[Note: This blog is a change from recent blogs on bad news at the federal and local levels, a change which I imagine many of my readers will appreciate. However, it might not be the change which they would want; it requires some familiarity with two of Shakespeare’s major tragedies, Macbeth and King Lear, and some interest in scholarship and its importance. I take the risk of losing many readers because I also needed a change and thus resorted to subjects which have engaged me for years.]
Recently, a friend of mine expressed horrified incredulity that anyone—of course, she meant me—would be a Shakespeare scholar. I was so surprised that I stammered an answer which I cannot now remember. We went back to watching a men’s college basketball game and our drinks. Afterwards, I pondered what sensible response I could make to the many people who scorn researching, writing, and publishing articles and books on sometimes arcane or trivial literary topics as far removed from the world of consequential events.
There are two main replies to my friend’s horrified incredulity. First, if not an academic, a Shakespeare scholar is simply a hobbyist, like a gardener, a quilter, a stamp collector, a participant in battlefield reenactments, anyone who finds inherent interest in his pastime. As an independent scholar, I enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays, read them with an eye to what other scholars had ignored or overlooked, and liked asking questions and answering them for myself and others. One “discovery” of mine, to be discussed below, is “godsonne,” a word appearing only once in Shakespeare’s works. In the many editions which I have consulted, no editor (and no scholar or critic—I use the words interchangeably) comments on this unique occurrence. But Shakespeare must have meant something by it in King Lear.
Second, a Shakespeare scholar can be one committed to advancing human understanding and cultural enlightenment. Addressing the foremost literary writer in western civilization can—and, I think, should—be a moral undertaking with both aesthetic and ethical ends. Literary criticism of Shakespeare’s plays should be a cogent exposition of what is artful and insightful in his representation of a selection of the human experience, with the aim of developing a reader’s sympathy with, if not acceptance of, people unlike themselves in societies and cultures which might be unlike their own. In a world shrunk by technologies of communications and transportation, the success of scholarship to these ends is not a negligible contribution to humankind. I offer some of my scholarly works as examples of either the hobbyist or the aesthetic and ethical impulses of my Shakespearean scholarship.
Three of my publications are those of the hobbyist. They address issues arising in the peculiarities of an unusual Elizabethan dramatic manuscript known as The Book of Sir Thomas More, three pages of which some attribute to Shakespeare. One is a note which attempts to sort the loose manuscript pages into the order of composition and only indirectly concerns any role which Shakespeare might have had in the play, which, by the way, was never performed. The attempt required a careful study of the watermarks and chain lines of the folio pages—nothing hair-raising about that research or its results.
The other two are articles, 40 years apart, which address the handwriting of those three pages. Both articles are part of an intense scholarly debate with high stakes in a small field. The debate is between traditional scholars and Anti-Stratfordians, who believe in Anyone But Shakespeare as the author of the plays conventionally attributed to him. ABS types have offered more than 80 alternatives! Whether Shakespeare’s handwriting appears in these three pages is critical. Traditional scholars argue that the handwriting is his—which proves that Shakespeare authored the plays attributed to him—, and ABSers deny it and thus leave room to deny his authorship. My position is a lonely one between the two sides. My 1975 article challenged traditional scholars’ attribution to Shakespeare by arguing that there is no basis for comparing the handwriting of Shakespeare’s six signatures and the handwriting in the three manuscript pages. Traditionalists take less comfort from my article than ABSers do, both sides regard it as sine qua non in the field. Then, 15 years later, my article was itself tacitly challenged by a distinguished paleographer at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Circumstances kept me from reading his article for 25 years; when I did, it appalled me. I reacted by writing a comprehensive refutation of old arguments reiterated and of new arguments reflecting sophistry, both kinds accepted by the unwary or unwise. Pointedly, the editor of the Shakespeare Quarterly, a Folger Library publication, placed it first in the 2016 summer issue. I am proud of both articles, but neither is going to enlarge or enhance anyone’s appreciation of humankind. They do, however, disabuse scholars of an untenable approach to the authorship question. It is my belief that there is enough strong evidence for the traditional attribution that it need not rely on—indeed, is weakened by—spurious arguments to prop it up. They also spoil the fun or dissipate the profit of the worst kind of pedant who proliferates quibbles for publications; one actually criticized me for my scrupulous attention to fact.
Aside from a few articles which directly address challenges to Shakespeare’s authorship, most of my other articles and my one book, Shakespearean Tragedy as Chivalric Romance, address issues about the meaning of some of his plays. My scholarship rests on an approach which has been out of fashion—indeed, distinctively unfashionable—for half a century. Instead of interpreting his plays for relevancy in terms of race, gender, and class, I avoid ulterior motives by relying on a literary tradition still popular in Shakespeare’s time: English chivalric romance. Its motifs serve as a language to convey meaning. Reviews of my book grudgingly acknowledge the merit of its interpretations but criticize them for not following current critical fashion. Not blinded by fashion, but following evidence in the texts as a scholar should, I made discoveries which support my innovative interpretations. I offer two examples, one from Macbeth, the other from King Lear.
Heretofore, all scholars of Macbeth have regarded the long scene between Malcolm and Macduff as irrelevant to the play except as didactic discourse on the ideal king, a pause before the rapid action of the final act, or padding for an already short play. This criticism struck me as impertinent. I did not believe that Shakespeare devoted over a tenth of his shortest tragedy to an unimportant scene since length is a sign of importance. Concurrently, scholars have found Malcolm to be “a milksop” or a “voice” of political platitudes. Yet, when he first appears, probably in battered armor, he credits the sergeant who fought against his captivity as he fought at great risk against rebels. Later, when he meets with Macduff in the English Court, he utters lines overlooked by these critics; he claims that he would “tread upon the tyrant’s [Macbeth’s] head,/Or wear it on my sword”—claims implying his ability to defeat Macbeth in combat and which Macduff silently accepts as plausible. Much is at stake in this scene. It is the turning point in the exile-and-return motif of chivalric romances in which the legitimate heir proves his worth to succeed a dispossessed father. Malcolm’s test of Macduff’s loyalty is really a test of Malcolm’s acumen in ascertaining the reality of loyalty beneath the appearance of it, a test necessary to demonstrate his superiority to his father, who lacked such insight. Malcolm succeeds and prevents the prospect, had he failed, of history repeating the past, of a treacherous thane overthrowing a legitimate king. The scene also dramatizes the struggles of two worthy men deeply concerned about the welfare of their country but suspicious of each other to find ways to overcome their distrust. Not to recognize Malcolm’s complete success is to undermine his triumphant ascendancy and to insinuate that the kingship remains vulnerable to betrayal. The difference between these competing views of the play is the difference between Shakespeare’s affirmation of the succession of kings leading to James I and modern cynicism about political success.
Return we now, in a round-about way, to “godsonne.” Such a cynicism taints most interpretations of the end of King Lear, which most scholars view as dominated by the pathos of Lear’s death with his dead daughter in his arms and the apparent nihilism of it all. My scholarly approach does not dismiss the power of his grief, but it does dismiss the idea of nihilism. The last scene has much more to it than his agony and nothingness. Even in his grief, Lear, said not to know himself, reveals in a moment of triumph an important part of his personal identity and establishes the terms of recovery and restoration of the kingdom. That much more is the clustering of motifs from chivalric romance which lead to the recovery and restoration of right rule in England from the forces led by Edmund, Goneril, and Regan.
At its beginning, the play establishes two plots involving fathers and their children: Lear with Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia; Gloucester with Edmund and Edgar. The older children are villains who undermine the younger sibling. Critics note the parallels between the two plots but discount Edgar because his platitudes make him appear to be someone not to be taken seriously. So they ignore the decisive fight between the two brothers. Appearing as an unknown knight—the scene makes much of his concealed identity—, Edgar defeats Edmund. By doing so in single combat, Edgar establishes his identity as a family member and settles issues of governance between rivals to power—all according to chivalric romance motifs.
Then Lear, sent for as an afterthought, enters, howling in grief. He claims he might have saved Cordelia, but the only justice he could attain was to kill the man who hanged her. When an attendant vouches that he did so, Lear speaks up with pride: “Did I not, fellow?/I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion [a machete-like sword often curved]/I would have made him skip”—thus identifying himself in his youth as a knight. Scholars have ignored Lear’s self-identification and Edgar’s knightly performance: Lear a knight, Edgar a knight, both bound by the moral and religious guidance of godfather to “godsonne.” Edgar’s succession to the throne vanquishes the idea of nihilism and promises better rule for England.
I need not claim that my scholarship is impeccable and my interpretations infallible. I need claim only that nothing discussed above justifies horrified incredulity. What has been gained by my scholarship? Something, but nothing earth-shattering. A better understanding of two of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. An appreciation of a contemporary perspective from contemporary cultural materials—a start to understanding others, not contemplating ourselves in our parochial terms. I am a small-d democrat, but I can admit that Macbeth and King Lear demonstrate that, in specific times and places, reasonable people can respect, even revere, monarchy. I know that I can live in a world with democracies and monarchies if their people accept them.
