Silence, Rape and Politics in 'Measure for Measure': Close Readings in Theatre History.

Post print version of article deposited in accordance with SHERPA RoMEO guidelines. Copyright © 2008, Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Shakespeare Bulletin Vol.27 pp 1-23. Reprinted with permission by The Johns Hopkins University Press.Ever since John Barton, in 1970, deliberately gave Measure for Measure an ‘open’ ending, the indeterminacy of the play’s conclusion has been widely recognised. It forms the crucial problem investigated by Philip McGuire’s chapter on the play in Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare’s Open Silences (1984), in which he analysed the six distinct ‘open silences’ that punctuate the last Act. This article revisists McGuire’s work in the light of more recent developments in theatre history and performance studies and investigates the relationship between rape, silence and politics in Act Five of Measure for Measure. Combining a reappraisal of Isabella’s silences in the light of Tiffany Stern’s work on actors’ parts with a theoretically self-conscious application of close reading techniques to archival records of a range of RSC performances (reviews, promptbooks, photographs, archival video recordings, actors’ and directors’ comments), I show how Isabella’s silent body in performance generates political meanings that can only be decoded through detailed attention to the performance text and its relation to its historical context

"To the Future": Derek Jarman's Edward II in the Archive

publication-status: PublishedThis essay traces the development of Derek Jarman’s ideas about Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy from his student days at King’s College London, through the film Edward II (1991), to the unpublished screenplay of “Pansy.” I argue that the play Jarman first read as a student and admired for its rhetorical figures and portrayal of same-sex love took on a political edge in 1986, when Jarman was diagnosed as HIV-positive, and homophobic legislation was first debated by Margaret Thatcher’s Government. The truncated film treatment “28” and the scripts for Sod ‘Em composed in response to these events use Marlowe’s tragedy as a structuring device that lends historical depth to the struggles of Jarman’s modern protagonist. In 1988, Jarman physically stood this script on its head as he started to rework it as Edward II in a script that imagined a Renaissance setting for the tragedy and stuck remarkably close to Marlowe’s words and Ranulph Higden’s chronicle account of the life of King Edward II. The screenplay Jarman eventually used for Edward II moves back in the direction of the political rage and focus on the present of Sod’Em and shows Jarman hesitating over the ending of his film and the significance of young Edward III. The return to Sod’Em is completed in Jarman’s Marlowe-inspired screenplay for the satirical musical “Pansy,” which imagines a hopeful future for its young queer king Pansy, who vanquishes the conservative forces of repression and dedicates his rule to sexual freedom

Uma década de transmissões de apresentações teatrais: questões e tendências

This article tracks the development of theatre broadcasting in the UK from 2009, when NT Live launched its broadcasting operation, to 2019. It argues for the need to consider the impact theatre broadcasting technologies have on the production and reception of Shakespeare in Britain and across the world, given that broadcasts are increasingly at risk of becoming a surrogate for the experience of theatre-going which they promote. The first part of the article considers the differential reach, across continents, of this supposedly ‘global’ phenomenon, and explores the risk of cultural monopolies being built by large companies like the National Theatre, the RSC and Shakespeare’s Globe, which might crowd out smaller players. The second part considers the camera techniques employed by broadcasts and pays closer attention to the relationship between a proscenium set-up in the theatre and the two-dimensionality of the cinema screen in Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet, which was broadcast by Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company Plays at the Garrick Live in 2016.Este artigo acompanha o período de desenvolvimento da transmissão teatral no Reino Unido dentre 2009, quando a NT Live lançou sua operação de transmissão, e 2019. Defende a necessidade de considerar o impacto que as tecnologias de transmissão teatral têm na produção e na recepção de Shakespeare tanto na Grã-Bretanha como ao redor do mundo, considerando-se que as transmissões estão cada vez mais aptas a se tornarem substitutas da experiência de teatro que promovem. A primeira parte do artigo considera o alcance diferencial deste fenômeno supostamente "global" em continentes diversos e explora o risco de que grandes companhias como a National Theatre, a RSC e a Shakespeare's Globe construam monopólios culturais que possam restringir a participação de companhias menores. A segunda parte considera as técnicas de câmera utilizadas pelas transmissões e dá uma atenção especial à relação entre a montagem de proscênio no teatro e a bidimensionalidade da tela de cinema em Romeu e Julieta de Rob Ashford e Kenneth Branagh, que foi transmitida ao vivo pela Kenneth Branagh Company no Garrick Live em 2016

‘Yet I’ll speak’: Silencing the female voice in Titus Andronicus and Othello

Dans les deux tragédies, les voix de femmes semblent à première vue harmonieuses et agréables, tout particulièrement lorsqu'il est question de chant. Pourtant ces voix suscitent des réactions et finissent par être réduites au silence. La mutilation de Lavinia, à qui ses agresseurs coupent la langue, est implicitement justifiée par sa propre famille. Il est significatif que, même astreinte au silence, Lavinia continue à s'efforcer de communiquer. Son meurtre, aux mains de son père, peut être considéré comme une volonté ultime de faire taire définitivement la jeune femme. Parallèlement, la voix de Desdémone est présentée plus d'une fois comme une intrusion dans un monde d'hommes. Son meurtre est une façon de la réduire au silence et, une fois de plus, le personnage féminin résiste et revient à la vie pour faire entendre une dernière fois sa voix. Emilia, dont les paroles font écho à celles de Desdémone mourante, perpétue cette voix jusqu'à ce qu'elle soit à son tour réduite au silence par son époux. Par delà la fiction, le mutisme infligé aux personnages féminins affecte l'interprétation de la critique et des acteurs.In both tragedies, female voices are, at first sight, represented as harmonious and agreeable, especially in their connection to song. On another level, however, those voices are criticised and eventually silenced. Lavinia's tongue-mutilation, a close reading reveals, is implicitly justified even by her own family. It is significant that even when bereft of her voice, Lavinia still insists on communicating. Her murder by her father can be seen as an ultimate silencing of the mute girl. Similarly, Desdemona's voice is repeatedly shown to be an intrusion in an all-male world. Her murder again figures as a silencing, and again, the resilient female character resists that silencing and revives to make her voice heard once more. Emilia, whose voice overlaps with the dying Desdemona's, perpetuates Desdemona's voice until she, too, is silenced by her husband. The silencing of those female voices is furthermore shown to extend beyond the fictional worlds into the interpretations of critics and performers alike

Black, White and Blue: Pregnancy and Unsettled Binaries in The Masque of Blackness (1605)

This article examines the construction of national and racial identities within Ben Jonson’s and Inigo Jones’s Masque of Blackness against the backdrop of King James’ investment in creating a ‘British’ union at the start of his reign. The article re-examines the blackface performance of the Queen and her ladies in the contexts of the Queen’s and Inigo Jones’ European connections, the Queen’s reputation as ‘wilful’, and her pregnant body’s ability to evoke widespread cultural beliefs about the maternal imagination’s power to determine a child’s racial make-up. We argue that the masque’s striking use of blue-face along with black and white-face reveals a deep investment in Britain’s ancient customs which stands in tension with Blackness’ showcasing of foreign bodies, technologies, and cultural reference points. By demonstrating the significance of understanding Queen Anna’s pregnancy and her ‘wilful’ personality within the context of early modern humoral theory, moreover, we develop existing discussions of the humoral theory that underpins the masque’s representation of racial identities. We suggest that the Queen’s pregnant performance in blackface, by reminding the viewer that her maternal mind could ‘will’ the racial identity of royal progeny into being, had the power to unsettle King James I’s white male nationalist supremacy in the very act of celebrating it before their new English court and its foreign guests

The roared-at boys? Repertory casting and gender politics in the RSC's 2014 Swan season

This essay interrogates the loading of the “Roaring Girls” season by asking what it means to “roar” in both the early modern period and twenty-first century, unpacking the terms on which the women of these productions are empowered or undermined through their treatment by their male counterparts. Performed alongside the 2014 “Midsummer Mischief” new writing season, the plays reposition “roaring” as challenging male-centred modes of representation. Drawing on Marvin Carlson's influential work on “ghosting”, this essay addresses these questions through investigation of the practices and implications of ensemble casting. With Arden of Faversham, The Roaring Girl and The White Devil sharing a single ensemble, the iterated roles of actors across the ensemble become key to understanding the season's overall strategies for presenting and interrogating misogyny. The recycling of actors’ bodies throws into relief the individual roles of the main “roaring girls”, framing and articulating the role of mischievous disruption within the company's work

Shakespearean Heritage and the Preposterous 'Contemporary Jacobean' Film: Commodifying and Consuming the Duchess of Malfi in Mike Figgis' 'Hotel' (2001)

Published article made available in accordance with SHERPA RoMEO guidelines. Copyright © 2009 Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly Vol.60(3) pp 279-303, 2009. Reprinted with permission by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Images reproduced with permission of copyright holder Mike Figgis.Mike Figgis’s Hotel (2001), which contains a film-within-the-film adaptation of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, is representative of an emerging corpus of screen versions of Jacobean drama which aggressively pitch themselves against the conservative nostalgia characteristic of mainstream screen Shakespeares. Hotel is deliberate in its use of anachronism, narrative disjunction and irreverence towards its source text, troping the revival of Webster’s play as both cultural cannibalism and the production of an easily digestible ‘fast-food McMalfi.’ The contemporary Jacobean aesthetic it espouses is preposterous, in George Puttenham’s terms, in that it deliberately misplaces temporal and spatial relationships to articulate the transgressive female desire that challenges the structures of the film industry and early modern society alike. Tracing its descent from Derek Jarman’s queer The Tempest (1971) and Edward II (1991), and setting itself against the Shakespeare heritage industry as represented by its immediate predecessor Shakespeare in Love (1999), Figgis’s Hotel employs digital technology, improvisation and intertextual dialogue to challenge not only Shakespeare’s cultural hegemony, but also the domination of the heteronormative male gaze in conventional cinema. If Hotel is a film ‘about’ how to produce a fast-food McMalfi for a contemporary audience, Figgis’s use of the preposterous contemporary Jacobean aesthetic makes of The Duchess of Malfi ‘about’ the making of Hotel, ‘about’ man’s control of transgressive female sexuality in the medium of film