Reviews 141

no theortzation of Renaissance sexuality orofits use in readings of the plays. Instead

rhat sexuality is viewed on the model of (oppressively sexist) twentieth-centun
([instructions of homosexuality, (One footnote lists as 'sexual perversions' trans-
icstism, homosexuality, voyeurism, and sadism!) Marlowe's sexuality has to be
constructed as recognizable deviancy; to view it historically may dissolve this
category, This absence of cultural materialism is not an oversight as much as a
precondition for constructing the quirky Marlowe.
On the evidence of this book, the Marlowe industr> needs to maintain in being an
always-marginalized Marlowe, who then requires critical activity to assess his
rrlationship to a canon of great art. This critical activity tends lo find its (comfort-
sbic • legitimation in the 'personality' of its author, rather than in an explicitly
theorized project. Invent afilthyplay-maker, then you can write about his filth
' OF NOTTtNGHAM SiMON SHEPHERD

Shakespearean Segotiatwns: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. By

STEPHEN GREENBUATT, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, xii H-205pp. £22,50.
Skaktspeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. Edited by JEAN E , HOWARD
and MARION F, O'CONNOR. New York and London: Methuen. 1987.
vi + 292 pp, £8.95,
Sia^e Images and Traditions: Shakespeare to Ford. By MARION LOMAX. Cambridge,
London, and New York: Cambridge University Press. 1987. xii + 202pp.
£22.50,
Shaktspeart's Political Drama: The History Plays and The Roman Plays. By ALEXANDER
LEGGATT. London and New York: Routledge. 1988. xvi-^266pp, £30,00.
Stephen Greenblatt's work in Renaissance literature, history, and culture was
alreadv widely known, deeply respected, and profoundly influential before Shake-
ipraremt Segotiations was es'er published. Since the appearance of his Renaissance
ifif-Fashiomng: From More to Shakespeart (Chicago and London, 1980) the studies
contained in this volume have been developing through a compiex individual
process of revision and revaluation, and a complex collaborative network of
conference presentations, journal articles, essays in anthologies, a.nd festschriften. Of
the [our substantive chapters, three have been available in earlier versions from as
far back as 1981: one was published three times in diflerent forms, in a journal, an
anthology, and a Jestschrijt, before its incorporation into Shakespearean Negotiations
'Invisible Bullets', Chapter 2 of the present voiume, first appeared in Glyph, 8
1981 j, 40-61, then in revised versions in Political Shakespeare, edited by ,'Vlan Sinfield
and Jonathan Dollimore (Manchester, 1985), pp. 18-47, and in Peter Ericksen and
Coppclia Kahn, Shakespeare's 'Rough Magic': Renaissance Essays in Honour of C. L
Bari)er (Newark, Delaware, 1985), pp, 276-302), This extensive dissemination of
theoretical (>erspectives and analytical examples has made Professor Greenblatt's
wTiting a constant reference-point for critics of Renaissance culture throughout the
present decade. The work embodied in this book could certainly be regarded in its
('*n right, as having travelled through, and having constituted, a formidable
circulation of intellectual and social energy.
The basic theoretical approach of Professor Greenblatt's 'new historicism' takes
us starting-point from an interdisciplinary convergence of literary and historical
methodologies. The traditionally constitutive structures of literary tinderstanding
the author, the canon, the organic text) are deconstructed, and the dramatic texts
returned to the historical culture from which they emanated. The traditionally
indispensable techniques of literary investigation (verbal analysis, qualitative
142 Reviews

identification, evaluation) are largely abandoned in favour of an intertextual

juxtapositioning of authorized literary works with the produas of 'non-literan
ducourses. Thus the second tetralogy of history plays is discussed in relation tt,
Thomas Harriot's/I Brief and True Report of the New iFound Land of Virginia (i588f
Twelfth Night is made to interpenetrate with a medical treatise, Jacques Duval's On
Hermaphrodites, Childbirth, attd tht Medical Treatment ofMothers and Children (\(>o'i); King
Lear is linked to Samuel Harsnett's A Declaration of Egregious Popuh imposUrs (16031.
The Tempest is drawn inSo a much closer relationship than has been previoush
acknowledged with William Strachey's 'A True Repertory of the Wrack, and
Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight', published in 1625, Other plays and other
texts, together with contemporary beliefs and cultural customs, social practices, and
institutional structures, are continually thrown into an exciting and liberatine
interplay of discourses, as Professtir Greenblatt traces the continuous flow anc
circulation of ideological forms and political interventions throughout the compio
i:>ody of Renaissance society, Tbe isolation of Shakespeare as deified author, and tht-
strict perimeters of demarcation between Shakespearean texts and other forms oi
writing, are convincingly broken down, and Renaissance culture opened up to new
methcids of literary and Iriistoricai analysis. The ultimate objective of that analysis is
the sphere of the political: through verbal and structural investigation of a range ol
rhetorical strategies, the critic discloses the conditions of cultural, ideological, and
political power, and the dramatic texts become sites for the negotiation and
authorization, interrogation and subversion, containment and recuperation of tht
forms of Renaissance pH:iwer.
As I have already indicated, the work of,American 'new historicism' intersects at
many points with the procedures of radical critics concerned with tbt 'political
investigation of Renais,sance culture. On the other hand, there are important differ-
ences between American 'new historicism' and British 'cultural materialism"
differences that are now becoming more clearly visible than they were a mere few
years ago are examined at length in Shakespeare Reproduced, and are focused in a
particularly intensive way by the appearance of Shakespearean Negotiations. Cultural
materialism is much more concerned to engage with contemporary cultural prac-
tices, where new historicism confines its focus of attention to the past; cultural
materialism can be overtly, even stridently polemical aixiut its political implica-
tions, where new hisloricism tends to efface them. Cultural materialism partiv
derives its theory and method from the kind of cultural criticism exemplified b\
Raymond Williams, and through that inheritance stretches its roots into the British
tradition of Marxist cultural anaiysis, and thence into the wider movement for
socialist education and emancipation; new historicism has no sense of a correspond-
ing political legacy, and takes its intellectual bearings directly from 'post-structurai
theoretical and philosophical models, American 'political' critics seem to think of
their ideology as having been formed in the environment of tgfcs campus radicalism
— in 'the political crucible of the 1960s' (in the words of Don E, Wayne, in
Shakespeare Reproduced, p, 48) — where their British counterparts are at least as likelv
to derive their ideological formation from the free milk and orange juice of the
post-war socialist reconstruction.
Political criticism, like sex, is something you cannot do effectively on your own,
and on the American side of the Atlantic the natural form for radical criticism to take
seems to have been the critical anthology, the forum fora collaborative hut abrasive
conjuncture of different voices — the papers of the Essex ajiiference: 1642: Literatan
and Power in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Francis Barker and others (Colchester,
1981); Political Shakespeare: AitematiBt Shakespearts., edited by John Drakakis (Lon-
don, 1985); The ShtUusptare Myth, edited by Graham Holdemess (Manchester,
1988), Precisely because Professor Greenhlatt's work has been developed within
 Reviews 143

such a system of collaboration, and has appeared so often already in the context of
ihese ccfliective forms, its manifestation in the form of this elegant, urbane, and
icamed monograph seems strikingly to characterize an individual voice, unmistak-
ahh distinctive even as it denies its own autonomy: 'I began with the desire to speak
with (he dead, , ., It was true that I could hear only my own voice, but my own voice
nas the voice of the dead, for the dead had contrived to leave textual traces of
tiiemselv es, and those traces make themselves heard in the voices of the living' (p, 1).
On the strength of this, if Roland Barthes had met T, S, Eliot somewhere on the road
to Little Gidding, Stephen Greenblatt would have been the third who walked always
tK-sidf them. This is not only an individual voice, and the voice of an accomplished
rhetorician: it is also a highly mannered voice bespeaking a form of cultural
ciuthority. Evidently when New Historicism seeks to give utterance to the voices of
ihose witnesses normally eliminated from the history of a culture — the subversive
and the oppressed, the marginalized and the dispossessed — it needs simul-
lancoush to adopt a voice capable of contesting power and authority within the
apparatus of that ver,' academic institution established to suppress those los! voices.
I'riifessor Cireenblatt s work has already, significantly, been acknowledged (see
i)elowi as the acceptable face of political criticism, and many a voice crying
t iimpellingly in the wilderness has ended up as a voice droning unopposed through
tht Senior Common Room,
.Shakespeare Reproduced is an international though predominantly American pro-
duct, emanating from the International Shakespeare Congress held in West Berlin
m 1986. Co-ediled by two women, one American and one British, it publi,shes eleven
contributions from Atnerica, two from the GDR, and one from Britain. Most of
the contributions adopt what is by now a familiar form, the discussion of one play in
relation to the literary and philosophical problems and methods of deconstruction,
feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, race, politics, and his«or>. W'hile these are ail
impressive pieces of work, they leave a sense of unfulfilment, not simply because they
operate within a well-tried professional format but because the editors arsd contribu-
tors an- continually promising or demanding something more. The editors write:
Other work beckons, as well. We need examinations of Shakespeare's use al all levels of thr
educational system, and not just in coilege,s and universities; and we need ro investigate Ihr
itirulogical use of Shakespeare in olher wide-reaching cultural practices such as television and
him Bui even then, we would argue, the work of a political and historical criticism of
Shaiespeare wil! not be done, Shakespeare is constantly reproduced in the general discourses
of rulture and is used to authorize practices as diverse as buying perfume, watching
Masterpiece Theatre, or dispatching troops to far-fiung comers of the giolif. We need studies
Miiirjj consider particular uses of the name or image of Shakespeare or of Shakespearean
plav-tities, speeches or snippets of verse in advertising, in popular culture magazines, in
poiitical rhetoric. Ignoring these uses of Shakespeare as trivia) or beyond our expertise means
acquiescing in the separation of the academy from general cuhure and means ignoring, as
well, much of what m our own time may be of significancr to a political and hiistorical
miicism. ('Introduction', p, t6)
See also Waller Cohen, 'Political Criticism of Shakespeare', p. 39), Few of the
writers actually address these issues: those who do produce some extremely valuable
and interesting contributions. Waiter Cohen's detailed and extensive discussion of
the growth and development of'political criticism' in Renaissance studies provides a
model example for the cultural an^ysis of academic and educational institutions,
and shows a critic beginning to take seriously the txjststtructuralist imperative to
investigate and identify all ideolo^cal positions, including our own, Don E, Wayne
supplements this essay with an tUuminatittg account of the differences between
American and British forms of radical criticism, Robert Weimann's essay on
Mimesis, Representation, Authority', though part of a fatniliar and continuous
144 Reviews

project, further advances the understanding and usefulness of these problematica:

terms, Bui the jewel in the crown o( Shakespeare Reproduced, and the one essay tha-
really takes the volume into new territory, is Marion F, O'Connor's examination ol
the 'Shakespeare's F-ngland' exhibition at Earl's Court, 1912: 'Theatre of thf
Empire', 'Fhi.s fascinating and scholarly essay moves quite beyond the weU-troddra
paths of textual rereading to the elaborate decoding of another kind of text, one 0:
those significant 'reproductions' of Shakespeare with which the volume as a whole n,
cleariy laiis to engage. Moving from society costume balis, through the productions
of Wiiiiam Poel's Eli:eabethan Stage Society, Queen Victoria's Jubilee,Counfr> £!/?
Illustrated, and the architectural style of Edward Lutyens, Professor O'Connor take»
us to view the simulated reconstructions of Drake's Revenge and Shakespeare's Globt
Theatre at an exhibition which clearly expresses vividly and eloquently the spirit oi
imperial Britain shortly before the First World War. In place of the 'arbitran
connectedness' which Walter Cohen identifies as the key method and the struciuraj
weakness of new historicism (p, 34), Professor O'Connor links her diversified and
disparate dements into a piowerful analysis of ideologicai and institutional
reproduction.
Marion l^max's book i,s very- much a product of the British tradition of theatn
history, but also seems, perhaps unconsciousiy, to intersect with that enterprisinir
(ontemporary attempt to deveiop an empirically-based methodology of theatrr
semiotics, uncontaminated by foreign theory. Her concern is to anaiyse the languap
of theatre in terms of its visual, scenic, and spectacular effects rather than its verbal
dimension: drawing on the syml>olic discourses of medievai culture, and on thf
internal stage-directions of the plays themselves, she applies this analysis to plays h\
Shakespeare, Heywood, Webster, and Ford, with much reference to conjectured
Renaissance stagings, and a iittle to modern productions. Her methtxls of decodins
symlwlic language are in themselves far too traditional to make the book a genuineh
innovative contribution.
,Alexander Leggatt's bocjk on Shakespeare's Political Drama opens ominously: 'It is
now customary for a critic dealing with the English histories in particular to begin
with a ritual attack on E, M, W, "Fillyard's Shakespeare's History Plays (1944), ! think
we have had enough of this' (p, xi). Professor Leggatt will have none of thi
contemporary vogue for regarding everything as political: to him 'political mean-,
'to do with fKilitics', The book itself has in fact precious little to do with politics of an\
kind, far iess in fact than Tillyard's: it is a familiar and ver\' boring series of exerciser
in practical criticism. He singles out Stephen Greenbiatt as a 'powerful and
impre,ssive' but ideoiogicaliy blinkered representative of the new 'single minded
poiitica! criticism (p. 254n.), It is hard to imagine anything more single minded (il
that is not too mucli of an exaggeration) than Professor Leggatt's nose-to-the-pag<
method of literary anaiysis. Safely corralled into the footnotes are a series oi
references to modern peri'ormances of the plays under discussion, apparentiy thert
for no good reason except to show that Professor Leggatt goes to the theatre. Most oi
them are exampies of the kind of observation iiterary critics imagine to be con-
vincing attempts at performance analysis: efforts to capture that living moment in
which an actor conveys, by some graphic physical gesture, an interpretative
inflection of some line or speech: 'at this point Antony Sher waved his crutches in a
gesture of ineffable malevolence', or, 'here Ian Holm grimaced as if ite could feel the
rats already gnawing into his scrotum'. In this area of literary/theatrical re\'iewing,
actors are no more than literary critics who wear funny clothes and do their practical
criticism standing up. Does anybody really read this stuff any more?
ROEHAMPTON iNSTITtnTE GRAHAM H O L D E R N E »