Shakespearean Resurrection: The Art of Almost Raising the Dead (review)

The first sentence of Sean Benson's Shakespearean Resurrection spells it out: "The thesis of this book is that Shakespeare repeatedly evokes Christ's resurrection from the dead when long-lost characters reunite; at those moments, he subtly superimposes the Resurrection on his 'recognition scenes'" (1). This is as straightforward as it gets, and the rest of the book is written with equal directness and clarity. However, the second clause of the first sentence is essentially a variation of the first clause; the same idea is restated in different words. In fact, the first sentence provides not only the governing thesis but also the organizational model of the book.

The author might explain the book's element of repetition as a necessity arising from the sheer frequency of allusions to the Resurrection in Shakespeare's works. Benson counts fourteen plays—or "one-third of [Shakespeare's] corpus"—in which "variations on resurrection" prominently exist (2-3), and he touches on all of them in one form or another. This is not to say that Benson considers these plays as religious allegories with an explicitly Christian message, in the manner of medieval mystery plays. As the book's subtitle hints ("The Art of Almost Raising the Dead"), Benson focuses on the dramatic art behind scenes of "quasi resurrections" or "figurations" (1, 3), including among them Viola's reunion with Sebastian, Helena's self-revelation to Bertram, Hero's reappearance to Claudio, and Hermione's surprise return. At issue are how theatrical "gestures" work "at the margins of imaginative possibility" to "direct . . . our gaze in the direction of the immaterial and transcendent" (12, 15). Nonetheless, the recurrent and dominant idea of the book remains constant: "Quasi resurrections remind us of the triumph over death as well as the possibility of reconciliation that the Christian Resurrection represents, and thus the sacred reminder suffuses the profane present of the stage" (78). Even as Benson gestures broadly toward the presence of an unspecified spiritual element, he remains quite sectarian, reading each instance of a quasi-resurrection as an allusion not merely to a resurrection effected by Jesus or to other possibilities outside Christianity, but to THE Resurrection of Jesus, with all its theological connotations. Shakespeare habitually relates the "resurrective potential intrinsic to the conventional recognition scene" to its ultimate expression in Christian universal history so that the plays "resound" with the redemptive promise of Christian eschatology; he encourages "a consideration of life sub specie aeternitatis" (41, 78). Hence, what constitutes the "pathos" of Shakespeare's tragedies is the "bitter frustration" of "failed resurrections" (322, 3)—as in Desdemona's brief moment of recovery on her deathbed—although the plays do not question Christian structures of belief.

In pursuing this argument, Benson sets himself against materialist and historicist readings of the past generation, in particular those seeking to secularize Shakespeare and his age. At the same time, Benson challenges humanist readings that have decidedly nihilist or at least skeptical inclinations. Most of all, Benson explores something that has probably seemed too obvious to notice (and remains therefore undeservedly underexamined): climactic reunions very often depend on the return or restoration of someone thought not merely to be lost but dead. As Benson points out, Shakespeare often tweaks his sources to include or emphasize the element of death (for example, adding the news of Helena's death in All's Well That Ends Well); it wouldn't do to suggest simply that Shakespeare raises the dramatic stakes with such maneuvers. In this respect, Benson performs important work; readers will find their minds spinning as they rethink the endings of many of Shakespeare's plays.

However, I am not entirely persuaded by the specific applications of Benson's argument. It may indeed be high time to rethink some of the darker readings of the comedies that have become prevalent in the past generation, but perhaps Benson pushes too far in the opposite direction to argue that for...