Bells E. A. Poe

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE, SERBIA
BELGRADE
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE &
LITERATURE
STUDIES
VOLUME VI
2014
Belgrade, 2014
Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies (Belgrade BELLS)

2014 Volume VI
Editor-in-Chief:
Radojka Vukevi (University of Belgrade)
Editor of Volume 6:
Milica Spremi Konar (University of Belgrade)
Editorial Board:
Jelisaveta Milojevi (University of Belgrade)
Aleksandra V. Jovanovi (University of Belgrade)
Ivana Trbojevi Miloevi (University of Belgrade)
Biljana ubrovi (University of Belgrade)
Biljana ori-Francuski (University of Belgrade)
Jelena Vuji (University of Belgrade)
Novica Petrovi (University of Belgrade)
Milica Spremi Konar (University of Belgrade)
Nenad Tomovi (University of Belgrade)
Geoffrey Leech (Lancaster University, UK)
Stepehen Regan (Durham University, UK)
Reviewed by:
Sneana Bilbija (University of Sarajevo)
Radojka Vukevi (University of Belgrade)
Jelisaveta Milojevi (University of Belgrade)
Aleksandra V. Jovanovi (University of Belgrade)
Dubravka Popovi Srdanovi (University of Ni)
Proofread by:
Christine Prickett, Clare Zubac, Greta Goetz, Charles Robertson,
Jonathan Pendlebury, Nathan William Meyer, Nataa ofranac
Prepress:
Aleksandra Vukoti
Published by:
Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade
Graphic design:
Biljana ivojinovi
Isidora Mareti
Printed by:
igoja tampa
Belgrade, Serbia
2014
ISSN 1821-3138 (Printed volume)
ISSN 1821-4827 (Online text)
UDC 811.111+82
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL PREFACE............................................................................... 5
BELGRADE BELLS INTERVIEW
VESELIN KOSTI: THE EVERLASTING COMPANION
OF OUR EXPERIENCE
by Radojka Vukevi................................................................................ 15
SHAKESPEARE: LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Svetozar Rapaji
SHAKESPEARE IN MUSIC THEATRE: WEST SIDE STORY...................... 23
Jelisaveta Milojevi
UNTYING THE KNOT: SHAKESPEARES SONNETS 27 AND 144
IN SERBIAN TRANSLATIONS................................................................. 43
Dubravka uri
SVETISLAV STEFANOVIS INTERPRETATION
OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND WORLD LITERATURE...................... 61
Zorica Beanovi Nikoli
SHAKESPEARE STUDIES, PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD LITERATURE.... 83
Danica Igrutinovi
NOTHING OF WOMAN: THE FEMININE VOID
OF MATTER IN SHAKESPEARE........................................................... 105
Goran Stanivukovi
EARLIEST SHAKESPEARE: BOMBAST AND AUTHENTICITY.............. 131
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Vesna Lopii
THE STAGE AS PURGATORY:
SHAKESPEAREAN MORAL DILEMMAS............................................... 157
Nataa ofranac
VISION IN SHAKESPEARES TRAGIC PLAYS:
PERCEPTION, DECEPTION, DELUSION............................................... 175
Danijela Kambaskovi
TO DO A GREAT RIGHT, DO A LITTLE WRONG:
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE AND ITS ETHICAL CHALLENGES........... 191
Milica Spremi Konar
A FORTNIGHT HOLD WE THIS SOLEMNITY:
THE ELIZABETHAN ANNUAL CYCLE IN SHAKESPEARES
MAJOR COMEDIES.............................................................................. 213
Milena Kosti
I AM FOR OTHER THAN FOR DANCING MEASURES:
SHAKESPEARES SPIRITUAL QUEST IN AS YOU LIKE IT..................... 231
NEW VOICES: LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Vladimir Bogievi
IN SEARCH OF THE UNPRESENTABLE:
DETECTIVES OF THE SUBLIME
IN (POST)MODERN AMERICAN NOVEL............................................. 247
Irina Kovaevi
POPULAR CULTURE IN ITS POSTMODERN CONTEXT:
VLADIMIR NABOKOVS LOLITA........................................................... 273
Stefan Pajovi
INSTRUCTING THE INDIVIDUAL IN DEMOCRACY
IN WALT WHITMANS LEAVES OF GRASS............................................ 293
EDITORIAL PREFACE
The essays on Shakespeares poetics collected here, written by distinguished
scholars on the occasion of his 450th anniversary, are dedicated to an
exceptional scholar from the English Department, Faculty of Philology,
University of Belgrade, Professor Veselin Kosti. All of the essayists in this
volume tell stories of the ways in which Shakespeare is understood by
them today. They are joined by Professor Kosti, whose distinguished voice
can be heard in the interview he graciously bestowed to this very special
edition of BELLS.
The contributors do not tell a unified story but outline intellectual
trajectories. They demonstrate a reverence for the achievements of this
great writer and a desire to study the boundaries in Shakespearean
studies, while telling their stories in the form of criticism. And they have
brought much insight to these boundaries! As a result, each has told a
unique story, if not always directly connected to Shakespeares poetry.
Thus the papers address historical or ideological aspects of Shakespeares
plays; the translation of Shakespeares poetry; Shakespeare and emotions;
Shakespeare in the theatre; Shakespeare in scholarship.
Irrespective of their focus, each of these essays complies with Stephen J.
Greenblatts suggestion that literature is effective insofar as it is pleasurable.
The essays collected here are effective in their ability to delight! For we,
certainly cannot hope to write convincingly about Shakespeare without
coming to terms with what Prospero at the end of The Tempest claims was
his whole project: to please. Ever mindful of the divergent sensibilities
of early 17th century London and contemporary audiences, the authors of

Stephan J. Greenblatt. Learning to Curse, New York: Routledge, p. 9.
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these essays have performed their tasks on various levels: they historicize
pleasure, explore its shifts and changes, and try to understand its project.
Shakespearean Literary and Cultural Studies

Svetozar Rapaji in Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story
considers the similarity between dramatic poetry and music, an approach
forwarded by T.S. Eliot and supported by music dramatists such as Verdi
who drew inspiration from Shakespeares plays. American music theatre
has also acknowledged this relationship, Rapaji argues, considering in
particular Bernsteins West Side Story. This musical, the epitome of American
music theatre, sets the story of Romeo and Juliet in mid-20th century New
York, where ethnic rivalry culminates in tragedy. Rapaji argues that, the
different adaptations of Shakespeares works, involving changes to the time
period and setting of the narrative and the social class of the characters as
well as the various interpretations of staging are proof that his writing affords
possibilities for new discoveries, and is at once vesatile and universal.
Jelisaveta Milojevis essay, Untying the Knot: Shakespeares Sonnets
27 and 144 in Serbian Translations discusses just that. These two sonnets
were chosen for analysis because of their astonishing polysemy and
consequent translation issues. Professor Milojevis own translations are
also presented. General questions are considered, such as: Why translate
that which has already been translated; Can a person with no knowledge
of the source language translate poetry with the assistance of a prose
translation done by someone who does know the language; Where are the
limits of poetic license in versification; Are the critic and translator to be
the same person; Why is translation criticism necessary? The importance
of such criticism is defended in the essay.
Dubravka uris paper, Svetislav Stefanovis Interpretation of
William Shakespeare and World Literature addresses Svetislav Stefanovis
reading of Shakespeares works as literary classics. In his analysis, Stefanovi
compares Shakespeares writing with the Bible and Greek and Roman
classics, as well as work by Goethe and Dostoyevsky. uri argues that
Stefanovis interpretation of Shakespeare is performative because in
demonstrating the classic qualities of Shaekspeares works and their place
in the canon of world literature, he symbolically included modern Serbian
literature, too.
Editorial preface
Zorica Beanovi Nikolis paper entitled, Shakespeare Studies,

Philosophy and World Literature considers two new books of Shakespearean
criticism: The Demonic: Literature and Experience by Ewan Fernie and Free
Will: Art and Power on Shakespeares Stage by Richard Wilson, both published
in 2013, and both remarkable for encompassing Shakespeare studies,
philosophy, and world literature within their respective critical scopes. In
The Demonic Shakespeare is, along with Milton, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann,
Kierkegaard, and other authors, considered in the context of demonic
transgression, paradoxically close to the mystical knowledge of what is
beyond self-experience. The author considers this book to be an audacious
retreat from current literary criticism insofar as it insists on responding
to crucial ontological and ethical questions through a passionate spiritual
engagement with art, literature, and philosophy. In Wilsons Free Will, the
focus is on Shakespeares demystification of the ruse of power, based on
both truthful experience and the careful performance of nonentity, which
produced a specific form of early modern creative autonomy.
In her essay, Nothing of Woman: The Feminine Void of Matter in
Shakespeare, Danica Igrutinovi looks at how the metaphysics of Renaissance
Neoplatonism could be taken to explain some of Shakespeares characters.
Drawing on the Neoplatonic concept of matter, her paper attempts to
elaborate the figure that Philippa Berry has termed, Shakespeares tragic Os
by showing its connection to multiple images of matter as the maternal/
infernal void. Igrutinovi suggests that in Shakespeares darker plays, the
O as feminine prime matter can figure as a locus for the encounter with
primordial matter, the womb/tomb that (en)matters and thus kills, the
hell and nothing that can indicate both unformed matter and the vaginal
orifice, and the nothingthe 0out of which everything is made.
Goran Stanivukovis article Earliest Shakespeare: Bombast and
Authenticity explores bombast as one of the defining features of Shakespeares
style of writing in the earliest, pre-1594, phase of his career as a dramatist.
Bombast is considered as both a logical and rhetorical instrument of knowing.
At the cognitive level of text, improbability, which is the key feature of bombast,
plays an important role in earliest Shakespeare because it captures competing
currents of thought that structure dramatic plots as they were outlined by
Elizabethan practices of playwriting, and moves the action forward. This
article suggests that, earliest Shakespeare is under the spell of Christopher
Marlowes bombastic blankverse, but [that] he also looks beyond Marlowe,
turning bombast into a tool of opening up new possibilities for drama
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performed within the specific context of Londons burgeoning theatre scene

in the 1590s.
In her article, The Stage as Purgatory: Shakespearean Moral Dilemmas,
Vesna Lopii discusses Trevor Nunns 2011 production of Tom Stoppards play
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with the aim to answer the question
of why Hamlets friends are kept in Purgatory and repeatedly exposed to
decisive events from their earthly lives. Based on Stephen Greenblatts study
Hamlet in Purgatory and Gareth Leyshons B.Th. Dissertation The Purpose of
Purgatory: Expiation or Maturation, the author proposes that, the purpose
of their detention is maturation, meaning the ability to make morally right
choices when faced with Shakespearean moral dilemmas.
In Vision in Shakespeares Tragic Plays: Perception, Deception,
Delusion, Nataa ofranac underscores the importance of visual effects in
theatrical performances but also in the reading of Shakespeares works. She
claims that the visual element is important in understanding Shakespeares
characters as well as the way they see and experience other characters,
the world, and themselves. ofranac argues that, [S]ometimes because of
distorted vision, sometimes because of malevolent input that works on their
minds, or just because of inherent subjectivity of perception, the appearance
of persons and things was substantially different from reality and that causes
a tragic course of events and ultimate catastrophe. Flawed vision, the author
concludes, was very much the tragic flaw of Shakespeares heroes.
In To do a great right, do a little wrong: The Merchant of Venice and
its Ethical Challenges, Danijela Kambaskovi discusses the discrepancy
between Portias words and her actions when Bassanio urges her to break
the law in order to thwart Shylock. She initially refuses on the grounds that
to do wrong is always immoral, but despite her words, her actions show
her ready and willing to do the opposite. The author effectively illustrates
the connection between Portias situation and Aristotles Nicomachean
Ethics, as well as how it relates to the principle of equity, an open-handed,
individualised approach to justice when hard legal questions exceed the
scope of the law. However, the incongruity between Portias words and her
actions, Kambaskovi argues, is of a more complicated nature, and suggests,
the presence in the play of a different, non-Aristotelian ethical framework:
that of Nicol Machiavellis post-Epicurean teleological utilitarianism.
Shakespeares moral considerations in The Merchant of Venice explore
the crucial question of whether expediency is more appropriate in real
life than principles not defined by expediency, and observes that to apply
Editorial preface
this question to the main themes of The Merchant of Venice, i.e., to the
themes of cultural and religious difference, stereotyping, discrimination,
scapegoating, gender equality, and bias, holds particular didactic value in
the 21st century classroom.
In her article entitled, A fortnight hold we this solemnity: The
Elizabethan Annual Cycle in Shakespeares Major Comedies, Milica
Spremi Konar takes as a starting point Franois Laroques book-length
study, Shakespeares Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment
and the Professional Stage, which analyzes festivity and its literary and
imaginary representation in Shakespeares England. He argues that the
Elizabethan year is essentially simple and logical as it is divided into two
halves. The first half starts on the winter solstice of 24 December and
ends on the summer solstice of 24 June, including the twelve days of
Christmas celebrations and a group of moveable feasts such as Easter and
Whitsun, which Laroque calls the ritualistic half of the year. The second
half, which begins on 25 June and ends on 24 December, is marked by a
lack of important religious festivals, the presence of a few fixed festivals,
and more working days than holidays, which is thus known as the secular
half of the year. Drawing on Laroques insights, Milica Spremi Konar
argues that Shakespeares major comediesA Midsummer Nights Dream,
As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Nightbring to life the
secular half of the Elizabethan year in such a way that each play seems to
evoke a particular period and its associated activities.
Milena Kostis essay, I am for other than for dancing measures:
Shakespeares Spiritual Quest in As You Like It analyzes the spiritual quest
Shakespeare undertook in As You Like It. Her analysis, grounded in the
critical insights of Ted Hughes, Northrop Frye, and Riane Eisler, focuses in
particular on Melancholy Jaques. Milena Kosti argues that his, decision
to devote himself to a solitary life in search of the causes for the existence
of the hostility and rivalry between brothers reflects Shakespeares
professional decision to dedicate himself to the resolution of this issue
throughout his writing career.
New Voices: Literary and Cultural Studies

We have included three new critical voices to open a venue in support of
Ph.D. candidates. Future developments belong to the generations to come!
Belgrade BELLS
We have classified, for the purposes of this volume, most of the papers
submitted by these authors as Non-Shakespearean. Their texts reflect
current trends and ask us to see the causes and effects of the actions of
the characters of the works they selected; all of them are committed to
contemporary critical perspectives on literature, culture, and society.
Vladimir Bogievi deals with the American novel in his essay, In
search of the Unpresentable: Detectives of Sublime in (Post)modern
American Novel. He considers some of the representative American novels
of the 20th centuryFaulkners Absalom, Absalom!, Pynchons The Crying of
Lot 49, Barths Lost in The Funhouse, DeLillos White Noise, and Morrisons
Beloved, using Nabokovs Lolita as a reference text, to arrive at a crosssection of sorts of the narrative strategies employed. Bogievi applies
the theory of Lyotard, Baudrillard, Ricoeur, and Hutcheon, together with
some of Derridas philosophical postulates in order to demonstrate that
all of these texts are unified by the quest for the modern expression of
the unpresentable, in which different types of marginal perspectives play a
specific role.
Irina Kovaevi departs from a similar literary domain with her
contribution to Nabokov scholarship and Postmodernism in her text,
Popular Culture in its Postmodern Context: Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita.
She explores the relationship of elements of popular culture to postmodern
literature and where they intersect in this novel. She also addresses and
elaborates the concept of postmodern identity, together with aspects of the
consumerism and consumptionism that characterize it.
Stefan Pajovis work, Instructing the Individual in Democracy in
Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass, concludes our Non-Shakespearean section
with its magic word, democracy. Pajovi carefully studies this motif in
Whitmans magnificent collection of poems Leaves of Grass, concluding that
Whitmans poems focus on the individual. As democracy is the safeguard
of the individual, the art it produces is of critical importance. Whitman
frequently represents democracy in his verse through the metaphor of the
maritime journey.
Let us believe that the art of Shakespeare will remain, alongside new
voices, a fixture on the scholarly stages of the future. At present, may we
express in conclusion our hope that readers of this celebratory edition of
BELLS will agree that each of the essays included merits being read through
to the end. And perhaps more than that: being read with relish, in the same
way that they were read by the members of the Editorial Board, reviewers,
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Editorial preface
proofreaders from the English and other departments, and many others
who collaborated in its production. On this pleasurable note, our letter to
Shakespeare and Pofessor Kosti comes to a close!
Belgrade, December 2014
The Editors
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Belgrade BELLS
Interview
13
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UDC 82:929 .(047.53)
INTERVIEW: VESELIN KOSTI
THE EVERLASTING COMPANION

OF OUR EXPERIENCE
by Radojka Vukevi
BELLS: It is an honor to interview you, dear Professor Kosti. This year

we are celebrating the 450th anniversary of Shakespeares
birth and the 85th anniversary of our English Department
founded by a Shakespearean scholar. What do you make of
this timing? What does Shakespeare mean to us now?
It is difficult to say whether the coincidence of these anniversaries
has a symbolic meaning, but it was certainly a fortunate circumstance that
the English Department was founded by a such a distinguished expert
in Shakespearean studies as Dr. Vladeta Popovi, because that fact lent
additional significance to the new Department and helped to attract
students, who were not very numerous at the beginning. Shakespeare was
made the subject of a special course in the programme of the final years of
English Studies and has remained one of the major fields of studies in the
Department to the present day.
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Belgrade BELLS
BELLS: You have made significant, voluminous contributions to

Shakespeare studies in both the former Yugoslavia and
beyond. Which aspect of Shakespeares works have you found
most rewarding (teaching, translating, analysis, etc.)?
One is hesitant to evaluate ones own work, but I can say which aspect
of my work I found most enjoyable it was definitely teaching. What I
did in the other fields was in a sense ancillary to it. My studies of and
comments on the Serbian translations of Shakespeare were intended to
provide linguistic and other guidance that might help translators avoid
the mistakes of their predecessors and get closer to the meaning and
implications of Shakespeares text. My interpretations of Shakespeares
works, on the other hand,were chiefly a corollary of my teaching and
were written in the hope that they would enable students and lovers of
Shakespeare to appreciate more fully the beauties of his poetic world.
BELLS: Which theory or scholarship on Shakespeares works has most
influenced your own work?
During my long academic career I saw the rise and eclipse of numerous
schools of Shakespearean criticism. There can be no doubt that the more
able proponents of each of them brought at least something valuable to
our understanding of the Great Bard. Nevertheless, I cannot say that I
was an ardent or constant supporter of any of these critical approaches.
What I found objectionable in the majority of the modern varieties of
Shakespearean criticism was their tendency to concentrate on a single aspect
of Shakespeares works the aspect which supported, or could be made to
support, the basic tenets of the particular school of criticism they sought to
promote and to neglect the elements which did not fit into its theoretic
template. I felt that such a synecdochical approach could throw fresh and
concentrated light on a particular aspect of Shakespeares dramas, but that
it left many other valuable features of their rich texture out of the field
of critical enquiry. I therefore tried to use another approach, which is not
original or particularly modern, and which might be termed integrated
or contextual. It seeks to interpret Shakespeares works in their varying
historical and cultural contexts in the context of their own time, in their
journey through time, and in the context of the present time.
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Interview: Veselin Kosti
BELLS: Some of the current methods of critical analysis applied

to Shakespeares works include New Historicism, cultural
materialism, feminist criticism, deconstruction, and so
forth. How much do they enlighten the layers of meaning in
Shakespeares opus? What are your views on New Criticism,
specifically the idea that only that within a text constitutes
the meaning of the text? How do you see this new approach
in terms of works that have existed for centuries, continually
read and re-read from the position of different contexts,
epochs, literary theories, and generations of critics?
Although the champions of almost every recent trend in Shakespearean
studies believed, or wanted to believe, that their approach was going
to establish a new paradigm in Shakespearean criticism, this has not
happened. Most of them have certainly shed new light on individual
aspects of Shakespeares work and made some useful contribution to our
appreciation of his art, but none of them has won universal recognition
and acceptance. However, if we have in mind the impression these insights
or views,accumulated over time, have made, directly or indirectly, on
our appreciation of Shakespeare, we can readily agree with the view that
interpretation may become a part of the text.
BELLS: Stephen Greenblatts achievement as a Shakespeare scholar
is largely due to his critical view that literature should be
studied and interpreted in terms of its cultural context. Would
you agree with those who say that he has revolutionized
Shakespeare studies?
Stephen Greenblatt is a very able and persuasive critic, an excellent
stylist and an original thinker. He is justly regarded as one of the most
important Shakespearean scholars of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst century. He has made a great impact on Shakespearean studies, but
neither has he succeeded in establishing his New Historicism as the new
paradigm. There are already signs that his approach is viewed more
critically and that it will eventually take its proper place in the general
depository of revolutionary critical schools with which the history of
Shakespearean criticism abounds.
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BELLS: What do you think about Jan Kotts Shakespeare Our

Contemporary now, fifty years after its publication?
I remember the enthusiasm and admiration with which many lovers
of Shakespeare, myself included, hailed that excellent book. It was an
interpretation of Shakespeare in perfect accord with the intellectual and
political atmosphere of that time. Kotts book not only strongly influenced
academic criticism of Shakespeare studies, but had a great impact on the
theatrical sphere, too. There were many productions of Shakespeares plays
inspired by it, and two remarkable English ones were also seen in Belgrade
King Lear (1962) and As You Like It (1969). Today, however, we can
agree with the view that almost the only relevant element of Kotts book
is its title. Its content remains, as the content of so many other excellent
interpretations, rather a record of the spiritual climate of a period than
a lasting answer to the abiding questions raised by Shakespeares works.
Shakespeare continues to be our contemporary, but now other answers are
sought and offered to the questions posed by him, different from those of
yesterday and no doubt distinct from those that will be offered tomorrow.
This is the real marvel of Shakespeares art he is, as a Shakespearean
scholar has aptly put it, the everlasting companion of our experience.
BELLS: You have witnessed turbulent times, but also the glory days
when Belgrades English Department was a center of research
and scholarship, visited by prominent international scholars.
Where are we now; how visible and relevant are we on the
global map?
There can be no doubt that the Englsh Department suffered severe
losses not only by the death of some of its most distinguished members,
but also as a consequence of the disastrous developments of the 1990s,
which made several talented students, prospective additions to the staff
of the Department, as well as some of the already appointed assistants,
leave the country. I am now glad to say that they have fared well abroad
and that at least two of them have successful careers as professors of
English literature in Canada, but I am sorry that they are not members of
our Department as it had been planned. Fortunately, the Department has
succeeded in attracting able and distinguished scholars from other English
departments in the country, and it has also recruited a number of young
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Interview: Veselin Kosti
and talented graduates, who have already made a remarkable contribution

to the English studies in our country.
BELLS: What are your thoughts on recent translations of Shakespeares
works? Does it remain a useful endeavor to translate his works
time and again? To what extent do new translations influence
interpretations of his works?
New renderings of Shakespeares works should always be encouraged,
especially if they are based on an awareness of the deficiencies of the
previous translations and on the latest advances in textual criticism and
research in the field of Elizabethan English. I do not think, however, that new
translations can contribute greatly to the interpretation of Shakespeares
works, since good Shakespearean criticism has to be based not only on
the literal meaning of the text, no matter how exactly it is transferred to
another language, but also on various other elements which require good
knowledge of the idiom of the author, such as the associative aura which a
word or phrase may have had in its Elizabethan social and cultural setting,
on the knowledge of the semantic losses or gains a verse from Shakespeare
plays may have had in its journey through time to the present day, and on a
number of other elements which are important for a detailed and reliable
interpretation and which are unavoidably lost in translation.
BELLS: Shakespeares works are being studied by a new generation
of scholars at the Faculty of Philology. These include Zorica
Beanovi-Nikoli, Milica Spremi, and Nataa ofranac. What
is your assessment of the latest research on Shakespeare in
Serbia?
I follow with great interest the work of the young generation of our
Shakespearean scholars and am glad to say that I find it not only valuable
in itself, but promising of even more important achievements in the future.
Their criticism is, generally speaking, based on solid research, ability for
subtle analysis and a good knowledge of recent trends in Shakespearean
criticism. What I regard as very important in the broader sense are their
efforts, particularly those of Prof. Beanovi-Nikoli to reintegrate Serbian
Shakespearean studies into the broader context of Shakespearean studies,
to re-establish the participation of our scholars in the international
Shakespearean organizations and to renew the personal links with
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Belgrade BELLS
distinguished Shakespearean scholars and organize their visits to our

University.
BELLS: Shakespeare is not your only academic interest. At the
beginning of your career, you took a comparative approach
(of Spenser and Tasso; Spenser and Ariosto) to examine
cultural relations between Yugoslavia and England. Then you
turned to Shakespeare studies, to return to cultural relations
in your latest book: Britain and Serbia: contacts, connections
and relations: 1700-1860 (Britanija i Srbija : kontakti, veze
i odnosi: 1700-1860, Beograd: Arhipelag, 2014). Are you
currently researching relations between Britain and Serbia or
Shakespeare and his works, or both?
My work in the field of Shakespearean studies was related to my
teaching. I published my books on Shakespeare not only because I admire
his works, but also because I felt it my duty to provide texts that would
make it easier for my students to understand and appreciate the precious
heritage that he has left to us. My books dealing with cultural and other
relations between our country and Britain were, on the other hand, the
outcome of my wish to contribute to the existing knowledge in a field
which I felt had not been sufficiently explored. The research I did in
exploring these links and the work on the presentation of its results have
given me the genuine pleasure that the pursuit of knowledge may afford to
a dedicated scholar. At the moment, however, I have no immediate plans,
and shall probably enjoy a period of leisure.
Radojka Vukevi
9 November 2014
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Shakespeare: Literary
and Cultural Studies
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UDC 792.091:821.111-2
792.57.091
Svetozar Rapaji*
University of Arts
Faculty of Dramatic Arts
Belgrade, Serbia
SHAKESPEARE IN MUSIC THEATRE:

WEST SIDE STORY
Abstract
T.S. Eliot compared Shakespeares dramatic poetry with music. The similarity was
also recognized by those music dramatists who drew inspiration from Shakespeares
plays in their operas and ballets. Some of those works are masterpieces (like Verdis
Otello) and are considered by George Steiner to be the only real tragedies of the late
19th century. There are even American musical comedies that have been adapted
from Shakespeares comedies. And when the theatrical art forms using music
developed into music theatre, some of the new musicals drew inspiration from
his tragedies. Bernsteins West Side Story, in which the serious and the popular are
merged, is the epitome of American music theatre. It sets the story of Romeo and
Juliet in the mid-20th century streets of New York, where ethnic rivalry culminates
in tragedy. The different adaptations of Shakespeares works, involving changes to
the time period and setting of the narrative and the social class of the characters
as well as the various interpretations of staging, are proof that his writing affords
possibilities for new discoveries, and is at once versatile and universal.
Key words: dramatic poetry, opera, ballet, musical comedy, musical drama,
popular art, staging
E-mail address: svrapajic@gmail.com
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Belgrade BELLS
In his famous essay Poetry and Drama, T.S. Eliot asserts his predilection
for dramatic poetry, compares it to music, and contrasts it with prose
drama:
It seems to me that beyond the nameable, classifiable emotions
and motives of our conscious life when directed towards action
the part of life which prose drama is wholly adequate to express
there is a fringe of indefinite extent, of feeling which we can only
detect, so to speak, out of the corner of the eye and can never
completely focus; of feeling of which we are only aware in a kind
of temporary detachment from action This peculiar range of
sensibility can be expressed by dramatic poetry, at its moments
of greatest intensity. At such moments, we touch the borders of
those feelings which only music can express. (Kerman 1989: 5).
In other words, dramatic poetry enriches dramatic action and supplies
it with meaning, emotion, and subconscious layers which could not be
sufficiently expressed otherwise, especially not in logical, veristic prose. By
reaching unspoken depths, dramatic poetrys function is similar to the effect
of music: to touch the irrational, emotional side of the audience through
artistically elaborated forms, rhythms, versifications, accents, dynamics,
melodies, repetitions, contrasts, symbolizations, and similar elements that
were integral even to ancient ritual practice.
On the other hand, all those poetic, musical, irrational, even abstract
qualities have to be organically interwoven with the basic dramatic elements:
action, plot, and character development. Both sides of that complex
theatricality Eliot finds in Shakespeares plays: When Shakespeare, in
one of his mature plays, introduces what might seem a purely poetic line
or passage, it never interrupts the action, or is out of character, but on
the contrary, in some mysterious way supports both action and character.
(Eliot 1951: 34).
Consequently, it is not surprising that Shakespeares dramatic poetry,
which Eliot compares to music, became a major inspiration for opera
composers. But this did not happen before the emergence of Romantic
art at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Until then,
the dominant form had been Baroque opera (the Italian opera seria that
reigned over the European stage and the French tragdie lyrique), which
had its roots in the mythology of ancient Greece, the history or pseudohistory of the decadent Roman Empire, or the legends of medieval chivalry.
24
Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story
The only exceptions were Purcells The Fairy Queen (1692), based upon A
Midsummer Nights Dream, and The Tempest (1692), both extravagant and
spectacular productions that drew on the tradition of the English masque;
as they were not imitations of the European operatic model, they were
labeled semi-operas.
But when the Romantics established the cult of Shakespeare,
rediscovering the greatness of his works as well as admiring his immersion
into the dark depths of the human soul and rejection of prescribed
conventions, so akin to Romantic ideals, it was natural that Shakespeares
plays readily lent themselves to the possibilities of being transformed into
Romantic operas as dramatic musical creations. The first Shakespearean
opera worth mentioning is Falstaff ossia Le tre burle (Falstaff, or The Three
Jokes, 1799), an opera buffa by Antonio Salieri, who was a celebrated
master of opera at that time, but today mostly known as being the presumed
legendary rival of the great Mozart.
The great Italian Romantic opera composers were drawn to the
remarkable themes and figures of British history, dynastic conflicts, and
bloody civil wars, as well as Shakespeares dramatic poetry, which was
found to lend itself most favorably to musical adaptation. Thence emerged
operas which enjoyed enormous success and which are still included in
the opera repertories of modern times, like Otello ossia il Moro di Venezia
(Othello, or the Moor of Venice, 1816) by Gioachino Rossini, and I Capuleti
e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues, 1830) by Vincenzo Bellini.
Also worthy of note is the almost forgotten Giulietta e Romeo (1825) by
Nicola Vaccai. Riccardo Zandonai, a late Romantic Italian composer, today
best known for his opera Francesca da Rimini, made a contribution to
Shakespearean musical theatre that transformed Romeo and Juliet into the
opera Giulietta e Romeo (1922).
Giuseppe Verdi was often inspired by great works of Romantic
literature (by Friedrich Schiller, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas), and was
also considerably influenced by Shakespeare. One of Verdis best known
operas is Macbeth (1847), and the mature genius of his later masterpieces
can be seen in Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). In his book The Death of
Tragedy, George Steiner, researching the possibilities for tragedy in modern
times, concludes that since early Romanticism, only opera has been able to
make a strong claim on the legacy of tragedy:

The titles are given in their original orthography, followed by the English translation in
parentheses.
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The Shakespeare of the romantics was not primarily an

Elizabethan poet with medieval traditions in his art and world
view. He was a master of poetic sublimity and volcanic passion, a
proclaimer of romantic love and melancholy, a radical who wrote
melodramas. The difference between the false picture and the
true can be clearly shown in Verdis operas. Macbeth dramatizes
a romantic reading of Shakespeare. Otello and Falstaff, on the
contrary, exhibit a transfiguring insight into the actual meaning
of the two Shakespearean plays. (Steiner 1978: 155-156).
Steiner poses a question: Could opera achieve the long-sought fusion of
classic and Shakespearean drama by creating a total dramatic genre, the
Gesamtkunstwerk? (Steiner 1978: 286). He also gives an answer: Tristan
und Isolde is nearer to complete tragedy than anything else produced
during the slack of drama which separates Goethe from Ibsen. And nearly
as much may be asserted of two other operas of the late nineteenth
century, Mussorgskys Boris Godunov and Verdis Otello. (Steiner 1978:
288). Steiners definitive conclusion is: Verdi and Wagner are the principle
tragedians of their age. (Steiner 1996: 285).
French Romantic composers also found a source of inspiration in
Shakespeares plays. Some of those operas, like Beatrix et Benedicte (based
on Much Ado About Nothing, 1862) by Hector Berlioz, and Hamlet (1868) by
Ambroise Thomas, are to this day periodically revived on stages throughout
Europe. (Curiously, directors staging Hamlet today have the problem of
how to eschew the absurdly optimistic ending of Thomass opera.) But
Romo et Juliette (1867) by Charles Gounod is still performed frequently,
popular among audiences, and sung by todays greatest opera stars.
The Romantic cult of Shakespeare in Germany began with Goethe (a
supreme and undisputed authority on German art and the author of essays
on Shakespeare and translator of Romeo and Juliet) and the young rebels of
the Sturm und Drang. The complete works of Shakespeare were translated,
studied enthusiastically, admired, imitated, and naturally adapted into
opera. As a result, relatively successful operas began to emerge, if today
almost forgotten, like Der Widerspentigen Zhmung (The Taming of the
Shrew, 1874) by Hermann Goetz and Macbeth (1910) by Ernest Bloch. The
most successful among them was the opera by Otto Nicolai Die lustigen
By Richard Wagner.
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Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1849), which remains
popular.
In the 20th century, a variety of composers discovered Shakespeares
dramatic poetry to be an inspiration for modern approaches to opera;
examples of such operas range from those marked by variations of neoromanticism or eclecticism, to those influenced by popular music or jazz,
to those produced by radical avant-garde or experimental music theatre.
Among them are: Gian Francesco Malipieros Giulio Cesare (1936);
Heinrich Sutermeisters Romeo und Julia (1940); Frank Martins Der Sturm
(The Tempest, 1956); the radical Giselher Klebe and his Die Ermordung
des Csar (The Assassination of Caesar, 1959), a one-act opera based on
the third act of Shakespeares tragedy; Samuel Barbers Anthony and
Cleopatra, which, adapted and staged by Franco Zeffirelli, inaugurated the
new Metropolitan Opera House in 1966; Aribert Reimans Lear (1978),
one of most appreciated works of modern German music theatre; Pascal
Dusapins version of Romo et Juliette (1989); Stephen Olivers Timon
of Athens (1991). The most performed and popular modern operatic
adaptation of Shakespeare was, however, A Midsummer Nights Dream
(1960) by Benjamin Britten, one of the most outstanding composers to
emerge since the Second World War. Also, it should not be forgotten that
prominent Croat composer Stjepan ulek wrote the opera Koriolan (1958),
considered one of the most important operas in former Yugoslavia.
Choreographers have also been drawn to Shakespeares themes,
characters, dramatic situations, or, more generally, poetry. Several ballets
have been interpretations of Shakespeares dramatic works by choreographers
open to the multiple possibilities of interpretation who used programmatic
works by great composers not originally written for ballet. For instance,
British choreographer Robert Helpmann created in 1942 a fantasy on the
theme of Hamlet to the music of Tchaikovsky with himself and Margot
Fonteyn in the roles of Hamlet and Ophelia. Georges Balanchine staged
a neoclassical ballet version of A Midsummer Nights Dream (1962) set to
the popular composition of Felix Mendelssohn, written as incidental music
to accompany a spoken dramatic performance of Shakespeares comedy.
This ballet is often reinterpreted by other dance companies. But of all the
ballets that are free adaptations of Shakespeares works by choreographers
and set to pre-composed music, perhaps the most interesting and most
original, and that which is considered an extraordinary achievement in the
history of contemporary dance, is The Moors Pavane (1949), by American
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choreographer Jos Limon, based on the fate of Othello and the music of
Henry Purcell.
Of course, even if less numerous, there are also Shakespeare ballets not
set to pre-composed music but that have scores written specifically for the
choreographic staging of one of his works. Among them, the most known,
most popular, and most performed is the famous ballet
(Romeo and Juliet, 1938) by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. There is
no ballet company or star of considerable reputation that has not included
this ballet in their repertory as a proof of excellence.
It is not surprising that even the American musical, although a particular
genre of musical-theatrical performance originally intended primarily to
entertain, has shown some sensitivity toward Shakespearean heritage. The
American musical emerged from previous examples of musical-theatrical
performance as a kind of melting-pot. Some of those antecedents
were imported from Europe, like the British ballad-opera, French opra
comique, melodrama, Viennese operetta, or English Savoy opera. But
The ballad-opera was a popular 18th century genre of English theater that was in fact
a parody of grand opera, particularly Hndels Italian baroque operas, consisting of
spoken dialogue and sung arias, and ridiculing operatic clichs. The heroes and princes,
the dramatis personae who enacted the pathetic scenes, betrayals, conspiracies, and
unbelievable endings characteristic of Baroque opera, were replaced in ballad opera by
thieves, beggars, and whores. The best known ballad opera is The Beggars Opera by John
Gay and Christian Pepusch, later adapted by Brecht into Die Dreigroschenoper. The first
theatre companies to tour the American British colonies performed mostly ballad operas
or Shakespeares plays.
The main feature of French opra-comique combined spoken dialogue and arias. Not all
French operas termed such are comic.
In the Romantic melodrama, the orchestra in the pit accompanied the spoken dialogue
and action on the stage, enhancing emotion, suspense, and dramatic peaks.
The Savoy operas of William S. Gilbert (text) and Sir Arthur Sullivan (music) had an
important role in the social life of the late Victorian era. They were named after the
Savoy Theatre in London, which was built to house those productions. Because of their
merciless cynicism, parodies of the pillars of society, and childish humour characterized
by absurdity and nonsense, they remain popular in Anglo-Saxon countries.
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some of the previous forms, like minstrel-shows, extravaganzas, revues,

or burlesques,10 also had an authentic American origin, and drew largely
on American topics and sometimes even showcased American music.
Gradually, those different traditions in America evolved into a type
of operetta, and in the first decades of the 20th century a new term began
to be used: the musical. But this new term was in fact a shortened form
of musical comedy. This indicates that the musical in its early days was
comedic; eschewed or at most glossed over references to serious social or
other problems; involved a simplified dramaturgy devoid of intellectualism
and packed full of stereotypes, and included catchy musical numbers.
Exceptions to those conventions were very rare. Consequently, great
literature was unpopular material unless it was the subject of travesty or
ridicule, like the parodies of Hamlet in minstrel shows or in one of the first
fabulous Ziegfeld Follies in 1916.11
Unexpected developments occurred during the thirties, the years
of the Great Depression and anxiety caused by premonitions of the
impending war. Musicals increasingly addressed the complex problems
These shows drew on stereotypes of Negro humour and songs, and were played by white
performers who had their faces blackened with burnt cork and dressed in exaggerated
versions of Negro costume. The shows depicted Negroes as humourous, benevolent, nave,
or even dim-witted, singing and joking merrily on the cotton fields under the care of their
white masters. There was no unifying plot, and the performance consisted of jokes, songs,
amusing talents, acrobatics, magic acts, and parodies (of Hamlet, among others). The
shows were extremely popular in the 1840s but lost their appeal after the Civil War.

Visually striking, immensely popular theatre performances with loose plot lines combining
spectacular production elements, dance, sophisticated stage machinery, elaborate scenery
and costumes, sometimes with an erotic flair. These shows ruled the American stage
from the period following the Civil War through the First World War. Storylines drew
on the magical, which made it possible for the momentary transposition of action to
distant exotic places or historical periods. The stage adaptation of the Wizard of Oz was
originally produced as an extravaganza.

A popular multi-act theatrical entertainment that was frequently satirical, combining
music, dance, and sketches.
10
The first American examples of theatre burlesque including songs and dances were based
on scenes of daily life in New York and familiar family characters in humourous but
recognizable situations, not unlike the TV sitcoms of today.
11
The legendary Florenz Ziegfeld was for decades the king of Broadway. He produced
annually a series of admired theatrical revues, the Follies, which were incredibly opulent
and spectacular and epitomized the wildest American dreams; despite that, he spent his
last years, during the Great Depression, bankrupt and almost homeless. His extravagant
lifestyle and demise has been the subject of numerous books and movies.

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of the contemporary world, becoming political and radically satirical,

ridiculing even sacred pillars of American society (like the function of the
president, democratic institutions, the sanctity of the family), sometimes
caustically or brashly. In this period, the writers of musicals, and the
audience also, became more concerned with the literary and musical value
of new productions. Sometimes even literary classics were adapted to the
musical stage. Therefore, the term book musical, which earlier referred to
a musical with a particularly ambitious libretto, came to mean a musical
based on storytelling and great literary works.
Even some of Shakespeares works served as a source of inspiration
for some musicals of this kind, of which some were quite successful.
Among them were The Boys from Syracuse (1938), created by the
legendary musical composer Richard Rogers and with a book by the then
renowned playwright George Abbott, based on The Comedy of Errors, and
Swingin the Dream (1939) by Jimmy van Heusen, based on A Midsummer
Nights Dream. The fact that writers considered Shakespeares comedies
amenable to musical adaptation shows the prevalence at that time of the
conception of the musical as a comedy. Also, it is noteworthy that the titles
of Shakespeares works were not used. This reservation may be explained
by the anticipation of criticism that the great classics had been reduced
to light entertainment.12 However, the musical The Boys of Syracuse was
created in a witty and erudite manner that recognized the sophistication
of the potential audience. Above all it proved that highbrow drama could
be translated into stylish musical comedy, and laid the groundwork for
Cole Porters Kiss me, Kate a decade later and West Side Story in 1957,
among others. (Riddle 2003: 69).
Kiss me, Kate (1948), with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and a book
by Hollywood and Broadway hit-makers Samuel and Bella Spewack, is
one of the highlights in the history of the American musical. It was a bold
update of The Taming of the Shrew, set in the world of a contemporary
12
A parallel may be drawn with Faust by Charles Gounod, one of the most popular and
most performed Romantic French operas. It was frequently produced in Germany, but not
under the original title. For the Germans, Goethe and especially his Faust are considered
almost sacred: it would be akin to blasphemy to simplify or sentimentalize Goethes
philosophical masterpiece by concentrating on the love story. Therefore in Germanspeaking countries, Gounauds Faust is performed under the title Margarethe, indicating
that it is of less worth than the work of the great Goethe. This also means that the
feminine principle of love, so important in this opera, is worth less than the masculine
principle of thought.
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American theater company producing and performing a musical version of

Shakespeares comedy, so that scenes involving Shakespeares characters
alternate with those depicting backstage intrigue. This play-within-a-play
created an explicitly comic parallelism between the life of Shakespeares
characters and the private lives and off-stage battles of the principal actors
who play them. The parallel plot is spiced up by the inadvertent intrusion of
two clumsy mobsters seeking to collect a debt owed by the lead actor. Their
cabaret number, Brush up Your Shakespeare is a parody recommending
the everyday lessons that can be learned from Shakespeares characters:
it is so brilliantly witty and charming that despite its outrageousness it
remains popular to this day.
The real transformation of the American musical gradually took place
during and after the Second World War. It was caused by a general change
of sensibility, better educated audiences that made more sophisticated
demands concerning artistic and social relevance, plotlines, and music, and
also by the contribution made by artists emigrating from occupied Europe
who brought experience and forged a connection between European
avant-garde movements and American popular art. The more ambitious of
these new musicals addressed topics once anathema to the entertainment
industry: contemporary and historical social problems; psychoanalysis; the
atrocities of war; some of the old wounds and resentments of American
society like racism and inequality, and sometimes even issues of aesthetic
or philosophical import.
More sophisticated demands also led to the rise of the book musical
inspired by great classical or contemporary literature by, for example,
Cervantes, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson,
Edmond Rostand, Mark Twain, Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge,
Maxwell Anderson, T.S. Eliot, Sholem Aleichem, Thornton Wilder, Lillian
Hellman, Alan Paton. And, of course, Shakespeare. Therefore the whole
concept of the musical was changed. The term musical, which was used
earlier as a shortened form of musical comedy, implying a humourous story
involving laughable characters and a happy ending, gained a new meaning.
Musical was thence understood to mean a musical play, which could even
denote musical adaptations of serious dramatic genres, including tragedy.
If we look back at the list of Shakespearean operas and ballets, it
may be seen that Romeo and Juliet was the tragedy most often chosen for
musical adaptation. This phenomenon may be explained by the words of
T.S. Eliot:
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I have before my eyes a kind of mirage of the perfection of verse

drama, which would be a design of human action and of words,
such as to present at once the two aspects of dramatic and of
musical order. It seems to me that Shakespeare achieved this at
least in certain sceneseven rather early, for there is the balcony
scene of Romeo and Julietand that this was what he was striving
towards in his late plays. (Eliot 1951: 35).
When the genre of the American musical was expanded to include tragedy,
Romeo and Juliet was the first of Shakespeares tragedies to be adapted
into a musical. West Side Story (1957) was a milestone in the development
of the genre, and was considered by many to be the greatest musical ever
written, definitively raising the profile of musical theatre or at least the
standards according to which the musical was to be judged. It was at once
a musical play (as opposed to the concept of the musical comedy), a book
musical (based on a literary classic, with a clear narrative structure), and a
dance musicalbecause of the primacy of choreography that advanced the
plot and developed conflict among characters in a break from convention,
according to which dance was a decorative element, a visual interlude
between scenes.
West Side Story was conceived and realized by a talented creative team.
The music was composed by Leonard Bernstein, one of the music geniuses
of the post-war era, who was an equally successful conductor, composer of
serious works and of musicals, music theoretician, and music lecturer. Prior
to West Side Story, he had already written several successful musicals. The
libretto was written by Arthur Laurents, a successful Broadway playwright,
and the lyrics were by composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, regarded
as the most important and celebrated figure in contemporary American
musical theater. The dances were staged by Jerome Robbins, one of the
greatest modern choreographers, who also directed the first production of
West Side Story and later co-directed the film adaptation.
It was Robbins who had come up with the original idea. He discussed
it in 1949 with Bernstein, who was immediately taken by it. Their intention
was to create a modern musical of artistic value, with depth, emotion,
and social relevance, which would rise above the mediocrity of so many
Broadway musicals of the time. The initial idea was to adapt Shakespeares
Romeo and Juliet into a musical, then titled East Side Story, and to set the
classic tale of love and hate in the East Side of modern-day New York City,
highlighting the outcome of racial prejudice, which brings a tragic end to
32
the love story between a Jewish girl and a Catholic boy. But Robbins and
Bernstein soon abandoned the project, seemingly for good.
Some years later (1957), the concept was revisited under the
impetus of the recent social phenomenon of juvenile delinquent gangs
and the widespread conflict between the native-born and recently-arrived
immigrant population. In those years, some New York neighbourhoods,
especially the West Side, were flooded by immigrants from Puerto Rico. This
sparked tension and hostility towards the newcomers, especially among
the youth who felt threatened by racial and socioeconomic otherness. In
this new musical, Shakespeares feudal hatred between two aristocratic
families was replaced by the cultural and ethnic clashes between two
disadvantaged lower-class juvenile gangs fighting over territory. On one
side is a gang of American-born teenagers, the Jets, mostly of European
origin and Caucasian in the vocabulary of today (Tony-Romeo is a
Polack), who consider themselves the only true Americans and therefore
the only ones to have a legitimate claim to assert their rights. They have
animosity towards the Puerto Ricans, blaming them for being trespassers
who do not belong in America and who aspire to the advantages reserved
for native-born Americans. Set in opposition against them is the gang of
Puerto Ricans (Latinos), the Sharks, who feel permanently humiliated and
fight for their turf in this hostile environment. Both gangs are determined
to eliminate the other. (Every one of you hates every one of us, and we
hate you right back!)
The basic plot of West Side Story follows Shakespeares quite closely, in
spite of the change of period, location, and social class. Thus Renaissance
Verona becomes the contemporary West Side. Riff, the leader of Jets, is the
equivalent of Mercutio; Bernardo, leader of Sharks, replaces Tybalt. Tony
(Romeo) works at a local candy-store and is Riffs blood brother. Maria
(Juliet) is Bernardos sister, and had been brought from Puerto Rico to
marry Chino, who is the equivalent of Count Paris. Anita, Bernardos girl,
replaces Juliets Nurse. The elderly candy-store owner, Doc, who is to Tony
a well-meaning fatherly figure and voice of reason, has his counterpart
in Shakespeares Friar Lawrence. The authority structure, represented in
Romeo and Juliet by Prince Escalus, is, like everything else in West Side
Story, presented at its lowest level: by the arrogant and ineffectual local
policemen and by a clumsy social worker who makes ridiculous attempts
to promote what is today termed inter-cultural dialogueunsuccessfully,
of course.
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Although parallel to Shakespeares play, the plot in West Side Story

approaches realist authenticity and is updated to a contemporary setting.
There is no secret wedding. Maria works at a bridal shop, and the lovers
enact a mock wedding ceremony, knowing it is not real but feeling it to
be. The final showdown of the two gangs, which ends with the murders
of Riff and Bernardo, is not accidental or spontaneous. The Jets and the
Sharks plan (a rumble) to settle accounts once for all, like in the football
hooliganism of today. Also, there is no plague, no quarantine of the town
which prevents Romeo from being informed of Juliets feigned death, no
drug, no poison, and no suicide.
But there is hatred and revenge. The greatest departure from the
original tale is the denouement. After the murder of Bernardo, Tony is
hiding in Docs basement (and not exiled to another city), waiting for Maria
and planning to run away with her. Maria sends Anita to the candy-store
to deliver a message to Tony about their escape. But on her arrival at the
Jets hangout, Anita is treated like an enemy whore as they savagely taunt
and try to rape her. Anita is saved by Doc and, overcome with rage, delivers
a different message, saying that Chino (Marias Puerto Rican fianc) had
avenged Bernardos death and Marias betrayal by shooting her dead: Chino
killed Maria. Wild with grief, Tony abandons his hiding place and exposes
himself to Chinos gunfire. Unlike Juliet, Maria survives and, in despair
and angry over Tonys death, blames both rival gangs for having killed
Tony through their mutual hatred. This accusation is implicitly directed at
society as a whole (You all killed him!).
Brooks Atkinson, for decades a leading Broadway critic, claimed
that West Side Story was a revolutionary work that changed the course
of the musical: Instead of glamour, it offered the poverty-stricken life
of Puerto Rican street-gangs, and it did not conclude with romance and
clich of living happily ever after. It concluded with the violent death of
the chief male character. (Atkinson 1971: 446). In his review, Atkinson
also described this musical as, a profoundly moving show that is as ugly
as the city jungles and also pathetic, tender, forgiving. West Side Story is an
incandescent piece of work that finds odd bits of reality amidst the rubbish
of the streets. (Lewis 2002: 86).
In his book Broadway Musicals, David H. Lewis expressed the deep
impact made by this musical drama, or musical tragedy: West Side Story
mined the darker realities of street life with sizzling theatricalitywith
a thunderbolt of a score that rode jazz and latin rhythms like a half-mad
34
symphony forever on the verge of exploding. And it moved us with the

eloquent lament of its young protagonists vowing in the end to help make
the world a more tolerant place. (Lewis 2002: 84). In spite of this, or
precisely because of it, plans to produce it at the Worlds Fair in Brussels
and in the Soviet Union collapsed because of opposition from some high
American government quarters to present to a foreign audience so sordid
and realistic a portrait of American life. (Ewen 1970: 557).13
It is standard practice in the American film industry to make motion
picture adaptations of musical theaters greatest hits. After a successful
run on Broadway and nationwide tour, film producers released West Side
Story (1961), which became one of the highest grossing productions in the
history of the American film musical. It was largely if not entirely based
on the theater version. But it was also acclaimed as a major cinematic
achievement. In the same year, the film garnered ten Academy Awards,
including best motion picture of the year. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins14
shared the Oscar for Best Director, and Rita Moreno (Anita) and George
Chakiris (Bernardo) won Best Supporting Actress and Actor, respectively.
Bernstein was sometimes criticized for merging both serious and
popular styles within the same work. On the other hand, Kenneth Tynan,
one of the most respected theatre critics of the time, described Bernsteins
and Sondheims songs, as smooth and savage as a cobra; it sounds as if
Puccini and Stravinsky had gone on a roller coaster ride. (Lewis 2002:
86). And werent Shakespeares plays also at once popular and serious?
Peter Brook, perhaps the wisest pioneer of the modern theatrical
phenomenon, in the classification of theater forms presented in his famous
book The Empty Space, finds Shakespeare to have provided a model of a
theater in which, through the unreconciled opposition of Rough and Holy,
through an atonal screech of absolutely unsympathetic keys we get the
disturbing and the unforgettable impressions of his plays. (Brook 1968:
86). He also adds that the greatest of rough theatres was the Elizabethan
one. (Brook 1968: 68). West Side Story was undeniable proof confirming
Brooks ideas about the possible development of the musical:
However, when West Side Story was performed in Belgrade in 1968, it was produced with
the support of the American embassy.
14
The name of Jerome Robbins was often omitted, because he was fired during the
shooting of the film. The producers considered his perfectionist demands a waste of
time, and therefore of money. Fortunately, he had already staged the dances and musical
numbers.
13
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It is the American musical on the rare occasions when it fulfils

its promise, that is the real meeting place of the American
arts. It is to Broadway that American poets, choreographers
and composers turn. A choreographer like Jerome Robbins is an
interesting example, moving from the pure and abstract theatres
of Balanchine and Martha Graham towards the roughness of the
popular show. (Brook 1968: 68).
If we return to the reflections of T.S. Eliot, we may discover some curious
and surprising ideas. Like George Steiner, who saw the potential in reviving
ancient tragedy in late 19th century opera, Eliot, a very subtle and refined
poet and intellectual, found a connection between Elizabethan theatre and
modern musical entertainment. For him such reconciliation, in which a
poet would transmute the form of music-hall comedy into a work of art,
could be definitive proof that, fine art is the refinement, not the antithesis
of popular art ... The Elizabethan drama was aimed at a public which
wanted entertainment of a crude sort, but would stand a good deal of
poetry; our problem should be to take a form of entertainment, and subject
it to the process which would leave it a form of art. Perhaps the music-hall
comedian is the best material. (Rampal 1996: 167,168).
West Side Story, a milestone, reached the summit of musical theatre
history and there it still stands. (Lewis 2002: 86). After the international
success of the stage musical and its film adaptation, ultimate recognition
came when it entered the regular repertory of distinguished opera houses,
like the Volksoper in Vienna in 1968. Also, the most celebrated opera singers
and conductors recorded its arias, and the most renowned orchestras
performed suites from Bernsteins musical score (among others, also the
Philharmonic Orchestra of Belgrade). West Side Story was also performed
in Belgrade in 1968 at the Contemporary Theater (now the Theater on
Terazije Square).
The year 1968 was marked by the culmination of hippie culture
and widespread youth rebellion. The hippie movement found a means of
expression in the musical with the introduction of a new genre, the rock
musical, which quickly became successful and commercially profitable.
The best example is the hit show Hair by Rado-Ragni-Macdermot. But in
fact it was the musical Your Own Thing by Hal Hester and Danny Apolinar,
produced in 1968 and premiered off-Broadway, which officially rose the
curtain on the new rock musical. (Lewis 2002: 97). It happens that it was
a very loose and rather silly rock adaptation of the Twelfth Night. The story
36
involves Viola, who pretends to be a boy in order to join an all-male rock

group, Olivia, who falls in love with this handsome dude, and Violas
twin brother, who, in the end, looking like his sister Viola in drag, wins
Olivias heart and body.
Much more successful was the rock musical Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Galt MacDermot, the composer of this musical that opened after the
international success of Hair, phenomenal in terms of its artistic and social
influence as well as its marketing strategies and commercial profit, found
inspiration in Shakespeare. His rock musical Two Gentlemen of Verona
was updated to the contemporary era, to the milieu of hippie tribes. It
was presented for the first time in 1971 under the open sky at the New
York Shakespeare Festival before it was moved to Broadway. Despite
some negative reviews, this production won the 1972 Tony Awards for
Best Musical and Best Book and was generally loved by the audience, so
enjoyed a long run on Broadway.
The profusion of all of the forms and genres of musical theater that
have been inspired by Shakespeares plays is the best proof of Eliots claim
that Shakespeares dramatic poetry is closely related to music, and that each
enriches the other. But it must not be overlooked that Shakespeares plays
were written primarily for the stage, i.e., the outlet for human expression
of body, sound, and movement using corporal, verbal, vocal, and visual
means, mediated by the emotions, nerves, intelligence, and understanding
of individual interpreters, all executed at the moment of live performance.
That also means that productions of Shakespeares works necessarily lend
themselves to multiple interpretations, myriad staging possibilities, and
unlimited investigation of layers and meanings. A good example of this
may be seen in the diverse settings used in the various stage and screen
musical adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. This is especially apparent in the
staging of the ball scene set at the Capulets house.
In most performances of Prokofievs ballet (including Nureyevs
choreography at the Teatro a la Scala in Milan), the nobility of Renaissance
Verona is represented as a class of knightly warriors, filled with dignity,
self-esteem, and aristocratic pride, for whom family feuds are practically
sacred, connected to ancestral duty and the honor-bound fight over their
families names. Everything on stage is dark, almost bloody red and brown.
Only Juliet is in white.
Contrary to the common adaptation of this ballet according to which
the dramatic conflict revolves around families of the same aristocratic class,
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the choreography by Angelin Preljocaj, a star of modern French ballet, sets

the action in the dystopian distant future, in which only two classes exist:
that of masters and slaves, who live in subterranean caves and who are
forbidden to ascend to the earths surface. Romeo and his friends trespass
into the world of the masters, which is alienated and mechanic, almost
inhuman and devoid of real feelings. Accordingly, the colour scheme is grey
and black. Again, only Juliet wears white. In this staging, hate is fuelled
by the totalitarian system, which rigidly prohibits any form of connection,
particularly that of love among those from opposite classes.
In the performance of Gounods opera produced at the Salzburg festival
and directed by Barthlet Sher, the aristocracy lives in a world of exaggerated
debauchery and egoism. Their ideal is maximal artificial embellishment,
and the transformation of life into maximal and selfish enjoyment. Their
lives transpire as if in an eternal colourful carnival, in which there are no
scruples and everything is permitted if it brings pleasure. In this superficial
environment, which partly connotes the decadence of the 18th century
French nobility of the ancien rgime, Juliet begins as a young girl who
expects from life only joy, but in course of the action is transformed into
a tragic heroine. Here also Romeo and Juliet are the only ones capable of
true feelings and therefore they must perish.
Of the few films based on this Shakespearean tragedy, the Romeo and
Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann is especially remarkable. It is mentioned
here because the music plays a very important part in it. This film retained
Shakespeares original verses and character names, but the story is set in
the contemporary Latino gang culture of California. Two families, which
are at the head of two rival corporate dynasties, vie for turf and excessive
commercial power. The lifestyle of the magnates and the style of the film
(similar to Luhrmanns other films) is glitzy and garish, with every frame
showcasing the bizarre, similar to the mock neo-baroque aesthetics of
music videos. At the extravagant party at the Capulets mansion, Mercutio
is dressed as a virile black drag queen, Juliet as an angel, and Tybalt as
the devil, while Sir Capulet himself, elderly, fat, and robust (Paul Sorvino,
known for his roles in gangster films) is wearing a short toga and a laurel
crown. The first meeting of Romeo and Juliet does not take place in the
dance hall, but in the toilet in the basement. The thunderclap of love at
first sight happens when they see one another through the giant aquarium
decorating the luxurious bathroom. Vulgarity is juxtaposed with poetry.
Here again Romeo and Juliet discover a pure emotion that does not belong
38
to this cruel and excessive world, and which leads them to their tragic
end.
These illustrations can lead to certain conclusions. Shakespeares
tragic story of Romeo and Juliet has proven amenable to all sorts of musical
theatre and its different forms, genres, and styles. The adaptations can be
set in the original time and place of Renaissance Verona but can just as well
be transposed to other settings, like New York immigrant neighbourhoods,
or the California world of questionable wealth and luxury. The opposing
families (or clans regarded as families) may belong to the same class, to
nobility, or, if not, one or both families may belong to the working class
or criminal underworld, and the conflict between them may be caused by
aristocratic honour, class or ethnic distinctions, or the excessive modern
obsession with profit. But in all these replacements, intolerance essentially
emerges somewhere between the reigning world of hate and the impossible
world of love. True love can be tolerated only in a dream, in the utopian
Somewhere, as sung in West Side Story.
It may be concluded that the large number of staged productions of
Shakespeares dramatic poetry are the best indicator of the plays wealth.
The various concepts of multiple directors with different sensibilities and
stylistic affinities have been based on different, sometimes contradictory
and even hidden, layers of meaning and visions. Any particular stage
reading of Shakespeares work may be simultaneously understood
emotionally or rationally, politically or metaphysically, traditionally or
experimentally, through the lens of Romanticism or absurdism, and so on.
Updating place and time, like to Victorian England, Medieval Japan (viz.
Kurosawas movies), the world of today, or even the fictitious future or
a geographically and temporally undefined environment, has always (or
almost always, if successfully and not superficially or arbitrarily executed)
been possible and revelatory of new readings of Shakespeares work, or of
what might be read between the lines. And the scope of those possibilities
is unforeseeable, endless, and inexhaustible. This proves the versatility
and universality of Shakespeares dramatic work, which cannot be found
in such abundance in the work of any other dramatic author.
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References
Atkinson, B. (1971). Broadway. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Brook, P. (1968). The Empty Space. London: Macgibbon & Kee.
Eliot, T.S. (1951). Poetry and Drama. London: Faber and Faber.
Ewen, D. (1961).The Story of Ameicas Musical Theater. Philadelphia and
New York: Chilton Company.
Ewen, D. (1970). New Complete Book of the American Musical Theater. New
York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Green, S. (1968). The World of Musical Comedy. South Brunswick and New
York: A.S. Barnes and Company.
Green, S. (1980). Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre. New York: Da Capo
Press.
Kerman, J. (1989). Opera as Drama. London: Faber and Faber.
Lewis, D.H. (2002). Broadway Musicals. Jefferson, North Carolina and
London: McFarland & Company.
Rampal, D.K. (1996). Poetic Theory and Practice of T.S. Eliot. New Delhi:
Atlantic Publishers and Distributors.
Rapaji, S. (2013). Od balad-opere do modernog mjuzikla., Scena, 2-3,
56-91.
Riddle, P.H. (2003). The American Musical. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press.
Salzman, E. and Desi, T. (2008). The New Music Theater. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Steiner, G. (1978). The Death of Tragedy. London: Faber and Faber.
Received: 1 November 2014
Accepted for publication: 4 December 2014
40
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42
UDC 821.111.03-1=163.41
Jelisaveta Milojevi*
University of Belgrade
Faculty of Philology
Belgrade, Serbia
UNTYING THE KNOT: SHAKESPEARES

SONNETS 27 AND 144
IN SERBIAN TRANSLATIONS
Abstract
This paper deals with the Serbian translations of Shakespeares Sonnets 27 and 144.
These sonnets have been chosen because of their striking polysemy and consequent
translation issues. Analysis of the original is considered and different translations
are compared and assessed. My translations are also presented, being published
for the first time in this volume of the BELLS journal. General questions are put
forward and answered: Why the sonnets, again? Why translate that which has
already been translated? Can a person with no knowledge of the source language
translate poetry with the assistance of a prose translation done by someone who
does know that language? Where are the limits of poetic license in versification?
Are the critic and translator to be the same person? Is it possible to criticise a
translation even if one has no sovereign control over the source language? Why
is translation criticism necessary? As the importance of such criticism is defended
in this paper, presented to the readers as a form of apologia and for the purposes
of illustration is a side-by-side analysis of Shakespeares Sonnets 27 and 144 and
their respective Serbian translations, including my own.
Key words: sonnets, analysis, translation, translation criticism, licentia poetica
E-mail address: jelce@EUnet.rs
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1. Introduction
Not 50 years since Shakespeares sonnets were released to the reading
public in Serbian, I translated another edition of the sonnets: a collection
of Shakespeares great sonnets (Milojevi, J. ekspir: Soneti. Belgrade:
Faculty of Philology, 2012).
In this paper, different versified translations of Sonnets 27 and 144 are
compared to the original and analysed according to their subject matter,
figurative techniques, rhythm, metre, and structure, mostly in terms of
how these elements relate to translation. In addition, general questions
are raised, such as: Why the sonnets, again? Why translate that which
has already been translated? Can someone who has no knowledge of the
source language translate poetry with the assistance of a prose translation
done by someone who does know that language? Where are the limits of
poetic license in versification? Are the critic and translator to be the same
person? Is it possible to criticise the translation even if one has no sovereign
control over the source language? Why is translation criticism necessary?
As I consider the freedom to indulge in such criticism meaningful, I present
to the readers as a form of apologia and for the purposes of illustration a
side-by-side analysis and criticism of versified translations of Shakespeares
Sonnets 27 and 144, so that readers may discern for themselves the lemons
from the gifts.
Why the sonnets, again? Why translate that which has
already been translated? There are no fewer than three answers.
Translating poetry is among the most demanding of translation tasks and,
as such, can always be done differently or better, given that a translation
is but an approximation of the ideal and not a realisation of that ideal. On
the other hand, new translations are necessary because language itself is
dynamic in its historical and social development such that at certain moments
communication between the source and target languages becomes strained
or impossible. There exists another, perhaps more important, reason: it is
the duty of every specialist and translator to stand, authoritatively, in defense
of the poetthe author of the originaland correct the mistakes of their
predecessors, insofar as they have failed the original. We can only imagine,
as a result of poor translations which fall short of the original, how much
inaccuracy is borne by works of literary criticism and literary history that

In Shakespeares play Loves Labours Lost (Act V, Scene ii) Hector was proclaimed to have
been given a giftwhich Berowne interjects was a lemon, i.e. something disappointing.
44
Jelisaveta Milojevi Untying the Knot: Shakespeares Sonnets 27 and 144 in Serbian Translations
do not engage with works in the original but rely on translations without
suspecting them to be wanting; the same is true of theatre: insufficient
translations are adopted by directors, actors and then the public, thus
perpetuating inadequate and poor interpretations. A criminal act is always
that which has occurred, has had an impact and repercussions, of relatively
short duration, at one time in the past. A poor translation has an impact
and repercussions which occur in the future, for an endless period of time
(ivojinovi, 1981: 273). Such reasoning prompted me to make my own
attempt at translating Shakespeares sonnets. A poor translation can only
be overcome by a good one. There is no opinion that can take the place of
creation itself. (ivojinovi, 1981: 267).
Why the sonnets, again, in Serbian? Or, in other words: Why
is translation criticism necessary? An answer, with annotation,
may be framed within the following citation: A poor translation would
possibly deserve no more attention than a weak original work if it werent
a question of it being a false representation of the original. A weak writer
speaks only in his own name, while a bad translator lends his voice to
even the great poets. This is why translation criticism has an important
task to warn readers as to how true to the original the text they are being
offered is. The critic who engages in reviewing a translation is the only
defense of the defenseless author of the original (Konstantinovi, 1981:
123). By reading a poor translation the reader most often lives in the
false belief that the poet, whose greatness he does not see, has created
an ephemeral work, of importance to only his or her contemporaries or
compatriots (Konstantinovi: 1981: 122, 123). I would have had such
convictions as a reader of Shakespeares sonnets had I not been consumed
by two doubts: that Shakespeare wrote anything ephemeral and that the
extant translations were flawless and that I wasnt in a position to peer
at such heights. My doubts dissolved the moment I took up the original
myselfthe poems revealed themselves in their true glory, and the extant
translations were but the shadow of a shadow. Thence my decision to
take a stand to defend the poet as far as my academic and poetic strength
would allow. Thence, as well, my decision to print the original sonnets
alongside the translations. Thence, again, the decision to assess through
critical analysis the sonnet corpus that has been translated into Serbian
thus far and to offer my own translation solutions, which, if successful, will
speak much more eloquently than criticism.
To review some of the more important ideas from the introduction to
my translations: It is my opinion that Shakespeare was a poet in his dramas
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as well as a dramatic writer in his poemshow much of each in which

instance is a matter of degree: of being more or less rather than one precluding
the other. When Shakespeares sonnets are recited, it is noted that they have
been penned by a hand with a flair for drama (see, for example, Sonnet 46,
which begins with the line, My eye and heart are at mortal war and has
a clear exposition at the beginning; undergoes conflict, development and
climax in the second act, i.e. in the second quatrain; reaches epiphany in
the third act, i.e. third quatrain and comes to an effective resolution in
the last distich). As a second example of the connection between the poetic
and dramatic, I will cite the example of Sonnet 66, which begins with the
line, Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, and which, in verse, thus
through the medium of poetry, shapes and powerfully evokes the theme of
Hamlets dramatic monologue, To be or not to be. In this instance, in this
context, I would like to point out the following: I think that this idea of
the dramatic and poetic in Shakespeares opus could be fruitful in bringing
his complete works to the stage: if the opus were to be cut vertically, so
that none of the dramas or poems were presented separately but all of
the dramatic works and poems were to be assembled in one place related
by theme (love, jealousy, beauty, disappointment, revenge, death, etc.),
it would be possible to speak of variations on a given theme or themes
so that, in such a staged presentation of Shakespeares works, even the
sonnets would naturally find their placeas it is, theatre directors find
the sonnets to be undramatisable because of the lack of action (Nikita
Milivojevi, personal communication), which is why we do not often see
them in the theatre. The Sonnets, however, were premiered on the stage
of the National theatre in Belgrade on 26 February 2014marking the
first time Shakespeares Sonnets were performed in Serbia (the translation
used was my own). The director, Aleksandar Nikoli, proved such a feat
possible through eloquent theatrical sensibility: the Sonnets are already
heavily dramatically charged in that they are expressions of deep inner
emotional states and conflicts that manifest a strong need to be verbalised
and communicated to an audience, as is the case with a soliloquy in a play
(compare, for example, the To be or not to be Hamlet soliloquy and Sonnet
66). What is more, this idea, as I have put it forward, would also benefit
literary criticism, which as far as I know has not considered Shakespeare in
this wayI think that only in this way could it have complete insight into
Shakespeares poetic vision.
46
The themes of the Sonnets vary but are all vaulted by the theme
of love, which is depicted in an unconventional, anti-Petrarchan and
surprisingly complex way so that we may say that the sonnets present a
kind of modern love poetry. Shakespeare plays with gender roles, speaks
openly about sexual desire and sexual intercourse, glorifies and parodies
beauty, describes the temptations of passionate and carnal love, considers
Platonic and idealized love and explores mans experience of physical and
spiritual love, procreation, everlasting love, disappointment, pining, doubts
and fears, hope and imagination, redemption and forgiveness, compassion,
jealousy, triumphant love, etc. Figurative techniques, imagery and tone
are crafted according to the different themes. In recent decades, scholarship
of the sonnets has focused almost exclusively on the decomposition of the
sonnets and the use of rhetorical figures, such as metaphor, metonymy,
allusion, alliteration, assonance, antithesis, synecdoche, personification,
internal rhyme, word play, double entendre, multiple associations,
anaphora, etc. Examples of such scholarship includes that released by
major publishing houses Cambridge University Press (Sonnets, CUP:1966)
and Penguin (Sonnets, Penguin: 1986). For examples of polysemy and
homonymy we refer the reader to analysis of Sonnet 20 (verses 1-2, verse
10), Sonnet 27 (verses 13-14), Sonnet 144 (polysemy is found in almost
every verse); metonymy, Sonnet 59; antithesis and synecdoche, Sonnets 12
and 116; alliteration, Sonnet 91 (verse 4) as well as Sonnets 30 and 55;
assonance, Sonnet 55; anaphora, Sonnet 91 (verses 1, 2, 3, and 4); parallel
structure within the verse, Sonnet 91 (verse 10); personification, Sonnets:
20 (verse 10), 27 (verse 12), 55, 65, 73, 2, 59); word play and double
entendre, Sonnets 144 (the last quatrain and the couplet), 75, 35 (verse 9),
20 (verse 1, 2); ambiguity and word play, Sonnet 20 (verse 7), Sonnet 27
(couplet, verses 13, 14). The absence of elaborate stylistic technique and
idiosyncrasy does not deprive the sonnets of their artistic potential and
beautyon the contrary, Shakespeare achieved great effect and beauty
by the use of very simple poetic means and structure, strong emotional
cohesion and transposition (for example, Sonnet 116). A few more words
on style: all stylistic analysiswhether an end in itself or carried out for the
purpose of explication and translationshould be preceded by solid and
comprehensive research into the meaning of those words that had different
meaning in early modern English (note, for example, that Shakespeare was
the first to use the word imaginary in the sense of imaginative: Sonnet 27,
verse 9, or that the word shadow, meaning the same as senka in present
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day English, meant in Shakespeares day insubstantial image: Sonnet

27, verse 10). This should be sine qua non, however, we witness many
failuresthe original being failed by the translators (see, for example, the
couplet verses of Sonnet 27 in Angjelinovics and Raickovics translations).
A translator should be guided by a healthy skepticism: collocative and
associative meanings change over time. Apart from the ignorance of the
translator there exist additional objective difficulties having to do with the
original text: some of the sonnets, or sections thereof, are intentionally
polysemous (cf. Sonnet 20, verses 1-2; Sonnet 27, verses 13-14 (Sonnets,
CUP, 1996)). Consequently, different readings are possible, which in turn
affects translation. We refer the reader to the following quotation: Poetic
work is often insufficiently transparent and it should remain such in
translation (Konstantinovi, 1981:126).
Almost all of the sonnets comprise three quatrains of four-line stanzas
and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter; the rhyme scheme is
abab cdcd efef gg. This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeares
plays. Because this article is concerned with the translation of Shakespeares
sonnets, I shall add that having considered the rhythm favoured by English
poetry, the rhythmic essence of the language is uniqueand it follows that the
essence of the Serbian language has its own rhythm (it is trochaic), which
must be respected in the translation because in order for a translation to
resonate with the rhythmic essence of the target language, it must pulse
in that rhythm only. Hence any insistence on the literal transference of
the rhythm and metre from the source into the target language makes
no sense: the translated poem must have the vibrations of the linguistic
essence of the language into which it is being translated.
Regarding the structure of Shakespeares sonnets and the essential
connection between form and meaning, I would like, from my own perspective
as translator, to point out the following aspect of my experience. Taken by
the beauty of one distich, I began to translate it at once, unable to wait for
the moment it would have its turn, i.e. by beginning with the first quatrain
then proceeding to the second, then third. It happened that despite my
enthusiasm and what appeared to be the self-contained meaning and
aesthetic qualities of a single distich, I was unable to arrive at solutions
and problems endured. The following became apparent, which I believe
to be of phenomenological value: translation is a journey, undertaken
hand in hand with the poet, and it has its beginning: both intellectual and
emotional, its duration, and its end, and the poetic hand-holding ought
48
to give way to trust, empathy and good will; in such a way, the translator,
alongside the poet, undergoes catharsis and finishes the journey with a
feeling of happiness and the translation grows only in those places where
things, according to the poets foresight, ought to grow and only when it is
time for them to grow. Prosodic translation is an act of re-creation, making
again, and it implies a respect for the natural flow of things: hop and skip
translating is unnatural in this respect.
Licentia poetica, also known as poetic freedom, is most often a
euphemism which stands for the distortion of facts, oversimplification,
the stylization or metaphorical condensation of images, the omission
or addition of linguistic material, grammar distortion and the verbal
reconfiguration of the original text with the intention to renew or improve
the inherent content of the original. Those who take liberties with poetic
freedom, consciously or not, assume that this is entirely the discretionary
right of the poet-translator and that this must be tolerated and approved
of by the public. Addressing the poets understanding of translation,
Milovan Danojli says: According to that understanding, the original is
not considered a protected prototype which must at all costs be preserved
and transplanted, but is rather considered a challenge, a stimulus, a model
according to which comparable poems are to be written... It was important
to leave as personal a mark on the new version as possible, breathe life
into it, enable it to have its own aesthetic function. The enterprise was
only as alluring and worthy of attention as the personality undertaking it
was interesting (Danojli: 1981: 247-248). Examples of poetic freedom,
going so far as to become improvisations, appropriations and failures to reach
the meaning of the original can be found in the examples of the side-by-side
analysis of several versified-translations of Shakespeares sonnets which I
have presented in this paper. It was assumed by the editors and publishers
that only literary experts and poets should translate the works of poets and
that, insofar as there was a choice, the preference in translation was to be
given to poets. It is my opinion, after serious and comprehensive analysis
of versified-translation, that poets cannot translate or let the original sing
through them without a thorough knowledge of the source language, and I
think, furthermore, that both such a knowledge and a gift for poetry
must be united within the same person.
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2. Critical assesment of the translations of Sonnets 27 and 144
2.1. Sonnet 27
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 27
(New Penguin Shakespeare, 1986)
(New Cambridge Shakespeare, 1996)
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travail tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when bodys works expired;
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see;
Save that my souls imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
Sonnet 27
Translated by Jelisaveta Milojevi (unpublished)
Umoran od posla postelji urim,
Slatkom odmoru za telo palo,
Al onda, mislima, na put jurim
I glava radi i kad je telo stalo.
Misli, iz daleka, gde prebivaju,
Sa arom tad kreu tebe da pohode
I teke kapke one otvaraju
Pa gledam mrak koji slepi vide
50
Osim to, izmatan mojom duom,

Tvoj nestvarni lik vidim slepim vidom,
Dragulj to groznu tamu uini lepom
A no-staricu uini mladom.
Mog tela i moje due nemira
Ja sam uzrok, a ti uzrok i namera.
Sonnet 27
Versified translation by Stevan Raikovi
(based on the prose translation by ivojin Simi)
(Beograd: Prosveta, 1966)
Postelji urim iznuren od rada Miloj poivki umornih od puta;
Al put po mojoj glavi pone tada,
Te posle tela trud po umu luta.
Polaze moje misli, udnog toka,
Na hodoae, tebi, koje sami,
I ne daju mi da sklopim ni oka,
Te kao slepi gledam, sam, u tami.
Al vidom moje mate mome oku
U tami tvoje drago lice gradim,
Koje ko dragulj sja kroz no duboku
I uini je lepom, s likom mladim.
Po noi um moj, danju telo moje
Zbog tebe nikad da se uspokoje.
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Sonnet 27
Translated by Danko Angjelinovi (Beograd: Kultura, 1966)
U krevet urim umoran od rada,
Da mi se mirom trudna uda slade,
Al vrtlog pone u glavi tek tada
I mozak radi kad tijelo prestade.
Jer tad mi miso iz dalekog stana
U hodoae k tebi eljno ide,
I umornoj mi vjei ne da sana,
Ve zurim u mrak, kog i slijepci vide;
Ti kad uskrsne kroz due mi plamen,
Ko mila sjena pred oima slijepim,
I kroz no mranu sja ko alem-kamen
I grozno lice noi pravi lijepim.
Tako mi nou miso, danju tijelo,
Rad tebe ne da mira vrijeme cijelo.
In the comparative analysis that will follow, only the couplet will be
considered as it is arguably the linguistic and philosophical focal point of
the sonnet and notoriously difficult from the point of view of translation.
For is used twice in a double sense: the poet lies awake because of the
friend and for his sake; so, because of his devotion, he finds no quiet
for himself; on account of you, on account of myself. For translates
into Serbian as zbog (indicating cause) and radi (indicating intention).
The meaning of the couplet is therefore the following: the poet cannot
sleep because he is thinking about his friend and cannot stop the stream
of thoughts; but, on the other hand, he himself instigates the thinking
wishing to be with his friend in this way, for the purpose of being with his
friend in his thoughts. This interpretation, based on analysis published in
the editions of the sonnets published by CUP and Penguin, informed my
translation. The translations by Raikovi and Angjelinovi are identical in
both being incorrect.
Verses 13, 14: Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind, / For
thee, and for myself, no quiet find. (Shakespeare);
Verses 13, 14: Po noi um moj, danju telo moje / Zbog tebe nikad
da se uspokoje. (Raikovi);
52
Verses 13, 14: Tako mi nou miso, danju tijelo, / Rad tebe ne da
mira vrijeme cijelo. (Angjelinovi);
Verses 13, 14: Mog tela i moje due nemira / Ja sam uzrok, a ti
uzrok i namera. (Milojevi).
2. 2 Critical assesment of the translations of Sonnet 144

This sonnet is even more strikingly polysemous and thus a challenge for
the translator.
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 144
(New Penguin Shakespeare, 1986)
(New Cambridge Shakespeare, 1996)
Two loves I have of comfort and dispair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair
The worser spirit a woman colourd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turnd fiend
Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in anothers hell:
Yet this shall I neer know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
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Sonnet 144
Translated by Jelisaveta Milojevi (unpublished)
Dve ljubavi imam oseanja tesnac

Dva duha, dva anela, dva iskuenja:
Aneo utehe je svetao mukarac,
Aneo oaja crna je ena.
Da me u svoj pakao to pre uvede
Ljubavnica ljubavnika mi opini Gordom, divljom strau ona ga zavede
elei da anela avolom uini.
Hoe li aneo postati avo?
Bliski su a izmeu nas daljina.
Slutim da hoe, al ne znam zapravo Njemu je otvorena avolja jazbina.
Moja e sumnja biti odagnana
Bude li im ljubav vatrom igosana.
Sonnet 144
Versified translation by Stevan Raikovi
(based on the prose translation by ivojin Simi)
(Beograd: Prosveta, 1966)
Dve su ljubavi sad u mojoj volji,
Duh zla i dobra ratuju u meni;
Plavook mladi aneo je boji,
A gori ena sa mrakom u zeni.
Da me otera u ad svojoj tami
Odvukla mi je anela boljega
I lepotom ga sada na greh mami
Da u avola pretvori i njega.
Da l je postao avo on od one,
Slutiti mogu, ali ne znam tano.
Oni su prisni, a mene se klone,
Te mi oboje izgledaju mrano.
Da li je tako, nikad neu znati
Dok zli aneo beljeg ne isprati.
54
Sonnet 144
Translated by Danko Angjelinovi
(Beograd: Kultura, 1963)
Do dvije ljubavi sree i oaja,
Ko do dva duha iznad mene bdiju:
Bolji je anel mladi prepun sjaja,
A gori ena, duh mranih oiju.
Da otjera me u pako zavodi
Ta enska zlica mog dobrog anela,
I istog sveca na vraga navodi,
Nevinost da bi u bludnost zavela.
Da l i moj anel postade sotona,
Nekako slutim, ali ne znam pravo;
Od mene bjee, prisni on i ona,
I strah me: crn je i anel i avo
To nikad neu znat i dvojit stoga,
Dok moj zli anel ne uzme dobroga.
We shall pinpoint few polysemous knots to be untied by a translator.
Consider the following examples:
What seems most striking in the polysemy of 144 is the
ambivalence of love in line 1. Those two loves must register as
different modes of feeling comforting and hopeless until the
second line makes them spirits. Two kinds of loving are summed
in two individuals (...), with love at once emotion and the loved
object. But the bad angel represents only the dark side of love
(...) (Introduction to the Sonnets, CUP, 1966:61)
Verses 1-2: Two loves I have of comfort and dispair,/ Which like two
spirits do suggest me still:/ (Shakespeare);
Verses 1-2: Dve ljubavi imam oseanja tesnac -/ Dva duha, dva
anela, dva iskuenja:/ (Milojevi);
Verses 1-2: Dve su ljubavi sad u mojoj volji,/ Duh zla i dobra ratuju
u meni; (Raikovi);
Verses 1-2: Do dvije ljubavi sree i oaja,/ Ko do dva duha iznad
mene bdiju: (Angjelinovi).
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We shall also note that the word suggest means: 1. prompt; 2. tempt
(podstai; iskuavati). The translations that approximate the original
most are those of Milojevi and Raikovi whereas that of Angjelinovi is
the least successfulin fact, it completely misses the point.
Another example of polysemy is the following:
Verse 3: a man right fair (Shakespeare);
Verse 3: svetao mukarac, (Milojevi);
Verse 3: Plavook mladi (Raikovi);
Verse 3: mladi prepun sjaja (Angjelinvi).
Right fair means the following: 1. just, absolutely honest; 2. most
beautiful (pale, blond).
Both meanings are suggested by the choice of the Serbian word
svetao, which has two meanings: fair-haired or fair-skinned but also
chaste and pure. This other meaning was ignored by Raikovi thus
failing the original.
Yet another example:
Verse 8: foul pride (Shakespeare) becomes gorda, divlja strast
(Milojevi), greh (Raikovi), and bludnost (Angjelinovi).
Foul pride has multiple meaning and thus it is very complex and stylistically
potent from the point of view of interpretation and connotation. It means:
1. horrible allure (implying beauty and sexual readiness), and 2. vanity.
Both Raikovis and Angjelinovis translation miss the other meaning.
I have also chosen to focus on the last quatrain and the couplet
because of their extreme richness in polysemy. Here is the original and
three Serbian translations juxtaposed for comparison.
Verses 9-14: And whether that my angel be turnd fiend/ Suspect
I may, but not directly tell;/ But being both from me, both to each
friend,/ I guess one angel in anothers hell:/ Yet this shall I neer
know, but live in doubt,/ Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
(Shakespeare);
Verses 9-14: Hoe li aneo postati avo?/ Bliski su a izmeu nas
daljina./ Slutim da hoe, al ne znam zapravo -/ Njemu je otvorena
avolja jazbina./ Moja e sumnja biti odagnana / Bude li im ljubav
vatrom igosana. (Milojevi);
Verses 9-14: Da l je postao avo on od one,/ Slutiti mogu, ali ne
znam tano./Oni su prisni, a mene se klone,/ Te mi oboje izgledaju
56
mrano./ Da li je tako, nikad neu znati/ Dok zli aneo beljeg ne

isprati. (Raikovi);
Verses 9-14: Da l i moj anel postade sotona,/ Nekako slutim, ali
ne znam pravo;/Od mene bjee, prisni on i ona,/ I strah me: crn je
i anel i avo/ To nikad neu znat i dvojit stoga,/ Dok moj zli anel
ne uzme dobroga. (Angjelinovi).
The polysemy of hell (verse 12) includes: 1. the idea of suffering; 2.
cunt (slang sense of hell); 3. burrow; 4. vagina. The sexual implication of
fire, which also meant pox, is obvious. The suggestion is also that the
good angel has become an animal to be smoked out of its burrow (a ladys
vagina) as well as an allusion to the proverb, One fire drives out another.
For an extensive explanation and commentary on Sonnet 144 the reader
is referred to the Introduction in Sonnets, CUP, 1966:60. The translations
by both Raikovi and Angjelinovi totally miss the point and thus fail the
original.
3. Conclusion
In this paper, sections of Shakespeares Sonnets 27 and 144 have been
analysed alongside their Serbian translations. General questions have been
put forward and answered: Why the sonnets, again? Why translate that
which has already been translated? Can someone who has no knowledge
of the source language translate poetry with the assistance of a prose
translation done by someone who does know that language? Where are
the limits of poetic license in versification? Are the critic and translator to
be the same person? Is it possible to criticise a translation even if one has
no sovereign control over the source language? Why is translation criticism
necessary? As the importance of such criticism is defended in this paper,
readers have been presented with side-by-side analysis of Shakespeares
Sonnets 27 and 144 and their respective Serbian translations serving as a
form of apologia and the purposes of illustration.
Translating poetry is among the most demanding of translation
tasks and, as such, can always be done differently or better, given that
a translation is but an approximation of the ideal and not a realisation
of that ideal. There exists another, perhaps more important, reason why
translations may ever be performed anew: it is the duty of every specialist
and translator to stand, authoritatively, in defense of the poetthe author of
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the originaland correct the mistakes of their predecessors, insofar as they

have failed the original. A criminal act is always that which has occurred,
has had an impact and repercussions, of relatively short duration, at one
time in the past. A poor translation has an impact and repercussions which
occur in the future, for an endless period of time (ivojinovi, 1981:
273). This was the reasoning behind my decision to attempt translate
Shakespeares sonnets anew. A poor translation can only be overcome by
a good one.
References
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Shakespeares Sonnets, For the First Time Globally Reprinted, A
Quatercentenary Anthology 1609-2009, Manfred Pfister and Jrgen
Gutsch (eds.), Dozwil TG Switzerland, Edition Signathur, 587-596.
Blakemore Evans, G. (ed.) (1996). William Shakespeare: The Sonnets,
Cambridge University Press .
Bertolino, N. (1981) O kritici prevoda poetskih dela in: Raji, Lj. (ed.)
Teorija i poetika prevoenja. Beograd: Prosveta, 159176.
Booth, S. (ed.) (1977). Shakespeares Sonnets. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Crnjanski, M. ekspirovi soneti in: Eseji (1983). Beograd: Nolit, 194-231.
Danojli, M. Pesnik kao prevodilac in: Raji, Lj. (ed.) Teorija i poetika
prevoenja (1981). Beograd: Prosveta, 243260.
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Shakespeare: The Sonnets, Cambridge University Press, 1-28.
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Complaint. Penguin Books.
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Klajn, H. (1964). ekspir kod Jugoslovena in: Klajn, H. ekspir i ovetvo,

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ivojina Simia. Beograd: Prosveta.
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Borivoje Nedi. Beograd: Kultura
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Vivian, P. (1900) A dictionary of literary terms. London: G. Routledge & sons.

Wilson, J. D. (ed.) (1969). Shakespeare, William. The Works of Shakespeare.
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prevoenja (1981). Beograd: Prosveta, 261278.
Received: 3 July 2014

: 27 144

27 144, , , , . ,
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60
UDC 821.111.09-2 .
82.09 .
Dubravka uri*
Singidunum University
Faculty of Media and Communication
Belgrade, Serbia
SVETISLAV STEFANOVIS INTERPRETATION

OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
AND WORLD LITERATURE**
Abstract
This paper deals with Svetislav Stefanovis interpretation of William Shakespeares
plays in which he presents Shakespeare as a classic of world literature (which at
the time was a Eurocentric concept). Analyzing how Shakespeare used different
sources for his own plays, Stefanovi applies a comparative approach and compares
Shakespeare with the Bible and with Greek and Roman authors, as well as with
other European writers, such as Goethe and Dostoyevsky. The way Stefanovi
interpreted Shakespeare is performative because he showed how Shakespeare is
a classic of the world literature system, and in doing so, he symbolically included
modern Serbian literature in that system, too.
Key words: classic, comparative approach, translation, world literature,
Shakespeare, Stefanovi
*
**
E-mail address: dubravka.djuric@fmk.edu.rs

This paper has been written as part of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological
Development of the Republic of Serbias project Knjienstvo. Theory and History of Womens
Writing in Serbia up to1916 (No. 178029).
61
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1. Introduction
In this text I will deal with the poet and translator Svetislav Stefanovis
interpretations of William Shakespeares dramas. Stefanovi was a poet,
essayist and translator whose fields of interest were English and American
poets. Among his most important translations are those of William
Shakespeares works. His interest in Shakespeare dated back to the end of
the 19th century. In the 1920s and late 1930s, new editions of his translations
were published, along with his Forewords. Stefanovi valued mysticism
highly, viewing it as one of the most important characteristics of English
poetry, and it was his ambition to pass this aspect of English poetry on to
Serbian poetry. He explains:
By emphasizing the mythical spirit of English poetry, I would like
it to creatively impregnate our poetry, to broaden and deepen its
horizons without which no poetry, be it great or pure, is produced.
More than German or any other, it was English poetry that
developed out of the hymn, the prayer; that kind of poetry has a
certain mythical incarnation, all the more artistic if it possesses
the mythical and divine (see: Konstantinovi 198: 262n).
This comment leads us into a brief discussion on the function of translation
in a culture.
2. Constructing modern national literature and the function

of translation
I will start from the premise put forward in translation studies that
translation is fundamental in all discursive fields. Translation is a text
product and at the same time a text producer (Bassnett 2014: 236). It is
produced through human labor from existing texts. At the same time, it
is an active agent in the production of new texts. In the past, translations

Since my paper deals with only a small fragment of Stefanovis work and is based
on a close reading of the text, it should be pointed out that Stefanovi (born in 1877)
belonged to a group of 100 Serbian intellectuals sentenced to death for collaborating
with the German occupiers and was shot in 1944. Like many others, this controversial
intellectual supported Nazi ideas the historian Olivera Milosavljevi wrote about his
case (see Milosavljevi 2010).
62
Dubravka uri Svetislav Stefanovis Interpretation of William Shakespeare and World Literature
were considered to be of secondary importance, but translating is now

viewed as an activity that has a crucial role in the development of any
national literary system as it involves complex processes of import and
export (Bassnett 2014: 236). Susan Bassnett wrote:
More recently, expanding research in what is termed world
literature also serves to highlight the significance of translation in
literary transactions. It appears self-evident that the transmission
of texts across cultural boundaries should also have a linguistic
dimension, yet studies of literary transmission tended for a long
time to play down or disregard the role of translation. This is
understandable once we pause to reflect on the link between the
construction of national histories in the nineteenth century, an
age characterized by the passionate struggle to establish clearly
defined and coherent national identities across Europe (Bassnett
2014: 238).
Translation is fundamental to the formation of literary systems. The usage
of the notion of a system derives from the belief that semiotic phenomena,
i.e. sign-governed human patterns of communication (such as culture,
language, literature, and society), could be more adequately understood
and studied if regarded as systems (Even-Zohar 1990: 9). Every translation
is a recreation and interpretation of the source text, while at the same time,
translation is a priori present in every source text: to varying degrees,
every literary work is made up of translations, always containing in itself
a certain amount of translation work (Mani 2010: 13), or as Aleksandra
Mani wrote, translation is the site of the shaping of national literature
(Mani 2010: 13). In the different phases of the forming and developing
of national literature, it is the function of translation to provide a repertoire
which exists within other, usually older and more developed literary fields.
Its other function is to change the national canon and provide new models
of literary production. A translation is always accompanied by discourse
which gives it additional interpretations, shaping it for contemporary
usages within the target culture (the target culture which receives the
literary work from some other (source) culture).
I will focus my attention on Stefanovis introductions to several of his
Shakespeare translations, which were written to portray Shakespeare as a
great European poet, as a classic of world literature. They are important
because here Stefanovi practiced a world literature approach, which has
a performative role in demonstrating the unity of European literature,
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considered at the time to be world literature. Written within the Serbian

Yugoslav bourgeois culture, his interpretation performatively made this
culture part of the world literary system. Since some of the main principles
we find in Stefanovis interpretations of Shakespeare correspond to some
of T. S. Eliots significant discussions on European literature and the notion
of a great poet, I will first discuss Eliots theses.
3. T.S. Eliot and the definition of a classic and a European poet

According to T. S. Eliot, every language has its resources and limitations
(What is a classic? 1944). However, at particular times throughout
history, some languages generate moments in which unique classical poets
appear, as happened in the history of Rome with the Latin language. Eliot
explains:
The maturity of literature is the reflection of that of the society in
which it is produced; an individual author notably Shakespeare
and Virgil can do much to develop his language but he cannot
bring that language to maturity unless the work of his predecessors
has prepared it for his final touch. A mature literature, therefore,
has a history behind it: a history that is not merely a chronicle, an
accumulation of manuscripts and writings of this kind and that,
but an ordered, though unconscious, progress of a language to
realize its own potentialities within its own limitations (T.S. Eliot
1971: 56).
Discussing Goethe (Goethe as the Sage, 1954), Eliot explains two crucial
concepts: a great poet and the unity of European literature. A great poet
is one who unifies wisdom and poetic inspiration. Such poets belong, not
merely to their own people, but to the world; it is only poets of this kind
of whom one can think, not primarily as limited by their own language
and nation, but as great Europeans (Eliot 1971: 207). It is important for
us to understand, wrote Eliot, that the unity of European literature exists,
deriving from our common background, in the literature of Greece, Rome
and Israel (Eliot 1971: 211). He stressed that the great European poets

With this term I refer to the fact that Serbian culture during 20th century was realized
within different political and economic contexts bourgeois, socialist and post-socialist,
as part of the Yugoslavian state or an independent state.
64
are Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. They are proclaimed as such by two
criteria: Permanence and Universality. Their work is of continual importance
for every new generation in their own language as well as in others, and no
one will question this importance. In addition, the influence of such a poet
is not a matter of historical record only; he will continue to be of value to
every Age, and every Age will understand his work differently (Eliot 1971:
211). There are three characteristics that the great poets have to have:
Abundance, Amplitude and Unity. Abundance means that they wrote a good
deal, and nothing that any of them wrote is negligible (Eliot 1971: 213),
while amplitude means that each had a very wide range of interests (Eliot
1971: 214). The third quality, unity, is explained as each of them gives us
Life itself, the World seen from a particular point of view of a particular
European age and a particular man in that age (Eliot 1971: 214).
Eliots discussion is important because the ideas he formulated were
characteristic for the period in which he formulated them and they were
common to European intellectuals between the two World Wars and
immediately after the Second World War. Therefore, we can see that the
translation of European classics like Shakespeare was necessary for the
local formation of a world literature canon in a literary culture like Serbian
between the two World Wars. Here I should mention that the different
translations of Shakespeare in Serbian culture were accompanied by
public debate concerning the fundamental question of how to translate
Shakespeare and how to understand his work (Mani 2010: 43). I will
not deal with these discussions, but only with Stefanovis interpretation
of Shakespeare as a universal classic of world literature in the sense Eliot
wrote about.
4. Stefanovis Shakespeare as a classic and modern playwright

My review of Svetislav Stefanovis interpretation of Shakespeares dramas
will deal with the forewords he wrote for the following plays: Julius Caesar,
Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Nights Dream,
Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winters Tale.
Stefanovi first explains when each play was written, suggests possible
sources for the plot, and outlines what different interpreters wrote about
it. Then he himself gives an interpretation of the plot and characters,
compares the dramatic techniques used in the plays, and points out the
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similarities and differences between the plots and characterization of

characters in different dramas. Very often Stefanovi calls Shakespeare a
genius and talks about his modernity. The concept of modernity could refer
to several conflicting ideas. It can signify something that is contemporary
(the present or up-to-date) as opposed to what belongs to the past, but it
can also signify differences within the present. In other words, the concept
of modern art and literature does not only refer to art and literature of the
modern period because not all art and literature produced in that period
can be considered modern. Only certain types of artistic and literature
production have the right to be called so (Fer 1993: 9). Modernity
in art and literature is connected to a break with traditional modes of
Western culture that connected the phenomenon of a work of art with
the appearance of the natural world (uri 2009: 23). It should also be
highlighted that it is the influential literary centers of Western cultures
that hegemonically proclaim what is to be considered modern (Casanova
2004). The concept of modernity is important to Stefanovi because he
had been advocating the modernization of Serbian poetic culture since
the end of the 19th century (Manojlovi, 1987: 265). Thus, it can be said
that when he writes about Shakespeare, he does so for contemporary use
in the context of modern Serbian literature as part of a system of world
literature. When he calls Shakespeare a genius, he means that the artist
is a genius because he is capable of producing universal values. A genius
creates artwork that transcends the time and space of its origin. I would
like to stress here that the modern age concept of universality has evolved
out of the humanism of the Enlightenment, that it is Eurocentric, based on
the idea of universal literature which is based on the universality of the
human spirit (Virk 2007: 73).
I will call Stefanovis approach comparative because he compares
Shakespeares works with the great literature from different epochs,
showing that world literature is one system whose parts are mutually
connected, and explaining how themes, motives, and narratives travel and
are formed historically in different linguistic (i.e. national) cultures. At
this point, I will briefly review comparative studies and world literature.
Goethes concept of world literature can be interpreted in the sense of the
post-Enlightenment and pre-Romantic idea of cosmopolitanism. The idea
functioned as an ideology, meaning it endorsed a conviction that people
are in essence all equal regardless of differences in nationality, nation-state,
language, religion, class, race, and cultural affiliation (Juvan, 2008: 69). The
66
cosmopolitan conception on which comparative literature was based was

the idea of the existence of world literature that from Goethes time meant
the exchange of literary goods across boundaries of language, peoples,
states, entities and civilizations (Juvan 2008: 70). Marx and Engels saw
cosmopolitanism as the ideology of bourgeois capitalism that operates on
the supranational globalized market, thus connecting it to world literature
as a modern form of the exchange and flow of spiritual products (Juvan
2008: 71). They established an analogy between the transnational, global
expansion of the capitalist economy and the beginning of the construction
of an international system of world literature (Juvan 2008: 71). It is
important to note that the canon of world literature up to the late 1970s
was essentially Eurocentric. Namely, the concept of world literature was
understood to mean European and Euro-American literature. Such ideas
were clearly expressed in Eliots texts, especially those written after World
War Two, as well as in Stefanovis Forewords, which I will discuss.
In several of his Forewords, Stefanovi stresses that Shakespeares
plays were written on the basis of existing material, claiming that that was
the standard procedure used by writers. He compares them to the Bible
and the literature of the classical period, as the core texts of European
civilization, as well as to the great European poets and writers, like
Goethe, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Cervantes. Thus, he shows the unity of
world literature in the sense of European and Euro-American literature.
Shakespeare appears as a classic whose work is universal and immeasurably
valuable, comprehensive and unique. Being a classic, it was necessary for
the relatively young Serbian national literature, which was going through
a process of modernization, to have translations of his works available in
the local language.
Below, I will outline several theses and discuss Stefanovis
interpretations of Shakespeares dramas to show how his approach is
comparative when attempting to present European literature through the
classic interpretation of one unified whole.
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1) Shakespeares dramas were written using existing sources

In the Foreword to Romeo and Juliet, Svetislav Stefanovi insists on the fact
that Shakespeare used stories that were already well known, much liked
and popular; thus, he comments:
It seems that Shakespeares creativity was not enough to produce
such great masterpieces belonging to the whole of world
literature, but that the work of all generations of cultured peoples
was needed. Thus, the themes that Romeo and Juliet dealt with
had already been used by a series of writers before Shakespeare,
which gave him not only ready-made material, but also made the
plot one of the most popular (Stefanovi 1928: 6).
Stefanovi expressed variations on this idea of Shakespeares creative
process. Thus, in the Foreword for Othello, we read:
Shakespeare took an existing story for his Othello as he did for
the rest of his plays. He did not invent the plots of his plays, in
the same way an architect of a temple or palace does not make
his own bricks or other material, but takes ready-made material
and uses it for his work of art. Maybe it shows a certain economy
of creativity, maybe the need for one basic impulse that spurs the
inspiration for further works of art (Stefanovi 1921a: V).
Specifically, for example, at the beginning of his introductory text to King
Lear, he points out that: [the s]tory of King Lear goes back in history to the
oldest mythical Celtic legends in Britain (Stefanovi 1923: V). Asserting
that The Winters Tale belongs to Shakespeares last creative phase of
great romances, dramatized fairy tales and legends which together with
Cymbeline and The Tempest make up the last trilogy but also the final
phase of his view on life (Stefanovi 1939b: X), Stefanovi mentions
that the specific material was taken from the most popular novel of the
time, written by Robert Green, entitled Pandosto: The Triumph of Time.
He highlights that all the playwrights in world literature had done the
same: used sources such as legends, myths, history, novels, or stories from
everyday life (Stefanovi 1921a: V).
However, Shakespeares attitude towards the existing sources that
were at his disposal changed over time. When writing Julius Caesar, his
source was the English translation of Plutarch, translated by Sir Thomas
North from Jacques Amyots French translation. In this drama and others
68
from Roman history, like Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, he followed
his sources more literally, using not just the plot lines, but whole scenes
and chunks of text. In contrast, when his sources were Italian novels (as
for Othello, The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure) or when he
used Holinsheds Chronicle of English history, he would only take the bare
skeleton. Hence, in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, a whole series of scenes
and speeches were mostly versified versions of Norths prose text. All the
characters in Shakespeares Julius Caesar can be found in Plutarchs Lives.
However, when Stefanovi compares Norths translation of Plutarchs
prose with Shakespeares version, he points out how the latter turned
it masterfully into miraculously magnificent poetry (Stefanovi 1939d:
XV). However, there are also plays like Midsummer Nights Dream that are
characterized as being the most liberal mixture of different elements:
old Greek and Roman mythology, classical heroic and Medieval
romantic spirit, stiff academism and the most debauched popular
traditionalism. From Plutarchs Theseus, Ovids Metamorphoses,
from which he took the name of Titania, from the popular
Medieval novel Huon de Bordeaux from which Oberon was taken
in the French version Alberih from the German tradition,
from Montemors Spanish pastoral prose romances and popular
Medieval miracle narratives and mysteries whose main actors
were artisans and workers Shakespeare composed the most
miraculous and most charming comedy and as Sir Sydney Lee
said conquered a new empire for art (Stefanovi 1924: V-VI).
2) The comparative approach and the transnational transmission of themes,

motives and world (i.e. European) literature narratives
In order to show how themes, motives and narratives are transmitted
from one epoch to another, from one local context to another, and from
one genre to another, Stefanovi tracks them assiduously up to their
appearance in Shakespeares dramas. Thus when writing about Othello,
he outlines the plot of the Italian novel A Moor of Venice by Giovanni
Battista Giraldi. Mapping the different variations of this story, he returns

The most frequently used source for this data is the book: C.K. Simrock, Quellen des Shakespeare
in Novellen, Sagen und Mrchen, 1870 (Stefanovi 1921a: VII).
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to Shakespeare and explains that, in terms of aesthetic values, this is

Shakespeares greatest tragedy, comparable to the tragedies of Sophocles,
Aeschylus, and Euripides (Stefanovi 1923: VI). He analyzes the novel
by the Italian writer Luigi da Porta, printed in Venice in 1535 and the
direct source for Romeo and Juliet, and notes that the motive of the death
of two star-crossed lovers could be found in an ancient Greek novel by
Xenophon of Ephesus from the 2nd century. This theme reached France
with Bandellos famous version and it was via the French adaptation of this
story in Belleforests famous Histoires tragiques that it came to England,
where it became very popular in various versions. Giving a detailed list
of sources for Hamlet from the first mention of the Danish prince in Saxo
Grammaticus (12th century) onwards, Stefanovi mentions that Hamlets
prototype can be found not only in Roman history with the character of
Brutus, but also, by going further back, in the ancient myth of the seasons
from which so many mythological and general narrative topics of the
earlier ages of European literature developed (Stefanovi 1921b: VI).
He adds that Simrock had already written that Hamlet was the reverse
of Orestes. Similarly, when discussing Twelfth Night, he notes that John
Manningham had mentioned in his diary that this comedy was reminiscent
of The Comedy of Errors or Plautuss Menaechmi, but above all of the Italian
comedy Gli Inganni. Three Italian comedies of that name existed before
Shakespeare, written by Secchia, Gonzaga and Cornaccinia, but older than
these and closer to Shakespeare was Gli Inganni, produced in Siena in
1531 and printed in Venice in 1537. It gained world fame and was staged
and translated in Spain, France and England, before Shakespeare began
writing his comedy (Stefanovi 1922: VIII). Although the exact origin
of this comedy cannot be established, one possible source could be an
adaptation of this motive written by the Italian novelist Bandello, whose
works were a source for playwrights of Shakespeares time. Giraldi Centio
was another Italian novelist whose novels were a source for dramatists and
he adapted this theme in his Hecatommithi. Another more significant source
for Shakespeares play is mentioned: the story of Apollonious and Silla by
Barnabe Riche, printed in the book Farewelle to Militarie Profession.
When discussing Shakespeares characters, Stefanovi writes about
their prototypes. I will give two examples. Firstly, the unhappy queen
Hermione from The Winters Tale belongs to the group of unjustly persecuted
women which, with numerous variants and variations of this character,
probably represents the most widely-used theme of the entire early and
70
late Medieval period, but actually dates back to the ancient classical world
(Stefanovi 1939b: XXI). Secondly, Autolycus is one of the most daring
and most original of all Shakespeares characters. Stefanovi traces his
genealogy back to Homers Odyssey and Book 11 of Ovids Metamorphoses,
with Ovid becoming popular and accessible in England through Arthur
Goldings translation, of which there were several editions (Stefanovi
1939b: XXIII-XXXIV).
According to Stefanovi, Shakespeares work is always modern and
popular. It is the second most popular literary work after the Bible. Both
embody the spirit of good and the spirit of evil, which is maybe the spirit
of creation and the same spirit which leads Christ to Calvary, and Hamlet
to torture himself and Lear to madness, and Macbeth to the witches and
Othello to Iago (Stefanovi 1921a: VI). He also emphasizes that Hamlet, as
the most famous, most studied, most often performed, most comprehensive,
and most profound of all Shakespeares plays, is, apart from the Bible, the
work which has been most written about.
3) Literary devices and interpretations of Shakespearean drama
When discussing Romeo and Juliet, Svetislav Stefanovi notes that this was
the play when Shakespeare finally freed himself from the classicist poetics
he had followed up to that point by rejecting the unity of character and
dramatic activity, the principle of one main character-one main plot. New
principles of constructing drama were established in the play, characteristic
of Shakespeare and his contemporaries the parallelism of plot and character
(for example, the hatred of the Montagues and Capulets and the love of
the young Romeo and Juliet) and the combination of the comic and tragic
(Stefanovi 1928: 9). If we compare Shakespeares plays written in different
periods, we can say that in his later period, e.g. in comedies such as The
Tempest and The Winters Tale, he showed a combination of realism with the
most imaginary elements of folk tales (Stefanovi 1923: VII), while in King
Lear that combination appears in the form of tragedy. In these plays, there
is a parallelism of the main themes. In the comedies, two themes take place
in parallel and very often they intersect and serve to mirror each other; the
same happens in the tragedies Hamlet and especially in King Lear. In Lear,
the tragedies of Lear and Gloucester run parallel crossing and intersecting
each other, not following the life of one, no matter how great a man, an
individual, but following the lines and essence of the human being as such
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in his social and later on in his cosmic existence (Stefanovi 1923: XIII).
In Twelfth Night there are also two parallel plots, stylistically independent
and separate: Violas comedy of situations written in verse and Malvolios
comedy of character written in prose. While sources for Violas story can be
found in Italian comedies and novels, the story of Malvolio is considered
to be Shakespeares genuine creation (Stefanovi 1922: VIII). As a special
device, we can single out a play-within-a-play, an example of which is the
comedy by the Athenian craftsmen, which is maybe the funniest scene
in world dramaturgy (Stefanovi 1924: IX). Stefanovi compares it with
another play-within-a-play the actors performance in Hamlet which
should reveal the crime of Hamlets uncle. In Midsummer Nights Dream,
the play-within-a-play presents the tragic death of Pyramus and Thisbe
and can be understood as an unrestrained parody of all that is painful and
tragic in human life, a play of imagination or the spirit where the deepest
pain of tragic love, the pain that drives the desperate to suicide, is nothing
more than a farce (Stefanovi 1924: IX).
Stefanovi presents other interpretations of Shakespeares works.
Coleridge, for example, considered Othello a tragedy of a very primitive
man who does not yet differentiate what seems to be from what is reality
(Stefanovi 1921a: XI). Dealing with the discourse of primitivism as
Coleridge did, Stefanovi explains that the play is about a tragic conflict,
about a hero who belongs to a different, foreign, lower race and who pays
a high price for elevating himself (Stefanovi 1921a: XI). Comparing the
Italian novella Moore of Venice with Shakespeares Othello, he concludes
that, in contrast to the Italian novella where people appear as they are
in real life, in Shakespeares tragedy the very same people become
expressions of all mankind: a whole world can be constructed from each of
them; and a world can be fitted into each of them (Stefanovi 1921a: X).
Stefanovi includes the character of Iago in the ranks of Shakespeares great
analytic characters like Hamlet and Macbeth. He knows life like Hamlet
and understands the noble nature of Othello and the unbridled goodness
and generosity of Desdemona. While Iago is a stereotype in the Italian
novel, in Shakespeares play he has become a grandiose figure thanks to
the force of his will and intellect, as if in one figure he has become Hamlet,
condemned to be the avenger, and philosopher and hero Macbeth, driven
and condemned to be a criminal (Stefanovi 1921a: XIII). It all leads to
the conclusion that Shakespeare had out of tragedy made jealousy:
72
...a gigantic conflict of good and evil and a tragedy of conflict

between the primitive and primordial virtues of the human
race and refined culture that goes as far as enjoying evil and
crime itself and finally a tragedy dealing with the issue of race.
Faced with these greater tragedies, the issue of jealousy almost
disappears, i.e., in these greater and bigger tragedies it is elevated
and sublimed (Stefanovi 1921a: XI).
Comparing Goethes Faust with Othello, he wrote that unlike Goethe, who
strives to elevate man to the world of spirits, Shakespeare seems to lower
the whole world of spirits into the human sphere, which is a greater artistic
process. The intention to bring the spiritual into the human sphere shows
that Shakespeares drama evolved out of the rituals of the Christian church
(Stefanovi 1921a: VI).
When discussing those plays dealing with Roman history, Coriolanus,
Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Stefanovi sees them as a trilogy.
Coriolanus deals with the founding of Rome and Antony and Cleopatra with
Roman decadence and the beginning of its collapse (Stefanovi 1939d:
XVIII). He stresses that these plays do not only deal with the tragedy of
the characters themselves, but are tragedies dealing with the great Roman
epoch with human history (Stefanovi 1939d: XVIII). However, they are
also tragedies of certain great, powerful, spiritual driving forces of human
life and history (Stefanovi 1939d: XVIII). Here again we can see the then
dominant Eurocentrism, where the history of all mankind is equated with
the history of the beginning of Western civilization.
As A. Brandl noted, in Midsummer Nights Dream, Shakespeare parodies
his youthful moving, tragic history of Romeo and Juliet (Stefanovi 1924:
VI). Both plays deal with the devastating power of love. While the lovers in
Romeo and Juliet really do kill themselves, in Midsummer Nights Dream the
killing takes place on the Athenian craftsmens stage in Pyramus and Thisbe
and is carried out with a stage knife used by actors. By using this comic
device, Shakespeare showed the drama of love as the most devastating,
tragic force that seizes not only the human world and life on earth, but also
the divine and cosmic world. Explaining the infatuation of gods and men
with love, Stefanovi uses Nietzsches terminology conceptualizing it as:

Stefanovi thought that from the time of Romeo and Juliet up to Goethes Werther, love
had not been portrayed in such tragic tones as that in Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet,
thus giving love its expression for centuries to come.
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the contrast between the quiet beauty of the classics and

the chaotic beauty of romanticism, between the Apollonian
and Dionysian spirit. While passions infatuate the gods and
humans, so they talk nonsense, argue, fight, insult each other,
become evil wisdom subdues love and all other passions, and
is overfilled with beauty, beauty that flows from Theseus words
and Hippolytas mouth like the perfect harmony of the Good and
the Beautiful (Stefanovi 1924: VII).
In addition, Puck, as the mediator between the supernatural world and the
world of mortals, gives special power to this Shakespearean play, as well
as to the mythical characters of Titania and Oberon. Stefanovi thinks that
he is one of the most beautiful of all Shakespeares creations and the most
daring match to the ethereal and tragic Ariel from the Tempest. As a kind
of airy, forest and domestic spirit, Puck is the eternal, mild, kind, never
bitter always smiling irony of the higher powers that oversees man and
his destiny, even the destiny of the gods (Stefanovi 1924: VIII-IX). While
many of Shakespeares characters had earlier versions, Lears Fool is entirely
Shakespeares creation. He is a human type somewhere between Sancho
Panza and Mephisto. Half cynic, half person of common sense, the eternal
companion of human tragedy, with all the power of realism the chorus of the
Greek tragedy has been brought to life (Stefanovi 1923: XVII). One of the
great paradoxes of Shakespeares genius was, explains Stefanovi, to have
transformed a comic figure from his earlier play into a profoundly tragic
one. He compares Lears Fool with the fool Feste from Twelfth Night, who
is the noblest and most beautiful of Shakespeares creations in the comedy
genre just as Lears Fool is his highest creation in the genre of tragedy
(Stefanovi 1922: XIII). Stefanovi pays special attention to the character
of Hamlet, which surpasses the artistic representation of an individual
because he is a type representing all cultured mankind; cultured first of all
(Stefanovi 1921b: V), stressing that Hamlet represents a type of culture,
i.e. high culture. When Hazlitt listed his character traits, he spoke about
a type of man, about a cultured type (Stefanovi 1921b: V). According
to Stefanovi, Faust and Hamlet are parallel works of world literature.
They connect the lowest, deepest foundations and the highest peaks of
literature and culture with the same artistic expression. Like Hamlet, Faust
also came out of popular stories and legends after previous attempts to
adapt and stage it. There was an older Hamlet than Shakespeares and
there is a preserved Hamlet from popular stories where only the contours
of the main characters of his play exist (Stefanovi 1921b: VI-VII).
74
Summarizing the numerous interpretations of Hamlets character

from Coleridge and Goethe up to the time the introductory notes were
written, Stefanovi groups them into three categories on the basis of which
Shakespeare constructs Hamlets character. The first discusses Hamlets
intellectual heights, the second talks about his paralyzed will, while the
third deals with his melancholy that develops into simulated madness
(Stefanovi 1921b: XI). Hamlet is the end of the past and the beginning
of something new. He was the first to feel what is termed after Nietzsche
disgust over the misery of human existence; we can find similar thoughts in
Macbeth. There are numerous copies of Hamlet from German romanticism
to the Russian Hamlet in Ivan S. Turgenevs stories. Stefanovi points out
that apart from the Bible, Hamlet was and has remained the fundamental
book of importance for the spiritual life of the modern world (Stefanovi
1921b: XVII). An insight into the religious spirit of modern man cannot be
gained without the Bible, just as the philosophical and moral thought of
modern man cannot be understood without Hamlet, even if both ideas are
later rejected. He develops his thoughts in the following way:
Hamlet is a great elevation of man above himself, the first great
rotation of the value of human life after Christs, the kind that
even Dante, the greatest poet of the Christian epoch, did not
do; and which firstly Goethe without the Christian spirit, in the
sense of a vain attempt at resurrecting the old Hellenic spirit,
and then Nietzsche, similarly in a vain attempt to resurrect the
Dionysian spirit, tried to do. In their own way, the first with his
aspiration for harmony and the cult of harmony, the second with
his aspiration for power and the cult of power, both Goethe and
Nietzsche actually tried to elevate some values that were not
new, but were those that Hamlet had toppled: the value and cult
of harmony and the enjoyment of life and the value and cult of
power. We say that Hamlet had toppled these values once and
forever. He was the first to feel that harmony was actually the
harmony of baseness of general life, human beings and human
nature, and what is called enjoyment in life is actually enjoyment
in the baseness and transience of all life. He was also the first to
feel that the path of power is really the path of evil and crime
and not the path of the happiness he is striving for. He elevated
the value of the human spirit above these values: he was the first
prophet, the first oracle of the gospel of the spirit, none other
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than the spirit of knowledge. The greatest aspect which brings

man closer to God is the one that Hamlet already knows the
power of knowledge (Stefanovi 1921b: XVIII-XIX)
Shakespeare probably liked Hamlet more than his other plays because he
constructed the whole play carefully as well as certain parts of it and the
significant scenes, especially those Hamlet appears in. This is confirmed by
the existence of three versions of the text, where Shakespeare painstakingly
modeled, corrected, supplemented, changed and improved the text of
the theme in accordance to his inner thoughts (Stefanovi 1921b: XIX).
Hamlet is a complicated character with an endless number of nuances. He
was the first prototype of the great tragic characters that would appear
hundreds of years later. Hamlet was a genius of skepticism to a number
of commentators, and a genius of fantasy to others. However, Stefanovi
thinks that it is crucial to note those of his attributes that give precedence
to the spirit, that elevate the spiritual above all other values. That was the
belief of a genius, of Hamlet, but above all of Shakespeare, who preaches
that only the spiritual is eternal (Stefanovi 1921b: XXI). Hamlet shows
how Shakespeare saw the future and in it the life of mankind, cultured,
and although it evolved from past forms lacking culture, it can never go
back to these forms and never will (Stefanovi 1921b: XXI). One phase
of mankind ends with him and a new one begins. Hamlet is spirit fighting
matter and Stefanovi predicts only spirit can overcome matter (Stefanovi
1921b: XIX).
4) Problems of translation
One important aspect of Shakespeareology is to show the genealogy
of Shakespeares themes, narratives, motives and characters and this is
what Svetislav Stefanovi has done in his texts on Shakespeares plays.
Following these genealogies, we see how the themes, motives, narratives
and characters migrate and are transformed from one context to another
by means of translation. Thanks to translations, a text of one culture
can become accessible to another. Translations are the foundation on
which the literary practice of a language is constructed; they enable and
broaden the literary repertoire. Stefanovis comparative method applied
to Shakespeares dramas shows the dynamics of cultural transactions that
take place through translations.
76
I will discuss another aspect of translating Shakespeare that Stefanovi

dealt with at the end of his Foreword to Macbeth. Shakespeares language is
dense and complex; thus, each translation is at best only an interpretation.
This is reinforced by the fact that some of his plays have reached us in very
poor condition, which makes translating them all the more difficult. In
his own translation, in order to demonstrate this, Stefanovi mentions the
translations into other languages of a few verses from Macbeths famous
monologue in which he decides to kill King Duncan. Comparing the French,
Italian and German versions of this fragment by Maurice Maeterlinck,
Benjamin Laroche, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck and Cino
Chiarini, and those from the Serbian, Croatian and Slovene translations
by Vladimir Nazor, Oton upani and himself, he concluded that not only
did each translator express himself differently, but each had a different
understanding of the controversial details:
Understanding of the meaning spans extremes that I have cited
in my comment: If the (brutal) murder encompassed (as if in
a net) all the consequences and thus insured success for itself;
or: If the murder excluded, prevented all the consequences by
entangling them in a net, capturing them and thus with this
act ensured success for itself. By one understanding, the murder
casts a net on all of its consequences and in that net, in that catch
gains success; according to the other understanding, the murder
liberates itself from all the consequences because it entwines them
in a net and does not allow them to act, but by the very execution
of the murder attains success (Stefanovi 1939a: XXI).
Apart from the problem of understanding the meaning of the verses and
their interpretation, he also warns that much of the word play in not
translatable. Stefanovi gives an example: the original two verses from the
last scene of Act III in Macbeth:
Strange things I have heard that will to hand
Which must be acted ere they can be scannd

(cited in: Stefanovi 1939a: XXII).
Numerous examples of French translations are given in their original French
form with the Serbian translation, followed by Stefanovis comment that
all translations convey the same meaning, that they all have the same
words, but there are incredible differences in the shades of meaning. It
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shows how simple verses can be translated and their meaning expressed
in many different ways, but not one of the cited versions, apart from
retaining the meaning and all the key words, has retained the versification
and rhymed verse; thus, it does not express what the original does in
the shades of meaning: some say more and some say less, but all in a
different way to the original (Stefanovi 1939a: XXIV). He says that there
is a French translation by De Roquigni that stops the tradition of prose
translation by translating Macbeth in rhymed verse; it is a concise and
shorter version, closer to the spirit of the original. He adds that Schlegels
German translation is actually an adaptation in accordance with the drama
conventions of the age he lived in. He also discusses the translations of
us the Yugoslavs (Stefanovi 1939a: XXIV). He gives examples of how
Shakespeares problematic verse is worded in his own Serbian translation,
written in 1902, then in the Croatian translation by Nazor from 1917
and the 1921 Slovene translation by upani. Of his own translation, he
says that it is almost literally true to the original. Nazors version is most
extensive and least true to the original because the translator has omitted
the rhyme and changed the rhythm, the form of the verse, because he did
not translate from the English original but from an Italian prose translation.
upanis is among the most concise of our translations and although
he exceeds the number of verses in comparison to the English original,
he used iambic decasyllables with retained rhyme in verses (Stefanovi
1939a: XXVIII).
5. Conclusion
Shakespeares works have been present in Eastern Europe since the 17th
century with the first translations made from German texts. Particularly
interesting were the translations of Shakespeare written from the 18th to
the 20th century at a time when European national identities were being
formed (Stbrn 2012: 57-76).
Svetislav Stefanovi wrote his texts on William Shakespeare from the
perspective of the central, hegemonic position of European literature as

Vladislava Gordi Petkovis analysis is interesting. She compared how Konstantin

Stanii, Laza Kosti and Svetislav Stefanovi translated Shakespeares metaphors in
regards to: whether they retell the meaning and change the meaning, reveal the original
or on the contrary hide it from the reader (Gordi-Petkovi 2006: 8).
78
world literature, which was standard procedure up to the 1970s. Stefanovi

treats Shakespeare as a classic, which means that he accepts the assumption
that his work is universal and always modern because each new generation
recognizes its worth. He emphasizes that his works were created on the basis
of existing sources. By using the comparative method, Stefanovi shows
how themes, motives, narratives and characters migrate from one context
to another, which indicates the unity of European literature (regarded as
world literature). Translation plays a key role in this process. Stefanovis
interpretations have a performative effect: Shakespeares work became
a part of Serbian literary heritage and at the same time Serbian literary
culture is shown to be a part of the world system because Shakespeare is
one of the most significant classics in that system as the Forewords show
in detail.
Translated by Vanda Perovi
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Stefanovi, S. (1939d) , . (Introduction). In:
: . : . :
. pp. xi-xxiv.
Stbrn, Z. (2012). Shakespeare & Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
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Virk, T. (2007). Primerjalna knjievnost na prelomu tisoletja: Kritini

pogled. (Comparative Literature at the turn of the 21st Century: A Critical
Review). Ljubljana: Zaloba ZRC, ZRC SAZU.
Received: 5 September 2014

,
( ). , ,
, .
,
,
.
: , , , ,
,
82
UDC 821.111.09 .
Zorica Beanovi Nikoli*

Belgrade, Serbia
SHAKESPEARE STUDIES, PHILOSOPHY

AND WORLD LITERATURE**
Abstract
This paper presents introductory considerations of two new books of Shakespearean
criticism: The Demonic. Literature and Experience by Ewan Fernie and Free Will. Art
and Power on Shakespeares stage by Richard Wilson, both published in 2013, and
both remarkable for encompassing Shakespeare studies, philosophy and world
literature within their respective critical scopes. In The Demonic, Shakespeare is
considered, along with Milton, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Kierkegaard and other
authors, in the context of demonic transgression, paradoxically close to the mystical
knowledge of what is beyond self-experience. This book is an audacious step
away from the current literary criticism in so far as it insists on responding to the
crucial ontological and ethical questions by passionate spiritual engagement with
art, literature and philosophy. In Wilsons Free Will the focus is on Shakespeares
demystification of the ruse of power, based on both truthful experience and
careful performance of nonentity, which produced a specific form of early modern
creative autonomy. Free Will is as provocative as The Demonic because it mediates,
directly or indirectly, awareness of the aporetic nature of weakness and power of
the weakness of power and the power in weakness.
Key words: Shakespeare studies, literature, experience, art, aesthetics, the
demonic, freedom, power
*
**
E-mail address: z.b.nikolic@fil.bg.ac.rs

This text has been written as part of the Knjienstvo project (No. 178029) of the Ministry
of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.
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Two important books of Shakespearean Criticism by two outstanding

Shakespeare critics delineated the year 2013 and greeted Shakespeares
450th anniversary with sharp, lucid and provocative thinking worthy of
the Bard himself. At the very beginning of year 2013, Routledge published
The Demonic. Literature and Experience by Ewan Fernie, and at its end,
Manchester University Press brought out Free Will. Art and Power on
Shakespeares Stage by Richard Wilson. Although Shakespeare studies have
been saturated with theory, philosophy and comparative criticism of world
literature for more than three decades, ever since the postmodern critical
approaches to literature were brought into Shakespearean scholarship with
deconstruction and new historicism, these two books and their authors
distinguish themselves by the particularly wide arrays of the involved
philosophical perspectives and exceptionally diverse literary works from
non-Anglophone traditions. In these two books, two Shakespearean
polyhistors offer their most exigent, but at the same time most gratifying
thinking.
1. Observingly distilled
There is some soul of goodness in things evil
Would men observingly distil it out
W. Shakespeare, Henry V, 4.1.4-5
Ewan Fernie, The Demonic. Literature and Experience London and New York:
Routledge, 2013, 312 p.
The critical and theoretical trajectory which precedes The Demonic.
Literature and Experience began with Ewan Fernies first monograph Shame
in Shakespeare (2002), and continued with articles and chapters in books on
presentism or in the context of the spiritual turn in Shakespeare studies,

Ewan Fernie, Shakespeare and the Prospect of Presentism, Shakespeare Survey 59

(2005); Terrible Action: Recent Criticism and the Questions of Agency, Shakespeare
2 (2006); Action: Henry V, Presentist Shakespeares, ed. by Hugh Grady and Terrence
Hawkes, London and New York: Routlegde, 2007.
Ewan Fernie, ed, Spiritual Shakespeares, London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
84
Zorica Beanovi Nikoli Shakespeare Studies, Philosophy and World Literature
editorial and authorial work within the series Shakespeare Now!, published
by Arden, and collections of essays Reconceiving the Renaissance: A Critical
Reader(Oxford University Press, 2006) and Redcrosse: Remaking Religious
Poetry for Todays World (Bloomsbury, 2012). In 2004, Gary Taylor and the
Hudson Strode Program selected Fernie as one of the six most brilliant
scholars of Renaissance drama in the world under 40. Presently, Ewan
Fernie is Chair of Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute of the
University of Birmingham in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The arc which could be drawn between Shame in Shakespeare and The
Demonic would show that in his first book Fernie had already developed a
complex, ethically and politically alert enquiry into the spiritual extremes
in Shakespeares works. The intensity of shame as related to two lost
traditions the heroic and the Christian and as manifested in identity
(de)formation and the sense of responsibility in Richard III, Hamlet,
Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus was the focus of
his first monograph. In The Demonic, however, Fernies interpretative scope
is significantly wider (its span reminds one of the comparative literature
criticism and hermeneutics practiced by Erich Auerbach or George Steiner)
and his philosophical scrutiny is more extended than in the first book, at
the same time daring and exigent, conscientious and refined. The Demonic
is divided into three major parts: Demonic negativity, Turnabout
and dialectic and Possession, with two subdivisions The agony in
possessing and The possessed, thus encompassing the phenomenon of
the demonic in literature, philosophy and experience. Like all important
works of criticism, writes Jonathan Dollimore in the Foreword, this book
unobtrusively involves us in larger metaphysical considerations about
human individuality, social being, and especially our relationship to others
and other cultures. (Fernie 2013: xvii)
The opening chapter Dark night of the soul evokes the famous poem
Noche oscura del alma of St John of the Cross, as well as the corresponding
Catholic metaphor for spiritual crisis, but none of the two is explicitly
mentioned. It introduces a number of urgent contemporary questions

Eric Mallin, Godless Shakespeare; Amy Scott Douglas, Shakespeare Inside; Philip Davis,
Shakespeare Thinking; Douglas Bruster, To be or Not to Be; Henry Turner, Shakespeares
Double Helix; Michael Witmore, Shakespearean Metaphysics; Lukas Erne, Shakespeares
Modern Collaborators; Steve Mentz, At the Bottom of Shakespeares Ocean; Philippa
Kelly, The King and I; David Fuller, The Life in the Sonnets; Will McKenzie and Theodora
Papadopoulou (ed.), Shakespeare and I; Graham Holderness, Nine Lives of William
Shakespeare; David Schalkwyk, Hamlets Dreams.
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regarding literature, experience, aesthetics and ethics, which will be dealt

with in hermeneutic focusing on the demonic in the works of Shakespeare
and a number of other authors of world literature Marlowe, Milton,
Donne, Dostoevsky, Mann, Melville, James, Huxley, and Coetzee, as well
as of theology St Paul, St Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius the Arepoagite,
Martin Luther, Paul Tillich, and Karl Barth, and philosophy Kant, Schelling,
Hegel, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Kierkegaard, and Arendt. A distinctive line of
Fernies thought comes out of his response to the writings of Georges Bataille
and to Jonathan Dollimores criticism. Fernie distances his own position
from new historical criticism, because the latter obliterates the subjectivity
of aesthetic experience. At the same time, he sees theory/philosophy as
abstraction from experience, and political criticism as a position which
provides comfortable distance from the painful ambivalences of moral
life. It seems as if the editor of the series Shakespeare Now, in which the
volume Shakespeare and I appeared, is confronting us with the urgency
of an intense personal response to the real presences of literature. Like
George Steiner in Real Presences, he discusses Rilkes Archaic Torso of Apollo
(Steiner 1989: 142-143) as a metaphor of art which can and should change
our life. Even without Kafkas well-known image of an axe which should
break the frozen sea within our being, Fernies arguments that literature
matters are as compelling.
Fernie believes that new intellectual and spiritual engagement with art
should involve looking eyes wide open into the liminal area between
life and death, into the controversies of the tragic, into the spheres of
transgression and transcendence, and, there within, into the demonic.
With Richard of Gloucester, Macbeth and Iagos famous statement I am
not what I am (Othello, I, 1, 65) at the centre of his attention, Fernie sees
Shakespeare as foretelling demonic modernity. Gods anchoring selfidentification from Exodus (3. 14) I am that I am serves as an essential
opposite to the Devils snap, as Fernie puts it, of I am not what I am. Along
this dangerous and highly elevated tightrope between the two ultimate
ontological positions, Fernie exploits his arguments by way of interpreting
literary works of art. What happens when the rejection of the self involves
the undoing of ones own being, as in Coriolanus? The annihilation of the
self without physical distraction is tragic, says Fernie, but at the same time,
the self without natural and social predicates is deeply stirring in its purity.
As if a man were author of himself and knew no other kin (Coriolanus 5.
3. 36-37) is the starting point for understanding Richard of Gloucesters
doing and undoing himself as a king, for Macbeths as well, and for Lady
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Macbeths unsexing and subsequent auto-destruction. The negative form

of life is then, in Fernies hermeneutic dialogues, considered in Miltons
Satan, in Byrons, Shelleys and Blakes works and their echoes in the
twenty-first century counter-cultural voices (with a tendency to become
the mainstream). Stable identities are rare in modernity and post-modern
times and Fernie explores the gnoseological potential of understanding I am
not what I am. The undermining of the self or its evacuation is approached
from a wide range of positions such as existentialism, deconstruction,
psychoanalysis and a number of postmodern eclectic perspectives.
Demonic literary characters like Macbeth or Stavrogin are personal
possibilities of evil. Fernie investigates the negativity turning into mysterious
positive power and searches for arguments in theology and philosophy.
Contrary to the postulates of the privatio boni theory, associated with St
Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Fernie accentuates places
in both thinkers works which express, substantiate and perhaps even
glamorize evil (Fernie 2013: 14). On his way to articulating the paradoxical
(and alluring) indivisibility of good and evil, the author looks for arguments
in Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but his methodically
responsible discussion pays due attention to Kants qualification of evil as
an ultimate dedication to self-interest, or Hannah Arendts banality of evil.
Some of the instances of the demonic Fernie will understand as merely
evil and nothing else, whereas in some cases he will find that negativity
carried into the self can produce an ecstatic openness to others where
eros and ethics merge; and where, though it risks possession, the demonic
even acquires a touch of sainthood (Fernie 2013: 17). A polemical
dialogue emerges from Fernies consideration of the equally generally
and philosophically entitled book by Terry Eagleton On Evil (2010),
and differences become clear: Fernie wants to investigate the subjective
possibilities of evil, not evil in the conceptual abstraction, but the demonic
as a form of life mediated by art. And that he finds in Shakespeare,
Goethe, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Mann, but also in the criticism of
another contemporary critic Jonathan Dollimore. Georges Bataille leads
Fernie towards the central argument of this book that demonic literature
represents a revolutionary challenge to traditional ethical ontology, that
St Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: OUP, 1998), 2, 3-4, pp. 2831; Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works, trans. Colin Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press,
1987), p. 85.
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good and evil are mutually intensifying and inextricable (Fernie 2013:
24-25).
Later on in the book, Karl Jaspers provides more vivid arguments: the
demonic is the failure of being, but on the other hand it is an alternative
to being. It is vacant and infinite, says Fernie, following Jaspers, because it
is vacant, it is infinite. It is an abyss of nothingness, says Jaspers, dragging
everything into its whirl. Finding stimulation for his own thoughts in
Jaspers, Bataille and Dollimore, Fernie is, on the other hand, skeptical
towards the tendency to sacralize negativity in various ways in Levinas,
Derrida and iek, rather than to demonize it. Closest to Bataille, he is
interested in the possibility of both sacralizing and demonizing negativity.
In the conclusion of the chapter Dark night of the soul, Fernie
investigates negativity and darkness in the deity and turns to theologians
Paul Tillich and Karl Barth. In Tillich, he finds the demonic without the
acknowledged darkness, and in Barth religion described as an abyss, a
terror, where demons appear. Evil, for Barth, is a great negative possibility
which, just like true religion, has the power of transforming the world.
This offers Fernie a starting point for his interpretations of literature:
Reading Barth, good and evil start to look like opposite sides of what in
fact is a Mbius strip, even though nothing can be more important than
distinguishing them. Here is an agony of soul to bring us in contact with
the terrors of existence that, according to Kierkegaard, moral systems dont
reach. (Fernie 2013: 31)
The sequence of interpretations begins with Luther and his potent and
long lasting contribution to the vivid and influential presence of the Devil
in the minds of Protestant believers as well as in the creative imagination
of Western literature, from Marlowe to Thomas Mann. Spirituality
which involves sinfulness is what Fernie highlights as Luthers gift to the
playwrights of the Elizabethan age, who, in his opinion, dared to go further
than Luther, the first of them being Marlowe in Doctor Faustus, whose Faust
is not only an antitype of Luther, but, in a way, a metaphor of Luther. If
one abandons oneself to sin and negation, i.e., gives oneself temporarily
to the Devil, and hopes for Gods grace, one is like Faustus, says Fernie,
and vulnerable to being damned like him. He stresses that sainthood is
perilously close to damnation hence, the tragic allure of the Faustian
figures. In Marlowes Doctor Faustus, however, there is at least a hint of the
possibility of redemption, whereas in Macbeth, demonic negation excludes
the God of redemption and shows Gods bloody Stage.
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The questions Fernie detects in Macbeth are terrifying: what if

the demonic in fact is the last rung on the ladder, what if this is human
personhood at its highest? but his analysis minute and painstaking is
persuasive. Macbeths ambition to exceed himself is not realized by the
mediating power of a Mephistopheles, nor is he a servant to Satan (on the
contrary, his servant is Seyton). Macbeth, Shakespeares Faustus as Fernie
calls it, emerges as the most radical artistic exposure of the vertiginously
destructive heights of human ambition, which doesnt settle for life
humbly accepted as mere givenness. Miltons Satan, next in Fernies focus,
is introduced as Macbeth raised to cosmological significance, the
demonic in pure form (Fernie 2013: 69). Satan is someone who wants
something else, and something more than Gods creation. What makes
him grand is that he is not self-deceiving; he turns away from the debt
immense of endless gratitude so burdensome (Paradise Lost 4. 53) and
steps into uncreated, autonomous selfhood, says Fernie. The two points
that Fernie is making are that Satan is the primordial sufferer, the first
created being to feel pain, which makes him akin to humanity, and the
first being to have sex as known to humans, involving fantasy, perversion
and cruelty, since in Paradise Lost, demonic sexuality precedes natural
sexuality. Thence an analogy: Adam and Eve become fully human with the
integrated experience of demonic desire [...] to be someone else in and
through desire, says Fernie. For the demonic being, as Gods creation, is
not enough.
Interpretations of Macbeth and Paradise Lost, along with those that
follow of Dostoevskys Demons and Thomas Manns Doctor Faustus, stand
out as a book-within-a-book. Whereas in Fernies readings of Macbeth and
Paradise Lost, the accent is mainly on the universal human condition, in
Dostoevsky and Mann, symbolic representations of the demonic related
to the cultural conditions of the Western world, Europe, Russia, Germany,
and Christianity in its Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant variants prove
themselves equally, if not more, pertinent. The philosophical import of
Fernies interpretation of Stavrogin, as the most alluring personification of
the demonic in Dostoevsky, a distant and infinitely more intensified kin of
Shakespeares Hal and Hamlet, lies in the consideration of a state beyond
identity. Not only is he, in his amoral conduct, in his pride and haughtiness,
on the other side of the human condition of being understood as humbly
accepted givenness fulfilled in love or, furthermore, on the other side
of good and evil, Stavrogin is, along with being recklessly unfaithful to
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others and to God, incapable of fidelity to himself, as is well shown by

Fernie. His constant self-negation is what, according to Fernie, brings him
close to the spiritual self-negation of the saints, and makes him a negative,
demonic variant of such an ontological ek-stasis. The philosophical aspect
of Fernies reading of Doctor Faustus belongs to ethics and aesthetics at the
same time, like the philosophical aspects of the novel itself. The demonic is
again related to Shakespeare, only more so, in persuasive parallels between
early modern recognition of the barrenness of parody and self-subversion
in Loves Labours Lost, on the one hand, and in the eponymous modern
opera written by Manns central character, composer Adrian Leverkhn,
on the other. The extremes of heat and cold in the music of the German
composer, with their infernal and apocalyptic echoes, symbolically reflect
the artists existential aloofness, chill, and absence of love, conditioned by
modern Faustus contract with the Devil in exchange for the groundbreaking
artistic expression. The motivational lines of the novel are polyvalent in
representing the demonic in modern art, in German Nazism, in Lutheran
Christianity and in Western civilization. All these semantic potentials
receive adequate elaboration in Fernies interpretation, along with the
major challenge of the novel: the paradox of art, which is at the same time
demonic and serene. Leverkhns new musical system (the metaphorical
representation of Schnbergs dodecaphony) is perfectly organized and
rational, like a magic square, and Mann uses it as a symbolic parallel
to the demonically destructive politics of Nazism. Nevertheless, Manns
modern artist is a cold transgressor, but he is also a self-chosen pharmakos.
Leverkhns final composition is his most infernal work, but, oddly enough,
it brings the possibility of beauty and of harmony, of an art being on
intimate terms with humanity: auf Du und Du. The demonic transgressor
and demonic transgression bring us to the other side of good and evil
once more. Parallel to that and concerning form as a carrier of meanings
demonic transgressions require generic transgressions: neither Demons
nor Doctor Faustus can be seen as exemplary novels in terms of their form.
In fact, it is the contrary, just like Goethes demonic masterpiece Faust,
especially Part II, which is generically indefinable and utterly (diabolically)
shape-shifting, as if the artistic structures, and not only the characters,
signify I am not what I am.
Part Two brings philosophical support to Fernies audacious advocacy
of the demonic as a paradoxically positive transgression which, like the
dark night of the soul, can lead to intensely pure spiritual states comparable
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mutatis mutandis to those of the saints. Kierkegaard comes first with his insight
concerning different forms of self-expressive non-conformity in the demonic
and the religious. After Kierkegaards responsibility and intensification of
true faith in the demonic aspects of fear and trembling, as a superlative of
intensity comes Nietzsche with his affirmative, albeit ambivalent and agonized
recognition of the demonic. Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell serves
both as a poetic equivalent of Nietzschean enthusiasm for the demonic and
an introduction to the ensuing dialectic in the works of Boehme, Schelling
and Hegel, where the ecstatic freedom of demonic energy is balanced with
the holiness of existential and spiritual peace.
Part Three deals with the relationship of the demonic and desire in
the ambit of possession. Again, between Tillich, in whose theology Fernie
finds a clear distinction between demonic possession and religious ecstasy,
and Barths understanding of religion as a fearful thing in which human
opening to the absolute implies sacrifice, suffering and giving up the
rational structure of the mind, the author follows Barth. Upon entering the
most disturbing, tormenting and intimate area of being the paradoxes of
demonic possession be it on the side of the possessing or the possessed,
Fernie is determined to give it an openly personal approach. A version of the
essay previously published in the collection Shakespeare and I (McKenzie and
Papadopoulou, eds. 2012: 19-39) entitled Mea culpa, now appears under
the title Angelo and elucidates the sin in loving virtue of Shakespeares
Angelo from Measure for Measure as demonic profanation dependent on deep
awareness of the Good. Fernie manages to interweave a critical reading of
the play with an ethical analysis, focusing not only on the characters of the
play: Angelo and Isabella, but on his very own self as well, thus powerfully
drawing the readers into a whirlpool of self-examination. As in a natural
vortex, our attention is whirled to the bottom of the problem and, after a
memorable experience, released back to the academic decorum of reading
literary criticism. An impressive accomplishment!
The ethical transgression inherent in possession is then examined in
Melvilles Claggart from Billy Budd, in Jamess Miss Jessel from The Turn of
the Screw, and in a thrilling analysis of Yeats Leda, with a double focus on
Ledas human subjectivity of subjection and on the indifferent possession
of the supernatural rapist Zeus. The closing counterpoint of this section
is both a disturbing and comforting consideration of Christ as possessor
in the contemporary novel The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, and in
Christian authors such as St John of the Cross and St John Chrysostom.
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The final section of the book, at the other end of the phenomenon of
possession, deals with the radical receptivity of the possessed. The third
Shakespearean climax of this book, after Macbeth and Measure for Measure,
comes with the reading of King Lear focused on Poor Tom not Poor Tom as
Edgars fraudulent, histrionic performance from Greenblatts famous essay
Shakespeare and the Exorcists (Greenblatt 1988: 127), and not Edgar of
cheerful and confident endurance, as described by Bradley (Bradley 1920:
306), but Poor Tom as Edgars demon-afflicted, utterly deprived, egoless
alter ego. Fernie asserts that Poor Toms voice is more alive and more
truthful than Edgars sane clichs. The multifarious demons possessing
Poor Tom embody the existential recognition that, far from being masters
of our own fate, we are, in multitudinous ways, mastered by them, claims
Fernie (2013: 227). The subjectivity of subjection in this instance involves
giving ones self to many possessors. Like the possessed man from St Marks
Gospel who says My name is Legion: for we are many (Mark, 5. 2), Poor
Tom is also many, he is not what he is, but oddly enough, he is, according
to Lear, the thing itself (King Lear, 3,4, 104), and according to Bradley,
in the secret of things (Bradley 1920: 289). The painful experience of
unwilling (or willing) susceptibility and openness, of spiritual nakedness
is, stresses Fernie, inseparable from a fully experienced life. The radical
example of Poor Tom prompts the author to juxtapose his interpretation
with the Levinasian theory of the primacy of the Other, and to juxtapose,
once more, the demonic and the sainthood, on the common ground of selfabandon which, in both cases, extends into mystical knowledge of what is
beyond self-experience. (Fernie 2013: 236)
Two more literary texts Huxleys The Devils of Loudon and J. M.
Coetzees The Master of Petersburg are paralleled with two personally
related experiences of possession unmediated by art. As suggested in
the subtitle: Literature and Experience, the book ends with a thoroughly
disturbing personal record of the experience of possession by Daniel
Paul Schreber, famous for his psychiatric case history. The artistically
unmediated experience of real spiritual nakedness makes the ending
bitterly memorable and irrevocably unsettling.
Throughout the book, just as in the final section, which ties up
various lines of intellectual elaboration of the demonic, one feels the
presence of a self-subverting undercurrent reminder not to place too much
confidence in intellectual formulas, but to feel disturbed by literature and
responsible to experience. The Demonic seems to have been written with
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the Kierkegaardian intention to keep the wound of negativity open and

with a refusal to derive positive, cozy joy from life. Thus, the author lets
the two closing lines of the book create lingering awe for the readers: The
most gruesome time of my life was the most holy time of my life. and I
am not what I am.
2. The Aesthetics of Freedom
Richard Wilson, Free Will: Art and Power on Shakespeares Stage,

Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013.
Richard Wilsons intellectual and critical atlas is a complex diagram which
offers a creative and provocative consideration of several theoretical
fields. In Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority (1993), he
positioned himself as a new historicist and defined his methodology as
a Foucauldian dialogue between theory and archives; this was followed
by Secret Shakespeare: Studies in theatre, religion and resistance (2004),
which approached Shakespeares reticence regarding religious questions
in the manner of postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion, sensitive to the
unsaid/unwritten, and the dynamic interchange with Derrida, Foucault,
Bourdieu, Deleuze, Lacan, Levinas, Hlne Cixous in Shakespeare in French
Theory: King of Shadows (2007). In his latest book Free Will: Art and Power
on Shakespeares Stage (2013), Wilson expands the demanding theoretical
horizon of his works towards Kants and Adornos aesthetics, the intricacies
of the political theology of Ernst Kantorowitz and Carl Schmitt, and the
political and cultural theory of Jrgen Habermas and Jacques Rancire.
From the initial research of the material conditions of Shakespearean
authority in Will Power, via his detailed inquiry into the resistance to
resistance and politique respect for the secrecy of the human heart of
Secret Shakespeare, Richard Wilson has arrived at the point from where he
offers an insight into the paradoxical nature of the power of weakness
on the one hand and the weakness of power on the other. In Free Will,
the readers will find a thorough, refined and precisely developed analysis
of the artists desire for powerful powerlessness, the power in self-irony,
passivity and creative unselfing.
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Having chosen to reiterate Shakespearean expressions of freedom

in plays and poems, with relevant emphases on artistic and political
stances, Richard Wilson composes his book by concentrating on the most
intriguing semantic knots. In his approach to Shakespeares dual role as
player and playwright, he draws on theories concerned with the meaning
derived from both personal presence and symbolic representation. Leaving
aside what he calls the current doxa of Shakespeare as the exemplar of
either sacred monarchy or monarchical selfhood, he conducts his line of
reasoning by showing that Shakespeares plays untie freedom from royalty
and dismantle sovereignty in all its forms. Richard Wilsons introduction
of Simone Weil into the discussion of the Shakespearean subject real
playwright, real actor, fictional king, fictional servant, real king and real
servant is illuminating and thought-provoking. Instead of a subject
position, Shakespeare seems [] to fall back to what might be better
termed an abject position, says Wilson and introduces Simone Weils
conviction that the only way into truth is through ones own annihilation
and utter humiliation. Throughout the book, the author detects politics of
presence and poetics of representation, showing the rivalry of state and
stage in Shakespearean culture. The convolution of dramatic art Wilson
concentrates upon consists of the controversial position of our bending
author from the epilogue of Henry V and numerous other instances
whose ironic resistance depends upon restraint. The straightforward
opposition to absolutism, a characteristic of Isaiah Berlins concept of
negative liberty, in Wilsons view, doesnt answer for Shakespeares authorial
attitude. On the contrary, by assuming the predetermined subservient
role of the artist, which made so many critics see him as a supporter of
absolutism, Shakespeare, ever the post-structuralist avant la lettre,
in Wilsons words, knew that entry into the symbolic order is a form of
castration. He demystified the ruse of power by the careful performance of
nonentity, which, paradoxically, produced a specific form of early modern
creative autonomy.
Drawing on Adornos opinion developed in Aesthetic Theory that the
social aspect of art is not its manifest position taking, but its immanent
advance against society, performed by its form, not by any recognizable
social content, Wilson sees Shakespeare as an author who could hold the
mirror up to nature, or show virtue her own feature, or scorn her own
image in a far more superior way than Hamlet could have envisioned
at all. Later in the book, Wilson traces Pierre Bourdieus argument that
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the self-reflexivity of art is liberating and considers Shakespeares critical

thinking in relation to both political and artistic sovereignty.
Wilson develops Foucaults concept of inverted sovereignty, its infamy
and its Ubu-esque strategies, Derridas notion of iterabilit as repetition
that at the same time reiterates and brings change, Kierkegaards insight
that no repetition was possible in theatre, and connects them to Judith
Butlers psychoanalytic model of foreclosure as the formation of a subject
in subordination. One of the contentions of this book is that Shakespeare
discovered the Erasmian topos of the great stage of fools, present in King
Lear and elsewhere in Shakespeares works passim, as a pattern of showing
the dialectical dynamics of determinism on the one hand, and free will on
the other. The symbolic order that creates a subject is the same one which the
subject opposes. This line of argument brings Wilson to Ernst Kantorowitz
and the epochal transfer of sovereignty from ruler to poet, parallel not
only in the inherent autonomy, but also in the ritual humiliation as the
symbolic integration of the weakness of power to which kings were
obliged before coronation, and the always already humiliated position of
the artist as servant. Free Will, according to its author, is thus a book about
the creaturely echo-effect with which Shakespeare strove to minimize
the sovereignty of his own writing, and generated a world of difference
that exceeds the context of its enunciation not by contradicting, but by
answering power back in its own words. (Wilson 2013: 10) Reiteration
in the Derridean sense deconstructs and disarticulates the system. Via
Derrida, Wilson draws our attention to the paradox of the artistic desire for
powerful powerlessness. Ironic perspective and punning are at the heart
of it: How every fool can play upon the word! Shakespeare, therefore,
emerges from Free Will as an auto-ironic, auto-reflexive author, both
autonomous and subdued to power, involved in distinguishing representation
from presence, and language and art from power, all the time being aware of
their indivisibility, which Wilson sees as tragic.
The title of the first chapter Picture of Nobody recalls the CalibanStephano-Trinculo scene from The Tempest (3, 2) and Wilson employs its
echo as a background on which he develops the thesis that Shakespeare
must have been, throughout his life, involved in creating a willed authorial
nonentity. Concepts such as pre-Kantian interested disinterestedness,
active passivity, dramatics of attention, formula of potentiality, fulfillment
in non-fulfillment, epochal divestment of majesty, paperless person,
power of attendance and creative unselfing arise in their full complexity
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from Wilsons pulsating analyses of Kant, Derrida, Agamben, Lyotard,

Kantorowitz, Bataille, and Eliot. Throughout, Richard Wilson is ever
attentive to the authorial voices of contemporary Shakespeare scholarship
and never misses an occasion to intensify the polyphonic composition
of his own text by paying attention to his fellow Shakespeareans theses
regarding the matter he is dealing with (Greenblatt, Lupton, Hawkes,
Dollimore, Sinfield, Barker, Belsey, and Fernie). Diverse dimensions of
Shakespeares self-suppressing reticence are approached in this manner:
from the introductory scrutiny of his controversial comportment in the
Welcombe and Mountjoy cases via numerous lines which express the
players and playwrights self-effacing position, to the liberating refusal of
authorial sovereignty that Richard Wilson consequently conceptualizes.
The second chapter Welsh Roots takes readers into the dim light
of the rabbit-duck type contentious historical understanding of WelshEnglish and English-Welsh cultural and political relations, providing them
with a post postcolonial inversion of the Tudor state and its dignitaries as
Welsh colonizers of England. The new historicist thick description of the
introduction flows into a sharp interpretation of the education parody in
The Merry Wives of Windsor bringing together a multilayered discussion with
Terence Hawkes, George Bataille, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Rancire and
other interlocutors. Monthy Pythons perspective is one of the viewpoints
considered as well. In the next chapter O World, the focus widens
towards a more general outlook and encompasses the aesthetic aspects of
the Wooden O in 1599, at the newly-opened Globe theatre, along with
the political aspects of the fictive Roman world from the inauguration play
Julius Caesar and the intrusions of real Elizabethan politics. The German
jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt is addressed here, as elsewhere
throughout Free Will, for the constructive argument regarding the
disturbingly unresolved tension between Shakespearean yearning towards
the aesthetic purity of a play and the traumatic irruption of real history and
politics into the art of theatre. In search of the aesthetics of Shakespeares
freedom and the freedom of the aesthetic, Wilson knowingly insists on
conversing with Schmitt, who wouldnt accept the conceptual difference
of theatre, forum and the pulpit, but would, nevertheless, concede that
Shakespeare represented history as a ground to be negated, which, in
certain aspects at least, impels the poetic and theatrical transpositions of
the historical and political echoes and repetitions towards the interested
disinterestedness of the aesthetic.
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In the chapter Denmarks a prison, the sovereignty of art is under

scrutiny in the context of close affiliation with the utterly aestheticised
absolutism of the Danish King Christian IV. The lively narrated accounts of
John Dowland at the court of King Christian and the touring English theatre
companies at the courts of Germany and Netherlands flow into a carefully
carried out analysis of Hamlet in the light of King James relations with
Queen Annes brother Christian IV and the Oldenburg dynasty. Read from
such a perspective, Hamlet as a tragedy about a system that so dangerously
combines the barbaric and Baroque (Wilson 2013: 212), appears as a
daring provocation. Wilson sees Shakespeare as skating on very thin ice,
his symbolically mediated political allusions and premonitions as mad
impertinence. Along with an overview of the preceding criticism concerning
the meta-theatrical significance of Hamlets explicit and Shakespeares
implicit poetics of theatre, Wilson brings up Montroses expression metatheatrical tragedy of state, which in his interpretation becomes a tragedy
of non-cooperation, and winds the text up with a playful quotation from
another Dane Hans Christian Andersen and The Emperors New Clothes.
In peeling the onion of the stage and state dynamics, Wilson reaches
its very core without residue in a far-reaching interpretation of King Lear
entitled Great stage of fools: King Lear and the Kings Men. Structural
and symbolic analogies with the Cinderella-type motives, tales and myths,
folkloric or artistic, ascertain the elemental base of King Lear so as to
discern beneath it not only desacralized royal sovereignty but a specific
depersonalization of the playwrights work. The introduction of Kafkas story
The Hunger Artist and Becketts poetics symbolically and conceptually
support Wilsons hermeneutic turn towards the negative aesthetics. King
Lear, according to Wilson, touches upon symbolic self-castration, artistic
askesis comparable to the anoretic passive aggression directed against the
surrounding reality, the art of failure and the negative absolutism of the
autonomous artwork. In Adornos analysis of the modernist minimalism
of the Dadaist da-da, Wilson finds confirmation for the radical negative
aesthetic potential of the destitution, divestment, linguistic abstraction
and semantics of the absurd in King Lear. The Shakespeare of King Lear,
in Wilsons view, is by no means a flattering Kings man, profiting from his
privileged official position as appointed royal artist, but, on the contrary,
a profound, albeit skillfully disguised, provocateur who symbolically
deconsecrates the King and deconstructs the abject position of the artist
at the same time.
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Wilsons interpretation of Shakespeares implicit focus on the Stuart

dynasty requires close and exacting attention in the chapter on Macbeth
entitled Double trouble. The mirror from the masque that the Witches
set up for Macbeth, carried by the eighth ruler of the same dynasty, reflects
rulers with twofold balls and triple scepters, usually interpreted as James
VI of Scotland and I of England and perhaps his brother-in-law Christian
IV as well. Nevertheless, when Richard Wilson reminds his readers that the
eighth Stuart ruler was James mother Mary Queen of Scots, the meaning
suddenly becomes deeply controversial: was Shakespeare, instead of
adulation, symbolically mediating with artistic skill, ruse, freedom and
audacity the accusation of a son who was, more or less indirectly, a traitor
to his own mother? Less than a hundred lines later, in the very next scene,
Macduffs son, Richard Wilson reminds us, poses a crucial question What
is a traitor? Interdisciplinary arches are a distinctive trait of Wilsons
criticism, and theyre always suitably placed. One can hardly see a better
instance for a comparative analysis of Caravaggios Medusa painted for
the Medici and Shakespeares Macbeth played for James Stuart in the
same year 1606. These contemporaneous works which connect Baroque
and barbarity serve as an outline for a dialectically ramified argument
regarding the perception of the authorized and unauthorized, good and
bad violence. The arguments progress from Schmitts emphasis on theology
to Kantorowitzs emphasis on political in political theology, from Benjamins
critique of violence to Derridas deconstructive philosophy and in the end
lead the reader to the conclusion that Macbeth expresses a refusal of the
spiritually mystified violence invested in the modern state.
In the continuation of the study dealing with the anxiety of the
playwright whose art was not only intended for the general theatre
audience, but also a commanded performance at the absolutist court,
Wilson investigates an anamorphic reversal in Anthony and Cleopatra.
The seventh chapter Your crowns awry again refers to the poetics of
Baroque painting, adjacent to the poetics of Stuart theatre masque. The
painter in focus now is Velzquez and the painting is Las Meninas, famous
for the simultaneous representation of at least three perspectives: that of
the central characters, the princess and her maids of honour, that of the
hidden royal couple, reflected in a looking glass, and that of the painter,
offered to the spectator as a peculiar exercise of the aesthetics of freedom.
Velzquezs equally famous paining Las Hilanderas, with equally delicate
lingering tension between the absolutist power and the power of art, is
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another central analogy in this chapter. Wilsons innovative contribution

to discussions concerning visual and anamorphic semantics of the play
brings into focus the wryness of perspective vision, as well as the ironic
position of the artists own viewpoint and of the democratic gaze. The
given arguments bring to mind Friedrich Schlegels definition of irony as a
permanent parabasis, the indispensable element of the Attic Old Comedy,
primarily Aristophanes, in which the chorus comments on the action, and
provides a special knowing perspective to the audience. Wilson begins
with E. H. Gombrichs thesis that the idea of art in which the painters skill
of suggestion matches the publics skill in taking hints can be recognized in
Antonys words on the polymorphic transformations of a cloud (Antony and
Cleopatra 4, 14, 3-8). His elaborate debate, duly involving all the relevant
authors viewpoints concerning the play of perspectives, the phenomenon
of anamorphosis, the aspects of Mannerism and Baroque in the art of
painting and in the Jacobean theatre, ends with the contention that a
lower place of the waiting characters in Antony and Cleopatra, and mutatis
mutandis that of actors, playwrights, artists, physically close to power, but
socially and politically weak, is characterized by the uncanny power of
weakness.
The finale of the Free Will symphony deals with Coriolanus, the
unperformable play about unperformability. Related to Wilsons two
previous texts, Against the Grain: Representing the Market in Coriolanus
from Will Power and The Management of Mirth: Shakespeare via Bourdieu
from Marxist Shakespeares (Howard and Shershow, eds. 2001: 159-177), this
study penetrates into both the metaphoric and metonymic representation
of convoluted relationships between artists and the commercial public, on
the one hand, and aristocratic patrons, on the other. A careful deciphering
of Shakespeares hypothetical code of the autonomy of art, disguised in
the tragic fate of the Roman general who changes sides in search of a
dignified position for his own valour, introduces the specific standpoints
of Jrgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu. The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere by the German philosopher corresponds with historical
reports of the social dynamics at London playhouses in the early modern
age. Habermas traces the roots of art as a commodity to the playhouse in
which everyone had equal claim to judge and Wilson traces Shakespeares
metaphoric expressions of consumer demand in histories and Roman
plays, thus shedding light on the birth of the modern cultural public sphere
in which the urban audience becomes a sovereign of a consumer society.
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Bourdieus assertions from The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the
Literary Field fulfill Wilsons theoretical framework by illuminating the fact
that the artists who allege creative freedom in any cultural system are always
confronted with a double bind of economic demand and political command.
When interpreting Coriolanus as Shakespeares metaphoric/metonymic
expression of the aesthetic notion of interested disinterestedness, artfor-arts-sake represented as valour-for-valours-sake, Wilson widens the
picture towards a comparative and diachronic understanding of the works
of Flaubert and Baudelaire dealing with the same problem. In between the
public sphere and the demands of the powerful patrons, in Shakespeares
case, the Herbert family (brothers William and Philip, with their respective
lists of aristocratic titles, and their mother Mary, Countess of Pembroke,
Sir Philip Sidneys sister), stands a writer and player, who, like the general
he created, faces the complex issue of self-authorship (As if a man were
author of himself/ And knew no other kin (Coriolanus 5, 3, 35-37). The
play which was never presented on the public stage, but only for the Herbert
patrons and their guests, is, according to Stanley Cavell, Shakespeares
defence of poetry. Richard Wilson reads it as the most noncompliant
rejection of feudal livery and an assertion of freedom adroitly conveyed
by a playwright aware of the tension between the medieval concept of
sovereignty and the modern royalty of literary subject.
The closing movement of Richard Wilsons remarkable composition
winds up the preceding discussions often cynically demystifying and
involving tutti of postmodern theory, as well as Karl Schmitt and Ernst
Kantorowitz, Adorno and Habermas with the sparkling but serene
andante of the Epilogue entitled: No Sovereignty: Shakespeares voyage
to Greece. Elaborate scrutiny of both political and artistic sovereignty
and their interactive tensions, in historical reality and in dramatic fiction,
has prepared readers for Shakespeares utopian intimations of the late
plays, As You Like It and some of the Sonnets. Gonzalos famous utopian
fantasy from The Tempest is harshly undermined and deconstructed in the
play itself. Most of the plays discussed, as well as the romances, confirm
Shakespeares awareness of what Agamben calls the dark mystery of the
sovereign power, and his readiness to show, from play to play, princes
who beg for mercy. The Sonnets convey the idea of the poet as a superior
sovereign creator, but the poet of The Sonnets is tongue-tied Will
as well. Sovereignty and No Sovereignty. The Epilogue contains a studywithin-a-study on utopia, with Fredrick Jameson, Jacques Derrida, Marx-
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via-Derrida, and Marx-via-Jameson, Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, Giorgio

Agamben, Hlne Cixous, and Slavoj iek, as Wilsons co-locutors, along
with the presentist Shakespeareans: Ewan Fernie and Hugh Grady. Passages
with lively responses to the voices of Stephen Greenblatt, Julia Lupton,
Gary Taylor, David Norbrook, Simon Palfrey, and Kiernan Ryan confirm
the impression one has throughout this book, that Wilson always considers
the current issues in Shakespeare studies relevant for his own inquiry, and
never leaves them without recognition or creative dialogical expansion.
No Sovereignty emerges in the Epilogue from the Golden Age, Arcadian
and Utopian trans-temporal and symbolically powerful influences, and
from Pauline Christianity, here approached via Alain Badious postmodern
interpretation, from Heideggers ultimate disavowal of the sovereignty of all
decision making, or Hannah Arendts inference that renounced sovereignty
is a condition for freedom. Free Will shows Shakespeares art as free because
it mediates, directly or indirectly, an awareness of the aporetic nature of
weakness and power, of the weakness of power and the power in weakness.
At the very end of the Introduction, Wilson quotes David Reiffs meditation
on Susan Sontags death and his admiration for a writer who can express
human unimportance and remain compassionate, who can take in the
real measure of ones own insignificance. Immediately after that, Wilson
mentions the voluntary servitude of tienne de la Botie, Montaignes
friend, and one of the Renaissance thinkers to whom, along with Montaigne
and Shakespeare, the ability Reiff admires can be attributed. At the very
end of his Epilogue, symmetrically, Wilson highlights the parallel between
the askesis of modern art and Shakespearean weakness as an assertion of
sovereign freedom, which he calls an aporia that literally cries out for
endless deconstruction.
Like Cecil Grayson, who compared reading The Kings Two Bodies to
deciphering a kaleidoscope, the reader of Free Will reaches the end of the
book with the impression that following Wilsons hermeneutic journey
has been a challenging task indeed. Nevertheless, virtually every step of
this subtle line of reasoning, leading to No Sovereignty as an endlessly
deconstructive and paradoxical source of freedom, provides, as with all
Wilsons previous books, indelible intellectual gratification and reward.
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References
Bradley, A. C. (1920). Shakespearean Tragedy. London: MacMillan and Co.
Fernie, E. (2013). The Demonic. Literature and Experience. London and New
York: Routledge.
Fernie, E. (2002). Shame in Shakespeare. London and New York:
Routledge.
Greenblatt, S. (1988). Shakespearean Negotiations. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Howard, J. E. and Shershow, S. C. (2001). Marxist Shakespeares. London
and New York: Routledge.
McKenzie, W. and Papadopolou, T., eds. (2012). Shakespeare and I. London
and New York: Continuum.
Steiner, G. (1989). Real Presences. Is there anything in what we say? London
and Boston: Faber and Faber.
Wilson, R. (2013). Free Will. Art and Power on Shakespeares Stage.
Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Wilson, R. (2007). Shakespeare in French Theory. King of Shadows. London
Wilson, R. (2004). Secret Shakespeare. Studies in theatre, religion and
resistance. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Wilson, R. (1993). Will Power. Essays on Shakespearean Authority. Detroit:
Wayne State University.
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104
UDC 821.111.09-2 .
821.111.09-2:305
141.13114/16
Danica Igrutinovi*
University Singidunum
Faculty for Media and Communications
Belgrade, Serbia
NOTHING OF WOMAN:
THE FEMININE VOID OF MATTER
IN SHAKESPEARE
Abstract
Studying the metaphysics of Renaissance Neoplatonism might arguably help throw
into sharper relief some of the more haunting figures in Shakespeares work.
Referring to the Neoplatonic concept of matter, this paper attempts to expand and
further illuminate the figure that Philippa Berry has termed Shakespeares tragic
Os (2002) by showing it to connect multiple images of matter as the maternal/
infernal void. In Shakespeares darker plays, the O as feminine prime matter can
figure as a locus for the encounter with primordial matter, the womb/tomb that
(en)matters and thus kills, hell and nothing that can indicate both unformed
matter and the vaginal orifice, and the nothing the 0 out of which everything
is made.
Key words: Renaissance Neoplatonism, matter, the maternal, nothing, O
E-mail address: danica.igrutinovic@fmk.edu.rs
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1. Matter in Renaissance Neoplatonism

By the sixteenth century, under the widespread influence of Marsilio Ficinos
writings and his Florentine Academy, modeled on Platos, Platonism had
become an extremely important aspect of popular culture and had an
almost ubiquitous presence throughout Europe. (Kristeller 1961: 61)
This, significantly, included England especially its poets. Many of Ficinos
theories, Jayne declares, were in the intellectual atmosphere and could
have reached England in a number of indirect ways, but there are also
those English poets who were demonstrably directly impacted by Ficinos
writings. There are, for instance, in Spensers verses verbatim quotations
and sequences of ideas unquestionably taken directly from Ficino, (Jayne
1952: 217) and other poets who can be shown to have actually read
Ficino include Raleigh, Burton, and Chapman (Jayne 1952: 238). Other
poets and thinkers had received Ficinos ideas via other sources, mostly
poetic, resulting in a profusion of thought closely reflecting his own, and
justifying his reputation as the fountainhead of Platonism in the English
Renaissance (Jayne 1952: 222).
We have in the past two decades, owing to the recently appearing
translations of Ficinos works into English, witnessed a revival of interest
in the phenomenon known as Renaissance Neoplatonism. Although not
unknown to Shakespearologists, Renaissance Neoplatonism has long been
neglected in interpretations of Shakespeares works especially the darker
ones as an overly marginal, eccentric, or optimistic concoction of notions
on the harmony of the spheres. A deeper reading of Ficinos texts, as well
as those of other Renaissance Neoplatonists and their ancient sources,
offers an invaluable insight into the dark sides of both Neoplatonism and
Shakespeares darker plays.
Studying the inherently poetic and frequently paradoxical
metaphysics of (Renaissance) Neoplatonism helps put into relief some
of the more haunting figures in Shakespeares work. A consistently
gendered and hierarchized spirit/matter dichotomy is firmly at the basis
of this metaphysics: spirit is forming, rational, light, and constructed as
masculine, whereas matter is chaotic, irrational, dark, and constructed
as feminine. The cosmos is a hierarchical combination of the two: at its
top is the pure spirit of God, followed by a series of lower spheres, each
reflecting, albeit imperfectly, the harmony of the one immediately above
it, and each increasingly material (Lauster 2002: 48). The bottommost
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Danica Igrutinovi Nothing of Woman: The Feminine Void of Matter in Shakespeare
rung on this ladder is the hell of primordial matter. That hell is no more
or less than being, banished into the realm of the unformed elements,
was a common tenet of Renaissance Neoplatonism, and advocated most
famously by Paracelsus (Murray 1968: 284).
This infernal feminine matter is the unavoidable basis of all being that
is, paradoxically, best avoided. In his highly influential De Amore, in which
his ideas on love and beauty that in fact passed for Platonism in English
Renaissance poetry are promulgated (Jayne 1952: 238), Ficino urges
the (invariably) male subject to become purified via an erotic desire for
beautiful (almost invariably) male figures (though personifying heavenly
Venus, liberating spirit from the shackles of matter) which inspire Platonic
ascent towards the pristine purity of spirit that is reflected in their beauty.
In the proliferation of trattati damore that followed in the wake of Ficinos
(a phenomenon which has since become known as Renaissance love
theory) these figures could also be female provided they be chaste to
the point of cruelty (Hanegraaff 2008: 175). Conversely, Ficino laments,
carnal female figures (personifications of his vulgar Venus, trapping sparks
of spirit in mortal bodies) will drag the lustful lover on a descent towards
the more material spheres and, finally, tragically, right into the abyss that
is unformed prime matter (Kodera 2002: 289).
Masculine spirit can thus descend to the very bottom of feminine prime
matter and find in it nothing other than hell. The mythical figure that best
personifies the hell of feminine prime matter would have to be Hecate.
Queen of the daimons and first among the witches, personifying all the
powers of lower nature, Hecate is, interestingly enough, in Neoplatonic
thought firmly identified with matter itself. Shaw explicitly elucidates that,
for Neoplatonists, Hecate does not merely preside over matter or have a
symbolic association with matter she is matter (Shaw 1995: 41).
The infernal feminine of Neoplatonism thus not only leads to and
governs this dark realm, she is identified with it. Unlike the female anagogic
figures that merely mirror or reflect the pristine purity of the (male) spirit
they lead their (male) adorers towards, the seductress who causes the
male hero to fall is also the place to which he falls. She is the thing itself,
and the thing itself will transpire to be a nothing a void. This void, as I
hope to show, is represented in Shakespeares work with circular, O-shaped
figures, which is significant in multiple ways, and seems to be inextricably
associated with female reproductive orifices as is Neoplatonic matter
itself.
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2. O: facing the oomb

Several critics have noticed the significance of what Berry, perhaps most
illuminatingly, terms Shakespeares tragic Os. Shakespeares Os, she
notes, frequently appearing in conjunction with his lethal and whorish
queens/queans, elide these infernal female figures with bodily openings or
dilations that are similarly amoral, connecting the gynaphobic with the
reginaphobic strand in his tragedies (Berry 2002: 50). This figure can, I
hope, be expanded and further illuminated by referring to the Neoplatonic
concept of matter.
The O which heroes, defeated by the infernal feminine figures, die
with on their lips is simultaneously the O of the vaginal orifice, but it is
also the womb/tomb Joyces brilliantly coined oomb of Mother Earth,
the O of dark feminine prime matter to which every Neoplatonic descent
ultimately leads. More than just a vowel uttered by the gynaphobic male
hero, this O also presents itself visually on Shakespeares stage as the locus
for an encounter with the hell of unformed matter.
The first and also the most elaborate and explicit appearance of
an actual O on Shakespeares stage is Tamoras infernal pit, with which
the dark queen of Rome is identified in multiple ways. She is the first to
mention it, and does a fair job of describing both its surroundings and the
hole itself:
A barren detested vale you see it is,
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe;
Here never shines the sun, here nothing breeds,
Unless the nighty owl or fatal raven;
And when they showd me this abhorred pit,
They told me, here, at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries,
As any mortal body hearing it
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.
(Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 93-104)
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The pit is a fascinating amalgam of the monstrously sterile (barren vale) and
the monstrously fertile (hissing snakes and swelling toads) and thus clearly
represents matter itself, which is in Neoplatonic thought paradoxically both
disgustingly fecund teeming and oozing with misshapen potentialities
and unable to create actual life without the truly vital spirit. The delicious
ambiguity of here nothing breeds must be especially emphasized, as it can
denote both the utter sterility and the uber-fertility of the nothingness of
malformed dark prime matter, untouched by the forming, life-infusing sun.
Attributes are added to the image of the pit when Martius falls into it,
and Quintus eloquently muses on it before attempting to aid his brother:
What, art thou fallen? What subtile hole is this,
Whose mouth is covered with rude-growing briars,
Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood
As fresh as morning dew distilld on flowers?
A very fatal place it seems to me.
(Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 198-202)
Gordon Williams classifies the circular hole of Tamoras pit under O in
his Glossary of Shakespeares sexual language and explains both as meaning
vagina, elucidating that briars were a common appellation for pubic
hair (Williams 1997). O as the vagina is also the swallowing womb of
this deep pit, poor Bassianus grave (Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 239-240).
The womb is, of course, simultaneously the tomb.
This tomb is also a mouth that devours all: the detested, dark,
blood-drinking pit (Titus Andronicus, II. iii. 224) and this fell devouring
receptacle which is as hateful as [Cocytus] misty mouth (Titus
Andronicus, II. iii. 235-236). Hades represented as a hell-mouth, equipped
to emit smoke, it should be noted here, was a standard stage-property of
Renaissance theater. The devouring receptacle a word reminiscent of
Platos term for the matrix of the world is also hell, another term for the
vagina; and thus the circle of O closes.
Kahn explains that Tamoras explicit self-association with hell is more
than conventional, given the imagery of the pit that connects hell not only
with female sexuality (a connection ubiquitous in the Shakespearean
canon as well) but more specifically [] with the malign fecundity of the
maternal womb (Kahn 2002: 69).
The O of the vagina, womb, and tomb is finally, Berry notes, the O of Tamoras
gaping mouth, when she devours her own children (Berry 2002: 139).
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Romeos own descent into the O of Juliets grave shows a similar overelaborate elision of the gaping devouring mouth with the womb and the
tomb of earth:
Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorgd with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And in despite Ill cram thee with more food.
(Romeo and Juliet, V. iii. 45-48)
In Macbeth, the witches significantly prepare their hell-broth in an Oshaped cauldron, and its ingredients should make it clear that we have
now descended to the very bottom of the universe. Being bits and body
parts of mostly formless, slimy animals like toads, lizards, and snakes, they
plainly indicate primordial matter chaotic, disordered, and disgusting.
An especially intriguing addition to the mix is a Finger of birth-strangled
babe / Ditch-deliverd by a drab (Macbeth, IV. i. 30-31). This links women
as whores and mothers with witches as women constantly suspended
between the two, proliferating nothing but dead misshapen matter. Hecate
is understandably pleased.
Othello descends in his mind into the O he believes Desdemona to be:
a subtile whore and a closet lock and key of villainous secrets (Othello,
IV. ii. 21-22). A womans closet, as her most intimate chamber where she
is likely to entertain lovers, (Jardine 2005: 148) is linked in imagery with
every facet of what Shakespeares O represents, an association reinforced in
Othellos accusation aimed at Emilia of having the office opposite to Saint
Peter and keeping the gate of hell (Othello, IV. ii. 91-92). Presumably, as
she has allowed lovers into Desdemonas closet and thus into her vagina
as well Emilia is cast in the role of the hell porter.
Lear similarly descends in his mind into this vaginal hell or feminine
prime matter:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends: theres hell, theres darkness,
There is the suphurous pit, burning, scalding,
Stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!
(King Lear, IV. vi. 126-129)
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Muir warns against interpreting this disgust as Shakespeares own revulsion

against sexuality as may have been suggested by Harsnetts account of the
exorcists pretence that Sara Williams was, during menstruation, possessed
with a devil in a peculiar part of the body, in the inferior parts, and
in the most secret part of my body. It must be noted, however, that the
vocabulary used here is quite rational and mild. Harsnett, as Muir has
argued, does indeed mention evocative phrases such as filthy fumes,
the bottomlesse pit of hell, scalded, thicke smoake & vapour of hell,
brimstone, vgly blackness, smoake, scorching, boyling and heate (Muir
1956: 160), but in a completely separate context, fully unconnected with
womens sexual organs. This would in fact prove that it is Shakespeare (or,
at any rate, Lear) who makes the connection between the dark, sulphurous
pit of hell and womens genitals, and not Harsnett, or Jesuit exorcists, or
poor misguided Sara.
Timon suffers a parallel plunge into a feminine gynecological hell:
Common mother, thou
Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast
Teems and feeds all; whose self-same mettle
Whereof thy proud child (arrogant man) is puffd,
Engenders the black toad and adder blue,
The gilded newt and eyeless venomd worm,
With all th abhorred births below crisp heaven
Whereon Hyperions quickning fire doth shine:
[...]
Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb,
Let it no more bring out ingrateful man!
Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears,
Teems with new monsters, whom thy upward face
Hath to the marbled mansion all above
Never presented!
(Timon of Athens, IV. iii. 177-192)
Burgess notices that King Lear and Timon of Athens were written roughly
at the same time and have in common a strong, seemingly unwarranted
revulsion at womanhood and sexuality. Timon, in his apt phrase, has a
gratuitous venereal obsession, and Lear finds in sex a symbol of the hell
he wishes on the whole world. Burgess argues that both Lear and Timon
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go beyond simple dramatic necessity in invoking woman as the source of

degradation and disease and surmises that if Shakespeare was ill with
something other than overwork, that something was venereal disease
(Burgess 1970: 197-199).
Although personal experience with venereal disease can certainly
cause one to become more puritanical, invoking woman or, rather,
infernal feminine prime matter located in and identified with the female
sexual organs as the source of degradation and disease hardly necessitates
contracting syphilis; Neoplatonism will suffice. Lear and Timon rage at
female sexuality because they have descended into the bottom of their
universes Os, and are there faced with this prime matter, which they
rightly (according to Neoplatonists of all persuasions) see as the root of
all that is rotten.
The O of infernal prime matter was often quite literal, tangible, and
visible on Shakespeares stage. Its role was played by the trap on the stage,
a standard theatrical property. As Kinney explains:
The trap in the middle of the stage, in the platea, serves the
gravediggers in Hamlet as they dig in unsacred ground and find
Yoricks skull []. It is the pit in Titus Andronicus into which
Bassianus body is thrown and where Quintus and Martius fall,
smearing themselves in his blood and thus appearing guilty of
his death (2.3). It is also, most commonly, infernal. Joan de
Pucells familiar spirits are culled Out of the powerful regions
under earth (1 Henry VI, 5.3.10-11); it is where the spirit rising
for Mother Jordan the witch is commanded by Bolingbroke
to Descend to darkness and the burning lake! (1 Henry VI,
1.4.39). This may be why the trap seems so fitting a place
for Malvolio and why Feste thinks of exorcism as the way of
bringing him back onstage. But ghosts may issue from the trap,
too [] Hamlets father seems doomed to remain in the trap as
one who cries under the stage (1.5). [] But it is used most
frequently by the weird sisters in Macbeth, who enter and exit
by it. (Kinney 2003: 22)
From it emerge the deceiving liars, demons, witches, and, interestingly
enough, Old Hamlet. Iamblichus warning that from the hollows of the
earth leap chthonian dogs (i.e., daimons), who never show a true sign to a
mortal (Shaw 1995: 41) is strangely appropriate here.
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A hero can also actively descend into an O as part of a daring

exploratory feat. Part of Hamlets timeless allure may stem from the fact
that his adventurous dealings with matter appear voluntary and that his
descent seems to leave him relatively unsullied. He does not fall into the
abyss of matter owing to, say, inordinate lust he plunges in because he
feels it his duty to investigate what is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Hamlet in fact undergoes not one, but three separate descents into
three separate Os analogous with the three faces of the Triple Goddess,
the Neoplatonic ruler over matter: the virgin, the mother, and the queen
of the underworld.
His first encounter is with the virgin. When he intrudes in Ophelias
closet, her private chambers, all unbracd, he has entered his first O.
He renounces her along with all baser matter, but has still to solve the
riddle. Ophelia, though she belongs to the female sex, is not the source of
all corruption in Denmark, and ridding himself of her resolves little. As
Laoutaris notes, Hamlets fixation with matter [] increasingly takes
on the moralised burden of the maternal body. Shakespeare swiftly moves
from the country matters of Hamlets banter with Ophelia to a
more intricate pun on mother/matter, mater (Latin for mother)
still providing the root of the word maternity: My wits diseased
as you say, my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter.
My mother, you say / O wonderful son, that can so astonish a
mother! (III. ii. 303-310) Weighted with the hierarchical sexual
biology of Aristotelian embryological theory, which defined the
female contribution to conception and gestation as gross matter
acted upon by the masculine motive principle of generation,
Hamlets imaginative penetration into the anatomical reaches
of the womb turns it into the origin of the corruption which
plagues the state. (Laoutaris 2008: 65)
Hamlets second plunge is into the O of his mothers closet the place Berry
refers to, in Lacanian terms, as the hollow phallus of the mother (Berry
2003: 79). Line lucidly observes that Hamlet asks Now, mother, whats
the matter? (Hamlet, III. iv. 7) on entering the womb-like cavern of her
closet to look into the face of his own substance (Line 2004: 129). For
in Gertrudes private chamber, Hamlet is faced with his material origins.
The presence of dead Polonius in Gertrudes closet, much like that of dead
Bassanius in Tamoras pit, is no accident. What Hamlet discovers in the O
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of the mother is dead, bloody, maternal, menstrual matter that is at the

basis of his mortal body. Screaming insults at her, however, does not solve
his quandary, as the originating source of all rottenness lies elsewhere.
The O that Hamlet faces last is the gaping hole of Ophelias grave. Dug
in unhallowed ground and spewing forth a medley of skulls and bones,
it is eerily reminiscent of the witches hell-broth, and similarly comprises
chaotic, disgusting dead matter. Hamlet has discovered the womb/tomb
of Mother Earth, the very bottom of the universe where the hell of prime
matter lies, and the real culprit for all chaos, rottenness, and death. He
muses on human mortality and the volatility of the earthy matter that even
great kings were made of:
Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to
dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that
loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beerbarrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turnd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall texpel the [winters] flaw!
(Hamlet, V. i. 208-216)
Ophelias grave, significantly, spits forth the skull of Hamlets beloved
jester Yorick, who, in Rutters interpretation, comes to speak for her one
last time:
Bizarrely, proleptically, Yorick is Ophelias double, for to this
favour she must come. The skull makes the audience face up
to deaths horrors in a materially specific way that Hamlets
philosophizing has managed to avoid. Death, the prince learns
from Yorick, stinks. The jester is a substitute who grounds
ghastliness, displacing it from Ophelia now, for, newly-dead, her
corpse still registers her sweetness, while casting imagination
forward to Ophelia then, in the grave, instant old, no longer
even a body but rotten flesh and jumbled bones. The words
Hamlet puts into Yoricks mouth let Ophelia, strangely, speak for
the last time to this favour she must come. (Rutter 2001:
41)
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However, when Hamlet instructs Yoricks skull Now get you to my ladys
[chamber], and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she
must come; make her laugh at that (Hamlet, V. i. 192-195), we are not
necessarily certain which lady Hamlet has in mind. He has been to both
his ladies chambers and ascertained that both Gertrude and Ophelia are
feminine dead matter that is mere bait and not to be trusted. My lady
can, in fact, be any lady: a woman luring her lover towards carnality (like
Ophelia); a mother trapping her child in a mortal body (like Gertrude); or
Mother Earth, the dead matter from which it is made merely being painted
over with a pleasing shape. Hamlet seems to be echoing Plotinus sentiment
that the material world (and any beautiful body in it) remains forever but
a corpse adorned (Enn., II.4.5.18, cited in Celenza 2002: 79).
Yorick also serves as a surrogate for Hamlets deceased father and
certainly appears in his memories as more of a true father figure than the
late king ever does. Old Hamlets still fresh grave is, interestingly enough,
never visited in the course of Act V, but he is briefly remembered by the
gravedigger, who significantly began his career on the day of the late kings
victory over Old Norway. Even more significantly, the gravedigger started
digging on the very day when Hamlet was born. A more chilling memento
mori specifically meant for Hamlet would be hard to devise. The two
events are actually linked in the graveyard scene as Hamlet contemplates
the death of his father, his own impending death, and the end of his line.
There is no grandson following Old Hamlets death that would be heir to
his conquest just as there was no grandson following John Shakespeares
death either recent or impending at the time Hamlet was written (Welsh
2001: 36-37).
Ophelia, who might have been Hamlets true earthly Venus, his
uneard womb to produce his sons and his bodily immortality, is discarded
as baser matter and good kissing carrion, and fittingly thrown into the
gaping O in the middle of the stage and Hamlet leaps in after her, daring
the pit to devour him, much as does Romeo. The pit finally does devour all.
The Ghost proves to have been her consort, doing her bidding and at last
bringing death upon everyone. She wins, as does every O that opens in the
tragedies, and there is no escaping this Charybdis.
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3. Mother, whats the matter? Mother (en)matters

Jacqueline Rose, replying in her Sexuality in the reading of Shakespeare:
Hamlet and Measure for Measure to Eliots notorious judgment that
Hamlets mother is not an adequate equivalent for his disgust, which
envelops and exceeds her (Eliot 1920), issues a bold statement.
Reversing Eliots argument, she suggests that, rather than attacking the
very existence of something inscrutable, unmanageable or even horrible,
one should instead question an aesthetic theory which will only allow
into its definition what can be controlled or managed by art such as
was Eliots (although in practice he certainly had his share of excessively
disgusted and horrified moments). Rose finds that the true object of horror
and disgust in Hamlet is nothing other than femininity itself (Rose 2002:
103). Given that femininity is in the entire tradition of Western dualistic
thought identified with maternity and materiality, and matter is seen as the
root of all evil, Hamlets disgust seems only natural.
The view that the mother provides only base menstrual matter in
procreation while the father provides the spiritual form was expounded
by Plato, elaborated by Aristotle, and even propounded by the likes of
Aquinas. All-pervasive before the discovery of the ovum (Allen 1997), it
was demonstrably held by Shakespeare. Helen herself warns a potential
husband: You are too young, too happy, and too good, / To make yourself
a son out of my blood (Alls Well That Ends Well, II. iii. 96-97). Sebastian
likewise explicates this distinctly dualistic view in Twelfth Night: A spirit
I am indeed, / But am in that dimension grossly clad / Which from the
womb I did participate (Twelfth Night, V. i. 236-238).
The mother does not merely make us material; she also makes us
mortal, as without embodiment, we could have happily remained pure
eternal spirits. As Janet Adelman explains: The mothers body brings death
into the world because her body itself is death: in the traditional alignment
of spirit and matter, the mother gives us the stuff the female matter of
our bodies and thus our mortality (Adelman 1992: 27; cited in Armstrong
P. 2006: 185). This traditional alignment which harks from Plato and
Neoplatonism necessitates Hamlets and other tragic heroes realization
that maternal matter makes us mortal and that vulgar Venus creates us
only to destroy us.
This is at the root of the persistent and sinister association between
motherhood and mortality, between mothering and murdering, between
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womb and tomb. It appears in Cleopatras disturbing oath made to Antony:

The next Caesarion [smite], / Till by degrees the memory of my womb
[...] / Lie graveless (Antony and Cleopatra, III. xiii. 162-166). It varies
from Romeos womb of death aimed at Juliets tomb through Friar
Lawrences jovial and casual The earth thats natures mother is her tomb
to Rosses lament that Scotland can no longer be calld our mother, but our
grave which seems on the surface to have little to do with metaphysical
issues. That the enmattering mother is also a murderess plainly follows
from the dualistic logic of Neoplatonism, and finds many expressions in
Shakespeares work.
Cases in point are the disturbing images of breastfeeding portraying a
helpless male child in danger of bloody violence perpetrated by the mother.
Lady Macbeth notoriously threatens her perhaps imaginary infant:
I have given suck, and know
How tender tis to love the babe that milks me;
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluckd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashd the brains out.
(Macbeth, I. vii. 54-58)
Volumnias threat to her own son is perhaps less direct but no less
disturbing:
The breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, lookd not lovelier
Than Hectors forehead when it spit forth blood
At Grecian sword.
(Coriolanus, I. iii. 40-43)
She finally manages to effect Coriolanus death by equating her womb with
Rome as his native land:
thou shalt no sooner
March to assault thy country that to tread
[...] on thy mothers womb
That brought thee to this world.
(Coriolanus, V. iii. 122-125)
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For Coriolanus, Rome is the monstrous multitude which desires his bloody
wounds much like his mother does. The multitude, elsewhere associated
with chaotic lower matter, is here explicitly linked with the mothers womb.
The many-headed monster that finally overwhelms Coriolanus certainly
also comprises his mother, as well as the two mutually indistinguishable
multitudes the Roman and the Volscian that offer to destroy him at
differing points in time. Defeating her son, this monstrous maternal O will
devour him:
O mother, mother!
[...] O my mother, mother! O!
You have won a happy victory to Rome;
But, for your son
[...] most mortal to him.
(Coriolanus, V. iii. 185-189)
Rome and Volumnia are thus one the mother that here metaphorically
eats her young. Timon is even more explicitly being eaten by the multitude
of Athens. As Apemantus notices, what a number of men eats Timon,
and he sees em not! (Timon of Athens, I. ii. 39-40). Tamora is literally a
mother that eats her young, as Titus uses deception to force her to like to
the earth swallow her own increase. (Titus Andronicus, V. ii. 191)
The womb-tomb that eats her own young is not Shakespeares
invention nor is it without precedent. In Spensers Faerie Queene, Errours
misshapen offspring crawl around her in the darkness, but Soone as that
uncouth light upon them shone, / Into her mouth they crept, and suddain
all were gone. (I. I. xv. 8-9) This is simply what the O of maternal prime
matter does in Neoplatonic dualism.
4. Nothing of woman: motherfree

It is understandable given the usual attributes coupled with maternal
materiality in Renaissance Neoplatonism that so many Shakespeares
heroes attempt to evade any association with the feminine. Before her
death, as Cleopatra grows determined and marble-constant, she feels
impelled to claim: I have nothing / Of woman in me (Antony and
Cleopatra, V. ii. 238-239). Renouncing her femininity apparently allows
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Cleopatra to assume a masculine fixity of spirit. The statement can also

be read as a humorous aside of the boy actor playing Cleopatras role,
who truly would have been granted the liberty to claim to have nothing of
woman in him.
Nothing of woman can, however, also be linked with the desire that
some heroes have to break free from the maternal body in which they were
tragically enmattered and thus to not have anything of woman in them. I
would like to term this an aspiration to be motherfree adding the suffix
which is used to denote a lack that is seen as positive and advantageous.
Ficinos heavenly Venus, as opposed to her earthly, vulgar counterpart,
is said to have been born without a mother, which makes her a stranger to
matter, and thus exalted and free.
To be of woman born is a heavy burden to bear and makes one
vulnerable to all that flesh is heir to: pain, illness, death, and worst of all
lust. When the puritanical boy rejects her advances, Vulgar Venus asks
Adonis: Art thou a womans son and canst not feel / What tis to love, how
want of love tormenteth? (Venus and Adonis, 201-202). She scolds him
that he is a Thing like a man, but of no woman bred! (Venus and Adonis,
214). A similar sentiment is found in Sonnet 41: And when a woman
woos, what womans son / Will sourly leave her till [she] have prevailed?
(Sonnet 41, 7-8). Freedom from being born to a mother is freedom from
lust and entanglements with women which does not seem like a bad
thing at all in the Neoplatonic value system.
Being motherfree confers other privileges as well. In a vision provided
by the witches, a bloody child tells Macbeth that none of woman born
/ Shall harm Macbeth (Macbeth, IV. i. 80-81). What Macbeth does not
immediately realize is that he will indeed be harmed only by someone not
of woman born. The bloody child anticipates Macduff, who, untimely
rippd from his mothers womb, and thus free from the maternal body,
can slay Macbeth and carry a victory over Hecate. To be motherfree is to
be virtuous, valiant, truly masculine, and impervious to the evil effects of
matter. Posthumus (also rippd from his mother) asserts that Theres
no motion / That tends to vice in man, but I affirm / It is the womans
part (Cymbeline, II. v. 20-22). Minimizing the womans part in a child
maximizes the chances that the child will be a decent and virtuous human
being. Leontes is glad that Hermione did not nurse the boy, as she already

Note the use of the suffix -free in the name for the Childfree movement the movement
of happily and intentionally childless individuals and couples.
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has too much blood in him. Mothers milk, as the contemporary physician
John Sadler insists, it should be noted here, is nothing but the monstrous
bloud made whitte in the breasts (Laoutaris 2008: 171).
5. The ladies have prevaild

Would-be motherfree heroes may sometimes attempt to sever their
associations with maternal matter in somewhat violent ways. Coriolanus
faces this chaotic substance in the mutable, rank-scented meiny which,
according to him, is a Hydra and a monster the beast with many heads
(Coriolanus, III. i. 66-71). He banishes the maternal material multitude:
You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate
As reek a th rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air I banish you!
(Coriolanus, III. iii. 120-123)
It is this maternal material monster that he attempts to escape when he
elopes into Aufidius open arms much like Othello does with Iago.
However, there is really no banishing or escaping ones feminine basis
and origins. The triple goddess, who reigns over matter, will usually win
in Shakespeares darker plays. It might be useful to remember here that
the triple goddess part of the Neoplatonic tradition was comprised of
three goddesses: infernal Persephone/Hecate, benevolent maternal nature
represented by Demeter/Ceres, and Artemis/Diana, the virgin goddess of
the new moon (Line 2004: 28).
It is precisely this trio of goddesses that appears before Coriolanus
and assures him that resistance is futile and that he cannot destroy or
escape the maternal womb and the monstrous multitude of his native
Rome: Volumnia, the most noble mother in the world and the sinister
manly witch who is fooling no one, Virgilia, the benign young wife and
mother, and the utterly gratuitous virgin Valeria clearly there only to
complete the triple goddess in the most clichd way imaginable The
moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle / Thats curdied by the frost from purest
snow / And hangs on Dians temple. (Coriolanus, V. iii. 65-67). The ladies
have prevaild (Coriolanus, V. iv. 40), the news goes, and when the three
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ladies enter Rome triumphantly, a Senator exclaims Behold our patroness,

the life of Rome! (Coriolanus, V. v. 1). For all the talk of virtue and virility,
Rome in effect worships and is apparently ruled by the triple goddess,
and Coriolanus does not stand a chance against her. He belongs to her.
For Coriolanus is a thing of blood. Frequently covered in blood, he
may superficially resemble in imagery the bloody man/bloody child
of Macbeth. The bloody child in Macbeth bloody because he has been
rippd from his mothers womb indicates, however, a radical cut from
the mother, being motherfree and thus free from matter as well: Macduff,
free from the materiality of the maternal body, can slay Hecates consort
Macbeth. Coriolanus, on the other hand, who from face to foot is a thing
of blood (Coriolanus, II. ii. 108-109), is entirely his mothers, a part of her
body, constantly returning to it, struggling to be born and separated, and
will be reabsorbed by her when he is devoured by the multitude.
The ladies have similarly prevaild against Bertram in Alls Well That
Ends Well. The triple goddess tricks him after he has attempted to renounce
women, and he is finally faced with a trio of women: the pure virgin Dian,
the pregnant mother Helen, and the old Widow, who demonstrate to him
that he cannot flee materiality and that he is indeed already trapped in it.
6. Nothing of woman: O = 0
There is yet another way in which to interpret Cleopatras assertion that
she has nothing of woman in her. In most Neoplatonic thought, prime
matter is viewed as privation and thus literally nothing (Celenza 2002:
75-76). Therefore, whoever is meant to be saying this however constant
Cleopatra is and however male-bodied the boy actor is neither can escape
the fact that they were enmattered in their mothers wombs and that they
consequently have in them the nothing of prime matter that is at the basis
of every living human being. We all have, according to Neoplatonists,
the nothing of woman in us, the nothing of maternal mortal matter we
inherited from our mothers. This enables Hamlet to play with his eerie
rhymes and claim that
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The King is a thing

Guildenstern: A thing, my lord?
Hamlet: Of nothing, bring me to him.
(Hamlet, IV. i. 27-30)
It is irrelevant here which king Hamlet has in mind, as the (still) living
king is, just as much as the dead one, a thing of nothing, made of the
nothingness of matter.
The fact that Neoplatonism so often equated prime matter with
privation, the void, nothingness itself, solidifies the meanings associated
with Shakespeares tragic Os and adds to them. O, nothing, and
hell are all things an Elizabethan might use to refer to female genitals;
they can also, significantly, denote feminine maternal matter. The void of
O is the womb we are enmattered in and the tomb we will be devoured by
in death.
Showalter declares in her Representing Ophelia: women, madness,
and the responsibilities of feminist criticism that Ophelia, consistently
with the customary representations of femininity, is certainly a creature
of lack. I think nothing, my lord, she says in the Mousetrap scene, to
which he retorts:
Hamlet: Thats a fair thought to lie between maids legs.
Ophelia: What is, my lord?
Hamlet: Nothing.
(Hamlet, III. ii. 11719)
Showalter notes that in Elizabethan slang nothing was a term for the
vagina, but that its meanings are further proliferated in a distinctly feminine
paradigm. To Hamlet, she explains,
nothing is what lies between maids legs, for, in the male visual
system of representation and desire, womens sexual organs, in
the words of the French psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray, represent
the horror of having nothing to see. When Ophelia is mad,
Gertrude says that Her speech is nothing, mere unshaped use.
Ophelias speech thus represents the horror of having nothing to
say in the public terms defined by the court. Deprived of thought,
sexuality, language, Ophelias story becomes the Story of O the
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zero, the empty circle or mystery of feminine difference, the

cipher of female sexuality (Parker/Hartman 1985: 78-79).
The nothing of the vagina and the nothing of the chaotic, irrational
incoherence of feminine madness are both ultimately the nothing of
unformed prime matter.
Nothing is thus deservedly the crucial key word of the tragedies
the original problem, the posed question, the stumbling block, but also
the usually unsatisfactory solution. All the ocular proof and auricular
evidence that the tragedies ultimately give in response to the probing
questions of the neurotic male heroes can boil down to nothing the
nothing of dark, unformed prime matter.
The apparently widespread contemporary notion that prime matter
could fully be equated with nothing is attributable to one of the bolder
moves in the history of ideas, occurring right around Shakespeares time
as part of an effort to reconcile traditional monotheistic religions with the
increasingly popular dualistic ideas spreading as part of the package of
Renaissance Neoplatonism.
The entire subject of the origin of the cosmos was rife with controversy
in Shakespeares time and there was an ongoing debate between the socalled pagan prima-materialists and the Christian ex-nihilists. Plato and
Aristotle unproblematically claimed that the cosmos was created from
chaotic prime matter in a culture whose creation myths shared the same
narrative. However, adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition had to see
the very notion of prime matter as heretical because it directly contradicted
the Biblical doctrine of creation from nothing (ex nihilo). This notion was,
nonetheless, being heartily espoused by learned people who read Plato
and Aristotle, and with increasing frequency.
William R. Elton cites in his informative Deus Absconditus: Lear
some of the arguments that Christian authors used to denounce the pagan
notion of prime matter. Some of these belie a great deal of anxiety, as the
arguments of pagan philosophers seemed to make quite a bit of logical
sense. Mutian categorically announces: We leave behind the entelechy
of Aristotle and the ideas of Plato. God created all things from nothing.
Montaigne sees the reasoning that Because nothing is made of nothing:
God was not able to frame the world without matter as proof of the vanity
of feeble human understanding, and Robert Parsons similarly exalts the
doctrine of ex-nihilism as high and hidden doctrine, beyond the merely
human capacity of comprehension. A contemporary of Shakespeares, R.
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B., Esquire, prays to God in The Difference betwene the Auncient Phisicke
and the Latter Phisicke (1585) to teach, ayd, & assist thy servants against
the heathnish and false Philosophie of Aristotle, which teacheth that of
nothyng, nothyng can be made (Elton 2008: 252). Apparently, this was a
hot and anxiety-inducing issue.
A potential solution was long before offered by the early Neoplatonists
who, not being bound by the Torah, needed no such solution. According to
Plotinus, as paraphrased by Celenza, matter, even when informed, retains
its ontological status as anti-substantial, evil privation (Celenza 2002:
79). This solution was then embraced by some of the dualists who wished
to hold on to at least part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Gnostics saw
the cosmos as formed from dark prime matter by the blundering Demiurge
very differently than the Jews and the Christians. This matter, however,
resulted from the shadow cast by the curtain separating the realm of light
from Sophias prideful creation. The substance of matter is, thus, nothing
but shadow, which is nothing other than the absence of light which is
nothing. Cabalists notably Maimonides similarly took the doctrine of
creation ex nihilo very seriously, but saw this nothing as the abyss of
prime matter that was within En Sof and has since been continuously being
overcome in creation (Armstrong K. 2007: 149).
Christian Neoplatonists in the Renaissance, faced with a similar
problem, adopted a similar solution. The brilliant, if audacious turn in
contemporary thought connecting and reconciling the debating parties
the traditionally and navely monotheistic with the popularly and
scientifically dualistic appears to have originated in the mind of
the mathematician Thomas Harriot, Raleighs protg, member of the
mythical School of Night, and probably an acquaintance of Shakespeares.
According to Aubrey, at one point, Harriot did not value the old storie of
the Creation of the World. He could not beleeve the old position; he would
say ex nihilo nihil fit (Elton 2008: 254). However, in his writings there is
also a marginal note that states: Ex nihilo nihil fit; sed omnia fint ex nihilo
out of nothing nothing is made; yet everything is made out of nothing
(Turner 1999: 35). This seemingly paradoxical addendum to Aristotles
insufficiently imaginative dictum in effect reconciles the pagan primamaterialists with the Christian ex-nihilists in the Christian Neoplatonic
vision of the cosmos fashioned from the nothing the void, the O/0
that is prime matter.
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For the womblike and vaginally suggestive nothing the O of

feminine matter is simultaneously the absolute nothing the 0 that
prime matter is. As Frederick Turner reveals in his brilliant Shakespeares
Twenty-First-Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money, despite
centuries of previous contact between the Arab world and Europe, the
zero only made its way into Christendom in the fourteenth century, and
it was only in Shakespeares time that its full power as a concept and as a
source of mathematical ideas began to be realized. Lears Fool is obviously
fascinated by its ramifications:
When Lears Fool wants to find the ultimate description of the
nonexistence to which Lear has reduced himself by giving away
his kingdom, he says to his master: Now thou art an O without a
figure (King Lear, I. iv. 193). What he means is that if Lear had a
figure or digit, say 8 or 2 or 5, followed by a zero (an O), then
he would have eighty or twenty or fifty; but as it is, he has only
the zero, he has nothing. Or rather, is nothing. There is something
utterly chilling about this image; the Fool is insisting on a meaning
for zero that is not simply as a conventional placeholding sign to
signify tens or hundreds or thousands, but the mysterious void
itself. (Turner 1999: 36)
This is what Lear encounters in the stormy wilderness: the void of prime
matter as the basis of the cosmos and his own frail body and this is what
he has been reduced to. Gloucester lucidly observes, on seeing Lear mad:
O ruind piece of nature! This great world / Shall so wear out to nought
(King Lear, IV. vi. 134-135). Lear is here compared to the cosmos, and both
will, without the forming spirit, eventually revert to the nought the
zero of chaotic, unformed matter. The abdicated king is being schooled
in the paradoxical cosmogony and cosmology of Christian Neoplatonism,
which is at variance both with the nave-sounding traditional monism of
creatio ex nihilo and with the popular scientific-seeming but unimaginative
materialism of Aristotles ex nihilo nihil fit which Hobbes dryly explicates
because nothing, however it be multiplied, will for ever be nothing (Elton
2008: 254). Apparently, Lear is initially a staunch follower of Aristotle and
Hobbes, as can be seen in his opening dispute with Cordelia, who has
nothing to offer him:
Lear: what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?
Speak.
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Cordelia: Nothing, my lord.

Lear: Nothing?
Cordelia: Nothing.
Lear: Nothing will come of nothing, speak again.
(King Lear, I. i. 85-89)
Conversely, Lear is able to say to Goneril when Regan only allows him to
keep twenty-five retainers: Your fifty yet doth double five and twenty, /
And thou art twice her love (King Lear, II. iv. 268-269). Both their loves
will eventually wear out to nought deflate to zero as neither daughter
will ultimately allow him a single servant. An O/0 without a figure, however
it be multiplied, remains nothing. The characters heavily associated with
lower matter Edmund, Goneril, and Regan will, attempting to multiply
their material possessions (which are in themselves nothing, as matter is
nothing) predictably end up with nothing.
In contrast, the less materialistic characters Cordelia, Edgar, Kent,
Gloucester, and Lear are all more or less voluntarily reduced to nothing/0
in the course of the play. Cordelia has nothing to offer, either to her father
and her new husband. Edgar becomes poor Tom, a poor, bare, forkd
animal, the thing itself, realizing that Edgar I nothing am (King Lear,
II. iii. 21). Kent is put in the stocks for serving the King, and Gloucester
is blinded and leaps into the abyss. Lear is reduced to an O/0 without a
figure, and he has apparently still not learned his lesson:
Fool: Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
Lear: Why, no, boy, nothing can be made out of nothing.
(King Lear, I. iv. 132-133)
What he needs to realize is that everything is made out of nothing
something even young Romeo seems to understand when he exclaims O
any thing, of nothing first [create]! (Romeo and Juliet, I. i. 177). The
universe is created out of the nothingness of feminine prime matter, the
Nothing, the middle, the female genitals, procreation (Berry 2002: 152)
that Lear has attempted to banish with Cordelia, the spurned, despised zero
which turns out to be the womb of all (Turner 1999: 43). Apparently, the
appropriate mathematical operation is putting a figure a digit before
the 0, and not multiplying it. The chaotic dark feminine nothing of matter,
led, guided, and lovingly formed by masculine numerical spirit, makes the
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universe. The way the universe is created on the cosmic level is analogous
to the way a child is made by the male spirit forming the nothingness of
menstrual matter, and both operations paradoxically make something out
of nothing.
7. Conclusion
The Neoplatonic concept of matter can indeed help illuminate Shakespeares
tragic Os, a figure which can be shown to connect multiple images
of matter as the maternal/infernal void. In Shakespeares darker plays,
the O as prime matter can figure as a circular O-shaped locus for the
encounter with primordial matter, the womb/tomb that enmatters and
thus kills, hell and nothing that can indicate both unformed matter
and the vaginal orifice, and the nothing the 0 out of which everything
is made.
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UDC 821.111.08-2 .
821.111-2:8138
Goran Stanivukovi*
Saint Marys University
Halifax, Nova Scotia
EARLIEST SHAKESPEARE:
BOMBAST AND AUTHENTICITY
Abstract
The essay explores bombast as one of the defining features of Shakespeares style
of writing in the earliest, pre-1594 phase of his career as a dramatist. The qualifier
earliest is an operative term which refers to the part of Shakespeares canon
that has not been explored in recent criticism. Bombast is considered as both a
logical and rhetorical instrument of knowing. At the cognitive dimension of text,
improbability, which is the key feature of bombast, plays an important role in
earliest Shakespeare because it captures competing currents of thought that fill
dramatic plots, as they were described in the Elizabethan practices of playwriting,
and moves the action forward. Earliest Shakespeare is both under the spell of
Christopher Marlowes bombastic blankverse, but he also looks beyond Marlowe,
turning bombast into a tool of opening up new possibilities for drama performed
within the specific context of Londons burgeoning theatre scene in the 1590s.
Key words: bombast, improbability, drama, literary influence, Shakespeare,
Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe
1. Earliest: exploring the term

As scholars around the world celebrate the 450th year of Shakespeares
birth in Stratford-upon-Avon, we may want to turn to the beginning of
E-mail address: Goran.Stanivukovic@smu.ca
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his career as a writer. Recently, Shakespeares late period has attracted

much critical attention, and for a long time Shakespeares mature plays
have been the staple of critical analysis. Yet, Shakespeares earliest works
seem to have dropped out of critical focus in recent years. In this essay,
earliest is understood to be an operative term that helps isolate that body
of Shakespeares writing before the dividing line of 1594 (Van Es 2013:
79). In 1594, he went from being essentially a freelance writer to a sharer
in the theatre company the Lord Chamberlains Men and, from that point
forward, he wrote plays for only one theatre company. Although this move
took place at the beginning of his career, the practical reason, however,
for choosing this year as the cut off point is that it has a justified place
in Shakespearean historiography, because it also helps us acknowledge
the astonishing working energy and speed with which Shakespeare wrote
during his first few years in London. According to the chronology of writing
established by the editors of the Complete Oxford Shakespeare, before
1594, Shakespeare wrote ten plays, two highly popular narrative poems,
and possibly penned some sonnets. This impressive output comprises
one third of the entire body of Shakespeares canon of work. The various
literary forms within the earliest portion of the canon makes earliest texts
the most diverse body of work within Shakespeares canon as well as the
most complex segment of his oeuvre to study. Because of the complexities
and problems of the chronology and authorship of early plays, any study
of Shakespeares personal style is mired with difficulties. So isolating one
aspect of that style, bombast in this case, is a way of acknowledging, not
so much Shakespeares stylistic specificity but addressing his adherence
and re-imagination of a mode of writing that in the early 1590s was
both pervasive and critically challenged. The study of early Shakespeare,
Ernst Honigmann writes in his analysis of his analysis of bombast, should
involve an examination of the various kinds of high style; of the blending
of one style with another; and of the effects of inflation on the audience,
concluding rightly that the really difficult questions (Honigmann 1980:
162) come from the study of Shakespeares early style. Bombast was a
signature style of earliest Shakespeare that permeated every genre that
he used to convey the force, the restlessness, and above all the sense of
writing in the spirit of Elizabethan aesthetics.
Since the 1980 publication of Ernst Honigmanns important book on
Shakespeares early years, scholarship has advanced our knowledge of his
chronology and collaboration, issues central to the historiography of the
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Goran Stanivukovi Earliest Shakespeare: Bombast and Authenticity
earliest part of Shakespeares opus. Yet the lack of critical interest in earliest
plays suggests that scholars still find it safer to stay away from that body
of work often thought to be the one deeply rooted in the technicalities of
rhetoric and wedded to a close imitation of Shakespeares contemporaries,
especially those already established as writers and playwrights. As
mentioned, the question of collaboration adds to the difficulty of making
arguments about Shakespeares early writing as a self-contained segment
of Shakespeares writing career. This is the case, for instance, with some
of the earliest works like the tragedy Titus Andronicus, considered by
the editors of the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare to have been
authoredby Shakespeare but containing additional passages written by
George Peele, or the comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona, dated, by the
same editors, between 1589 and 1591. Yet, critical caution should not
lead to avoidance when it comes to exploring other works from the pre1594 phase of writing, or even from studying those parts of collaborative
plays that can be identified as possibly written by Shakespeare. Moreover,
to study Shakespeares earliest writing as a way of anticipating his later
writing should not overshadow attempts to explore the earliest works as
texts with their own autonomous style and imaginative worlds. I intend
to argue that the style of Shakespeares earliest plays and his rhetorical
strategy of bombast in particular, reveals not so much the beginnings of the
aesthetic dimension of Shakespeares writing that expands in later writing,
but a feature distinctive of earliest Shakespeare searching for his authentic
creative voice at the time when other powerful dramatic voices compete
for the place in the growing theatre world of 1590s London. Bombast is
not an isolated aspect of Shakespeares early style, but a mode of writing
transformed into other expressive resources in later work. Bombast is also
a design of language, to which the modem ear is not accustomed, as the
moderns are condition to think of bombast in pejorative terms. To the
Elizabethans, bombast would have appeared as something quite different
from what it sounds to our ears.
Used as a qualifier of style, earliest brings to mind opportunities not
yet seized, craft not yet mastered, the first steps. It can also mean too
early, before something has fully come into being. Earliest can also refer
to the least significant and often neglected body of work. It is a qualifying
term of uncertain meaning and temporal limits. When does earliest
Shakespeare become early Shakespeare, or mature Shakespeare? These
questions imply that Shakespeare develops his artistic style in a linear
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manner. The works themselves, however, defy such categorization because

the hierarchy of texts does not come out of their writing organically but is
artificially established by modem critics. Earliest tends to be neglected on
teleological grounds, precisely because it is undeveloped, undistinguished,
inauthentic, and because its temporal boundarieswhen does earliest
begin and when it stopsare all too clear. The year 1594 helps a critic
come up with a sample of work that is easier to address in a limited space
of critical writing, but the year serves the contingences of literary criticism
more than what one might call, if somewhat unfashionably, the evolution
of a writers personal style and aesthetics in general. Earliest provides
us with an opportunity to uncover the limitations of critical forgetting.
Shakespeare of the early 1590s wrote within the decorative continuum of
Elizabethan England that was magnificent by design and saw magnificence
as the sum of all virtues, a culture whose spirit was overblown (Mowl
1993: 14-14). This cultural and aesthetic milieu determined Shakespeares
love of, and skill with which he used bombast early in his writing career. In
earliest Shakespeare bombast is the place where he expands the capacity
of language to shape meaning and reinforce that meaning through verbal
sound.
To begin with bombast as the starting point for an analysis of earliest
Shakespeare makes sense because it was targeted as the main object of
critique in the first surviving published review of Shakespeares earliest
writing. It is also the dominant feature of grand style (and its counterfeit)
in early modem writing, as suggested by a recent critic (Adamson 2007:
46). In an age when the English language expanded its semantic potential,
when rhetoricians recommended amplification and ornamentation as the
proper strategy for narrative composition and its padding with exempla for
turning orations into stories (as the rhetorician Richard Rainolde maintains
[1563: A4v]), and when repetition was not considered a deficiency but
a virtue of style, bombast became both a compositional principle and a
stylistic strategy of producing meaning. To sound modern in the early
1590s meant to write in ones own grand style, ones personal bombast.
2. Bombast: the practice of writing

The trivial lying pamphlet, as Thomas Nashe called Greenes Groatsworthof Wit in Pierce Pennilesse in 1592, gives us the first record of the
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effect Shakespeares earliest writing had on his contemporaries; it also

provides an opportunity to explore bombast as a rhetorical dimension and
chronologically determined property of Shakespeares earliest style (Nashe
1985: 50). Although critics like Samuel Schoenbaum have debated whether
writing or acting is targeted in this piece of malicious writing (Schoenbaum
1970: 51) and whether the pamphlet was even authored by the dying
Robert Greene, which is the question raised by a recent biographer of
Shakespeare (Duncan-Jones 2001: 48), early Shakespeare has continued
to be linked with bombast in subsequent interpretations of this pamphlet.
The familiar words referring to a Shake-scene as an upstart crow, that
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of his
contemporaries (Schoenbaum1970: 50), have shaped the idea of bombast
as a negative quality of writing in criticism for years to come. Yet it is not
bombast style itself, but Shakespeares ability to employ it as well as, if not
better than, other live-wire young writers (Nicholl 2013: 3) of the early
1590s, that irks the author of the Greenes Groats pamphlet. This incendiary
pamphlet, which caused quite a bit of turmoil when it came out, calls our
attention to the fact that, for the Elizabethans, unlike for us, bombast did not
imply faulty style, an error of language. The author does not attack Shakescene for using bombast in the first place. Second, the pamphlet invites
us to put Shakespeares bombast in relation to that of his contemporaries,
and encourages comparative analysiswith other playwrights. If anything,
this pamphlet tells us that earliest Shakespeare stood out among his
contemporaries because of his virtuoso handling of bombast.
For an early view of bombast, not as a derisory quality of poetry but
a sign of poetic finesse, let us turn to John Dryden. In his 1679 essay
The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy he says thatbombast is commonly
the delight of that audience which loves poetry but understands it not:
and as commonly has been the practice of those writers who, not being
able to infuse a natural passion into the mind, have made it their business
to ply the ears, and to stun their judges by the noise. But Shakespeare
does not often thus. (Dryden 195: 143). Drawing on the example of an
exchange between Brutus and Cassius from Shakespeares Roman tragedy
Julius Caesar, Dryden shows that Shakespeare adjusts words to subject

Schoenbaums suggestion that it is acting, not writing, that the words in the pamphlet
refer to, seems plausible. But since we do not have any substantial evidence of the specific
modalities of Shakespeares acting ability, I will treat the reference in this pamphlet to be
about writing, because that is what the language seems to be suggesting at this point.
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matter and language to passions, aiming for psychological motivation to

correspond with linguistic form. In Drydens estimation Shakespeares
bombast sounds authentic and not clich. Drydens reference attends to
what one might call the sound of bombast, that is, bombast that is soft
and meaningfully employed, not a thundering accumulation of words.
Dryden was the first critic among poets to write about Shakespeares use
of bombast as a positive feature of style. There were earlier versions of
assessing the sound of exaggeration by language. In his 1589 treatise on
poetry, The Arte of English Poesy, George Puttenham refers to hyperbole as
Loud Liar (Puttenham 2007: 276). Puttenham uses the adjective loud
to mean rhetorically vivid (as we might say that someones clothing is
too brightloud colours) as opposed to too noisy. Dryden asserts that
some writers cannot get bombast right, and that some audiences do not
understand it, but that Shakespeare mastered the art of bombast and made
it meaningful to his audiences. Much of Shakespeares earliest dramatic and
lyric poetry, I would argue, is about trying to get the right measure of, and
balance between, the lexical form and sound of bombast, making bombast
a vehicle for thought. Rather than view it as a fault, which would be a
modern-day understanding of bombast, we need to understand bombast in
its historical complexity. Bombast tests the boundaries between rhetorical
and cognitive models of reading because it is both a rhetorical device and
a sound to be cognized. As the examples that follow show, Shakespeare
experiments with the modalities of style and structure within the linguistic
frame of bombast. If some of Shakespeares texts appear more bombastic
than others, it is because the text is doing work instead of defaulting to the
teleological assumption that earliest Shakespeare is learning his craft. In
employing bombast in all of its complexity, Shakespeare turns against his
critics, like the authorof the Greenes Groats pamphlet, and wields the same
weapon they used to attack his earliest achievement. The expansive and
explosive word bombast gave writers and their critics sufficient material
to reach for it liberally and creatively.
The etymology of bombast is a stuffing made out of cotton wool that
gave garments (and presumably their wearers) an inflated impression.
Bombast is both conceptually and acoustically close to bombarda, the
Italian for a gun, or any kind of bumbard and to bombardare, meaning
to batter, to shoote, to beate, which is how John Florio glosses these
words in his 1598 Italian-English dictionary (Florio 2013: 99). For the
author of the Greenes Groats pamphlet, bombast became the lexical gun
with which to shoot down the new grand style practiced by Shakespeare.
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One of the reasons that historiographers of early modem drama have

differed on what the pamphlets author may have meant shows that we
are not certain whether early modern ways of assessing style are accessible
to us today in all their critical nuances. On the matters of style, if we
take Puttenham as a guide, then it is the tenor of speaking and writing,
extending to the whole tale or process of the poem or history [narrative],
and not properly to any piece or member of a tale. As he simply puts it,
style is of words, speeches, or sentences (Puttenham 2007: 233). For the
Elizabethans, style covered a large spectrum of writing modalities, from
the smallest unit of a word, to a sound, to the largest organization of those
units into a meaningful story like narrative. More generally, any smallest
and any largest unit of a composition constituted one notion of style in the
Elizabethan period to comprise what we now call formalism.
While the Elizabethan idea of style remained oriented toward close
reading, modern examinations of style also take into account external
factors that leave an imprint on literary style. In contemporary critical
writing poetic style comprises the study of the smallest measurable units
of poetry as well as more abstract notions of style like historical, religious,
economic, political (Nolan 2010: 396). And these are, Nolan argues,
contradictory aspects (Nolan 2010: 396) of style. They are contradictory
because external and internal aspects of style are considered to work
together towards a general notion of style in a specific period. What these
aspects of style also contradict is how the Elizabethans conceived of style,
because what for us are more abstract features of style for the Elizabethans
would be an altogether different level of experiencing and expressing the
world, history, religion, and politics through aesthetics. This approach
reflects theextent to which material and ideological orientation of some
influential and prevailing modern criticalpractices and methodologies
marginalize formalist criticism. So the critical point, then, is to what
extent we can distinguish a writers personal style from a mode of cultural
expression that reflects habits and practices of representation in Elizabethan
culture as a whole. Shakespeares earliest style is not only a product of
his comprehensive reading and his attentiveness to the requirements of
acting on the stage, but also a certain immanent quality that bears his
imprint and that distinguishes his writing, and bombast in particular, from
his contemporaries.
Shakespeares bombast crosses the boundary that separates the
personal from the cultural. One of the features of Shakespeares stylistic
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expression lies precisely in the blurring of such a boundary which matters

more to our extremely individualistic culture than to the Elizabethan age
where the sense of collective belonging (especially with respect to religious
sects) was more pronounced.
Writing about Shakespeares style, therefore, is not without
methodological difficulties largely because analytical tools that we use
to study language and style are neither consolidated nor consistently
employed by critics, and those tools may not fully be adequate either. Some
might even say that writing about style hides within itself a particular
ideological stance manifested in avoidance of politics and history, which
produce literature in the first place. For the art historian Ernst Gombrich,
the preferred approach to the study of style in Renaissance visual arts is
through sociology and psychology (Gombrich 1959: 17). Yet Gombrichs
critical method demonstrated in much of his writing about art history is
the best example of treating styles as cultural and historical manifestations.
Gombrichs approach to style is based on an exploration of what he calls
materialist incarnations that make styles [...] instances of cultural
traditions (Gombrich 1977: 17). Following up on Gombrich, one could,
then, argue that bombast is an instance of the cultural tradition of writing
in late Elizabethan aesthetics.
Historians of the English language have studied style mostly through
words and grammar; literary scholars have assessed it primarily through
rhetoric and meter. But there has been a change in the ways literary critics
analyze style. Interdisciplinary approaches to Elizabethan styles have
recently produced compelling arguments about the styles of Shakespeares
writing, especially his late plays. For example, Russ McDonald has analyzed
the style of Elizabethan artistic and materialist world, such as garden design
and architecture,providing a new model for literary critics how to expand
the ways of interpreting literary style (McDonald 2013: 486-504). The
study of Shakespeares bombast brings together verbal, linguistic, metrical,
visual, and cultural properties that underpin his creative imagination. Yet
bombast also, and inevitably, because it is associated with volume, invites
comparison with music.
In the essay Racines Classical Piano, first published in 1927 and
expanded in 1931, Leo Spitzer borrows the term piano from music to
explore the morphology of Racines tragic language. In this sense, piano
is the effect of softening sound, and Spitzer uses it to describe Racines
style as that of distinguishing restraint, of self enclosure (Spitzer 1983:
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4), by exploring a range of linguistic strategies (he calls them attenuating

devices [11]), including figures and tropes, which cumulatively produce
the effect of something muted, distanced and icy [...] of the stylistic
expressions of modesty and restraint (103), where Racine hides the
ardour in his writing. Setting the larger concern of Spitzers essay aside,
a concern with the untranslatability of the linguistic effects of Racines
dramatic poetry, to focus on his metaphorical use of a musical effect, piano,
to capture the nature of that stylistic elusiveness, I want to suggest that
unlike Spitzers Racine, earliest Shakespeare is the writer of linguistic
forte. If piano is the term that best describes Racines stylistic elusiveness,
then earliest Shakespeares bombastic style can be called forte, alluding
to the acoustic presence that Shakespeares works asserted for themselves
on stage. Forte is both a figure for bombast and a quality of sound; it is the
capacity of languageto give force to ideas. Shakespeares bombast reveals
the force of linguistic experimentation. It is also evidence of Shakespeares
fast-developing skill in turning the growing opportunities of the expanding
semantic potential of English language into both the subject of his drama
and the vehicle for thought. Earliest bombast is both a linguistic music
and a meaning-generating device.
3. Shakespeares dramatic forte: bombast and authenticity

In a sense, Shakespeares bombast comprises both style and the linguistic
place of improbability, understood here as an aberration and departure
from different kinds of literary conventions, including intelligible syntax,
plain, and moderate style. It is both a rhetorical realization of an idea and
a cognitive practice. Bombast is a logical as well as rhetorical instrument
of knowing, that underpins representation. At the cognitive dimension of
text, improbability plays an important role in earliest Shakespeare because
it captures competing ontological currents of thought that fill dramatic
plots and actions. Bombast is often composed of conceptual tropes, or
figures of thought, like hyperbole, irony, allegory, synecdoche (Lausberg
1998: 328) and of figures of syntax, like repetition, all of which are
added, almost like verbal jewels, to the fine fabric of textual background.
Shakespeare exploited this possibility of language to dilate, grow, expand,
and bulge with ornament and verbal bravura to a level in which language,
performance, and the actors art together shaped a new reality, a new
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playworld (Palfrey 2014:1), in his stage plays. In his earliest works,

Shakespeare capitalized on bombasts multidimensional form and forte
(its meaning-creating volume) to set his work apart from the often onedimensional sonic force of much ofthe bombast of his contemporaries.
To understand how Shakespeares bombast differed from that of his
contemporaries we should turn to Christopher Marlowe, whose use of
bombast framed in iambic pentameter blankverse, a style that led Harry
Levin to call him an overreacher (Levin 1965), shows how qualitatively
different his bombast is from Shakespeares. If Shakespeare competed with,
and was influenced by the already popular Marlowe, bombast became
the obvious sign of that competition, given Marlowes predilection for
expressive exaggeration. Marlowes bombast impresses more as an image
than as a thought, Shakespeares is ornament as thought. The effect of
Marlowes bombast is in the linguistic form as such, of Shakespeares in its
multidimensional meanings. There is a sense that each bombastic passage
in Marlowes overreaching plays is a self-contained stylistic vignette. Here
is Tamburlaine courting Zenocrate, from the second part of Tamburlaine
the Great:
Zenocrate, lovelier than the love of Jove,
Brighter than is the silver Rhodope,
Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hills,
Thy person is more worth to Tamburlaine
Than the possession of the Persian crown,
Which gracious stars have promised at my birth.
A hundred Tartars shall attend on thee,
Mounted on steeds swifter than Pegasus;
Thy garments shall be made of Median silk,
Enchased with precious jewels of mine own,
More rich and valorous than Zenocrates;
With milk-white harts upon an ivory sled
Thou shalt be drawn amidst the frozen pools
And scale the icy mountains lofty tops,
Which with thy beatify will be soon resolved;
My martial prizes, with five hundred men,
Won on the fifty-headed Volgas waves,
Shall all we offer to Zenocrate,
And then myself to fair Zenocrate. (1.2.87-10 5)
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Words referring to a world beyond England, an otherworld, create in

this apostrophe an acoustic and visual effect of estrangement; Zenocrate,
the absent character is imaginedagain and again, but only as an idea. She
never directly speaks. The play, already crowded with men, displaces the
absent woman, banishing her to thecold zones in Russia and in frozen
landscape, creates even more room for men to bond with one another. As
the plot progresses her beauty figures as improbable, her image constituted
by hyperbolic metaphors. It is as if in the heroic world of Marlowes
grinding soldiers, female beauty is a strange fellow, a remote idea. There is
a disjuncture between words and action, since desiring Tamburlaine, who
only moves in the world of military men, imagines Zenocrate more as a
concept than a body of flesh. The poetic energy of Tamburlaines bombast,
and the dramatists intelligence to conjure up cold beauty in such a way
that it creates an illusion of affect and admiration in this set piece, act as
visual-verbal set pieces on stage. In the words of a recent critic, this kind of
speech represents rhetorical comfort food (Adamson 2007: 46). In terms
of its meaning, this example of bombast does not reach beyond verbal
embellishment; it almost renders Zenocrate a stage prop. Marlowe varies
the same syntactic formula through auditory repetitions, counting on the
aural effect of his verbal padding. This formula worked well in plays that
are more based on a series of extraordinarily crafted episodes than on
a developing plot. In contrast to the ornamental grammar of Marlowes
bombast, Shakespeares bombast privileges the rhetorical dimension
of bombast as a composite of different strategies and instruments of
persuasion. His bombast is calculated to animate physical, affective, and
cognitive aspects of drama, which are in consonance with the plot and
action as developing features of stage plays. In that respect, Marlowes
style is limited, and Shakespeares is multilayered. In his comparison
of Marlowe and Shakespeare, Simon Palfrey has recently argued that
Marlowes reputation is for nonchalant carelessness, but in truth he is
much more possessive of his instruments than Shakespeare (Palfrey 2014:
74). This idea that Marlowe does not let his expressive instruments in the
theatrelanguage and performancerun away from him, captures clearly
the quality of Marlowes bombast. Marlowes refined ear for poetry and for
stage spectacle better follows his intuition for crafting dramatic verse than
structuring dramatic plot; so he puts all of his charismatic intelligence
(Palfrey 2014: 14) into the formal effect and the ornamentation of his
blankverse. While Marlowe puts all of his creative energies in producing
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impressive poetic imagery, Shakespeare allows his materials a quasiindependent appetite, or morphs his mind into their potential for such
(Palfrey 2014: 14). Morphs is the key word here because it suggests
the extent to which Shakespeare uses rhetorical dimension of language
for multiple purposes. Shakespeare treats bombast as complex language
itself, as malleable verbal matter, and weaves it around and through both
actions and characters, to enrich other forms of expression. He wrote his
bombast against the background of the culture and practice of bombastic
expression in late Elizabethan aesthetics, which included public theatre
as well. Marlowe was not alone in treating bombast as merely ornate
style. Shakespeare would have been surrounded by other playwrights who
handled bombast in the way Marlowe did.
Marlowe conceives of bombast as ornamental in a similar way in
which Robert Greene uses blankverse in his popular play Friar Bacon and
Friar Bungay, written probably in 1589, shortly after Tamburlaine (written
in 1587/8), and performed successfully at the Rose Theatre. In Friar
Bacon, a play popular on the public stage in London at time when earliest
Shakespeare was busy acting and writing plays, Shakespeare may have
heard the actor playing King Henry III deliver the following speech:
Great men of Europe, monarchs of the west,
Ringd with the walls of old Oceanus,
Whose lofty surge is like the battlements
That compassd high-built Babel in the towers,
Welcome, my lords, welcome, brave western kings,
To Englands shore, whose promontory cleeves
Shows Albion is another little world. (Greene, Scene 4, 1-7)
The vocabulary of this speech highlights physical geography that consists of
walls, battlements, towers, cliffs, a shore, and a promontory. This exterior
world delineates thought much like Tamburlaines thundering recitations
of the countries and territories that he conquers in his thirst to extend his
domain from the East to the West. Yet this bombast does not anticipate
Shakespeares grand style. In Shakespeares hand, bombast is a way of
shaping knowledge about women. In Shakespeares bombast, we follow
the movement of the mind in the first place, only then we are impressed
by the sound of language. It is as if Shakespeare had the speaking part
and the speaking body of the actor in mind when he wrote some of his
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bombast. He is careful not to deafen the actors vocal performance by the

volume of verbal sound. In 3 Henry 6, York is speaking of Queen Margaret
on stage:
Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud
But, God he knows, thy share thereof small;
Tis virtue that doth make them most admired
The country doth make thee wondered at;
Tis government that makes them seem divine
The want thereof makes thee abominable.
Thou art as opposite to every good
As the antipodes are unto us,
Or as the south to the septentrion.
0 tigers heart wrapped in a womans hide! (1.4.129-138)
Spread evenly across several lines (129, 131, 133), repetition creates
balance and harmony. Between each repeated line, Shakespeare gives the
actor a pause to introduce another thought directly related to the external
context that shapes the world. God and country are just as crucial points
in developing this argument as is woman and her power because they are
all one universe. Interestingly, it is striking that the author of the Greenes
Groats pamphlet picks up the last line of this speech, in a possible reference
to Shakespeare, beautified with our feathers and acting bombastically
with his Tigers heart wrapt in a players hide (Schoenbaum 1970: 50).
The connection between this line and cultural history might not have
escaped contemporary audience. Writing against the historical background
of Queen Elizabeth Is rule, the last line of Yorks speech can be read as
exposing a male aristocrats anxiety of being subservient to a powerful
woman, and could very well be a reference to Elizabeth herself. At the
semantic and formal levels, the words and ideas from one line grow out of
those in the previous to create an organic cascade of sound. The stylistic
and ontological shock of bombast at the end calls for a re-valuation of
Yorks intent, for a radically different way of thinking about womans role
in a heroic play, and outside it, in heroic discourse, with which patriotic
Elizabethan age was enamoured. This bombastic line, then, is more than
an insult directed at Queen Margaret; it resonates with a view of Queen
Elizabeth I. Elizabethan tragedy is particularly attentive to the treatment
of ambition and its consequences, and that theme establishes the larger
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frame for Yorks speech, whose last line is a logical, if not exaggerated,
articulation of denouement towards which the speech is build up. It is this
kind of linguistic crescendo that creates the effect of forte in Shakespeares
bombastic writing; volume is increased at the point where meaning is
expanded to cover more than one set of issues, more than one world.
Structured around repetition (Tis beauty; Tis virtue ;Tis government)
the bombast of this speech dampen some of Marlowes overreaching
rhetoric. But this flattening, this repetition executed as a linear sequence
of the same lexical formula, reflects, as Russ McDonald has argued writing
about rhetorical repetitions in Romeo and Juliet, the Elizabethan fondness
for pattern (McDonald 2009: 2) that produces balance and harmony,
which were Elizabethan stylistic ideals. Elizabethan music, gardens, and
the well-defined but unadventurous timbering (Mowl 2001: 44) of
the facades of town houses, as well as those of country mansions (like
Hardwick Hall) and castles (like Kenilworth), are all evidence of the love
of balance achieved through parallelism and the repetition of structural
forms. If we want to gain knowledge of where Shakespeares bombast came
from, we should not only turn to literature but also to the material culture
of the physical environment in which he lived and the visual world which
surrounded him. While we prefer variety and difference, the Elizabethans
preferred sameness and the balance of equal parts. What for us, then, is
monotony, for them would have been harmony. We avoid monotony, they
sought harmony stemming from repetition. The corresponding rhythm of
forms that create balance through the repetition of like formal patterns
has its textual equivalent in Shakespeares use of rhetorical strategies that
create just such an effect.
In Shakespeare, the broken conduplicatio, which Richard Lanham
defines as repetition of a word or words in succeeding clauses (Lanham
1991: 190), moves towards building a thought that culiminates in a
bombastic climax in the last line of the speech. Beauty [] proud ,
country [...] admired, government [...] divine: these are important
collocations in lines shaped around conduplicatio. Those lines make
conceptual pairs based on collocations concerning government and country,
two entities that mattered to Shakespeares audience. In other words,
beauty supplies the scaffolding of a larger frame of the historical basis of
human condition. At the levels of logic and rhetoric, that is, at the level
of form, the conceptual coherence achieved in the examples of bombast
from Yorks speech indicates careful following of the precepts for building
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a point around various examples recommended in textbooks of rhetoric.

But the effect of this bombast is an individual achievement. This bombast
does not produce disbelief, as does Marlowes bombastic blankverse, but
calls attention to the subject of this speech, the pragmatics of earthly rule.
Marlowes words and sounds flow out as if propelled by one giant bluster.
Shakespeare braids the styles the Elizabethans liked: lexical exaggeration
alternates with rhetorical parallelism.
Yet bombast also provides a conceptual way of imagining history,
history conceived not as a repository of exempla involving the work of
Fortune and divine justice. As an outcome of mans agency outside the
reach of Fortune and divine justice, history brings its own turmoil; so
bombast becomes the vehicle that captures a new reality, as and audience
would have witnessed in 2 Henry VI. Here is Suffolk:
My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words;
My eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint;
My hair be fixed on end, as one distraught;
Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban.
And, even now, my burdened heart would break
Should I not curse them . ...
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!
Their chiefest prospect murdring basilisks!
Their softest touch as smart as lizards stings!
Their music frightful as the serpent s hiss,
And boding screech-owls make the consort full!
All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell(3.2.320-325 ; 326-332)
The curse depends on repetition for its power and the repetition of
possessive pronouns in the initial positions (My/Mine and Their) may
sound syntactically tedious to us, but for the Elizabethans repetition which
produced harmony was a source of delight. Distraught, a key word in this
speech, conditions passionate exclamations which are the affective state
identified by the literary theoretician William Scott as one of the situations
requiring the writer to force violently (Scott 2013: 67) poetic language
to enhance the power of utterance, in his recently discovered work, The
Art of Poesy (c1599). Here Scotts model is Quintilian. But Shakespeares

Scott was a contemporary of Sir Philip Sidney, whose treatise An Apologie for Poetrie(1595)
inspired Scotts treatise.
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tunes his bombast to the processes of thinking ideas in the language as a

living force of theatre. Heaping up adjectives becomes a way of displaying
to Elizabethan theatre goers the richness of language to produce both
ornament and meaning; to capture high emotions with swelling terms.
Some detectable linguistic traces in this speech reveal an astonishing
sensitivity to work simultaneously with lexical nuances and ontological
categories, suggesting in turn that bombast was a carefully thoughtthrough strategy of writing, not a rhetorical stream of consciousness.
Style that reflects a concentration of Latinate influence, in collocating
Latinate nouns with Saxon adjectives words (nouns + adjectives) and
with adjectives appearing in the Latinate position following the noun, as
in chiefest prospect, music frightful, four terrors, are linguistic signs
of bombast as a cultural category as well. Shakespeare echoes the periods
instructions for grand style by using great words (Wilson 2009: 45); that
is, Latin lexicon, as the rhetorician Thomas Wilson advises in his popular
treatise, The Art of Rhetoric (Wilson 2009: 45). If style which collocates
Latinate with Latinate words, as Sylvia Adamson suggests (Adamson 1999:
571), tends to appear in parodies and not in the grand style, then mixing
words of Latin and Saxon origins in Suffolks speech shows Shakespeares
artistic skill in adjusting vehement style to a linguistically attentive and not
just ambitious soldier ina historical situation. Much of the tension between
political and military players as rivals in Shakespeares early history plays
like 2 Henry VI depends on achieving balance between possibility and
improbability of heroic agency.
Improbability implied by bombast makes us think about what history,
mans ambition for rule, and heroic agency mean after history is no longer
a series of exempla and when Fortunes doing is replaced by human agency.
Shakespeares dramatic parts (or characters) are good listeners on stage
who aptly commentators on language and the speech of others. To Queen
Margaret and to the audience of Shakespeares theatre, Suffolks vehement
language sounds like an overcharged gun that can recoil / And turnthe
force of them upon thyself. (3.2.333) Shakespeares text issues a warning
about the limits of bombast to capture history in full. The self-conscious
reference to bombast signals Shakespeares awareness of the limits and
potential of this rhetorical device for representation. Bombast suited well
historical narratives the Elizabethan liked, and thus fitted the mode of
speaking of characters that delivered such narratives.
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The best way to see what Shakespeare does with his bombast is to
compare his drama to that of Thomas Kyd, who introduced bombast to
the public stage of London theatres at the close of the sixteenth century.
In Kyds play The Spanish Tragedy Shakespeare might have seen how to
employ bombast for narrative purpose. Here is Don Andrea:
I saw more sights than thousand tongues can tell,
Or pens can write, or mortal hearts can think.
Three ways there were: that one on the right-hand side
Was ready way unto the foresaid fields
Where lovers lived and bloody martialists,
But neither sort contained within his bounds.
The left hand-path, declining fearfully,
Was ready downfall to the deepest hell,
Where bloody Furies shake their whips of steel,
And poor Ixion turns an endless wheel;
Where usurers are cloaked with melting gold,
And wantons are embraced with ugly snakes,
And murderers groan with never-killing wounds,
And perjured wights scalded in a boiling lead
And full foul sins with torments overwhelmed. (1.1. 55-71)
The force of Kyds writing depends on bombast as a narrative principle that
also generates stylistic excess, with the ghost of Don Andrea, delivering
this fantastical account that runs over eighty three lines of an imagined
topography of Hell, that dreaded land that lies on the other side of
death. The figure of language called anaphora, which Lanham defines
as repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive clauses or
verses (Lanham 1991: 11), furnishes bombast in this speech. Anaphora
leads to the acousticclimax at the end of a long block of blank verse, just
before bombast gives the listener a reprieve when the wondering ghost of
Don Andrea reaches the fair Elysian green (1.1.74). Shakespeare could
have learned a lot from Kyds example, especially how to vary the modalities
of bombast language to push the narrative forward. But he could have
also learned how to avoid the excess of anaphora turn into a bombastic
tedium. That The Spanish Tragedy was performed regularly for fifty years,
from about 1592, soon after it was written, until the closure of the theatres
in 1642, suggests that an abundance of bombast was not an obstacle to
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the plays popularity. Marlowes and Kyds bombast left an imprint on the
language of drama, and Shakespeare worked both alongside and against
that tradition of dramatic rhetoric.
The authentic quality of bombast of earliest Shakespeare lies in
eliminating the disconnection between language and the agency performed
by characters on stage. In Shakespeares early tragedy Titus Andronicus,the
language that Tamora uses to describe the dangerous landscape (the hell
on earth) where she finds herself with her the two lascivious (2.3.110)
Goth sons, Chiron and Demetrius, resembles a thick and dark English forest
(lines 93-7) rather than a distant and foreign place. Here is Tamora:
A barren detested vale you see it is;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe.
Here never shines the sun, here nothing breeds
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven,
And when they showed me this abhorred pit
They told me here at dead time of the night
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins
Would make such fearful and confused cries
As any mortal body hearing it
Should straight fall mad or else die suddenly. (2.3.93-104)
Linguistic vehemence intensifies an imagined answer to the question that
possessed the period in which Shakespeare lived: what Hell is like. Both visual
and textual presentations of Hell in the early modem period often associate
Hell with exaggeration, Hell with excess, and Hell with improbability.
Shakespeares version of making Hell legible if not fully comprehensible is
to present it as an eerie anti pastoral landscape crowned with hyperbole (A
thousand/Ten thousand), arranged as gradual intensification (Lausberg
1998: 410). Lausberg links hyperbole to extremity and implausibility
(1998: 263), and, like Claudia Claridge, for whom hyperbole is not only an
evaluation device but first and foremost a quantity and thus an intensity
device (2011: 87), Lausberg treats hyperbole as a tope that creates volume
rather than generate meaning. In his modern rendering, hyperbole is more
a Marlovian than a Shakespearean trope, revealing a certain limitation of
linguistic formalist criticism when tropes are analyzed outside an aesthetic
148
context, which gives meaning to their use. Claridge, working on a corpus

of hyperbole coming largely from Shakespeares works, makes a valuable
comment regarding the quality of hyperbolic use: Perhaps the hyperbole
was somewhat more restrained, less blatant in the past (Claridge 2001:
183). At this point a historian of literature and a historian of the English
language join hands in claiming that while Shakespeare continues to
employ even the simplest form of hyperbole, the hyperbole of number
(hyperbole whose lexical base is in the use of number, like thousand), the
immediate linguistic milieu is not linguistic exaggeration.
Returning to Tamoras words, we encounter epithets that enable vivid
language (a barren detested vale, baleful mistletoe, fatal raven,
abhorred pit). To argue that earliest Shakespeare is too rhetorical and
that his poetry is too much rooted in clichs and techniques, as generations
of critics have done, is to overlook the choice of stylistictools which he
used to create nuances oflinguistic opportunities. Tamoras speech is
rhetorical, and stylistically rich, and the bombast that lies at the heart of it
features more as an ornament than a thinking tool. The audience is carried
along by the poetical particularities of epithets and nouns that see into the
nature of contemporary imagination that tries to comprehend Hell with
clarity and sharpness. These two hyperboles extend the meaning of Hell
by intensifying its intent to conjure it up on earth, which suits Tamoras
character. The snakes and toads, which appear within the frame of this
hyperbole of number, are the animals associated with hell (remember
Hieronymus Boschs painted fantasies of Hell); as such, they correspond
to Tamoras animalistic, hellish, and destructive character. In this careful
balancing of hyperbole with other aspects of ornate style lies the authenticity
of Shakespeares bombast adjusted to character and dramatic situation.
The English vocabulary in this speech, that corresponds to the
imaginable and potentially familiar landscape is far removed from the
flight of Tamburlaines fancy about distant geography and Don Andreas
verbal rendering of Hell. In an age when the new delight in spectacle
(Gurr 1992: 226) determined both performance and play writing in early
modem England, delight in speaking in language that itself is a spectacle
of word choices, combinations, the modalities of sound and semantics, as
well as syntax, represent a way of becoming attuned to bombasts rhythm
and action on the stage. Titus is a good example of a play in which the
combination of bombast and action create spectacle. Part of the richness
and gothic appeal of Titus comes from the way Shakespeare knitted together
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different strategies of crafting bombast through vocabulary, hyperbole,

and rhetorical figures of syntax. Shakespeares turn to bombast signals
experimentation with multiple possibilities of exaggeration as a mode of
writing, not as one might say, an error of expression. That, too, is a sign
of stylistic authenticity in an age of linguistic excess. Shakespeares forte
created by resounding bombast marks him off from his contemporaries
who energized his own writing, butagainst whom he developed his own
personal style that clearly surprised them, as the Greenes Groats pamphlet
suggests.
That Shakespeare was mindful of the rhetorical and performing
dimensions of bombast is evident not only in the way he matches it with
action but how he makes dramatic parts self-conscious of their use of it.
That is most often the case in his early and late comedies. Shakespeares
earliest comedies are most often concerned with troubling and mocking
traditions of love, and with the opportunities and limitations of courtship
and the rhetoric of courtship. They probe deep into the puzzling and fuzzy
psychology of lovers, exploring love and desire as powerful and engulfing
charges that transform his imagined men and women in ways that are
frighteningly appealing in the end. Within an aetiology of amorous excess,
the recourse to bombast makes sense; its formal and rhetorical excess
make it an ideal medium for writing about the power, exaggeration, and
improbability of love as acted and articulated on stage. Reading his early
comedies of love, one is almost lead to think that Shakespeare knew there
were only a few things one could say about love, and once they were
said, the rest could be only exaggeration and improbability, necessary
though they may be to sustain the illusion of loves enduring effect. In that
spirit the Queen of Navarres commentary on Birons love-letter writing is
revealing of bombast invoked as a term as a critique of the style previously
written out as emotion:
We have received your letters full of love,
Your favours the ambassadors of love,
And in all maiden council rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,
As bombast and as lining to the time. (5.2.669-773)
It is hard to disagree with the Queen that bombast was the verbal lining
of writing about love in the 1590s. From lining used in Birons speech in
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the sense of bombast as cotton wool, to the extended meaning of bombast

as a figure for writing, Shakespeare shows how flexible and meaninggenerating potential the two wordsbombast and liningoffer when
used in the same line. That is, after all, what made
bombast the obvious subject of humour and of depicting silly loversand what makes comedy sound like comedy. Biron says:
A lovers eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lovers ear will hear the lowest sound
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
Loves feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Loves tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste. (4.3. 310-315)
These lines parody both Petrarchism and Euphuism. The speech also
exemplifies self-conscious writing of that parody. These two stylistic media
show that lovers imagination cannot be liberated from clichs, which
makes love such a tragicomic subject in comedies at the time when drama
reached the heights of rhetorical fashioning.
Earliest Shakespeare continues to experiment with and search for
a poetic medium that will hold the various features of 1590s aesthetics
together within literary and dramatic expression. He realizes his bombast
in dramatically and rhetorically sensitive moves towards turning the
periods favoured (and therefore often attacked) mode of writing into an
instrument of thought. In his book Distant Reading, Franco Moretti suggests
that style provides critics with a model for studying how human beings
make sense of situations (Moretti 2013: 229). The idea that Shakespeares
characters, his stylized humans, draw attention to the role bombast played
in turning psychology into words, emotions into syntax, illusions into
images, and history into inner torment, represents a new a way of thinking
about how a derided feature of style in fact should be treated as one of
the key instruments of Shakespeares authentic style-making, a signature
of his personal style in the 1590s through which he conveyed the idea of
his characters making sense of dramatic situations created to make them
alive on stage.
If the author of the Greenes Groats pamphlet reacted against
Shakespeares use of bombast because the device was more suitable for
those who were academically educated, unlike a budding author without
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university education, such as Shakespeare, still a novice on the London

artistic scene, he said something important both about bombast and about
Shakespeare. On the one hand, the implication in that pamphlet may
be that bombast was treated as a complex rhetorical device, so much so
that only the educated were fit to write it and understand its uses. And
Shakespeare was one of them, since the caliber of Elizabethan grammarschool education in rhetoric, imitation, translation and composition
exercises, was high enough to have furnished him with the creative and
cognitive resources for such an understanding and artistic skill. On the
other hand, the author of the pamphlet may also be suggesting that a
crafty use of bombast was the key to successful play writing in cut-throat
competition for the presence and visibility on the public stage in early
1590s London already filled with plays written by playwrights who
used bombast liberally. Earliest Shakespeare gives ample evidence for
arguments in favour of these two possible explanations. Bombast shows
that earliest Shakespeare wrote within the Elizabethan rhetorical and
stylistic traditions in which repetition and exaggeration, which alternate
and battle with mean and plain style became one of the ways for managing
the sound of drama and audiences affects. Through bombast Shakespeare
simultaneously created and reduced the distance between his audience
and the world and how to create other worlds that extended both the
plots of his plays and the use of language of his characters. Shakespeares
bombast became a sign of authenticity and a writing strategy which he will
return to in the plays written and performed after 1594, like Othello, Julius
Caesar, Coriolanus, and Anthony and Cleopatra. In these plays he will use
bombast sparingly yet with more sophistication, but with no less forte than
in his earliest dramas.
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Vesna Lopii*
University of Nis
Faculty of Philosophy
Serbia
THE STAGE AS PURGATORY:

SHAKESPEREAN MORAL DILEMMAS
Abstract
This article was inspired by Trevor Nunns 2011 production of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. As the
performance and the title of the play transpire, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
detained in Purgatory after being killed in England. The aim of this article is to
explore the reasons why Tom Stoppard keeps them in Purgatory and repeatedly
exposes them to the crucial moments from their earthly lives. The necessary
theoretical framework is set out by Stephen Greenblatts study Hamlet in Purgatory
(2002), and Gareth Leyshons B.Th. thesis The Purpose of Purgatory: Expiation or
Maturation?(2005). The conclusion we would like to propose is that the purpose
of their detention is maturation, meaning the ability to make morally right choices
when faced with Shakespearean moral dilemmas.
Key words: theatre, Purgatory, Greenblatt, Leyshon, Shakespeare, Stoppard,
moral dilemmas
*
**
E-mail address: lovevuk@gmail.com

This research was supported by the project 178014 granted by the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.
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I thank him that prays for me when the bell tolls,

but I thank him much more that catechises me, or preaches to me,
or instructs me how to live.
John Donne
1. Introduction
In his book Hamlet in Purgatory (2002), Stephen Greenblatt endorses
the views of John Gee, a 17th century Protestant, on the degree to which
idolatry, superstition and credulity defined Catholic spirituality (Shami
2003: 195) in his time. As a convert from Catholicism, in 1624 Gee
published a book, The Foot out of the Snare, in which he documented and
illustrated many deceptions, public spectacles, and vices (fear of Purgatory
being one of them), allegedly practiced by Catholic priests in order to
ensnare common folk. The book came to be known as Somers Tracts and
became widely popular among Protestants. Jeanne Shami identified the
dominant comparison used by Gee in order to subject popish practices to
public ridicule. In the chapter Sermons and the Moral Marketplace of her
study John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit, she
says: In fact, the Tract compares these public spectacles to theatrical stage
plays and interludes (Shami 2003: 195). Shami is right to notice that Gee
was the first to establish this connection between religious practices and
the theatre. Therefore, it seems that Stephen Greenblatt got the idea for
his research into the phenomenon of Purgatory directly from John Gee and
his perception that Purgatory in the end reached the Renaissance stage. In
the last paragraph of his book Greenblatt comes to the same conclusion:
The space of Purgatory becomes the space of the stage (Greenblatt
2002: 257), which he repeats in his Epilogue (261), leaving his readers
no room for doubt as to whether Hamlet is in a metaphorical Purgatory
or not. The goal of this paper is not principally to determine the presence
of Purgatory in Hamlet, but to focus on the representation of Purgatory in
its complementary play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Our aim
is to prove that Stoppard places Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a real,
not metaphorical Purgatory in order to explore how they would react to a
second opportunity to make a morally correct choice. Before looking at the
text of the play in greater detail, it is important to set the background for
this research by outlining the concept of Purgatory as shown in Hamlet.
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Vesna Lopii The Stage as Purgatory: Shakespearean Moral Dilemmas
2. Purgatory and Shakespeare

Greenblatt wrote Hamlet in Purgatory as if to put an end to the endless
debate regarding the issue of the Ghost. Both Protestant and Catholic
audiences raise the question of the origin of the Ghost. The play was staged
for the first time around 1602, about half a century after the Protestant
Reformation was completed and the Anglican Church established. By that
time, Purgatory as part of Christian teaching had been eliminated from the
official Protestant doctrine, and practices related to it were disapproved
of, if not forbidden. Why Shakespeare then introduced a ghost into the
original story remains the subject of dispute. If the Ghost is an earthly
representation of the soul of King Hamlet, then it means that the Kings soul
is suffering in Purgatory, which is definitely part of the Catholic portrayal
of the human lot. The evidence from the text supports this interpretation:
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself
I am thy fathers spirit,
Doomd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away (Act 1, Scene 5).
These are the words with which King Hamlet rather conventionally
describes his suffering in Purgatory. The Christian people of Europe,
regardless of their religious persuasion, are all quite familiar with these
images of torturing flames and sulphurous stenches to which the soul of a
sinner is condemned for a certain period of time. The King also reminds his
listeners of the purpose of this punishment which is the purification of the
soul so that it can ascend to the Holy Father in its pure state. Reminding
is definitely unnecessary since to this day the readers, believers and nonbelievers alike, tremble at the stories of purgatorial agonies experienced
either as realistic post-mortem perils or as vivid metaphors for the plights
of this life.
King Hamlet (or his ghost) is fully aware of his own foul crimes and
the need to purify himself through fire until all sins are burnt away and
his soul remains clean and ready to meet its Maker. The only problem with
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this standard representation of Purgatory is that doctrinally it should have

been unacceptable to Shakespeares audiences which Shakespeare was
definitely aware of and yet he chose to make the nature of the Ghost the
crux of the problem. Greenblatt points out that Hamlet, as a young man
from Wittenberg, with a distinctly Protestant temperament, is haunted by
a distinctly Catholic ghost (Greenblatt 2002: 240), which could mean
that at the turn of the century Protestantism was still being haunted by
Catholicism. Deeply rooted images and practices are not easily eradicated,
nor is it unusual for old customs to surface in a new guise centuries later,
as often happens with pagan rituals. Still, it was daring of Shakespeare
to open his play with intimations of Purgatory, unless he wanted to warn
against it and show how devastating the effect of such a belief is: Prince
Hamlet goes mad, and eight people including him die over the course
of the play. It would stand to reason that he does indeed go mad and
cause the death of eight persons, haunted as he is by the request of the
Ghost, being unable to reject the moral obligation imposed upon him by
his fathers ghost. Consequently, at least part of the audience would get
the message that Catholicism, with Purgatory which the Catechism of the
Catholic Church teaches, may be devastating to peoples mental or physical
being.
Other questions that arise in this context are equally intriguing. Is
the Ghost the workings of the Devil; why does it confuse us by demanding
vengeance instead of simple Catholic remembrance; did Shakespeare
perhaps want to thrill the audiences as a strategy to increase ticket sales,
or perhaps he intended to take a subversive stand against the Protestant
authorities because, though he was a conforming member of the Church of
England, he was secretly a Catholic? It is well-known that these questions
related to the nature of the Ghost are not the only unanswered ones in
Hamlet, but there are also other questions related to the nature of Purgatory
which beg to be tackled in view of the fact that Stoppard makes Purgatory
the setting for his play: why did the Anglican Church reject Purgatory and
what is its canonical purpose today?
It took Stephen Greenblatt a book of over 300 pages to answer the
first question, relating it to Hamlet. Briefly,
Though it received its full doctrinal elaboration quite late the
historian Jacques Le Goff places the birth of Purgatory in the
latter half of the twelfth century the notion of an intermediate
place between Heaven and Hell and the system of indulgences
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and pardons meant to relieve the sufferings of souls imprisoned

within it had come to seem, for many heretics and orthodox
believers alike, essential to the institutional structure, authority,
and power of the Catholic Church (Greenblatt 2002: 13-14).
This means that the rituals and paraphernalia of Catholicism relied heavily
on the institution of Purgatory for good reason. It was believed, and this
belief was reinforced by all classes of the clergy, that the souls of sinners
suffered such unimaginable torments in Purgatory that any means of
relieving them of these pains was acceptable. That is how the system of
indulgences and pardons was developed where a person would willingly
part with their last penny in order to save their soul from the scorching
flames. Suffrages also included prayers, fasts, almsgiving and masses which
could all be purchased. This favour could be extended to the departed as
well, and since almost all souls were imperfect, shortening their stay in
Purgatory through suffrages became a lucrative side-activity for the Church.
The living could thus reduce the duration and intensity of the souls agony
which the Church encouraged by spreading the fear of Purgatory. To hasten
their souls through it, people parted with their wealth, commissioned
prayers and bought whatever relics were placed before them by the clergy
or impostors. Their fear was ungrounded, Purgatory itself imaginary, but
the money they paid was real. As Greenblatt phrases it: purgatorial fire,
though a figment of the imagination, brings real gold and silver into the
coffers of the Catholic Church (Greenblatt 2002: 39).
When the institutional practices related to Purgatory spread out
of control and beyond pragmatic argument, they made the Catholic
Church vulnerable to the attacks of Protestants. The extent of corruption
of the clergy became intolerable to lay folk and nobility alike, and the
reformation of the church was inevitable. The intense exploitation of
human fears which had lasted for almost five centuries was suppressed
by other practices imposed by the newly established Church of England.
Purgatory evolved into an emblem of the corruption of the Catholic Church.
However, the human imagination was already deeply possessed by horrible
images which, strangely enough, seemed to be more appealing to it than
the representations of heavenly bliss. The Anglican Church rejected it, but
Greenblatt lists bishops, abbots, priors, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, priests, monks,
canons, friars, pardoners, and summoners (Greenblatt 2002: 10).
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Purgatory lodged itself in literature so that even Shakespeare resorted to

the images of Purgatory knowing that the effect would be powerful.
The second question, about the significance and meaning of Purgatory
today, is more difficult to answer, even if one is a practicing Catholic.
The B.Th. thesis of Gareth Leyshon, The Purpose of Purgatory: Expiation
or Maturation? (2005), can offer some basic insights into this matter.
Following doctrinal requirements, Leyshon asserts:
a) There is a post-mortem state in which souls expiate their debts.
b) Truly penitent souls undergo purgatorial penalties in lieu of
the penances they were unable to complete while alive.
c) Living persons may contribute suffrage towards this expiation
by applying Mass, prayers or alms.
d) In order to avoid this state, one must ask the Lords mercy before
one comes to judgment.
e) But one will only receive mercy to the extent one has been
merciful to others. (Leyshon 2005: 41).
Evidently, all these elements of Catholic dogma have been preserved virtually
unchanged from the earliest times of Purgatory. The living soul passes
through the process of purification, and stays in Purgatory proportionally
to the heaviness of its burden of sins and possibly the suffrage offered by
those left behind. However, this period is not just a punishment, but a
cleansing of the soul. Leyshons terminological equivalents for punishment
and cleansing are expiation and maturation respectively, where maturation
is part of the development of an individual soul, while expiation is a
penalty justly imposed. Further, Leyshon proposes a new paradigm and
introduces two new terms: Detention and Refinement. He relates Detention
to expiation and Refinement to non-penal purification: Detention, which
is an expiatory state which effects maturation; and Refinement, which is
purely for maturation (Leyshon 2005: 50).
Making use of these distinctions, an interpretation of Stoppards play
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will now be attempted.
3. Purgatory and Stoppard

It seems that the title of this play has not been given full critical consideration.
In Hamlet, these are the words with which the English ambassador informs
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Horatio, since the King is already dead, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
have been executed. Stoppard chooses to quote these words as the title of
his play and thus sets a clear context for its understanding: Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern are dead! They are not metaphorically dead, they will
not die at the end of the play, their deaths are not impending, and they
are not headed for death: they are dead but not quite gone. The fact that
Stoppard does not repeat these words in the text of his play should not
create any misunderstanding, though it evidently does. None of the many
critics of the play, at least to our best knowledge, acknowledge the title,
but read the text as signifying the main characters fear of death, or the
absurdity of life, or a metaphor for death. We contend that the title is an
integral part of the play and as such should at the start make the reader
ask the logical question: if they are dead, and still the main characters of a
complex play with a great deal of action, where are they situated?
It could have been expected that after Greenblatt published Hamlet
in Purgatory (2002), his title would give rise to new interpretations of
Stoppards play, and answer the above question. The two plays are
intrinsically connected, and their main characters find themselves in
similar situations, but with one difference: Hamlet is in a metaphorical
Purgatory seeking answers to his moral dilemmas while Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are in a real Purgatory, doing exactly the same thing. So,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, as the title indicates, and detained
in Purgatory.
As much as Hamlet is a play about death, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead is even more so. Although for the whole length of the play Ros and
Guil keep avoiding the grim realisation that they are dead and in Purgatory,
this seems to be the glaring truth. At the beginning of the play they are in

The authorial intention is as irrelevant as always. It seems that Stoppard intended the
play to be a metaphor: The more doors there are for you to open, the better the play.
Take Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, if the metaphor had been specific, the play
would not have had the freedom to go where it wanted. Some students dont see it as a
metaphor but a puzzle to which I have the answer, and if I were to impart it they would
get an A.
An interesting reading of Hamlet sees it as a play about death: Death pervades the play.
Of the 11 principal characters, one is already dead (the Ghost) 8 die during the course
of the play (Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Ophelia, Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius,
and Hamlet), one attempts suicide (Horatio, who is stopped by Hamlet) and one is
responsible for the death of thousands (Fortinbras). Death is referred to or someone dies
in 18 of the 20 scenes of the play. The exceptions are the scenes of Laertes departure (1.3)
and Polonius with Reynaldo and Ophelia (2.1)
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a place without any visible character (R&G: 2), passing the time tossing
coins which keep landing heads up. The run of heads is impossible, they
are aware of the oddity of it, but they refuse to draw logical conclusions.
Stoppard gives clear instructions: Guil is worried by the implications;
aware but not going to panic about it (R&G: 3). What is this it and its
implications that worry Guil, if not the fact that they are dead. The very
place where they are denies description, it is not like any other place, and
it does not resemble any place where they have ever been, for they have
never been in Purgatory. In his brilliant 2011 production at the Theatre
Royal Haymarket, Trevor Nunn places them in a void, on an empty stage,
as the best approximation to the horror of Purgatory. There is nowhere to
go; there is a lack of environment. It is an alternate universe where their
existence is continued without their grasping what has happened, very
much in the manner of the films The Others (2001) or The Sixth Sense
(1999), with the difference that they remain unenlightened to the end.
The strangeness of the place is highlighted by the improbability of the
lucky coin tossing which neither luck, nor the law of probability, the law
of averages, the law of diminishing returns or any other law can explain.
Guil subconsciously realises that speculating about these issues cannot be
particularly rewarding because he fears that the spell of their illusion of
being alive might be broken. He criticises Ros for not asking any questions,
for not pausing to think, not having any doubts, and not being ready to go
any further, while these are also his own shortcomings. He fears that their
existence is not real in the worldly sense, and wants Ros to touch and hug
him. Ros does not feel fear, the crack that might flood his brain with light,
as Guil says, and he is the dumber of the two, since there is good reason
to be fearful.
Further, the dimension of time also seems to be missing from the
universe which they now inhabit. They seem to be tossing coins forever, not
being able to remember when the game started, being unable to remember
when the day started. Time has stopped dead, all things are forgotten,
and Guils pseudo-scientific dithyrambs cannot fool even himself: The
scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against
the pure emotion of fear (R&G: 11). Various options which he explores
are unconvincing, and however much he struggles, the strangeness of the
Hamlet is obsessed with death. In every one of the 13 scenes in which he appears there is
a reference to death or someone dies. The play ends on a final note of death, with the
body of dead Hamlet and the others being carried off (5.2. 388-395).
164
place and the things happening in it lead Guil to the conclusion which he
will not explore, that all these must be indicative of something.
Finally, Rosss comment about the fingernails and the beard growing
after death starts an exchange of deliberate misunderstandings whose
purpose is to obscure the fact they have died. Guil is on the verge of
realising this fact, but Ross always picks up a wrong reference and focuses
on the irrelevant detail, trying not to give any significance to the fact
that he cut his fingernails 18 times while he never cut his toenails. Guil
entertains the idea that a mystical experience can become as thin as reality
if witnessed by more people, which then takes away its startling dimension.
Yet, he cannot exclude the option that they are now within un-, sub- or
supernatural forces (R&G: 10), basically meaning outside the realm of
ordinary experience. They try hard to understand how it all began and Guil
remembers the messenger, which gives a clue to Ross to conclude: Thats
why were here (R&G: 13). This conclusion is so terrifying that he must
qualify it immediately: Travelling.
All the scenes mentioned above take place at the beginning of Act
1, before the arrival of the players, and yet on these 15 pages Stoppard
asks and answers all the important questions which will be developed
over the course of the play. Further on, the evidence of Ros and Guil
being in Purgatory accumulates, but that having been established, it is
also important to see what the form of their suffering is. Traditionally,
purgatorial purification takes the form of cleansing fires as the torments
of purifying punishment. Leyshon adopts the traditional categories of
duration (analogous to time on earth) and intensity (analogous to the
heat produced by a fire):
In Purgatory, we posit, a soul endures a varying (but non-zero)
intensity of purgation for a finite time. The purification required
by a soul is determined solely by the state of detachment of its
will at the time of death. The penalty depends on the sins and
good works committed since baptism and the suffrage applied on
behalf of the soul (Leyshon 2005: 14-15).
The form of purgation to which Stoppard exposes his characters is
excruciating though it may seem to be milder than the flames. Throughout
the play Ros and Guil are either exposed to or involved in events that
they do not understand. It is like a carousel that spins faster and faster,
people jump on it, interact with them, jump off, and leave them in ever
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greater confusion. The first of these events is in fact the first memory that
they manage to recall, that of the messenger waking them up to tell them
they have been sent for. His arrival and their prompt departure are of
the utmost significance because they mark the beginning of everything
that came afterwards. It is easy to confuse this event as the beginning of
the actual plot of Stoppards play because it parallels the plot of Hamlet.
However, Ross unintentionally gives us a clue that this is just a flashback,
not something that is happening now. He first says: Which way do we?
meaning which way do we take now, but immediately corrects himself in
order to follow the events as they really happened in the past: Which way
did we? meaning which way did we take, when they hastily left for
Elsinore fearful lest they came too late to please the king. Both questions
are interrupted and left unanswered because it would be too dangerous
to answer them. The grammar would reveal the truth, and their existence
then would become unbearable even more so than it already is.
These flashbacks are numerous and they constitute the plot of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Ros and Guil do not meet the
Players but remember having met them on their way to Elsinore. They do
not go to the court but remember watching The Murder of Gonzago. They
never wonder how they got to be in all these different places, because
there is no logical explanation for their teleportation. The flashbacks come
in swift succession, Ophelia, Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, the
Tragedians, the pirates; they enter and exit the stage many times, they
cry, pray, act, and talk, the scenes change, the court, the road, the boat,
and confusion mounts all the time until Ros feels so frustrated for living
as though he were in a public park that he is on the verge of tears: Never
a moments peace! In and out, and theyre coming at us from all sides
(R&G: 86)... Incidents! All we get is incidents! Dear God, is it too much to
expect a little sustained action? (R&G: 146). Ros and Guil are mentally
tormented to the very end of the play by all these life-like mirages meant to
communicate the truth they fail to grasp. Their world is without meaning,
without logic, and their agony without end. They disappear into the dark
only to begin a new cycle anticipated by Guils words: Well, well know
better next time (R&G: 155). However, the reader realises that this will
not be the case, that the same hectic activity will be repeated again, the
scenes acted out again without catharsis. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
will remain in their permanent Purgatory.
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4. Shakespearean moral dilemmas

The crucial point of the purpose for which Stoppard places Ros and Guil in
this horrible Purgatory where they are made to relive their lives over and
over again pushes itself to the foreground. At the end of the play, the two
of them are all alone on the stage/Purgatory as they have actually been all
the time and the spotlights are above their heads, signifying the need for
them to think. In his desperation, Ros asks the right question: Weve done
nothing wrong! We didnt harm anyone. Did we? (R&G: 154). Finally he
comes to the most important moral issue concerning the consequences
of ones acts, whose recognition may mark the beginning of the process
of purification. One more 3D rewinding of the film of their lives would
have allowed them to understand where they went wrong and who they
harmed had they not been afflicted with moral amnesia. Guils answer is
the easiest one, I cant remember (R&G: 154), and at the same time the
worst one for it will detain them in Purgatory.
Leyshons paradigm of Detention and Refinement can explain their
present position. Refinement cannot apply to Ros and Guil because they
do not qualify for it: God provides a process of Refinement which has
the sole purpose of maturation (purification), enabling those souls which
need make no expiation to become sufficiently detached from all lesser
goods to enjoy the totality of the Beatific Vision (Leyshon 2005: 50). Ros
and Guil are not merciful souls who begged for Gods mercy during their
earthly life (Leyshon 2005: 50), for which reason they are not allowed
non-penal purification in order to reach maturation. However, their implicit
commitment to God allows them to go through the process of Detention
and expiate their sins in the hope that this will effect maturation. Therefore,
Stoppard keeps them in Purgatory and exposes them to the decision-making
moments of their experiences which have influenced the course of their
lives. The first one was when the messenger came to take them to the
king. He was a foreigner and they could have refused to go even though he
mentioned official business and no questions asked, but their remarkable
obedience to figures of authority left them with no dilemma as to whether
to go or not. They mask their submissiveness with the pursuit of duty.
Throughout the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go back to that time
realising its moral momentum: He was just a hat and a cloak levitating in
the grey plume of his own breath, but when he called we came. That much
is certain we came (R&G: 38). All other uncertainties that follow begin
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with this certainty, they came, knowing there are alternatives but believing
there is no choice. That is when they begin to wear their daily mask.
The second decision-making moment happens at the court when the
king and the queen ask them to spy on Hamlet. Ros and Guil willingly obey:
But we both obey, and here give up ourselves in the full bent. To lay our
service freely at your feet, To be commanded (R&G: 36). They are spurred
by the promise of reward into forgetting that Hamlet was their childhood
friend who trusted them most, and into disregarding the connotations of
the kings ominous words: the need we have to use you (R&G: 35).
Their compliance with this request disturbs the order of their previous
existence, which cannot escape Guil. There was a kind of harmony and
a kind of confidence which is recognised as nature so that acts deviating
from it have to be treated as unnatural. Their loyalty to the secret wishes of
the king is equivalent to their betrayal of Hamlet, thus the natural order is
broken, very similar to the way the legal and natural practice was offended
by king Claudius adultery, murder and throne usurpation. The loss of order
also affects the breakup of the language. Consequently, Ros and Guil cannot
compose a simple phrase, that they will be high and dry soon because of
the wrong decision they have made. The comedy of the scene cannot hide
the tragedy of their situation even though Guil quickly comes up with a
rationalisation: To exchange one set for another is no great matter (R&G:
38). When he refers to one set (of questions and answers), he alludes to
the system of values they have shattered along with the stability of their
existence. Contrary to his perfunctory conclusion, everything changes with
this exchange of values. They lose all sense of direction, and are left with
questions without any answers. From the first hasty and unwise decision to
follow the messenger, they lose their authentic selves, everybody confuses
them, and in the end they do not know who they are any more. Ros refuses
any responsibility saying they do not owe anyone anything, but witty Guil
has a better understanding of the human condition: Your smallest action
sets off another somewhere else, and is set off by it (R&G: 39). What they
are to do to Hamlet cannot remain without moral consequences. Still, he
abuses his own intelligence and decides that it will be just a game they will
play, asking the right questions and giving away as little as possible, as if
playing with a persons life equals playing a game. What makes this game
morally reprehensible is the fact that they play it for money and not out of
fear. Knowing all the facts of the injustice that occurred at court, they still
play the part of the two smiling accomplices friends two spies (R&G:
99) who will probe Hamlet.
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The third situation in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are guilty,

of omission rather than commission, is when they finally meet Hamlet
and fail to take his side and redress the previous wrong decisions. He
welcomes them as the best of friends, while they clumsily try to find out his
secret. Hamlet is naturally superior to them and not easily deceived, so it is
with good reason that Ros and Guil feel ridiculous after this unsuccessful
encounter which left them high and dry. The next time they see him, they
have the idea of accosting him directly and asking him as friends what
is going on. It is a perfect opportunity but they miss it because they now
feel unnatural knowing that their spontaneity is part of somebody elses
order, and the occasion passes. They confirm their submissiveness to the
king when they set a trap for Hamlet with their belts and when they ask
him where Polonius dead body is, but Hamlet always outsmarts them, and
leaves them frustrated.
The last time Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fail Hamlet by failing to
make the right decision happens on the boat to England. Having opened
the letter to the king, they dispel all uncertainty about its content and their
role in the implementation of Claudius plan. Without delay, the king of
England should have Hamlets head cut off which practically makes Ros
and Guil Hamlets executioners. In the natural order of things, this makes
no sense, and Ros cannot comprehend it:
The position as I see it, then. We, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
from our young days brought up with him, awakened by a
man standing on his saddle, are summoned, and arrive, and
are instructed to glean what afflicts him and draw him on to
pleasures, such as a play, which unfortunately, as it turns out, is
abandoned in some confusion owing to certain nuances outside
our appreciation which, among other causes, results in, among
other effects, a high, not to say, homicidal, excitement in Hamlet,
whom we, in consequence, are escorting, for his own good, to
England. Good. Were on top of it now (R&G: 138).
What will happen is neither logical nor just, but pragmatic Guil easily
manages to convince Ros that this is the best course of action. His
philosophical discourse on death serves only one purpose to justify their
cowardice, greed, and disloyalty. Guil hides behind the mask of a small
ignorant man who is just a cog in somebody elses wheel, knowing that
otherwise they would probably head for their own execution. After this
brainwashing, Ros comes up with a different argumentation:
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The position as I see it, then. Thats east unless were off course,
in which case its night; the king gave me the same as you, the
king gave you the same as me: the king never gave me the letter,
the king gave you the letter, we dont know whats in the letter;
we take Hamlet to the English king, it depending on when we
get there who he is, and we hand over the letter, which may or
may not have something in it to keep us going, and if not, we are
finished and at a loose end, if they have loose ends. We could
have done worse. I dont think we missed any chance... Not that
were getting much help (R&G: 138).
Ross logic is now relativistic, materialistic, evasive, hypocritical, egoistic,
and opportunistic. The past is forgotten, responsibility either resigned or
delegated, and the moral world seen as non-restricted and non-inhibited:
We can do what we like and say what we like to whomever we like,
without restriction (R&G: 143). They do not question, they do not doubt,
they act in submission to anothers authority. Their moral world becomes
one-dimensional, and all room for dilemma is eliminated. This lack of
mercifulness keeps them in Purgatory after they have been stabbed to
death by the English guards. Unlike their friend Hamlet who was torn by
many moral dilemmas, to be or not to be, to kill or not to kill, to love or
not to love, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not see any alternatives. It is
not a question of either him or us, and still they sacrifice Hamlet believing
it is all beyond them and beyond repair. For this unmerciful act they are
detained in Purgatory.
5. Conclusion: purgatorial rehearsals

The doctrinal definitions of Purgatory listed by Leyshon are more than
relevant in the case of Ros and Guil. What they cannot accept to the end of
the play is their post-mortem state in which they expiate their wrongdoings
for which they have not asked forgiveness in life. What is even more
important is the fact that they are not even penitent souls for they do not
realise they have sinned. They exist in a state of denial, downgrading and
finding excuses for themselves: Who are we that so much should converge
on our little deaths? (R&G: 152). Nevertheless, they have to undergo
purgatorial penalties which in the play take the form of repeated exposure
to the scenes of their wrong moral decisions. Leyshon clarifies that the
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Scriptural image of fire applies strictly to Refinement; its appropriateness

for Detention is traditional but undefined (Leyshon 2005: 43). Thus, the
salvific fire may be coterminous with the experience of seeing ones poor
works burnt up (Leyshon 2005: 42). Not using this traditional imagery of
purgatorial fires, Stoppards play in fact corresponds to Leyshons paradigm,
and places Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Detention whose purpose is
to make them realise where they went wrong and repent for their sins, so
that their immoral choices are burnt up and maturation reached. Since
nobody is contributing suffrage towards their expiation, the length and
intensity of their suffering in Purgatory depends exclusively on them. The
focus of the play is individual responsibility which is as crucial in earthly
life as it is in the post-mortem existence.
The final point to be made concerns the idea of a two-stage life after
death and the possibility of the second death, explored by Keith Ward in his
book Religion and Human Nature (1998). At the end of his study Ward claims
that temporality continues after death, both in the intermediate world,
where time is needed for souls to progress (or regress) in understanding
and purification, and in the resurrection world (Ward 1998: 307). The
intermediate world is the term he uses for Purgatory, where all souls still
have the opportunity to repent and in that way progress. Further, progress
in understanding or maturation enables one to see things as they are and
to redeem the past by fully knowing it. Therefore, there is some time for
possible development after death which allows the soul to make amends
for its sins.
Being detained in Purgatory, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
given this extra opportunity to develop their potentiality for mercifulness
which was frustrated on earth. They are made to relive their moments of
moral failure in order to grasp their own shortcomings and reshape their
characters so as to move on to the second stage of life after death by being
released from Purgatory into the life in Heaven. They can still exercise
their free will and choose good in this post-mortem existence, and yet they
choose to turn a blind eye to the images of betrayal and to repeat the same
mistakes. Keith Ward explains that To relive that moment redemptively is
not just to watch an old film of a violent event (Ward 1998: 317), which
is what Stoppard makes them do, as if in the hope that maturation is only
a few rehearsals away. Although Guil cries: No, no, no! if we cant learn
by experience, what else have we got? (R&G: 109), it seems that the
repetition of experience will not be enough. Occasionally they both come
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close to the full understanding of their condition, but quickly back away
before surrendering to it. A new rehearsal begins in which they take part in
all the painful moments of their lives, so that instead of being in Purgatory
they feel almost like being in Hell: Hell might be the disintegration of life
into isolated moments of suffering and anguish (Ward 1998: 317). The
power of passivity is such that despite being warned of their imminent
deaths unless they change their moral stand, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
still unmercifully persist in betraying their friend. The possibility of the
ultimate refusal to repent is also an option, leading to the second death,
the death of the soul, from which there is no return. Unless they learn how
to live, which is what John Donne wished for, no purgatorial rehearsals can
protect them from this infinite loss.
References:
Amenbar, Alejandro. (2001). The Others. Film written, directed and
scored by Alejandro Amenbar, starring Nicole Kidman and Fionnula
Flanagan.
Billwic. Hamlet: A play about death. Posted on 22nd August 2009 by billwic.
Available at: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.
php?46462-Hamlet-A-play-about-death (accessed 5th July 2014).
Donne, John. DEATHS DUEL. John Donnes Devotions. Christian Classics
Ethereal Library. June 1, 2005. Available at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/
donne/devotions.v.ii.html (accessed July 1, 2014).
Farndale, Nigel. (2010). Sir Tom Stoppard interview. Daily Telegraph. Jan 19,
2010.Availableat:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/7019256/
Sir-Tom-Stoppard-interview.html (accessed 16th July 2014).
Greenblatt, Stephen. (2002). Hamlet in Purgatory. New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Leyshon, Gareth. (2005). The Purpose of Purgatory: Expiation or Maturation?
B.Th. Dissertation. St Johns Seminary, Wonersh. Available at:
http://www.drgareth.info/Purgatory.pdf (accessed 4th July 2014)
Shakespeare, William. (2003). Hamlet. London: Simon & Schuster.
Shami, Jeanne. (2003). John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the
Late Jacobean Pulpit. Martlesham: DS Brewer. Available at: http://
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gee,_John_(DNB00) (accessed 4th July 2014).
172
Shyamalan, M. Night. (1999). The Sixth Sense. Film written and directed
by M. Night Shyamalan.
Stoppard, Tom. (1967). Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. New
York: Grove Press. All quotes taken from the PDF version available
at:
http://nschwartzhuntsvillehighschool.yolasite.com/resources/
Tom%20Stoppard%20-%20Rosencrantz%20%20Guildenstern%20Are
%20Dead.pdf (accessed 22th March 2013)
Ward, Keith. (1998). Religion and Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

, 2011. . , ,
.

.
(2002) : ? (2005).
, .
: , , , , ,
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174
UDC 821.111.09-2 .
Nataa ofranac*
Belgrade, Serbia
VISION IN SHAKESPEARES TRAGIC PLAYS:

PERCEPTION, DECEPTION, DELUSION
Abstract
Visual effects are, naturally, conspicuous in theatrical performances, but even
when we read Shakespeare we can internalise the experience of his characters and
visualise the scenes. Vision is also important at another tier, that of his characters
themselves, the way they see and experience other characters, the world and,
very importantly, themselves. Sometimes because of distorted vision, sometimes
because of malevolent input that works on their minds, or just because of inherent
subjectivity of perception, the appearance of persons and things was substantially
different from reality and that causes a tragic course of events and ultimate
catastrophe. So, flawed vision was very much the tragic flaw of Shakespeares
heroes.
Keywords: Shakespeare, tragedy, vision, eyes, sight, see, seem, perception, mind,
error
E-mail address: natashapixie@yahoo.co.uk
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1. Eyesight, appearance and reality

Those are pearls that were his eyes.
(The Tempest, I.ii.)
Of all the five senses, sight seems to be the most important for Shakespeares
tragic heroes. Not the tactile, because they could even speak daggers
(Hamlet, III.ii.); not smell, although there is a lot of odour, mortality and
brimstone in these plays too; and not auditory, although onomatopoeia,
voices and music also play an important role. Words could be toxic like
poisons poured into ones ear. But vision is what brings things home, what
reassures or dissuades. For she had eyes and chose me. / No, Iago, Ill see
before I doubt, when I doubt, prove, concludes Othello quite logically (III.
iii.), not at all easily jealous or self-righteous. On the other hand, what is
seen sometimes needs to be verified or challenged, like the Ghost of Hamlets
father or Cordelias dead body. Vision is most telling and reliable, but many
times things are not as they seem to be and, on the other hand, there is
much of what passeth show within us. Images from the past often haunt
us to the verge of insanity, like the primal scene that, according to many
analysts, accounted for Hamlets problematic attitude toward femininity,
or the traumatic experience of the murdered victims that hovered over
Macbeths mind in the beginning, and his wifes in the end of this horror
story. The inutterable, what was beyond description or comprehension.
That is why Lady Macbeth writes and seals letters, mentioning the crimes
only in fragments and allusions. In the beginning, the witches talk; in the
end, they show the apparitions. When Hamlet swears to avenge his father
and to wipe away all other memories from the book and volume of his
brain, he also demonstrates this tangibly:
My tables, meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least Im sure it may be so in Denmark:
Writing
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is Adieu, adieu! remember me.
I have sworn t. (I.v.)
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Nataa ofranac Vision in Shakespeares Tragic Plays: Perception, Deception, Delusion
There are opposite examples, no vision but words when it was

impractical to enact a scene, or indecent to show a bloodbath or an
intimate act. Titus Andronicus is a play full of such atrocities and patent
aggression, as if written by Kyd and not by Shakespeare. Hamlets father
talks about the murder and Hamlets prophetic soul recognizes it as djvu. Fratricide is not staged and neither is regicide in Macbeth we get a
succinct account of that; the death of Gloucester and Fool; Ophelias report
on Hamlets frenzied visit at night, when he probably wanted to leave the
impression of an insane person and make believe it was love-sickness; the
Queens heartfelt description of Ophelias death as poetic and innocent,
these are all conveyed by narratives, not enacted. Marjorie Garber called
such a scene an unscene, unseen but evoked meticulously and felt as seen
by our own eyes (Garber, 2009: 221). Yet, the visual is a very strong tool
in persuasion among the characters of this play, so Iago brings the newly
emerged circumstances home to Brabantio with vivid pictures of an old
black ram tupping your white ewe (I.i.), knowing that a visualization of
these words would make a detestable picture in the fathers mind, an effect
identical to his devious account of Cassios dream in Act III, Scene iii.
2. What seems and what is

Appearance versus reality that is often a clash between good and evil,
the genuine and the false. Iago makes it clear in the very beginning of
the play that he will pretend just to serve his own peculiar end, not his
lieges, but hell definitely wear his heart on his sleeve: I am not what I
am(Othello, I.i.). Lady Macbeth taught her husband to be less transparent
and to pretend:
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent undert (I.v.)
just as Hamlet noted that in the dungeon of Denmark people may smile
and be villains (I.v.). Well-taught by the time of the banquet, though still
traumatised by the memory and guilt, Macbeth says:
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Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;

Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:
Unsafe the while, that we
Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,
And make our faces vizards to our hearts,
Disguising what they are. (Macbeth, III.ii.)
The one who stood up against pretence and outward strappings of love
and fidelity was banished and disinherited for doing so. Cordelia said she
could not heave her heart to her mouth, counting that the obvious would
prevail over hollow phrases. On the opposite side of Iagos and Edmonds
feigned love and loyalty, Cordelia came across as much worse than she really
was. Why Cordelia wanted to keep her feelings to herself and not wear
her heart on her sleeve like her sisters or, like Iago, who used this phrase
describing his strategy, may be rather obvious; she did not want to take part
in the farcical contest; why Edgar did not want to be recognised but let his
father die in ignorance, that is a more complex issue. Stanley Cavell called
both the avoidance of love (Cavell, 2003: 512 ). It was Lear more than
Cordelia who avoided love, for he feared the need and the rejection thereof.
Disinheriting his favourite daughter and renouncing all blood ties has also
been interpreted as his manoeuvre to keep her by his side.
Hamlet is disgusted by the hypocrisy and avarice that surrounds him.
His mothers suggestion that his grief seems so particular, provokes his
response that heralds his future excessive and violent reactions:
Thou knowst tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not seems.
Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
.
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Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
(Hamlet, I.ii)
He abhors the word seems because it can coincide with another one
he uses in the same reply: play. To do him justice, we can corroborate
his view with a quote from Iagos first soliloquy, sharing his tactics and
intentions with the audience/readership:
In following him, I follow but myself.
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end.
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am. (I.i.)
Almost identically, another Machiavellian hero plots against his father and
half-brother:
A credulous father! and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms,
That he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty
My practises ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with mes meet that I can fashion fit. (King Lear, I.ii.)
The verb seem appears 21 times in Hamlet, 17 times in Macbeth, 18 in
King Lear and 18 in Othello. It is mainly associated with appearance, with
what is not, but not only as erroneous perception, but also as deliberately
imposed delusion, a misleading impression.
The personification of such intrigue and motive-hunting motiveless
malignity (Coleridge, 1907: 172), Iago, identified Othellos credulity as
free and open nature, / That thinksmen honestthat butseemto be so
(I.iii.).
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Passing himself off as a loyal and generous friend, while subtly

insinuating the infidelity of his victims who become caught in his web,
Iago suggests to Othello, in a nutshell, that all that glitters is not gold.
Using a binary system of thinking, Othello has a very simple division of
people into honest and dishonest, Iago being most honest. Honesty, for
men meant integrity and sincerity, and had an additional meaning for
women chastity. Thus, they judge Cassio:
IAGO
Men should be what they seem;
Or those that be not, would they might seem none!
OTHELLO
Certain, men should be what they seem.
IAGO
Why, then, I think Cassios an honest man.
and Desdemona:
OTHELLO
No, not much moved:
I do not think but Desdemonas honest.
IAGO
Long live she so! and long live you to think so!
Such words are enough to shake Othellos firm belief:
OTHELLO
And yet, how nature erring from itself (III.iii.)
3. To see is to believe
See in different forms and tenses is used 90 times in Hamlet, 42 times
in Macbeth, 75 in King Lear and 77 in Othello. Besides the physical sight,
it often denotes intuition, premonition or the unconscious. Methinks I
saw my father, says Hamlet. In my minds eye. (I.ii.) Gloucester
understands the world and its pitfalls better after the loss of his eyes: I see
it feelingly (IV.vi.). Gertrude, as a character abandoned to a hedonism and
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passion that Hamlet found detestable at her age, also managed to develop
her mental eyes:
Oh, Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turnst mine eyes into my very soul
And there I see such black and graind spots
As will not leave their tinct. (III.iv.)
On the other hand, it is precisely the physical, tangible, that is decisive for
judgment: Ill see before I doubt, says Othello (III.iii.), and this is quite
reasonable and patient, unlike the rash and impetuous reactions of Lear
and, sometimes, Hamlet. Give me the ocular proof, he demands in the
same scene, and he is given one a planted, false one, but a plausible
one too. Just like the letter in the forged handwriting of his son Edgar
presented to the guillable eyes of the Earl of Gloucester in Act I, Scene II,
the eyes that will be plucked out by Lears daughters, but that will open
new perspectives to him when blind. Incredibly enough, he takes it from
the hands of his mendacious son Edmund whom he has never held dear
or spoken highly of. But it sufficed. And then the villain staged a tragedy
of errors, providing his father with a distorted insight into his honest sons
doings like a twentieth century TV news editor manipulating with image
and sound for propaganda purposes. That is what Iago does to Othello,
enabling him to watch Cassio and Bianca, but placing it in a completely
different script. Shakespeare was aware of the power of image, the
ultimate proof and persuasiveness stronger than a thousand words. After
all, the visual was the prevailing effect of his plays, composed for playing,
not for reading or discussion.
There is something that prevents us from seeing clearly and makes us
err, killing the wrong guy even when there is no arras between us. What
caused Lears wrong judgment and volte-face in relation to his daughters, as
if he did not know them well enough? What is the mental arras that blurs
our vision even when nobody whispers poisonous words into our ears like
Iago did into Othellos? The echo of Brabantios words must have pounded
in his ears when Iago started pouring his medicine into his ear: Look to
her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may
thee (I.iii.). Iago picks up on this and builds a plausible argument:
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She did deceive her father, marrying you;

And when she seemd to shake and fear your looks,
She loved them most.
OTHELLO
And so she did.
IAGO
Why, go to then;
She that, so young, could give out such a seeming,
To seal her fathers eyes up close as oakHe thought twas witchcraft(III.iii.)
But then, again, even Othello could have known Desdemona from a lewd
minx (III.iii.) capable of infidelity and lies. Vanity, hurt feelings, worked up
atmosphere that is what prevents disambiguation and mists the vision. Lear
refused to see the obvious, and subsequently to admit his sins and errors. His
was a wilful blindness, perfectly mirrored in Gloucesters violent, physical
loss of eyes, plucked out by the same malefactors who tricked Lear out of his
kingdom and favourite daughter. Cupid is blind, but everybody else should
keep their eyes wide open when it comes to the interpersonal lest one get
wrought and perplexd in the extreme, or murdered in sleep. Macbeth did
not want any star to shine that night, no eyewitnesses to his deed. His act
horrified him and somehow he felt that, if not seen and mentioned, it had
never happened. Vision is what confirms and incriminates:
Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (I.iv.)
On the contrary, his wife in the end yearns for light, holds on to the candle
though her eyes are closed, because hell is a murky place (V.i.) and she
needs light.
Macbeth is said to be the most imaginative of all Shakespeares tragic
heroes, because of the hallucinations related to his future and recent sins,
but it was Lady Macbeth who later saw blood spots on her hands and
recapitulated all the agony in her somnambulism. Her husband was past
that by the time, just as he was past fears and any human reaction or
emotion, but it was he who saw blood on his murderous hands first:
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What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptunes ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,
Making the green one red. (II.ii.)
Another sight will also hurt the eyes of now changed, arrogant and
overbearing Macbeth Banquo and the line of kings after the third
apparition shown by the witches:
Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down!
Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls.
...
Start, eyes! (IV.i.)
The following excerpt encompasses all the words relevant for this paper
see, sight, vision:
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
(II.i.)
4. In the eye of the beholder

I saw Othellos visage in his mind, said Desdemona in Act I, Scene III. She
loved Othello for the beauty of his soul, his integrity and courage, which
was the beauty she needed. Just as many Shakespeares plays have their
counterparts in fairy tales, Othello is compared to The Beauty and the Beast
for the physical discrepancy but harmonious relationship between the two.
Iago is sure that this will not last, as
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Her eye must be fed;

and what delight shall she have to look on the
devil? (II.i.)
When Iago started his infernal plot, eliciting suspicion against the most
beloved and important persons in Othellos life, he suggested that this
fascination could vanish fairly soon and Desdemonas perception of Othello
might become much more realistic:
But pardon me; I do not in position
Distinctly speak of her; though I may fear
Her will, recoiling to her better judgment,
May fall to match you with her country forms
And happily repent. (III.iii.)
Looks do matter, too: it is not by chance that King Hamlet is handsome and
comely, while Claudius and Osric look unappealing and disreputable:
This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildewd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
(III.iv.)
In the same scene, the Ghost enters the chamber, but Gertrude fails to see
it, despite Hamlets desperate attempts to make her see him, even talking
to Hamlet, not just showing up:
HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
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Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!

My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
Exit Ghost
QUEEN GERTRUDE
This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
The coinage of ones brain is yet another illusion as deception of a disturbed
mind, not of blurred sight. Yet, it is not very likely that Shakespeare wanted
us to believe that the Ghost was just Hamlets hallucination, because Horatio
and the guards saw him in the beginning of the play and that preceded
Hamlets encounter with the Ghost, who would talk to no one else but
him. When the Ghost came to whet Hamlets almost blunted purpose,
but also to intervene and placate his sons fury after the dumb show (step
between thy mother and her fighting soul), Gertrude has got what Hugo
Klajn called negative hallucination (Klajn, 1964: 499): absence of vision,
not seeing the obvious, as incapability or, rather, refusal to see and admit
to the incontestable. Sin is unseen, but it gnaws the soul and necessitates
purification:
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. (III.iv.)
The word eye(s) is used 40 times in Hamlet, 23 times in Macbeth, 53 in
King Lear and 24 in Othello. Besides the primary function, and that of
mirroring the soul, eyes also signal life. Macbeth is sure that Banquo is
dead and harmless when his ghost appears, because
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with! (III.iv.)
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The eye is also a metaphor of intelligence and wisdom. When Ophelia

laments over Hamlets noble mind overthrown, she says that he was
The courtiers, soldiers, scholars, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down! (III.i.)
Kent wants to stay with Lear, despite the Kings degrading treatment:
See better, Lear; and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye. (I.i.)
Ross informs Malcolm, exiled in England, of the situation in the country,
saying: Your eye in Scotland / Would create soldiers, make our women
fight, (IV.iii.) Eyes are taken for a lower level of perception when the
subject is going by appearances, populism or impressionability. Thus,
Claudius underrates Hamlets reputation and popularity with his people,
calling them the distracted multitude, / Who like not in their judgment,
but their eyes. (IV.iii.)
When Iago tries to talk Cassio into confession of his love for Desdemona,
he suggests
What an eye she has! methinks it sounds a parley of
provocation.
CASSIO
An inviting eye; and yet methinks right modest. (II.iii.)
Also, eyes are viewed as depths similar to the womb where life is begotten
and sin committed. Thus, when Gloucesters eyes are gouged out, he will
identify the black void with the place of sinful conception, both being
synonymous of nothing in several of Shakespeares plays. As the main
plot and the sub-plot are parallel and the loop of deception and tragic error
unfurls on two tracks, in the bitter anagnorisis, no wonder there are many
common denominators between the two. Much before Gloucesters eyes
were plucked out by Lears daughters, the King felt the same about the
betrayal following his fatal error:
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Old fond eyes,

Beweep this cause again, Ill pluck ye out,
And cast you, with the waters that you lose,
To temper clay. (I.iv.)
He was emotionally and rationally blind, just like Gloucester with his
children, but the latter gained insight, having lost his eyesight: I stumbled
when I saw (IV.i.). When Regan tortured Gloucester in his own house,
asking why he had sent the King to Dover, he said because I would not see
thy cruel nails / Pluck out his poor old eyes (III.vii.). And she plucked his.
When they reconvene in the fields near Dover, the mad Lear and the
eyeless Gloucester, the King asks the Earl to read
GLOUCESTER
What, with the case of eyes?
KING LEAR
O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your
head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in
a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how
this world goes.
The Kings reply is reason in madness, as Edgar put it: Get thee glass
eyes; / And like a scurvy politician, seem / To see the things thou dost not.
(IV.vi.)
Nature is like a whimsical monarch, furious, merciless and blind to
the wretched ones, reflecting the storm in Lear, who:
tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of (III.i.)
Eyes are Homerically attributed to inanimate forms, like the dark-eyed
night in King Lear (II.i.), or the Cyclops-like green-eyed monster in
Othello (III.iii.). They are the routes of outward stimuli to ones mind, but
also the channel of effluent feelings and thoughts, often betraying the one
they belong to. Thus, King Lear thought that Regan could never wrong him
the way her sister did:
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No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse:

Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
Thee oer to harshness: her eyes are fierce; but thine
Do comfort and not burn. (II.iv.)
Though Hamlet used the following conversation to deride Polonius, it still
shows the undeniable truth that perception is subjective and arbitrary:
Do you see yonder cloud thats almost in shape of a camel?
LORD POLONIUS
By the mass, and tis like a camel, indeed.
HAMLET
Methinks it is like a weasel.
LORD POLONIUS
It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET
Or like a whale?
LORD POLONIUS
Very like a whale.
(III.ii.)
Hamlet played with Polonius ingratiating attitude, baffling the old man
to humiliation. But, again, he demonstrated how nothing is but what is
not, to quote his inverted twin Macbeth (I.iii). Just as the foul can be fair,
or, to go back to Hamlet, nothing is good or bad, but thinking maketh it
so (II.ii).
5. Conclusion
Not everything is supposed to be accounted for or illucidated. Much of
the popularity and universality of Shakespeares plays is rooted in the
negative capability, as Keats called the untold, unexplained or openended in poetry (Keats, 1817). That leaves us with enough wiggle
room to play with different scenarios, choose different endings, like in
postmodernist novels and rewrite the plays together with Shakespeare and
his editors. In these terms, the Keatsean term correlates to Klajns negative
hallucination because both are about absence and negation. One thing is
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for sure, though: Shakespeares characters are part of a grand scheme of

humanity, like spokes to the hub. But they are also individuals, sometimes
unruly and unpredictable, independent from their creator. In what they
saw, imagined or were made to believe, we find endless ways of reading
and subaudition, through the looking glass of our own time, civilisation,
science and various theories, but always bearing in mind the Renaissance
man who still believed in the supernatural, who wanted to see a good show
and a fight, who was susceptible to fears and superstition. Truth is often
multi-faceted and this is why we will not find any Manichean character
or idea in Shakespeares works. Even the villains sometimes repent, even
the monsters are sometimes pitiable. So, what Shakespeare saw, what he
wanted the spectators to see, what they thought they saw and what we see
now, after all the dramatic and turbulent history that lies between us, all
converges in a confluence of visual cacophony and brings us back to the
original Shakespeare, to close-reading of the timeless lines.
References
Cavell, S. (2003) Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Coleridge, S. T. (1907) Notes on Othello, Coleridges Lectures on Shakespeare
and Some Other Old Poets and Dramatist, London, J.M. Dent.
Garber, M. (2009) Shakespeare and Modern Culture, New York, Anchor
Books.
Keats, J. (1817) Selections from Keatss Letters. Available at: http://www.
poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237836?page=2. Last accessed:
28 February, 2014
Klajn, H. (1964) Duh Hamletovog oca,in Izraz, year VIII, number 5.
Shakespeare, W. (2005) The Complete Works, Stanley Wells, John Jowett,
William Montgomery, Gary Taylor (eds.), Oxford University Press.
Received: 27 October 2014
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UDC 821.111.09-2 .
Danijela Kambaskovi*
University of Western Australia

Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence
for the History of Emotions 1100-1800
Perth, Australia
TO DO A GREAT RIGHT, DO A LITTLE WRONG:

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE AND
ITS ETHICAL CHALLENGES**
Abstract
When Bassanio urges Portia to break the law in order to thwart Shylock to do a
great right, do a little wrong (4.1.213) she at first refuses, on the grounds that
to do wrong is always immoral; but despite her words, her actions show her ready
and willing to do just that. Critics usually explain Portias actions with reference
to Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics and the principle of equityan open-handed,
individualised approach to justice when hard legal questions exceed the scope of
the law; but the misalignment between Portias words and her actions indicates that
the question of justifying any little wrong with the greater right is more complex
than it may at first seem, particularly if the greater right is defined by ones own
interests. This signals the presence in the play of a different, non-Aristotelian ethical
framework: that of Nicol Machiavellis post-Epicurean teleological utilitarianism.
Shakespeares moral considerations in The Merchant of Venice are compelling
*
**
E-mail address: danijela.kambaskovic-sawers@uwa.edu.au.

The paper is based on a lecture given as a part of a senior undergraduate course on
Shakespeare on Stage and Screen, University of Western Australia. I dedicate it to my
dear teacher, Professor Veselin Kostic, whose lectures gave me the first taste of what I
wanted to do. Professor Kostics books on Shakespeare and early modern history, his
inspired conversation and the unstinting encouragement of my writing and translations
of Shakespeares sonnets over several decades, continue to act as mainstays of my
courage.
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precisely because they routinely juxtapose Machiavellian utilitarian ethics with

principles of deontological ethics, to explore a crucial question: is expediency more
apt in real life, than principles not defined by expediency? Applying this question
to the main themes of The Merchant of Venice cultural and religious difference,
stereotyping, discrimination, scapegoating, gender equality and spin, themes no
less relevant and divisive in Shakespeares time than they are in our own holds
particular didactic value in the twenty-first century classroom.
Key words: The Merchant of Venice, Aristotle, Machiavelli, ethics, deontology,
utilitarianism, teaching Shakespeare
Decoding texts is a moral process. Growing up as readers or viewers, we

learn to hunt for clues to help us distinguish protagonists from antagonists,
good characters and bad, and adjust our responses. We have this tendency
in common with the audiences in William Shakespeares own time, as
well as any other audience in time and space: it is part of being human.
In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare challenges our need for ethical
certainties. While all Shakespeares problem plays reveal a profound
preoccupation with ethics a philosophical discipline concerned with
values governing human conduct, the rightness or wrongness of motives,
ends and actionsThe Merchant of Venice makes it particularly hard to take
sides, yet even harder not to. The plays moral landscape shifts frequently
between deontological ethics (ethics in which actions are deemed good
or ill inherently, rather than by reference to their consequences) and
utilitarian or teleological ethics (ethics in which actions are deemed to be
good or bad on the basis of the expediency (often interpreted as morality)
of their consequences). In plain terms, we are made to believe people are
good, then watch them perform actions which have bad consequences,
and vice versa. The ethical challenges posed by The Merchant of Venice are
useful to us in that they encourage examination of core values which may
have been taken for granted but for this challenge.
Elizabeth Wheater recognized the debt that The Merchant of Venice
owes to Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics when it comes to the plays central
structure, as well as articulation of Aristotles main themethe achievement
of happiness () and the subsidiary questions of pleasure, virtue,
the mean, choice, equality, justice, and friendship, themes which underpin
the play's plot, characterization, and language. No less important to the
play is the concept of wealth, which can also be interpreted morally, or,
as Wheater writes:
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Danijela Kambaskovi To Do a Great Right, Do a Little Wrong: The Merchant of Venice...
It is often supposed that The Merchant of Venice is about the

proper use of wealth. This is in part true. But [] wealth in the
sixteenth century meant both riches or goods and also welfare
in the sense of spiritual prosperity or happiness. The most
apposite example of wealth used to mean happiness is furnished
by John Wylkinsons translation (1547) of Aristotles Ethics: Then
is beatitude the greatest welth and the most soverai[n]e thing a
man can have. Indeed Wylkinsons choice of welth either to
translate or to define is particularly apt since Aristotle
virtually identifies this concept with the good life or doing
well (Nic. Eth. I. iv. 2, viii. 4), [so that] , usually
translated as Happiness, would perhaps be more accurately
rendered by Well-being or Prosperity (Wheater 1992: 467).
But Shakespeares considerations of moral questions in The Merchant of
Venice and this is insufficiently recognizedgo beyond first Aristotelian
questions into more uncomfortable, utilitarian (teleological) ethical
explorations concerned with the expediency of the consequences of ones
actions. The plays moral landscape raises some uncomfortable questions
which are highly relevant to us as we negotiate life in our complex twentyfirst century societies. They concern cultural difference (particularly
conflicts between religious and cultural paradigms and personal ethics,
cultural stereotyping, (perceived) discrimination of the minority by the
majority or (perceived) harassment of the majority by the minority);
gender discrimination within relationships, marriage and society at large;
individual need for social acceptance and the unstable nature of truth
in society (does our society value words more than it values actions?).
Shakespeares themes are as divisive in our own times as they would have
been for his pre-modern Christian audiences.
The Merchant of Venice is renowned for supporting conflicting ethical
interpretations equally well. Perhaps because of this quandary, the play
has proven attractive to directors. It was performed forty-seven times
at Stratford-upon-Avon in the hundred years between 1880 and 1980;
in London, it appeared thirty-five times in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, before the First World War; it is popular on Broadway;
and the Internet Movie Database records seventeen film and television

(Aristotle and Latini 1547, sig. Avi), compared with Nic. Eth. i. vii. 7, viii. 14, ix. 2-3, and
xii. 4, cited in (Wheater 1992: 469, note 3).
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versions between 1908 and 2004. Since The Merchant of Venice shares
with Othello the unlikely distinction of having a villain, not a protagonist,
who attracts the best talent, it is the memorable character of Shylock who
represents the greatest attraction to lead actors, and the way the character is
interpreted gives the production its ethical tone. Shylock has been played
as a representation of monstrous evil, in the comedic vein, or, as became
fashionable in the nineteenth century with Edmund Kean, sympathetically
and it is this interpretation that made Edmund Keans reputation as a
character actor, and paved the way for most great Shylocks after him to
be played sympathetically, with an eye on the moral complexities of the
character. Henry Irvings dignified, aristocratic Shylock, for instance, played
in 1879 to Ellen Terrys Portia, was considered one of the summits of his
career. In the early twentieth century, Jacob Adler prophetically played the
role in Yiddish within an otherwise English-language production played in
New York.
The adaptability of this character to divergent moral interpretations
is uncanny. In 1933, The Merchant of Venice was staged no fewer than
20 times, with Shylock played as a character representing straight evil
and the danger that Jews would bring to the fledgling Nazi world order.
(Makaryk and McHugh 2012; see also Whaley 2011). How could this be
done, one might ask, when even one glimpse of Shylocks famous hath
not a Jew eyes speech is enough to win the viewer over to Shylocks point
of view?:
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with
the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed
by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same
winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us
do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If
you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us
shall we not revenge? (3.1.54-62)
The undeniable power of the speech and the moral dilemma posed by it
were represented in the Nazi versions of the play as precisely the diabolical
challenge which is likely to be posed by Jews to the sacred moral resolve

All citations from The Merchant of Venice are taken from (Shakespeare 1998).
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of young Nazis. Viewers were urged to steel themselves against such pleas
and be resolute in the knowledge that their victims were sub-human,
and that, consequently, their arguments should not be given the same
consideration as arguments advanced by a German (for more on this, see
Bonnell 2010).
Much has been made in critical literature of Shakespeares alleged
anti-Semitism; but although Shylock happens to be Jewish, and Antonio
Christian, their particular religions are immaterial, and a different
constellation of religions could be imagined (Shylock Muslim, Antonio
Jewish; Shylock Christian, Antonio Muslim, etc.) without loss of either
narrative or ethical import. This plays most important discussion
concerns the relationship between the I and the Other: two members
of two different normative groups who view each other as antagonistic.
Shakespeare juxtaposes the opposing world-views of these groups, and the
fundamental questions the play raises apply equally well to any cultural
paradigms in which two groups judge one another, in Shakespeares time
as well as ours.
The Nazi affection for productions of The Merchant of Venice vilifying
Shylock caused a general shift of sensibility, and after World War II there
was a rise in the awareness of this plays ethical complexity. This is reflected
in the two filmic productions of the 1940s, Ernst Lubischs To Be or Not to Be
(1942) and Elia Kazans Gentlemens Agreement (1946), both of which use
Shylocks Hath not a Jew eyes speech in their films to plead for common
humanity. Trevor Nunns 2001 restaged and filmed-for-television version
and Michael Radfords film version, made in 2004, stem from this school
of thought. Directors, as readers or viewers, often take one point of view;
but as far as the text is concerned, the very fact that Nazi and pro-Jewish
versions of the play can exist without changes of text taking place, shows
(as do other texts) that Shakespeare is adept at writing text that supports
both points of view. Each reader will have to make up his or her own mind
about where their allegiances lie; or at least to see clearly and impartially
the allegiances (and criticisms) that we owe each side.
Shakespeares main plot guides the audience firmly towards a feeling
of pity for Antonio. A wealthy merchant and a respected member of the
Christian community, Antonio is a symbol of entrepreneurial spirit and the
value of honest, hard work. He is an unusually generous friend: not only
is he willing to help his friend Bassanio financially at his time of need, but
also goes further he will help him at a time when he has no money of his
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own, and needs to borrow money to help: something very few friends are
willing to do. And, if that were not enough, he is also prepared to accept
the creditors (Shylocks) macabre condition to offer a pound of his own
flesh as surety for the debt. Once the debt is forfeited and we find that
Shylock actually wants to pursue his right and have the pound of flesh cut
out of Antonio, we, the audience, fear for him and do not want such a good
friend to die.
Siding with Antonio is made even easier as Shylock, the man who
threatens Antonio, is not easy to like. To begin with, Shylock is old, rich
and stingy a character type straight out of ancient literary traditions
that demand that they be ridiculed and swindled by younger and cleverer
characters. He cries about the loss of his daughter Jessica and the loss of
his ducats in the same sentence, and would, in fact, rather lose Jessica than
his valuables: I would my daughter were dead at my / foot and the jewels
in her ear! he says. (3.1.82-3).
Second, Shylock makes his living as a usurer. Usury, lending money at
interest, may be how banks run their business today; but in Shakespeares
time, there were very few professions with a worse reputation. Chaucer
thought the practice as bad as fornication, defamation and witchcraft
(The Friars Tale 1. 1301-10, in Chaucer 1957: 90; see also Bond 1985)
and, throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, usury remained a
phenomenon forbidden, denounced and repudiated, although economically
necessary and continually practiced. Shakespeare explored ethics of usury
in his other works, such as The Sonnets, and, in the context of Platonic
ethics, Timon of Athens (Kator 2012: esp. 139). Lending money at interest
remains morally ambiguous to this day.
Further, Shylock openly denounces Christians. He laments his
daughter Jessicas marriage to a Christian as the worst fate on Earth.
He has nothing good to say about Antonio, and refuses to dine with him
in good faith when invited. He bears long grudges. He is officious and
pompous, as well as bloodthirsty and stubborn. When it seems he might be
getting his revenge, he shows no remorse or reason. None of this will have
endeared him to a Christian audience. But none of this aversion-building
is an accident. If Shakespeare wants us to loathe Shylock, it is not because
he is an anti-Semite but so that we could be aware of the disappearance
of our reserve, and the unexpected power of pity and understanding which
we will, inevitably, be brought to feel for Shylock.
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In the course of his time on the stage, Shylock is quick to complain and
to curse. Yet, much like Calibans ranting in The Tempest, Shylock has the
power to change our point of view. To begin with, we discover that Antonio
that selfless, generous friend has repeatedly mistreated Shylock. Antonio
has explicitly insulted his religion, insulted him personally, hindered his
business efforts and even spat on him. We may not like Shylock, but we find
ourselves baulking at this treatment. And by the third act, when Shylock
starts waving his knife around and calling for a pound of Antonios flesh,
we may find ourselves thinking: Perhaps I would behave like Shylock, if
someone had treated me that way. Our moral allegiances have shifted,
and Shylocks rage is a thing of darkness we acknowledge to be ours.
As for the softly spoken and genteel Antonio, his life is in danger
because of a generous gesture he made to help his friend, and we feel
for him. But we can also see that Antonio never acknowledges that he
has hurt Shylock. Shylock will complain against him, but Antonio never
once retorts; he simply never gives Shylocks grievance the dignity of
a response. Antonio claims the privilege of the majority to ignore the
complaints of the minority, treating the claimant as too preposterous to
warrant serious engagement. Such tactics are prevalent in our society and
often mistaken (usually by the majority) for politeness; yet can be deeply
offensive. Modern-day socio-legal studies have found that apology and
acknowledgment of wrong-doing (of one group against another, or one
individual against another) must happen before the wrong-doing can be
forgotten. Holocaust survivors consider absence of acknowledgment and
apology particularly offensive, and Holocaust and genocide denial is illegal
in a number of European countries (Balint 2002). Once we notice and
ponder the silence which meets Shylocks pleas, it is very hard to return to
seeing Antonio simply as the wronged friend.
In addition, some traits that Shakespeare has given Shylock make him
look conspicuously good. Throughout the play, Shylock is unwavering in
his faith and, regardless of the difficulties he is exposed to, remains true to
his identity. Unlike his daughter, within the moral parameters of his religion
and culture, Shylock is scrupulously honest. He displays touching loyalty
to the memory of his late wife: it can hardly be an accident that Shylock,
who has treasured the ring his wife had given him in her youth, passes
the very test of faith which the two Christian husbands in the play fail so
abysmally. And Shylock shows dignity when defeated: his final words, I
am content (4.1.391) are a more disturbing and poignant comment on
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the justice he has received in a Christian court than any prolonged speech
could ever have been. If the main plot favours Antonio, the subplot favours
Shylock, and the moral conflict generated between their two world-views
lies at the heart of the play.
In his 2004 filmic version of The Merchant of Venice, Michael Radford
tones this moral conflict right down. From the outset, he picks his agenda,
and his directorial perspective is scrupulously sympathetic to Shylocks
viewpoint. In an interview, Radford explained this by the need to create a
clear moral vision favouring the underdog, with which todays audiences
can identify. Radford recognized the greatness of Shakespeares plots and
stories (which, one may argue, are great precisely because ethical views
are never spoon-fed), but wanted to make the ethical bottom line, as it
emerged for him, more transparent and attractive to young audiences
today (Canavese 2004). Radford therefore foregrounds the moment when
Antonio spits on Shylock by moving it from the middle of the play to the
beginning of the movie, making the spit a prominent visual emblem of
Shylocks life as a Jew in Renaissance Venice. We are shown the frightening
Jewish ghetto, as well as scenes of book burning in a clear reference to
the gruesome tendency of the strong, so-often repeated moment in history
from Savonarola to Nazi Germany and the recent Balkan wars, to destroy
the written culture of the nation they seek to humiliate.
If you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (3.1. 61-2)
The truth of everyones fundamental humanity, equal amidst the differences
of religion, culture or financial status, is a truth as often forgotten in
Shakespeares world as it is in ours. Al Pacinos delivery of this speech is
profoundly moving; Michael Radford gets sensationalist value out of this.
But the question we find in Shakespeares play, if not in Radfords film, is:
if we always revenge, when will the cycle of violence stop?
Gender injustices are explored in The Merchant of Venice within its
broader discussion of cultural inequities and examination of utilitarian
ethics. The inferiority of women was a notion broadly held in pre-modern
England, and Shakespeare examines it in most of his plays, most notably
in The Merchant of Venice, as well as in The Taming of the Shrew and As You
Like It. St Augustine believed that woman was not created in the image of
God, and that there is no reason for her existence other than the bearing
of children:
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Woman together with man is the image of God, so that the whole
substance is one image. But when she has the role of helpmate,
which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God. But
with regard to man alone, he is the image of God, just as fully
and completely as he is joined with the woman into one. (St
Augustine 2002: 12.7.10)
If one rejects giving birth to children as the reason why woman
was created, I do not see for what other help the woman was
made for the man. (St. Augustine 1982: 9.5.9; see also Matter
2002).
The medical views of Aristotle and Galen, propagated by many influential
Renaissance books, was that a womans gender was the result of faulty
gestation, and the very things that make her female, also make her
stupid:
when a woman is born, it is a defect and mistake of nature,
[] as is [] one who is born blind, or lame, or with some other
defect. (Castiglione 1959: III: 11)
She [Woman] was by God created cold and moist, which
temperature, is necessarie to make a woman fruitfull and apt
for childbirth, but an enemy to knowledge. (Huarte y Navarro
1604: 270)
Eve was believed to have caused Adams fall from Gods grace (not without
debate initiated by intelligent women, see Speght 1617); and medieval
and early modern ideas on female education suggested that a womans
place was in the home. In addition to what their mothers taught them,
most women needed merely to receive religious and ethical instruction
from their husbands to the point deemed necessary (Vecchio 1992: 118-
Here Castiglione is citing Galen. Castigliones Il Cortegiano [Book of the Courtier] was
originally published in 1528.
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121). In other words, the inferior position of women was seen as part of
natural law, and women were expected to live within its precepts.
Since we know how highly intelligent and capable Portia is, as well as
being a rich heiress, we may feel sad that she is treated as an inferior out of
tradition. Her father has given her no voice in choosing her own husband.
And once she was chosen by a husband who is significantly poorer and less
intelligent than she is, she is forced to assume a submissive role or employ
strategies which conceal her agency. When she falls in love with Bassanio
(3.2), she signals love by giving a highly eloquent speech claiming lack of
eloquence. This is deliberately ironic: Portia knows exactly whom she wants,
and she has ample means to get him, but she must be covert about it. It is
necessary for her to work within acceptable codes of behavior, according
to which a maiden hath no tongue but thought (3.2.8). By professing
herself unschooled, unlessoned and unpractised (3.2. 159), Portia
also sends signals that she is sexually chaste, pandering to perceptions of
uneducated, clean-slate women as sexually and biologically attractive.
Sexual inexperience aside, it is quite clear that Shakespeares Portia could
not be further from the notions of unschooled and unpractised when it
comes to articulateness, intelligence and ingeniousness; so her ebullience,
much like Juliets and Desdemonas, is both endearing and confronting. As
she is a comedic character, however, Portias verbosity will not become a
tragic flaw, but merely serves to foreshadow her virtuoso legal performance
in the court scene. Her verbal facility is tempered not only by conformity
with the tenets of Renaissance views of ideal women as obedient and silent
(on this see Boose 1991, Smith 2002, Smith 1995, and Phillippy 1998), but
also the tenets of the sixteenth century law on marriage, which specified
that That which the husband hath is his own and that which the wife
hath is the husbands (Doddridge and I. L. 1632: 144). On marriage,
the wife lost her right to own property, even if before marriage it was
all her own. Portia professes Bassanio to be her king, adding myself and
what is mine, to you and yours / is now converted (3.2.166-7). Viewing
these words as an expression of generosity would be anachronistic. In
Shakespeares lifetime, a woman bestowing all her money on a man was
not acting on a generous impulse, but simply within the law.

The idea had a classical lineage. In [Aristotles] Economics and in Xenophons Oeconomicus
it is proposed that a husband educate his wife as household manager.
The Lawes resolutions were printed in 1632, but thought to have been written at the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
200
Nevertheless, Portias submission of her person and her property

can also be symbolically interpreted as emotional and sexual surrender.
Expressions of gender have a crucial role here. But now, says Portia,
I was the lord
Of this fair mansion; master of my servants,
Queen oer myself; and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours, my lords. (3.2.167-171, emphasis mine).
Lord, not lady; master, not mistress. Portia conspicuously trades her
habitual control of her estates, which she genders masculine, in return for
wifely submission appropriate to her femininity. (Thankfully, Shakespeare
allows her to reclaim a little dignity when she reminds the audience of who
will have done the husband-buying, when she tells Bassanio: Since you
are dear bought, I will love you dear. (3.2.311).) Feminine submission is,
of course, most seriously interrogated when Portia dresses up and poses
as a lawyer. The court scene, in which Portia reclaims the masculine voice
of control and public power, never fails to delight the audience and offers
unique challenges for actors, making Portia one of Shakespeares most
sought-after female roles. When she performs in court, Portia is finally in
her element. She shines; and we are happy that she finally speaks without
needing to mince words, or to self-deprecate for the sake of conforming
to cultural expectations associated with her gender. Her performance in
the court scene is so brilliant that it must make any viewer re-consider
the magnitude of exactly what Portia will be sacrificing by submitting to
her husband and societys expectations. As an indication of the limitations
that the pre-modern society placed on individuals, however intelligent
and talented, because of their gender, Portias brilliant court performance
retrospectively adds poignancy to her submission speech.
On the other hand, however, within the ethical framework of her own
society, Portia did what she did without a right to do it, and broke a number
of relevant laws. By wearing male clothes, Portia acted against the Biblical
prohibition forbidding honest women to wear male clothes (Lev 13:45;
Vows; Deut.22:5, Prohibitions (Idolatry). Commandments, The 613 in
Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971: 772), the same laws that prevented women
from acting on a public stage in Shakespeares time. She broke Renaissance
laws which indicated that the purpose of clothing was to show clearly who
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you are and to what rank you belonged (Ruggiero 1993: esp. 25), in this,
she is a match for Bassanio, who broke the same law in order to woo her.
Finally, appearing in court without licence was, and remains to this day, a
grave criminal offence.
Similarly, swept along in the main plot, we want Bassanio to marry
Portia, so we barely give credit to her comment on the unsuccessful suitor
who preceded Bassanio, who was black. When he fails, she is relieved: Let
all of his complexion choose me so. (2.7.79). The casual racism of this
comment compares to Iagos at the beginning of Othello, and it is particularly
cruel if we remember that, according to the dictates of Portias fathers will,
a failed suitor must never come back, or marry again. (Characteristically,
in his film, Michael Radford cuts out the danger inherent in the princes
wrong choice, and minimizes the racism of Portias comments.)
Jessicas character and behavior are ethically equally divisive. On one
hand, she betrays her father for love; we condone this, as it is something
we have been taught young women in stories must do. After all, Juliet
and Desdemona have done the same, and we have applauded them. We
know it takes great courage to confront or hurt your father, and abandon
everything for the man you love. But there is something about the way
Jessica does it that seems wrong. For instance, she could have escaped
without stealing her fathers money and valuables, and she could have
made her own fortune with her new husband. If she needed money, she
could have taken only what she needed, without stealing the ring his late
wife had gifted him she must have known how much Shylock loved
that ring surely something that a loving daughter, or even just a decent
person, leaves behind. The Merchant of Venice directed by Jack Gold for the
BBC in 1980 presents a rebellious and heartless Jessica, more interested
in escape and her fathers money, than in Lorenzo. Trevor Nunn and
Christ Hunts masterpiece, a restaged and filmed Royal National Theatre
production of The Merchant of Venice (2001), sets the story in the 1920s, the
time of rising anti-Semitism, focuses, for instance, on the cultural conflict
between traditional and modern viewpoints. Their production highlights

For example, many laws govern the legal profession and the practise of law in Western
Australia, such as the Legal Profession Act 2008. Under this Act, The Supreme Court or
Legal Practice Board have a responsibility to protect the public interest in the proper
administration of justice by ensuring that legal work is carried out only by those who are
properly qualified to do so by issuing and enforcing solicitors Practising Certificates.
A Practising Certificate is a licence which allows a solicitor to provide legal services
(Government of Western Australia 2008).
202
the cultural contrast between the cabaret world of the Christians and the
traditional setting of the Ghetto. Shylock speaks English when speaking
to Christians, but Yiddish when addressing a dowdily dressed Jessica,
represented as a frustrated young woman who cannot wait to escape a
tyrannical father. In Michael Radfords film, this complexity of Jessicas
character is simplified to cater to modern audiences. In the final scene,
in one of the most significant feel-good whitewashes of the original text,
Radford shows that Jessica is eaten away by guilt for taking her fathers
ring: the pretty Zuleikha Robinsons Jessica, directed by Michael Radford,
is much easier to forgive than Shakespeares Jessica. Shakespeares text
easily supports the differing versions of this character.
On close inspection, Lorenzo behaves strangely as well. Lorenzo says
he loves Jessica, but has an uncanny knack of complimenting her in the
same breath as insulting her cultural heritage and origins. He says to her,
for instance,
If eer the Jew her father come to heaven
It will be for his gentle daughters sake:
And never dare misfortune cross her foot,
Unless she do it under this excuse:
That she is issue to a faithless Jew. (2.4, 33-37)
Is there a woman alive, who, having left her faith and her father for her
love, would hear such praise from the lips of her future husband without
re-examining her decision? Other characters put her down as well, but she
seems not to notice. Jessica may be foolish and too eager to please; she
could be positive; she could deliberately ignore her doubts. Shakespeare is
highlighting the risk that women took when eloping for love: the Marriage
Law makes Jessica as vulnerable to Lorenzo as Portia is to Bassanio. In
a production of The Merchant of Venice directed by Gorin Stojanovi in
Belgrade in 2010, Jessica and Lorenzos love was portrayed as having
gone sour: the minute they were married, Lorenzo broke his promises,
took brutal control of her money and started to taunt and verbally abuse
Jessica (Stojanovi 2010). Yet this heart-breaking menace was portrayed
on stage only by the gestures and facial expressions of the actors, without
a single word of Shakespeares text being changed. In contrast, Michael
Radford chooses not to make use of this depth. In his film, Lorenzo is
a simple, warm-hearted, gorgeous lout in love, and his relationship with
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Jessica unfolds in conventional terms. But the fact that Shakespeares text
is ethically ambiguous enough to be used as a basis for a convincing stage
representation of marital happiness, as well as marital unhappiness, must
give us pause.
What is true love? Is it reflected in words, or in actions? In emotions,
which are by their nature ephemeral, or in commitment? This play offers
us several practical tests for answering this question. Would we borrow
money we do not have, to give it to someone else? Would we pledge a
pound of flesh for someone? If so, for whom?
And there is our answer. Antonio pledges this for Bassanio. In a play
about multiple lovers, the only person whose actions clearly recall the words
of Gospel according to St John, let us love, not in word or speech, but in
truth and action (1 John 3:18, in Coogan, ed. 2007: 410), is a man who
shows love for another man. The ultimate love-test of the play the lead
casket with which Bassanio wins Portiaconceals a message which says
that, to win love, one must risk, give and hazard all he hath (2.29.20);
once again, the only person in the play who lives by this precept is Antonio,
acting for Bassanio. The viewer must reach his or her own conclusions as
to the comment that Shakespeare is making here. The Merchant of Venice,
directed by Jonathan Miller and John Sichel in 1969, the National Theatre
version videoed by Precision Video was boldly the first to place an emphasis
on the potentially homoerotic relationship between Bassanio and Antonio.
The version is set in the nineteenth century, and Laurence Olivier plays
Shylock with a particular awareness of the underhanded nature of racism,
which seemingly accepts members of the minority, only to reveal prejudice
hidden away beneath the surface. Michael Radfords film also simplified
potential homosexual overtones to explain Antonios extraordinary
generosity to his friend. Antonio (Jeremy Irons) and Bassanio (Joseph
Fiennes) employ double entendres, laze around on a four poster bed, and
Antonio is often filmed in close-ups directing long and tearful gazes at
Bassanio. When, after the court scene, Fiennes Bassanio tells Portia Sweet
doctor, you shall be my bedfellow. (5.1.284), this is done in a way that
links with the homosexual undercurrent in the play.
And yet, the same utterly selfless, loving man who goes above and
beyond the call of duty to help his friend, is capable of spitting at another
man, because he is Jewish. Shakespeares lesson here is as striking and
thought provoking, as it is relevant to our own times. Love and kindness
towards a member of ones own group do not mean that we will be equally
204
kind to those whom we see as different (the Other). By making a loving

friend of one the abuser of another, Shakespeare proposes that, however
selfless it may seem, love is, at its root, a possessive and selfish emotion
or at least one that is particular, and by no means universal. The capacity
to love ones own should not be confused with genuine, disinterested
goodness, or even with social responsibility.
The discussion the play offers of the relationship between ends
and means is also consistently challenging. Consider, for instance, the
relationship of money and truth. Bassanio is handsome, young, and the
plays romantic hero, so it is easy to forget that he is penniless and brazen
enough to ask his (also penniless) friend for money so that he can represent
himself as richer than he is, in order to impress an heiress. Whatever
Portias gifts of beauty, wit and loyalty, Bassanio had never met her before
he went to woo her, and his initial motives are solely financial. Even once
he has met her and fallen in love with her, Bassanio continues to praise
her money along with her other qualities. Since, according to the law of
marriage, Bassanio stands to win Portias fortune along with her hand, the
money he borrows from Antonio in order to impress Portia should be seen
simply for what it isan investment.
Bassanio has a way of keeping his eye on the prize, regardless of the
price others have to pay to help him get to his goals. He is happy to ask
Antonio for a loan when Antonio has no money, presumably because the
prize will be worth it for him (not for Antonio). This is an example of
thinking about actions in terms of expediency (utilitarian ethics), not of
their inherent (deontological) ethics. In the court scene, Bassanio asks of
Portia to Wrest once the law to your authority. / To do a great right, do a
little wrong, (4.1.212-3, my emphasis). Portia refuses. Isabella Wheater
reads this request, together with Portias refusal, as reference to Aristotles
Nicomachean Ethics and its postulates of moral and fair dealing as the
basis of prosperity, and its opposite, a misfortune (Wheater 1992: 487).
The principle of equity a more open-handed, individualised approach
to harder legal questions requiring that the spirit, rather than the letter
of the law be upheldis also a concept derived from The Nicomachean
Ethics (Hadfield 2014: 159). It is, however, crucial to note that Portia
initially offers Bassanio verbal refusal to engage in creative interpretations
of the law on the grounds that this would be immoral, but proceeds to
actions whereby she does exactly as Bassanio askedwrong, in order
to do what they both believe is right. The fact that Portias actions and
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her words are in misalignment clearly signals introduction of a different

ethical framework at play here, the originally Epicurean, utilitarian ethics
of Niccolo Machiavelli: A ruler who wishes to maintain his power must
be prepared to act immorally when this becomes necessary. (Machiavelli
1998: 55; see also Pearce 2010: 99-100, Wells 2005: 56-57, and Rosenblum
2006: 138). Bassanio defines his interests here as the greater right, and
judges Portias morality on the basis of whether her actions will support
his interests.
Portias behavior throughout the play is also an exemplar of utilitarian
ethics, a philosophical signal that she is a perfect match for Bassanio. Like
Bassanio, she is likeable. She is fiercely intelligent and shows the ability
to love deeply and selflessly. Her facility with the argument in the legal
scenes is elating, and she enjoins Shylock to be merciful in eloquent and
unforgettably moving terms. She offers him three opportunities to be
merciful; to fetch a surgeon; to accept double his forfeit. He refuses, and
he is punished, so we cannot blame Portia. Or can we? Portia has shown
herself to be a racist early in the play, when she dismissed a dark-skinned
suitor. She refers to Shylock almost always as The Jew, without using
his name. Of all the participants in the court scene, Portia is the only one
who has true power; she knows, long before the scene ends, how things
will play out for Shylock if he refuses to be merciful. Her own injunctions
to Shylock to give mercy freely do not apply to her; her own mercy is not
free, but depends on Shylocks. As a lawyer, Portia promises justice with
promises that sound like threats: the Jew shall have all the justice; For
as thou urgest justice, be assured / Thou shalt have justice more than thou
desirst; (4.1.318; 4.4.313-4). She achieves her victory by breaking the
law and disregarding the rules. Shakespeare may have been accused of
anti-Semitism, but his Christians, who spit on Jews, hinder their business
efforts, withhold citizenship even when Jews have lived in their midst for
generations and prefer legal loopholes to true justice, do not look much
better.
There is no doubt that Shylock is Shakespeares villain. He is miserly,
horrible and, even when offered double his forfeit, irrationally stubborn
and bloodthirsty in his desire for revenge. But Shylock can also be said to
be a representative of the older framework of deontologist ethics, as he
is merely using legal means to fight to punish a man who amply deserves
punishment. He asks no more and no less than what the law entitles him

Il Principe [The Prince] was originally published in 1532.
206
to; he asks no more than what the state says, and he believes, is right. He
continually calls for justice. Who shall determine what is right and what is
wrong? While we must agree that for Antonio to die for Shylocks version
of justice is too harsh a punishment for his offences, to do so would be to
be utilitarian; and deontologically speaking, we cannot question Shylocks
motives. Neither can we condone that it is just for Shylock to die instead.
It is impossible for us to condone the fact that the legal loophole which
saves Antonio is the fact that the Venice law regards Shylock as a legal
alien, although he has lived in Venice all his life -- a law singularly lacking
in inherent justice and reminiscent of the plight of long-term refugees in
our own world, Palestinians in Lebanon or, before 2004, Croatian Serbs
in Serbia, people without the right to citizenship of their host countries
even after decades of forced exile (see Moor 2010, and tiks 2013: 30-32).
And then, as an additional mercy, instead of being killed since no one
must die in comedies Shylock is to be baptized, a fate which we already
know is worse for him than death itself. He will also be humiliated before
his daughter and stripped of his money, which means that as a moneylenderor, in todays terms, a bankerhe is also being stripped of his
livelihood, expertise and identity.
Portias success in the court scene teaches her viewers two single most
important utilitarian lessons of the play:
One: What is legal is not always just, and what is just, not always
legal.
Two: Breaking the rules pays, if you think your objective is justified,
and if you manage not to get caught.
Should these lessons be believed, and applied to real life? The difficulty at
the heart of this play is that it asks of every reader and viewer to make up
their own minds about that question. If the answer is yes, the viewer has
become an adherent to utilitarian ethics. If the answer is no, the viewer has
become an adherent of deontological ethics. A choice must be made, and
each group will be vehement in justifying their choices.
Regardless of the choice we make for ourselves, we must learn to
value the uncertainty we feel when we contemplate the implications of
this choice. It is this uncertainty that is the unique gift of thinking human
beings.
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Katharine Eisaman Maus ends her Norton introduction to this play by

talking about its ability to annihilate dangerous dualities by emphasizing
the distance between its charmed fictions and real life. By contrast, I
suggest that the play emphasizes dualities, which have enormous value in
teaching applied ethics. The only way for our children to succeed morally
in the world we have created for them, is to learn to think like the I and
the Other, as well as like a deontologist and utilitarian, simultaneously.
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212
UDC 821.111.09-2 .
Milica Spremi Konar*

Belgrade, Serbia
A FORTNIGHT HOLD WE THIS SOLEMNITY:

THE ELIZABETHAN ANNUAL CYCLE IN
SHAKESPEARES MAJOR COMEDIES
Abstract
In Shakespeares Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the
Professional Stage Franois Laroque analyses festivity and its literary and imaginary
representation in Shakespeares England. He holds that the Elizabethan year
is essentially simple and logical as it is divided into two halves. The first half
starts on the winter solstice of 24 December and ends on the summer solstice
of 24 June, including the twelve days of Christmas celebrations and a group of
moveable feasts such as Easter and Whitsun and Laroque adopts for it the name of
the ritualistic half of the year. The second half, which begins on 25 June and ends
on 24 December, is marked by a lack of important religious festivals, the presence
of a few fixed festivals and a greater number of working days over holidays, so it
is known as the secular half of the year. Based on Laroques insights, this paper
argues that Shakespeares major comedies A Midsummer Nights Dream, As You
Like It, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night bring to life the secular half of
the Elizabethan year in such a way that each play seems to evoke its particular
period and a set of activities peculiar to it.
Key words: Shakespeare, festivity, A Midsummer Nights Dream, As You like It, The
Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night
E-mail address: mspremic@eunet.rs
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1. Introduction
In his influential study Shakespeares Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal
Entertainment and the Professional Stage Franois Laroque analyses festivity,
a social manifestation linked with natural and seasonal cycles and rooted
in a so-called archaic vision of time and the cosmos (Laroque 1991: 3),
and its literary and imaginary representation in Shakespeares England. He
has limited the scope of his book to the period of Shakespeares dramatic
activity, that is, to the time span between 1590 and 1613, as he has detected
the close relationship between festivity and literature during this period
(Laroque 1991: 5). Laroques study is divided into two parts: the first
provides a detailed survey of the festive calendar of Shakespeares time
while the second deals with festive motifs and images in Shakespeares
plays.
It is held in Shakeseares Festive World that the festivity in Shakespeares
England is a complex phenomenon, considerably different from the medieval
times from which it originates. The difference predominantly stems from
the Reformation and the changes it brought about, changes which seriously
impaired the area of festivity and dramatic performances as its integral part.
The Tudor monarchy and its officials saw to a general anglicanization and
simplification of the liturgy, services and ceremonies of the Church and a
reduction in the number of the feast days. Consequently, the two feast days
most closely related to dramatic performances and processions, Corpus
Christi and Saint Johns Day (the Midsummer Watch), were among those
abolished during the first half of the sixteenth century (Laroque 1991: 7).
The truth is, however, that the celebrations of Corpus Christi and Saint
John did not disappear the moment they were banned, that the oppositon
to such bans was strong, particularly in the remote parts of the country,
and that it took several decades for the new regulations to be fully adopted.
Together with imposing prohibitions on what had hitherto constituted
peoples annual experiences, the Tudor authorities took care to offer their
subjects new celebratory occasions by inaugurating new holidays. The two
best-known are the celebration of the anniversary of Queen Elizabeths
accession to the throne on 17 November and the commemoration of the
Gunpowder Plot on Guy Fawkes Day, 5 November (Laroque 1991: 8). It is
also important to note that not all the holidays from the pre-Reformation
period were irrevocably abolished some were transformed into new ones
and celebrated on different dates in the calendar. The Midsummer Watch,
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Milica Spremi Konar A Fortnight Hold We This Solmenity: The Elizabethan Annual Cycle...
for example, was replaced by the Lord Mayors Show and celebrated on 28
November instead of 23 June.
It should be mentioned here how Laroque takes good care to point
out that his work has nothing to do with new historicism from which
he implicitely distances himself and how, at the same time, some of his
shrewdest observations are reminiscent of Stephen Greenblatt. Writing, for
example, about the decline of medieval festival pageants in Tudor England
and the consequent disappearance of the guilds and corporations that
used to be responsible for financing and organizing religious festivals and
performances, Laroque astutely observes that it was at this juncture that,
thanks to aristorcatic or royal protectors [...], permanent troups of players
and professional artists sprang up and began to cater for a paying public by
putting on daily performances which took the place of the erstwhile seasonal
religious spectacles (Laroque 1991: 10). In other words, that which was
no longer acceptable in reality, particularly the Catholic festivities, their
paraphernalia and symbolism, moved under the auspices of professional
players and the then emerging theatre. This remark is in acordance with
and similar to Greenblatts ideas about another kind of remnant from the
Catholic times the ghosts which, he argues, moved to the theatre after
they had been evicted from reality: The theater, writes Greenblatt is the
place, as Shakespeare understood, where those things are permitted that
the authorities have ruled illicit and have tried to banish from everyday
reality (Greenblatt 2001: 203). It can be rightfully said that Laroques
understanding of festivity by and large coincides with Greenblatts views
on the theatre. This affinity can be detected throughout his study and a
good illustration would be the point he makes discussing different kinds of
festivals and their manifold meanings: This provides us with a particularly
striking illustration of the ambivalence of the festival: sometimes it served
as a solemn ratification of boundaries, points of reference and dividing
lines; at other times, it gave a community licence to transgress those
boundaries and abolish those dividing lines (Laroque 1991: 14). This is
very similar to Greenblatts notion of the theatre which he sees at once as a
subversion of the dominant order and a safety valve indispensable for the
sustainability of that same order.
Laroque points out that regardless of a large number of different
local festivals, the Elizabethan year is essentially simple and logical as it
is divided into two halves. The first half starts on the winter solstice of 24
December and ends on the summer solstice of 24 June (Saint Johns or
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Midsummers Day). It includes the twelve days of Christmas celebrations

and a group of moveable feasts Candlemas, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Saint
Georges Day, Whitsun and Corpus Christi and Laroque adopts for it the
name of the ritualistic half of the year (Laroque 1991: 81). The second
half, which begins on 25 June and ends on 24 December, is marked by a
lack of important religious festivals, the presence of a few fixed festivals
and a greater number of working days over holidays, so it is known as the
secular half of the year. It should be mentioned, though, that the second
half was invariably marked by local festivals such as the sheep-shearing
festival, the rush-bearing festival, the harvest festivals and parish festivals,
celebrating the completion of certain agricultural works (Laroque 1991:
82). The only big parade in this half of the year was the Lord Mayors
Show, while smaller-scale ceremonies were organized by the guilds upon
election of the new masters.
It follows from Laroques study that the Elizabethan year was a
firmly established and dynamic sequence of working days and festivity,
equally observed by the court circles and ordinary people. As has been
already mentioned, Christmas festivities at the court lasted for twelve
days and included entertainments such as music, dancing and theatrical
performances. When the celebrations were over the court would move
from the palace of Whitehall to Hampton Court, Greenwich or Richmond
and stay there during the time of Lent. Saint Georges Day would be
celebrated at Windsor where the Queen would receive the knights of
the Order of the Garter. The secular part of the year seems to have been
famous for the summer visits the Queen paid to the countryside and her
most prominent subjects there at whose houses she would stay for a few
weeks. Her notable hosts would do their best to make each of the Queens
stays a memorable occasion by taking care to organize mythological and
pastoral entertainments, fireworks, water pageants, banquets followed
by Masques, hunting and other rural pastimes (Laroque 1991: 69). For
ordinary people the secular part of the year meant hard work as this was
the time of major agricultural tasks in the fields, the completion of which
they would celebrate in their local communities. Laroque poins out that
the great annual fairs such as the fairs of Saint Bartholomew, Saint Luke
and Saint Giles were also held in the summer or early autumn, the period
without many festivals (Laroque 1991: 83). He sums up his discussion
on the Elizabethan annual cycle by arguing that the ritualistic half of
the year is characterized by festivals involving fire (Christmas candles,
216
the bonfires of Saint Johns Day) and by prohibitions, dietary and sexual
(which were preceded and followed by periods of indulgence) and adds
that [I]f the first half of the year was marked by behaviour and symbolism
that belonged to a ritualistic and sacred concept of the world, the secular
half was devoted to the economic side of life as opposed to the religious,
the private as opposed to the public and the rational as opposed to the
mystical (Laroque 1991: 83-84).
Laroques task in the second part of his study, as he defines it, is to
see how our findings on the place and functions of festivity apply to an
artistic production as highly elaborated as Shakespeares plays (Laroque
1991: 179). He holds that a play never represents reality exactly and
that none of the concrete forms of festivity such as a Morris dance or a
May game is transposed to a dramatic text. What Shakespeares plays do
contain, however, is an air of festivity shaped for dramatic purposes. On a
concrete level this kind of festivity may manifest itself as singing, dancing
and music, but there is more to it than that. The atmosphere of rejoicing,
confusion and role-switching, surprising turns in the course of events,
moonlight, leasure, freedom, noise and frivolity are images of festivity
echoing traditional celebrations, both those still vividly present and those
not any more acceptable in Shakespeares England.
Taking into account Laroques findings on the Elizabethan calendar I
would like to argue that four of Shakespeares plays known as the major
comedies A Midsummer Nights Dream, As You Like It, The Merchant of
Venice and Twelfth Night bring to life the secular half of the Elizabethan
year. They do it in such a way that each play seems to evoke its particular
period and a set of activities peculiar to it. Thus, A Midsummer Nights
Dream can be said to recall its beginning, usually marked by weddings
and the Queens visits to aristocratic homes in the countryside; As You
Like It, with nature as its predominant setting, appears to be related to
agricultural labour in the fields and celebrations of its completion in high
summer; The Merchant of Venice with a serious topic and dark colours in
which Venice is depicted seems to refer to autumn and the economic side
of life, and Twelfth Night to the winter festival itself, which marks the end
of the secular and the beginning of the ritualistic half of the year.

For that reason the order in which the comedies will be analysed in this paper differs
slightly from the accepted chronological order in which they were written and staged.
Namely, As You Like It will be dealt with before The Merchant of Venice because the kind
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2. The Major Comedies

Laroque labels A Midsummer Nights Dream as a comedy whose major
theme is festivity (Laroque 1991: 198). The Midsummer Night from the
title and the prospect of Theseus and Hippolytas royal wedding signify
a joyful, clamorous and passionate beginning of the secular half of the
year. Theseus is impatient as he has to wait for another four days before
our solemnities (1.1.11) and assures his future wife that the grandoise
celebration the preparations for which are well underway will be a unique
event in his otherwise warrior-like life:
Hyppolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
(A Midsummer Nights Dream, 1.1.16-19)
Theseus wants all Athenians, especially the young, to take part in
merriment and revelry. At the same time he takes good care to get rid
of any disposition inappropriate to the festive moment, when he orders
Philostrate, his Master of Revels: Turn melancholy forth to funerals: / The
pale companion is not for our pomp (1.1.14-15). Theseus words illustrate
in the best possible way Laroques attitude that [I]n the world of comedy,
the ceremonies for weddings and those for funerals are placed in a mutually
exclusive relationship (Laroque 1991: 236). And truly, Theseus not only
wishes all his subjects to enjoy themselves, but he casts away the very
thought of sadness. Thus, when worried Egeus comes in front of the Duke
and presents him with his trouble his daughter Hermias disobedience in
regard to Demetrius, whom Egeus has chosen for her husband Theseus
is authoritative but somehow meek and gentle at the same time while
he explains to Hermia what awaits her if she ignores her fathers will. As
is well-known from the storyline, Hermia and Lysander are in love and
want to get married, but as Egeus refuses to bless their love they decide
to elope from Athens, to the place where Lysanders aunt lives and where
Athenian laws do not apply, in order to get married. Hermia reports their
secret to her best friend Helena who ardently loves Demetrius and hopes
of festivity it evokes seems to take place in high summer, whereas The Merchant of Venice
is more of an autumnal play.
218
to win back his love. Helena decides to reveal Hermias and Lysanders
plan to Demetrius and when he leaves Athens to pursue Hermia, to follow
him. When the four lovers enter the forest outside Athens, the action starts
unrolling at a faster pace. The forest is the green world of Northrop
Frye but it also resembles the forest of medieval romance, a limitless,
uncultivated space packed with hidden menaces and the atmosphere
of mystery and fear (Whitaker 1984: 54-55).
Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of fairies, with their
respective attendants are to be met there, as well as a group of amateur
actors rehearsing the play on Pyramus and Thisbe they want to show on
Theseus wedding day. Oberons and Titanias quarrel over the Indian
boy is a serious matter as it causes commotion in the natural world, but
Oberons way of resolving it, although ironic and not so flattering for the
Queen, is essentially harmless and benevolent as the King is well versed in
magic and aptly controls its use. His skill is equally unquestionable when
a mistake such as the one Puck has made ocurrs and causes frenzy among
the enchanted lovers. Oberon easily corrects it and, having been handed
over the Indian boy, releases Titanias eyesight of foolish affection as well,
thus bringing back peace and pleasure both to the fairies world and to that
of the mortals. It is hardly necessary to point out to the benevolence and
kind-heartedness of the simple Athenian craftsmen who enthusiastically
engage their modest acting skills in order to contribute to the happy
ocassion. Their poignantly nave, meticulous care not to frighten anyone
by staging a tragic love story adds up to the general air of wishing well that
permeates the comedy.
It is generally agreed among Shakespeare scholars (for example, Wilson
1962: 194; Greenblatt 2004: 47) that Oberons remark about a fair vestal
thrond by the west (2.1.158) whom Cupidons shaft has missed refers
to Queen Elizabeth and her visit to the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth in
July 1575 during which, among many kinds of entertainment, the Queen
watched a spectacular water pageant with a mermaid on a dolphins
back (2.1.150). In his happiest festive comedy Shakespeare seems to have
alluded to a contemporary festivity he might have even witnessed himself
as a boy of eleven (Greenblatt 2004: 43). The implications of the Queens
famous three-week stay at Kenilworth relate to the royal wedding as the
principal topic of A Midsummer Nights Dream in that the Earl of Leicester is
known to have courted the Queen, albeit unsuccessfully, at the time.
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The festive, harmless, light-hearted atmosphere which implies that

Shakespeares aim in this comedy is what J.D. Wilson calls consummation
in happiness (Wilson 1962: 186) is best summarized in the famous words
of Oberons blessing:
Now until the break of day
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessd be;
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be,
And the blots of natures hand
Shall not in their issue stand
Never mole, harelip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despisd in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.
With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait
And each several chamber bless
Through this palace with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blessed
Ever shall in safety rest.
(A Midsummer Nights Dream, 5.1.379-398)
Speaking of festivity as a prominent theme of Shakespeares comedies,
Laroque defines As You Like It as the play at a kind of crossroads, between
those comedies in which festivity is a major theme and those in which
it is a minor one (Laroque 1991: 198). Its major part, as is well-known,
takes place in the Forest of Arden, to which Duke Senior fleees with his
attendants after being overthrown and banished by his brother, the usurper
Duke Frederick, and to which arrive other decent and benevolent people
such as Rosalynd, Celia, Orlando and Adam when Duke Fredericks malice
and murderous intentions make it impossible for them to survive at his
court. Laroque quotes Janet Spens argument that As You Like It reflect[s]
the traditions and amusements of the summer period (Laroque 1991:
220
192), while Agnes Latham similarly holds that the play discloses a good
deal of the holiday spirit and the very real joy of summer days in the
country (Latham 1975: lxix, lxxxvi).
Logically enough, from times immemorial, the joy of summer days in
the country has been connected to the bounteous harvest season and the
completion of the various phases of agricultural activities which would be
marked by large communal celebrations. The atmosphere at Duke Seniors
banquet deep in the Forest of Arden (2.7) seems to mirror such lavish
celebrations, as the meal is set out, the host is there with his lords and
attendants, the air is festive and those present at the feast are high-spirited
and willing to listen to Jaques reflections on his meeting a worthy fool.
Free from obligations of courtly life, they are relaxed and easy-going
because ...this our life, exempt from public haunt, / Finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything
(2.1.15-17). When Orlando shows up with a drawn sword, ready to fight
for food in order to save old Adams life, the Duke ignores the potential
threat and greets him saying: Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table
(2.1.105). The air of hospitality which permeates the Forest of Arden points
to an all-encompassing sense of community typical of summer celebrations
in the country, celebrations to which everyone is welcome and entitled to
basic provisions. A refugee from the oppressors world, Orlando can hardly
believe he has met generous and caring people who even promise not to
start eating until he returns with old Adam. Although much older and
better experienced in human indecency, the Duke himslef seems surprised
on meeting Orlando, as he says to Jaques:
Thou seest, we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
(As You Like It, 2.7.136-139)
The first shepherds to be met in the Forest of Arden are Corin and Silvius.
Rosalind disguised as Ganymede and Celia as Aliena run into them as they
enter the forest, hungry and exhausted. Silvius is a young shepherd in love
with Phoebe who refuses his advances and he, obsessed with his passion,
is slightly alienated from the outside world. Older and wiser Corin, on the
other hand, can be of some help to the banished girls who ask him where
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they can find food and lodging in this desert place. From his answer
we get a glimpse of a simple life of a good man and his hard work for an
ungenerous master:
Fair sir, I pity her,
And wish, for her sake more than for mine own,
My fortunes were more able to relieve her;
But I am shepherd to another man,
And do not shear the fleeces that I graze
My master is of churlish disposition,
And little recks to find the way to heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality.
(As You like It, 2.4.73-80)
Corins conversation with Touchstone shows in more detail the shepherds
decent, modest and unpretentious view of the world: Sir, I am a true
labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no
mans happiness; glad of other mans good, content with my harm; and the
greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck (3.2.7175). These two examples of Corins speech make a powerful image of the
annual cycle in the life of Elizabethan shepherds, an image which cannot
be discerned either from Silvius and Phoebes artificial and exagerrated
reflections on love or from William and Audrey whose utter simplicity
makes them caricatures (Latham 1975: lxxvii).
The very end of the play, albeit often criticised for lack of plausibility
and an abrupt resolution of the many entangled storyline ends, is another
clear example of the festive occasion in the countryside. Having undergone
a harsh and potentially baleful ordeal, Duke Senior invites those present
in the Forest of Arden who have also experienced their share of trouble
consequently gaining love, wisdom, knowledge and awareness, to take
part in the merrymaking:
Meantime forget this new-falln dignity,
And fall into our rustic revelry.
Play music, and you brides and bridegrooms all,
With measure heapd in joy, to thmeasures fall.
(As You Like It, 5.4.175-178)

Emphasis mine.
222
The forest celebration in high summer, with the sun shining on the
four couples soon to be joined in wedlock and the table rich in natures
ripest produce remains a potent picture of the secular part of the years
zenith.
Laroque considers The Merchant of Venice a comedy in which festivity
is a minor theme (Laroque 1991: 198). Its two principal venues Venice
and Belmont stand in stark opposition to the very notion of festivity.
Venice is the city of capital, commerce, interests and usury, a place where
people like Shylock are hostile towards festivity, while others, like the
young Venetians, consider it not just an occasion for a harmful disguise
and revelry but also for robbery (Laroque 1991: 257). Shylock famously
orders Jessica to lock up the doors and close the windows of his house
when the masques begin and strictly prohibits her to take part in the
entertainment by watching it:
What are the masques? Hear you me Jessica,
Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-neckd fife
Clamber not you up to the casements then
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnishd faces:
But stop my houses ears, I mean my casements,
Let not the sound of shallow foppry enter
My sober house. By Jacobs staff I swear
I have no mind of feasting forth to-night.
(The Merchant of Venice, 2.5.28-37)
The pressure on the part of her father and the love she feels for Lorenzo
spur Jessicas decision to elope with her beloved who comes to her house
disguised in the midst of the festival, with Bassanio and Gratiano, and
takes her away. But Jessica is not his only reward, as she robs her father
upon leaving the house and brings ample revenue to her future husband.
While in Venice we witness an opposition to festivity and its inversion into
a theft, Belmont seems like the archetypal centre of festivity. Not much
is known about what Belmont looks like, but it must be a spacious and
beautiful manor far enough from the corrupt and cruel Venice. It is the

This idea is inspired by Muriel Whitakers remark on Camelot as the archetypal center of
the chivalric milieu (Whitaker 1984: 41).
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home to charming and witty Portia where she feels utterly happy only when
Bassanio chooses the right casket and marries her. At that very moment
Belmont becomes the place of mirth and joy, whereas before Bassanio it
was more like a prison to Portia where she welcomed and saw off the
suitors coming to try their luck according to the provision of her fathers
will. When its mistress achieves love and happiness Belmont turns into a
locus amoenus of the comedy, the place where Bassanios Venetian friends
are also welcome, where generosity and good humour rule and where
moonlit nights are the most beautiful in the world, just like in Lorenzos
words:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony:
Sit Jessica, look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold,
Theres not the smallest orb which thou beholdst
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyd cherubins;
(The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.54-62)
It should be noted though that The Merchant of Venice predominantly
deals with the economic side of life and that [L]ove and festivity are
both circumscribed by economics (Laroque 1991: 258). In order to go to
Belmont and try to win Portia, Bassanio needs Antonios money. As Antonio
does not have ready money he borrows it from Shylock and agrees to sign
a monstrous bond by which the Jewish usurer is entitled to cut a pound of
Antonios flesh if the latter cannot pay him back the debt in due time. The
scenes that happen in Venice resound in economic terms merchandise,
fortunes, credit, money, bond, usurer, lend, borrow and are frought
with utmost tension. As the play unfolds it becomes evident that there is
much more to the conflict between Antonio and Shylock than mere money
lending. Their hostility is not private but overwhelming and spread across
their two communities Christian and Jewish which become belligerent
parties. The exciting court trial scene resolves the conflict which has brought
The Merchant of Venice to the very verge of tragedy the famous drop of
Christian blood which is not to be found in the bond saves Antonios life
224
and makes it possible for the Venetians to punish and humiliate Shylock.
Victorious Christians and defeated Shylock who leaves the stage never to
show up again until the plays closure make such a grim and distressing
impression that Venice becomes an unbearable place to stay in. From the
distorted and venal world of trade and economy the action moves to the
enchanted Belmont and there reaches its end in a joyful and festive place
whose charm is breathtaking. The fact that The Merchant of Venice ends
with its characters departure to the green world and not return from it
as is the case in A Midsummer Nights Dream and As You Like It seems to
imply that conflicts between parents and children as well as sibling rivalry
can be settled once and for all if people are willing to change and mature,
whereas in the stressful world of business and conflicting interests one has
to have a peaceful resort to regularly return to and relax before going back
to the economic side of life which owes its existence to unpredictability
and pressure. It further points out to the necessity of an age old, dynamic
sequence of working days and festivity.
According to Laroque, the major theme in Twelfth Night is festivity
(Laroque 1991: 198); he claims that both its title and contents suggest it
functions itself as a festival (Laroque 1991: 196). In the Elizabethan annual
cycle the Twelfth Night marked the end of the winter festival which started
at Christmas, so Shakespeare scholars generally agree that the plays title,
which does not reveal anything about its contents, conveys the prevailing
air of festivity typical of this time of the year.
Shakespeares last major comedy takes place in Illyria, a strange,
lethargic country whose Duke Orsino is lover of Love and his beloved
Olivia is lover of Sorrow (Wilson 1962: 169). Orsino dreams about Olivia
in his palace, apparently enjoying music, poetry and the notion of love
more than trying to win Olivia, while she spends time cloistered in her
house, having vowed to a seven-year period of mourning for her recently
dead brother. The shipwreck which has separated Viola and Sebastian,
twins closely resembling each other, brings them both to Illyria but neither
of them knows the other one has survived. Viola arrives first in a boat with
sailors and Sebastian reaches the shore later with Antonio, the captain of
the ship. Viola, disguised as a boy called Cesario, becomes Duke Orsinos
page and causes the action to move at a faster pace. She visits Olivia on
behalf of Orsino, courts her for him and provokes confusion as Olivia,
fascinated with the gentle and well-mannered boy, falls in love with Viola.
Sebastians arrival resolves the situation on the verge of chaos as Olivia
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takes him for Cesario and marries him immediately while disappointed
Orsino turns his affection to Viola who has fallen in love with him the
moment she took service as his page.
Twelfth Night, with its famous sub-plot, can also be said to show
festivity in extremity as the revelry at Olivias house never ends and is an
aim to itself. The revellers are Sir Toby Belch, Olivias uncle, Sir Andrew
Aguecheek, his friend, and her clown Feste. Maria, Olivias waiting woman,
keeps them company but also scolds them on behalf of her mistress when
their noise becomes unbearable. Malvolio, Olivias steward, is a strong
enemy of festivity who tries to make her house a cosy and quiet place in
line with his mistress vow to seven years of mourning and seclusion. He
considers himself entitled to teach the revellers a lesson:
My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit,
manners, nor honesty but to gabble like tinkers at this time of
night? Do ye make an alehouse of my ladys house, that ye squeak
out your coziers catches without any mitigation or remorse of
voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?
(Twelfth Night, 2.3.75-79)
Malvolios haughty bearing is so humiliating and irritating that Maria
decides to take revenge on him while Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and the clown
eagerly join her. She writes a letter imitating Olivias handwriting with
hints of Olivias affection for Malvolio and drops it in his way. The moment
Malvolio discovers it his already extant ambition increases dramatically as
it occurs to him that by marriying Olivia he could become the master of
her property. In order to please her he starts behaving in such a foolish and
presumptious way (allegedly demanded by Olivia) that he is eventually
imprisoned as a madman. When the joke is explained to Olivia, she has
him released but Malvolio is so resentful that he leaves the stage in fury,
promising to retaliate against them all.
It should be noted, however, that the air of festivity which undoubtedly
dominates the play does not entail a perfectly joyous atmosphere. Apart
from the tender but vivid and energetic Viola, the main plot is also
remembered for the melancholic characters Duke Orsino and Olivia
and Festes melancholic songs which introduce a note of sadness into the
Illyrian setting:
226
Come away, come away, death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fie away, fie away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid;
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it.
My part of death no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strawn;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save
Lay me, O where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there.
(Twelfth Night, 2.4.49-64)
Such an example of memento mori is not to be found in A Midsummer
Nights Dream, for instance, where happiness is complete and sadness
non-existent because officially banished by Duke Theseus. If Twelve Night
functions itself as a festival, the note of sadness it certainly possesses may
be explained as either coming out of the surplus of leisure and lethargy
or of an awareness that the festival must eventually come to an end. The
sub-plot and its rollicking characters also testify to the impossibility of
an everlasting festival because unbridled festivity inevitably turns into
disorder and violence.
3. Conclusion
In the first three analysed comedies A Midsummer Nights Dream, As You
Like It and The Merchant of Venice festivity is a wished for occasion, a
reward to be gained after an effort has been made. It can also be perceived
as an objective of the dramatic plot and the destination the characters
head for. Duke Theseus wedding, Duke Seniors forest celebration and
Portias festivity in Belmont all take place after wisdom has been achieved,
intricate situations resolved and reconciliations made. In such happy
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moments festivity comes as a deserved relaxation and real pleasure just

because everybody knows it is a get together of limited duration after
which life will resume its everyday course. In Twelfth Night, on the other
hand, notably in its sub-plot, life is festivity. The revellers eat and drink,
crack jokes, sing to the music and make noise. Every single day is the same
as they are parasites without obligations and a sense of duty, people who
have nowhere to go because they are stuck in the festive setting. Although
it does not seem to be the case at first sight, Duke Orsino and Olivia also
appear to be stuck in a kind of an everlasting holiday in their respective
surroundings, a holiday marked by leisure, longing and contemplation,
which would have lasted forever if it had not been for the shipwreck and
Violas arrival in Illyria. Both the sub-plot and the main plot seem to suggest
that ceaseless festivity eventually results in a dead end.
If Shakespeares four major comedies can be said to bring to life the
secular half of the Elizabethan year, to evoke its particular periods and
the activities peculiar to them, the question of why Shakespeare chose to
depict its secular and not ritualistic part remains to be answered. In line
with Laroques remark that the secular part of the year lacked important
religious festivals, Shakespeares festive comedies can be understood as
his addenda to that half of the Elizabethan festive calendar which was not
already packed with celebrations. Festivities in themselves, Shakespeares
major comedies have the significance comparable to that of the new holidays
inaugurated by the Tudor authorities. And what is more, although they are
new events in the Elizabethan culture, they also reintroduce, albeit in a
displaced form, and preserve, those older, forgotten, silenced or prohibited
traditions which would otherwise have been irrevocably lost.
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Shakespeare, W. (1984). A Midsummer Nights Dream (ed. R.A. Foakes). The
New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shakespeare, W. (1985). Twelfth Night or What You Will (ed. E.S. Donno). The
New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whitaker, M. (1984). Arthurs Kingdom of Adventure: The World of Malorys
Morte Darthur. Cambridge, England & Totowa, New Jersey: D.S. Brewer
Barnes & Noble.
Wilson, J.D. (1962). Shakespeares Happy Comedies. London: Faber and
Faber.
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Shakespeares Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the

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UDC 821.111.09-2 .
Milena Kosti*
University of Ni
Ni, Serbia
I AM FOR OTHER THAN FOR DANCING

MEASURES: SHAKESPEARES SPIRITUAL
QUEST IN AS YOU LIKE IT
Abstract
The critical insights of Ted Hughes (his understanding of active ritual drama and
vision of the Mother Forest), Northrop Frye (his perception of the Forest of Arden
as the green world originating in the bygone Golden Age) and Riane Eisler (her
recognition of the partnership model necessary for the playwrights recreation of
the mythic domain based on the matriarchal principles of equality) are combined
in the paper in order to explore the spiritual quest Shakespeare embarked on in As
You Like It. Special attention here is given to Melancholy Jacques, whose decision
to devote himself to a solitary life in search of the causes for the existence of the
hostility and rivalry between brothers reflects Shakespeares professional decision
to dedicate himself to the resolution of this issue throughout his writing career.
Key words: active/passive ritual drama, Mother Forest, green world, partnership
model
E-mail address: mkostic76@gmail.com
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1. Introduction: Spiritual Quest as a Transition from the Realistic

to Mythic Domain
The paper aims to explore the spiritual quest Shakespeare embarked on
while writing the popular pastoral comedy As You Like It in 1599. Although
the story of the play was not originally devised by him (as is the case
with a great number of Shakespeares plays), but was to a large degree
inspired by Thomas Lodges romantic prose work Rosalind, it can be
rightfully asserted that Shakespeares version of the story contains certain
elements that contribute to the plays originality and uniqueness (the
aforementioned spiritual quest of the author certainly being one of them).
In order to clarify the spiritual quest in question here, we have to resort to
Ted Hughes reading of As You Like It as a valid illustration of active ritual
drama (Hughes 1992: 107).
Namely, in his influential study Shakespeare and the Goddess of
Complete Being (1992) Ted Hughes differentiates between two types of
ritual drama relevant for the interpretation of Shakespeares opus: passive
and active. Both kinds of ritual drama start with the same premise a
human being is only half alive if their life on the realistic, outer plane does
not have the full assent and cooperation of their life on the mythic plane
whereby the whole business of art is to reopen the negotiations with
the mythic plane (Hughes 1992: 106). Whereas passive ritual dramas
function is to contribute to communally organized social bonding and to
present a natural form of deep therapy, where the mythic plane holds the
keys to health, vitality, meaningfulness and psychic freedom on the outer
plane (Hughes 1992: 106), active ritual drama goes a step further:
Active ritual drama always begins with a psychic malaise, usually
a failure in the link between the personality on the realistic plane
and the spiritual self or soul on the mythic plane. This breakdown
of communications between ego and soul is always brought about
by a sin usually some more or less extreme form of the egos
neglect or injury to the soul. The result is like the primitives loss
of the soul. In this sense, active ritual drama begins where the
traditional shamans healing drama begins and its purpose is the
same: to recover the soul and reconnect it to the ego (Hughes
1992: 107-108).
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Milena Kosti I am for Other Than for Dancing Measures: Shakespeares Spiritual Quest...
It is precisely on this level that Hughes perceives As You Like It: the
dispossessed Orlando becomes the epitome of Shakespeares ailing ego
that gradually becomes illuminated and transfigured by new spiritual
understanding and in harmony with the universe of which the elemental
soul is an emanation (Hughes 1992: 108). As a matter of fact, both variants
of ritual drama are offered here at the same time: one for the audience
and/or readers who want to enjoy the romantic pastoral comedy and be
entertained with the numerous amusing obstacles on the way to the lovers
happy ending, and the other for those who can perceive the significance of
the process of the main protagonists recuperation on the realistic plane,
and, more importantly, his commitment to the spiritual quest on the mythic
plane, the issue Shakespeare deemed crucial for his artistic vision.
The duality of the plays setting a duchy in France and the Forest of
Arden actually constitutes the frame for the coexistence of the realistic
and mythic realm previously mentioned. Thus, a certain transition, mostly
represented through the physical suffering and extreme danger that the
main characters undergo, can be traced in the action of the play: from the
court, a place that belongs to the realistic domain governed by corruption,
political ambition and strife, to the forest, a place belonging to the mythic
domain symbolically implying moral healing, personal growth and
renewal.
There are certainly many ways of interpreting the transition from the
corrupt court to the idyllic Forest of Arden in As You Like It (quite symbolically
the movement from the domain of experience to that of innocence),
but one legitimate reading is to see in it an indirect reply to Baltazare
Castigliones Courtier (1528). For Castiglione the court represented the
new secular setting for the cultivation of genuinely courteous or virtuous
men. Unconscious of any irony, he praised sprezzatura a manner that has
the appearance of ease and spontaneity but is in fact carefully calculated
and studied as the chief asset of the ideal courtier (Castiglione 1953).

This binary opposition in the play evokes Northrop Fryes distinction between two worlds
(the contrasted worlds of objective reality and inner desire) in his study The Educated
Imagination (1963) in the first chapter entitled The Motive for Metaphor, whereby the
transformation of reality, influenced by the inner desire to recapture the lost harmony
with the natural world and transform necessity into freedom, finally results in the creation
of the third world, the one created by man, e.g. in this case, the visionary artist: This
third level is a vision or model in your mind of what you want to construct... So we begin
to see where the imagination belongs in the scheme of human affairs. Its the power of
constructing possible models of human experience. (Frye 1993: 9)
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However, Shakespeare was interested in the truth behind the appearances.

At the court of the usurping Duke Frederick, dominated by his power
games and crafty intrigues, sprezzatura conceals a cynical strategy of tragic
self-betrayal (here optimistically leading to the sincere repentance of both
villains, Duke Frederick and Oliver, unlike in Hamlet, for instance, where this
strategy ultimately results in madness and death). Shakespeares goal was
to show that far from cultivating independent and free-thinking individuals,
courts produced ruthless tyrants and hypocritical Machiavellians.
In accord with this idea, it is important to emphasize that Shakespeare
was rather aware of the fact so vividly discussed later by Riane Eisler in her
internationally known bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History,
Our Future (1989) about the existence of two alternatives in the historical
development of our civilization the first based on the partnership model,
the second on the dominator model the latter implying a high degree
of fear and violence, and an authoritarian social structure and hierarchy
of domination, all of which perfectly portray the Renaissance courts
Shakespeare realistically described and directly criticized in his plays. The
partnership model, on the other hand, corresponds to the mythic plane
Shakespeare was set on reincarnating in his artistic vision, the spiritual
domain of the Forest of Arden, whereby man lived in harmony with natural
laws and was committed to the principles of sharing and caring:
The old love for life and nature and the old ways of sharing rather
than taking away, of caring rather than oppressing, and the view
of power as responsibility rather than domination did not die
out the old roots of civilization were never eradicated. But,
like women and qualities associated with femininity, they were
relegated to a secondary place. Neither did the human yearning
for beauty, truth, justice and peace disappear (Eisler 1989: xvii).
The old roots of civilization are symbolically represented in As You Like It
through the voices of socially lower classes, underprivileged and inferior
at the court of Duke Frederick, but rather potent and compelling in the
Forest of Arden; furthermore, the wisdom of ordinary peasants, shepherds
and shepherdesses, as well as the court jesters and fools, is appreciated
and presented as more humane, lifelike and overwhelming than the
Machiavellian court practice. However, in the realistic domain of the
court, their life-approving philosophy was not even considered as a valid
alternative there was no place for the humanistic values of sharing,
harmony, equality and peace, and, as Riane Eisler comments, this tragic
234
event occurred at the moment of transition from the matriarchal to the

patriarchal system of values:
But there was no such place left in their new world. For this was
now a world where, having violently deprived the Goddess and
the female half of humanity of all power, gods and men of war
ruled. It was a world in which the Blade, and not the Chalice,
would henceforth be supreme, a world in which peace and
harmony would be found only in the myths and legends of a long
lost past (Eisler 1989: xviii).
This idea is quite analogous to Hughes view of the tragic error our
humanity suffers from, described in detail through the myth of Venus and
Adonis, in which, by alluding to Shakespeares version of this myth (1593),
the ungrateful young hero rejects the love of the Goddess, puritanically
disgusted with it since he perceives it as sweating lust, blotted with
blame, full of gorged lies, totally contrasted to his rather deficient vision
of true love which to Heaven is fled and comforts like sunshine after rain
(2007: 146-148). This episode that Hughes notices in Shakespeares Venus
and Adonis actually reflects the transitional moment whereby matriarchy
was succeeded by patriarchy, the moment Eisler refers to as the symbolic
downfall of the life-giving Chalice and the rise of the power-centered
Blade. According to Ted Hughes, Western history would henceforth be
generated, as the rejected Venus in Shakespeares poem prophesied, by
power-crazy men (Hughes 1992: 43). Thus, due to the overthrow of the
system of values and actual dominance of the male over the female sphere,
Shakespeares visionary heroes are purposefully set on a quest to recreate
the long-gone mythic unity and, on their way, experience numerous,
extraordinary, significantly revealing ordeals.
2. The Rival Brothers: Reconnection with the Lost Soul (Rosalind)

In his remarkable study Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Northrop
Frye claims that the underlying myth in literature is that of a quest, whereby
comedy is perceived as the mythos of spring. Comic vision is based on
the triumph of the main character over the blocking forces (natural or
human) and generally implies a movement from one kind of society to
another (from tyranny to freedom, from the old to the young, from winter
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to spring) resulting in the society at the end of the comedy as a projection

of our desires (see Frye 1957: 163-186).
A valid illustration of this idea can be easily noticed in As You Like It: from
the beginning of the play, the audience and/or readers are presented with
the conflict between the usurping society, on the one hand, and the vision
of the desirable society, on the other. Thus, Duke Frederick symbolically
represents, as Frye terms it, a cruel, absurd or irrational law (since he acts
on his whim and forces the characters to partake in his obsessions) that
will finally be evaded. The movement of the play revolves around a society
controlled by habit, arbitrary law and the older characters, and ultimately
results in a society governed by youth and freedom, thus quite literally
putting into practice Fryes notion of comedy as a movement from winter
to spring. Throughout the comedy, the audience and/or readers witness
unlikely conversions, miraculous transformations, and acts of providence
so that the desirable ending logically follows. The desirable society achieved
at the end of the comedy actually represents a return to the Golden Age
that existed in the past (before the action of the play commenced), the
domain corresponding to Eislers vision of the partnership model of society
symbolically represented through the life-giving Chalice (Eisler 1989),
reflecting a stable and harmonious order (represented through the rule of
Duke Senior and Sir Rowland), disrupted by folly and obsession (of Duke
Frederick and Oliver) and then finally restored (through the characters of
Orlando and Rosalind):
...the heros society rebels against the society of the senex and
triumphs, but the heros society is a Saturnalia, a reversal of
social standards which recalls a Golden Age in the past before
the main action of the play begins. Thus we have a stable and
harmonious order disrupted by folly, obsession, forgetfulness,
pride and prejudice, or events not understood by the characters
themselves, and then restored (Frye 1957: 171).
Shakespeares romantic comedy focuses on the final reconciliation or
conversion of the blocking characters rather than their punishment (in
As You Like It: the rival brothers Oliver and Orlando are reconciled, Duke
Frederick is miraculously converted), which was a theme present in the
medieval tradition of the seasonal ritual play, as Frye notices and claims
that we may call it the drama of the green world, its plot being assimilated
to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land...
Thus the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal
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world, moves into the green world, goes into metamorphosis there in which
the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world (Frye
1957: 182). The Forest of Arden in As You Like It represents an emanation
of Fryes green world, which is analogous to the dream world, the world
of our desires. In this symbolical victory of summer over winter, we have
an illustration of the archetypal function of literature in visualizing the
world of desire, not as an escape from reality, but as the genuine form of
the world that human life tries to imitate (Frye 1957: 184).
In As You Like It, Shakespeare portrays Hughes idea of a psychic
malaise that originates in the clash between the realistic and mythic plane
whose ultimate result is the injury of the soul, through the theme of the rival
brothers (Orlando vs. Oliver, Duke Senior vs. Duke Frederick), whereby the
respect for the patriarchal principle of the right of the firstborn represents
the cause of the major conflict; namely, it implies a sort of competition
between the brothers that should be regarded as equals, ultimately
resulting in the insatiable craving for dominance and supremacy over the
weak (second-born) brother, whereas the matriarchal egalitarian principles
are simply discarded and/or not given enough attention.
Both Hughes and Frye explore the reasons for Shakespeares description
of the overthrow of the good and moral ruling principle by the immoral
impulse of the brother who at the beginning of the play unjustly gets the
throne for himself. The implication of the possible reason for the weakness
of both Duke Senior and Orlando that both critics offer in their respective
studies can perhaps be best summarized and paraphrased through the idea
that they lack a deeper connection with their soul or as T.S. Eliot would
put it, they suffer from the dissociation of sensibility.

T.S. Eliot employs this term in order to glorify the quality of unified sensibility typical
of the English metaphysical poets, who were able to combine totally disparate aspects
of human experience in their portrayal of the complexity of life, a quality that was later
lost in the poetry of Milton and Dryden, with the emphasis on decorum and versification
rather then the emotional content and personal involvement in their verses:
A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poets mind is
perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the
ordinary mans experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or
reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the
noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences
are always forming new wholes... sometimes we are told to look into our hearts and
write. But that is not looking deep enough. Donne looked into a good deal more than
the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive
tracts (Eliot 1921: 64).
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From this point of view, As You Like It can be interpreted as a play in

which the hero symbolically reunites with his soul. For instance, Orlandos
soul is significantly represented through Rosalind. When he finally reunites
with her, he simultaneously reconciles with his vicious brother Oliver:
She is the feminine aspect of Orlandos mythic self She is
what Orlando was lacking at the beginning of the play. The two
recognize each other automatically, on first sight. The end of
the play and the mending of all other fractures will come when
Orlando and Rosalind are betrothed (Hughes 1992: 112).
In addition, it is no coincidence that the marriage between Orlando and
Rosalind takes place in the Forest of Arden. This is Shakespeares vision of
the final unity and healing only to be accomplished in the Mother Forest,
as Hughes terms it (1992: 110), which ultimately represents a symbol of
the totality of nature and mens psychic completeness. In Fryes reading of
Shakespeares green world, an identical idea of the heroine as the lost soul
is expressed: In the rituals and myths the earth that produces the rebirth
is generally a female figure, and the death and revival, or disappearance
and withdrawal of human figures in romantic comedy generally involves
the heroine (Frye 1957: 183). Thus, Rosalind represents the epitome
of the matriarchal earth goddess who revives the hero and at the same
time brings about the comic resolution by disguising herself as a boy (for
those members of the audience and/or readers who regard the play as
an instance of Hughes passive ritual drama and thus primarily enjoy the
process of the young lovers overcoming various impediments on the way
to a desirable end to the play).
3. Melancholy Jacques: a Self-Portrait of the Author?

However, apart from the rival brothers in the realistic domain of the court,
Shakespeare also introduces another idea, equally relevant for the spiritual

Although in this study T.S. Eliot does not mention Shakespeare, this idea can be
metaphorically applied to the interpretation of his plays in the sense of the authors
constant reminder of the destructive alternative that the majority of his ambitious
protagonists opt for the one based not on cherishing the totality of lifes experience,
but on the sole aiming towards power and ambition, through the systematic abuse of the
intellect, at the expense of the deeper connection with their soul, as previously stated in
Hughes and Fryes reading of As You Like It.
238
quest discussed here, through the confusing insertion of two characters

with the same name Jacques (a name that does not appear again in any
of his plays and here, within the same play, refers to two characters). The
symbolic bond between Melancholy Jacques (an allusion to Shakespeare
himself according to Hughes (1992: 115)) and Jacques de Boys (the middle
of the Boys brothers) alludes to the idea of the idyllic forest brotherhood:
namely, they are both scholars, one is a student of the ways of the world
and the other is a student of books, thus symbolically representing the
playwrights wishful unity of the realistic and mythic domain. Hence,
whereas Jacques de Boys represents the mythic intelligence that is the
unifying, healing intelligence of the Mother Forest, creative intelligence or
spiritual intellect, Melancholy Jacques represents the unifying intelligence
of rational consciousness (Hughes 1992: 113).
The chief role of Melancholy Jacques becomes to investigate the role
of fraternal crime. Although the play ends with a note of reconciliation,
Jacques does not join in. He decides to join Duke Frederick in his exile in
order to understand his guilty conscience and repentance, as well as the
cause for the existence of the hostility between the two brothers:
If I heard you rightly,
The Duke has put on a religious life,
And thrown into neglect the pompous court?
To him will I: out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learned
I am for other than for dancing measures. (V, iv, 195-200)
In other words, as Hughes claims, Shakespeare commits himself to the
quest on which his irrational self has already decided. Melancholy Jacques
dismisses the pursuit of social happiness and [he] is Shakespeare himself,
thirty-five years old, awake in the depth of the Mother Forest, about to
enter his Divina Commedia (Hughes 1992: 115-116). The ideas that
Hughes suggests here seem to be rather plausible and trustworthy and can
be taken as a well-founded explanation of Shakespeares spiritual quest
initially proposed for discussion in this paper. Namely, if we accept the idea
of Melancholy Jacques as the emanation of the playwright himself, that
fact would account for Shakespeares persistent treatment of the theme of
rival brothers in his entire dramatic opus. Of course, the authors interest
in this theme was rather prevalent in other plays written before As You Like
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It (1599), but it is in this play that the audience and/or readers can finally
witness Shakespeares conscious decision to dedicate his complex artistic
vision to the exploration of the patriarchal competition, rivalry and craving
for power between brothers, their crucial motifs, motivation, reasons and
ultimate result, as well as his creative condemnation and warning against
this common practice.
It is no wonder then that parallel with his work on As You Like It
(1599), Shakespeare was writing Hamlet (namely, he probably started
writing it in 1599, but according to the history records the final date of its
completion is quite uncertain and mostly refers to the period of 1599-1601,
quite significantly for the argument presented in this paper). Perhaps the
best illustration of the relevance of this theme for the playwright himself
can be seen in the famous Closet Scene in Hamlet (Act III, scene iv), when
the young, almost deranged Danish prince imposes what seems to him an
obvious difference between the two rival brothers in the play, his father
(the late king Hamlet) and his uncle Claudius (the usurping brother) on
his mother, queen Gertrude:
Look here, upon this picture and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow
Hyperions curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you know, what follows:
Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? (III, iv, 54-66)
The young idealist Hamlet is profoundly disgusted and disillusioned with
a glimpse into the reality of the Danish court, where the relevant memory
of the glories of the past (created by his godlike father) is ultimately erased
and replaced with the opportunists practice of wearing masks that conceal
obedient servants of the system (claiming allegiance to his beastly uncle),
the masks worn by his friends, servants, acquaintances, relatives (including
240
even his own mother). Hence, the essence of this tragedy represents the
main protagonists revelation of the meaninglessness, chaos, enigma and
mystery behind what seemed to be meaning, order and certainty: quite
symbolically, the movement from the domain of innocence (from Hamlets
University of Wittenberg, an ideal, almost mythic, realm of books, learning,
knowledge and answers provided) to experience (the court of Elsinore, a
realistic realm revealing the political reality of strife, ambition and crime),
finally resulting in the tragic self-betrayal, leading to madness and death.
This movement is thus thoroughly contrasted to the transition previously
described in As You Like It from the corrupt court to the ideal Forest of
Arden, from innocence to experience.
Although Shakespeare showed the tragic consequences of selfbetrayal (that could be closely associated with the rejection of the mythic
or spiritual sphere previously discussed in the paper) as a sort of sincere
warning in Hamlet, this pessimistic vision was ultimately not an option
for the resolution of the spiritual quest undertaken in As You Like It that
the playwright himself favoured. It is perhaps in the romance The Tempest
(1610-1611), usually regarded as the last play Shakespeare wrote without
collaboration with other authors, that we could search for the ultimate
realization of his artistic vision. The theme of the rival brothers is present
here as well; however, whereas in Hamlet the hostility between the brothers
is hopelessly portrayed through the tragic death of the main characters, in
The Tempest Shakespeare places emphasis on acts of mercy and forgiveness
as a more valid option for the resolution of the discussed antagonism.
Thus, Prospero, the unjustly banished brother, the rightful Duke of Milan,
who, with the help of his magic, induces a storm to entice his usurping
brother Antonio and his accomplice King Alonso of Naples to his solitary
place of exile, finally gives up on his plans for revenge and states:
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason against my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. (V, i, 25-31)
The storm that Shakespeare masterfully depicts here actually represents a
symbolic rebellion against any kind of false authority, so that the audience
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and/or readers are found in the domain of the mythic once again. The
authorities in the realistic realm are exposed here as utterly powerless
and helpless revealingly showing Shakespeares attitude that the forces
of nature, instigated by self-conscious individuals, eventually destroy the
corrupt human order. Thus, Prospero, the benevolent magician who on his
banished island rediscovers the significance of the harmonious (mythic!)
bond between man and nature, the brother unjustly discarded from the
realistic domain of secular power, (and, according to Ted Hughes, another
character that alludes to the self-portrait of the author (Hughes 1992: 99)),
acts here as an agent of moral reawakening who decides to terminate the
bloody brothers feud and restore the long-lost mythic unity by setting an
example for the future generations to follow by practicing mercy and
forgiveness.
4. Concluding Remarks
Hence, the spiritual journey that Shakespeare purposefully undertook in As
You Like It, reflecting Melancholy Jacques conscious decision to dispense
with his old way of life by announcing that he is for other than for dancing
measures (V, iv, 200), is, according to Ted Hughes, successfully completed
in The Tempest, where the tragic fraternal crime is finally accounted for:
While in The Tempest, as Prospero, this figure judges, repairs and
redeems the tragic fraternal crime that has spoiled his life, in As
You Like It, as Jacques, he resolves to search, i.e. to investigate,
through and through mans tragic crime against himself and his
brothers (Hughes 1992: 99).
In conclusion, Shakespeares ultimate decision to revert to the longforgotten values of mercy and forgiveness in his dramatic opus is completely
analogous to Riane Eislers emphasis of the recognition of the validity of
the matriarchal partnership model as opposed to the patriarchal dominator
model, whereby the necessary reconnection with the mythic sphere
would be finally achieved in Shakespeares idyllic Forest of Arden, which
corresponds to Hughes vision of the Mother Forest (Hughes 1992: 110)
and Fryes vision of the green world (Frye 1957: 182). This is definitely one
of the reasons why the passionate admirers and enthusiastic interpreters of
Shakespeares work should regard the pastoral comedy As You Like It as a
242
key element in the attempt to resolve the spiritual riddle that the greatest
English Renaissance bard posed for us.
References
Castiglione, B. (1953). The Courtier. In: Three Renaissance Classics. New
York: Charles Scribners Sons.
Eisler, R. (1989). The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future. New
York: Harper & Row.
Eliot, T.S. (1921). Metaphysical Poetry. In: Selected Essays. London: Faber
and Faber.
Frye, N. (1993). The Educated Imagination. Toronto: House of Anasi Press Inc.
Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Hughes, T. (1992). Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. London:
Faber and Faber.
Shakespeare, W. (2005). As You Like It. London: Penguin Books.
Shakespeare, W. (1983). Hamlet. London: Penguin Books.
Shakespeare, W. (1985). The Tempest. London: Penguin Books.
Shakespeare, W. (2007). Shakespeares Poems. London: The Arden
Shakespeare, Third Edition.
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244
New Voices:
Literary and Cultural Studies
245
246
UDC 821.111(73).09-3119
Vladimir Bogievi*
University of Belgrade**
Belgrade, Serbia
IN SEARCH OF THE UNPRESENTABLE:

DETECTIVES OF THE SUBLIME
IN (POST)MODERN AMERICAN NOVEL***
Abstract
This paper deals with analysis of five representative American novels of the XX
century Faulkners Absalom, Absalom!, Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49, Barths Lost
in The Funhouse, DeLillos White Noise, and Morrisons Beloved using Nabokovs
Lolita as a reference text and as an intersection of certain narrative strategies which
appear in the mentioned novels, too. Through Lyotards, Baudrillards, Ricoeurs,
Hutcheons and partially Derridas philosophical postulates, we shall endeavor to
demonstrate that a common denominator of these texts is the search for some
modern unpresentable, and the role that different forms of marginal perspectives play
in this search. We shall also outline some provisional (and certainly incomplete)
typology of the unpresentable the paradox of desire, unreliability of reality, and
indeterminacy of identity and determine several different margins psychopathological, racio-cultural, historic-anachronistic and introvertedly philosophical
at which, in various combinations, the characters who engage themselves in this
search for the unpresentable are placed.
Key words: contemporary American novel, margin, unpresentable
E-mail address: deklinacije@yahoo.com

PhD candidate
***
This paper was presented as the exam paper for PhD course Modern American Novel
held by Prof. Radojka Vukevi at Belgrade Faculty of Philology, in March 2014. Translated
from Serbian by Vladimir Bogievi.
*
**
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1.Introduction
A common denominator that, in spite of thematic diversity, we could single
out and under whose auspices we would place Faulkner, Pynchon, Morrison,
Barth and DeLillo provided that it will not be reduced to some humanistic
platitude, nor to their joint (though in some ways problematic) affiliation
to postmodernism will not be so easy to find, and we are afraid that our
following analysis will, despite our efforts, end up on equally undesirable
speculative heights. However, certain generalizations are inevitable; all the
more so since we are dealing with extremely self-conscious authors not
just in the metafictional sense, which Hutcheon stresses, nor in McHales
sense of ontological problematization of the text (Hutcheon, 1988; McHale,
1987), but also at the level of social criticism, playing with literary tradition
and procedures, incorporation of mass culture, complicating reception
(making it difficult), etc. In other words, we are facing authors who play
with reader a perplexing Nabokovian chess game and whose every move
should be monitored with attention and disbelief, for things rarely are as
they look, and readers most often will not be even capable to figure them
out to the end.
2. Theoretical backgrounds: analysis of the sublime

That is why our initial thesis, in Lyotardian spirit, will invoke a Kantian
basis, into which we will try to interweave all scattered narrative threads: as
we will use other Lyotards terms differend, breakdown of metanarratives
already overexploited by now, but nonetheless appropriate to point out
to some unavoidable aspects (Lyotard, 1991; Lyotard, 1984). We will
not forget Baudrillard either, whose theory of simulacra takes its cue
from Jamesons and McLuhans critique of media and consumer society,
and almost functions as a manual for reading DeLillo, but we will try to
subsume it under Lyotards basic dichotomies and to draw some not-soLyotardian conclusions (Baudrillard, 1994; Baudrillard, 1993). Our goal
here is not to devise a coherent philosophical position but only to apply the
already existing theoretical concepts for the sake of easier interpretation of
specific literary works not oversimplifying their complexity, but also not
straying into overcrowded theoretical arguments. We will, finally, make
use of Hutcheons insistence on the voice of the other, i.e. awakening
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Vladimir Bogievi In Search of the Unpresentable: Detectives of the Sublime...
the margin which is the direct descendant of Derridas decentering,

feminist, post-colonial and Marxist criticism and we will abuse it, just
like Baudrillards simulacra (Hutcheon, 1988); thereat, we do not expect
to encounter significant resistance in making this philosophical mixture,
since all postmodern thinkers essentially proceed from the same mutually
interchangeable assumptions.
It is well known that Kant explains the sublime as incompatibility of
comprehending faculty of imagination with bordering ideas of the mind
(as opposed to the beautiful, which is a harmonized play of representations
of imagination and concepts of reason; Kant, 2000). Lyotard takes over
this Kantian definition, from Critique of the Power of Judgment, and applies
it in a much wider context and in different fields. To him, the distinctive
feature of postmodernism, as well as of modernism, is precisely in
dealing with presenting the unpresentable, i.e. with the impossibility for
imagination to picture what mind must know to exist whereat modernism
regrets this inability of imagination, and is overwhelmed by nostalgia
for the unpresentable while postmodernism faces the same problem
in a much more serene way and finding there a cause for the play of
perpetual approaching and distancing (Lyotard, 1992). We agree that the
unpresentable is one of the most precious golden fleeces of literature not just
since modernism, but already in romanticism, and even earlier, in various
variants of antique and medieval mysticism. We will add that the nature
of the unpresentable, in regard to those earlier epochs, has considerably
changed; and that this change occurred in the time of positivism, realism
and naturalism (which is exactly the time-frame Lyotard is interested in).
Old transcendences are demystified; God is dead, phenomenology of spirit
is just academic fiction and man just the most recent episteme, like the
system of representation, or an even older system of similarity (Foucault,
1970). All the old Beyonds have been disqualified (and it would be nave
to return to them) and life yet remained unfathomable.
3. The (post)modern unpresentable and its chosen ones

The unpresentable, which is a subject of modern American novel, is no
longer the eschatological or subjective-spiritual unknowns God, afterlife,
genius, inscrutability of nature, infinity of imagination and even when
they are, they come out more as a symbolist intimation than as romanticist
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metaphysics (e.g. religious moments in Pynchon or death in DeLillo). A

whole new world of mysteries was opened up by scientific breakthroughs
from the end of XIX-beginning of XX century understandable in itself
came into focus of interest: the meaninglessness of routine, irrationality of
social reality, impersonality of identity and logic of power and submission,
to name a few. The classical answer of Emerald Tablet (as above, so
below), taken over by Christianity, became unsustainable as soon as
transcendence that supported it was refuted: it became clear that to search
for the first cause would mean regressus ad infinitum, and that the dialectics
of external and internal is elusive and interminable. Indeterminacy took
place of certainty, and partial analyses that of total explanations. The
world, in other words, became decentered and lost its transcendent pledge
the same happening to the subject, history, language, and even science.
That trend of demystification of the unpresentable and exclusion of the
original and final is easy to follow in structuralism and poststructuralism,
as it is through great works of modernism and postmodernism; its lowest
common denominator is a replacement of chain, root or arborescent model
of conditioning with a network, or a rhizomatic one where elements of
this world can be determined only by other similar elements, not by some
instance of higher (or lower) order (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Lyotard
characterizes the same phenomenon as breakdown of metanarratives
primarily metanarratives of spiritual development and the emancipation
of men accompanied by fragmentation of knowledge and rise of the
utilitarian, capitalist paradigm (Lyotard, 1984). Great stories that give sense
to the totality of existence have lost their credibility, and narrative space
burst into multitude of smaller narratives, paralogisms and differends,
not subsumable under some higher unity. Instead of unfathomable heights
of the Divine we are left with unsolvable aporias of the real.
In accordance with that change of the unpresentable, its champions
have changed as well: they are no longer mystics and hermits, philosophers
and artists, Faust who wrestles with Erdgeist himself. The new unpresentable
is still being searched for, but now it has its detectives: random chosen ones,
average, maladjusted, oppressed and rejected all those who precisely
because of their marginal positions have a clearer view on the realm of
the real. Whether it is about some pathological ostracism or lack of social
affirmation, they are the ones who are capable of stepping out and exposing
the incomprehensibility of the normal: that is equally the case with
Faulkners Quentin, Morrisons Sethe, Barths Ambrose, Pynchons Oedipa
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and even with DeLillos Gladney. Fragmentation and multiplication of

stories their decenteredness, as Derrida would call it (Derrida, 1966)
go hand in hand with these new searches: both when it comes to polyphony
and variations of Faulkner and Morrison, and episodicity of Pynchon,
Barth and DeLillo; and with them also agrees that irreducible residue,
to which the new detectives of the sublime are condemned unlike the
old ones, who had their mystical certainty. The true story of Sutpen and
his lineage is impossible to recount, as well as that of Beloved or Trystero:
while in Barth and DeLillo the subject himself and his reality remain
indeterminable they are what one can speak about, but what cannot be
reached. New searchers thus search for their own identity too or at least
for what can be called human nature as much as the old ones: but, that
identity is no longer either the basis of itself or eternal essence or a result
of simple external causes. It is, in much more perfidious way, a correlate
of one schizophrenically and paranoically derealized reality and is equally
elusive as that reality. Baudrillards simulacra provides us with insight in
the extent of this derealization: White Noise is so full of them that nothing
but death still seems authentic and it too, thanks to dylar, becomes its own
simulacrum. But the same could be said about Pynchons Trystero, Barths
Ambrose, Helen and Anonymiad. We believe we would not go too far if we
understood both Morrisons Beloved and Faulkners demon-ogre Sutpen as
simulacra of their own kind.
4. Simulacra and authenticity, fiction and history

The problem of simulacra actually overlaps with the mystery of the
unpresentable in (at least) one point: Derridian slippage of the signified. If
signs already conceal what they signify, and make it impossible to really speak
about it, than simulacra are just the last stage of that cleavage: language is
merely a veil of the secret, around which one can circle, evoke it, or falsify
it. Just as Faulkner stories circle around an unknown history, Pynchons
around a dubious conspiracy, and Morrisons around a mysterious ghostimposter who, at the end, disappears with attributes of an African deity
(Washington, 2005). Ineffability of reality, i.e. its insusceptibility to signs
whose ultimate expression is simulacrum, the sign that signifies itself serves
to conceal, push out or camouflage the unpresentable and that is precisely
the mechanism of advertising, fashion and reality TV themes that occupy
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both Baudrillard and DeLillo. This whole problem was already outlined
in Heidegger: falling prey, inauthenticity, forgetting and covering over of
being all perfectly correspond to both mentioned philosophical concepts
and themes of our novels; the important difference being that Heidegger
still believes in pristine and original being, which poststructuralism along
with postmodernism does not acknowledge anymore (Heidegger, 1996).
It is almost impossible to ask what is an authentic being of Thomas Sutpen
not just because of the unreliability of various narrators, but also because
of one essential inauthenticity (Sutpens design) in his character; it is also
impossible to ask about Sethes authenticity, since her whole life has been
shaped by misery, oppression and exploitation; Gladneys for other reasons
fall prey to inauthenticity, surrounded by an artificial reality of television,
supermarkets and simulations, where even the true real loses its distinctive
features (and the question remains whether their obsession with death
really represents a step out into the authentic); Barth almost everywhere
in the Funhouse thematizes inauthenticity: as conventionality of narration,
artificiality of the real, fictionality of personality, etc; while Pynchon never
gets his Oedipa, neither Trystero, out of the dilemma: myself or the world,
lie or truth, madness or conspiracy where boundaries between authentic
and inauthentic are no longer even relevant.
Close to simulacra stands Hutcheons historical metafiction too
which doubtlessly can be recognized at least in Faulkner and Pynchon
(Hutcheon, 1988). The Yoknapatawpha County itself, insignia and topos of
Faulkners whole opus, is just an example of that problematizing of history
which she talks about. Thus in Absalom, where this unknowable history
revives as Southern Gothic, fictional places and persons intertwine with
real, historical ones: figures larger than life, at the same time exposed and
mystified, stand almost as emblems of moral and political turmoil from the
time of Civil War and accompanying crisis of values and their historical
accuracy and fictional expressiveness mutually exchange and equate with
each other. Pynchon invents an entire parallel history for the sake of his
underground society he places Trystero back in the first days of Thurn &
Taxis, making him a crux of all paranoid projections, over-interpretations,
and conspiracy theories (whereat The Crying could be exemplary of a close
relationship between paranoia and historical metafiction). However, he

On Pynchons attitude to history in general, and paranoia as a form of cognitive

mapping, see: Elias (2012).
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leaves it unresolved whether this is a genuine conspiracy, some obscure

deception, or the vivid imagination of his female protagonist.
5. Lolita and two main types of margin

On the whole, if there were a unique prototype of all our five novels that
would be Nabokovs Lolita. Standing at the crossroads of modernism
and postmodernism, it was crucial for novels that followed, especially
in Anglophone world, and its abundance of local trivia, animated with
exoticism that only a naturalized alien could provide, made it a kind of
lexicon of American culture, both for Americophiles and for Americophobes.
The phenomenon of the voice from the margin decentered focus which
provides us with a fresh perspective and defamiliarization, is already
multiply incarnated in Lolita. At a paratexual level, Nabokov himself is that
displaced voice, which speaks about foreign culture in a foreign language
but which, at the same time, appropriates this culture and this language,
speaking from one internal position, since there is no external perspective
with which he could identify. The acuteness of his insights is enabled by
that indeterminacy, a stateless otherness, which in literature flourished
with Kafkas Judaism, or Hemingways corrida and Humbert Humbert
incorporates this Ahasverian feature of his author, replicating it in all fields
indiscriminately: as a wandering expatriate, a conservative European
in liberal America, idiosyncratic stylist, hypersensitive eccentric, sexual
pervert. Otherness in all these meanings cultural, social, psychological
and pathological will determine the focal positions of our novels too.
Perverted sexuality, primarily in incestuous key (in Lolita it is a simulated
incest), is one of the main flywheels of Faulkners Absalom especially if
the reader remembers Quentin from The Sound and the Fury and notices
to what extent incestuous matrix shapes his narrative perspective (as well
as moral-symbolic milieu of Faulkners world); Beloved is full of images

We consider Lolita a prototype despite it being published almost 19 years after Absalom,
because the most important tendencies of all five novels converge in it: it is a reference
point that condenses their narrative strategies, and therefore from its different elements
one can proceed to every one of them in particular. In that and only that sense we allow
ourselves to call it prototype.
On Nabokovs ambivalent cultural-linguistic position see: Sweeney (2005).
On the role and significance of incest in Faulkner see: Zender (1998).
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of sexual alienation, given sometimes in extremely brutal way: starting

from the stolen milk, prostituting with the engraver and chokecherry
tree on Sethes back, through various instances of oral, gustative and
tactile objectification, to the scenes of savage raping, torture and sexual
exploitation. Morrison also points her finger to racial discrimination,
position of oppressed other, who is deprived not just of free will, but
also of his own culture, and condemned to always be intruder in foreign
world. His situation is the inverse of that of Nabokov he is not in an
indefinite borderline area, space between outside and inside, because
he tries to appropriate a foreign culture and assimilate with a new society,
but because that culture and society are simultaneously being imposed
on and denied to him. On the one hand, he is irrevocably cut off from his
origins, in order to be forced to accept the orders of his masters, which
must become his own, while, on the other, he is being forbidden from any
possibility to recognize himself as a member of new community because he
is denied his very humanity i.e. of right to any culture. The perspective
that opens up from this slave margin must concern that elementary
and primal, where the human gets in touch with the bestial and Beloved
reveals that (literally) sub-cultural world of passions and urges, and its
civilizational supports, which enclose and maintain it like a reservation.
The situation is similar with Faulkner, who puts an equally strong emphasis
on the junction of the historical, mythical, pathological and racial, but
his narrators give the impression of outsiders also because of something
that is more characteristic of a highly intellectual air of romanticism and
modernism: their specific mixture of personal extravagance and ideological
anachronism. Conspicuous rhetoric and pathetic, as well as extreme passion
in solving moral and political problems which all can be traced back to
Schiller are just a shell behind which hides profound socio-emotional
maladjustment, as of bitter and capricious Rosa Coldfield, so of nostalgic
and sensitive Quentin and his father. All three of them live in the wrong
time and experience themselves as captives of the past: of a nobler and
stronger age when giants walked the earth. This fascination with the past,
undead and unreconciled with, which comes back to haunt them is in fact
what makes them capable to step out of everydayness and reach a no mans
land, neither-here-nor-there, wherefrom they can look back at ordinary

On various forms of libidinal objectification, torture and deprivation, as well as on the

significance of intersubjective relationships and resocialization, see: Schapiro (1991),
and Boudreau (1995).
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life. The matter is somewhat different with Pynchon, Barth and DeLillo, in
whom history does not appear as a burdensome origin, personal, racial and
national past, but as a paranoid construction, mythological pattern, textual
(i.e. commercial) convention, or a sign that conceals its own absence. In
the vacuum left by the withdrawal of history which is just a reverse of
multiplication of alternative, fragmented histories their hero-narrators
are left on their own; that is why their otherness always develops out of
specific heightened self-consciousness, as a final stage of introspection,
which becomes self-destructive awareness of the artificiality of self and
the world. DeLillos Gladney becomes prey of this centrifugal force when he
gets to grips with the empty center, i.e. becomes aware of his own death.
Mistrust of reality, which was already indicated by his cultural analysis, by
this shift becomes a burning issue: and his intellectual distance, thanks to
which he developed a critical attitude towards the real, will grow into an
existential crisis proper. Pynchons Oedipa will pass through similar ordeals,
pushing herself into the world of eccentrics and rejects, of waste that
gravitates around Trystero, and facing the alternative: solipsism or pandeterminism, madness or conspiracy; her mediocrity will be irrevocably
shaken when testimonies of unreliability of the real begin to pile up so
much that one moment she will even attempt suicide.
In Barth, this process is already in its Beckettian stage: his characters
do not even belong to some reality, which they could afterward call into
question, because reality is exposed as a fiction beforehand. The world is
clearly falling apart before our eyes, and all that remains is multitude of
reverberations identity compromised by precursors, realism compromised
by convention, a funhouse whose dozed off operator just underlines
artificial character of entire construction. In other words, in all three
authors, margin on which their heroes posit themselves is a product of
their critical consciousness: brought to the point of suspecting reality of the
world and authenticity of their own egos, they get out beyond the scope of
normal life and enter into vicious circle of philosophy. Is the fake reality
work of a real subject, or the real subject work of a fake reality? Is the
world just a hallucination, or consciousness just the creation of the world?
Obsessed by these questions, they displace themselves to the position of
one meta-consciousness, whose role is to deconstruct each certainty, all

On various roles of history and past in Faulkner see: Rollyson (2007).

On various philosophical approaches to history see: Foucault (1972) (Introduction) and
Ricoeur (1984).
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that is understandable in itself and they insofar cease to be a part of

habitual course of events; their newborn fundamental skepticism separates
them from its lures. That, however, does not mean that Barths, Pynchons
and DeLillos heroes are not displaced in other ways too as introvert,
cumbersome, aloof, unaffirmed, dissatisfied nor that marginality in general
in them (especially in Pynchon) is not thematized; but it means that their
philosophical distance plays the same role as racial otherness in Morrison,
or historical anachronism in Faulkner. Gladneys are surely remarkable for
many reasons (DeLillos extraordinary skill lies in presenting them as the
most unusual where they appear the most common), Ambrose is obviously
maladjusted, Oedipa is hasty and unstable, which we do not infer just from
her aborted psychiatry sessions After all, Nietzsche already brought to
light the relationship between philosophical and artistic deviations and
other sorts of abnormalities, and Mann described it beautifully in his
famous novels: so there is nothing surprising in those combinations of
eccentricities and insight.
6. Search and revelation

If we return to Nabokov, we will realize that the problematics of unreliable
reality was already developed in Lolita reaching its full expansion in
Pale Fire as well as that a lot of meta-fictional traps and ontological
indeterminacies, which will be specific to Barth and Pynchon, were already
staged here. Some of the means by which Nabokov achieves that effect of
derealization are literary allusions, parodies and pastiches, which Barth
and Pynchon use in abundance too (as well as Faulkner; while DeLillo
rather parodies sitcoms, disaster stories and pop culture) while Humberts
paranoia, which mystifies and over-codes the plot of the novel, finds its place
both in Oedipas pursuit of Trystero, and in Gladneys uncovering Babettes
infidelity and machinations over dylar (it also could be recognized in Rosas
sections about Sutpen, or in perplexities over phantom nature of Beloved).
The dominant plot, however, that one finds both in Lolita and in our novels
is the plot of search and revelation, which will be in the closest relationship
with presenting the unpresentable. Here literature did not advance much
further from Aristotle, who saw anagnorisis, in the sense of a change from
ignorance to knowledge (Aristotle, 1452a), as a constitutive (although
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not necessary) part of the tragedy: today it is equally hard to imagine a

(decent) story which might do completely without it. His understanding
of anagnorisis as discovery of ones own or others identity or true nature
also touches the vital point of modern novels: which only means that some
habits and interests have not changed for the last two thousand years. But,
the whole search for the unknown, the meaning of crucial revelations,
went through considerable transformations since Aristotle; former solid
cosmological, ethical and political setup became susceptible to the most
daring relativizations while out of inviolable root personality remained
just a battlefield of impersonal forces. Hence the concepts of fate, fortune,
chance, necessity, opinion and truth, so essential to Greek thought, had to
change their role too: recognition could no longer be taken as confirmation
of the higher order, disclosure of unexpected rule, or reconciliation with
fate, because predetermined social laws, to which individual had to adapt,
ceased to be universally valid; just as the guilt of that individual, which
determined his place in the story, became too complex to relate just to the
clash of general and individual, person and norm, two equally justified and
exclusive spiritual claims, etc. Collision of irreconcilable orders which is
another name for Lyotards differend such as in Antigone or Oresteia lost
its opportunity to be subsumed under a higher narrative: either that of
tragic emancipation through suffering, or that of elevation of spirit through
contradictions; and by that fact alone, nature of what has been revealed,
and what remains in the gap between these incompatible language games,
had to be drastically changed. The question is, therefore: for what new
revelation search the heroes of (post)modern novels?
7. Paradox of desire and unreliability of reality

In Nabokov, the trajectory in which Humberts investigations move on
follows at least two separate but intertwined tracks: and on each of them
he runs up against an insurmountable obstacle, which reveals his aporetic
position. The first one concerns paradox of desire, whose gratification
inevitably entails upcoming destruction of its object (at least in the oralsadistic key, which fits perfectly into eroticism of Lolita). The lust that
drives Humbert into a shared exile, and latter chase after Lolita, will not
get him what he wants complete, mutual consummation but only
certainty about her evasion, corruption, and ultimate degradation: first
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with Quilty, and then, in other way, at Schillers. Even the retribution he
carries out, as some kind of instrument of fate, is extremely farcical,
since he bears equal, if not greater blame for Lolitas downfall, and since
Quilty is just his own caricature. Humberts pedophilic fixation is, from the
very beginning, paradoxical and, in a bizarre way, utopian: ideally of his
island of nymphets is disparate with reality of their age, his pathological
need to control with his craving for love, his lyrical outbursts and pangs
of conscience with wantonness of sexual exploitation; everything that
burdens any passionate relationship is here intensified to the limit, in this
impossible arrangement, where the roles of tutor and lover constantly
undermine each other, and which is clearly condemned to brevity. The
second track concerns, however, that more obvious detective work on
discovering Lolitas kidnapper but is in fact a part of wider constellation
of signals and clues, whereby in Nabokov the smallest details get activated.
For, as Humbert advances in unraveling set of circumstances responsible
for his debacle, signs begin more and more explicitly to indicate a twofold
construction of events: that which reveals Humbert himself, and that
which maybe will be revealed to the reader (and which Humbert is not
aware of). In this way, an increasingly fictional structure of Humberts
story threatens to call into question the credibility of story of Humbert
too: and aporia in which we get caught is an undecidability between
constructive or real character of the whole inner world of the novel (and,
by analogy, of world in general). That already mentioned unreliability
of reality postmodernism will exploit abundantly it will be its generic
discovery, unpresentability ex ante facto but the previous differend
will be equally significant too: as incompatibility of irrational and rational,
unconscious and conscious,performative and indicative. The field where
all these opposites permeate each other and spark in a short circuit, is
the field of ideology, which simulates their reconciliation; that is why it is
not strange to regard Faulkner and Morrison, whose novels are the most
inwrought with the ideological (political, racial, cultural), in spite of their
stylistic differences as still closer to Nabokov than Pynchon, Barth and

This double coding is a subject of many works on Lolita; here we will point out just three:
Pifer (2007); Ferger (2004); and Stone (2010).
And this unreliability will reveal itself through both what McHale calls epistemological
and what he calls ontological dominant; thus, although McHale places Lolita in Nabokovs
modernist phase, indications that issues of ontological ambiguities are in it already raised
are numerous and hard to ignore. On that see: Fraysse (1995).
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DeLillo; with them it is easier to recognize both impassable paths whereby

in Lolita one searches for revelation.
8. Lolita and Absalom: desire and reality

In Faulkner we find almost identical problematics, as well as identical
obsessiveness of the main characters. Racial and class prejudices, as
irrational and therefore indestructible foundation, play the same part in
Sutpens design, as sexual preferences for Humbert (who even dreams of
conceiving the whole dynasty of Lolitas) while the scene at planters
mansion, from Sutpens childhood, assumes equal significance to him as
Annabel Lee in Lolita. Both obsessions develop in formative years (without
going into psychological implausibility of Humberts ironic self-analysis),
when navet of heroes allows them to leave such indelible stamp on their
psyche; both heroes are slaves to their passion, which makes them blind to
others feelings; and, for both of them, fulfillment of their tyrannical desire
entails its frustration too. The reason for their failure, however, cannot be
attributed to fate Aubrey McFate panders to Humberts machinations,
just as for Sutpen it sometimes seems that he is being favored by incredible
luck; instead of hybris, their plans are thwarted by the past which returns
to claim its debts: either in the person of Quilty, about whose acquaintance
with Lolita Humbert finds out too late, or in the person of Charles Bon,
whose relationship with his own half-sister Sutpen fails to prevent, not
being willing to acknowledge him for his son. In both cases, psychological
and social conditionality of desire that governs their actions is conspicuous,
as is its inner contradiction that leads inevitably to an absurd and tragic
outcome. If Sutpen had been able to renounce his beliefs, his tragedy could
have been avoided, and the goal to which he strived because of those beliefs
would maybe have been attainable to him same as Lolita would have
been attainable to Humbert if he had been able to renounce his passion,
which led him to her in the first place. With both, it seems like the goal
and the means for its fulfillment by nature exclude each other; Humberts
lust makes him too demanding to be able to keep the object of that lust
apart from forcing him to play two different roles that exclude each
other just as exclusive commitment to founding a dynasty and securing
its material well-being makes Sutpen cruel enough to turn one son against
another, becoming the real culprit of its downfall. It is characteristic that
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both have earlier, unsuccessful attempts behind them Humbert to achieve

a relationship with a girl-child in Europe, Sutpen to found a family in
Tahiti and that both are trying again, after their best chance for success
went down the drain Humbert with Rita, Sutpen with Rosa and Milly.
Compulsivity of their characters and Sisyphean discipline with which they
devote themselves to their mania point out to desire as a center around
which gravitate all other plots: its paradox is that unpresentable which is
searched for in Absalom and Lolita.
But, that is not the only unpresentable. The already mentioned
unreliability of reality, which is the second layer of the Passion of
Humbert, in Absalom does not perhaps appear with all ontological and
metafictional implications that Nabokov will develop from Lolita to Pale
Fire, but it certainly comes out with powerful epistemological charge and
indeterminacy, which already threaten to blow up the limits of modernism.
In The Sound and the Fury we were dealing with different versions of events,
recounted by highly specific narrators (Benjy was retarded, Quentin and
Jason obsessed with honor and profit, and all in their way preoccupied
with Caddy), with extraordinary points of view but the definitive story
might be (at least fragmentarily) reconstructed, which is also confirmed
by final interfering of omniscient narrator, and by subsequently added
authors appendix (Faulkner, 2003). In Absalom, things are different:
apart from us being left to conflicting narrators, with biased or otherwise
deformed points of view, the story that reveals itself is also mediated,
sometimes through multiple generations or instances of oral tradition,
not one narrator except Rosa is really a witness of described events (and
even she witnessed them only for a short period she lived in Sutpens
Hundred otherwise she spreads others hearsay in her own interpretation,
as Quentins father spreads stories of his own father, general Compson),
and, on top of all that, in Quentins and Shreves improvisation the whole
narrative becomes completely hypothetical (with made up characters, like
Bons mothers lawyer, of whose existence there is not any evidence in the
world of the novel).10
10
This, of course, applies only to the central story, which describes the rise of Thomas
Sutpen and quadrilateral Sutpen-Judith-Henry-Charles Bon: not to the additional or
secondary events, which heroes-narrators could attend as witnesses (or inform themselves
about them from the first hand).
260
9. Absalom: fiction and past

The problem that comes out to light here is the unpresentability of the past,
exactly in terms in which Linda Hutcheon discusses historical metafiction,
as a difference between fact and event (Hutcheon, 1988). Something
did happen (event) of that one can (mainly) be sure: but, what is the
meaning of that (fact)? The whole context, causes, interests and motives
cannot be known to their contemporaries because they are not omniscient,
and their perspective is both spatially and temporally, intellectually and
hermeneutically quantitatively and qualitatively restricted; while,
on the other hand, as one moves away from the eyewitness position, the
dangers of retrospective projection, misrecognition, over-interpretation and
ideologization become more and more noticeable. To that extent, historical
distance is at the same time necessary and detrimental; some comprehensive
truth would be available only to an ideal being, in the rank of Berkeleys
God, who would be aware of all external and internal events (even
those without witness), their meaning and correlations, and would be
able to connect them into one coherent whole. For human beings, though,
reconstruction implies construction not just for someone who unravels
history afterward, but also for those who are experiencing it immediately
and construction fiction (et vice versa; Ricoeur, 1984; Hutcheon, 1988);
Faulkners Absalom demonstrates that in the most striking way. Let us ask
ourselves, whose story of Sutpens is more convincing: Rosas, general
Compsons, his son Jasons, or Quentins and Shrives? Fragmentary views
that complement and undermine each other in different narratives, leaving
us with undisguised extrapolation and speculation, reveal nothing except
that the right past is unknowable; if a story about any historical event,
from biography to national history, is possible, it is far from complete and
reliable report and we do not even want to clarify what the event by
itself means, and how to limit all lateral series entering in its orbit (i.e. to
what extent to expand the story, for it to have any meaning).
10. Beloved: the paradox of desire and indeterminacy of identity

The paradox of desire let us call it its differend is no less noticeable
in Beloved. There we encounter a different, but equally possessive love
parental and filial whose two complementary sides are protection
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and recognition. Aporeticity of this relationship was already presented in

Lolita and Absalom: however contaminated Humberts fatherhood may
have been, his attempts to save Lolita from the world (although not from
himself) are real as real as aversion that he in this way arouses, and
because of which she eventually leaves him (the interesting question is
what is the real reason of Lolitas escape: Humberts sexual exploitation,
or his fatherly control? We ask this knowing how offensive it might
sound primarily because she runs away from him only to embrace even
more perverse protector, Quilty)11; while, in Absalom, Charles attempts
to attract Sutpens attention and be acknowledged as his son ends up in
an inevitable catastrophe the single thing he achieved is to force him to
orchestrate his murder: and this with the help of other son, who also, in
order to be (in another way) recognized, had to renounce the family, for
whose recognition he was striving. In Beloved, hopelessness of parental
love is even more drastic: in order to protect her daughter and save her
from the school teacher and his nephews, Sethe is forced to kill her; just
as Beloved, in her desire for recognition verifying her identity, physically
ruins the person whose love she needs. Sethes need to redeem herself, to
explain the unexplainable how murder can be an act of love exposes
herself to an even more gruesome aporia, potentiated by the supernatural
atmosphere of the novel: her devotion to the again found Beloved and
their reciprocal decline and exuberance show only that, in her subsequent
giving of once denied, Sethe condemns herself to vanish i.e. moves
precisely toward the moment when giving will become impossible. In
that succubus-family circle, even the male intervention of Paul D could
not stop rushing into disaster not until the whole community, in a sort
of collective exorcism, casts out the intruder and breaks the spell: where
it is impossible to determine whether this intruder really is, and to what
extent, Sethes deceased daughter (Chaningkhombee, n.d.). Isolation, as
a neurotic choice par excellence full separation of public and private
only increases entanglements of desire: as in Lolita, where Humbert
from the beginning tries to put his nymphet under the glass bell, so in
Absalom, where Sutpen openly withdraws from community, and limits all
his aspirations to conception of a future dynasty. In Beloved that isolation
reaches even more pathological and psychic heights, becoming absolute
11
Which is certainly not to suggest that she is not a victim of Humberts molestation and
manipulation; on the contrary, her behaviour can be interpreted also as developing
behavioural resilience in response to experienced trauma. See: Hamrit (2009).
262
and almost inescapable. And, in all three cases, breakthrough of the outside
world, if not abolishes ominous circling of desire, at least gives it a decisive
thrust, speeding it up to the point of breakdown. Gordian knot is not untied
desire cannot be tamed by mere involvement of reality principle but is
cut off by a coup de grace when artificial paradises of the private give in
before onslaughts of the public.
However, behind the impassable paths of desire, there is, in Beloved,
an even more fundamental problematics hiding determining the fate of
those sixty million (and more) from the dedication and reaching into
the darkest corners of psycho-political abysses the question of identity.
Brought to the foreground by mentioned contradictory position of slaves,
as people forcibly integrated into a foreign culture but deprived of any
chance to become its members, it is already indicated in Absalom by
indeterminable racial and family status of Charles Bon and his son (which
largely resembles Smerdyakovs similar anonymity): and in Morrison it
gets the most striking expression in long, variously intriguing monologue
of Sethe, Denver and Beloved. Sethes resurrected daughter is not, of
course, the only character whose self-awareness is warped and endangered
physical and mental torture equally gnaws at Sethe and Paul D, as Denver
is stricken by isolation and neglect (and as, in Faulkner, both Quentin
and his father are torn between old traditions and new state of affairs)
but she takes a special place in this charade of identities: because of
intensity of her inner dispersion and symbolic charge that Morrison stores
into her chaotic memories. Fragments that flood her consciousness can
in no way be attributed to a single person: some of them corroborate her
being Sethes real daughter, while others are phantasmagoric, outside
any context or related to things the real Beloved could not experience
(e.g. sections evoking maltreatment on a slave ship); and the climax of
derangement is reached when fragmentary but still recognizable voices of
Sethe and Denver in 23rd chapter merge with dispersed voice of Beloved
leaving the impression of progressive confusion and erosion of all three
identities (Rimmon-Kenan, 1996). The pendulum that describes the way
in which heroines experience their self in the novel goes from paranoid
implosion to schizophrenic dispersion12 from various forms of persecution,
isolation and enclosure to the breakdown of personality and its effusion in
unpredictable directions and if anything is suggested through that array
12
The polarity of paranoia-schizophrenia should be understood in the context of Deleuzes

and Guattaris paranoid and schizophrenic poles, from: Deleuze&Guattari (2000).
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of false salvations it is that identity cannot be built, nor regained, without

strong social foundation: i.e. interaction with some kind of group (at least
with Paul D, who is a disturbing factor), and its reciprocal support and
recognition (i.e. outside intervention surpassing efforts and power of
the individual). Denver is the one who has the chance to make the most
of that lesson and get out from the vicious circle; Sethes future is more
uncertain, although her last meeting with Paul D indicates that she is not
unable to become her best thing to construct her own identity without
burdens of the past, which kept her trapped in a triangle of trauma, guilt
and redemption. One should, however, have in mind that community here
plays the role of the healer just as particular, local group, able to physically
communicate with and embrace endangered individual: community as
an abstract, global or backstage entity can have exactly opposite effects
deconstruction of identity (either in paranoid, or in schizophrenic key)
which will be thoroughly explored by Pynchon, in The Crying of Lot 49.
But Beloved too already indirectly shows us the dark side of social instinct;
if we bypass symbolic reading, and refuse to recognize just the paradigm
of female Negro slaves, or slaves in general, in Beloved (i.e. if we do not
accept her only as a symbol epitomizing the fate of those sixty million
which does not mean that the text forbids such reading), and do not write
off surreal visions from her monologue as scenes from the other side,
some transitional transcendence (which the text also does not exclude
especially in the light of African religious beliefs), but accept them as
real, though hallucinatory / illusory memories, that monologue could help
us discern the mechanism of her obscure socialization. In a word, either
Beloved is a runaway captive from Deer Creek who really witnessed events
on the slave ship, or she is embodiment of the ghost of Sethes daughter
who haunts the house no. 124, or she is somehow both because the
text fragmentarily corroborates both possibilities, in spite of their mutual
exclusion in all three cases the fact remains that it is precisely her hunger
for integration, simultaneous appropriation and belonging between
dead and alive, daughter and mother, orphan and family, individual and
race that creates her schizoid omnipresence (hicstansand nuncstans) as
a conglomerate of incompatible identities. The undecidability between
natural and supernatural interpretation is not of essential importance
for that conclusion: in Africa, the living dead and their communi(cati)on
with the relatives are not a matter of fiction but of religious belief, so the
appearance of ghost in flesh and blood is not a contradiction at all but
264
that does not solve the problem of mixed, fragmented identity. The search
for the face, smile and recognition which runs through the entire Beloveds
monologue, and possessiveness of that longing, in which boundaries
between self and the other, between what one is, one has and to what
one belongs are lost, testify about more general crisis: the impossibility
for alienated I from the margin to build up its identity through any
universal or ideal identification including identification with the margin
itself. And Beloved is in this respect exemplary: if she is Sethes deceased
daughter then assimilation of entire racial past is a factor of schism in
her identity; if she is a runaway slave from Deer Creek then this factor is
her craving a family shelter; at any rate, search for unique meaning, for
centering of decentered alternatives, leads to dissolution of personality,
which ceases to be its own, and becomes equally no ones and everyones
(hence such symbolic potential of Beloved). Identity, in the case of racial
discrimination and other marginalizing practices is not opposed just to
the universal imposed by colonialism as its global heritage: it opposes every
universalization because every universalization is the heir of colonialism,
whatever it sets as its locus. Anguishes that Sethe, Denver and Paul D suffer,
in their own search for belonging, are thereby focused and potentiated in
Beloved, because the irreconcilable opposites they face are in her brought
to the extreme to a transcendent plane; but also conversely, dispersion
of Beloveds identity in return dissolves all personalities within her range,
all too willing to get caught in a net of pathological dependence and its
inherent self-destructive individuation.
11. Identity and reality: paranoia and schizophrenia

(Barth, Pynchon, DeLillo)
The unpresentability of identity in Morrison is emphasized as a result of
centuries-long racial exploitation; but, already in Nabokov, the characters
reflecting in each other (Humbert-Quilty, Annabel-Lolita), the system of
doubles, overlaps and substitutions and literary analogies problematize
identity as (im)possible construction. Pynchon, DeLillo and Barth will
approach this problem from a different, less moving, but no less anxious
side. While in Faulkner and Morrison we deal with an ambiguous exclusion
from culture or cultural and racial ostracism, in them the culture itself
becomes a burden, storehouse of repetitive patterns, and torsion these
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patterns require: but, since there is no more nature that would precede
that distortion, building up identity is like erecting castles in the air,
phantasms supported by phantasms which is graphically represented by
a symbol of Moebius strip at the beginning of Barths book: strip whose
underside is just an extension of the upper side, twisted around itself in
order to serve as its own basis (in Pynchon, a similar role is assigned to
weaving the world from Varos painting where weavers, since they
weave entire reality, must weave themselves too). Oscillating between the
paranoid and schizophrenic, and its characteristic entropy of identity, are
so conspicuous with these writers that there is almost no need to dwell on
examples (Trystero, dylar, Mucho Maas, Willie Mink, Barths echolalias,
etc.): but it is important to note that, unlike Faulkner and Morrison, for
whom repression, torture, and cultural and axiological deracination were
factors of loss of identity, for them this role is assumed by existential
insecurity, breakdown of meta-narratives and artificiality of reality i.e.
by already mentioned derealization of reality. In (post)modern age which
exports brutality and discrimination to the dumpsites of the Third World,
or to its own abject enclaves (ghetto, white trash, various sub-cultural
groups), individuation of the average man is no longer endangered by
what is traumatic and terrifying on the contrary, they sometimes can have
even therapeutic effect but by that all too familiar, which is a factor of
paralysis: maintaining at the same time illusion of continuous change, and
of non-existent meaning that this commotion ostensibly evokes. Paranoia
is one of the ways out that lends meaning to the world without meaning,
and allows recuperation of identity, even at the cost of conflict with the
forces projected into its center; schizophrenia, as rendering senseless so
advanced that it turns into its opposite, into omnipresence of meaning
and thereby of personality too is the other. Boundaries between Ego and
the world, i.e. Ego and the others, in both cases are violated: and we are
not so much interested here in psychological explanation of mechanisms of
this violation, as in the fact that the reality itself, especially from about the
mid-twentieth century being increasingly more mediated and fictional
has become a perfect ground for these mechanisms. In other words, what
Freud in his time recognized as a triumph of reality principle, on account of
limitation and deformation of human drives and pleasure principle,13 has
today come to its own inversion: to releasing the drives (at least in enclosed,
but globally recognized reservations which are still in expansion), on
13
e.g. in: Frojd (1969).
266
account of limitation and deformation of the reality principle. Here we will

stop, because deeper delving into this would require more serious psychosocial analysis (and resorting to some terms such as death drive which
are still raising controversy even in their own fields); we will just repeat
once more a distinction between Barth, Pynchon and DeLillo that applies
to the unpresentability of reality, thus to unpresentability of identity (as
obverse and reverse of the same process): Barth primarily dissolves his
characters by pointing out to their fictional, conventional and imaginary
nature; Pynchon by confronting them with alternative and paradoxical
interpretation of the world; DeLillo by having them taste instability and
falseness of reality. All three, thus as we already said dispatch their
heroes into the labyrinths of philosophical aporias, which force them to get
themselves involved in the most fundamental and essentially insolvable
questions about the world and about themselves.
12. Conclusion: three types of the unpresentable;

margin as a condition of their knowledge
Finally, we have distinguished desire, reality and identity as three modern
unpresentables: they are mutually interconnected in their unreliability
and indeterminacy, and are usually signalized by simultaneous presence of
several irreconcilable orders and interpretations. The prevailing plot, which
gravitates around these unpresentables, is a plot of search and revelation
which is just why it is not by accident that Pynchon, by the name of his
heroine, in fact alludes to Oedipus Rex, a play considered exemplary for
its economy of reversals and recognitions (peripeteias and anagnorises) by
no other than the father of both terms, Aristotle; and just because of the
irreconcilability of contradictions of these unpresentables, the heroes who
dare to face them must be of the people from the margin of those who will
not conform to one totalizing explanation, but live out the opposites to the
full extent and to their ultimate limit. We will not claim that this is the only,
not even the main thread binding the five discussed contemporary novels
together: but it is no doubt there; whether we should follow it further, and
how far, will depend on more general conclusions it is to provide us and
on the possibility or impossibility of applying them to a wider group of
literary works.
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:
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XX
Absalom, Absalom!, The Crying of Lot 49, Lost
in The Funhouse, White Noise, Beloved
, , . ,
, ,
,
. (
) , , , -, - -
, ,
.
: , ,
271
272
UDC 821.111(73).09-31 . .
Irina Kovaevi*
Faculty of Philology**
Belgrade, Serbia
POPULAR CULTURE IN ITS POSTMODERN

CONTEXT: VLADIMIR NABOKOVS
LOLITA
Abstract
The principle concern of this paper is to explore elements of popular culture in
relation to postmodern literature; namely, the most important forms of intertwining
20th century literature and popular culture as its referent field. In this regard, one
specific feature which this paper hopes to further address and elaborate on is the
concept of postmodern identity in its consumerist and consumptionist ends, and
how it relates to the novel of Lolita as a whole. In doing so, the paper explores
characteristics of postmodernism and establishes its place and significance of
essential manifestations of postmodernism in popular culture.
Key words: postmodernism, popular culture, consumerism, Lolita, Nabokov
1. In a Quest for Lolita

The novel Lolita, though usually interpreted as an allegory of romance in
bridging the literary modern to the postmodern, is also a representation of
*
**
E-mail address: i_nina_k@yahoo.com

PhD student
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the respective postmodern cultural values, norms, and society in which it

is set, and when it was written. It itself is an artifact of the popular culture
of the America of its time, specifically the post and Cold War 1950s, and
may be seen as such throughout the novel. In this regard, as a product of
its time, Lolita should be relegated to the period of cultural, historical, and
intellectual ideas of postmodernism, emerging from the literary background
of its own underlying philosophy.
While Fredric Jameson, the Marxist political theorist and leading
thinker in the field of postmodern critique, does not find the novel to be
a primary instance of postmodern ideals in its truest form, it does offer
something even more important, an ever so unique bridging of the apparent
prior modern into the postmodern, as the novels background quality,
which sheds light upon the two differing, yet emerging, schools of thought
(the modern into the postmodern): Jenckss late moderns are those who
persist into Postmodernism, and the idea makes sense architecturally; a
literary frame of reference, however, throws up names like Borges and
Nabokov [] who had the misfortune to span two eras and the luck to
find a time capsule of isolation or exile in which to spin out unseasonable
forms (Jameson, 1991: 304).
It would seem then that if one desired to see a clear illustration of
what the postmodern would be (especially in regard to the modern), one
would then be apt to take Jamesons advice and read the novel Lolita to
gain such an understanding.
2. The Postmodern and Popular Culture

Though originally coined by Tonybee in the 1940s to describe a postworld-war-two era and picked up on by art theorist Charles Jencks to
describe the deconstructionist based art movements of the 1970s, the term
postmodern has become all encompassing, though elusive in meaning,
and, in all actuality, self-contradictory: The word postmodern itself
seems odd, paradoxically evoking what is after (post) the contemporary
(modern). How can something be after the contemporary? (Bennett and
Nicholas, 2004: 248).

See: Tonybee, A. J. (1974). A Study of History. Vol. 1: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI.

Oxford University Press.
274
Irina Kovaevi Popular Culture in its Postmodern Context: Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita
Fredric Jameson, renowned expert on the postmodern, also provides

no clear definition per se, even in his culminating work Postmodernism
or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Being so hard to delineate, the
essential definition is only alluded to in a general idea and laid out
through example throughout the work. Perhaps though, this is the way
postmodernism should be defined, as supposition could herein be made
that postmodernism is merely an analysis of how things are and in their
moment and shape the movement thereof, as opposed to how things are
from a background, top-down, all pervasive meaning (i.e., modernism);
part of the essence of the postmodern is the inability of its decision to be
defined and to define what it gives rise to.
To shorten the argument of the definition of the postmodern, let it
suffice to say that Jameson is of two main minds in his work, characterizing
the idea of postmodernism as a whole: 1) there is no prior meaning, rather
the cultural realm in itself makes meaning as it transpires and 2) mass
consumerism/consumption is a readily visible facet and outlet of the
postmodern ideal, whatever it may be and in whatever form it may take,
as what is made or done gives the meaning as in a stream of development.
In Jamesons own words, what is most important is that: A postmodernist
culture is also implicitly to affirm some radical structural difference
between what is sometimes called consumer society and earlier moments
of the capitalism from which it emerged (1991: 54).
The postmodern is perfectly reflected and to be understood in what it
produces, especially in the consumer culture which it not only reflects, but
also creates, feeding off itself. Therein, according to Jameson, the essence of
postmodernism is that the massive influx of commercially available goods
have influenced the mere definition of postmodernism itself: What wears
the mask and makes the gestures of populism in the various postmodernist

The postmodern, that is to say, does not simply reject the possibility of making decisions.
Rather, it gives new attention to the value of the undecidable. What the new critics of the
middle of the twentieth century called ambiguity or paradox is now considered in terms
of undecidability (Bennett and Nicholas, 2004: 249).
Having no set terms does not limit the power of postmodern theory, rather this paradox of
the time of the postmodern also points to the fact that, strictly speaking, the postmodern
should not be thought of as a term of periodization: the postmodern challenges our
thinking about time, challenges us to see the present in the past, the future in the present
in a kind of no-time (Bennett and Nicholas, 2004: 248).Therein, the associated aspects
and results of postmodernism are those to be examined to gain clarity into its actual
function.
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apologias and manifestos is in reality a mere reflex and symptom of a

[] cultural mutation, in which what used to be stigmatized as mass
or commercial culture is now received into the precincts of a new and
enlarged cultural realm (Jameson, 1991: 63). Jameson goes so far to say
that postmodernism has initiated a self-perpetuating creation phenomenon,
where consumption has rapidly enveloped the cultural realm as a whole,
becoming the driving force behind the aesthetic ideals of postmodernism:
What has happened is that aesthetic production has become integrated
into commodity production generally (1991: 3).
The idea of production and consumption as being a moving or
mutating force in the creation of an epochal idea or cultural movement is
not novel to Jameson. Walter Benjamin previously suggested that the mere
establishment of a means of mass consumption and reproduction gave the
individual more power over the object of art and its creation, influencing
the nature of art itself: For the first time in world history, mechanical
reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence
on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes
the work of art designed for reproducibility (Benjamin, 2010: IV). Hence,
divorcing art from the thereto traditional aesthetic principle, to the end
purpose of reproduction for consumability, is the same envisioned by
Jameson.
This new relationship between the object and the individual in
postmodernism may be subsequently seen as revitalizing the idea of
an objects individual aesthetic as applied in practice and theory to the
individual: The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object
from the domain of tradition [] in permitting the reproduction to meet
the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the
object reproduced (2010: II). The relationship of the object with the
individual in its consumption can therefore be seen as the ultimate token
essence of postmodernism, being one of its fundamental pillars.
Much like postmodernism, popular culture also derives its own
definition from its own instances. Popular culture, in its postmodern sense,
would seem to be but a mere extension of consumption, i.e., the object to
be consumed which Jameson or Benjamin touches upon. Fiske, a renowned
theorist of popular culture is of a similar mindset in his exploration of the
field in terms of the postmodern, claiming, in general popular culture finds
its most fertile soil in the fields of leisure and consumption (Fiske, 1997:
213). If the object and its obtainment is part and parcel of the postmodern
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and enjoyment in the produced object is the manifestation of the popular,

then postmodernism and popular culture would seem to easily bear the
same foundation to their identity: the production and consumption of the
object. Therefore, the relationship between the object consumed and the
consumer may also be considered essential to popular culture; namely
the result of consumerism on the consumer in establishing postmodern
culture.
Consequently, attached to the postmodern idea of consumption is
popular cultures idea of consumerism, as being defined by what one owns,
or that identity is found along within the pleasure of the consumption of
the object: People can turn cultural commodities to their own interests
and find pleasure in using them to make their own meaning of their
social identities and social relations (2010: 56). Within postmodernism,
consumerism has also become a micro culture of its own, the best definition
of which is offered by Charlotte Sussman, where she sees consumerism as
a set of beliefs and values, sometimes even a way of life that distances the
obtaining of material assets, and the actual process of obtaining them, at
the top of the list of priorities for those who believe in the concept.
The affect of consumer identity, however, is not alone found in the
object and its consumption; rather, the actual relationship in the process
of the consumption of the object by the individual is of primary concern,
as between the person (who uses them) and these products (index of the
order which is imposed on him), there is a gap of varying proportions
opened by the use that he makes of them (deCerteau, 1984: 32). The
object then, from its start to its end and the manner in which it is done
(the relationship of consuming the object), is therefore but one end-result
of the postmodern, ultimately giving rise to consumerist popular culture.
In postmodern popular culture, the consumer uses the object as
fulfillment, where consumerism becomes a progressive trend and the
purchasing of goods becomes the only defining quality of assigning purpose
or meaning. In late capitalistic postmodernism, everyone is a consumer.
Consumption is the only way of obtaining the resources for life, whether

Judith Williamson, a British journalist and filmmaker concurs in this regard, postulating
that the original context of any product is that of its production. [] Because of the
products context is, first of all, its production, what is the context of the consumer,
without whom, after all, there can be no consumption? (Williamson, 1995:229-230).
See: Sussman,C. (2000). Consuming Anxieties:Consumer Protest,Gender and British
Slavery,17131833. Palo Alto:Stanford University Press.
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these resources be material functional (food, clothing, transport) or

semiotic cultural (the media, education, language) (Fiske, 2010: 28).
A postmodern member of society is then to be defined by their purchase,
rather than thought or reflection. The postmodern individual in popular
culture can therefore be comprehended by the relationship as to how they
desire to consume, providing insight into the individuals personality as
relates to consumerism. Williamson even goes so far as to state that it
defines ones conscious: [The] chosen meaning in most peoples lives
comes much more from what they consume than what they produce.
[] All the things we buy involve decisions and the exercise of our own
judgment, choice, taste (Williamson, 1995: 230).
Accompanying this dominant aspect of consumerist self-definement
is that pervasive consumerism offer[s] a sense of control. If you pay for
something you do tend to feel you control it (1995: 230). This sense
of entitlement to an object in its entirety stems from the actions of
acquisition in order to acquire it and is a powerful underlying motive in
consumerism. As a dominant force in postmodern popular culture, it may
be also hypothesized that ownership is at present the only form of control
legitimized in our culture (1995: 231). Postmodernism may therefore be
essentially characterized in popular culture as the essence of owning or
possession as to define individual identity. Yet, the mere possession of a
thing, need not supply a final identity. With this need to control, there
occurs a deficit of identity security. The nature of acquisition as to identity is
purely transitory and does not endure. As Williamson suggests, ownership
only offers itself alone, not a secure identity since the compulsion to
consume in order to gain an identity collapses into an endless cycle where
one cannot be certain in it. Once an object is consumed, another is needed
to maintain the relationship it once provided the consumer. Therein,
Williamson criticizes the ideals of consumerism, stating that the acquisition,
attainment, and procurement of objects only supplies consumers with an
illusory sense of control, whether it be attainable or not: The great irony
is that it is precisely the illusion of autonomy which makes consumerism
such an effective diversion from the lack of power in peoples lives (1995:
233).
See: Williamson, J. (1995). Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture. London:
Marion Boyars Publishers. p. 232.
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3. Obtaining the Object of Lolita

If the consumerism inherent to the postmodern concept of popular culture
compels one to form their own identity in the relationship reciprocal of
the object of ones consumption, the novel Lolita can be consequently read
as one mans desire to control a person as an object, to fulfill himself, his
identity, his sense of being, his character, to the detriment of that same
person.
The synopsis of Lolita is the following: The character of Humbert
Humbert, a well-educated and read, attractive European migr comes to a
small town to focus on his writing. Seeking lodging, he eventually comes
across an empty room offered by one Charlotte Haze, who falls in love
with him. However, he is fascinated only by her daughter, Dolores, who is
merely twelve, and whom he assigns the sobriquet Lolita. To stay close to
Dolores and take advantage of her young attributes, which he so deeply
desires, he hatches a plan to marry Charlotte, who, luckily for Humbert,
shortly after dies when being hit by a car. From this moment, Humbert
starts acting partially as a father, as well as a lover, towards Lolita. After
a road trip in which he establishes a more predatory relationship with his
Lolita, they move to another town, to a small college where he teaches
French literature. Seeing that she is growing distant, and afraid to lose her,
he tries another road trip a year later, where she escapes him. In the end,
after being contacted by Lolita, he finds out that she had run away with
another, older man, whom he eventually murders.
In 1940, Nabokov and his family immigrated to the United States where
he earned his living teaching literature. He wroteLolitawhile travelling on
butterfly-collection trips that he undertook every summer. Nabokov came
to the idea for writing such a kind of a novel in 1939 and 1940 while he
was still living in Paris; originally writing it as a short story in Russian, at
the end of the 1940s, he decided to write it as a novel in English. According
to Nabokov, Lolita was his successful affair with the English language
(Nabokov, 2000: 316). It is not presumptuous to suppose that Nabokov may
have written the novel as a growing reflection on the American society that
he saw at the time. Given the position and relationship between Nabokov
and the narrator of the novel Humbert Humbert, as both men of literature

A statement further seen by the fact that the butterfly even appears as one of the
novels important motifs, subtly indicating the resemblance to the most famous fictional
character Lolita.
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and European outsiders in origin, it could be even argued that Nabokov

fashioned the narrator of Lolita to be a removed commentator for what he
observed of the America of the time.
To wit, this 1st person narration provides an unreliable narrator which
compels the reader think, to even examine the truth of every statement.
What is more, while the structure of the novel itself is straightforward
(a presentation of Humbert Humberts manuscript his chronological
unfortunate love story with a girl coined as Lolita to fit his fancies and
obsessions) it is within this narration which reveals more than merely a
confession, but an exploration of identity in consumerism, as shall be now
shown.
4. A Monster in Humbertland
Nabokov presents Humbert as, at times a sympathetic, but obsequiously
clinical case, one who is completed by no further character development
beyond the simple obtainment of an idea or fulfillment of a desire he
possesses. Yet, the author does try to create an illusion of his growth. By
placing him in the position of the narrator, Nabokov makes him and his
story fallible in the mere presentation of the events, by being the only
source of information about himself and others in the process. Duplicating
his name in creating a surname, addressing himself in the 3rd person
warns that Humber Humbert wears a mask and it is only his false self in
contact to the others and the reader. In fact, Humbert worsens the reality
presented, providing final, artificial scenery of occurrences and its causes:
He must re-name everyone and every place in the book in order to disguise
their real identities (Brand, 1987: 18).
Humbert, as narrator, represents different situations which lead
him into a difficult position, which is no more than the realization of
a tragic flaw. Yet, this prism of Humbert as such not only allows for the

Nabokov makes the novel Lolita in this fashion, but any consideration that he is representing
himself in any manner beyond the superficial should not be taken seriously, as he is leading
the reader into a labyrinthine game: When earnest readers, nurtured on the standardized
symbols of the psychoanalytic racket, leap to make the association between the two
episodes [] and immediately conclude that Lolita is autobiographical in the most literal
sense, then the trap has been sprung: their wantonly reductive gesture justifies the need for
just such a parody as Nabokovs. (Nabokov and Appel, 1991: 76-77).
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so-called truth of the events to be distanced by a narrators unreliability,

but for focus to be given to more singular ideas that drive the story as
well. Compelled by description and explanation as a motive or confession,
the plot of the novel is allowed to be exposited through Humberts own
retelling as the mere obtainment of a sought Lolita what the term or
person of Lolita represents to him. Here then, is where the story of the
novel lies and which focus is belied from character to progression, while
maintaining the same end idea Humberts need to have his Lolita.
As the story originates through Humbert, the assigned character he
gives to Dolores of Lolita stems from his early childhood. As a young man,
he was in love with a girl named Annabel Leigh, an obvious reference to
Edgar Allan Poe in that her tragic and premature death severely influenced
the rest of his life, engraving upon his psyche to seek out a nymphet
to replace her: Was it then, [] that the rift in my life began; or was
my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent
singularity? (Nabokov, 2000: 13).
Stemming from his childhood experience, Humbert goes so far as
to literally call himself an artist in his gift of recognizing the complex
nature of nymphets (2000: 16). He comes across Lolita, by actual name
Dolores Haze, and sees in her Annabel: It was the same child the
same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bear back, the
same chestnut head of hair [italics mine] (2000: 39). He concludes with
she, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely her
prototype (2000: 40) to which he suddenly sees a direct purpose to his
desire: Everything between the two events was but a series of gropings
and blunders, and false rudiments of joy. Everything they shared made one
of them (2000: 40). Still, in spite of his simplistic desire to possess or own
such a girl, throughout the novel Humbert is not merely interested in only
having sexual relations with Lolita, but rather to enjoy her presence and
ability to keep the memory on his first love intact: I am not concerned with
so-called sex at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A
greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of
nymphets (Nabokov, 2000: 134). Ironically, this is where his immaturity
Humbert defines a nymphet as a specific type of girl between the age of nine and
fourteen [] who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they,
reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is demonic); and these
chosen creatures I propose to call nymphets (Nabokov, 2000: 16).
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comes to the fore as this sexual trait reaches and reviles his pathological
character which ultimately destroys everyone around him.10
What Humbert strives in his machinations to have is something
unobtainable: the particular youth of a young girl to enliven him in his
secret desires. It is almost a punishment as all young girls such as Lolita
outgrow what Humbert desires, and therefore castigation at the same time:
In two years or so she would cease being a nymphet and would turn out
into a young girl, and then, into a college girl that horror of horrors
(Nabokov, 2000: 90).
Humberts attitude towards a nymphet, his past history, his
classification and harking desires, can also be taken as that of the act of
simply acquiring one, much as one would shop around for a product or
object to fulfill what one believes to be the essence of ones character, or,
at least, the end or purpose thereof. For this reason, Humberts sense of
control over having Lolita drives his character throughout the novel, and
may be read as a commentary on consumerism and its postmodern nature
in popular culture itself, on the act of buying her: Humbert can only have
the illusion of possessing Lolita by spending a great deal of money to buy
things for her. When Lolita becomes [] a commodity, Humbert becomes
a consumer (Brand, 1987: 19).
However, nothing is clearly bought and possessed, unless it is duly
paid for. As an object, Humbert tries to mollify Lolita with other objects
of her own affection. He buys clothes, magazines and food for his little
nymphet. Humbert is willing to do anything just to have her play around
[him] forever (Nabokov, 2000: 21). He becomes a victim of his own mad
desire in a completely unbalanced volition, objectifying a living person.
One prime example of this objectified relationship is in the first road
trip Humbert takes with Lolita in hope that no one will ever find out his
secret. They purposefully never stay long enough at one place in order
to not only avoid discovery, but for his precious Lolita not to be taken
away from him as well.11 Beyond this as a literary device propelling events
forward, the conjunction of Humbert in his obsession with Lolita in the
Jameson equates this very fetishism of Lolitas character through Humbert to a growing
exploration of taboos in postmodernism, as a greater exploration of the consumed object
and its effects on artistic works: The latest and the last in the long line of those taboo
forms of content which, beginning with Nabokovs nymphets in the 1950s, rise one after
the other to the surface of public art (Jameson, 1991: 293).
11
See Nabokov, V. (2000). Lolita. London: Penguin Classics. p. 138, 139.
10
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backdrop of said road-trip may also be used by Nabokov to provide criticism

into the small-town, suburban America of the time, and its consumerist
postmodern nature in popular culture: This is why Lolita is, for the most
part among other things, a brilliant, lucid and ironically subjective account
of a journey, a huge panorama of America seen through a distorted mirror,
through the eyes of a cynical European. [] He does not want to reach
any concrete place in particular, but in his constant changing of places, he
tries to become invisible [translation mine] (Paunovi, 2006: 197).
Humberts pathological jealousy, firmly believing that everyone wants
to steal away his sacred guarded object, in which he cloaks himself in
the hypocritical presentation of a concerned father figure where Lolita
is the actual victim of a pedophilic relationship illustrates that Humbert is
indifferent to her other needs or anything that might represent her inner
life: I simply did not know a thing about my darlings mind [] there was
in her a garden a twilight [] absolutely forbidden to me (Nabokov, 2000:
284). While he may profess to love Lolita until the end, it is only the love
of the unobtainable object that forces his hand as a character. Lolita is not
a person to him, she is something he wants to play with; she is a word
where Humbert is flesh: loins, tongue, palate, teeth (Kauffman, 1989:
136). In Humberts own words: Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a
trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee.
Ta (Nabokov, 2000: 9). His profession of love is empty. It is a tragic flaw
of Humberts obsession where the Double parody in Lolita locks Humbert
within that prison of mirrors where the real self and its masks blend into
one another, the refracted outlines of good and evil becoming terrifyingly
confused(Nabokov and Appel, 1991: 82).
Seen then there is Humbert not caring one bit for Lolita outside of
her as an item to get his hands on. Surely, though Nabokovs hero does
not enjoy hurting Lolita, he is her abuser for treating her as such. Humbert
Humbert is ultimately presented as a deranged individual who uses and
abuses Lolita as a material object and from the standpoint of the popular
culture of the postmodern consumerist society of the novel, it is a criticism
offered for its time of publication.
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5. In Love with an Image or How Much is that Little Girl

in the Window?
As has been noted, Humbert is an unreliable narrator. Exceptionally
eloquent, he has an unusual gift for rhetoric. Utilizing a needless abundance
of academic words and sentences than would a layman to hide his true
intentions, Humberts outward confession can succeed in persuading the
reader of how he is not actually guilty of anything. Yet, such lofty ideals
that Humbert likes to shield himself in do not completely hide his true
motives.
Williamson notes in her book Consuming Passions that as a
contemporary advert puts it: One instinctively knows when something
is right. [But] unlike advertising, Art has a reputation for being above
things vulgar and mercenary, a form eternal rather than social, whose
appreciation springs from the discerning heart, not the cultural background
(Williamson, 1995: 67). If Williamson is to be considered, while Humbert
may loom largely upon his Lolita, the reader may not be so easily fooled
into his innocent objectives. Instead, what is left is that Lolita may be
seen in Humberts eyes as a sexual product being advertised and obsessed
over opposite to that of the artist who would not incite the vulgar.
Humbert is therefore not the artist as he portends to be, but an advertising
executive trying to sell the reader on his version of Lolita, an object of his
own making and fancy, a fact undeniably found in his own words: What
I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful
Lolita perhaps more real than Lolita; overlapping encasing her; floating
between me and her, and having no will no consciousness indeed, no life
of her own [italics mine] (Nabokov, 2000: 62). The method of persuasion
that Humbert embarks upon is therefore similar to that of promoting an
object, where advertisement is a false double of art in that it deceives a
viewer into thinking that an object can be possessed in actuality and not
merely in the imagination, consumerism is a false double of aestheticism
in that it involves a dependence upon the actual rather than the merely
imaginative possession of objects (Brand, 1987: 20). In this regard,
Humbert tries not only to sway the reader to accept his ideas as the norm,
but also himself in the process, selling himself on the ideal nature of his
romantic intentions.
The reader is easily drawn into Humberts little game, perceiving him
as if he were only some kind of a well-mannered madman. This arises as
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the reader views all events and characters exclusively through Humberts
own objectifying eyes. Such is the case with little Dolores: seen through the
eyes of her sexual predator, Lolita is viewed as nothing but a worshipped
and classified object with which he fulfils his abnormal needs. As Humbert
is the narrator of the story, Lolita is a flat character, projecting only
Humberts whims and desires, with no internal character thereof to that
of Lolita herself. As Kauffman notes in her essay Is There a Woman in the
Text: Lolita is little more than a replication of a photographic still. [] He
longs to have a frozen moment permanently on celluoid, since he could not
hold her still in life. She is thus the object of his appropriation, and he not
only appropriates her, but projects onto her his desires and his neuroses
(Kauffman, 1989: 137).Therein, no true character of Lolita in the text
exists, just Humberts objectification of a little girl.
Unmasking Lolitas real but (essentially) non-existent character that
is amended and usurped by the voice of the narrator does not lend itself
to be easily undertaken since the narrator is so sexually aroused by the
nymphet that he fetishizes her body (paying attention only to parts of it,
e.g. the way she holds her toes, the way she speaks, etc.) to such an extent
that the reader is left more with a superficial description than a character
made to resemble an individual young girl. Lolitas character is seen but in
parts, never as an entire person.12 Humberts fetishism objectifies Lolita so
greatly that its progression is best symbolized by the replacement of her
name Dolores Haze, with the nickname Lolita emptying her identity
and filling it with his wants instead.
The story of Lolitas character does offer more insight into her as a
separate individual outside of Humberts encompassing gaze, but, sadly,
not enough to establish a separate character outside of his grasp. To wit,
the circumstances in which Lolita grew up were that she was without a
father figure and under a mother who did not care for her, treating her
daughter as a competitor, one aspect which influences Lolitas formation
and maturation. Due to her subsequent naivet, Lolita willingly falls in
love with an older man, Quilty, which she finds normal, and even defends,
only complaining about how he broke her heart and how she was an active
participant in the affair, not the victim Humbert had assumed.13
Lolitas lack of a character actualized through her presentation by Humbert is not unique;
the rest of the female characters are described mostly as superficial and unworthy of any
of his attention, and they only receive outright criticism.
13
See: Lolita p. 279.
12
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It could also be argued that Lolita had come to see herself only as an
object of others desires. At the end of the novel, Lolita is unable to come
to complete terms with what had happened to her (both with Quilty and
Humbert), and sees her present choice (her husband) as something which
is the best compromise, given her past. This is a trait which can be seen
when Humbert gives her money that she and her husband desperately
need for improving their life together. Humbert also gives her a choice
to go with him as well. Strikingly, at first she understands it as if she
needs to repay him for it and go with him to a hotel clearly not
understanding his gesture. Despite being pregnant and married, somehow
she has never emerged from seeing herself as merely an object to him, or
perhaps even to Quilty. Torn between the two predators who have defined
her, one in narrative (Humbert) and another as a counterpoint to the main
character (Quilty), she cannot escape the definition they assign her: an
object of their desire.
Still, the object is not the same for both characters, illustrated by the
first exchange that Quilty and Humbert share, directly prior to Lolitas
first sexual experience with Humbert, in which the two have a mundane
conversation, and Quilty mentions: Where the devil did you get her?
[italics mine] to which Humbert replies I beg your pardon? (Nabokov,
2000: 127), not fully understanding the direct overtones. Surely, Humbert
in this light is presented more gallantly than Quilty who has never so
elaborately hidden or justified his intent, and Quiltys character could be
seen as the carnally perverse mirror to that of the perversely romantic of
Humberts. From these snippets of dialogue,14 Lolita as an object to these
two men and her definition thereof could be taken to be that merely of an
object, one based on a fetishism and another purely on exploitation, but in
both still just something to be used, no matter the excuse.
This fetishism of Lolita implies that she cannot be anything but
a material object of desire for anyone, which is why a progression of
Lolitas character cannot be seen until she is removed from all even if, in
the end, she may not know who she is and what she really wants. It bears
repeating that growing up in an environment where she has never been the
14
Another instance is when Humbert is rampaging through Quiltys house, on the verge of
shooting him, he deadly seriously posits: Quilty, I said, do you recall a little girl called
Dolores Haze, Dolly Haze? Dolly called Dolores, Colo.? Quilty, thinks nothing of Lolita
to such an extent that he does not even understand the verb to call, mistaking it for by
telephone: Sure, she may have made those calls, sure. Any place. Paradise, Wash., Hell
Canyon. Who cares? (2000: 296).
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subject to another, Lolita is not the subject in Nabokovs novel either, but a
motive of someone elses manipulative and confabulatory reflection above
all; Humbert is the narrator who takes himself as a reference point, and
distorts reality by subordinating the truth to an a priori notion of himself,
even so much as to make him into the hero, claiming to have killed Quilty
in the firm belief that he is defending himself and his Lolita.
To this extent, Lolita is unable to escape Humbert in his domination of
the text. The most freedom she has is when Humbert recognizes she falls
out of the sphere of what he had once imagined her to be. When Humbert
realizes that his artistic creation does not exist anymore, though willing
to accept her even if she is pregnant and blemished, he has one of his
epiphanies, which are all the more obvious and frequent indicators
of Humberts growing inability to control himself and his own thoughts
[translation mine] (Paunovi, 2007: 135): I know that the hopelessly
poignant thing was not Lolitas absence from my side, but the absence of
her voice from that concord (Nabokov, 2000: 203). Yet, there is nothing of
regret, only his Lolita has surpassed him in life, and has now been disposed
of after having been consumed.
Lolita is never to reach being a self-individual or subject to others,
confirmed by her denial of abuse: She asked me not to be dense. The past
was the past. I had been a good father, she guessed granting me that
(2000: 272). She never overcomes the trauma but is induced by others
behavior and modeled as a victim apart from the fact as to whether in her
environment the abuser exists or not. Humbert does not simply determine
Lolitas fate; he also interjects that he loves her even if she has lost her
nymphet qualities, as if his love is a reward for her which in a great part
diminishes Lolita as an autonomous person.
6. One loves ultimately ones desires, not the thing desired.15

A superficial reading of Lolita will provide the reader with nothing more
than an account of one mans sad and pedophilic journey in the pursuit
to realize his own perverse goals, which end and begin in the death of
an elusive literary figure. The novel is clearly not meant to be taken as
such. Instead, an inspection of the narrative and its characters reveals a
15
Nietzsches aphorism
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criticism of finding ones identity in the consumption of an object, vis--vis

the postmodern culture of consumerism.
As a literary character, Humbert was drawn to and compelled by his
own nature to possess a nymphet. While this may have been his primary
motivation, it is also his tragic flaw. Without his Lolita in the young
Dolores Haze, there would be nothing of him to note. In fact, even though
a small majority of the novel consists of taking road trips, the reader
does not experience much of them beyond his poetical lusting of Lolita,
showing how closed he is to anything but his obsession of her. Albeit, there
is some development in his character, as at the end of the novel, Humbert
recognizes that his observations of the American landscape have been
distorted by the prism of his obsession: We had been everywhere. We had
really seen nothing (Parker, 1987: 83). Nevertheless, this admission only
comes after the fact and not during.
Just as consumerism instills a desire to have, hold and control an
object, Humbert wishes the same in his relationship to Lolita. Yet, he can
never be satisfied, even admitting in several places how transitory his
possession and her state are. It would not appear that Humbert ever lets
go of his obsession, even after having been sentenced to life imprisonment.
The diary he discloses to the court is the best proof how the disappearing
of the worshipped object did not decrease at all greatness of his affair. []
It would seem that Humbert, once again with exactly the same intensity, is
experiencing the sweetness and the agony of enormous (still) unfulfilled
passion [translation mine] (Paunovi, 1997: 113). Humberts identity is
far too much based on his pursuit of his ideal Lolita for him to abandon,
it is all that he has to characterize himself. Clearly, this is a criticism of
identity being based on self-reference to an object and, therefore, anticonsumerist.
Truthfully, Humberts prone position as he seeks to be the owner (for
lack of a better word) of Lolita is the only needed plot device of the story of
which all other subplots are based on. In the same instance, it is a criticism
of the same self-destructive pursuit of identity through consumption. What
Humbert wants is not to be had by any means, even if he fools himself
into believing it can be so. The fixation on his little nymphet forces him
along nonetheless, producing a character who would develop without
developing. As Williamson notes: Desire itself is channeled into this
endless, obsessive theorizing about desire harnessed in its own pursuit;
[] the more elusive its object, the more interesting this pursuit is [italics
288
mine] (1995: 12). Nonetheless, Humbert is only one actor in this story.
There could be no Humbert without Lolita to prod him onward. Just as
Humbert is defined by the object, his object is defined by him or perhaps,
has no definition beyond him.
If the novel can be taken as a censure of the consumerism for when
it was written, then Lolita is more than an object of a lecherous mans
desires. In fact, she may even be given as an epitome of consumerism itself
to lend even more criticism of her objectification. It has been observed that
the character of Lolita is indeed an ideal consumer (Nabokov and Appel,
1991: 62). In Humberts own description, he even mentions: She it was
to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of
every foul poster (Nabokov, 2000: 148). Indeed, the reader does not know
much about Lolita beyond the special natures of her nymphic qualities
Humbert so values in his object. In her youthful childishness and as a tragic
figure at the end of the novel, there is not even much to be said of her as
having individual characteristics separate than that Humbert assigns her.
In between though, in her more intimate time with Humbert, she comes
most typified by her wants and desires. Although this may not be atypical
for a teenager in postmodern popular culture, she is directly placed in the
story to reflect consumerist sentiment. However, while Lolita may be taken
as the ideal consumer, she is still a victim of being consumed, she herself
is consumed, pitifully, and there is, as Nabokov said, a queer, tender charm
about that mythical nymphet (Nabokov and Appel: 1991: 62).
One thing is certain for the novel. Lolita is but one part of that universe
of fiction arrayed around the consciousness of Nabokov, who would join
Humbert in his lament that words do indeed have their limitations, and
that the past is the past; to live in it, as Humbert tried, is to die (1991:
85). Indeed, Humbert has made this world of his own choosing, but is
jailed by it. He seeks his freedom as he creates his Lolita, striving for his
fulfillment and identity through her, but unable to do so, makes a tragedy
in the consumption of her and himself in the process.
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References:
Benjamin, W. (2010). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Prism Key Press.
Bennett, A. and R. Nicholas. (2004). An Introduction to Literature, Criticism
and Theory. UK: Longman.
Brand, D. (1987). Interaction of Aestheticism and American Consumer
Culture in Nabokovs Lolita. Modern Language Studies,17. 2, 14-21.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall.
Berkley: University of California Press.
Fiske, J. (1997). Reading the Popular. London and New York: Routledge.
. (2010). Understanding Popular Culture. USA and Canada: Routledge.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
Durham, NC.
Kauffman, L. (1989). Framing Lolita: Is There a Woman in the Text? In:
Yeager, P. and Kowalski Wallace, B. (eds.), Refiguring the Father:
New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 131-152.
Nabokov, V. (2000). Lolita. London: Penguin Classics.
Nabokov, V. and A. Jr. Appel. (eds.) (1991).The Annotated Lolita. New York:
Vintage Books.
Parker, S. J. Understanding Vladimir Nabokov. (1987). Columbia, South
Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.
Paunovi, Z. (1997). Gutai blede vatre. Beograd: Prosveta.
. (2006). Istorija, mit, fikcija. Beograd: Geopoetika.
Tonybee, A. J. (1974). A Study of History. Vol. 1: Abridgement of Volumes
I-VI. Oxford University Press.
Williamson, J. (1995). Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular
Culture. London: Marion Boyars Publishers.
Received: 16 June 2014
290
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292
UDC 821.111(73).09-1 .
Stefan Pajovi*
University of Novi Sad

Novi Sad, Serbia
INSTRUCTING THE INDIVIDUAL IN

DEMOCRACY IN WALT WHITMANS
LEAVES OF GRASS**
Abstract
The paper examines the democracy motif in Walt Whitmans lauded collection of
poetry Leaves of Grass. After an introduction which asserts Whitman as a writer
of democracy, the paper shifts towards the relationship between the individual
and democracy. The poets stance is that the individual is the building block of
American democracy. Whitmans own democratic views expressed in his poetry
serve as guidance to his fellow countrymen on how to develop their democratic
potential to the fullest. The conclusion dwells on the topicality of such a democratic
concept since America is in need of it now just as ever.
Key words: Walt Whitman, democracy, Leaves of Grass, individual, America,
poetry
*
**
E-mail address: stefan@capsred.com

The paper is part of the authors masters thesis defended at the Faculty of Philosophy in
Novi Sad in September 2013, under the mentorship of Zoran Paunovi, PhD.
293
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I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, / by God!

Walt Whitman, from The Song of Myself
1. Introduction
Walt Whitmans (1819 1892) greatest work was by far his collection of
poems entitled Leaves of Grass. First published anonymously in 1855, it
contained 12 unnamed poems preceded by a preface. Over the following
half a century it would be printed and edited several times, amounting to
the ultimate, Death-bed Edition of 1892, containing nearly 400 poems
(Oliver 2004: 105).
The reinstatement of democratic ideals was one of the main reasons
behind Whitmans poetry:
Anticipation lay in his hope that the nation, by seeing both its
best and its worst features reflected in the improving mirror of his
poetry, would reverse its current downward course and discover
new possibilities for inspiration and togetherness (Reynolds
1995: 111).
The work was by no means exclusively turned to the past, but possessed a
vein of futurity since the gap between the individual and the state was ever
widening and the events that would occur were becoming more and more
unpredictable, which perturbed Whitman. The very title of the collection
indicated the contradiction the poet had not only set down on paper but
lived by his entire life. In the compound, the leaves are juxtaposed to the
grass in its entirety, effectively forming an order or hierarchy in which
leaves are subordinated to the grass. However, the opposite is true as well,
as the grass could not exist sans its comprising members, i.e. the leaves,
which indicates that it too is in a subordinate position. The metaphor at
work, which the poet ingeniously creates, refers quite obviously to the
humankind and the issue of government, especially the American one.
The grass represents the people, the mass, but since it is characteristic
of grass not only to grow in turfs (nations) but also in individual leaves
(one person), Whitman points out that uniqueness, as a whole has its
place in this great world and the Universe (Lonar-Vujnovi 2007: 226).
It is interesting to notice that Whitman did not opt for the proper word
blades, but chose to comprise his grass of leaves (Karbiener 2004: 10),
294
Stefan Pajovi Instructing the Individual in Democracy in Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass
manifesting outwardly in the very title that he had faith in humankind and
his Americans. Blades are sharp, whereas leaves are not as rigid and can
adjust more easily, i.e. progress and transform themselves, creating the
perfect breeding ground for democracy.
It cannot be argued that the centerpiece of Whitmans artistic
endeavors was the individual, but the title of his magnum opus reveals
a troublesome relationship between the state and its subjects. By and
large, the vision of democracy Whitman advances in Leaves of Grass is an
explicitly constructed vision (Mack 2002: 22). In Whitmans own words
from the 1872 Preface the collection is, in its intentions, the song of
a great composite democratic individual, male or female (1982: 1004).
Summarized in one word, it is a yawp intended for Americans whose
characteristic democracy was becoming ever dormant, and susceptible to
erroneous paths it could take. But it is not a concept without a future, of
which Whitman wishes to remind his countrymen in Democratic Vistas, an
essay written after the Civil War:
We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too
often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps,
quite unawakend, notwithstanding the resonance and the many
angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or
tongue (1982: 960).
He goes on to conclude that it is a great word, whose history, I suppose,
remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted (Ibid.).
Whitman had become a crucial factor of this historic enactment, not
only through his poetry, but through his entire personage of a celebrated
national poet for celebrity had evolved into more than a quality granted
by the public; it was also a distinct category of democratic identity (Blake
2006: 29). For Karbiener Whitman is America, as he represents the best
that America can bethe promise of the new democracy (2004: 7).
2. Democratic literacy
Nationality, literature and democracy all share the same building block:
the individual. Whitmans famous opening lines of The Song of Myself,
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, claim that very same individual as
the object, as well as the subject, of the poets literary proclamation. By
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celebrating himself, he celebrates every Self in existence by ordering

them to introspect: You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with
me (Whitman 1982: 14). Langston Hughes (1902 1967), the author of
the famous poem I, Too Sing America, wrote of Whitmans potent first
person exclamation:
One of the greatest I poets of all time, Whitmans I is not
the I of the introspective versifiers who wrote always and
only about themselves. Rather it is the cosmic I of all peoples
who seek freedom, decency, and dignity, friendship and equality
between individuals and races all over the world.
One of the best confirmations of Hughes description is Whitmans address
To a Common Prostitute. By conversing through the medium of poetry
to this woman, who was considered the lowest of the low in society
(Karbiener 2004: 30), he clearly stipulates with whom he wants to chat,
effectively immersing them in his concept of democracy:
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to
rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
(Whitman 1982: 512).
The belonging to Nature is the only ticket to the poets world of democracy
as he was the bard of and for every person:
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffd with the stuff that is coarse and stuffd with the stuff
That is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same
and the largest the same (Whitman 1982: 203).
These opening lines of part 16 of the Song of Myself confirm the poets
universal and utterly contradictory vision of America, in which total
oppositions reside alongside one another.

Langston Hughes, The ceaseless Rings of Walt Whitman, (qtd. in Walt Whitman: The
Measure of his Song 97).
296
This intended cultivation of the individual is the cultivation of his

or her soul. It was a well-known fact since Antiquity that ones soul is
enriched by literature, but Whitman argues that even this democracy of
which we make so much, unerringly feeds the highest mind, the soul
(Whitman 1982: 986). Democracy is an instrument for schooling of the
individual, and the poets are the teachers which convey their message in a
radically new pedagogy of oneness:
The message of great poets to each man woman are, Come to
us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no
better than you, What we enclose you enclose, What you enjoy
we may enjoy (Whitman 1982: 14).
The great poet instructs Man not of Gods ways, but of his own. For Man
is the commonplace Whitman sings of in the eponymous poem:
The commonplace I sing;
The open air I sing, freedom, toleration,
(Take here the mainest lesson less from books less from
the schools,)
The common day and night the common earth and waters,
Your farm your work, trade, occupation,
The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all
(Whitman 1982: 651).
The closing couplet is important because it sheds light on the very
foundation of democracy. People who are the salt of the earth are glorified
as pillars of any democratic system and their mundane chores provide
the prolongation of any such system. Whitmans democracy has to work
from the bottom up, not hierarchically from the top down (Fletcher
2004: 122), which was the direction power circulated in bloodstream
of humanity during the previous centuries. In Whitmans view, America
was a nation of common people, all of whom are more important
individually and collectively than all the politicians who run the country
(Oliver 2004: 156).
The entire poem is, like the bulk of Whitmans poetry, an observation
which is inherently in the present tense. The present period did not
feature prominently in the literature of the 19th century, an observation
297
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which apparently held ground even in the first decades of the 20th century.
D.H. Lawrence wrote on the topic in 1920:
One realm we have never conquered: the pure present. One great
mystery of time is terra incognita to us: the instant. The most superb
mystery we have hardly recognized: the immediate, instant self. The quick
of all time is the instant. The quick of all the universe, of all creation, is the
incarnate, carnal self. Poetry gave us the clue: free verse: Whitman. Now
we know (qtd. in Bloom 2008: 128).
Democracy too necessarily privileges the here and now, just as time,
as we experience it, moves us progressively forward (Mack 2002: 58). Its
reach, the politically suitable carpe diem trait set aside, extends by default
into the future acting as a stark contrast to hereditary forms of government
which seek legitimacy in the past. In that sense, Whitmans poetry can be
regarded, along with his description of contemporary American society,
as being projected into the future, futuristic even, as a renowned Serbian
literary critic from the beginning of the 20th century, Todor Manojlovi,
noticed:
He introduced into poetry motifs, terms, and objects from modern
life which was up until that period regarded in poetry, simply as
unpoetic and impossible he started celebrating by means
of poetry (precursor to Futurism!) technical progress, factories,
machines, steamboats, trains he had in a similar manner the
means of expressing these new terms his tongue cast, poured
himself from the elements which no other contemporary poet
would have even mentioned: from life, rough and powerful
dialects of the street, suburbs, newspapers and farms (1998:
150).
Whitman truly was the bard of the future, as Henry Miller described him,
unlike his contemporaries, namely Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807
1882), who drew his poetic material from the past. That past is not a
very far away one, as in the poem The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,
which takes place at the onset of the American Revolution in 1775, but still
requires the reader to recollect or be in a reminiscent mood while reading
the lines.
However, democracy is such an institution of the soul that calls for an
equilibrium, rather than promoting extremities. Ivo Andri wrote that:

Lawrence, D. H. (1920). Poetry of the Present. Intro. to American edition of New Poems.
298
Whitman perceived the task of his democracy the democracy

of America and the world in generating a grand and a free
personality out of every individual, but at the same time generating
a powerful sense of solidarity in that individual (1977: 162).
Thomas Jefferson once wrote on the issue of the rigidity of constitutions
that dead had no rights, referring to the lawmakers (Mack 2002: 59).
In his famous preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman
wrote a nearly imbecilic assertion of reality: What is past is past
(Whitman 1982: 9). Behind this short sentence, whose plainness renders
it perfect for an advertizing slogan, lurks a radical stance Whitman takes
towards the legacy of the past. He does not denounce it entirely, but rather
calls for its re-evaluation, just as his country was a massive test for the
entire humankind up until the 18th century. He couldnt do away with his
predecessors because he was aware that he too would over time become
one of them. He decided to instruct the reader of the past, depriving it of
its own voice, but expecting in return that the free man or woman who
reads his lines draw the final conclusion, thus grandiosely asserting the
democratic self and fulfilling the promise of America, all through the
means of poetry:
You shall no longer take thing at second or third hand, nor

look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the

spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things

from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self
(Whitman 1982: 189-190).
Walt Whitman was the Hermes of American democracy, readily falling
in the battle for the preservation of the universal ideals his country was
founded on. He was in his opinion (nor take things from me) only a minor
casualty in the epic struggle in which every American carried upon himself
the enormous weight of freedom of thought (filter them from your self).
Whitmans repetitive I retransfers the burden of freedom to the you
of America, evoking in its citizens the initial concept of democracy that
had spawned the United States of America. In the first edition of Leaves
299
Belgrade BELLS
of Grass, the famous Song of Myself opened with and an I and ended
with a you, which was not followed by a period, indicating that Americas
democracy was still to a large extent a tabula rasa.
Before the Revolution, the Continent was in need of a republic of
equal citizens without hereditary titles, but in the 19th century that very
need took a different shape, embodied in the New Yorkers famous cry:
the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets
(Whitman 1982: 8). Whitman was to become one of these poets, but his
life work would fall short to his initial expectations.
3. Conclusion
American democracy today applies to a much greater number of people
than it did in the second half of the 19th century when Whitman lived. Thus,
its task of uniting all Americans seems more arduous than ever. Whitmans
poetry and its teaching are great instructors on how to overcome the
multitude by promoting the individual. His own democracy in personal,
intimate even, and present in every task he undertakes, whether intellectual
or physical. Individuals democracy acts as a cell which merges with other
such cells to build the organism of American democracy. The poets claim
is that if we ensure that each such cell remains healthy the entire organism
would too. The only way a democracy can be successful on the national
scale is by succeeding inside the respective members of that nation. In
Leaves of Grass there exists a shift of democracy, a gift one could say, that
the poet presents his fellow Americans with. He possesses democratic
sentiment in abundance and wishes to pass it over to the readers of the
collection. Perceived as such, democracy ceases to be a choice, but rather
an innateness that every individual is endowed with. For Whitman, it is
inseparable from being human and every man has a right to it, just as he
is entitled by birth to life and freedom. It is the pursuit of happiness that
The Declaration of Independence lists as an unalienable right.
Leaves of Grass thus serve as a handbook of sorts on how an individual
can awake the democratic feeling in himself. Such a concept of democracy
promulgated by Whitman did in fact prevail in the American society
and in terms led to the economic and political growth of the country in

In 1855 the poem did not bear that title, but was later named by Whitman.
300
the centuries that ensued. It is a democracy that rests on the pillars of

individuality and freedom, just as the Good Grey Poet had envisioned it.
References
Andri, I. (1977). Volt Vitmen (1819-1892): Jedno kratko seanje o
stogodinjici. Istorija i Legenda: Eseji I. Beograd: Prosveta, 157165.
Blake, D. H. (2006). Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity.
Yale: Yale UP.
Bloom, H. (ed.). (2008). Blooms Classic Critical Views: Walt Whitman. New
York: Infobase.
Fletcher, A. (2004). A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the
Environment, and the Future of Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Karbiener, K. (2004). Walt Whitman and the Birth of Modern American
Poetry: Course Guide. Prince Frederick: Recorded Books.
Lonar-Vujnovi, M. (2007). The Symbolic Presentation of Some
Transcendental and the Elements of Mystical Realism in Walt Whitman
and Emily Dickinson. Zbornik radova Filozofskog fakulteta, 37, 221235.
Mack, S. J. (2002). The Pragmatic Whitman: Reimagining American
Democracy. Iowa City: U of Iowa P.
Manojlovi, Todor. (1998). [Vitmen]. In: G. Tei (ed.), Osnove i Razvoj
Moderne Poezije. Zrenjanin: Gradska narodna biblioteka arko
Zrenjanin, 146150.
Oliver, C. M. (2004). Walt Whitman: A Literary Reference to his Life and
Work. New York: Facts On File.
Reynolds, D. S. (1995). Walt Whitmans America: A Cultural Biography.
New York: Vintage Books.
Whitman, W. (1982). Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York:
Library of America.
Received: 19 October 2014
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302
Notes to Contributors
Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies (Belgrade BELLS)

is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal issued by the Department
of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Philology, University of
Belgrade, Serbia.
The aim of the journal is to provide an international forum for current
investigations in English theoretical/applied linguistics and anglophone
literary/cultural studies.
The journal welcomes original research papers, book reviews, scholarly
interviews, conference reports, and commentaries.
Manuscripts (up to 10.000 words) should be submitted electronically:
belgrade.bells@gmail.com
Submission deadline: 1 April 2011
Contributions should be in English. Contributors whose native language
is not English are asked to have their manuscript carefully checked by a
native speaker.
Manuscripts should conform to the style sheet available on the Belgrade
Bells website:
http://www.belgrade.bells.fil.bg.ac.rs/
303
CIP -
,
811.111+82
BELGRADE English Language & Literature
Studies / editor- in-chief Radojka Vukevi. Vol. 1 (2009)- . - Belgrade : Faculty of Philology,
University of Belgrade, 2009- (Belgrade :
igoja tampa). - 24 cm
Godinje. - Drugo izdanje na drugom medijumu:
Belgrade English Language & Literature Studies (Online) =
ISSN 1821-4827
ISSN 1821-3138 = Belgrade English Language &
Literature Studies
COBISS.SR-ID 170838540
304

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DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE, SERBIA

Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies (Belgrade BELLS)

Stephan J. Greenblatt. Learning to Curse, New York: Routledge, p. 9.

Shakespearean Literary and Cultural Studies

Zorica Beanovi Nikolis paper entitled, Shakespeare Studies,

performed within the specific context of Londons burgeoning theatre scene

New Voices: Literary and Cultural Studies

UDC 82:929 .(047.53)

INTERVIEW: VESELIN KOSTI

THE EVERLASTING COMPANION

BELLS: It is an honor to interview you, dear Professor Kosti. This year

BELLS: You have made significant, voluminous contributions to

Interview: Veselin Kosti

BELLS: Some of the current methods of critical analysis applied

BELLS: What do you think about Jan Kotts Shakespeare Our

Interview: Veselin Kosti

and talented graduates, who have already made a remarkable contribution

distinguished Shakespearean scholars and organize their visits to our

SHAKESPEARE IN MUSIC THEATRE:

E-mail address: svrapajic@gmail.com

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

The Shakespeare of the romantics was not primarily an

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

some of the previous forms, like minstrel-shows, extravaganzas, revues,

of the contemporary world, becoming political and radically satirical,

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

American theater company producing and performing a musical version of

I have before my eyes a kind of mirage of the perfection of verse

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

Although parallel to Shakespeares play, the plot in West Side Story

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

symphony forever on the verge of exploding. And it moved us with the

It is the American musical on the rare occasions when it fulfils

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

involves Viola, who pretends to be a boy in order to join an all-male rock

the choreography by Angelin Preljocaj, a star of modern French ballet, sets

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

Svetozar Rapaji Shakespeare in Music Theatre: West Side Story

UNTYING THE KNOT: SHAKESPEARES

E-mail address: jelce@EUnet.rs

as well as a dramatic writer in his poemshow much of each in which

day English, meant in Shakespeares day insubstantial image: Sonnet

2. Critical assesment of the translations of Sonnets 27 and 144

Osim to, izmatan mojom duom,

2. 2 Critical assesment of the translations of Sonnet 144

Dve ljubavi imam oseanja tesnac

mrano./ Da li je tako, nikad neu znati/ Dok zli aneo beljeg ne

the originaland correct the mistakes of their predecessors, insofar as they

Klajn, H. (1964). ekspir kod Jugoslovena in: Klajn, H. ekspir i ovetvo,

Vivian, P. (1900) A dictionary of literary terms. London: G. Routledge & sons.

SVETISLAV STEFANOVIS INTERPRETATION

E-mail address: dubravka.djuric@fmk.edu.rs

2. Constructing modern national literature and the function

were considered to be of secondary importance, but translating is now

considered at the time to be world literature. Written within the Serbian

3. T.S. Eliot and the definition of a classic and a European poet

4. Stefanovis Shakespeare as a classic and modern playwright