Spiritual Shakespeares (Accents on Shakespeare)

262 Pages·2006·0.78 MB·English

by  Ewan Fernie

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11 ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE
11 General Editor: TERENCE HAWKES
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Spiritual Shakespeares
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11 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are
dreamt of in secular materialism, theology, or contemporary theory.
That at least is what the present collection sets out so suggestively
to show.
John D. Caputo (from the Foreword)
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Readers will find here an engagement with both Shakespeare and
spirituality which is intelligent, original, and challengingly optimistic,
one which surely succeeds in its wish to ‘reinvigorate and strengthen
politically progressive materialist criticism’.
Jonathan Dollimore (from the Afterword)
Spiritual Shakespeares is the first book to explore the scope for reading
Shakespeare spiritually in the light of contemporary theory and current
world events. Ewan Fernie has brought together an exciting cast of critics
in order to respond to the ‘religious turn’ in recent thought and to the
spiritualised politics of terrorism and the ‘War on Terror’.
Opening a genuinely new perspective within Shakespeare Studies, this
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volume suggests that experiencing the spiritual intensities of the plays
could lead us back to dramatic intensity as such. It tests spirituality from
a political perspective, as well as subjecting politics to an unusual spiritual
critique. Among its controversial and provocative arguments is the idea
that a consideration of spirituality might point the way forward for
materialist criticism.
Spiritual Shakespeares reaches across and beyond literary studies with
challenging, powerful contributions from Philippa Berry, John D. Caputo,
Jonathan Dollimore, Ewan Fernie, Lisa Freinkel, Lowell Gallagher,
John J. Joughin, Richard Kearney, David Ruiter and Kiernan Ryan.
Ewan Fernie is Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway,
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University of London, and the author of Shame in Shakespeare (Routledge,
11 2002).
1111 ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE
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General Editor: TERENCE HAWKES
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8 It is more than twenty years since the New Accents series helped to
9 establish ‘theory’ as a fundamental and continuing feature of the study
of literature at the undergraduate level. Since then, the need for short,
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powerful ‘cutting edge’ accounts of and comments on new developments
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has increased sharply. In the case of Shakespeare, books with this sort
2 of focus have not been readily available. Accents on Shakespeare
3111 aims to supply them.
4 Accents on Shakespeare volumes will either ‘apply’ theory, or
broaden and adapt it in order to connect with concrete teaching con-
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cerns. In the process, they will also reflect and engage with the major
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developments in Shakespeare studies of the last ten years.
7 The series will lead as well as follow. In pursuit of this goal it will be
8 a two-tiered series. In addition to affordable, ‘adoptable’ titles aimed at
19 modular undergraduate courses, it will include a number of research-
based books. Spirited and committed, these second-tier volumes advocate
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radical change rather than stolidly reinforcing the status quo.
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2 IN THE SAME SERIES
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Shakespeare and Appropriation Shakespeare and Feminist
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Edited by Christy Desmet Performance: Ideology on Stage
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and Robert Sawyer Sarah Werner
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Shakespeare Without Women Shame in Shakespeare
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Dympna Callaghan Ewan Fernie
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Philosophical Shakespeares The Sound of Shakespeare
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Edited by John J. Joughin Wes Folkerth
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Shakespeare and Modernity: Shakespeare in the Present
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Early Modern to Millennium Terence Hawkes
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Edited by Hugh Grady
3 Making Shakespeare
Marxist Shakespeares Tiffany Stern
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Edited by Jean E. Howard
5 Presentist Shakespeare
and Scott Cutler Shershow
Edited by Terence Hawkes
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Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis and Hugh Grady
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Philip Armstrong
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Shakespeare and Modern Theatre:
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The Performance of Modernity
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Edited by Michael Bristol
4111 and Kathleen McLuskie
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Spiritual
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Shakespeares
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Edited by EWAN FERNIE
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First published 2005 A catalogue record for this book is
by Routledge available from the British Library
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Data
Simultaneously published in
the USA and Canada Spiritual Shakespeares / edited by
by Routledge Ewan Fernie.
270 Madison Avenue, p. cm. – (Accents on Shakespeare)
New York, NY 10016 Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Routledge is an imprint of the Contents: Introduction: Shakespeare,
Taylor & Francis Group spirituality, and contemporary criticism /
Ewan Fernie – ‘Where hope is coldest’:
This edition published in the All’s well that ends well / Kiernan
Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. Ryan – Harry’s (in)human
face / David Ruiter – Waiting for
“To purchase your own copy Gobbo / Lowell Gallagher – ‘Salving
of this or any of Taylor & Francis the mail’: perjury, grace, and the
or Routledge’s disorder of things in Love’s labour’s lost
collection of thousands /Philippa Berry – The Shakespearean
of eBooks please go to fetish/Lisa Freinkel– Bottom’s secret/
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” John J. Joughin – Spectres of
Hamlet / Richard Kearney – The last
act: presentism, spirituality, and the
Editorial matter and selection
politics of Hamlet / Ewan Fernie.
© 2005 Ewan Fernie
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616
Individual chapters © the
– Religion. 2. Spiritual life in
contributors
literature. 3. Spirituality in literature.
All rights reserved. No part of I. Fernie, Ewan, 1971–. II. Series.
this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any PR3011.S65 2005
form or by any electronic, 822.3′3–dc22 2005004410
mechanical, or other means, now
ISBN 0-203-62549-8 Master e-book ISBN
known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and
recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing ISBN 0–415–31966–8 (hbk)
from the publishers. ISBN 0–415–31967–6 (pbk)
British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data
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11 And what impossibility would slay
In common sense, sense saves another way.
11 (All’s Well That Ends Well)
No settled senses of the world can match
011 The pleasures of that madness.
(The Winter’s Tale)
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Contents
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11 List of contributors ix
General editor’s preface xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Foreword: of hyper-reality xvii
JOHN D. CAPUTO
Introduction: Shakespeare, spirituality and
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contemporary criticism 1
EWAN FERNIE
1 ‘Where hope is coldest’: All’s Well That Ends Well 28
KIERNAN RYAN
2 Harry’s (in)human face 50
DAVID RUITER
0111 3 Waiting for Gobbo 73
LOWELL GALLAGHER
4 ‘Salving the mail’: perjury, grace and the
disorder of things in Love’s Labour’s Lost 94
PHILIPPA BERRY
5 The Shakespearean fetish 109
LISA FREINKEL
0111 6 Bottom’s secret ... 130
11 JOHN J. JOUGHIN
viii Contents
1111 7 Spectres of Hamlet 157
2 RICHARD KEARNEY
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4 8 The last act: presentism, spirituality and
5111 the politics of Hamlet 186
6 EWAN FERNIE
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8 Afterword 212
9 JONATHAN DOLLIMORE
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Bibliography 219
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Index 233
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Contributors
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11 Philippa Berry was Fellow and Director of Studies at King’s
College, Cambridge until 2004. She is Visiting Fellow in the
Department of English at the University of Bristol. She is
author of Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the
Unmarried Queen and Shakespeare’s Feminine Endings: Disfiguring
Death in the Tragedies. She is co-editor of Shadow of Spirit:
Postmodernism and Religion and Textures of Renaissance Knowledge.
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John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of
Religion and Humanities at Syracuse University. His most
recent books include Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions
and Circumfession, On Religionand More Radical Hermeneutics. He
is also the author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida
and editor of the Fordham University Press book series
‘Perspectives in Continental Philosophy’.
Jonathan Dollimore recently left the academy to concen-
trate on writing. His books include (with Alan Sinfield),
Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism (2nd edn,
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1994); Sexual Dissidence; Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture;
Sex, Literature and Censorship and Radical Tragedy: Religion,
Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His
Contemporaries (3rd edn, 2003).
Ewan Fernie is Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway,
University of London. He is the author of Shame in Shakespeare
and the leading editor of Reconceiving the Renaissance: A Critical
Reader. His latest essay, ‘Shakespeare and the Prospect of
Presentism’, appears in Shakespeare Survey 58. He is a founding
0111 editor (with Simon Palfrey) of a new series of ‘minigraphs’
11 called ‘Shakespeare Now!’