Shakespearean Resurrection: The Art of Almost Raising the Dead

Notes

188 NOTES Notes to Introduction A small portion of this chapter appeared as Sean Benson, “Short Shrift?: Religion and Materialist Criticism,” Literature Compass 2, no. 1 (2005): 1–7; available at http://blackwell-compass.com/subject /literature. 1. Marshall (1991) corroborates the observation: “An inherent motif in each of Shakespeare’s last play is afterlife—or its corollary in the theater, the return of the dead” (xiv). 2. As Marshall (ibid.) remarks, “The revelation of Christ’s Resurrection to humankind stood at the center of the Corpus Christi cycles, which dominated England’s native tradition for several hundred years and continued to be performed sporadically into the 1560s and 1570s” (122); the latter dates intriguingly correspond to the young Shakespeare’s opportunity to see them in performance. 3. The exceptions are Henry IV, Part 1, and Antony and Cleopatra, the subjects of the appendix. Both contain mock resurrections , which are distinct from the other representations of resurrection in this study. 4. Though the adjectives “resurrectionary” and “resurrective” are not in wide use today, they are, as a quick glance at the OED confirms, by no means obsolete. To say “resurrectionary (or ‘resurrective ’) variations” instead of “variations on the theme of resurrection ” seems less cumbersome, though both phrases are, admittedly, imperfect. Still, no less an authority than Vendler (1997) wrote of Sonnet 55, “The other chief ingenuity of the sonnet is the gradual transformation of a memorializing and commemorative impulse into a resurrective one” (268). In addition, the adjectives nicely encompass resurrections and the Resurrection alike; at times his audience, if not Shakespeare himself, has both in mind at once. 5. Dennis Taylor (1996), too, has written cogently of the need in the contemporary academy “for ways of discussing religious or spiritual dimensions in works of literature” (124). 6. Othello 5.2.294, in Bevington 2004. With the exception of chapter 3, unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Shakespeare’s works are from this edition. 7. Even the recent reinterest among contemporary scholars in the role of religion in early modern drama cedes too much ground, Knapp (2002) argues, to this secularizing view. While many materialist critics do operate within such a paradigm, he overstates the case for critics such as Targoff (2001), Shuger (1997), and Diehl (1997), each of whom is acutely sensitive to the religious dynamics at work in plays of the early modern era. 8. Knapp further argues that the “secularist hypothesis” of Shakespeare’s theater is a result of modern critics’ overreliance on Puritan antitheatricalist harangues: “The temple is despised,” wrote Anthony Munday in 1580, “to run unto Theaters; the Church is emptied, the yard is filled; we leave the sacrament, to feed our adulterous eyes with the impure, & whorish sight of most filthy pastime” (18). As titillating as his vehemence is, Munday represents only one position, and probably a minority one given the popularity and spread of professional playhouses at the time. For a more recent argument concerning the theater’s opposition to religion, see Bouwsma 2000, 129–42. 9. On the itinerant tradition of the Queen’s Men and Shakespeare’s possible early association with them, see McMillin and MacLean 1998, esp. xv, 5–7, 160–66. 10. J. R. Mulryne (2007, 14–15) points out as well that the Guild Hall in Stratford, where Shakespeare probably witnessed the itinerant companies in his youth, was founded as the “Guild of the Holy Cross,” with Mass celebrated in its buildings. See also McMillin and MacLean 1998, 60, 76. 11. A myth may be true or false in the end, and I wish to make it clear that I am not taking an absolute position on Shakespeare’s religious beliefs. My use of “myth” serves to underscore the hypothetical , suppositional nature of speculation about Shakespeare’s religious beliefs. It is worth noting, too, that claims regarding Shakespeare’s precise denominational affiliation strike me as equally speculative. For a more recent argument regarding Shakespeare’s alleged secularism, see Mallin 2007. 12. In an earlier study, Greenblatt (2001) acknowledges, “It is conceivable that Shakespeare, with his recusant family background, Notes to 4–9 189 his education in Stratford by teachers linked to [Edmund] Campion and the Jesuits, [and] his own possible links to Lancashire recusants , felt a covert loyalty to these structures and a dismay that they were being gutted” (254). Greenblatt further notes, “Plays can borrow , imitate, and reflect much of what passes...