The animal continuum in A Midsummer Night's Dream
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09502360903471714
ISSN1470-1308
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Bruce Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals: Nature and Society in the Drama of Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave, 2002). Jeanne Addison Roberts, The Shakespearean Wild: Geography, Genus, and Gender (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991). Boehrer, Shakespeare, p. 44. All quotations from Midsummer will be cited from Q1 by signature followed by the act, scene, and line numbers from William Shakespeare, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', The Norton Shakespeare, Gen. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 814–863. See Gary Jay Williams, Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997), especially chapter two, and Trevor R. Griffiths, 'Introduction', A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare in Production. William Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), especially pp. 12–25. Jacques Derrida, 'The animal that therefore I am (more to follow)', trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry, 28 (2002), pp. 369–418 (399). David Selbourne, The Making of A Midsummer Night's Dream: An Eye-witness Account of Peter Brook's Production From First Rehearsal to First Night (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 227. As Stephen Greenblatt notes, one Q1 stage direction reads, 'Enter Quince, Flute, Thisby and the rabble' (G2), 'Introduction', A Midsummer Night's Dream. William Shakespeare. The Norton Shakespeare (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 805–813 (806). The OED defines 'rabble' as 'A pack, string, swarm (of animals). Obs.' and as 'the common, low, or disorderly part of the populace' (A.n. 1, 2c). Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 33. Of course, Bottom does respond to Theseus during the play, but his response demonstrates his deep misunderstanding of Theseus's position in relation to the representation. Kenneth Burke, 'Why A Midsummer Night's Dream?', Shakespeare Quarterly, 57 (2006), pp. 297–308. Annabel Patterson, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989). See also Greenblatt's comment in his introduction to the play in the Norton Shakespeare: 'we are invited at once to join in the mockery of the inept performers and to distance ourselves from the mockers. That is, the audience of A Midsummer Night's Dream is not simply mirrored in the play's upper classes; the real audience is given a broader perspective, a more capacious understanding than anyone onstage' (p. 841). Also, see Richard Wilson's fine essay: 'The Kindly Ones: The Death of the Author in Shakespearean Athens', in Richard Dutton (ed.), A Midsummer Night's Dream: New Casebooks. (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996), pp. 198–222. I share the utopian goals of some critics, although my reading of the play's workmen obviously differs. Patterson offers compelling evidence that the play asked its contemporary audience to care about food shortages and unemployment (see especially pp. 55–57). Of course, seeing people as animals does not necessitate starving or mistreating those people. The play could be criticizing or at least acknowledging starvation and unemployment and still categorizing the workmen on a lower end of the animal continuum than some nonhuman animals. According to Horace Howard Furness, Warburton amended 'beholds' to 'behowls'. William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Night's Dreame, A New Variorum Edition, in Horace Howard Furness (ed.) (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1895). The Norton follows Warburton and his followers. Warburton's emendation would add the wolf to the list of mortals who make noise at night. This is the folio reading with through line numbers followed by the Norton act, scene, and line numbers. The Troilus 1609 quarto reading is 'the cignets downe is harsh, and spirit of sence/hard as the palme of plow-man' (A2v). Philostratus is the speaker in Q. William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Night's Dreame, A New Variorum Edition, in Horace Howard Furness (ed.) (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1895), note to his line 224, p. 222. Furness, note to his line 230, pp. 223–224. Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality,and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 175. Fudge's claim here risks discounting the historically simultaneous rise of African slavery in the British Empire. Lysander's simile seems to place Quince as the rider of the horse, but his comment, 'he knows not the stop', may make Quince the horse. Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 128. See Erica Fudge's discussion, Brutal, pp. 42–50. See also Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. 43. This is the gloss in William Shakespeare, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', The Riverside Shakespeare, in G. Blakemore Evans (ed.) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 2nd edn, pp. 251–283; and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', The Complete Works of Shakespeare, in David Bevington (ed.) (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 4th edn, pp. 147–177. This is the gloss in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Norton Shakespeare, in Gen. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 814–863. See also Helena's comments on the easily 'beguil'd' and 'periur'd' boy Cupid (Bv; 1.1.239, 241). On women as horses see Roberts, The Shakespearean Wild, pp. 64–67; see also Gywnne Kennedy, Just Anger: Representing Women's Anger in Early Modern England (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000). For a discussion of the workmen's confusion of gender in regards to facial hair, see Will Fisher, Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 91–93. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. Unlike in the modern world, people in the Renaissance did not completely differentiate between the noise produced by asses and the noise produced by horses. See the OED 'bray' v superscript 1 2. It is probably telling that Bottom enters twice with his ass-head on, both times to cue lines with 'horse[s]' in them. Midsummer, p. 148. See Boehrer's discussion of the varied classical opinions on the relation of speech to definitions of the human: Parrot Culture: Our 2,500-Year-Long Fascination with the World's Most Talkative Bird (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 8–10. See also Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), especially chapter two, where he discusses ways to 'unsettle the ontological difference between human and animal, a difference expressed in the philosophical tradition by the capacity for language' (p. 47). And see Derrida's comments in response to Jean-Luc Nancy's question, 'in the shift, which you judge to be necessary, from man to animal … what happens to language?' in ''Eating Well', or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida by Jean-Luc Nancy, Who Comes After the Subject?, Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (eds) (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 116. Also see R. W. Serjeantson, 'The passions and animal language, 1540-1700', Journal of the History of Ideas, 62 (2001), pp. 425–444. Serjeantson surveys the English and European views. He claims that 'early modern natural philosophers almost universally insisted that only humans were capable of language and speech' (p. 425). However, he refers to 'a popular belief in early modern England that "in the olde tymes" animals could speak' (p. 426). See Brian Cummings, 'Pliny's Literate Elephant and the Idea of Animal Language in Renaissance Thought' in Erica Fudge (ed.), Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans and Other Wonderful Creatures. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 164–185, on Renaissance ideas about animals that can use or understand human semantics. See also C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 138. Bruce Smith, 'Hearing Green' in Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary-Floyd-Wilson (eds), Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 147–168. See also Bruce Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-factor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum: Or A Natural History. The Works of Francis Bacon, in James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) (St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1969), vol 4, p. 263. Bacon, p. 225. See the Variorum's collation: William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Night's Dreame, A New Variorum Edition, in Horace Howard Furness (ed.) (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1895), p. 25. On voice in the play, see Maurice Hunt, 'The Voices of A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespearean Criticism Yearbook 1992 (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1994), vol 22, pp. 39-47. I agree with Hunt that 'Shakespeare's choice of the word "auditor" rather than "spectator' as a term for playgoer 3.1.67 suggests that he valued dramatic appeals to playgoer's ears as much (or more) than those designed for their eyes' (p. 39). Of course, Quince tells his friends that Bottom is 'a very Paramour for a sweete voice' (G2; 4.2.11-12). Quince's line should get a laugh here not just because he mistakes 'Paramour' for 'paragon' but because the audience has recently heard how bad Bottom's voice really is. See also Edward Topsell, Tha Historie of Fovre-Footed Beastes (London, 1607). Topsell says that 'the Asse is called … of some Megamucos because of his vnpleasant voyce' (p. 20). The play makes the same joke when Titania enters with Bottom and offers to kiss him: 'And kisse thy faire large eares, my gentle ioy' (F2v; 4.1.4). Patricia Parker, Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 121. Wilson as quoted in Parker, p. 117. Ben Jonson, Timber; or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter. Ben Jonson, in C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947), rpt. 1965, vol 8, pp. 620–621. Kathryn Perry, 'Unpicking the Seam: Talking Animals and Reader Pleasure in Early Modern Satire', Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans and Other Wonderful Creatures, in Erica Fudge (ed.) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 18–36. Parker, p. 124. Bacon, p. 280. Bacon, p. 282. 'Mimmick' is the folio reading (TLN 1041). Q1 has 'Minnick', Q2 'Minnock' (D4). The OED lists 'minnick' as a variant spelling of 'mimic'. George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, in Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn (eds) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 95–96. See R. W. Dent's comment: 'the language – in its grotesque combination of muddled syntax, padded lines, mind-offending tropes, ear-offending schemes – does violence even to what would otherwise be woefully inadequate' [quoted in Shakespeare, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. A Casebook, in Antony Price (ed.) (London: Macmillan Press, 1983, p. 135). Many critics see Bottom as particularly human and compelling when he speaks about his dream vision after he awakes without his ass head (Gv-G2; 4.1.196-211). However, Bottom mangles not only the sense but also the musicality of 1 Corinthians in that speech. Puttenham, p. 170. See also Parker's reading of joinery in the third chapter of Shakespeare From the Margins: Language, Culture, Context (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). Parker makes a strong case for the bad joinery practiced by the mechanicals as making visible the oppressive 'hierarchies' that 'smooth discourse … forges and the orders it constructs (p. 115). See Mark S. R. Jenner, 'The Great Dog Massacre'. Fear in Early Modern Society, in William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts (eds) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 44–61. Jenner notes that although the English slaughtered dogs in times of plague. 'it was dogs that they slaughtered, not other members of the canine commonwealth. Ladies lap-dogs and hounds of the gentry were specifically excluded from these regulations' (p. 55). See also Michael Dobson, 'A dog at all things: the transformation of the onstage canine, 1550–1850', Performance Research, 5 (2000), pp. 116–24. Dobson offers evidence of hunting dogs displayed at great expense in University and court productions. His evidence points to a significant distinction between these dogs and the clown's dog in Two Gentlemen of Verona. See also Alan Stewart on how highly James I valued his hunting dogs: 'Government by Beagle: The Impersonal Rule of James VI and I', Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans and Other Wonderful Creatures, in Erica Fudge (ed.) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 101–115. According to Stewart, James saw his favourite bitch's death as more significant than the accidental hunting death of a keeper. See also Thomas A. Hamill, 'Cockfighting as cultural allegory in early modern England', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 39 (2009), pp. 375–406, on the 'very intimate set of relations' between cock breeders and their gamecocks (p. 390). See also G. Wilson Knight: 'the bird-beast opposition is vivid here … Bottom's heavy wit or blundering ignorance gives us other examples … The humour in these clearly depends on the bird-beast contrast' (quoted in Price, p. 67). 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', The Norton Shakespeare, Gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 814–863 (821n.1). Bacon, pp. 265–266. Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 192. See also Kim F. Hall, '"Troubling Doubles": Apes, Africans, and Blackface in Mr. Moore's Revels', Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Renaissance, in Joyce Green MacDonald (ed.) (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), pp. 120–144. James Knowles, ""Can ye not tell a man from a marmoset?": Apes and Others on the Early Modern Stage', Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans and Other Wonderful Creatures, in Erica Fudge (ed.) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp.138–163 (151). See also Erica Fudge's chapter on bearbaiting in Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000). Although Fudge claims a special significance for apes and monkeys at one point in the chapter (pp. 12–13), she also points to the practice of giving the bears 'human names' (p. 16). Ben Jonson, Timber; Or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter, in C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947), rpt. 1965, vol 8, p. 566. See Cynthia Marshall, The Shattering of the Self: Violence, Subjectivity, and Early Modern Texts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), especially pp.13–24, for a concise summary of challenges to the idea of a stable self as a Renaissance ideal or as emerging in the Renaissance. Trevor R. Griffiths, Introduction, A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare in Production. William Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), provides a telling history of press commentary on Bottom in productions (see pp. 102–105). Deborah Baker Wyrick, 'The ass motif in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night's Dream', Shakespearae Quarterly, 33 (1982), pp. 432–448 (433). Bottom is not the only 'mechanical' whom the nineteenth century transformed into the essential man. See S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Prawer shows how Karl Marx often looked to Snug as he thought about men of his day. In an article about Abraham Lincoln, Marx compares Lincoln to Snug – both are examples of 'an average man of good will' (Prawer, p. 269). William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 1817 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 98. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 148. Hazlitt, p. 103. Dorothea Kehler, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Bibliographic Survey of the Criticism', A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays, in Dorothea Kehler (ed.) (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 3–76 (9). Frank Sidgwick, The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's dream' compiled by Frank Sidgwick (London: Chatto and Windus, 1908), p. 2. G. Wilson Knight, The Shakespearean Tempest, 1932 (London: Methuen, 1971), p. xv. Barber, p. 156. Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), p. 151. Wyrick, p. 447. David Selbourne, The Making of A Midsummer Night's Dream: An Eye-witness Account of Peter Brook's Production From First Rehearsal to First Night (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 223. Jacques Derrida, 'The animal that therefore I am (more to follow)', trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry, 28 (2002), pp. 369–418 (399). Derrida, p. 398. Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 186. See, for example, her discussion of her differences with Paster (Humoring the Body) on this question (108–109). The primary text on animals in the Renaissance is, of course, Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon, 1983). Like Fudge, Thomas insists on the primacy of the distinction between human and animal in the period. But Thomas also, like Fudge, provides a lot of evidence that when reconsidered might help us to question that primacy.
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