‘Where Did She Get Hold of That?’ Shakespeare in Henry James’s The Tragic Muse

Abstract

Where did who get hold of what? And who wants to know? Henry James’s novel of 1890, The Tragic Muse, which may be his wittiest, is a novel about artistic vocation, about the mostly undramatic struggle to live for art, and the mystery of genius. One of the two main protagonists is an actress, so a good deal of it directly addresses the conditions of the late-Victorian theatre, and the relation between British, French and (a little) Italian culture. One reason for James’s growing interest in this topic at this time was his own imminent attempt to make his name, and more money than in a fiction market that was becoming difficult for him, through writing plays for the late-Victorian theatre. It is a novel in which Shakespeare plays a large part, and one which consciously recapitulates the history of the nineteenth-century theatre in England and France.KeywordsLiterary CriticismBryn MawrEnglish WriterMain ProtagonistItalian CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.