Shakespeare and Domestic Loss: Forms of Deprivation, Mourning, and Recuperation by Heather Dubrow (review)

JBMCS 1.1(Spring/Summer 2001) Book Reviews HeatherDubrow. ShakespeareandDomestic Loss: Forms ofDeprivation , Mourning, andRecuperation. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge UP, 1999. xii+ 242 pp. $54.95. ReviewedbyLori SchroederHaslem The most recentadditionto the CambridgeStudies in Renaissance Literatureand Cultureseries, Shakespeareand DomesticLoss is a remarkablestudydocumenting and anatomizingvariousforms ofloss inearlymodern England - loss ofgoods, ofdwellingplace, ofparents - and then connecting these provocatively to Shakespeareanplaysand poetry, themselvespreoccupiedwithloss . To thisalreadyambitiousprojectDubrow adds a fascinating lookat howbothgenreand gender - at turns ambivalentand transgressive - are involvedin Shakespearean explorations ofhavingand losing;a numberofinstructive caveats to new historicistand postmodernist critics;and periodic analysisofShakespearealongsidecertaintwentieth-century poetry , films, memoirs, and social concerns. Identifying what she calls her study's"via media,"Dubrow eschewsboththeoverly optimistic notionthata loss can eventuallybe fully recuperatedor healed (as thefivestages ofgrief theorymightsuggest)and the "poststructuralist tendencyto assume that loss reduplicatesitselfwithvirtually no hope of mediationor remediation" (14). Instead, Dubrow - drawingon poetssuch as LindaPastan,MichaelBlumenthal, and Elizabeth Bishop - insiststhatart'sspecialgift is tohelponereachat least partialor temporary but alwayslimitedmasteryoverloss and deprivation.This veryquestion - whetherloss can be recuperated and, ifso, to what degreeand in whatform - is whatthe book argues that manyShakespeare textsalmost obsessively explore. Underpinning thestudyis theclaimthatShakespeare'spreoccupationwithloss in Shakespearederivesfrom theculturein whichand forwhichhis textswereproduced. Each ofthree chaptersfocuseson certainculturaltextsthathelp to illumi- Reviews 145 nate early modern psychological and social constructions of a particular formof loss. Dubrow borrows a termfromophthalmology - monovision - to explain hermethodologicalaim in studying these cultural texts alongside Shakespeare's. With monovision, a technique forrestoring clear vision, "one eye is corrected to see close objects well and the other to perceive distant ones, but thetwoeyes functiontogetherto produce a clearer image of both near and distant sights than even the single eye adjusted foreach typeofvision could have achieved* (9). Carrying this technique metaphorically into a cultural materialist study,then,is meant to guard against hazy generalizations about early modern cultural attitudes and anxieties and to help keep in tension the various pulls between local and national, rural and urban, personal and public. And at several points thereare gentlycorrectivecomments made to cultural materialist critics who are not as careful about their methodological approach as is warranted. The firstmain chapter- focused on burglary - opens with a fine explication of Sonnet 48's paradoxes, slippages, and ambivalences around such matters as keeping in and letting out, blame and guilt, securityand permeability,and this sonnet becomes a valuable touchstone for the many issues explored throughout the chapter. Turning to the period's assize court records,which one is cautioned against readingwithoutacknowledging their limitations and possible misrepresentations, the chapter goes on to show how such records (togetherwith such historical documents as royalproclamations) point to an upturn in burglary and thieveryprosecutions, particularly in market townssuch as Stratford-on-Avon. Atthesame time,these records suggest that local officialsand citizens may have been more tolerant ofburglarythan national officialswould like, out of sympathy for those- perhaps their neighbors- whose economic struggles impelled them to steal foodand clothing. Or perhaps itwas just easier to believe that bands ofrovingand highlyorganized outsiders were the trulythreateningcriminals than to consider that "the boy next door"was breaking intoone's home and stealing goods. The period's popular but largelyfictionalliterature ofroguerysurely helped to promote this ideology that burglarywas not as locally based as it actually was. Subsequent discussions of The Rape of Lucrece and the Henriad weave in many of the cultural concerns ("categorycrises ") about crossed boundaries addressed in the earlier section. Pointing to a number of ways in which Shakespeare deviated fromhis source, Dubrow argues that while his Lucrece's "sub- 146 TheJournal forEarlyModern Cultural Studies jectivity and agencyhave . . . beenthreatened bytherape"(47), she is largely exonerated, whileCollatineis blamed"inwaysthat comment onmalesubjectivity and especiallyontheobligation to protect" (49). TheHenriad,incontrasttoLucrece, focusesmuch less on thesheerterrors ofburglary (and ofrape)and is shown tovacillateinitsoutlookon burglarsand burglary, viewing that crimefrom"perspectivesrangingfromunmitigated horrorto ambivalenceto respect*(62). Whilepersistently allowingforso manycharactersto be "bothrobberand notrobber "(70), the Henriadneverthelessworkstowarda harsherattitudetoward burglary (capitalpunishment forBardolph)thatmirrors thehistoricalincreasein prosecutions. The nextchapterexaminesproperty disputesand threatsof fireto dwellingsas revealedin legal documents,pamphletson fire, and sermons. Fireitself is showntooccupyan ambivalent position,again concerning boundaries. Although friend when associated withhearthand home,firequicklyturnsfoewhen escapingproperboundariesand leavingone homeless. But beforemovingtoanalyzethehomelessand displacedin KingLear and Cymbeline> Dubrowturnsimportantly - as she does several timesearlier - tothesignificance ofgenreinherstudy.Pastoral and romanceare particularly appealingtoearlymodern persons because they"mediateand moderatethe stressesofloss in its manyforms"(98). Whilepastoral offers an alternative home, romanceemphasizes the "cyclicaldynamicsoflosing,recovering...