Shakespeare's Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality

345 Pages·2010·2.108 MB·English

by  Marjorie Garber

Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers
‘Shakespeare’s Ghost Writersis a brave new book, for
in justifying another book on Shakespeare, it has
attempted nothing less than to make literature newly
consequential.’
Margreta de Grazia, Shakespeare Quarterly

Marjorie
Garber
Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers
Literature as Uncanny Causality
With a new preface by the author
New York and London
First published in 1987
by Methuen, Inc
New York
First published in Routledge Classics 2010
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1987, 2010 Marjorie Garber
Chapter 7 “A Tale of Three Hamlets” first published in
Shakespeare Quarterly 61 (2010) 28–55
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Garber, Marjorie B.
Shakespeare’s ghost writers : literature as uncanny causality / Marjorie Garber.
p. cm. – (Routledge classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Shakespeare,
William, 1564–1616 – Authorship. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 –
Characters – Ghosts. 4. Psychoanalysis and literature. 5. Drama – Psychological
aspects. 6. Ghosts in lierature. I. Title.
PR2976.G37 2010
822.3′3 – dc22
2010006490
ISBN 0-203-85711-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0–415–87556–0 (pbk)
ISBN 10: 0–203–85711–9 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–87556–1 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–203–85711–3 (ebk)
For Rhoda and for Barbara

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
– But who is that on the other side of you?
t. s. eliot, “the waste land”
Nearly every man who loses a limb carries about with him a
constant or inconstant phantom of the missing member,
a sensory ghost of that much of himself, and sometimes a
most inconvenient presence, faintly felt at times, but ready
to be called up to his perception by a blow, a touch, or a
change of wind.
s. weir mitchell, injuries of nerves
...the phantom is meant to objectify, even if under the guise
of individual or collective hallucinations, the gap that the con-
cealment of some part of a loved one’s life produced in us.
The phantom is, therefore, also a metapsychological fact.
Consequently, what haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left
within us by the secrets of others.
nicolas abraham, “notes on the phantom”

CONTENTS
acknowledgments xi
preface to the routledge classics edition xiii
preface: ghostlier demarcations xxiii
1 Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers 1
2 Descanting on Deformity: Richard III and the
Shape of History 37
3 A Rome of One’s Own 69
4 Freud’s Choice: “The Theme of the Three
Caskets” 98
5 Macbeth: The Male Medusa 116
6 Hamlet: Giving up the Ghost 166
7 A Tale of Three Hamlets Or, Repetition and
Revenge 238
notes 273
index 306