bardolatry

by John Murphy

The April 12^th issue of New York Review of Books features a very interesting article by Stephen Greenblatt about “Power in Shakespeare”—an unsurprising topic from a distinguished academic with a Foucauldian bent whose name is virtually synonymous with the New Historicist model of critical theory. Of primary concern to Greenblatt is situating Shakespeare in his specific socio-historical context while appreciating ways in which the Bard was outside and ahead of his own time.

How does the Bard represent power in his plays? There are any number of kings, queens, princes, dukes, senators, and generals in his complete works, but does the Bard approach these emblems of might from any specific attitude towards the nature of power? Let’s remember that even his most captivating king, Henry V, threatened to mow like grass, “your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants,” if the half-achieved Harfleur did not relent.

Shakespeare is nothing if not complex, and Greenblatt embraces this fundamental ambiguity instead of attempting to order it. “If one wants to find genuine skills at governance in Shakespeare,” he convincingly argues, “they are most attractively displayed by Claudius, the usurper in Hamlet who kills his brother.” Claudius always struck me as a ruthlessly efficient ruler as well, but Greenblatt also recognizes the fatal consequences that usurpers (such as cruel and charismatic Richard III), in disrupting the natural order of things, bring upon their own heads. Considering the ambitious Macbeth, Greenblatt writes: “Shakespeare did not think that one’s good actions are necessarily or even usually rewarded, but he seems to have been convinced that one’s wicked actions always return, with interest.”

It’s a thoughtful article, though the subject is large enough to fill a volume.

And check out Debra Murphy’s review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.