A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare by René Girard (review)

76Rocky Mountain Review Deborah Gaensbauer presente, dans son French Theater ofthe Absurd, un travail sérieux pour lequel elle a consulté non seulement les sources premières mais aussi les revues, les journaux, les notes des metteurs en scène qui ont monté les premières. Elle nous replace dans l'atmosphère des débuts de ce théâtre qui a fait scandale à son époque, mais qui a cessé de surprendre. Enfin les Notes, Références et Bibliographie qui complètent le volume donnent à tous ceux, étudiants et autres, qui s'intéressent au théâtre du XXe Siècle, une excellente donnée pour poursvivre leurs propres lectures. Ce travail évoque le théâtre de l'absurde d'une manière riche et multiple. Un format agréable et une typographie claire ajoutent au plaisir de le lire. C'est un ouvrage indispensable, appelé à devenir un usuel de première nécessité dans toutes les bibliothèques et le compagnon familier de toute personne cultivée. Hommage en soit rendu à Madame Gaensbauer. MARIE-FRANCE HILGAR University of Nevada, Las Vegas RENÉ GIRARD. A Theater ofEnvy: William Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 366 p. The name of René Gireird is neeirly synonymous with "mimetic desire," the term he coined to describe our human tendency to choose the objects of our desire by imitating the desires of others. Over the past 25 years, Girard has earned the admiration ofliterary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers for his pioneering attempts to show that mimetic desire operates pervasively in all cultures, at once preserving social stability and threatening to disrupt that stability. In a series of brilliant and provocative books, he has explored literature, myth, and ritual, demonstrating how mimetic desire is linked to the psychology of violence, victimization, scapegoating, sacrifice, shame, rivalry, revenge. His best known works include Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Selfand Other in Literary Structure (Johns Hopkins UP, 1965); Violence and the Sacred (Johns Hopkins UP, 1977); "To Double Business Bound": Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (Johns Hopkins UP, 1978); TAe Scapegoat (Johns Hopkins UP, 1986); Job: The Victim ofHis People (Stemford UP, 1987); Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford UP, 1987). In his eeu-lier books, Girard credits great imaginative writers with having discovered and described the importance of mimetic desire. But in a 1978 interview, published in Diacritics and reprinted in "To Double Business Bound," he explained how his interests had moved from the literary treatment of mimetic phenomena to the phenomena themselves. Nevertheless, he said, he remained interested in those few writers who expose "the hidden role of mimetic effects in human interaction. . . . above all, William Shakespeare" ("To Double Business Bound" 200-01). And in the 1980s, Girard published roughly a dozen essays on Shakespeare which are the basis of his new book, A Theater of Envy. Book Reviews77 Girard explains that he deliberately chose envy rather than mimetic desire for the title of this study because envy is the traditional "provocative word, the astringent and unpopular word, the word used by Shakespeare himself." Though Girard treats envy as a subcategory ofmimetic desire, his description ofthe former is nearly identical to his earlier descriptions ofthe latter: "Like mimetic desire, envy subordinates a desired something to the someone who enjoys a privileged relationship with it. Envy covets the superior being that neither the someone nor something alone, but the conjugation ofthe two, seems to possess. Envy involuntarily testifies to a lack of being that puts the envious to shame . . ." (4). The disadvantage of the term envy, for Girard's purposes, is that it "suggests a single static phenomenon, not the prodigious matrix of forms that conflictuel imitation becomes in the hands of Shakespeare" (5). Readers who eure completely unfamilieir with Gireurd's work, or at least with his work on Shakespeare, will find much in this book that is stimulating. While some may balk at what appears to be an attempt to "reduce" Shakespeare's writing to a single formula, Gireurd's sensitive application of his strong hypothesis turns up fresh and important insights into the plays and into the functions of literature itself. Just as his earlier books connect the...