Shakespeare and Modernity: Early Modern to Millennium (Accents on Shakespeare)

247 Pages·2000·0.79 MB·English

by  Hugh Grady

ACCENTS ON SHAKESPEARE
General editor: TERENCE HAWKES

Shakespeare and Modernity

Shakespeare has variously been seen as the last great exponent of
pre-modern Western culture, a crucial inaugurator of modernity, and
a prophet of postmodernity.
This exciting collection of essays traces the changing reception of
Shakespeare over the past four hundred years. Along the way it
provides fascinating insights into:

• the nature of individuality, identity, subjectivity, and the self
• the interrelations of the rise of capitalism, nation-states, modern
gender roles, and secular culture
• the development of art as a secular and critical mode of
knowledge
• the beginnings of Western colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism.

This fresh look at Shakespeare’s plays is an important contribution
to the revival of the idea of ‘modernity’ and how we periodize
ourselves, and Shakespeare, at the beginning of a new millennium.
Hugh Grady is Professor of English at Beaver College,
Pennsylvania, and author of The Modernist Shakespeare (1991) and
Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf (1996).
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
developments 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
concerns. 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
Shakespeare and Modernity
Edited by Hugh Grady
Philosophical Shakespeares
Edited by John Joughin
Shakespeare and
Modernity

Early modern to millennium
Edited by
HUGH GRADY

London and New York
First published 2000 A catalogue record for this book is
by Routledge available from the British Library
11 New Fetter Lane, London
EC4P 4EE Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Data
Simultaneously published in the USA
and Canada Grady, Hugh.
by Routledge Shakespeare and modernity: early
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY modern to millennium/Hugh Grady.
10001 p. cm. – (Accents on
Shakespeare)
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Includes bibliographical references (p. )
Francis Group and index.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–
This edition published in the Taylor 1616–Criticism and interpretation –
& Francis e-Library, 2002. History. 2. Literature and history –
Great Britain – History. I.
© 2000 Hugh Grady Title. II. Series.
PR2965.G73 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this 822.3’3–dc21 00-025453
book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in
writing from the publishers. ISBN 0-415-21201-4 (pbk)
ISBN 0-415-21200-6 (hbk)
British Library Cataloguing in ISBN 0-203-14104-0 Master e-book ISBN
Publication Data ISBN 0-203-22084-6 (Glassbook Format)
Contents

List of contributors vii
General editor’s preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction: Shakespeare and modernity 1
Hugh Grady
2 (Post) modern Elizabeth: Gender, politics, and the
emergence of modern subjectivity 20
Stephen Cohen
3 Ante-aesthetics: Towards a theory of early modern
audience response 40
Charles Whitney
4 Shakespeare, modernity and the aesthetic: Art, truth
and judgement in 61
The Winter’s Tale John J. Joughin
5 Measure for Measure and modernity: The problem of
the sceptic’s authority 85
Lars Engle
6 ‘Jew. Shylock is my name’: Speech prefixes in
The Merchant of Venice as symptoms of the early modern 105
John Drakakis
7 The Merchant of Venice: ‘Modern’ anti-Semitism and
the veil of allegory 122
Lisa Freinkel
vi Contents
8 Jewish invader and the soul of state: The Merchant
of Venice and science fiction movies 142
Eric S. Mallin
9 Shakespeare and the end of history: Period as
brand name 168
Douglas Bruster
10 The Hamlet formerly known as Prince 189
Linda Charnes
References 211
Index 227
Contributors

Douglas Bruster is Assistant Professor of English at the University
of Texas at Austin and author of Drama and the Market in the Age of
Shakespeare.
Linda Charnes is Associate Professor of English and Cultural
Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington and is the author of
Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare.
Stephen Cohen is Assistant Professor of English at the University of
South Alabama. He has written for the journals Criticism, Mosaic, and
REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature.
John Drakakis is Professor of English at the University of Stirling
and editor of several works in Shakespeare studies, including
Alternative Shakespeares and Shakespearean Tragedy.
Lars Engle is Associate Professor of English and Honors Director at
the University of Tulsa and author of Shakespearean Pragmatism:
Market of his Time.
Lisa Freinkel is Assistant Professor of English at the University of
Oregon and author of Reading Shakespeare’s Will: The Theology of
Figure from Augustine to the Sonnets.
Hugh Grady is Professor of English at Beaver College and author of
The Modernist Shakespeare: Critical Texts in a Material World and
Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf: Studies in Early Modern Reification.
viii Contributors
John J. Joughin is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of
Central Lancashire and editor of Shakespeare and National Culture and
of Philosophical Shakespeares.
Eric S. Mallin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of

Texas at Austin and author of Inscribing the Time: Shakespeare and the
End of Elizabethan England.
Charles Whitney is Associate Professor of English at the University
of Nevada at Las Vegas and author of Francis Bacon and Modernity.
General editor’s preface

In our time, the field of literary studies has rarely been a settled,
tranquil place. Indeed, for over two decades, the clash of opposed
theories, prejudices and points of view has made it more of a
battlefield. Echoing across its most beleaguered terrain, the student’s
weary complaint ‘Why can’t I just pick up Shakespeare’s plays and
read them?’ seems to demand a sympathetic response.
Nevertheless, we know that modern spectacles will always impose
their own particular characteristics on the vision of those who
unthinkingly don them. This must mean, at the very least, that an
apparently simple confrontation with, or pious contemplation of, the
text of a four-hundred-year-old play can scarcely supply the
grounding for an adequate response to its complex demands. For
this reason, a transfer of emphasis from ‘text’ towards ‘context’ has
increasingly been the concern of critics and scholars since the
Second World War: a tendency that has perhaps reached its climax
in more recent movements such as ‘New Historicism’ or ‘Cultural
Materialism’.
A consideration of the conditions, social, political, or economic
within which the play came to exist, from which it derives, and to
which it speaks will certainly make legitimate demands on the
attention of any well-prepared student nowadays. Of course, the
serious pursuit of those interests will also inevitably start to
undermine ancient and inherited prejudices, such as the supposed
distinction between ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ in literary
studies. And even the slightest awareness of the pressures of gender
or of race, or the most cursory glance at the role played by that
strange creature ‘Shakespeare’ in our cultural politics, will reinforce