25 research outputs found
Superfluous Falstaff: Morality and Structure
Falstaff est excessif : par sa taille, par son comportement et par sa profusion rhĂ©torique. Il est en quelque sorte une tumeur allĂ©gorique sur le corps politique, qui Ă dâautres endroits se forme Ă partir du discours des chroniques plutĂŽt que de lâallĂ©gorie. Il donne de la couleur Ă la piĂšce et, sur le plan rhĂ©torique, donne de la couleur Ă la vĂ©ritĂ©, utilisant souvent la figure prĂ©fĂ©rĂ©e de Machiavel, la paradiastole. Falstaff dĂ©passe Henry iv, « fuyant » vers The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry v (lâacteur Richard Moore dĂ©crivit jadis Pistol comme « Falstaff devenu baroque ») et, probablement, les deux parties de Sir John Oldcastle (1599). Ou bien nous pourrions invoquer la notion de supplĂ©ment dĂ©veloppĂ©e par Derrida, en ce que cette croissance secondaire devient partie intĂ©grante de lâoriginal : « banish plump Jack, and banish all the world ».Falstaff is excessive: in size, behaviour, and in rhetorical copiousness. In some ways he is an allegorical tumour upon the body-politic, which is elsewhere formed from the discourse of chronicle rather than allegory. He colours the play and, rhetorically, colours the truth, often using the figure favoured by Machiavelli, paradiastole. Falstaff out-grows Henry iv, âescapingâ to The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry v (the actor Richard Moore once described Pistol as âFalstaff gone baroqueâ) and, probably, the two parts of Sir John Oldcastle (1599). Or we might invoke Derridaâs notion of the supplement, in that this secondary growth becomes integral to the original whole: âbanish plump Jack, and banish all the worldâ
Philip C. McGuire. Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. xxvii + 191 pp. $22.
Describing and Explaining: New Historicism and Its Metaphors
Pour le âNew Historicismâ, les Ă©vĂ©nements de lâhistoire sont prĂ©sentĂ©s comme des lignes de force culturelle. Les critiques qui sâen inspirent se rĂ©clament aussi de lâanthropologie et rĂ©agissent autant contre les Ă©tudes dĂ©suĂštes des folkloristes que contre le caratĂšre empirique et statistique des sciences sociales. Pour eux, chaque Ă©tude doit ĂȘtre accompagnĂ©e dâun rĂ©cit et de tendances et non procĂ©der dâun modĂšle unique dâinterprĂ©tation. DâoĂč le reproche dâarbitraire qui leur est souvent adressĂ©. Par ailleurs, le âNew Historicismâ se caractĂ©rise par le dĂ©tournement dâun certain nombre de mĂ©taphores empruntĂ©es Ă diverses sciences : les âcodesâ (informatique), les âlignes de fractureâ (gĂ©ologie), les ârĂ©seauxâ (informatique Ă nouveau), les âtrajectoiresâ (balistique), les âoscillationsâ (Ă©lectro-physique) etc. Or, pareille appropriation Ă©quivaut Ă plaquer de la mĂ©canique sur de âlâhistoire vivanteâ (Jacques Le Goff)
Re-shaping King Lear: Space, Place, Costume, and Genre
Performance studies must enjoy parity of esteem with critical studies because they remind us of the plurality of âreadingsâ that are generated by a Shakespearean text. Shakespeare seems to have apprehended this when, in Othello, he used a nonce-word, âdenotementâ, which applies to Othelloâs reading of his wife in his mindâs eye. I examine other sequences in which we watch a character âreadingâ on-stage or imagined action, in Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, Richard II, and Troilus and Cressida. In Hamlet this involves re-reading as well as generic displacement, which, I argue, is a way of rendering inwardness. As I test case, I analyse a production of King Lear by Shakespeareâs Globe, on a fairground stage, in which the king reshaped himself, became a folkloric figure, like a figure in Nasheâs Summerâs Last Will and Testament. The play itself was thus, indecorously, reshaped as âThe Tale of King Learâ. âDramatic truthâ, therefore, in no way depends upon theatrical ârealismâ