Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity ed. by Irena R. Makaryk and Marissa McHugh (review)

The essays in this admirably well-focused collection were initially presented as papers at the SSHRC-funded conference Wartime Shakespeare in a Global Context/Shakespeare au temps de la guerre, held at the University of Ottawa in 2009. The coherence of the project reflects the exemplary guidance of the editors in defining a clear set of questions to be addressed. They have also done an excellent job in devising a strong organizational scheme for their volume, beginning with discussions of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and concluding with a complex discussion of the contemporary Polish vision of the war. Although the strength of this volume in large measure results from the work of the editors, one must still give credit where credit is due. I would also say that each of the contributions here gives evidence of lucid intelligence in the development of its argument. Coverage of the topic is international if not exactly comprehensive, with attention given to the major theatres of the war, along with less well-known areas affected by the conflict, including Canada, Greece, and Palestine, among others.

The question of Shakespeare in the historical context of the Second World War requires a strong interdisciplinary style of research and analysis. Irena R. Makaryk’s introduction to the volume sets out the central themes of collective memory, ideology, and, more crucially, the resistance encountered in every effort to co-opt Shakespeare’s works to the interests of a propaganda agenda. This last point is brought out most strikingly in Zeno Ackermann’s “Shakespearean Negotiations in the Perpetrator Society: German Productions of The Merchant of Venice during the Second World War.” Staging the play to reinforce German anti-Semitism was not, it turns out, such an easy task. The marriage of Jessica to Lorenzo violated certain clauses in the Nuremburg laws, a problem that could only be got round by making Jessica a foster child of Shylock. More problematic and more fundamental was the character of Shylock as a “vengeful Jew” who might somehow pose a legitimate threat to the imagined Volksgemeinschaft in Shakespeare’s Venice. Typically the larger structural problems were addressed by performing the play as a reconciliatory comedy, with Shylock as a harmless, bumbling clown. Inciting anti-Semitism was no longer an issue for many of these productions. The disappearance of Jews from cities and towns throughout the Third Reich was staged as a fait accompli, and the audience could leave the theatre reconciled to the events that made this possible.

The recruitment of Shakespeare in the service of German triumphalism may be contrasted with Katarzyna Williams’s discussion of Pawel Passini’s “recycling” of Shakespeare in the context of Polish “martyrology.” Her essay takes up Passini’s 2008 restaging of Hamlet in his play Hamlet ’44, set against the background of the failed Warsaw Uprising of 1944. His production did not aim at the affirmation of heroic Polish resistance, nor, on the contrary, did it set out to be anything like a conventional “anti-war” tract. It did, however, provoke considerable resistance and controversy among Polish intellectuals, both about Shakespeare and about the uprising itself. In my view this type of reaction is closer in spirit to what Shakespeare intended, although to be sure his plays were produced in conditions of tight censorship. It is clear from the various essays in this volume that Shakespeare’s works can be repurposed and adjusted to conform to almost any program of national or collective self-affirmation. I have sometimes wondered if anything similar could ever have been said about the works of a great musical composer. In any event it is equally clear, though not always emphasized by the various contributors, that Shakespeare resists appropriation. After reading these essays I find myself in some disagreement with the view that Shakespeare is “always already” disseminated, or absorbed into someone’s ideological apparatus. Artists may desire sovereign...