"An Incarnational Art": Teaching Shakespeare

Abstract

the changes in Shakespearean interpretation over the past decade or so have indeed been remarkable. During this time, performance-centered criticism enjoyed a few years at center stage; more recently, the spotlight has shifted to harbingers of the new historicism. Psychoanalysis has made a comeback, especially the pre-oedipal variety; and British cultural materialists are increasingly making themselves heard. Such changes have been coming more and more rapidly. Each year between 1980 and 1985 saw at least one new book on gender in Shakespeare published, most of them representing a sophistication in method over previous ones. The pace of change has been quickened by the popularity of purpose-commissioned anthologies, in which many hands develop various aspects of one or another of the new schools. Clearly some sorting out is in order. Are these new approaches merely trendy, or do they achieve new understandings of Shakespeare's plays? Taken together, do they amount to a fundamental change in Shakespearean interpretation? Or do they simply ramify and accelerate a pluralism that has already prevailed for decades?1