MYRIAD-MINDED SHAKESPEARE

MYRIAD-MINDED SHAKESPEARE

Myriad-tninded Shakespeare Essays, chiefly on the tragedies and problem comedies E. A. J. Honigmann Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN 978-1-349-19816-0 ISBN 978-1-349-19814-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19814-6 E. A. J. Honigmann 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1989 978-0-333-41939-7 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United Statesof America in 1989 ISBN 978-0-312-02440-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Honigmann, E.A. J. Myriad-minded Shakespeare: essays, chiefly on the tragedies and problem comedies I E. A. J. Honigmann. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-02440-6:$35.00 (est.) 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PR2976.H58 1989 822.3'3---dc19 88-18834 CJP

Contents Acknowledgements Note on texts and references Bibliographical note Introduction: Myriad-minded Shakespeare and the modern reader 1 1 In search of William Shakespeare: the public and the private man 4 2 Politics, rhetoric and will-power in Julius Caesar 21 3 The politics in Hamlet and 'the world of the play' 43 4 Trends in the discussion of Shakespeare's characters: Othello 60 5 The uniqueness of King Lear: genre and production problems 73 6 Past, present and future in Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra 93 7 Shakespeare suppressed: the unfortunate history of Troilus and Cressida 112 8 All's Well That Ends Well: a 'feminist' play? 130 9 Shakespeare's mingled yarn and Measure for Measure 147 10 On not trusting Shakespeare's stage-directions 169 11 Shakespeare at work: preparing, writing, rewriting 188 ~~ m Index 233 vi vii viii v

Note on texts and references Quotations from Shakespeare, and line-references, are taken from Peter Alexander's William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Collins, 1951). A single line-reference after a quotation is to the first line quoted. Other Elizabethan plays are usually quoted from The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press). Old-spelling quotations from Elizabethan texts are modernised, except that I retain old spelling when there is a special reason for doing so: I hope that this will not cause confusion. vii

Bibliographical note Some of the essays in this volume are revised versions of earlier publications or lectures, or reprint parts of earlier publications, as indicated below. I am grateful to the editors and publishers for permission to reprint. I have not sought to disguise the fact that the lectures were written as lectures: my occasional exhortations to attentive listeners will not confuse the attentive reader. 1. 'In search of William Shakespeare: the public and the private man.' Partly based on a review in The New York Review of Books, vol. 31 (17 Jan 1985) pp. 2~, and on 'Shakespeare and London's immigrant community circa 1600', in Elizabethan and Modern Studies Presented to Willem Schrickx, ed. J. P. Vander Motten (R.U.G., 1985). See also my Shakespeare's Impact on his Contemporaries (Macmillan, 1982) ch. 1. 3. 'The politics in Hamlet and the "world of the play".' From Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 5, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (Edward Arnold, 1963). 4. 'Trends in the discussion of Shakespeare's characters: Othello.' From Handelingen van het XXIX Vlaams Filologencongres (Antwerp, privately printed, 1973). Some of the ideas in this chapter were later developed in my Shakespeare: seven tragedies, the dramatist's manipulation of response (Macmillan, 1976). 5. 'The uniqueness of King Lear: genre and production problems.' A lecture delivered on 23 April1983 to the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft West. Published in Jahrbuch, 1984. 6. 'Past, present and future in Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.' Partly based on a lecture delivered in Los Angeles, 1987, at a oneday conference on Macbeth sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles. 7. 'Shakespeare suppressed: the unfortunate history of Troilus and Cressida.' Partly based on a lecture delivered to the Caltech Weingart Conference at the Henry E. Huntington Library, 1982: see Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation, ed. Jerome J. McGann (University of Chicago Press, 1985). 9. 'Shakespeare's mingled yarn and Measure for Measure.' A lecture delivered on 23 April 1981 at the British Academy. From Proceedings of the British Academy, LXVII (1983). viii

Bibliographical note ix 10. 'On not trusting Shakespeare's stage-directions.' Partly reprinted from Shakespeare Survey 29 (1976), and partly based on a lecture delivered to the Renaissance Conference of Southern California, 1987. 11. 'Shakespeare at work: preparing, writing, rewriting.' Partly based on The Stability of Shakespeare's Text (1965), passim, and on 'Shakespeare as a reviser', in Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation, ed. Jerome J. McGann (University of Chicago Press, 1985).