Shakespeare: The Histories (review)

Shakespeare: The Histories. By Graham Holderness. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. x + 231. Illus. $29.95 cloth.

Graham Holderness is one of the most prolific critics of Shakespeare's history plays, having published three monographs and two collections of essays on this genre over the course of fifteen years. ¹ Moreover, he has done so from a consistently postmodern point of view. The introduction challenges the linear sequentiality of the plays (1-4), raises doubts about genre (5-7), queries the stability of "history" as a category of inquiry (7-9), describes a method "more concerned with the word than with the concept, with the metaphor than with the theory" (13), meditates paradoxically on nothing as something (13-16), and discourses on problems with "the mirror image as a model for mimetic reflection" (17). The promise of the introduction is fulfilled in Holderness's decision to defy generic expectation by beginning with a chapter on Hamlet; to defy chronology and the presumed order of composition by treating Richard III before 1Henry VI, Henry V before 1 Henry IV, and 1 Henry IV before Richard II; and to resist closure on his subject by leaving four of the history plays (2 and 3 Henry VI, King John, and Henry VIII) out of account altogether. Despite its title, this book is about a great deal more (and less) than "the histories."

As one would expect of an experienced and articulate postmodern critic, Holderness complements his reading of the plays with readings of other cultural artifacts. In a chapter called "Rainbow and Sword" (19-41), he discusses the "Rainbow Portrait" and the "Ermine Portrait," of Elizabeth using them to evoke the paradoxical nature of juridical power in the late-sixteenth century. The Rainbow Portrait depicts an ideal of alert watchfulness: though the queen holds a rainbow in her right hand as a symbol of covenantal calm after storm, her dress is emblazoned with eyes and ears, "representing the vigilant senses of the state, watching, listening, reporting," and the needlework serpent on her arm suggests she is "wise but also deadly" (21). In the Ermine Portrait she holds an olive branch, but a bejewelled sword of state lies within easy reach on a table before her.

Other provocative insights abound. Drawing on Patricia Parker's canny observations about "preposterousness," Holderness supports his case for a nonlinear approach by noting that "Henry VI, Part One and Richard III both appear to be back to front, since each begins with an ending (a funeral) and ends with a beginning (a betrothal)" (12). Holderness points out that Richard III's shadow "defines him as an effect of historical causation," and then adds, "But of course, in the historical drama, everything is made out of nothing; the actor himself is but a 'walking shadow' (Macbeth, 5.5.24); and shadow is the only basis of substance, the absence of real history that alone facilitates its theatrical representation, the presence of history in the artifice of dramatic representation" (84). Holderness notes the frequent observation that in 1 Henry VI, Talbot is the vestige of the dead Henry V, but he also points out that Talbot anticipates Henry V in the later play: "Surrounded and outnumbered by the enemy, Talbot re-enacts the hopeless odds of Agincourt, and responds with the same reckless courage, stoicism, and determination, the same submission to the concurrence of divine will and national interest, as his illustrious predecessor" (120).

Despite the familiar postmodern features of his book, Holderness points out that "the approach taken differs considerably, as should be immediately apparent, from much of my earlier work on Shakespeare's history plays" (ix). For Holderness to distance himself from the Marxist tradition of Raymond Williams is indeed to take a different approach from the one he has taken earlier. His interest in "word" and "metaphor" rather than "concept" and "theory" (13) suggests a more traditional aesthetic interest, manifested in his frequent citation of other literature, especially poetry and the Bible.

An evocative...