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RichatdVUilson:
ueizaAozveirEssays on .Shakeipezarean Authon'D'

London: HanrcsterVCihcatsheag
igg3･ xil + z8g PP･

Here is a book which

proclaimsa
"newer
historicism" than New Historicism,
abjuring everybody's timelessShakespearefor the Stratfordman localized in time
and
place.The book has been variously praised-"A tocar de force" (John
Drakakis), necessary
C`a
read"
(AIan Sinfield), "An
extraotdinary achicvcment"

(Kathleen McLuskie).Whether ot not one can shate in the enthusiasm of these

ferventeulogies which decoratethe back cover, one has to acknowledge that the
book isabsolutely "a
necessary tead" cspccially fbr the method it adopts.
The significance of the method liesin itsdeep commitment to history-not
those fragmentaryhistorical episodes ofNew Historicismbut rather such historyas
would bringtihe "unappropriated"
Shakespcareback to us. This vo]ume isby no
means Richard VCrilson's firstcontribution to the debate ever New Historicism. In
his introductionto iTVlrw Hlistonidi-sm and RenaissanceDnenva, a igg2 collection which

he co-edited with RichardDutton, he showed the necessity of New

"Histoticising

Historicism," attacking this voguish thcory for aestheticising historyinto a spec-

tacle or gamc. Instead, he argued fbr Cultural Materialism,which "historicises
the
aesthctic"-in other words, affirms the historiciry of texts, an element Iargely
disregarded by New Historicists. S)Uhere New Historicismaestiheticizes history,
CulturalMaterialism historicizesthe aesthetic. Few have elucidated the difference
between American and Britishhistoricismas cleatly as this.
The charm of Wilson'sargument lies,arnong other things,in his convincing
criticism of the fallacy of modernism
CChistory
that isa pattern/ Of timelessmo-
and in his to explore, a la Foucault, the Stratford as localized
"will" "NPCrill"
ments,"

in time and place.In brieghe suggests that since Shakespeareis no longer our
contemperary, we should face the past.This is a decent proposal, and I fbr one
think that it is high time we woke up from the delirium
"post-deconstruc-
of
tionism," and were liberatcdfrom the critical ench4ntment of Greenblattand his
fbllowers.It is regrettable that many Shakespeareanscholars have been so be-
witched by these trends that they have not had the time to pay due attention to
important but lessfashionable works by such historiansas David Underdown,
Lawrence Stone,and ChristopherHil1.I personally believethat the wall between
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literary
criticism historyshould be demolished,without
and the one exploiting the
other, and in this sense XSCJilson's book is most welcome.
In his provocativeintroduction Return of the Author," VCJilson
"The
declarcs
that Iogical
"tihe
end of historicism is the return of the author" -
quitea polemical
and invigofatingchallengc to contemporary ctitical practice. Although the concept
"authorial
intention" may stil1 be untenable in some arenas such as textual bibliog-
raphy, itis no longera naive, extrinsic element in literary criticism. It may seem
contradictory that VCJilson argues for authorial intentionwhen he is thoroughly
influenced by Foucault, whose concept of episteme isusually considered to be con-
ducive to anti-authorialism. But in factFoucaultis not so much anti-authorial 2s

meta-authorial. Foucault's isan Author?" forexample

"XPCihat
- despiteitsopening
a linefrom Beckett, does itmatter who is speaking?"
"iJC'hat

with and ending with

an answer that it does not matter at all-is not an anti-authorial tract like
Barthes's Death of the Author." In thisessay, Foucaultacknowledges
"The
that
of discursivity" becausethey have produced something
"founders
some authors are
more than their own works; e.g Freud is the author of Freudian psychoanalysis
and
Marx Marxism. Foucau]tsays,
of believethat itisbctterto try to understand
`CI
that
somconc who is a writer is not simply doing his work in his books, in what he
publishes, but that hismajor work is,in the end, himselfin the processof writing
hisbooks. . . . The work ismore than the work: the subject who iswriting ispartof
the work" ("Postscripti An Interviewwith Michel Foucaultby CharlesRaus,"Death
affd theLaigrinth
INewYork: Doubleday, ig86]). VC'ilson assumcs tihat
the reader is
fullyacguainted with all this, although hc could ha/vebothserved the generalreader
betterand lent greatersubstance to his argument by a closer examinati()n of his

Foucauldiansources. VVrehave to turn elsewhere fbrreplenishment. Sean Burke's

7JbeDeath and RetstmoftheAathox' Cix'ticr'sm? and in Bamhes I baduafr
.Shrlyiectimb, and

Dei77de(Edinburgh Universit}T Press,igg2) isa puissant booster.

The authorial intentionin questionis not the timeless"Poetical Cortectness"
pursued by humanism but rathet the authority possesscdby the author in local
histories. Although ilSe'llsondoes not say so in so many words, the obvious implica-
tion is that such authority isa Nietzschean (to)power"- or the power of the
"will

author as envisioned by Foucault.Wil1 powet is thus, in VQ'ilson's words,

"the

discursive template of modern sellihood," a definition which, while difift,ring on the

sutface, is yet strangely reminiscent of the dead man's voice Greenblatt wanted to
hear.Although Greenblatt heard hisown voice instead, Wilson believesthat indeed
we can heat it,for where there isa will, therc is alwaysa way.
powet" of course has several other meanings. It is the power of Veril1
"VCiill

Shakespeareand of Shakespeare's wi11.Although all the seven chapters can be tead

independently, the introductionand the lastchapter - two brilliant
piecesnewly
written for the book - cortespond internally to each other, forming a frame fbr

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Richard Wilson: wal POwerrEtssays A"thon'ty

on .S)bakaipearean 28g

the entire text, The book beginsand ends with a declaration of wil1 en VViilson's

partto break the sign of that othet - the injunction engtraved on

"iJViM"
namely,

Shake$peare'stombstone prohibitingthe removal of his bones. Fot Wilson, itis

impefative to exhume the writing subject and remove the dust of
`Canti-

authorialism" in order to revive the authot.

In thc book's seventh chapter ConstantVCrM to Publish:Shakespeare's

"A
Dead
Hand," VUilsonanalyzes the notorious document itselCi,e. Shakespeare's testamen-
tary wM, seeing in itthe manifestation of selfhood as coterminous with modetn

propertyownership. By the lateElizabethan period,patrimonialidcntity aflirmed

by kinshipand lineagebegan to loseout to materialist identity linkedwith property.
Wilson citesJonson's libipone, in which a would-be beneficiary disinherits an heirto

procure a legacyforhimselg as literary evidence that, by the early Jacobean period,

identityhad already come to be grounded in individual ownership at the cost of
kinship. VCrhereas in a feudal systern of inhetitanccpropcrtydoes not belong to an
individual but to a lineage, modern selfhood disruptsthis relation to the extent that
the coercive power of custom is undermined by a new individualism. Through rich
and convincing argument basedon copious evidence of contempotary practices,
Wllson shows how Shakespeare's generation, untrammelled by hereditary imposi-
tion, "fashioned
their unprecedented selfautonomy." Here power" isto mean
"wM

boththe enforcing power of fathers' testation and the strength of individual voli-
tion,the one contradicting the other. Shakespeare's eanj comedies may belongto a
different culture, fbr there isnot yet a private space freefrom patriarchal lineage,
but in the latercomedies things begin to chznge. Although the submissive Pottiais
content that
"the
wil1 of a living daughterP$1 curb'd by the wM of a dead father,"
the volitional Jessica is freefrom the shackles of patriarchy. Referring to almost
available in Shakespeare's - from Lear's wil1 to pub-
"will" "censtant

every canon
lish"to Shakespeare's puns in Sonnets i3s and is6 - Wilson conducts the reader
"Will"
around the monument of superbly, making many notable
points.
Sadlythe other chapters failto be as rernarkable as this final essay. Sometimes
the argumcnt is too condensed and peremptory,Often itis too provocative to be
productive.
In the firsttwo chapters, VC'ilson tries to show Shakcspeareas belongingto an
urban elite which contemns the plebeian, buthe isso keento negate the traditional
image of the universal Shakespearethat perhapshe pushesthe opposite image too
im. The first chapter Mingled Yarn: Shakespeareand thc Cloth Workers" takcs
"A

Bakhtinian criticism to task for underestimating the extent to which the

carnivalesque elements of
popularculture are contained and contradicted within
Shakespeare's discourse.Shakespeare's contemptuous characterization ofJack Cade
is cited as an example of such containment, because,according to VCJilson, Cade is
a symbolic figureof ttaditional popular culture. Cade, however, is no more repre-

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sentative of theilliteratc culture to which he belongsthan Ginzburg'smiller in 7he

(;;beese affd cbeIPbines conforrns to the viewpoints of the dominant writtcn culture to
which he presumes.Gtantedthat ShakcspearcprcsentsCade as a clothing worker,
a member of a tradc which was particularly mvatant and radical duringthe isgos,
there is no sense in our imitating Cade's impetuou$ distinction bctxxTcen an edu-
cated elite who can write and the illitcrate mass. VV'ilson baseshisargument on the
oversimplified dichotomy of the illiterate and the literate. W"ere allthe wtiters -
drarnatists, pamphleteers,ballad-makers - then elitistP And docs the factthat the
"wooden
O" was not open on the day of the Midsummer revels of i sg2 make itan
"elite
theatre" separated from the customs of itsneighbourhood? I doubt it.VCJilson
strives to dispelthe illusionof the Shakespearecult; but he unwittingly betrays
some bardolatry of his own by dealing with Shakespeare as if
"the
Swan of Avon"
were an elite dtamatist cleaxly demarcated from his fellowplaywrights.
The second chapter this a holiday?':
"`Is
Shakespeafe'sRoman Carnival," is a
revised and augmented version of an essay previously publishedin Mw Hlisten'cisiva
and Renatstsance Dmnva and in ELH Here, VC'ilson considers the linguistic legerde-
starts from Antony's wilfu1 itselfas
"wil]"
main which wordplay on the word
"Derridean
dissemination." This fbllows,he argues, "from
Anten}r'serotics of
wriring, which are, as hiswanton way with words suggests, literally, a matter of wnv

Pouef'(page ss). Caesar'swM is transfbrmed by Antony into the signifier of all

desire- tihepower of hidden authorial intentionanthis case Caesar's) is exploited
so as to create another kind of power, the power of desireor willin thc crowd.
Antony repeats tihe word twenty-seven timesin thirty lines,
"wil1"
stimulAting
"the

Crowd to rnerge its `wM'

with Caesar's, untzil itcries orgasmically:
`The
vLril1, the wil1!

We wM hear Cacsar'swila!"' Thus farthe argument is engrossing and convincing;

but itfalls off later in the chapter, again becauseof an oversimplificd dichotomy,in
this case of the carnivalcsquc and the elite-as if everything were either
carnivalesque or elitist.

The book also have been more fascinating

could if XSV'ilson had restrained his
confrontationisrn a linic.On several occasions he challenges well-received

Shakespeareancriticism to no purpose.For example, in Chaptet Three, the

"Like

Old Robin Hood: -e4s Yb" Ldee frand the Enclosure Riots,"he attacks a cclebrated
reading ofAs Yb" L £ke fr by Anne Barton,compe-ng the rcader to choose be-
tween Barton and himself.Unfbrtunately, however, his essay is farless attractive
than Batton's.Of course IJCXilson'sreading, too, isinteresting enough, especially in
its te-examination of
`Ca
commonplace of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century

Shakespearecriticism," namely that deBop'swas an Elizabethan avatar of

"Orlando

the fo1kloric Robin d uaod" Nevettheless, it is perhaps a little far-fetchedto

so faras to associate yeoman Orlando" - as XPailson will
"the
expand thc analogy
have him-with the Midlaridrioters of the isgos. Ho'wever much Orlando's

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ruchard iJC'llson: U7Z(l

A)avetr
EsLfays
on 5hakespeateav
Authen'Dt zgi

desperatepleafbr food,burstingin on the exiled Duke "with

sword drawn," may
suggest a patallel, itseems almost a
pervetsion to characterize Orlando as if he
were a-ed with
pauperized shepherds against the class of Rosalindand her father.
The ttue value of Vailson's cririque rnay bc found in Chapter Four,
"Against
the
Grain:Representingthe Market in CbnSolanas," where he regatds "Mr.
Shakespeate"
capitalist and Cotiolanus the type of improving landlordthat was
"as
as a venture
enclosing Mdland counties." The metaphor is apt; Wilson skilfully demonstrates
the manner in which the market ecenomy of Cbriolanus and that of Elizabethan
Str2tfordovetlzp. Referring to a isg8 Stratfotdinventory which shows thatonly
forty-fburquartets of mi]1 corn, wheat and rye remained in the town whcn 6g6
quartersof malted corn were stored by maltsters, he concludes: isin the context
`CIt

of this chronic problem of graindistribution in a town such as Stratfordthat the

action of Cbriolanus unfblds. For as localstudies suggest, the economics of the
play
are specific to the Midlands" fpage 88). The drama of Cbriolanus isthen read back
intothe politics of Stratford, and we are ledto realize thatall those
politicaltussles
between Edward Grevilleand Richatd Quineymay not be itrelevant to the play
after al1.VC'ilson's application of localhistoriesto an analysis of the Shakespearean
canon certainly proves successfu1 in this instance.
Chapter Five, Quality of Mercy: Disciplineand Punishment in Shake-
"The

spearean Comedy," beginsand ends with an account of Sir iJValtef Raleigh'sexecu-

tion,using the drama of SitVValter's lastdays as model fbr an exploration of
"the

quality of rnercy" as itappears both in localhistories and in Shakespeareancomedy.

X)ailson
power that withdraws from sight, to become an eye that
"a

ponders upon
observes without being observed." The motif of unseen gaze, so prominent in
Shakespearcancomcdy, pointsto that ubiquitous, invisibleauthority which subju-
gatesthe disciplined subject. This of course relates to the figureof the Panopticon,
"a
machine fbrdissociating seeing from being,"which Foucaulttakes as exemplary
of modetn society's strategy to control itssubiects thtough the power of "gaze."

This power mechanism is reminiscent of the structure of Elizabethantragedy,

where, as Shakespeare's Ulyssespredicts, released from the restraining influenceof
feudalorder, "everything
includesitself in power, / Powet intowill, wM intoappe-
tite; / And appetite, an universal wolf. . . / Must . . . Iast eat up himselP'(Tivdes
and C'ressida I, bi,iig-24). VC(itherudite and stylish analysis, iJV'ilson looksinto
Shakespeare's exploration of
power and
"gaze"
in both comic and tragic contexts,
ultimately expanding his fbcusto consider how theseterms functionin localhisto-
fies as well.
Chapter Six,"Observations on English Bodies; LicensingMaternityin Shake-
speare's Late Plays," features Shakespeare'sson-in-law, JohnHall,a country physi-
cian who has Ieftus a recerd of his observations of female bodies. Here again,
"seeing"
reiates to autherity, The Elizabethan period$aw a tense struggle "between

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zg2 書 評

doctorand 　
　midwife 　 fot　authority 　ever 　delivery in　which
，
” ‘ ‘
the 　male 　will　 to　truth
”

evcntualy tr玉
　 umphed 　and 　subdued 　 the　empiricism 　ofmidwivcs 　DoctQfs　locked
． 　the

midwif ヒ out 　of 　the 　room 　and 　 bhndfbldcd

　the 　mother 　so 　as 　to 　monopoh2e 　al 　the
‘‘
seeing
”
duting　delivcry
　 　and 　acqUire 　the 　power 　of 五censing 　 fertility
　HaH
．
’

s　observa ．
面 ns 　of femalebodies　thus 　can 　be　interpreted
　 　
　as 　symbohzing process 　the 　ongoing 　

by　which 　the 　new 　patriarchal 　 mcdical 　 eg．tablishment 　asserted 　control 　over 　them ．
　

Wilson s　analysis 　amply 　demonstrates

’

　how 　m 討e 　discourse 　fbr 　al 　its 　prctcnse 　to ，

‘‘

science is　in　fact
，
”

　hoUow 　betraying the 后clion 　of 　a 　masculine

，
‘‘

　universe ． The ”

essay 　is 　intriguing 　as 　it

points 　out 　that 　Hall s 　 Wife 　Susanna 　hersclf
’
　 aU 　the 　more 　 ，

”
observed 　and cured by　hcr　husband 　floutcd　his wi11 and 　sold 　his　notebQoks
‘‘

，
‘‘ 刀

aftet his　dcath， 　The 　male win 　to 　power here　is 　nulh 丘ed 　by　femalevolition ．　These
‘‘ ”
　 　

notebooks 　inscribed 　with 　the 　mystery

， 　of 　the 　male 　univefse 　werc 　intended 　by 　Hal ，

to　 be　burned；but　in　fact　a 丘er 　his　death， 　 they 　were

，
　circulatcd 　in　the 　market 　fbr
”
　purposes 　lust 　as　King　Lear s constant 　wiU 　to 　publishwas 　taken 　advan −
’ ‘‘
mercenary

tage 　ofby 　his 　daughtcrs飾 r 　sim 丑ar reasons ．　As 　noted 　above
・ 　Wilson　tums 　to 　Lear s ，
’

in　 the 　next 　and 丘nal 　 chapter ， 　 bringing 　 to　 a 　 close 　 his f　thc
‘‘ ’

wilP 　 explora 面 n ⊂）

numerous 　implications 　of 　wi 且 power ．

　　On 　the 　whole 　Wilson s　book 　is　cngagingly 　theroughly

’

， 　written 　researched 　and ，

knowledgcablc ． 　Although　at　times 　his 　argument 　is　not 　fuly　convincing 　it　nonethe − ，

less　is　absolutely 　gratifying 　to　survey 　the 　degrcc 　of 　thc 　power　of Wil togeth “ ”
α

’
with 　Wilson ． 　Onc 　cannot 　emphas ze 　too 　much 　the　sign 愉 cance 　ofWz 丑son s　call 　fbr
｛

the 　return 　of 　the　author ． Lct　us 　hope　it 　is

‘《 ”

　taken 　up 　and rewarded with 　a 　fencwcd 　 　

consideration 　of 　Shakespeare 　in　all　his 　h 玉 storicity 　so 　that 　we 　may 　comc 　truly 　to

understand 　the 　correlation 　between 　his 　work 　and 　the 　age 　he　lived 　in．　Without　such

aclcar 　historical 　fbcus　it 　is　unlikely 　that　we 　may 　add 　much

， 　to 　our 　appreciadon 　of

Shakespeare 　fbr 　all　the 　good 刎 認 in　the 　world ．

Universit ｝・of 　TokyQ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 − Shoichifo　Kawai

モ
著 m モ ダニ ズ
代 表 ・濱 田 明 ）
ダ ニ ズ ム 研究会 く ム 研究 』

　二 十 世 紀 も終 わ り に 近 づ き つ つ あ る 現 在 今 世紀 初 頭 に 世界 を 席巻 し た 感 す ら あ る モ
、

ダ ニ ズ ム を再 検討 し よ うとす る試 み が 、 日本 で も様 々 に な さ れ て い る。 こ の 問題 を考 え

る ときの ．
難 し さは 、
モ ダニ ズ ム が 明 確 な 理 念 や 主 唱者 を 備 え た 運 動 で は な く ダ ダイ ズ 、

ム 、 未来主 義 シ ール
ュ レ ア リス ム な ど 様 々 な 前衛 的 芸 術運 動 全 般 を含 ん で い る た め
に、 れ を芸術運動 の 一つ ・傾向 に す ぎ な い
こ と見 るか 、 単な る 芸術 的現 象 とす る か とい

うとこ ろ に まで 議論 が さか の ぼ っ て しま う上、 モ ダ ニ ズ ム の 時期 、地 域 が き わ め て 広 範

一
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