Shakespeare and Modernism (review)

Intended for scholars of Shakespeare, Modernism, and Performance studies, Cary DiPietro's Shakespeare and Modernism is an examination of the Bard's role as a source of authority and controversy during British High Modernism (roughly defined here as 1890 to 1940). The work's intended purpose, to discuss "how artists and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England engaged with the cultural traditions of Shakespeare as a means of defining . . . their own distinct historical experience" (7), is reliant upon three "frameworks" (12), each appropriate to DiPietro's focus: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Of these three, Marx plays the largest and most consistent role as the author sees the various attempts to render Shakespeare commonly available or intellectually exclusive in the context of class tensions that arose in the Victorian era and collapsed during the Modern period. Although not clearly divided into separate sections, the book follows three phases of discussion: critical responses, performance history, and gender. The author's reliance on these thinkers produces a work that has pedagological worth, even to those instructors of survey courses rather than period specialists.

The first two chapters focus upon modernism's creative and scholarly reevaluation of Shakespeare. In Chapter One, DiPietro presents his argument that focuses on George Bernard Shaw's and T. S. Eliot's, and other modernsrespective writings on Shakespeare. DiPietro refines his argument that certain moderns intended to "topple Shakespeare" from his paramount role as cultural icon (42) and does an excellent job of exposing the complex interrelations between Shaw's and Eliot's respect for (or envy of?—there is enough internal conflict in their critical approaches to suggest both) Shakespeare and their desire to recreate the canon in a less dominated form; Shaw, as we are reminded, coined the term "bardolatry" to denigrate the Shakespeare criticism of his day (15). Chapter two focuses less upon the critical theory of modernists and more upon the literary criticism of the period. Here DiPietro's range of study is dazzling. Those authors immediately expected, such as A. C. Bradley (Shakespearean Tragedy [Palgrave MacMillan 1992]) and Freud ("the Oedipus complex in Hamlet" [Interpretation of Dreams (Modern Library 1995, 55]), are discussed alongside lesser-known contemporary critics. Of these, biographic scholarship, exemplified by Frank Harris's The Man Shakespeare (Kessinger 2004), are considered in detail and this is a discussion that usefully contextualizes the recent flourish of Shakespeare biographies. Hamlet looms large throughout this section, and as it is the quintessential modernist Shakespeare, DiPietro deftly shifts his consideration of psychoanalytic approaches to Hamlet and Ulysses. The relationship between biographic speculation and canonization is demonstrated through a close reading of the "Scylla and Charybdis" section of Joyce's masterwork and illuminates Shakespeare's reception in the period, and the novel.

DiPietro then moves from criticism to theatrical theory and performance. Chapter three considers the changes to British theater in the period, with some brief discussion of Continental European and U.S. influences. DiPietro's focus on the rise of cinema as a competing and more mass audience form of dramatic presentation, as well as the radical approaches to stage design and costuming—modern dress performances are discussed ably in these two chapters—is rewarding and logical. The fourth chapter is an interestingly themed case study of Shakespearean performance circa 1923. This is a year chosen for its locus so close to the peak of British Modernism (1922, Ulysses, The Waste Land) and also for the fact that it was the tercentenary of the First Folio, an event that occasioned anniversary celebrations and an increase in performances. Throughout his discussion of performance, DiPietro makes good use of illustrations and photographs of stages and performers, enhancing the visual nature of this section.

Finally, he turns to a close examination of gender theory through Virginia Woolf's little known play Freshwater, loosely based upon the life of the actress Ellen Terry, along with the more canonical A Room of One's Own and Orlando. While the discussion of the play is engaging, the most...