Shakespeare in the Victorian Periodicals (review)

Kathryn Prince’s Shakespeare in the Victorian Periodicals is a needed addition to nineteenth-century studies, as it draws together two branches of inquiry that have independently garnered much recent attention: nineteenth- century Shakespeare and the periodical press. Such a pairing creates a multifaceted lens through which we can analyze how Shakespeare became embedded in nearly every corner of nineteenth-century society. As Prince informs us, “Collectively, the periodicals are the best record we have of the ways in which the nineteenth century created a new public for Shakespeare” (15), and her compelling research reveals the facets of this “new public” and the forms Shakespeare are took when he reached its members.

Prince’s argument rests on the notion that studies of Shakespeare within the periodical press provide a more accurate and nuanced understanding of how nineteenth-century readers would have encountered the Bard and his works than can be reached by examining them in other genres and formats. While anthologies such as Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts’s Women Reading Shakespeare 1660–1900 (Manchester University Press, 1997) have helped us better understand how different populations of nineteenth- century society interacted with and adapted Shakespeare’s plays, readers of Penny Magazine, Girls’ Own Paper, or Theatre Journal would not have encountered the plays grouped together and presented as such. Prince therefore urges us to analyze nineteenth-century periodical portrayals within the context of single periodical issues and in relation to particular moments in history discussed in these publications:

It is an enlightening exercise to discover Shakespeare within these and other periodicals as their first readers would have, perhaps turning to other interesting features and making connections with them . . . . The surprising aspect of this approach is . . . how embedded [Shakespeare] is in the shifting tides of topics that are not always sufficiently important to have been recorded in the standard works of social history.

(4)

When examined in this manner, references to and portrayals of Shakespeare’s plays become more minutely (and sometimes surprisingly) imbedded in their surrounding contexts. Such intertextuality has the potential to alter the accepted, teleological script that has guided our understanding of nineteenth-century Shakespeare reception.

Prince groups her chapters into two main categories: different target audiences and particular events in theater history. Her first three chapters track Shakespeare’s presence within working-class, children’s, and women’s periodicals. She provides examples from a range of periodicals for each demographic as she demonstrates how writers and editors tailored their references to further pedagogical missions or to appeal to readers’ interests. For instance, some magazines discussed facets of Shakespeare’s family history rather than his plays or characters, and they tailored this focus to align with their overarching thematic framework. Thus, the working- class magazine The National details Shakespeare’s own rags-to-riches story and posits a good work ethic as a means to success. Boys’ Own Paper, though, stresses Shakespeare’s middle-class masculinity as complementing his poetic skill, and an article in Woman’s World details how Mary Arden’s success as a mother factored into Shakespeare’s later achievements. Furthermore, Prince spends time examining unexpected adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays intended to attract specific target audiences. In particular, her discussion of sensational renditions of Othello and Hamlet in Boys of England prompts us to reconsider Shakespeare’s educational legacy and the manner in which children encountered Shakespeare’s works. Scholars frequently cite the likes of the Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare when exploring children’s first encounters with Shakespeare. Yet these alternative periodical versions prompt us to reevaluate the accepted notion that writers, for the most part, used Shakespeare moralistically to help inculcate in young readers particular personal qualities: in some periodical renditions, Shakespeare’s plays are adapted to entertain rather than instruct.

Prince’s last two chapters explore nineteenth-century theater history, and specifically how periodicals like Theater Journal actively shaped readers’ aesthetic taste and contributed to debates regarding the 1843 Theater Regulation Act and the establishment of a Shakespeare-oriented national theater. Periodical...