Shakespeare and the Uses of Ideology (Studies in English Literature)

He was clearly fascinated by the problem of the public life as opposed to the private one, with the mediating ethic of honor. Thus I perceive Hamlet, ideologically, as an elaboration of the conflict between the public man, driven by the compulsion of service and honor, and the private man self-sufficient unto himself. The Jacobean world was riven by crisis, by dualism. It is interesting, therefore, that Shakespeare's greatest responses to it symbolically dramatize dualism, conflict, chaos. Lear depicts two orders of being in confrontation, Coriolanus two classes, Antony and Cleopatra two worlds. It is also in his great tragedies that Shakespeare most profoundly examines the essence of ideology, its manipulation of power and authority and their relationship to justice. In Lear power and authority are examined profoundly, metaphysically; in Coriolanus brutally and nakedly, stripped of all veneer, of all transcendental value; in Antony ideology, so to speak, "vanishes". Power qua power rules the world with no hint of a need for selfjustification. At the end comes The Tempest to urge that vengeance disappear and in its place a loving authority arise to administer true justice, above all selfish need of power. ## CONTENTS Preface vii 1. Ideology and Transcendence 2. Drama and Ideology 3. Ambition, the Murderous Appetite 4. The Cracked Mirror of History 5. Henry V as Ideological Vehicle 6. Stoicism, a Middle Way 7. Some Light on the "Dark" Comedies 8. King Lear, "Ideology" as Structure 9. Coriolanus, The Limits of Neutrality 10. Antony and Cleopatra and Vanishing Ideology ... 11. The Tempest, "With Justice and Freedom for All" . . ## Conclusion 'As for gentlemen [Smith says in De Republica Anglorum], they be made good cheape in England. For whosoever studieth the lawes of the realme, who studieth in the universities, who professeth liberall sciences, and to be shorte, who can live idly and without manuall labour, and will beare the port, charge and countenaunce of a gentleman, he shall be called master ... and shall be taken for a gentleman: ... (and if needs be a king of Heraulds shall also give him for mony, armes newly made and invented, the title whereof shall pretende to have been found by the sayd Herauld in perusing and viewing of olde registers ..."' (270). Smith's description of this most significant reality of his time reads like a paradigm of Shakespeare's career, so typical was he, in his social existence, of the successful of his time. 12 "The Comedy of Errors and Titus Andronicus revealed their author as ambitious. If we wrote 1 Henry VI about the same time, the extent of his ambitions is enlarged. Here we may have a young man trying his hand in three great literary modes, classical comedy, Senecan tragedy, and, in keeping with the political proclivities of his age, a highly serious political play", E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (1964), 141. Shakespeare's ambition was enormous. Moreover, the purpose of the Mirror was to teach the lessons which Tudor England thought it was the business of history to teach, the political lessons concerning ruling and being ruled, concerning the duties 2

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