Schedule / Horaire
Wednesday 23 April 2014, 11h-13h.
Room: Vendôme.
Leaders / Organisateurs
Daniela Carpi and J. Gaakeer (Italy-Netherlands)
Participants
- Helen Vella Bonavita, Edith Cowan University (Australia)
Stand up for Bastards: Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Shakespeare’s plays - Francois Ost, Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles (Belgium)
Weak kings and perverted symbolism. How Shakespeare treats the doctrine of the King’s two bodies - Carolyn Sale, University of Alberta (Canada)
Shakespeare’s Common Law: Hamlet and Conscience - Gary Watt, University of Warwick (UK)
No Play Without Will - Andrew Majeske, University of California Davis (USA)
Dying declarations, feigned deaths, and dramatic rebirths in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale
Abstracts / Résumés
1. Helen Vella Bonavita, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia (Australia)
Stand up for Bastards: Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Shakespeare’s plays
From King John to King Lear, legitimacy and its counterpart illegitimacy is an abiding concern in Shakespeare’s plays. The notion of ‘legitimacy’ and its multiple applications – to inheritance, to power, to identity – dominate much of sixteenth and early seventeenth century drama, but are particularly evident in Shakespeare’s history plays. From the clear legalistic debate over legitimacy and inheritance that is the opening of King John, to the use of illegitimacy as political metaphor in Richard II, illegitimacy is a critical thematic concept frequently manifested onstage in the figure of the Bastard.
2. Francois Ost, Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles (Belgium)
Weak kings and perverted symbolism. How Shakespeare treats the doctrine of the King’s two bodies
The doctrine of the two bodies, arising from the political theology of the Middle Ages, plays an essential role through the western political philosophy. The theme runs through many of Shakespeare’s plays . But Shakespeare rarely uses the doctrine in order to legitimise power. What interests him is the theme of the weak king (where there is tension between the two bodies) and the fact that a king cannot with impunity manipulate the symbolic power which underlies this doctrine.
3. Carolyn Sale, University of Alberta (Canada)
Shakespeare’s Common Law: Hamlet and Conscience
My paper focuses on the proposition that the Shakespearean drama, like the work of the earlier sixteenth-century writer Christopher St. German, cultivates “conscience” in regard to law, not as a matter of practice within any formal court, or emanating from any single figure, but rather as an entity that is general, inclusive, and collective. In the time and space of performance Shakespeare’s writing for the stage contributed to the shaping of a law that is truly “common” by helping to make a conscience that is inherently communal. The test case for my proposition will be Hamlet; the theoretical underpinnings, post-Marxist.
4. Gary Watt, University of Warwick (UK)
No Play Without Will
The death of feudalism in England has been long and drawn out — lingering to this day — but it suffered a mortal wound on 20 July 1540 when the Wills Act (32 Hen VIII c.1) came into force. It permitted feudal tenants to devise 2/3 of their land by will at law. Shakespeare was born at the dawn of this new age of will, and his first plays were virtually contemporaneous with the publication of the first text to offer a comprehensive treatment of testamentary law in the English language. In this paper I will demonstrate the ways in which Shakespeare uses the English legal language of testamentary will to express the drama of conflict between dispensation (royal, paternal etc) and individual desire.
5. Andrew Majeske, University of California Davis (USA)
Dying declarations, feigned deaths, and dramatic rebirths in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale
In this paper I will examine dying declarations, feigned deaths, and dramatic rebirths as they relate to issues of female chastity in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale. I will contrast these Shakespearean works with the Classical era drama Hippolytus by Euripides, and Machiavelli’s masterful comic refashioning of the ancient Lucretia myth in his play Mandragola. One purpose for this examination is to shed light on the shaky foundations of the evidentiary advantage given to certain dying declarations in Anglo-American law, at least to the extent this advantage is based (tacitly) upon considerations relating to the Christian afterlife.