Staged Transgression in Shakespeare’s England

310 Pages·2013·1.788 MB·English

by  Rory Loughnane, Edel Semple (eds.)

Palgrave Shakespeare Studies
General Editors: Michael Dobson and Dympna Callaghan
Co-founding Editor: Gail Kern Paster
Editorial Advisory Board: Michael Neill, University of Auckland; David Schalkwyk,
Folger Shakespeare Library; Lois D. Potter, University of Delaware; Margreta de
Grazia, University of Pennsylvania; Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame
Palgrave Shakespeare Studies takes Shakespeare as its focus but strives to understand the
significance of his oeuvre in relation to his contemporaries, subsequent writers and
historical and political contexts. By extending the scope of Shakespeare and English
Renaissance Studies the series will open up the field to examinations of previously
neglected aspects or sources in the period’s art and thought. Titles in the Palgrave
Shakespeare Studies series seek to understand anew both where the literary achieve-
ments of the English Renaissance came from and where they have brought us.
Titles include:
Pascale Aebischer, Edward J. Esche and Nigel Wheale (editors)
REMAKING SHAKESPEARE
Performance across Media, Genres and Cultures
James P. Bednarz
SHAKESPEARE AND THE TRUTH OF LOVE
The Mystery of ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’
Mark Thornton Burnett
FILMING SHAKESPEARE IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE
Carla Dente and Sara Soncini (editors)
SHAKESPEARE AND CONFLICT
A European Perspective
Cary DiPietro and Hugh Grady (editors)
SHAKESPEARE AND THE URGENCY OF NOW
Criticism and Theory in the 21st Century
Kate Flaherty, Penny Gay and L. E. Semler (editors)
TEACHING SHAKESPEARE BEYOND THE CENTRE
Australasian Perspectives
Lowell Gallagher and Shankar Raman (editors)
KNOWING SHAKESPEARE
Senses, Embodiment and Cognition
Daniel Juan Gil
SHAKESPEARE’S ANTI-POLITICS
Sovereign Power and the Life of the Flesh
Stefan Herbrechter and Ivan Callus (editors)
POSTHUMANIST SHAKESPEARES
David Hillman
SHAKESPEARE’S ENTRAILS
Belief, Scepticism and the Interior of the Body
Anna Kamaralli
SHAKESPEARE AND THE SHREW
Performing the Defiant Female Voice
Jane Kingsley-Smith
SHAKESPEARE’S DRAMA OF EXILE
Rory Loughnane and Edel Semple (editors)
STAGED TRANSGRESSION IN SHAKESPEARE’S ENGLAND
Stephen Purcell
POPULAR SHAKESPEARE
Simulation and Subversion on the Modern Stage
Erica Sheen
SHAKESPEARE AND THE INSTITUTION OF THEATRE
Paul Yachnin and Jessica Slights
SHAKESPEARE AND CHARACTER
Theory, History, Performance, and Theatrical Persons
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Staged Transgression
in Shakespeare’s England
Edited by
Rory Loughnane
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
and
Edel Semple
School of English, University College Cork, Ireland
Selection and editorial matter © Rory Loughnane and
Edel Semple 2013
Individual chapters © Contributors 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-34934-7
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First published 2013 by
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Introduction: Stages of Transgression 1
Rory Loughnane
1 ‘On the most Eminent seate thereof is Gouernement Illustrated’:
Staging Power in the Lord Mayor’s Show 24
Tracey Hill
2 The Transgressive Stage Player 37
William Ingram
3 ‘Ha, Ha, Ha’: Shakespeare and the Edge of Laughter 49
Adam Smyth
4 ‘Have we done aught amiss?’: Transgression, Indirection and
Audience Reception in Titus Andronicus 63
D arragh Greene
5 The King’s Three Bodies: Resistance Theory and Richard III 76
R ob Carson
6 Marriage, Politics and Law in The Tragedy of Mariam and
The Duchess of Malfi 89
C hristina Luckyj
7 Incapacitated Will 104
R ebecca Lemon
8 Transgression Embodied: Medicine, Religion and Shakespeare’s
Dramatized Persons 120
T homas Rist
9 The Taming of the Jew: Spit and the Civilizing Process in
The Merchant of Venice 136
B rett D. Hirsch
10 ‘Edgar I Nothing Am’: Blackface in King Lear 153
B enjamin Minor and Ayanna Thompson
v
vi Contents
11 M arrying the Dead: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet,
Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline and The Tempest 165
L isa Hopkins
12 S peaking Out of Turn: Gender, Language and Transgression
in Early Modern England 180
D anielle Clarke
13 R ethinking Transgression with Shakespeare’s Bawds 194
E del Semple
14 ‘Nothing but pickled cucumbers’: the Longing Wives of
Middletonian City Comedy 209
C elia R. Caputi
15 Lady Macbeth and Othello, Convention and Transgression
in Early Modern Tragedy 224
A ndrew J. Power
16 ‘ How to vse your Brothers Brotherly’: Civility, Incivility
and Civil War in 3 Henry VI 239
C hristopher Ivic
Afterword: Thinking Staged Transgression Literally 252
Jean E. Howard
Works Cited 260
Index 289
List of Illustrations
7.1 Title page to Thomas Heywood, Philocothonista, or the
Drunkard (1635) 109
9.1 Jew spitting on Christ’s coat of arms. Roof boss at
St Mary’s Church, Clifton 142
9.2 Jew spitting at Christ. Stained glass at Great Malvern
Priory, Malvern 143
9.3 The Mocking of Christ and the Martyrdom of Hur. Dutch
blockbook edition of the Speculum humanae salvationis,
c.1468–79 145
vii
Acknowledgements
In putting together a volume of this length over an extended period of time,
it is perhaps inevitable that we have drawn heavily on the support and
generosity of a large number of people. Now that we have an opportunity to
thank these wonderful folk, we hope not to transgress academic etiquette by
failing to acknowledge all of our debts.
First of all, our sincere thanks to the attendees of ‘Staging Transgression in
the Early Modern Period’, a conference held in Dublin in August 2010. This
present volume grew from the wide-ranging and insightful conversations at
this conference. The two-day event was kindly supported by Trinity College
Dublin, University College Dublin and the Society for Renaissance Studies.
Our thanks also to the members of the Early Modern Tavern Society in
Dublin. We met and became friends through this wonderful reading group,
founded by Andrew J. Power. The seeds were sown for this volume over many
exhilarating discussions about the nature of transgression in early modern
drama.
Thanks also to the staff and our colleagues at our past and present
universities who have supported research for this book: Indiana University-
Purdue University Indianapolis, Syracuse University, Trinity College Dublin,
University College Cork, and University College Dublin. Rory would like to
especially thank his colleagues at the New Oxford Shakespeare: Gary Taylor,
Terri Bourus and Anna Pruitt.
We wish to acknowledge the diligence and bonhomie of all of the contrib-
utors to this volume. It’s been our pleasure to work with such an outstanding
and collegial group of scholars. In particular, we wish to thank Jean E. Howard
for her support and kindness. We would also like to express our gratitude
to the General Editors of the Palgrave Shakespeare Studies series, Dympna
Callaghan and Michael Dobson, who offered their support when this volume
was in its infancy and gave us astute feedback as the project developed. We
are also grateful to the staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their guidance and
patience, with special thanks to Felicity Plester, Benjamin Doyle and Sophie
Ainscough. Thanks also to our diligent copy-editor, Frances Tye, who was
immensely helpful in the final stages of this project.
Finally, we owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to our families and
loved ones for their unwavering support.
viii
Notes on the Contributors
Rob Carson is Assistant Professor of English at Hobart and William Smith
Colleges. He has published articles on Shakespeare and early modern skepti-
cism and on the linguistic turn in Shakespeare studies, and he is currently
finishing up work on his first book, Every Third Thought: Shakespeare and the
Early Modern Play of Ideas.
Celia R. Caputi (formerly Daileader) is Professor of English at the Florida
State University and author of Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage: Transcendence,
Desire and the Limits of the Visible (1998); Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello
Myth: Inter-racial Couples from Shakespeare to Spike Lee (2005); and She Dances
the Tarantella (2013). She is co-editor with Gary Taylor of the Revels Student
Edition of John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, or the Woman’s Prize (2007) and
also co-edited with Rhoda E. Johnson and Amilcar Shabazz Women & Others:
Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Empire (2007). She resides in north Florida
and southern Italy.
Danielle Clarke is Professor of English Renaissance Language and Literature
at University College Dublin. She has published widely on early modern
women’s writing, textuality, gender, and poetics, and is working on a book
about form, language, and genre in Renaissance women’s poetry. Her most
recent book is Teaching the Early Modern, edited with Derval Conroy (2011).
Darragh Greene lectures in the School of English, Drama and Film, University
College Dublin. He has published a number of essays on medieval poetry.
His research interests in aesthetics, philosophy of language, and history of
ideas extend from the medieval period to the early modern. He is currently
preparing an edited volume of essays on Grant Morrison (MacFarland
Publishing, forthcoming 2014) and a monograph on the representation of
divine speech in Middle English literature.
Tracey Hill is Head of Department of English and Cultural Studies at Bath
Spa University. She specializes in the cultural history of early modern London
and is the author of two books: Pageantry and Power: a Cultural History of the
Early Modern Lord Mayor’s Show (2010: winner of the David Bevington Prize
for the Best Book in Early Drama Studies, 2011), and Anthony Munday and
Civic Culture (2004). She has also published a number of articles and book
chapters on civic pageantry and early modern drama. Her latest research
projects focus on the early modern Thames in ceremony and popular culture,
and on early modern book owners.
ix