Shakespeare Between the World Wars: The Anglo-American Sphere

318 Pages·2019·2.97 MB·English

by  Robert Sawyer

Shakespeare Between the World Wars
Th e Anglo-American Sphere
robert sawyer
Shakespeare Between the World Wars
Robert Sawyer
Shakespeare Between
the World Wars
The Anglo-American Sphere
Robert Sawyer
Literature and Language
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, TN, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-59063-3 ISBN 978-1-137-58218-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58218-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967771
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To My Perfect Partner,
Danielle Nicole Byington
A
cknowledgements
Countless people have helped me in producing this book, but a number
of academic colleagues deserve special recognition. In Italy, I’ve bene-
fited from the wise council and warm friendship of Paola Pugliatti, and
Donatella Pallotti, and in the UK, Stephen O’Neill, Paul Edmondson,
John Drakakis, Richard Wilson, and both Ken and Irene Pickering.
Closer to home, I’m grateful to have had the support of Darlena
Ciraulo, Terri Bourus, Katherine Scheil, Bob Logan, Lisa Starks, Ruby
and Ed Mitkus, Fred Sauceman, Louise Geddes, David Schiller, and
the late Christy Desmet. Here at ETSU, I have profited from the com-
ments and careful proofreading skills of Judy Slagle, Josh Reid, Rebecca
Stephens, and Thomas Crofts, a group of scholars who personify the
term collegiality.
I also have benefitted from travel grants and time off to write, includ-
ing a one-semester Non-Instructional Assignment (sabbatical) enabled
by my Chair, Katherine Weiss, and supported by Gordon Anderson, the
Dean of Arts and Sciences. I want to also thank Dr. Weiss for allowing
me to create a Special Topics course on the subject matter of my book,
which I taught during Fall of 2018. The following students in the class
helped me to workshop my ideas which, in turn, allowed me to write
more clearly about the years between the World Wars: Brooke Johnson,
Christopher Price, Caitlin Baker, Carissa Kohne, and Aimee Robinson.
The Research Development Committee at ETSU, headed by William
Duncan and David Hurley, has been generous with grant money
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
allowing me to travel to numerous libraries to pour over documents
and to present my research in the USA and Europe. The many library
visits ranged from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford to the Folger
Shakespeare Library in D.C., where Betsy Walsh (now deceased) exam-
ined over thirty years of sign-in sheets to find the single time a well-
known New Critic seems to have visited their holdings (see Chapter 2).
Lifelong friends also kept me sane during this two-year project, and
while the list is too long to name them all, I want to thank three in par-
ticular: Mary Anne O’Neal, John Leroy, and George Fink; their encour-
agement provided much needed buoyancy during the turbulent political
tempests following the last presidential election in the USA. Danielle
Byington, to whom this book is dedicated, has provided more profes-
sional support and personal cheer than I probably deserve.
Finally, the following editors and publishers have graciously allowed me
to use earlier research in this book where it now appears in considerably
revised and expanded form: I am grateful to Stephen O’Neill and to Arden
Press for publishing an earlier version of one subsection of Chapter 4,
the former entitled “Broadcasting the Bard: Orson Welles, Shakespeare,
and War,” in the volume Broadcast Your Shakespeare: Continuity and
Change Across Media. Ed. Stephen O’Neill (Bloomsbury / Arden,
2017). I am also indebted to Matthew Roudane, former editor, and
Barton Palmer, current editor, of South Atlantic Review, for a section of
Chapter 2, originally published as “From Fugitives to Agrarians to New
Critics: The Institutionalized Paradox of Shakespeare in the South,” South
Atlantic Review 77.3–4 (2014): 26–47. Finally, I appreciate that Monika
Sosnowska, Editorial Assistant for Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation,
Appropriation and Performance, has allowed me to borrow from one of
my essays originally published in that journal: “Performing Protest in
Cross-Cultural Spaces: Paul Robeson and Othello,” 15.30 (2017): 77–90.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Criticism in the UK: The Bard of Britannia 25
3 Criticism in the USA: The Institutionalization
of Shakespeare in the USA 83
4 Shakespeare Productions in the USA: The Voices
and Sounds of America’s Shakespeare 133
5 Shakespeare Productions in the UK: A Sense
of Return—“‘Tis Here, ‘Tis Here, ‘Tis Gone” 195
6 Conclusion: Transnational Shakespeare, Then and Now 251
Works Cited 281
Index 305
ix
A ’ n c I
uthor s ote on over mAge
In the concluding section of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, entitled “What
the Thunder Said,” the speaker wonders, “Who are those hooded hordes
swarming / Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth / Ringed
by the flat horizon only” (l.369–371) before lamenting the collapse of
the great cities of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, and London.
As has been often noted, including by Hugh Kenner in a course I was
fortunate enough to attend, Eliot’s reference to “hooded hoards” sym-
bolized the gas mask-wearing combatants of World War I. Although
my book admittedly begins after the Armistice of 1918, Eliot’s poem,
which was published in 1922, demonstrates that the image of the gas
mask remained a central symbol of the turbulent times, employed by
civilians and soldiers alike. Even in the early twenty-first century, this
unfortunately iconic image of the gas mask calls up memories of both
World Wars, as well as the twenty years between them. The fact that
some Shakespearean productions between the global conflicts incorpo-
rated weapons of war including gas masks, machine guns, and artillery is
detailed in Chapter 5, specifically when I focus on the performances of
Troilus and Cressida at the Westminster Theatre in 1938.
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
“Where we see [the past as] a chain of events,”
the Angel of History “sees one single catastrophe,
which unceasingly piles rubble upon top of rubble.”
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”1
Confronting his mother Gertrude during the closet scene in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark challenges her not only
to “[r]epent what’s past,” specifically the mistakes she has committed
concerning her new husband Claudius, but he also begs her to “avoid
what is to come,” by not repeating similar transgressions in the future.2
Occurring almost exactly midway in Hamlet, this central scene looks back
to the past even while trying to focus on the future, all captured in an
infinite moment in the dramatic present. While Gertrude seems in most
productions to heed Hamlet’s advice, it is worth focusing for a moment
on the liminal space of that singular scene, as it anticipates another histor-
ical lull between senseless carnage and widespread destruction.
This pause in the play, immediately following the death of Polonius
and the psychic reunion of the Queen and the Prince, not only coun-
tenances the dark comic relief of Hamlet dragging the counselor’s guts
around Elsinore, but also allows us as auditors to catch our breath, even
though we sense that this “peace” on stage may just be a short inter-
val in a drama which is in a state of perpetual conflict, both militarily
and familially, external and internal, political and psychological. It is
even possible that the forced “intermission” in Hamlet’s production of
© The Author(s) 2019 1
R. Sawyer, Shakespeare Between the World Wars,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58218-8_1