Shakespeare and violence

Abstract

Shakespeare and Violence, by R. A. Foakes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xiii, 224 pp.. Cloth $70.00, paper $24.99. By many accounts (including that of this reviewer), R. A. Foakes, although nominally retired, remains one of the premier Shakespearean scholars working in this country today. He has touched all the bases: he has written brilliant interpretive works (Hamlet versus Lear, Cambridge, 1993); he has edited complex texts with scrupulous attention to all the variant readings that changing dramatic productions necessarily involve (see his Arden King Lear, 1997), and he has engaged the historiography of Shakespearean criticism (Coleridge's Criticism of Shakespeare, 1989). His contributions are marked by detailed, reliable information, and while trenchant in his criticisms of fashionable cant, he has shown a remarkable openness to the approaches of younger scholars, for whom he has served as model and mentor, gladly learning and gladly teaching. He follows these works with a new monograph, Shakespeare and Violence, which benefits from his expertise on practically every page. His essential argument is that in his depiction of violence-a violence that is meaningless and arbitrary because it is bred in the testosterone-Shakespeare heralds a modern situation: Shakespeare is still our contemporary. Violence is endemic to human nature, particularly showing itself in hierarchical, male-dominated societies. As a biological given, aggressive behavior serves as the thread that Professor Foakes draws through the various stages of Shakespeare's development, from the early histories, by way of the pivotal Hamlet and culminating in The Tempest. In the larger sense this emphasis on violence challenges the humanistic interpretations of Shakespeare. Intellectual background is amply provided, particularly the paramount role of the Cain and Abel story (obviously gratifying to this reviewer). Unfortunately, given our expectations, the result is flawed and sadly disappointing. As one attempts to account for this disappointment one sees that the work is marred by both its premises and more importantly by its turning of violence into a monomyth, with all the limitations such an imposition entails. One can first dissent from its premise that all violence is meaningless. This reviewer happens to believe that war is the stupidest invention ever contrived by the mind of man. Nevertheless, it is hard to think that the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or World War II were meaningless, or unproductive of valuable resolutions, and not involving some better-if embattled-purpose and design. The deeper disappointment comes from the choice of theme, or at least its working-out. Violence treated as a monomyth leads to repetition and lack of development, to unproductive analyses and to an avoidance of the larger conceptions present in Shakespeare's plays. Violence becomes a just so story that is irreducible and always the same. It not only works as a straitjacket where it should be more flexible and opening onto larger conceptions, but it also places excessive attention on minor episodes and relies on aberrant conjunctions. The thread that Foakes draws through the plays rarely changes shape or leads to larger configurations. If there is change, it is because of the differences of the terrain and not because of any yield coming from the root idea. Of course there is some support for the contention that Shakespeare regards violence as gratuitous, without purpose, but rather deriving from the sheer aggressiveness of human nature. We see it in the opportunistic feuds present in Henry VI and Romeo and Juliet, where no one seems to be aware of the whys or wherefores. Some of the best pages deal with the recent cinematic versions of Richard III (Richard Loncraine, 1995) and Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996). Visually, Foakes argues, with all their alterations, these modern versions capture the endemic nature of violence present in the Shakespearean plays. …