Reading Shakespeare's Will: The Theology of Figure from Augustine to the Sonnets by Lisa Freinkel (review)

Abstract

770 Reviews that would require 'acquainted' and not 'a-cunted'. Yet the sonnets seem to delight in such non-logical games, as does language; a word taken in one sense earlier in a sentence can return to haunt the sentence with another sense later, and one can have more significant meanings than there are logical routes through a sentence, because, as they are interpreted, words have a duration in the mind as well as a semantic loca? tion on the page. In the end, Pointner's desire not to overstrain his readings logically may be what leads him to, as he says, 'overstrain the argument'. His final,and logical, reading of these lines runs: '[Thou hast] A woman's gentle heart?but not equipped with a cunt? | With shifting change. Ass is false women's fashion!' (p. 106). ICU, Tokyo John Lee Reading Shakespeare's Will: The Theology of Figure from Augustine to the Sonnets. By Lisa Freinkel. New York: Columbia University Press. 2002. XXX + 384PP. $52; ?36.50 (pbk $20; ?14). ISBN 0-231-12324-8 (pbk 0-231-12325-6). Although concerning itselfwith Shakespeare, and principally with the Sonnets, Read? ing Shakespeare's Will spends one hundred and fifty pages on other authors before it gets to its ostensible object. The explanation for this lies in the book's subtitle: 'The Theology of Figure'. In her opening chapter Lisa Freinkel takes her inspiration from Erich Auerbach's famous essay 'Figura', in which he develops the notion of 'figural interpretation', based on what is more commonly known as typology or Christian allegory. Freinkel's approach to the Sonnets, then, is theological and the preliminary chapters take in not only St Augustine and his master St Paul, but also Augustine's poetic disciple, and occasional adversary, Petrarch, culminating just prior to Shake? speare's entrance in the radical, Reformation theology of Martin Luther. Throughout the book flesh and spirit are seen to oppose one another, a traditional balance of contraries, but one that is depicted with unusual fervour. Indeed, the writing is always dramatic and the argument presented with an eagerness that bespeaks the presence of the urgently testifying Luther himself. Stylistically, however, this is not always a virtue. The book is longer than it need be, and suffersfrom a somewhat verbose exposition. How does the flesh-spirit dichotomy relate to Shakespeare's sonnets? The answer lies in Freinkel's application of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the text that occasioned Luther's special kind of conversion. Whereas, according to Freinkel, Augus? tine gathered his recollections of previous sinfulness into a 'figura' representing his new spiritual identity (something that the poet of memory Petrarch similarly strove for), Luther insisted that the division between fleshand spirit could never be healed? hence the argument, 'justificationby faith alone'. In her chapter 'Luther Disfiguring the Word' Freinkel shows that for Luther 'figura' can function only in a broken or abused manner. (In a finalchapter, on The Merchant of Venice, Freinkel again invokes Luther when she subtly reads 'abuse' into the operation ofthe Law that seals the fate of Shylock.) The poetic trope that corresponds to this process (and here is where Shakespeare comes in) is catachresis, which Puttenham defined, as Freinkel takes care to remind us, as 'the figure of Abuse'. Giving a useful summary of the term's history both in the age of Quintilian and in the Renaissance, she none the less makes an error,in my view, in interpreting how Puttenham intends the word 'lack'. Puttenham says, 'for lacke of naturali and proper terme or worde we take another', meaning presumably that when we do not have the correct word to hand, we substitute another for it. In poetry, then, catachresis capitalizes on 'mistakes' to invigorate the language, as Sister Miriam Joseph (cited by Freinkel) long ago observed about Shakespeare's MLR, 100.3, 2005 771 creativity. Freinkel, by contrast, gives a quite extraordinary and challenging meaning to Puttenham's words: 'Catachresis thus compensates foran original lack in the proper order ofnature: a lack that compromises the verynotion oforigin itself (p. 162). Pretty much everything she claims for Shakespeare's use of language in the Sonnets hangs on this assertion...