Shakespeare and Montaigne. Edited by Lars Engle, Patrick Gray, and William M. Hamlin

Abstract

Lars Engle usefully explains (p. 38) that the sixteen chapters in this edited volume are divided into those which draw a comparison between Montaigne and Shakespeare and those which argue for an influence of the first on the second. Yet the beauty of this volume is that other understandings of its organization and purpose are also richly available. For instance, Colin Burrow’s careful preface raises an implicit question that is central to the volume’s overall concerns: is any syncrisis between the essayist and the playwright a matter of exact verbal parallels or of a conference, a conferring, a vibration through moments of empathy and silent, perhaps even accidental, affinity? Burrow’s deliberate unpicking of the notion of source as being inadequate to the task of what reading — let alone imitation — might mean in this debate is followed by N. Amos Rothschild’s contribution on the rhetoric of imitation, and then further refracted in Peter G. Platt’s ‘hovering and haunting’ (p. 242), in Richard Scholar’s delicate probing of Shakespeare’s and Montaigne’s rhetorical manner as well as matter, and in The Tempest’s ‘essay-like processes of thought’ analysed by Engle (p. 56). In a not dissimilar vein, Richard Hillman discusses the imitative generic patterns of tragedy and comedy. A second thematic strand studies how or whether Shakespeare and Montaigne can speak to our modernity: Anita Gilman Sherman interrogates selfhood, William McKenzie narcissism, and David Schalkwyk gender; in the book’s longest chapter (forty-seven pages), Patrick Gray proposes a dissenting view of liberalism. Likewise, there is a marked philosophical edge to a number of chapters — another thematic undercurrent. Maria Devlin McNair uses Bernard Williams’s notion of moral luck, Cassie M. Miura deploys Stanley Cavell, and Zorica Bečanović-Nikolić examines subjectivity through the writings of Paul Ricœur; Pyrrhonism occurs in chapters by Alison Calhoun, Richard Dillane, and William M. Hamlin, while Daniel Vitkus champions a neo-pagan reading of Antony and Cleopatra. Alongside this prismatic sense of the chapters, with each change of perspective bringing a new dimension of Shakespeare and Montaigne into view, the volume also reflexively enlarges on and assesses its own emphases through its abundant paratexts — a preface, two introductions, and two afterwords. They fulfil diverse functions. Hamlin offers a history of criticism about Shakespeare and Montaigne, whereas Engle views the pair in terms of thought-experiments. The afterwords, by contrast, tend to be contestatory. Thus, echoing Gray, George Hoffmann warns us not to take Montaigne straightforwardly as our liberal ancestor and, like Burrow, sees the self chiefly as a product of performance albeit now in a philosophical, sceptical mode. Meanwhile, Katharine Eisaman Maus points up some of the differences rather than the similarities between the playwright and the essayist. Curiously, none of the contributions considers whether oral transmission through report, news, or even word of mouth among circles of acquaintances might have played any part in Shakespeare’s encounter with the Essais. This reservation notwithstanding, the volume offers a wide-ranging yet coherent body of reflection and represents a distinguished and stimulating illustration of the key themes, ideas, and approaches in its field.