks, first published 1994.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Political Shakespeare: essays in cultural materialism / edited by
Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-8014-3091-7.—ISBN 0-8014-8243-7 (pbk.)
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Political and social views. 2.
Politics and literature—England—History—16th century. 3. Political
plays, English—History and criticism. 4. Social change in literature.
5. Authority in literature. I. Dollimore, Jonathan. II. Sinfield, Alan.
PR.3017.P59 1994
822.3'3—dc2o 94-15983
»
Printed in Great Britain
Contents
Preface to the second edition vii
Foreword to the first edition Cultural materialism vii
Part I Recovering history
1 Jonathan Dollimore 2
Introduction: Shakespeare, cultural materialism and the
new historicism
2 Stephen Greenblatt 18
Invisible bullets: Renaissance authority and its subversion,
Henry IV and Henry V
3 Paul Brown 48
‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’: The Tempest
and the discourse of colonialism
4 Jonathan Dollimore 72
Transgression and surveillance in Measure for Measure
5 Kathleen McLuskie 88
The patriarchal bard: feminist criticism and Shakespeare:
King Lear and Measure for Measure
6 Leonard Tennenhouse 109
Strategies of State and political plays: A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII
7 Jonathan Dollimore 129
Shakespeare understudies: the sodomite, the prostitute, the
transvestite and their critics
[v]
Contents
Part II Reproductions, interventions
8 Alan Sinfield 154
Introduction: Reproductions, interventions
9 Alan Sinfield 158
Give an account of Shakespeare and Education, showing
why you think they are effective and what you have
appreciated about them. Support your comments with
precise references
10 Alan Sinfield 182
Royal Shakespeare: theatre and the making of ideology
11 Graham Holdemess 206
Radical potentiality and institutional closure: Shakespeare
in film and television
12 Margot Heinemann 226
How Brecht read Shakespeare
13 Alan Sinfield 255
Heritage and the market, regulation and desublimation
Raymond Williams 281
Afterword (
Index 290
[vi]
*
Preface to the second edition
This second edition of Political Shakespeare includes all the essays
of the first edition and two new chapters. In chapter 7, ‘Shakespeare
understudies: the sodomite, the prostitute, the transvestite and their
critics’, Jonathan Dollimore discusses current critical approaches to
questions of gender and sexuality — topics in which some of the
most important critical developments of the last decade have
occurred. In Chapter 13, ‘Heritage and the market, regulation and
desublimation’, Alan Sinfield revisits themes from the second part
of the book, in the light of major cultural and political changes in
Britain and the United States. Raymond Williams’s ‘Afterword’ still
stands last. This second edition is dedicated to his memory, and to
that of another contributor, Margot Heinemann. It is also for Helena
Dollimore, born March 22, 1994.
J.D., A.S., 1994
Foreword to the first edition: Cultural materialism
The break-up of consensus in British political life during the 1970s
was accompanied by the break-up of traditional assumptions about
the values and goals of literary criticism. Initially at specialised
conferences and in committed journals, but increasingly in the main
stream of intellectual life, literary texts were related to the new
and challenging discourses of Marxism, feminism, structuralism,
psycho-analysis and poststructuralism. It is widely admitted that
all this has brought a new rigour and excitement to literary
discussions. At the same time, it has raised profound questions
about the status of literary texts, both as linguistic entities and as
ideological forces in our society.
Some approaches offer a significant alternative to traditional
practice; others are little more than realignments of familiar posi¬
tions. But our belief is that a combination of historical context,
theoretical method, political commitment and textual analysis offers
the strongest challenge and has already contributed substantial
work. Historical context undermines the transcendent significance
traditionally accorded to the literary text and allows us to recover
its histories; theoretical method detaches the text from immanent
criticism which seeks only to reproduce it in its own terms; socialist
and feminist commitment confronts the conservative categories in
which most criticism has hitherto been conducted; textual analysis
locates the critique of traditional approaches where it cannot be
ignored. We call this ‘cultural materialism’.
There are (at least) two ways of using the word ‘culture’. The
[vii]
Foreword
analytic one is used in the social sciences and especially anthro¬
pology: it seeks to describe the whole system of significations by
which a society or a section of it understands itself and its relations
with the world. The evaluative use has been more common when
we are thinking about ‘the arts’ and ‘literature’: to be ‘cultured’ is
to be the possessor of superior values and a refined sensibility,
both of which are manifested through a positive and fulfilling
engagement with ‘good’ literature, art, music and so on.
Cultural materialism draws upon the analytic sense of ‘culture’,
and it includes work on the cultures of subordinate and marginalised
groups like schoolchildren and skinheads, and on forms like
television and popular music and fiction. But its effects are perhaps
most startling when it is applied to artefacts and practices which
have traditionally been prized within the evaluative idea of culture.
In brief, ‘high culture’ is taken as one set of signifying practices
among others.
‘Materialism’ is opposed to ‘idealism’: it insists that culture does
not (cannot) transcend the material forces and relations of produc¬
tion. Culture is not simply a reflection of the economic and political
system, but nor can it be independent of it. Cultural materialism
therefore studies the implication of literary texts in history. A play
by Shakespeare is related to the contexts of its production — to the
economic and political system of Elizabethan and Jacobean England
and to the particular institutions of cultural production (the court,
patronage, theatre, education, the church). Moreover, the relevant
history is not just that of four hundred years ago, for culture is
made continuously and Shakespeare’s text is reconstructed, re¬
appraised, reassigned all the time through diverse institutions in
specific contexts. What the plays signify, how they signify, depends
on the cultural field in which they are situated. That is why this
book discusses also the institutions through which Shakespeare is
reproduced and through which interventions may be made in the
present.
Finally, cultural materialism does not pretend to political neutral¬
ity. It knows that no cultural practice is ever without political
significance — not the production of King Lear at the Globe, or at
the Barbican, or as a text in a school, popular or learned edition,
or in literary criticism, or in the present volume. Cultural material¬
ism does not, like much established literary criticism, attempt to
mystify its perspective as the natural, obvious or right interpretation
of an allegedly given textual fact. On the contrary, it registers its
commitment to the transformation of a social order which exploits
people on grounds of race, gender and class.
J.D., A.S., University of Sussex, 1985
[viii]