Skepticism and Memory in Shakespeare and Donne (review)

The last decade or so has witnessed a good deal of work on skepticism, and a fair amount of work on memory, in early modern studies. Anita Gilman Sherman's contribution to these burgeoning fields brings the two purposefully together, factoring in an aspect of skepticism-that of temporality, and especially mnemonics-rarely tackled elsewhere. The result is an intelligent and valuable work, at once wide ranging in its theoretical parameters and, at the same time, peculiarly limited in its primary texts. Sherman addresses Donne's two Anniversaries and Ignatius His Conclave, Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and (with Fletcher) Henry VIII, or All Is True, as well as the two authors' few and scattered epitaphs.

Skepticism's complementary perspectives-its investment in equipollence (isostheneia)- inform the choice of texts and the organization of Skepticism and Memory in Shakespeare and Donne. The conjunction of these two authors may seem an odd one in relation to this topic-Donne (at least for much of his life) deeply religious and passionately inspired by the transcendental and salvational, Shakespeare myriad minded and of an apparently almost infinite negative capability. But Sherman's "long-dreamed-of dialogue" (191) between the two makes for a productive friction. Shakespeare and Donne are played off against each other in the first two pairs of chapters: the Anniversaries are juxtaposed with The Winter's Tale, and Ignatius His Conclave is set beside Henry VIII. Indeed, the Anniversaries and The Winter's Tale are themselves manifestly bifold works, neatly splitting into halves exemplifying (for Sherman) aspects of the skeptical aesthetic. These works' biphasic nature helps her to show that the potential for profound skepticism and for an attempted recuperation or cure from its most painful effects is available in the formal aesthetic of these otherwise not very compatible writings. The multivocality of Ignatius and Henry VIII provides even more opportunities for Sherman to unveil the skeptical rhetoric of conflicting accounts or plurality of points of view. Shakespeare and Donne, in Sherman's view, have a "conflicted stance toward doubt" (113); both foster skeptical attitudes (especially toward history, collective memory, or claims of authoritative truth) while exploring the possibilities for recovery from these kinds of skepticism. Readers of Stanley Cavell will recognize his portrayals of the dual impulsions in skeptical recitals and, indeed, Sherman's book is openly indebted to Cavell's oeuvre at many turns.

Sherman adds to Cavell's aesthetics of skepticism a set of rhetorical and narrative techniques-including countermonumentality, disnarration, framing, perspectivism, and exemplarity / typology-introduced in the opening chapter. There is something of the plurality of skepticism here not just in the thematics of skepticism but also in Sherman's methodology. While all of these techniques are brought to bear interestingly on "the dialectic between remembering and forgetting" (17) and while the conjunctions of theoretical perspectives are often fruitful, it must be said that the rapidity and plurality of perspectives can be somewhat perplexing. Skepticism and Memory in Shakespeare and Donne is creatively interdisciplinary, using ideas imported from critical theory, narratology, history, art criticism, and philosophy alongside some fine close readings of the primary texts. Sherman is disarmingly skeptical about her own methodology, asking (herself, or perhaps the reader) in her afterword, "Does this syncretism work?" (191). My answer is: on the whole, yes.

The two chapters on the Anniversaries and The Winter's Tale focus on the figure of the exemplary (and memorialized) woman-Elizabeth Drury (the deceased daughter of Donne's patron) in the first case, Hermione in the second. In both cases, the figure comes to represent "the definitive end to skepticism" (57); both are "privileged, but elusive object[s] of desire and knowledge" (86). In their unknowability, Sherman argues, they push the reader or watcher toward an "epistemological agnosticism" (51), where "forgetfulness and memory, like knowledge and ignorance, become meaningless binaries" (58)-although both authors are aware of the tenuousness of such a fideist gambit. Sherman contextualizes her readings in early modern discourses, especially...