Marxist Shakespeares (Accents on Shakespeare)

321 Pages·2001·1.33 MB·English

by  Jean E. Howard

ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE
General editor: TERENCE HAWKES
Marxist Shakespeares
Marxist Shakespeares uses the rich analytic resources of the Marxist tradi-
tion to redefine what the study of Shakespeare can mean. The essays
collected here reveal that Marxism remains an inescapable challenge to
prevailing modes of literary scholarship, essential to addressing such
issues as:
• the relationship of texts to social class
• the historical construction of the aesthetic
• the utopian dimensions of literary production
• the role of literature in nationalist and anti-nationalist projects
This book offers new insights into the historical conditions within
which Shakespeare’s representations of class and gender emerged, and
into Shakespeare’s role in the world-wide culture industry stretching
from Hollywood to the Globe Theatre.
Marxist Shakespeares will be a vital resource for students of
Shakespeare as it examines Marx’s own readings of Shakespeare,
Derrida’s engagement with Marx, and the importance of Pierre
Bourdieu, Georges Bataille, and Alice Clark within a continuing
tradition of Marxist thought.
Jean E. Howard teaches Early Modern literature at Columbia
University. She is the author of The Stage and Social Struggle in Early
Modern England (1994) and co-author, with Phyllis Rackin, of Engendering
a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (1997).
Scott Cutler Shershow teaches English literature and literary theory
at Miami University, Ohio. He is the author of Puppets and Popular
Culture (1996), and of articles on Renaissance drama, popular culture
and cultural studies.
ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE
General Editor: TERENCE HAWKES
It is more than twenty years since the New Accents series helped to
establish ‘theory’ as a fundamental and continuing feature of the study
of literature at undergraduate level. Since then, the need for short,
powerful ‘cutting edge’ accounts of and comments on new develop-
ments has increased sharply. In the case of Shakespeare, books with
this sort of focus have not been readily available. Accents on
Shakespeare aims to supply them.
Accents on Shakespeare volumes will either ‘apply’ theory, or
broaden and adapt it in order to connect with concrete teaching con-
cerns. In the process, they will also reflect and engage with the major
developments in Shakespeare studies of the last ten years.
The series will lead as well as follow. In pursuit of this goal it will be a
two-tiered series. In addition to affordable, ‘adoptable’ titles aimed
at modular undergraduate courses, it will include a number of
research-based books. Spirited and committed, these second-tier
volumes advocate radical change rather than stolidly reinforcing the
status quo.
IN THE SAME SERIES
Shakespeare and Appropriation
Edited by Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer
Shakespeare Without Women
Dympna Callaghan
Philosophical Shakespeares
Edited by John J. Joughin
Shakespeare and Modernity: Early Modern to Millennium
Edited by Hugh Grady
Marxist Shakespeares
Edited by Jean E. Howard and Scott Cutler Shershow
Marxist
Shakespeares
Edited by
JEAN E. HOWARD and
SCOTT CUTLER SHERSHOW
London and New York
First published 2001 British Library Cataloguing in
by Routledge Publication Data
11 New Fetter Lane,
A catalogue record for this book is available
London EC4P 4EE
from the British Library
Simultaneously published
Library of Congress Cataloging in
in the USA and Canada
Publication Data
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, Marxist Shakespeares / Jean E. Howard
New York, NY 10001 and Scott Cutler Shershow.
p. cm — (Accents on Shakespeare)
Routledge is an imprint of the Includes bibliographical references and
Taylor & Francis Group index.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—
This edition published in the Political and social views. 2. Literature
Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. and society—England—History—16th
century. 3. Women and literature—
© 2001 Jean E. Howard and England—History—16th century.
Scott Cutler Shershow; individual 4. Marxist criticism. I. Howard, Jean E.
chapters, the respective contributors (Jean Elizabeth), 1948– II. Shershow,
Scott Cutler, 1953– III. Series.
All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reprinted or reproduced PR3024.M39 2000
or utilized in any form or by any 822.3′3—dc21 00–030823
electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter ISBN 0–415–20234–5 (pbk)
invented, including photocopying and ISBN 0–415–20233–7 (hbk)
recording, or in any information ISBN 0-203-13118-5 Master e-book ISBN
storage or retrieval system, without ISBN 0-203-18754-7 (Glassbook Format)
permission in writing from the
publishers.
Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements x
General editor’s preface xi
1 Introduction: Marxism now, Shakespeare now 1
Jean E. Howard and Scott Cutler Shershow
2 “Well grubbed, old mole”: Marx, Hamlet, and the (un)fixing
of representation 16
Peter Stallybrass
3 An impure history of ghosts: Derrida, Marx, Shakespeare 31
Richard Halpern
4 Looking well to linens: women and cultural production in
Othello and Shakespeare’s England 53
Dympna Callaghan
5 “Judicious oeillades”: supervising marital property in The
Merry Wives of Windsor 82
Natasha Korda
6 The rape of Jesus: Aemilia Lanyer’s Lucrece 104
Barbara E. Bowen
7 The undiscovered country: Shakespeare and mercantile
geography 128
Walter Cohen
vi Contents
8 The management of mirth: Shakespeare via Bourdieu 159
Richard Wilson
9 Shakespeare’s Globe? 178
Crystal Bartolovich
10 The Shakespeare film and the Americanization of culture 206
Denise Albanese
11 Measure for Measure: Marxism before Marx 227
Kiernan Ryan
12 Shakespeare beyond Shakespeare 245
Scott Cutler Shershow
Bibliography 265
Index 287
Contributors
Denise Albanese is Associate Professor of English and Cultural
Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is the
author of New Science, New World (Duke University Press, 1996), and she
works on critical science and technology studies as well as on early
modern culture and Shakespeare performance. She is currently at work
on a study of Kenneth Branagh, “popular” Shakespeare, and the place
of American Anglophilia in global culture.
Crystal Bartolovich is an Assistant Professor of English and Textual
Studies at Syracuse University. She has published essays on a range of
topics in Marxism and early modern cultural studies; currently, she is
completing a book manuscript, Boundary Disputes: Notes on the Socialization
of Culture.
Barbara E. Bowen is Associate Professor of English at Queens
College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
She has published a book on Troilus and Cressida and articles on African
American literature and the politics of academic labor. She has been
active for twenty years in the labor movement and is a union leader at
CUNY. Her current research project is a book on Aemelia Lanyer.
Dympna Callaghan is William P. Tolley Professor in the Humanities
at Syracuse University. She is author of Woman and Gender in Renaissance
Tragedy (Harvester, 1989) and Shakespeare Without Women (Routledge,
viii Contributors
1999); co-author of The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics
(Blackwell, 1994), and co-editor of Feminist Readings in Early Modern
Culture: Emerging Subjects (Cambridge University Press, 1996). In add-
ition, she has edited two collections, A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare
(Blackwell, 2000) and The Duchess of Malfi Casebook (Macmillan, 2000).
Walter Cohen is Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell
University, where he is also Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate
School. He has published Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance
England and Spain (Cornell University Press, 1985) and co-edited The
Norton Shakespeare (Norton, 1997).
Richard Halpern is Professor of English at the University of
California at Berkeley. He is author of The Poetics of Primitive
Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital
(Cornell University Press, 1991) and Shakespeare Among the Moderns
(Cornell University Press, 1997).
Jean E. Howard teaches English at Columbia University. Her recent
books include The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England
(Routledge, 1994) and, with Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A
Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (Routledge, 1997). She is
one of the editors of The Norton Shakespeare (Norton, 1997) and General
Editor of the Bedford Text and Context Shakespeare Series. She is at
work on a new book, Theater of a City: Social Change and Generic Innovation
on the Early Modern Stage.
Natasha Korda is an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan
University. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled
Household Stuff: Shakespeare’s Domestic Economics, and is co-editing an
anthology with Jonathan Gil Harris entitled Staged Properties: Props and
Property in Early Modern English Drama.
Kiernan Ryan is Professor of English at Royal Holloway, University
of London, and a Fellow of New Hall, University of Cambridge. He
is the author of Shakespeare (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989; 3rd edn.,
Macmillan, 2001) and the editor of King Lear: Contemporary Critical Essays
(Macmillan, 1993), New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A Reader
(Arnold, 1996), Shakespeare: The Last Plays (Longman, 1999), and
Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts (2000).
Scott Cutler Shershow is Associate Professor of English at Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of Laughing Matters: The
Paradox of Comedy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), Puppets and
Contributors ix
“Popular” Culture (Cornell University Press, 1996), and, more recently,
of articles on early modern drama, cultural studies, and literary theory.
Peter Stallybrass is Professor of English at the University of
Pennsylvania where he also directs the seminar on the History
of Material Texts. With Allon White he wrote The Politics and Poetics
of Transgression (Cornell University Press, 1986), and with David Scott
Kastan he edited Staging The Renaissance (Routledge, 1991). He recently
completed a book with Ann Rosalind Jones entitled Renaissance Clothing
and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
His essays on Marx and materiality have just been published in
Portuguese under the title of Marx’s Coat (Belo Horizonte, Brazil:
Autentica, 1999).
Richard Wilson is Professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of
the Shakespeare Programme at the University of Lancaster. He is the
author of Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority (Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1993) and the editor, with Richard Dalton, of New
Historicism and Renaissance Drama (Longman 1992). He has also edited
Christopher Marlowe (Longman 1999) and Julius Caesar (MacMillan
2000). His study of Shakespeare and Catholicism, Secret Shakespeare, is
forthcoming from Manchester University Press.