Ab ovo or in medias res? Rewriting History for the Early Modern Stage Or, How Elizabethan History Plays Collapsed Referentiality

Shakespeare’s representations of history often have replaced history itself in the popular imagination: Julius Caesar, Margaret of Anjou, Henry V, Richard III — popular recollections of their lives and deaths are intimately linked with Shakespeare’s account of their stories, despite the playwright’s deviations from historical fact. In order to “make” history through the power of words, as suggested by the Prologue of Henry V, Elizabethan history plays continuously altered history, deviating both from historical facts and classical rules of dramatic writing. This contribution will discuss the several referential crises created and embodied by Elizabethan history plays, showing how the flaunting of mimetic rules inherited from Aristotle, and from the rules of historiographic writing, allowed Shakespeare and his contemporaries to rival and challenge God’s Creation — much to the dismay of Puritan antitheatricalists. Elizabethan history plays made and unmade history, providing competing accounts of the past, using anachronism to express their nostalgia for a past which, despite its ability to relive on stage, remains but an “airy nothing”.Les représentations de l’histoire par Shakespeare ont souvent remplacé l’histoire elle-même dans l’imagination populaire : Jules César, Marguerite d'Anjou, Henri V, Richard III… Les souvenirs les plus connus de leur vie et mort sont intimement liés aux récits de Shakespeare, malgré ses déviations par rapport aux faits historiques. Afin de « faire » l’histoire par le truchement des mots, comme le suggère le Prologue de Henry V, les « Histories » élisabéthaines se plaisent à continuellement modifier l’histoire, s’écartant des faits historiques et des règles classiques de l’écriture dramatique. Cette contribution traitera des différentes crises référentielles créées et incarnées par les pièces historiques élisabéthaines, montrant comment l’application des règles mimétiques héritées d’Aristote et des règles de l’écriture historiographique ont permis à Shakespeare et à ses contemporains de concurrencer la Création divine, au grand dam des puritains théâtrophobes. Les pièces historiques élisabéthaines font et défont l'histoire, fournissant des récits concurrents du passé, utilisant l’anachronisme pour exprimer une nostalgie pour un passé qui, même lorsqu’il revit sur scène, demeure un « néant aérien »

La nuit genrée ou l’obscure clarté des scènes anglaises

Gendered night, or the nocturnal brightness of the early modern English stage In French, critics speak of the night using feminine terms, but the term is grammatically neutral in English. Despite this neutrality, night may be gendered. In Romeo and Juliet, virgins hide their shame from their lovers by hiding in the dark. If night is consecrated for love games, it is also a time for death. In Macbeth, Satan acts in media nocte, and Lady Macbeth calls on night and the « ministers of hell » to murder in secret. Carpe noctem. This paper will discuss the different loci used in Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama, as well as the different literary genres, to describe the rich variety of the plays’ gendered nocturnal landscapes. The Shakespearean « gendered » night may prove more revealing than plain daylight

Introduction

La Société française Shakespeare a été fondée en 1975. La même année, Juliet Dusinberre publiait son ouvrage Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. Dans son sillage, des critiques ont commencé à interroger la notion de genre dans l’œuvre de Shakespeare et de ses contemporains, mettant en lumière ses aspects poétiques, discursifs, politiques et performatifs, qui contribuent à faire encore et toujours de Shakespeare notre contemporain.La liste d’ouvrages qui ont marqué les études shakespearienne..

“Fright the ladies out of their wits”: Gendered passion and the English stage

This essay discusses female spectatorship from within Shakespeare’s plays as performed in his lifetime. Several plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet or King Lear address the issue of female spectatorship, providing comedic and tragic illustrations of how women reacted to theatrical performances, and how playwrights seemed to address the needs of female spectators. Interpretation of female spectatorship is rendered difficult by the scant evidence pertaining to actual women spectators at the time, pointing to the problem of interpreting how such spectatorship and gendered emotions could be performed and received by Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. The essay shows that gendered constructs of spectatorship rarely followed accepted norms, and that men were as likely as women to be frightened “out of their wits”. The plays are as fictional as the gendered differences between female and male spectators

‘Discretion fought with nature’ (1.1.5): eulogy and jointure in Hamlet

The article studies the formal aspects of Claudius’ inaugural speeches in Hamlet, which mimics sermons on the inevitability of death and the holy nature of patrilinear bonds linking the dead and the living. It compares this with the suggestion that his ‘state [is] disjoint and out of frame’ (1.2.20), which recalls early modern discussions on jointure, a legal provision allowing wives to take possession of their late husbands’ lands and tenements, thereby (momentarily) dispossessing the natural heirs. Claudius’ speeches contrast the topos of the ‘natural’ cycle of life and death, and the ‘discretion’ afforded Gertrude by law to symbolically dispossess her own son in favour of a new husband and king. As Claudius makes short shrift of his eulogy for his ‘dear brother’, he paves the way for his own unceremonious death in act 5, when Hamlet chastises the infamous nature of the king’s ‘union’ or ‘jointure’ with Gertrude. Contrariwise, Hamlet succeeds in being remembered following the rules of epideictic rhetoric.Cet article étudie les aspects formels des discours inauguraux de Claudius dans Hamlet, qui imitent les sermons sur l’inévitabilité de la mort et la nature sacrée des liens patrilinéaires qui unissent les morts et les vivants. Il compare ces discours avec la notion selon laquelle son « état [est] disjoint et de guingois » (I.ii.20), qui rappelle les discussions du début de la période moderne sur la jointure, disposition légale permettant aux femmes de prendre possession des terres et des biens fonciers de leur défunt mari, dépossédant ainsi (momentanément) les héritiers naturels. Les discours de Claudius opposent donc le topos du cycle « naturel » de la vie et de la mort à la « discrétion » accordée à Gertrude en vertu de la loi, qui lui permet de déposséder symboliquement son fils en faveur d’un nouveau roi et mari. En faisant un piètre éloge de son « cher frère », Claudius ouvre la voie à sa propre brutale disparition à l’acte V, lorsque Hamlet dénonce la nature infâme de son « union » ou « mariage » avec Gertrude. À l'inverse, Hamlet parviendra à perpétuer sa propre mémoire suivant les règles de l’art rhétorique

Subscription and proscription in Marlowe’s Edward II

The celebrated amphibolic letter in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II which, left “unpointed”, both saves and kills the King is the last of a long list of pieces of writing in the play. This paper will bring into focus the manner in which the final coup de théâtre is prepared by earlier acts of writing, notably by repeated efforts by characters to convince others to “subscribe [their] names” to writs ordering the proscription of perceived enemies of the realm. It first shows how the various references to (acts of) writing in Edward II are the fruit of material peculiarities found in Marlowe’s narrative sources (Holinshed, Foxe, Stow), lending the play a semblance of historical verisimilitude. Letters, however, also serve a host of specifically dramatic purposes, contributing to underline key structural elements in the play and serving as props capable of inflicting physical wounds. But if these letters may have a life of their own, producing meaning or provoking pain, they are also the result of an act of writing. Studying the letters’ agency helps reflect the shifting allegiances both in and outside of the play, illustrating Marlowe’s struggle between the public and private “hand”, between policy and passion, belonging and exile, subscription and proscription

‘My bliss is mixed with bitter gall’: gross confections in Arden of Faversham

What might strike some as Arden of Faversham’s faulty construction may perhaps be ascribed to the fact that Arden’s murderers, as well as the play’s audience, had to learn how to “temper poison” (i.229). Poison is not simply a means to commit murder, its use also requires great dexterity, one which must be interpreted within a historical and metatheatrical context. The ineffectual use of poison lays the foundation for what is to come: a play in which murder becomes a laughing matter

The sweet which is their poison’: of venom, envy and vanity in Coriolanus

Contrary to other plays in which references to poison clearly refer to mortal potions and assassination plots, Coriolanus offers no such thing. Poison is only taken in a figura- tive sense – and yet, the poison in the play is poisonous, infecting not the body natural, but the body politic, underlining the deep-rooted link between poison and envy, or Invidia. I take the question of poison and the way in which poison affects, or infects, the body politic to be a metaphor for what happens when one attempts to weigh one’s merits, or give (away) one’s voice. This will, in turn, allow me to argue that, if Coriolanus is often said to lack rhetorical flourishes commonly found elsewhere in Shakespeare, it is perhaps because Coriolanus’ fabled lack of oratorical skills is here set as a model against the “Vanitie of Words”, to counterpoise “the sweet which is [our] poison” (III.1.159)

Du détournement au délire interprétatif : les figures de l’excès dans Julius Caesar de Shakespeare

La figure de l’excès, prise dans ses multiples sens d’écart, de mort, de dépassement, voire de ravissement, imprègne la Rome de Shakespeare. Les excès de César sont multiples : ayant franchi le Rubicon et s’étant rendu maître de Rome, il passe au rang des dieux ; après sa mort, il revient pour prédire la mort de Brutus, outrepassant une fois de plus les limites du naturel. À ceci, il faut ajouter les excès du dramaturge lui-même : Shakespeare met en scène encore plus de signes prémonitoires que n’en comportent ses sources. En se démarquant ainsi (notamment de Plutarque), Shakespeare ne cherche-t-il pas à mettre en évidence combien il est difficile de circonscrire les dangers inhérents aux phénomènes prophétiques ou divinatoires ? Les pratiques divinatoires de la cité antique permettent en effet de (ré)interpréter indéfiniment les signes et prodiges offerts par les dieux, au risque de sombrer dans un délire interprétatif. C’est ainsi que les ides de mars peuvent devenir tour à tour les « sides », « tides » ou « dogs » d’un dieu ou d’une plèbe en courroux... comme lorsque, dans un moment de délire, ou « slip », Antoine se met à prophétiser : il invoque alors le fantôme de César et the « dogs of war » du dieu de la guerre, Mars, aux ides du mois éponyme. Le chaos qui s’ensuit est à l’image du délire interprétatif que nous nous proposons d’examiner.Shakespeare’s Rome is nothing but excess—excess as écart, death or even rapture. Caesar exceeds, or crosses, multiple boundaries: after having entered Rome with his army and taken hold of the city, he becomes a living god; after his death, he returns to predict the death of Brutus as a ghost, flouting the laws of Nature. To this, we must add the playwright’s excess: Shakespeare includes more omens than attested in his sources. By thus breaking with his forebears (notably Plutarch), the dramatist may have wished to point out the inherent difficulties in circumscribing the dangers of interpreting prophetic or divinatory phenomena. The divinatory practices of ancient Rome make it possible to indefinitely (re)interepret signs and wonders sent by the gods, at the risk of interpreting too much. Thus, the Ides of March also refer to the “sides”, “tides” and even the “dogs” of an irate crowd or deity... such as when, in a moment of madness, or “slip”, Antony prophesies, invoking Caesar’s ghost and the “dogs of war” of the god of war, Mars, on the ides of the month named after him, March. The ensuing chaos is the excess this paper wishes to examine

Introduction

The French Shakespeare Society was founded in 1975. That same year, Juliet Dusinberre published her book Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. In her wake, critics began to question in earnest the notion of gender in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, highlighting its poetic, discursive, political and performative aspects, which make Shakespeare our contemporary still.The list of studies that have left their mark on Shakespearean criticism in recent decades is extensive, embracin..