Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear by Leon Harold Craig (review)

388 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 understanding it is necessary to examine the shadowy boundaries between history and poetry in the epics themselves, and in Renaissance theories of literary imitation B imitatio. Unlike Aristotle=s mimesis, which means the imitation of something outside art, the Latin imitatio takes from rhetoric the idea of imitating the style or the formal properties of a genre, or of an exemplary work in a genre. But after the discovery and translation of the Poetics, imitatio was contaminated B not to say confused B by association with mimesis, the imitation of an action. In the Renaissance such an action was taken to be a decisive moment in the larger movement of history. Galbraith seizes on this problem to expose the various ways in which the poets attempted to lend gravity to their fictions by associating them with Rome, where >Rome= is a figure for historical greatness in itself. By >architectonics of imitation= Galbraith means the formal methods by which the poets attempted to grasp a historical reality that lies beyond artistic form, in the real. But their efforts to anchor the literary in the historical (in a manner not unlike recent critical trends in the field of Renaissance studies) end in this shadowy realm between poetry and history. In the first section of the book this realm is termed >The Landscape of Allegory.= Galbraith denies the possibility of distinguishing between deliberate allegorical composition and simple allegorizing, a claim which many critics have found convenient in the short run (here, it ropes in Daniel and Drayton). The claim undoes itself in the long run, however, because it allows any literary work to be categorized as allegorical, thus depriving the term of meaning. The second section has two chapters on The Faerie Queene, the first on allegory and the Protestant Reformation in the Legend of Holiness, the second on the poet=s use, the Legend of Chastity, of the Troy story as a foundation for Britain. The two powerful chapters of the third section are on Daniel=s Civil Wars, which was inspired by the Roman poet Lucan=s epic on the Roman civil war, and on Drayton=s massive >chorographical= (placewriting ) epic, Poly-Olbion, a poetical survey of England in which myth and history are interwoven. Here Galbraith returns to the theme with which the book opens: the confusion of the verbal and the visual, of the modal and the spatial, in the efforts of poets and critics to delineate a boundary between historical and poetical discourse. In its meditation on the interaction of the figural and the historical, Galbraith=s study is unobtrusively but deeply philosophical. (GORDON TESKEY) Leon Harold Craig. Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare=s Macbeth and King Lear University of Toronto Press. xii, 406. $70.00 Admittedly old-fashioned, and dismissive of postmodernism as >various current Aisms,@= Leon Harold Craig argues in his book >that Shakespeare is humanities 389 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 as great a philosopher as he is a poet B that, indeed, his greatness as a poet derives even more from his power as a thinker than from his genius for linguistic expression.= This claim necessitates the premise that a play=s insights, its >deeper meaning,= may never have been intended for >mere theatre-goers,= suggesting that a search will be undertaken for hitherto hidden meanings. Craig=s special interest is Shakespeare=s political philosophy, and his projected audience is >a select group of scholars, many from an older generation.= I might admit to being of an >older generation= but I confess that I am not convinced by Craig=s interpretations. Craig suggests that Shakespeare=s philosophical plays induce his readers to engage in philosophizing, the >activity of thinking,= and he offers lengthy readings of Macbeth and King Lear. On Macbeth, his thesis is >that the play is designed to illustrate the political teachings we associate most readily with Machiavelli=s The Prince=; however, Macbeth=s course to the crown and beyond is, really, an illustration of how not to attain and hold power, which becomes clearer when we...