‘The Hunt is Up’: Death, Dismemberment, and Feasting in Shakespeare’s Roman Tragedies

Critics have noted the prominence in Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies of the related discourses of hunting, sacrifice, and ceremonialism. The emphasis on ritualism and aberrant feasting in these plays finds its echo in the par force hunting, which evokes in order to deny the subjectivity of the noble quarry, casting the deer as both worthy adversary and aestheticized corpse. Early modern hunting manuals describe the ritualism at the conclusion of the aristocratic hunt, formalised ceremonies which enacted an elaborately ceremonial dissection and distribution of the body of the slain quarry, drawing their symbolic charge from the inherent violence of the hunt and its sacrificial emphasis on the dead animal’s physical dismemberment. Exploring the interactions between hunting, ritualism, and sacrifice in Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus, this article excavates the contemporary significance of the deer as animal, as lordly game, and as symbol. This article suggests that in these plays, the animal corpse becomes a useful metaphor for communal conflict and division, resonances which the aristocratic sport easily evoked given the discourses of exclusion and elitism which surrounded it and its importance in the construction of noble male identity.La critique a montré l’importance, dans les tragédies romaines de Shakespeare, des discours sur la chasse, le sacrifice et le cérémonial. La part du ritualisme et des aberrantes festivités associées dans ces pièces trouve un écho dans la vénerie qui, afin de nier toute subjectivité à la proie, suppose de la concevoir à la fois comme valeureux adversaire et corps esthétisé. Les manuels de chasse de la première modernité décrivent les rituels qui viennent clôre la chasse aristocratique, les cérémonies formelles où l’on dissèque et partage le corps mutilé de l’animal qui trouvent leur charge symbolique dans la violence inhérente à la chasse et l’importance accordée au sacrifice et au démembrement de l’animal mort. Cet article explore les liens entre chasse, ritualisme et sacrifice dans Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, et Coriolanus, afin d’exhumer le sens contemporain de la dépouille animale, à la fois noble gibier et symbole. La présente contribution suggère que dans ces pièces le cadavre animal devient métaphore utile du conflit et de la division de la communauté, faisant écho à ce qu’évoque aisément les discours sur l’exclusion et l’élitisme qui entourent ce divertissement aristocratique tout à fait central dans la construction d’une identité masculine noble

Monuments of superstition, memories of idolatry : early modern customary culture in Shakespeare and contemporaries

The thesis asks what literary and theatrical texts reveal about the role of customary culture in the lives and imaginings of early modern subjects, focusing upon England but with reference also to Scotland. The study considers a range of plays written between 1585-1640 including Robert Greene’s George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield; Anthony Munday’s The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington; and William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and Titus Andronicus. It frames these with reference to diverse sources containing evidence of festal customs and folkloric belief from 1500-1800, including antiquarian writings and polemical tracts. Commercial drama is approached as a form of performance which draws on and is in some ways parallel to traditional practices yet which, through its interplay between written and embodied representation, offers a conscious and reflective engagement with customary culture, spotlighting and making visible the latter’s themes, tensions, and preoccupations. The thesis is shaped by three key considerations: the interest in customary culture found in stage plays written around the turn of the seventeenth century; the elusive nature of customary activities in the source material; and the religious controversies they provoked amongst contemporaries. It begins by asking how instances of Robin Hood plays and games vary in form, function, and meaning, and what cultural work they undertake. The second chapter examines how the hunt’s ritualised breaking ceremonies are incorporated into drama, processions, dances, and fairylore. The third chapter asks how early modern belief in spirits and fairies reflect the religious changes of the Long Reformation, while the final chapter looks at the shifting meanings of the Rogationtide tradition of beating the bounds and its various supernatural functions. The Reformation gave striking focus to early modern experiences of customary practices and beliefs and to wider tensions between concepts of past and present. Setting late Elizabethan and Stuart drama alongside the evidence of customary culture found in antiquarian writings, imaginative literature, balladry, and polemic, this thesis approaches the interaction between literary and non-literary texts as an opportunity to investigate how early modern subjects understood their relationship with the past and tradition, through a close examination of various themes which, although not representing a comprehensive picture of customary culture, all held a crucially collective position in early modern English and Scottish cultural and communal life