Shakespeare
vs.
“Shakespeare”
vs.
“Shakespeare”
“Shakespeare was born, he wrote, he acted, and died. These
things happen. But Shakespeare’s presence and prominence in our culture depends
not on the fact that these things happened so much as it depends on the fact
that there are structures in place which continually reproduce those events or
their effects. The labor for Shakespeare’s continued presence is ours, not his,
and not history’s.”
--Matt
Wagner
“Shakespeare was born, he wrote, he acted, and died. These
things happen. But Shakespeare’s presence and prominence in our culture depends
not on the fact that these things happened so much as it depends on the fact
that there are structures in place which continually reproduce those
events or their effects. The labor for Shakespeare’s continued presence is
ours, not his, and not history’s.”
--Matt
Wagner
How did Shakespeare become “Shakespeare”?
General History
Ideology
of Liberal Humanism
Specific History
Cultural
Promotion of Shakespeare
Ideology of Liberal Humanism
Christianity®Humanism
Questioning of the Catholic Church
Desacralization of everyday life
Focus on man and man’s possibilities
Bologna (14th Century)
Diego Velazquez
Las Meninas
1656
We are included and excluded at the same time
Piero della Francesca
The Flagellation of Christ
1469
Possibly the first use of perspective in visual art
Leon Battista Alberti
Wrote treatises about creating perspective drawings
1435
“Perspective” comes from a Latin word, meaning “to see
through”
Sebastiano Serlio
Design for Tragic Scene
1569
Serlio - Comic Scene
Serlio - Pastoral Scene
Conceptual Results
Objectivity
We have developed a world that we are both inside and
outside
We are most inside it when we are most outside it
We are all separate from the depicted world, and it is this
separation that unites us
Supremacy of the Prince
Most objective
Omniscient
Secular center of human existence
English Renaissance
1516, 1551: Utopia, Thomas More
1534: Henry VIII denounces the Catholic Church and
institutes the Church of England
1558-1603: Elizabeth I
1588: English defeat Spanish Armada
1611: King James version of The Holy Bible
“Our ideas as to what makes the self authentically human owe
more to Shakespeare than ought to be possible, but then he has become a
Scripture, not to be read as many of us read the Bible or the Koran or Joseph
Smith’s Doctrines and Covenants, but also not to be read as we read Cervantes
or Dickens or Walt Whitman. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
could as soon be called The Book of Reality, fantastic as so much of
Shakespeare deliberately intends to be.”
--Harold Bloom
--Harold Bloom
“Bardolatry, the worship of Shakespeare, ought to be even
more a secular religion than it already is. The plays remain the outward limit
of human achievement; aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even
spiritually. They abide beyond the end of the mind’s reach; we cannot catch up
to them. Shakespeare will go on explaining us, in part because he invented us.”
--Harold Bloom
--Harold Bloom
How did Shakespeare become “Shakespeare”?
Three significant events:
- Restoration England
Restoration England
Civil War (1642-1660)
Plague of 1665
Great Fire in London, 1666
“We must gather around some calm and indifferent things.”
--Thomas Sprat
--Thomas Sprat
John Dryden, “Dramatick Poesie”: Argues that England
should take their heritage and fashion something new.
How did Shakespeare become “Shakespeare”?
Three significant events:
- Restoration England
- English Imperialism in the beginning of the 20th century
- Present-day cultural production
Shakespeare and Tourism
“Visits can be structured as in safaris and cruises, but the
touristic site is only the occasion for the adventure: seeing the Acropolis,
touching its stones, is ultimately a prompt for an event that occurs in the
mind of the visitor, as the meaning of a performance occurs in the mind of the
spectator.”
--Dennis
Kennedy
The Globe Theater
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