Back in the late 1990’s, Bill Cosby aired a show entitled “Kids Say the Darndest Things” in which he would pose them questions to allow a studio audience to revel in the naivety of their answers. Cosby was trying to cash in on the innocence of childhood with an acceptably mild form of exploitation. Train wrecks such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Miley Cyrus have since taught us that even the most benign commercial exploitation of a child can have irrevocably damaging effects. If memory serves, Cosby ran out of material after about one episode. Subsequent shows demonstrated awkwardly contrived questions designed to elicit the necessary type of response but the artifice was too transparent and overwhelmed the scant humour that remained. The problem is that the wonderfully humorous perspective of children can’t be scripted. It certainly can’t be packaged and sold like Cosby attempted. It exists only in their candor – perfectly unexpected candor – and it never loses its cache. Let me share some candid snapshots with you.
One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater:
Milo: (huge grin) Look Dad! I painted my eyebrows!
Dave: Oh my god, Milo! Is that purple nail polish!? That's not like eyeshadow. It won't just wash off!
Milo: (smile dropping to fear) I don't want to be like this forever!
Sleeping with a One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater:
Blair: (stumbling from his bed rubbing his tired eyes) Dad I can't sleep in there with Milo. His eyebrows are freaking me out!
Bedtime Hunger:
Dave: Okay, Aiden. I'll lie with you for a few minutes. Now, just close your eyes and feel yourself sinking into the mattress. Feel every inch of your legs and your back and your head softly comforted and cushioned. Keep your eyes closed. Now try to imagine yourself on the deck of a nice boat, lying in the warm sun, with the roll of the waves gently rocking you to sleep.
Aiden: I'm imagining I'm on a sea of meat and I can eat as much as I want!
How to know you're a bad singer:
Dave: Okay, Milo. I'll lie with you for a few minutes. (gently and melodiously) Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetops. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough....
Milo: Uuuuuh, Dad? Can you stop for a while?
Rural BC Dialect:
Marianne: Well, I hope Lily learns how to speak from you and not me.
Dave: Why?
Marianne: Because you have a better vocabulary and better grammar.
Dave: Yeah, I guess. We sure don't want her acquiring that Shawnigan Lake dialect and accent you have.
Marianne: (ingenuously) What accident!? I don't never had an accident!
Technological Humiliation:
Rory: No way, Tasha! My phone is way better than yours. I have voice recognition. Watch this! (holding his phone up in front of himself) Call Tasha.
Phone: (hyper-polite mechanical female voice) I'm . . . sorry. I didn't quite . . . get that. Can you please . . . try again?
Rory: (emphatically) CALL TASHA.
Phone: Thank you. Did you say, call . . . . . . . . . . ALLISON.
Rory: No. / Me, Megan, Tasha: Aaaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!
Fairy-tales, Irony, Sexuality, and Tragedy:
Recently I bought a social "board" game called "what?". Ironically, it requires one player to pose questions to others to answer in any way they like. Competitors must try to guess who wrote a specifically chosen answer. Sometimes, at least with 'adults', I guess answers can be both candid and humorous.
Marianne: Disney has asked you to write a new ending to their classic fairy-tale version of Snow White. What would you change?
Stu: Graphic depiction of Snow White losing her virginity to Prince "Charming".
Lucy: Orgy with the seven dwarfs.
Marianne: She divorces him.
Dave: Everybody dies.
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Barber of Springfield
David Christopher
Dr. Jennifer Wise
THEA 309a
03-December-2009
Operatic High Art vs. Operatic Popular Entertainment in the Simpsons' Homer of Seville
The Simpsons has long been a reflection of common North American sensibilities and has also been in touch with the institutions of popular art and entertainment. Episodes have included parodies of Shakespeare (as a Zombie), Edgar Allen Poe's the Raven, the media circus surrounding the candidacy of Bill Clinton for President, an insane asylum patient convinced that he is Michael Jackson, Star Wars, Star Trek, and more. The Simpsons' humour, like all humour, is dependent on the complicity of the audience. When someone expresses a preference against a type of comedy that they do not find humorous, it is often an indicator of a more fundamental sensibility. That is to say that they do not share the perspective that the target of the humour is risible, and therefore they are unable to appreciate the parody or satire. Like a touchstone to popular opinion, The Simpsons has satirized or parodied virtually every recognizable global institution. The recent re-popularization of opera motivated the ongoing television series to devote an entire episode to the art form, entitled Homer of Seville. Typical of the Simpsons, the humour is well informed and in this episode, it demonstrates a well-researched knowledge of the history of opera. The parody takes particular aim at the disparity between popular American entertainment and haute couture art in the form of opera, which has historically intended to be both.
Taking a holistic view of the chronological episode, a pattern of satiric themes emerges. The opening sequence is normally a simple variation on a theme of the family racing to their couch to watch television. In this episode, however, the animators take an entirely different approach and present the convention of the evolution of man, in the form of Homer. There is something particularly appropriate about the evolution of man that is animated in the opening sequence. The art of opera represents some of the highest achievements of the evolved human mind and it effectively sets the tenor for the ensuing parody of an art form that presently continues to evolve.
Early in the episode, Mr. Burns approaches Homer with an offer to sing at "The Springfield Opera House, of which [he is] founder, artistic director, and standing ovation starter" (8:22-8:26). Mr. Burns' control over all aspects of the production may well be a reference to the building and artistic control that Wagner held over his theatre at Bayreuth in which he staged the Ring Cycles. The comic mention of "standing ovation starter" is an obvious glance at nineteenth century Paris' Auguste Levasseur who instituted the claque. He would effectively hire audience plants to begin and sustain applause at key moments when it was desirable to bolster the audience's natural reaction and make critical acclaim more certain (Wise). This contrived aspect of Grand Opera became such a fundamental institution that ‘Auguste’ took on an iconic status. “Auguste’s art consisted of much more than just unleashing a storm of applause whenever he gave the signal: he was probably Veron’s closest advisor” (Somerset-Ward 155). In fact, his marketing skills were deemed so valuable that, without any formal musical knowledge, he took an active part in advising dancers and singers prior to their performances. The character of Mr. Burns fancies himself a bit of an ‘Auguste’.
In response to Mr. Burns' offer, Homer admits that he can only sing when lying on his back. The avaricious Mr. Burns simply replies with a dismissive comment that it can be covered with a "re-write" (8:33-8:34). The parody aims at the fact that opera, in its lack of realism, can be modified to accommodate the most ludicrous stage representation. Inherent to the parody is an attack on theatrical art that does not fall within the popular confines of realism. Evidently, realism is a mode of acting that has become so pervasively popular, it merits the risibility of all other forms of theatre in the sensibilities of the Simpsons audience. In his essay, Realism and the American dramatic tradition, William W. Demastes identifies the "tyranny of realism. This phrase summarizes the impression expressed in numerous critical analyses of twentieth century American drama [...] [S]uch playwrights as Eugene O'Neill and Sam Shepard [...] returned to this form if for no other reason than that American audiences have been more willing to accept realist drama more than any other form" (Demastes ix). Realism in drama has become the standard for American entertainment against which American audiences measure and parody all forms of entertainment outside of its regime.
During rehearsal, Homer is confronted by a hyper-emotional French director, complete with stereotypical beret (8:45-8:55). This may be another glance at French opera, but it is certainly indicative of the shameless way that the Simpsons will exploit stereotypes. However, the exploitation of stereotypes may be more than it seems. On the surface, the parody appears to be aimed at the French director, but the stereotype presented does not typify historical French opera. The stereotype might be more accurately representative of Broadway directors. Long ago, in season three, the Simpsons established a well-informed parody of the Broadway musical in an episode entitled A Streetcar Named Marge. The current parody is actually aimed at both the narrow perspective held by American audiences as to what constitutes entertainment, and the ignorance of the common audience at large as to what represents opera.
Audience patrons of Homer's first performance include his working class colleagues, Lenny and Karl. Standing in the rafters above the stage, they converse. "Homer's fantastic! / Yeah but these seats are terrible" (9:16-9:21). The obvious allusion to Citizen Kane is further evidence of the Simpsons' vast survey of American art and popular culture. More important is the social comment made about opera audiences. In contrast to the working class priced seats occupied by Lenny and Karl, their interaction is immediately followed by the image of audience members, in good seats, centred by an elderly woman sporting a beehive hairstyle and looking through stemmed opera glasses (9:23-9:24). Other audience members caricatured as staunch and elderly surround her. The message seems to be that opera is unaffordable except to the wealthy elite and that it only appeals to the conservative elderly patron. She wipes away a single tear. Considering the patrician facade that she represents, the humour seems to suggest that only lofty art such as opera can elicit even the slightest emotional response in her while the less financially well-off patrons are systemically compromised in their appreciation due to their poor seats.
Homer's ridiculous performance concludes with his rapidly alternating between lying and standing for the singing and dramatic parts of his performance respectively (9:29-9:40). The audience then stands and in a universal British accent, shouts stereotypical theatre interjections of appreciation: "Bravo! Bravo! Bellissimo! Encore!" (9:41-9:47). The parody here is a trope not established by the Simpsons but exacerbated in their repeated use of the British accent to symbolize wealthy Victorian elitism. For example in a Season Three episode entitled Lisa's Pony, the same accent is identified as part of a "patrician facade" by the stoic elderly female stable owner and trainer who sneers at Homer for his social standing and lack of wealth (20:50). In fact, the character suggests she is correcting Lisa's accent as she begins to enter the elitist world of horseback riding. The pretentious stable trainer says, "I'm teaching your daughter riding, grooming, and at no extra charge, pronunciation" (13:13-13:19). Lisa, astride her pony in fashionable equestrian garb responds with a ridiculous version of the British accent. In the episode at hand, the same stereotype of the generic British accent is used to caricature the American perspective of the opera patron demographic.
The most distinctive evidence of the contrast between American popular entertainment and lofty operatic art follows Homer's performance. The audience acclaim in the previous scene prompts Mr. Burns to comment, "Homer, you are a star." Homer responds with an exuberant "Woo-hoo!" Mr. Burns then completes his interrupted sentence by emphasizing, "...an opera star!" Homer's celebratory mood disappears and he plaintively groans in disappointment. "Oooh" (9:51-9:55). Homer's disappointment at the type of fame he has achieved is a parody of the narrow American vision of stardom being exclusive to popular entertainment. The lofty arts are of a much lesser appeal to the uncultured Homer. The following interlude with Bart and Lisa clarify Homer's ignorance further.
Bart: "Dad you were great!"
Lisa: "And you contributed to our culture!"
Homer: "I didn't mean to."
Lisa: "No-no. It's a good thing" (9:57-10:04).
In Homer's stupidity, he actually has to be consoled that fame by culture is positive.
The scene that follows jumps to an image of an elaborate system of pulleys rigged to elevate Homer's lying body into the air against an Egyptian background. The pulley system requires the strength of two elephants in a side-stage area to operate. The surface joke in the 'dialogue' of the elephants is leveled at Homer's weight (10:17-10:32). However, for the informed observer, it is easy to interpret a parody of the historical use of complex machinery to create stage spectacle typical in French Grand Opera and exemplified in Handel's Rinaldo.
In the "locker room" as the sign on the door identifies it, Homer is given an athlete's snap of the towel to the ass by a Placido Domingo caricature wearing naught but a towel (10:53-10:57). The image juxtaposes athletic locker-room camaraderie against the expected operatic changing room etiquette. Ironically, Placido Domingo expresses the complicit views of the common viewer: "There iss one thing about opera that hass alwayss bugged me. Everyone singss instead of talking, but you made me believe I wass in a magical world, where singing iss talking" (11:08-11:22). The comment reiterates how modern audiences privilege realism over other forms of theatre or drama that are aimed at arousing emotional responses in other ways. However, it also demonstrates a deep understanding of the fundamental problem with opera. "In opera, there is a constant tension between the music and the drama" (Wise).
Domingo's accent is very obvious. English opera has never been particularly popular and even less common. The fallout from the earliest performances of Rinaldo and the virtuosity of castrati performances in London was severe (Wise), and American culture is characterized by extreme ethnocentricity and the racist backlash against people who do not speak the language. This linguistic defensiveness openly extends into art forms that are not commonly presented in English. The lack of English opera, combined with the popularity of realism, has resulted in opera's absence from the late twentieth and twenty-first century mainstream of popular American culture. Given, however, the informed perspective on the tension between drama and music that is at the heart of the genius of opera (Mozart / Carmen), and the fact that Homer is both a buffoon and the paradigm representation of common American opinion, it seems clear that the parody is actually attacking the limited American range of artistic taste which is largely exclusive to popular film and music.
Homer demonstrates an irreverent buffoonery when he looks at Placido Domingo and says that of the Three Tenors, he is his "second favourite" (11:23-11:29). Then, after remembering "that other guy" he adds insult to injury by saying that he is the third favourite. Domingo is caricatured as incredulous and dumbfounded (11:30). The irony and juxtaposition continue to mount as Domingo then asks Homer, bearing an excitement in his face reminiscent of a child eager for approval, to evaluate a "new note he has been working on" (11:31-11:37). The note is expertly executed to which a puffed-up Homer instructs him to "Keep reaching for the stars, kid" (11:37-11:59). The expected hierarchical dynamic is inverted by placing Domingo in a subservient position, which satirizes how American culture maintains a perspective of humble reverence for those elite to whom we have ascribed artistic genius within the perceived 'haute couture' of opera. The truth of the humanity behind the elevated status of the Opera star is laid bare. Domingo is left standing exposed as humanly fallible, naked (literally, except for a towel), humiliated, deflated (12:00-12:02). In this instance, the self-important iconographic status that opera seems to embody is parodied and brought low.
The juxtaposition of opera and rap in the following scene comically demonstrates that opera is also a form of popular entertainment. Homer tries to marry his operatic fame into the pop-culture rap music stereotypes of the American common media. Marge suggests that their anniversary dinner would be more romantic without Homer's "entourage" (12:06-12:11). Wikipedia states that Homer's entourage, Lenny and Carl, specifically parodies the television series Entourage but I suggest it has broader appeal as a parody of rap-culture in general. Homer responds with vernacular stereotypical of the popular entertainment genre of rap. He vaguely claims he needs his posse to "keep it real" (12:15). Later two elderly groupies will extend the juxtaposition of young urban vernacular against operatic fame when one of these elderly women pines that she really wants to "hook-up with Homer" (13:34-13:36).
Although opera may not be characteristic of mainstream popular entertainment in the U.S., it has been characterized by fanatical reactions by its patrons. In the entourage scene, two elderly female groupies accost Homer during his dinner with Marge (12:29). They are followed by the approach and praise of a waiter who is stereotypified as gay in his demeanour and in the innuendo of Homer's response (12:51-13:03). For the second time, the audience to which opera appeals is presented as elderly women, to which the parody adds gay men. In the following scene, Homer and Marge are chased by a screaming and frantic mob of elderly female groupies (14:03-14:40). Juxtaposed against the reserved behaviour expected of their demographic is the insanely fanatical behaviour reminiscent of Beatles' fans. Most of the rest of the episode then follows a more focused parody of opera fanaticism. An obsessed fan that originally poses as the Simpsons’ saviour in the form of a manager stalks Homer and persistently offers him sexual favours. To extend the fan parody, particularly of those who identify with the intellectual elite, Lisa, while scanning the audience for a potential threat to her father during his final performance, complains only of someone "loudly unwrapping his candy!" (18:42-18:49). Clearly this is less important than her father's safety, but exemplifies a stereotype of the hypersensitivity of opera fans towards opera house etiquette.
The episode also includes a verbal parody of the often larger physique of operatic performers that became a stereotype after the popularization of the Three Tenors and perhaps with a glance at Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld who played Isolde in Wagner's Tristan in Munich in the summer of 1865. Somerset-Ward candidly describes him as "a massive man with a gigantic girth" (134). Marge insists that Homer's operatic fame has got him "out of control" with "late nights, and eating. You've actually outgrown your cape" (13:07-13:12). Marge notes only these two elements out of a litany of 'out of control' behaviours currently associated with fast-fame, which emphasizes the stereotype of weight ascribed to operatic artists. Furthermore, the presentation of Homer wearing a cape seems to satirize the stereotype of both operatic costuming and the eccentric fashion choices associated with the egomaniacal virtuosos of the twentieth century.
The Simpsons’ episode seems better informed in its parody than the famous Bugs Bunny parody of Wagner's ring cycle. The hilarious "kill the wabbit" rendition of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is complete with Elmer Fudd wearing a Viking costume and a horned magic helmet. Bugs is later seen costumed with long braids from under another horned helmet. The stereotype of Norse myth as it appeared in Wagner's Bayreuth Ring Cycle is very specific. At the time of the cartoon's release, the stereotype of opera seems to have found a paradigm in Wagner. The Bugs Bunny cartoon uses this opera exclusively. The Simpsons, by contrast shows a broader range of operatic fares as though it is intending to demonstrate a better-informed survey of the art form as it is appreciated today. The only reference made to the stereotype paradigm of Wagner occurs when Chief Wiggum needs to go on-stage during a performance to protect Homer. While announcing that he's "going in" he replaces his police uniform hat with a horned Norse helmet (19:11-19:16). He then takes the clichéd tumble off the stage into the orchestra (19:17-19:19). Ironically, in a stereotype of Wagnerian opera, this tumble would not be possible since the orchestra was hidden in a space under the stage at Bayreuth.
Within Homer's satirical final performance, the episode finds the space to parody one last convention that represents a marriage of both popular entertainment and opera via the recent Broadway hit The Phantom of the Opera. Within that story line, the giant chandelier over the auditorium mysteriously and dangerously falls on the audience. Both the operatic venue and chandelier tragedy are parodied as Chief Wiggum implements safety measures that include "pre-crashing the chandelier" (18:18-18:20). Homer summarizes the contradictory popularity of the opera in an ironic statement in which he claims, "I'm retiring from the opera. It's just too popular" (20:40-20:46). Homer's final words make an ironic connection between the high art of opera and popular entertainment.
The last scene of the episode delineates the high arts in general as a unified ideology. Homer, while making romantic gestures towards Marge, states that he knows an activity that can be accomplished while lying on his back that is much more fun. Following, however, is an image of him painting baroque art on the ceiling of his home while lying on his back on a scaffolding. The image is the stereotype of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Homer states that somehow "singing opera" made him "good at painting". The connection of what is typically considered haute couture or high art, associated with classical styles and specifically baroque, is obviously intended to classify them in a singular category in particular opposition to lower popular entertainment.
The humour of the Simpsons moves so rapidly from one parody to the next in stychomythiaic dialogue that it is difficult to identify a singular form of humour. Comic visual representation with vibrant colours, accompanied by rapid verbal humour that demonstrate irony, burlesque, pun, and coincidence, are laid against a well-informed cultural knowledge of the larger institution being satirized. In this case, the focus is opera, and there is almost no aspect of opera that is not represented. In order to truly appreciate the depth of the humour, one must be well versed in the esoteric details of international opera history: Auguste's claque, Wagner's Bayreuth, the iconic status of Placido Domingo. The common threads with which all of the humour is imbued is twofold. In the Simpsons characteristic ability to parody both sides of an institution, the episode ridicules the narrow view of popular American artistic taste while simultaneously ridiculing the lofty and inaccessible position to which opera may have been relegated in an all-English culture that is hyper-loyal to its realism. There is a certain irony in the most ubiquitous popular-cultural television series bringing the most elite haute couture form of art into the popular spotlight. However, it may be argued that the parody of opera was inevitable as, prior to its topical coverage by the Simpsons, it had began to garner more popular appeal on its own. Either way, the parody is clearly aimed at popular entertainment and high theatrical art alike, through the institution of opera, which is conveniently both.
Works Cited
Demastes, William W., ed. Realism and the American dramatic tradition. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.
"Homer of Seville." the Simpsons. Writ. Carolyn Omine. Dir. Michael Plocino. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 2009. November 23, 2009.
"Lisa's Pony." the Simpsons: The Complete Third Season. Writ. Al Jean & Mike Reiss. Dir. Carlos Baeza. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., 2003. DVD.
Somerset-Ward, Richard. The Story of Opera. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1996
Wise, Dr. Jennifer. Introduction to Theatre History 309a. Univeristy of Victoria. Phoenix Theatre Building, Victoria, BC. September - November 2009. Classroom Lectures.
Dr. Jennifer Wise
THEA 309a
03-December-2009
Operatic High Art vs. Operatic Popular Entertainment in the Simpsons' Homer of Seville
The Simpsons has long been a reflection of common North American sensibilities and has also been in touch with the institutions of popular art and entertainment. Episodes have included parodies of Shakespeare (as a Zombie), Edgar Allen Poe's the Raven, the media circus surrounding the candidacy of Bill Clinton for President, an insane asylum patient convinced that he is Michael Jackson, Star Wars, Star Trek, and more. The Simpsons' humour, like all humour, is dependent on the complicity of the audience. When someone expresses a preference against a type of comedy that they do not find humorous, it is often an indicator of a more fundamental sensibility. That is to say that they do not share the perspective that the target of the humour is risible, and therefore they are unable to appreciate the parody or satire. Like a touchstone to popular opinion, The Simpsons has satirized or parodied virtually every recognizable global institution. The recent re-popularization of opera motivated the ongoing television series to devote an entire episode to the art form, entitled Homer of Seville. Typical of the Simpsons, the humour is well informed and in this episode, it demonstrates a well-researched knowledge of the history of opera. The parody takes particular aim at the disparity between popular American entertainment and haute couture art in the form of opera, which has historically intended to be both.
Taking a holistic view of the chronological episode, a pattern of satiric themes emerges. The opening sequence is normally a simple variation on a theme of the family racing to their couch to watch television. In this episode, however, the animators take an entirely different approach and present the convention of the evolution of man, in the form of Homer. There is something particularly appropriate about the evolution of man that is animated in the opening sequence. The art of opera represents some of the highest achievements of the evolved human mind and it effectively sets the tenor for the ensuing parody of an art form that presently continues to evolve.
Early in the episode, Mr. Burns approaches Homer with an offer to sing at "The Springfield Opera House, of which [he is] founder, artistic director, and standing ovation starter" (8:22-8:26). Mr. Burns' control over all aspects of the production may well be a reference to the building and artistic control that Wagner held over his theatre at Bayreuth in which he staged the Ring Cycles. The comic mention of "standing ovation starter" is an obvious glance at nineteenth century Paris' Auguste Levasseur who instituted the claque. He would effectively hire audience plants to begin and sustain applause at key moments when it was desirable to bolster the audience's natural reaction and make critical acclaim more certain (Wise). This contrived aspect of Grand Opera became such a fundamental institution that ‘Auguste’ took on an iconic status. “Auguste’s art consisted of much more than just unleashing a storm of applause whenever he gave the signal: he was probably Veron’s closest advisor” (Somerset-Ward 155). In fact, his marketing skills were deemed so valuable that, without any formal musical knowledge, he took an active part in advising dancers and singers prior to their performances. The character of Mr. Burns fancies himself a bit of an ‘Auguste’.
In response to Mr. Burns' offer, Homer admits that he can only sing when lying on his back. The avaricious Mr. Burns simply replies with a dismissive comment that it can be covered with a "re-write" (8:33-8:34). The parody aims at the fact that opera, in its lack of realism, can be modified to accommodate the most ludicrous stage representation. Inherent to the parody is an attack on theatrical art that does not fall within the popular confines of realism. Evidently, realism is a mode of acting that has become so pervasively popular, it merits the risibility of all other forms of theatre in the sensibilities of the Simpsons audience. In his essay, Realism and the American dramatic tradition, William W. Demastes identifies the "tyranny of realism. This phrase summarizes the impression expressed in numerous critical analyses of twentieth century American drama [...] [S]uch playwrights as Eugene O'Neill and Sam Shepard [...] returned to this form if for no other reason than that American audiences have been more willing to accept realist drama more than any other form" (Demastes ix). Realism in drama has become the standard for American entertainment against which American audiences measure and parody all forms of entertainment outside of its regime.
During rehearsal, Homer is confronted by a hyper-emotional French director, complete with stereotypical beret (8:45-8:55). This may be another glance at French opera, but it is certainly indicative of the shameless way that the Simpsons will exploit stereotypes. However, the exploitation of stereotypes may be more than it seems. On the surface, the parody appears to be aimed at the French director, but the stereotype presented does not typify historical French opera. The stereotype might be more accurately representative of Broadway directors. Long ago, in season three, the Simpsons established a well-informed parody of the Broadway musical in an episode entitled A Streetcar Named Marge. The current parody is actually aimed at both the narrow perspective held by American audiences as to what constitutes entertainment, and the ignorance of the common audience at large as to what represents opera.
Audience patrons of Homer's first performance include his working class colleagues, Lenny and Karl. Standing in the rafters above the stage, they converse. "Homer's fantastic! / Yeah but these seats are terrible" (9:16-9:21). The obvious allusion to Citizen Kane is further evidence of the Simpsons' vast survey of American art and popular culture. More important is the social comment made about opera audiences. In contrast to the working class priced seats occupied by Lenny and Karl, their interaction is immediately followed by the image of audience members, in good seats, centred by an elderly woman sporting a beehive hairstyle and looking through stemmed opera glasses (9:23-9:24). Other audience members caricatured as staunch and elderly surround her. The message seems to be that opera is unaffordable except to the wealthy elite and that it only appeals to the conservative elderly patron. She wipes away a single tear. Considering the patrician facade that she represents, the humour seems to suggest that only lofty art such as opera can elicit even the slightest emotional response in her while the less financially well-off patrons are systemically compromised in their appreciation due to their poor seats.
Homer's ridiculous performance concludes with his rapidly alternating between lying and standing for the singing and dramatic parts of his performance respectively (9:29-9:40). The audience then stands and in a universal British accent, shouts stereotypical theatre interjections of appreciation: "Bravo! Bravo! Bellissimo! Encore!" (9:41-9:47). The parody here is a trope not established by the Simpsons but exacerbated in their repeated use of the British accent to symbolize wealthy Victorian elitism. For example in a Season Three episode entitled Lisa's Pony, the same accent is identified as part of a "patrician facade" by the stoic elderly female stable owner and trainer who sneers at Homer for his social standing and lack of wealth (20:50). In fact, the character suggests she is correcting Lisa's accent as she begins to enter the elitist world of horseback riding. The pretentious stable trainer says, "I'm teaching your daughter riding, grooming, and at no extra charge, pronunciation" (13:13-13:19). Lisa, astride her pony in fashionable equestrian garb responds with a ridiculous version of the British accent. In the episode at hand, the same stereotype of the generic British accent is used to caricature the American perspective of the opera patron demographic.
The most distinctive evidence of the contrast between American popular entertainment and lofty operatic art follows Homer's performance. The audience acclaim in the previous scene prompts Mr. Burns to comment, "Homer, you are a star." Homer responds with an exuberant "Woo-hoo!" Mr. Burns then completes his interrupted sentence by emphasizing, "...an opera star!" Homer's celebratory mood disappears and he plaintively groans in disappointment. "Oooh" (9:51-9:55). Homer's disappointment at the type of fame he has achieved is a parody of the narrow American vision of stardom being exclusive to popular entertainment. The lofty arts are of a much lesser appeal to the uncultured Homer. The following interlude with Bart and Lisa clarify Homer's ignorance further.
Bart: "Dad you were great!"
Lisa: "And you contributed to our culture!"
Homer: "I didn't mean to."
Lisa: "No-no. It's a good thing" (9:57-10:04).
In Homer's stupidity, he actually has to be consoled that fame by culture is positive.
The scene that follows jumps to an image of an elaborate system of pulleys rigged to elevate Homer's lying body into the air against an Egyptian background. The pulley system requires the strength of two elephants in a side-stage area to operate. The surface joke in the 'dialogue' of the elephants is leveled at Homer's weight (10:17-10:32). However, for the informed observer, it is easy to interpret a parody of the historical use of complex machinery to create stage spectacle typical in French Grand Opera and exemplified in Handel's Rinaldo.
In the "locker room" as the sign on the door identifies it, Homer is given an athlete's snap of the towel to the ass by a Placido Domingo caricature wearing naught but a towel (10:53-10:57). The image juxtaposes athletic locker-room camaraderie against the expected operatic changing room etiquette. Ironically, Placido Domingo expresses the complicit views of the common viewer: "There iss one thing about opera that hass alwayss bugged me. Everyone singss instead of talking, but you made me believe I wass in a magical world, where singing iss talking" (11:08-11:22). The comment reiterates how modern audiences privilege realism over other forms of theatre or drama that are aimed at arousing emotional responses in other ways. However, it also demonstrates a deep understanding of the fundamental problem with opera. "In opera, there is a constant tension between the music and the drama" (Wise).
Domingo's accent is very obvious. English opera has never been particularly popular and even less common. The fallout from the earliest performances of Rinaldo and the virtuosity of castrati performances in London was severe (Wise), and American culture is characterized by extreme ethnocentricity and the racist backlash against people who do not speak the language. This linguistic defensiveness openly extends into art forms that are not commonly presented in English. The lack of English opera, combined with the popularity of realism, has resulted in opera's absence from the late twentieth and twenty-first century mainstream of popular American culture. Given, however, the informed perspective on the tension between drama and music that is at the heart of the genius of opera (Mozart / Carmen), and the fact that Homer is both a buffoon and the paradigm representation of common American opinion, it seems clear that the parody is actually attacking the limited American range of artistic taste which is largely exclusive to popular film and music.
Homer demonstrates an irreverent buffoonery when he looks at Placido Domingo and says that of the Three Tenors, he is his "second favourite" (11:23-11:29). Then, after remembering "that other guy" he adds insult to injury by saying that he is the third favourite. Domingo is caricatured as incredulous and dumbfounded (11:30). The irony and juxtaposition continue to mount as Domingo then asks Homer, bearing an excitement in his face reminiscent of a child eager for approval, to evaluate a "new note he has been working on" (11:31-11:37). The note is expertly executed to which a puffed-up Homer instructs him to "Keep reaching for the stars, kid" (11:37-11:59). The expected hierarchical dynamic is inverted by placing Domingo in a subservient position, which satirizes how American culture maintains a perspective of humble reverence for those elite to whom we have ascribed artistic genius within the perceived 'haute couture' of opera. The truth of the humanity behind the elevated status of the Opera star is laid bare. Domingo is left standing exposed as humanly fallible, naked (literally, except for a towel), humiliated, deflated (12:00-12:02). In this instance, the self-important iconographic status that opera seems to embody is parodied and brought low.
The juxtaposition of opera and rap in the following scene comically demonstrates that opera is also a form of popular entertainment. Homer tries to marry his operatic fame into the pop-culture rap music stereotypes of the American common media. Marge suggests that their anniversary dinner would be more romantic without Homer's "entourage" (12:06-12:11). Wikipedia states that Homer's entourage, Lenny and Carl, specifically parodies the television series Entourage but I suggest it has broader appeal as a parody of rap-culture in general. Homer responds with vernacular stereotypical of the popular entertainment genre of rap. He vaguely claims he needs his posse to "keep it real" (12:15). Later two elderly groupies will extend the juxtaposition of young urban vernacular against operatic fame when one of these elderly women pines that she really wants to "hook-up with Homer" (13:34-13:36).
Although opera may not be characteristic of mainstream popular entertainment in the U.S., it has been characterized by fanatical reactions by its patrons. In the entourage scene, two elderly female groupies accost Homer during his dinner with Marge (12:29). They are followed by the approach and praise of a waiter who is stereotypified as gay in his demeanour and in the innuendo of Homer's response (12:51-13:03). For the second time, the audience to which opera appeals is presented as elderly women, to which the parody adds gay men. In the following scene, Homer and Marge are chased by a screaming and frantic mob of elderly female groupies (14:03-14:40). Juxtaposed against the reserved behaviour expected of their demographic is the insanely fanatical behaviour reminiscent of Beatles' fans. Most of the rest of the episode then follows a more focused parody of opera fanaticism. An obsessed fan that originally poses as the Simpsons’ saviour in the form of a manager stalks Homer and persistently offers him sexual favours. To extend the fan parody, particularly of those who identify with the intellectual elite, Lisa, while scanning the audience for a potential threat to her father during his final performance, complains only of someone "loudly unwrapping his candy!" (18:42-18:49). Clearly this is less important than her father's safety, but exemplifies a stereotype of the hypersensitivity of opera fans towards opera house etiquette.
The episode also includes a verbal parody of the often larger physique of operatic performers that became a stereotype after the popularization of the Three Tenors and perhaps with a glance at Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld who played Isolde in Wagner's Tristan in Munich in the summer of 1865. Somerset-Ward candidly describes him as "a massive man with a gigantic girth" (134). Marge insists that Homer's operatic fame has got him "out of control" with "late nights, and eating. You've actually outgrown your cape" (13:07-13:12). Marge notes only these two elements out of a litany of 'out of control' behaviours currently associated with fast-fame, which emphasizes the stereotype of weight ascribed to operatic artists. Furthermore, the presentation of Homer wearing a cape seems to satirize the stereotype of both operatic costuming and the eccentric fashion choices associated with the egomaniacal virtuosos of the twentieth century.
The Simpsons’ episode seems better informed in its parody than the famous Bugs Bunny parody of Wagner's ring cycle. The hilarious "kill the wabbit" rendition of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is complete with Elmer Fudd wearing a Viking costume and a horned magic helmet. Bugs is later seen costumed with long braids from under another horned helmet. The stereotype of Norse myth as it appeared in Wagner's Bayreuth Ring Cycle is very specific. At the time of the cartoon's release, the stereotype of opera seems to have found a paradigm in Wagner. The Bugs Bunny cartoon uses this opera exclusively. The Simpsons, by contrast shows a broader range of operatic fares as though it is intending to demonstrate a better-informed survey of the art form as it is appreciated today. The only reference made to the stereotype paradigm of Wagner occurs when Chief Wiggum needs to go on-stage during a performance to protect Homer. While announcing that he's "going in" he replaces his police uniform hat with a horned Norse helmet (19:11-19:16). He then takes the clichéd tumble off the stage into the orchestra (19:17-19:19). Ironically, in a stereotype of Wagnerian opera, this tumble would not be possible since the orchestra was hidden in a space under the stage at Bayreuth.
Within Homer's satirical final performance, the episode finds the space to parody one last convention that represents a marriage of both popular entertainment and opera via the recent Broadway hit The Phantom of the Opera. Within that story line, the giant chandelier over the auditorium mysteriously and dangerously falls on the audience. Both the operatic venue and chandelier tragedy are parodied as Chief Wiggum implements safety measures that include "pre-crashing the chandelier" (18:18-18:20). Homer summarizes the contradictory popularity of the opera in an ironic statement in which he claims, "I'm retiring from the opera. It's just too popular" (20:40-20:46). Homer's final words make an ironic connection between the high art of opera and popular entertainment.
The last scene of the episode delineates the high arts in general as a unified ideology. Homer, while making romantic gestures towards Marge, states that he knows an activity that can be accomplished while lying on his back that is much more fun. Following, however, is an image of him painting baroque art on the ceiling of his home while lying on his back on a scaffolding. The image is the stereotype of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Homer states that somehow "singing opera" made him "good at painting". The connection of what is typically considered haute couture or high art, associated with classical styles and specifically baroque, is obviously intended to classify them in a singular category in particular opposition to lower popular entertainment.
The humour of the Simpsons moves so rapidly from one parody to the next in stychomythiaic dialogue that it is difficult to identify a singular form of humour. Comic visual representation with vibrant colours, accompanied by rapid verbal humour that demonstrate irony, burlesque, pun, and coincidence, are laid against a well-informed cultural knowledge of the larger institution being satirized. In this case, the focus is opera, and there is almost no aspect of opera that is not represented. In order to truly appreciate the depth of the humour, one must be well versed in the esoteric details of international opera history: Auguste's claque, Wagner's Bayreuth, the iconic status of Placido Domingo. The common threads with which all of the humour is imbued is twofold. In the Simpsons characteristic ability to parody both sides of an institution, the episode ridicules the narrow view of popular American artistic taste while simultaneously ridiculing the lofty and inaccessible position to which opera may have been relegated in an all-English culture that is hyper-loyal to its realism. There is a certain irony in the most ubiquitous popular-cultural television series bringing the most elite haute couture form of art into the popular spotlight. However, it may be argued that the parody of opera was inevitable as, prior to its topical coverage by the Simpsons, it had began to garner more popular appeal on its own. Either way, the parody is clearly aimed at popular entertainment and high theatrical art alike, through the institution of opera, which is conveniently both.
Works Cited
Demastes, William W., ed. Realism and the American dramatic tradition. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.
"Homer of Seville." the Simpsons. Writ. Carolyn Omine. Dir. Michael Plocino. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 2009.
"Lisa's Pony." the Simpsons: The Complete Third Season. Writ. Al Jean & Mike Reiss. Dir. Carlos Baeza. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., 2003. DVD.
Somerset-Ward, Richard. The Story of Opera. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1996
Wise, Dr. Jennifer. Introduction to Theatre History 309a. Univeristy of Victoria. Phoenix Theatre Building, Victoria, BC. September - November 2009. Classroom Lectures.
Renaissance Porn
David Christopher
Dr. Erin Campbell
HA 545
December 2009
Gentileschi’s Lucretia: Visible and Covert Sexuality in Art for the Domestic Space
The role and pervasive presence of didactic imagery within the domestic space of Renaissance Italy has been well documented. Objects within the domestic space were heavily focused on marital ritual, childbirth and childrearing. But what happens in between? Moving from marriage to childbirth is a definitively sexual activity that ostensibly occurred within the domestic space. Artemisia Gentileschi’s circa 1621 Lucretia is an artwork that provides a clear voice to the silent narrativisation of Renaissance sexuality. Beyond its didactic exterior, the painting is rich with meaning in several of its aspects. The sexualized reputation of the author was widespread. The ontological piety of the myth was saturated with sexual ambiguity. The image itself is visibly sensual. The painting is pregnant with erotic energy! It would have been pivotal in defining a space as erotic, whether it was a bedchamber or a common room, as long as there was a settee handy. A locus of multiple meanings and influences conflate in the painting to give meaning to a space: an holistic ideology of sensuality. In defining the space, it may have acted as both an aphrodisiac and a sensual reminder to both the husband and wife of her sexual duty. In this paper I will argue that Gentileschi’s Lucretia was teeming with sexual meaning that directly prompted a call to perform sexual activity.
William Shakespeare, during the closures of the theatres in the late sixteenth century, took to writing epic poetry. He only wrote a handful of poems and on this short-list was the Rape of Lucrece. Evidently, the myth was powerful enough in romantic energy and mythical status to have commanded the bard’s attention. In her article Virtuous Model / Voluptuous Martyr, Carol Schuler states that Renaissance “texts are nearly unanimous in their admiration of Lucretia’s moral rectitude” (Schuler 7). “By the Renaissance, the name of Lucretia was virtually synonymous with the idea of female chastity” (Schuler 7). The story suggests that Lucretia's suicide brought down the Roman monarchy, circa 508 BCE. Lucretia had proven superior in virtue and beauty. Thus inflamed, the Roman prince Tarquinius stole into her chamber and raped her at knife-point under the threat of murdering her and a servant and falsely reporting their adultery. The next day she committed suicide after telling her story to her father and her husband, Collatine. Accompanied by Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius, they vowed to kill Tarquinius and exile the ruling Tarquin family. Their story was met with acclamation by the people to change from the tyranny of monarchy to rule by consuls.
But Gentileschi's Lucretia has a sexual, power connotation that might not be so ontologically evident in the connotation invoked by the famous story. Ajmar states "awareness of the symbolic meanings associated with the domestic space in the Renaissance is only now beginning to dawn among historians" (Ajmar 75). In this way historians are being invited to explore meanings that may have little extant voice. On the surface the didactic virtue of a woman who takes her life after being raped seems obvious. However, the meaning hidden within the myth is ambiguous. Lucretia was a virtuous wife whose beauty caused the sexual advances of her rapist. Inherent to the story is the suggestion of some causality between her virtue and her rape. Was she too virtuous and is this the lesson intended for the image to invoke? Is it intended to invoke the myth of power-drunk patriarchy that resulted in her assault and act as a warning against tempting the lusty power of the structure with virtue and beauty? If it is a warning that feminine sexuality is dangerous to the welfare of women and the security of the patriarchy, why is the image so provocative? The "awareness of symbolic meanings" that Ajmar is encouraging cannot ignore the blatantly sexualized image presented of Lucretia, nor the power of a woman to bring an empire to its knees with only an ultimate sacrifice.
The piety of the surface myth is openly complicated in the Renaissance period. Schuler states that Augustine cast doubt based on “the Christian view of suicide as sinful rather than heroic, and questions why, if Lucretia remained chaste and blameless, she needed to take her own life” (Schuler 7). Schuler boldly introduces speculation about the myth. “Lucretia’s decision to commit suicide may have resulted from an inadvertent pleasurable physical response at the time of her rape” (Schuler 7). Looking to tangible artworks rather than social sensibility, Schuler notes that “fidelity to the details of the story, as well as the straightforward interpretation of Lucretia as a paragon of virtue, are characteristics notably absent from artworks produced during the early sixteenth century. This period witnessed a virtual explosion of artistic interest in the suicide of Lucretia, concomitant with an increasingly eroticized interpretation of the subject” (Schuler 8). Nevertheless, “most philosophic inquiry debated Lucretia’s response to her rape, not her complicity in causing it” leaving her pious image relatively untainted (Schuler 7). But other renaissance images of Lucretia variously depict her being raped, or committing suicide, or both. So, the myth is filled with sexual ambiguity and the artist’s reputation coincides in her story of rape and ambiguous complicity.
Recent scholarship has tended to shy away from biographical interpretations of art and has relegated the artist nearly to irrelevance. Feminist criticism has made the interpretation of a female artist’s sexual persona virtually criminal to discuss. However, without any need to ascribe artistic motives to Gentileschi herself, it is the public reception of her reputation as it was associated with her artwork that is relevant. In Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, R. Ward Bissell refreshingly argues that “the reconstruction of an artist’s oeuvre must privilege considerations of style over interpretive strategies, without at all discounting the latter’s potential, when solidly grounded, for informing connoisseurship” (Bissell xxi). In Gentileschi’s Lucretia, it is difficult to overlook a biological read of the artist’s life in the provenance of the painting as it lends itself to a psychoanalytical exploration of the repressed sexuality, lust, and desire for sexual domination inherent to the image and the story it invokes. Echoing the myth within the painting is the substantial meaning of the artist’s own life which informed its reception. Many researchers into the life and times of Artemisia have been heavily preoccupied with the coincidence of the myth and the painter.
Artemisia’s rape trial was highly publicized and the social identity ascribed to her was irrevocably sexualized. Bissell reports that “it is highly unlikely that this case, although conducted in semiprivate, escaped the court of public opinion” (Bissell 14). Bissell quotes George Hersey as stating “personal tragedies of other artists have not conditioned their work but their art is not usually seen as a specific restaging of those tragedies. It seems that Artemisia’s pictures were admired in just this way” (Bissell i). The reception of her pictures discussed by Hersey is not ascribed to an audience of a particular era, but given the public nature of her reputation it is reasonable to include the audience of the period in which the painting emerged. In Mann’s book she includes an article by Elizabeth S. Cohen entitled, What’s in a Name? Artemisia Gentileschi and the Politics of Reputation. Cohen and Mann both reiterate a likely public reputation, if only from her artwork alone. “[T]hese women’s accomplishments were celebrated in their own time” (Mann 123). “The arts became a domain in which some numbers of women began to emerge in the limelight” (Cohen 123). Although Cohen argues that, “after Artemisia left Rome in 1612 after the trial, she was not haunted for the rest of her days with unusual sexual notoriety” (Mann 121), she also points out that “Artemisia’s assertive testimony and judgment against Tassi, sufficiently mended the blemish to her reputation” (Cohen 121). The fact that her reputation needed mending and that it called her to the unusual task of publicly speaking on her own behalf is clear evidence that the knowledge of her sexual transgression was widespread enough to require public defense. “Artemisia testified to resistance [which] in effect succeeded in making Artemisia’s virtue a central issue (Bissell 14). Artemisia complicates the rape dynamic with her own ambiguous complicity. “Artemisia kept hopes alive of marrying Tassi – certainly so that she might reclaim her honor […], but also, it seems, because of positive feelings towards him” (Bissell 15). Bissell paints a highly sexualized public reputation, richly ambiguous with her complicity in the rape. “The very fact that she remained unwed for several years after Roman culture would have deemed her sexually mature, more likely than ever to let her female passions rule, and fully ready for a husband would have set tongues wagging” (Bissell 17).
Whether or not the trial was staged by her father to protect the reputation of her virtue is unclear. What is clear, however, are common themes in Gentileschi's art. She tends towards hyper-sensualized depictions of women, themes of sexual assault by powerful men, violent revenge against tyrannical men, suicide and sacrifice. Cohen dismisses her trend as simply the work of “a woman artist who specialized in strong religious subjects as well as classical narratives and nudes” (Cohen 122). Bissell categorizes Lucretia in a population of early works that followed the success of her Susanna (image 1), which include both of her depictions of Judith (one of them displayed in image 2). The biographical psychology that might be psychoanalytically interpreted from this population would regard sexual conquest and feminine vengeance. The Lucretia myth is laden with both. One might be strongly inclined to think that Artemisia was using her art as a therapeutic outlet for emotional turmoil and guilt. Overtly, the painting depicts a strong, independent woman making the ultimate sacrifice after her rape and is popularly painted by a strong independent rape victim who has boldly chosen to pursue and challenge an entirely male-dominated profession.
“[T]he painter’s identity, like that of all human beings, [was] an amalgam of the social and the individual” (Cohen 122). Whether or not Gentileschi was complicit in her rape is not at stake. All that is relevant is that her public reputation was tainted with the idea. “In the calculus of reputation, rank and sexual propriety certainly mattered” (Cohen 123). In defense of the biographical interpretation, Bissell notes that “as a woman she was singularly able to project herself into the stories” (Bissell 14). The sexual ambiguity which imbued her life’s story was specifically and perfectly reflected in the Lucretia myth.
In her book, Sexuality in Medieval Europe : doing unto others, Ruth Karras states that "Medieval people […] did not see suggestive or explicit images glaring out at them from newsstands, billboards and computer screens" (Karras 150). I do not entirely agree. Although Karras is referring to an earlier medieval period, she describes it as "an era without photography, video and the internet" (Karras 150). This definition is also true of the early modern era but suggestive images were ubiquitous. They were not on billboards and computer screens but they were on cassones and in paintings. Bissell suggests that the Lucretia “painting is not beautiful by orthodox standards […] while not disallowing the erotic and sexually allusive which patrons had been conditioned to find in pictorializations of these themes. Certainly Lucretia’s right hand, for all its poignancy within the story, calls attention to her very full breast, and her bare leg crowds the picture plane. That the bed on which Lucretia was raped becomes now the site of her suicide imparts sensuality by implication” (Bissell 13).
The association of death with sexuality was an old trope, already established by a medieval preoccupation with corporeal needs. "Caroline Bynum suggests "while we may think today of bodies primarily in sexual terms, for medieval people other concerns were paramount [...] food, and the status of the body after death" (151). Jumping forward to the "Late medieval" period, she notes that "The relation between sex and death [...] is even more complex but equally ubiquitous" (153). As such, there is an elusive erotic connection between death and sexuality that is perfectly embedded in the erotic images of Lucretia at the moment of her suicide.
Have a good look at the face of Gentileschi's Lucretia (image 3). It ambiguously invokes as much of a sense of guilt and perhaps even ecstasy, as it does sacrifice. Bissell describes the image as “a figure frozen in the anticipation of guidance from beyond” (Bissell 12). Relegating the image to a strictly religious anguish and/or ecstasy seriously overlooks “the expressive range (from the reflective to the startlingly dramatic) of which Artemisia was capable” (Bissell xxii). “Works of art, speaking across the centuries, hold new meanings for successive generations but it can be hazardous to ascribe these meanings to the artist or period under review” (Bissell 10). However, I argue that some images hold meanings and generate physiological reactions that are more biologically fundamental, and have been present over a vast stretch of human history. Sexual imagery that appeals to the male mind and libido has changed very little. The poses and depictions of Gentileschi’s Lucretia and Cleopatra (images 3 and 4) are identical to those contrived poses of women in such current erotic magazines as Playboy and Penthouse. Furthermore, these paintings by Gentileschi, when compared to other nudes of her genre, and when compared against other depictions of the subjects, are extremely and unnecessarily erotic. There is no specific need to represent Cleopatra or Lucretia so blatantly sexually, nor to have the sexuality supersede the less noticeable accoutrements of suicide.
The sensuality of the image is obvious. “In a gesture clearly reminiscent of nursing, Lucretia proffers her left breast as if to the suspended dagger” (Bissell 11). The connection to breastfeeding may well have prompted a Freudian sexual response in its male viewers. Lucretia sensually elevates and presents her own breast, as if for viewing. Mann’s book also includes an article by Ann Sutherland Harris called Artemisia and Orazio: Drawing Conclusions in which she posits that “Women’s breasts are regularly placed too high in Renaissance and seventeenth-century […] images of nude and dressed women, apparently as a matter of male taste” (Harris 137). Bissell poetically unpacks the image of Lucretia. “No wound yet marring her flesh nor blood tinging her weapon, she teeters on a bed of turbulent drapery, trussed by her shift and gripped by psychic anxiety” (Bissell 11). The undamaged flesh maintains a specifically sexual image not yet marred by the didacticism of her suicide; that her trussed shift is evidence of a dramatic or performative invocation, as is her “psychic anxiety”, which I suggest may also be interpreted as sexual ecstasy. At least the image may have been unconsciously received that way.
Bissell specifically disagrees. “Although not devoid of sexual appeal, [Artemisia’s depictions of Lucretia, Judith] do not explicitly spur fantasies of sexual availability, nor does eroticism prevail over meaning. All of these women have minds” (Bissell 13). Here, I firmly disagree with Bissell. Juan Luis Vives’ works inherently recognize a female intelligence and I posit that, even in Renaissance Italy, it was part of the social dynamic of sexual attraction, even if it was ignored or unknown. The fact that these women have minds actually empowers the already sexualized images of them to spur sexual fantasies with greater potency.
Historians, feminists and aestheticists are unanimous in reporting that the expropriation of sex from women was celebrated in art of patriarchal Renaissance Italy. Geraldine A. Johnson, in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, outlines the public sensibility held by men towards nude female statuary. “[T]he focus of this chapter will be primarily on the responses of male viewers to female public statuary” (Johnson 223). Although Johnson is exclusive to public and sculpture, from her observations on the male reception of these artworks, we can extrapolate and idea of the general ideology and reception that would have inevitably informed their private reception in the domestic space. “These female figures, which derived from the Bible as well as from allegory and myth, elicited responses from contemporary viewers that ranged from devotion and admiration to suspicion and outright fear. Such a variety of reactions suggests that the meanings of such works could be ambiguous” (Johnson 222). Piety was not singular in its interpreted authority. Johnson describes the dismantling of pagan nude statues of Venus and Judith. “In both situations, public images of women – the one an alluring idol, the other a dangerously triumphant heroine – were believed by at least some male viewers to be the cause of civic misfortune” (Johnson 232). “[T]he Venus’s aesthetic beauty, which had initially caused the Sienese to lavish so much praise on the statue, was apparently not enough to prevent its subsequent talismanic dismemberment and disposal” (Johnson 233). Clearly the sculpted images were perceived as sexual, so much so that they were dangerous!
Johnson quotes the words of “an early seventeenth-century visitor who observed that “in Florence women are more enclosed than in any other part of Italy; they see the world only from the small openings in their windows”” (Johnson 234). If the Lucretia was indeed housed in Florence, and women lived such tyrannically domestic lives, what motive would there be to adorn the domestic space with such a lascivious depiction as the Lucretia? In describing Giambologna’s sculpture, The Rape of Sabine, Johnson states, “Like the figure of Perseus, who proudly presents the head of Medusa, the young Roman man who abducts the Sabine woman demonstrates his power and virility by literally holding up a conquered female body as his trophy (Johnson 240). “According to Borghini, the abduction of the Sabines marked the historic beginnings of the institution of marriage in the Italian peninsula, an institution that was seemingly based from the start on men’s violent oppression of the opposite sex” (Johnson 241/42). As she proceeds to describe the male ideology, Johnson suggests that the entire professional identity of men may have been predicated on their domination of women. “This conclusion is telling, for it clearly links female sexual subjugation not only to the institution of marriage, but also to success in the wider historical political arena” (Johnson 243). Admittedly, there are differences in the reception and perception of a painting in the domestic space as compared against public statuary, but the male ego tied up with a need to sexually conquer women as Johnson describes it and the sensuality and nudity of an image would certainly not have been neutralized in the domestic space.
Moving from broad public male perception to focus more on erotic painting, Linda Wolk-Simon surveys Rapture to the Greedy Eyes: Profane Love in the Renaissance in which she identifies a “base lust […] that the vision of a naked goddess had the power to incite” (Bayer 48). In her article she offers a graphic of Giulio Romano’s Two Lovers (image 5). Both the presence of the voyeur at the door, and their positioning on the bed is very similar to Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia (image 6). Even more striking is Romano’s Olympia is Seduced by Jupiter (image 7). The image of the two lovers is overtly sexual. Audiences could not have been able to overlook the bold similarity in other depictions of Lucretia. Johnson argues that “the seductiveness of the female form [was] implicitly linked in texts and images throughout medieval and early modern Europe” (Johnson 232). In this way, similar images informed the myth, which in turn informed other images, like Gentileschi’s, in a cycle of mythical-sexual reciprocity.
Based on the impossibility of painting from certain postures and the availability of mirrors, Harris argues that “Artemisia must have had a model and the model must have posed for her away from Orazio’s studio with its male comings and goings” (Harris 143). Turner argues that though “the Platonist Ficino taught that lovers should communicate through gazing alone, he recognized that the soul imprints images while men and women are “making babies”, and describes eyesight in quite sexual terms: a stream of “sanguine spirits” penetrates the heart like sperm” (Turner 179). However, the image that exemplifies this sexual gaze provided by Turner is a ca. 1523-24 painting called Diana Transforming Actaeon into a Stag which depicts the naked goddess gazing into the eyes of the naked woman. These three ideas (Artemisia as a female artist imbued with sexuality, the sexualized myth of Lucretia, and the feminine sexual gaze) converge and lend themselves to a lusty image of the male patron of Gentileschi’s Lucretia lasciviously fantasizing about Artemisia gazing steadily at the nudity of her model and further impregnate the image with a sexual narrative.
Conflating Artemisia’s reputation with the sexually ambiguous narrative of the myth and the sensuality of the image itself, we reach a point of intersection that cannot deny the sexuality of the image beyond its mere aesthetics. Bissell even suggests that Artemisia may have taken professional advantage of her compromised reputation and the meaning she knew would be attached to her art. Orazio’s “daughter’s now public vulnerability began to be exploited” (Bissell 18). “[T]he conception of Artemisia Gentileschi as a woman of dubious rectitude […] was to have an effect on the nature of the commissions she was awarded and upon how her pictures were to be received” (Bissell 18). Men surely viewed the Lucretia as sexualized.
But who were these men? Patronage data surrounding the Lucretia is scant. Bissell places the Lucretia in Venice in 1627 and suggests “Gianfrancesco Loredan, famous-surnamed literary man-about-Venice” as “the patron of the Lucretia and the Susanna” (Bissell 42). What Bissell lays down as fact is that “Gentileschi supplied paintings to rulers” (Bissell 42). It is well documented that male members of the ruling elite were substantially bolder in their sexual conquests and rakishness, almost to the point of pride. In light of Johnson’s suggestion of rape and sexuality being a matter of male ego, Tarquinius may well have been their secret hero.
Feminist theory has been preoccupied with the expropriation of sex from women by men. We learn from Juan Luis Vives’ works that the reputation of chastity and piety was paramount for women. His treatise, On the Education of the Christian Woman delineates the role of the woman into stages of her life entirely in relation to the husband: the first anticipating her marriage and remaining chaste, the second describing her marriage and role as a wife, and the third outlining appropriate Christian behaviour for the widow. Vives, quoting the words of Paul, describes the first two of these phases in the following way. "Unmarried women are occupied with things that pertain to the lord, how they may please him; married women are concerned with the things of the world, how to please their spouse". He states that a “married woman ought to be of greater chastity than an unmarried. For if that thou then pollute and defile thy chastity, as God forbid thou shouldest, hark, I pray thee, how many thou shalt offend and displease at once with one wicked deed” (Kaplan 324). His work is an openly didactic piece that is designed to put forth a Christian paradigm of the perfectly educated woman and her exemplary behaviour. Inherent to the text are examples of behaviour that must have been common enough to merit chastisement and remediation. Goldthwaite suggests that the Renaissance domestic space was social and professional to the point of being public. Therefore, there would be a real need for women to be covert in their sexuality.
In her article entitled, Toys for Girls: Objects, Women and Memory in the Renaissance Household, Marta Ajmar states her thesis clearly. "I shall attempt to show that [Renaissance women and domestic objects] informed each other and that they were mutually influenced by their individual changes of status" (Ajmar 76). Ajmar goes on to introduce both theoretical and artefactual evidence to give voice to the often-silenced role, authority, and vested interest women had in domestic art and objects. She points out that the "'ideology' of domesticity has traditionally associated the 'domestic woman' with values imposed by men, with a 'passive feminine conformity'" (Ajmar 80). She immediately challenges the dogma by asking, "Is Margherita's reaction, as depicted by Vasari, just a projection of the male Florentine writer, determined to depict her as a worthy example of civic pride, or should we take at face value her emotional involvement in something in which she does not possess? And if so, why?" (Ajmar 77). Ajmar offers answers in the rhetoric of her following question. "Was it for reasons of family pride, personal virtue or 'professional' identity, as a housewife?" (Ajmar 77). "During the sixteenth century I would like to suggest, domestic memory was constructed along increasingly matriarchal lines" (Ajmar 78). In this way the role in object-display that women may have needed to disguise in their patriarchal abjection is perfectly served in Gentileschi's Lucretia. It represents the style and taste of refined Baroque art and superficially invokes the notion of high virtue in a sensual image of a woman (both of which would appeal to the male mind) while simultaneously, and perhaps covertly, invoking meaning surrounding the strength of women on behalf of the household matriarch.
The didacticism intended by the patriarchal society is ostensibly reflected in treatises that "promoted an image of the mulier economica - the housewife - as someone who was in charge of the moral and material identity of the household" (Ajmar 83). "[T]he house was therefore proactive in creating and fulfilling the demand for a new 'professional' figure: the housewife" (Ajmar 87). When examined against other research into the symbolic meaning and deployment of space and objects within the domestic space, a more complete view of its potential meaning, especially within a potentially domestic space, takes on broader possibilities. Judith Butler argues that women voluntarily participate in the social ritual of their culture. There is no evidence to suggest that women did not wholly concur with Vives’ views and welcome the conquest sexuality of their male counterparts. Beds stood in public areas of the house and sleeping occurred simultaneously with social activities which included individuals outside of the family. Given the notion of women as professionals within the domestic space who informed and had agency in that region, participation in the sexual ritual, and a social need to hide sexuality behind piety, it seems very likely that women would be complicit with men in the sexual interpretation of the image.
So powerfully imbued with sexuality, it is inevitable that the Lucretia defined whatever space in which it was housed. The University of Victoria DIDO database lists the Lucretia painting as having dimensions measuring 137 x 130 cm. Certainly that is sizeable enough to overpower pithy images on spalliere and cassone, and to contend with other larger paintings within a space. In Richard Goldthwaite’s Wealth and Demand for the Art in Italy 1300-1600, he describes how the earlier years of this Renaissance period suggest a domestic decor that included the patriarchal chamber as “the intimate core of the household” around which the entire space was organized (Goldthwaite 225). The space was multi-functional with most furniture and valuables concentrated there while the rest of the house was “sparsely furnished” (Goldthwaite 225). Even more interesting, for a culture stereotypified by its rich and lavish baroque renaissance art, is the fact that the “typology of furniture does not extend beyond basic functions of eating, sitting, sleeping and storage (Goldthwaite 225). Finally, the evolution of these household goods brought about interesting cultural corollaries. “[G]oods evolved into more complicated forms” (Goldthwaite 225). These more complicated forms resulted in the redefinition of the household spaces in which they were housed.
While “commerce was seen to have infected nearly every aspect of modern life, the realm of art was deemed free of its contagion” (Bermingham 5). At least it was free to maintain sexual meaning in the new household of the young married couple. In Hareven’s article The Home and Family in Historical Perspective, the “nuclear household structure has predominated in England and Italy since the twelfth century” (Hareven). Two major social characteristics of these archaic homes were that marriage “meant the establishment of a separate household by the new couple” and that the space served for domestic activities such as eating, sleeping and childrearing, as well as more social functions such as production, welfare agency, correctional institution and religious worship.
In Mary Douglas’ article, The Idea of Home a Kind of Space, she suggests that “home starts by bringing some space under control.” “[T]he home is the realization of ideas.” She focuses on art in the house and how it interacts with the perception of time and space. In Henri Lefebvre’s article The Production of Space, he describes the sociological notion of space as being “produced” rather than merely appropriated and filled with things (Lefebvre). He considers that “If space is a product [...] The ‘object’ of interest must be expected to shift from things in space to the actual production of space” (Lefebvre). He admits that in certain historical era/economic dichotomies, “the active groups did not ‘produce’ space in the sense in which a vase, a piece of furniture, a house, or a fruit tree is produced” but that space is produced in a less tangible and more perception-based way (Lefebvre).
In The Madonna and Child, a host of saints, and domestic devotion in Renaissance Florence, Jacqueline Musacchio states that "Dominici discussed what he considered the only justification for having art in the home: to aid in the education of children" (Musacchio 147). In the passage that follows she lists examples of art for that purpose. What is obviously lacking is the inclusion of pagan icons, or any of the images that might have the suspect sexuality so obvious in the depictions of Lucretia. Dominici did not include Lucretia in what he deemed suitable for children. Furthermore, Musacchio notes, "many of the paintings and sculptures associated with the domestic environment had intimate iconography” (Musacchio). When she notes that "the estate of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici contained seven Madonna images as well as nine other sacred paintings and sculpture", the reader cannot help but be inclined to ask what these 'others' were (Musacchio 149). Were any of them pagan icons? Might any of them have been Lucretia? If such is the case, and Lucretia was not considered appropriate for children, then what iconographic purpose could such an image have had? The inherent sensuality of Lucretia’s likeness is the only verifiable evidence. "As Kent Lydecker has observed, marriage prompted extensive purchases of all types of domestic art to outfit the personal chamber" (Musacchio 148). Not only does this statement relate to the accoutrements of marriage and marital gifts discussed in Randolph's article, it is reasonable to assume that the "personal chamber" may include some more sexualized images like that of Lucretia: "Marriage [...] focused attention on the continuation of the lineage through the conception [...] of children" (148). Once again, marriage and conception are linked through art for the bedchamber.
In James Grantham Turner’s article entitled Profane Love: The Challenge of Sexuality, he quotes Leonardo da Vinci as saying, “Painting moves the senses more readily than poetry does. . . . Painters have depicted libidinous acts, so lustful that they have incited the spectators to play the same party game” (Bayer 178). In Ian Woodward's The Material as Culture, he provides examples of "how apparently inanimate things within the environment act on people and are acted on by people, for the purposes of carrying out social functions, regulating social relations and giving symbolic meaning to human activity" (Woodward 3). Any room decorated with Gentileschi’s Lucretia would be overpowered by its sexual message and the energy, or at least the purpose of the room would be clear. According to da Vinci, the call to action would be equally clear.
In Bill Brown's article Thing Theory, he introduces the idea of “actants”, objects designed to perform some human function on behalf of humans. Although he is referring specifically to objects such as cellular telephones that conduct some specific action, if we consider that art defines a space, surely it must perform some semiotic function on behalf of the human occupants "They are questions that ask not whether things are but what work they perform" (Brown 142). The work of an image to prompt sexual interaction is globally ubiquitous.
Bissell describes four of Artemisia’s paintings as “marked by a heightened theatricality, of which a new conception of the viewer-painting relationship is the first indisputable sign” (Bissell 69). Although these four postdate the Lucretia and Bissell does not include it amongst them, I suggest that it was an obvious progenitor to this recognizable characteristic. Theatricality is already apparent in Gentileschi’s image of Lucretia and is preceded and proceeded by a theatrical history of the myth’s presentation. “The viewer now becomes the member of an audience, rather than someone who finds him/herself confronted one-on-one with reality” (Bissell 70). Bissell is careful to include both male and female viewers. Where it might seem that the intimacy of one-on-one sexuality is compromised by the perception of a larger audience, it is important to note that the audience perception was not tangible. In Artemisia’s work, “human drama is reduced to the core and presented close up, where idealization is rejected in favour of truth, where frankness counts more than beauty” (Bissell 10). The viewer took part with an absent audience in appreciating the art, but individuals were confronted by its sexual realism within the potentially intimate privacy of the space it defined. The perception of an audience by the viewer inherently suggests a theatricality which would have specifically resulted in a call for acting. The participation of the audience with the performer is a common tenet of theatrical performance.
In terms of the domestic space, Adrian Randolph’s position on the performance of the bridal body might be extended to that of the wife in general. His article follows a Marxist slant in an economic perspective that views marital gift-giving (especially of jewellery to women) as an equation that needs balancing. "[T]he exchange of women is a conversation between men and is the basis of all symbolic exchange". The article suggests that often a woman's only ability to balance the equation was by 'owing' her body to the marriage bed, and indeed how the system may have been biased in its design to require women to unconsciously recognize this debt and to ensure that it was in place. "I would like to question whether equilibrium was returned to this system of presentations or whether, instead, the balance was left skewed". "[T]he extralegal presentations to the bride from the bridegroom (and his family) functioned, unofficially, as a Maussian counter-gift, returning equilibrium to an unbalanced economy of exchange". "A gift results in a debt which must be repaid, repayment returning equilibrium to the system". "The mancia was a traditional payment made to the bride after consummation of the marriage [which] emphasized the conjugal pair and the sexual act". "The jewels functioned, too, in a symbolic sexual economy, one in which --despite the reciprocity of the Pauline notion of mutual corporeal authority of husband and wife -- the bride was sexually subjected". "In this Florentine 'potlatch' the bride loses. She cannot return the gifts; or rather, she pays for them with her body". The sensuality and iconography of Lucretia may have acted as a reminder to the wife of what is 'owed' to the husband: sexuality (in her suggestive posing and nudity), loyalty (in the invocation of her story), and morality (in the invocation of the requirement of death (or suicide) if another man enjoys her sexually, which is a debt of ownership belonging to the husband).
Ajmar outlines “new possibilities for the interpretation and meaning that […] objects may have represented”. In this way, exciting new meaning may be interpolated into Gentileschi’s Lucretia. Theory and fact conflate to present an undeniably sexualized depiction of the Lucretia. The public nature of Artemisia’s trial and the sexual stigma which was attached to her reputation are largely accepted as historical truth. Changing Renaissance perceptions of the Lucretia myth further impregnated the painting with sexual meaning that was amplified by dramatic coincidences with Gentileschi’s life. The sexual sensibilities of men and their inevitable perception of the painting must have been seconded by a complicit female population participating in the sexual culture. The definition of space, call to action of the painting, and motivating nature of sexual images would all have worked in concert to define a space endowed with the Lucretia as highly erotic and called to action the sexuality that a wife owed her husband.
Bibliography
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Dr. Erin Campbell
HA 545
December 2009
Gentileschi’s Lucretia: Visible and Covert Sexuality in Art for the Domestic Space
The role and pervasive presence of didactic imagery within the domestic space of Renaissance Italy has been well documented. Objects within the domestic space were heavily focused on marital ritual, childbirth and childrearing. But what happens in between? Moving from marriage to childbirth is a definitively sexual activity that ostensibly occurred within the domestic space. Artemisia Gentileschi’s circa 1621 Lucretia is an artwork that provides a clear voice to the silent narrativisation of Renaissance sexuality. Beyond its didactic exterior, the painting is rich with meaning in several of its aspects. The sexualized reputation of the author was widespread. The ontological piety of the myth was saturated with sexual ambiguity. The image itself is visibly sensual. The painting is pregnant with erotic energy! It would have been pivotal in defining a space as erotic, whether it was a bedchamber or a common room, as long as there was a settee handy. A locus of multiple meanings and influences conflate in the painting to give meaning to a space: an holistic ideology of sensuality. In defining the space, it may have acted as both an aphrodisiac and a sensual reminder to both the husband and wife of her sexual duty. In this paper I will argue that Gentileschi’s Lucretia was teeming with sexual meaning that directly prompted a call to perform sexual activity.
William Shakespeare, during the closures of the theatres in the late sixteenth century, took to writing epic poetry. He only wrote a handful of poems and on this short-list was the Rape of Lucrece. Evidently, the myth was powerful enough in romantic energy and mythical status to have commanded the bard’s attention. In her article Virtuous Model / Voluptuous Martyr, Carol Schuler states that Renaissance “texts are nearly unanimous in their admiration of Lucretia’s moral rectitude” (Schuler 7). “By the Renaissance, the name of Lucretia was virtually synonymous with the idea of female chastity” (Schuler 7). The story suggests that Lucretia's suicide brought down the Roman monarchy, circa 508 BCE. Lucretia had proven superior in virtue and beauty. Thus inflamed, the Roman prince Tarquinius stole into her chamber and raped her at knife-point under the threat of murdering her and a servant and falsely reporting their adultery. The next day she committed suicide after telling her story to her father and her husband, Collatine. Accompanied by Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius, they vowed to kill Tarquinius and exile the ruling Tarquin family. Their story was met with acclamation by the people to change from the tyranny of monarchy to rule by consuls.
But Gentileschi's Lucretia has a sexual, power connotation that might not be so ontologically evident in the connotation invoked by the famous story. Ajmar states "awareness of the symbolic meanings associated with the domestic space in the Renaissance is only now beginning to dawn among historians" (Ajmar 75). In this way historians are being invited to explore meanings that may have little extant voice. On the surface the didactic virtue of a woman who takes her life after being raped seems obvious. However, the meaning hidden within the myth is ambiguous. Lucretia was a virtuous wife whose beauty caused the sexual advances of her rapist. Inherent to the story is the suggestion of some causality between her virtue and her rape. Was she too virtuous and is this the lesson intended for the image to invoke? Is it intended to invoke the myth of power-drunk patriarchy that resulted in her assault and act as a warning against tempting the lusty power of the structure with virtue and beauty? If it is a warning that feminine sexuality is dangerous to the welfare of women and the security of the patriarchy, why is the image so provocative? The "awareness of symbolic meanings" that Ajmar is encouraging cannot ignore the blatantly sexualized image presented of Lucretia, nor the power of a woman to bring an empire to its knees with only an ultimate sacrifice.
The piety of the surface myth is openly complicated in the Renaissance period. Schuler states that Augustine cast doubt based on “the Christian view of suicide as sinful rather than heroic, and questions why, if Lucretia remained chaste and blameless, she needed to take her own life” (Schuler 7). Schuler boldly introduces speculation about the myth. “Lucretia’s decision to commit suicide may have resulted from an inadvertent pleasurable physical response at the time of her rape” (Schuler 7). Looking to tangible artworks rather than social sensibility, Schuler notes that “fidelity to the details of the story, as well as the straightforward interpretation of Lucretia as a paragon of virtue, are characteristics notably absent from artworks produced during the early sixteenth century. This period witnessed a virtual explosion of artistic interest in the suicide of Lucretia, concomitant with an increasingly eroticized interpretation of the subject” (Schuler 8). Nevertheless, “most philosophic inquiry debated Lucretia’s response to her rape, not her complicity in causing it” leaving her pious image relatively untainted (Schuler 7). But other renaissance images of Lucretia variously depict her being raped, or committing suicide, or both. So, the myth is filled with sexual ambiguity and the artist’s reputation coincides in her story of rape and ambiguous complicity.
Recent scholarship has tended to shy away from biographical interpretations of art and has relegated the artist nearly to irrelevance. Feminist criticism has made the interpretation of a female artist’s sexual persona virtually criminal to discuss. However, without any need to ascribe artistic motives to Gentileschi herself, it is the public reception of her reputation as it was associated with her artwork that is relevant. In Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, R. Ward Bissell refreshingly argues that “the reconstruction of an artist’s oeuvre must privilege considerations of style over interpretive strategies, without at all discounting the latter’s potential, when solidly grounded, for informing connoisseurship” (Bissell xxi). In Gentileschi’s Lucretia, it is difficult to overlook a biological read of the artist’s life in the provenance of the painting as it lends itself to a psychoanalytical exploration of the repressed sexuality, lust, and desire for sexual domination inherent to the image and the story it invokes. Echoing the myth within the painting is the substantial meaning of the artist’s own life which informed its reception. Many researchers into the life and times of Artemisia have been heavily preoccupied with the coincidence of the myth and the painter.
Artemisia’s rape trial was highly publicized and the social identity ascribed to her was irrevocably sexualized. Bissell reports that “it is highly unlikely that this case, although conducted in semiprivate, escaped the court of public opinion” (Bissell 14). Bissell quotes George Hersey as stating “personal tragedies of other artists have not conditioned their work but their art is not usually seen as a specific restaging of those tragedies. It seems that Artemisia’s pictures were admired in just this way” (Bissell i). The reception of her pictures discussed by Hersey is not ascribed to an audience of a particular era, but given the public nature of her reputation it is reasonable to include the audience of the period in which the painting emerged. In Mann’s book she includes an article by Elizabeth S. Cohen entitled, What’s in a Name? Artemisia Gentileschi and the Politics of Reputation. Cohen and Mann both reiterate a likely public reputation, if only from her artwork alone. “[T]hese women’s accomplishments were celebrated in their own time” (Mann 123). “The arts became a domain in which some numbers of women began to emerge in the limelight” (Cohen 123). Although Cohen argues that, “after Artemisia left Rome in 1612 after the trial, she was not haunted for the rest of her days with unusual sexual notoriety” (Mann 121), she also points out that “Artemisia’s assertive testimony and judgment against Tassi, sufficiently mended the blemish to her reputation” (Cohen 121). The fact that her reputation needed mending and that it called her to the unusual task of publicly speaking on her own behalf is clear evidence that the knowledge of her sexual transgression was widespread enough to require public defense. “Artemisia testified to resistance [which] in effect succeeded in making Artemisia’s virtue a central issue (Bissell 14). Artemisia complicates the rape dynamic with her own ambiguous complicity. “Artemisia kept hopes alive of marrying Tassi – certainly so that she might reclaim her honor […], but also, it seems, because of positive feelings towards him” (Bissell 15). Bissell paints a highly sexualized public reputation, richly ambiguous with her complicity in the rape. “The very fact that she remained unwed for several years after Roman culture would have deemed her sexually mature, more likely than ever to let her female passions rule, and fully ready for a husband would have set tongues wagging” (Bissell 17).
Whether or not the trial was staged by her father to protect the reputation of her virtue is unclear. What is clear, however, are common themes in Gentileschi's art. She tends towards hyper-sensualized depictions of women, themes of sexual assault by powerful men, violent revenge against tyrannical men, suicide and sacrifice. Cohen dismisses her trend as simply the work of “a woman artist who specialized in strong religious subjects as well as classical narratives and nudes” (Cohen 122). Bissell categorizes Lucretia in a population of early works that followed the success of her Susanna (image 1), which include both of her depictions of Judith (one of them displayed in image 2). The biographical psychology that might be psychoanalytically interpreted from this population would regard sexual conquest and feminine vengeance. The Lucretia myth is laden with both. One might be strongly inclined to think that Artemisia was using her art as a therapeutic outlet for emotional turmoil and guilt. Overtly, the painting depicts a strong, independent woman making the ultimate sacrifice after her rape and is popularly painted by a strong independent rape victim who has boldly chosen to pursue and challenge an entirely male-dominated profession.
“[T]he painter’s identity, like that of all human beings, [was] an amalgam of the social and the individual” (Cohen 122). Whether or not Gentileschi was complicit in her rape is not at stake. All that is relevant is that her public reputation was tainted with the idea. “In the calculus of reputation, rank and sexual propriety certainly mattered” (Cohen 123). In defense of the biographical interpretation, Bissell notes that “as a woman she was singularly able to project herself into the stories” (Bissell 14). The sexual ambiguity which imbued her life’s story was specifically and perfectly reflected in the Lucretia myth.
In her book, Sexuality in Medieval Europe : doing unto others, Ruth Karras states that "Medieval people […] did not see suggestive or explicit images glaring out at them from newsstands, billboards and computer screens" (Karras 150). I do not entirely agree. Although Karras is referring to an earlier medieval period, she describes it as "an era without photography, video and the internet" (Karras 150). This definition is also true of the early modern era but suggestive images were ubiquitous. They were not on billboards and computer screens but they were on cassones and in paintings. Bissell suggests that the Lucretia “painting is not beautiful by orthodox standards […] while not disallowing the erotic and sexually allusive which patrons had been conditioned to find in pictorializations of these themes. Certainly Lucretia’s right hand, for all its poignancy within the story, calls attention to her very full breast, and her bare leg crowds the picture plane. That the bed on which Lucretia was raped becomes now the site of her suicide imparts sensuality by implication” (Bissell 13).
The association of death with sexuality was an old trope, already established by a medieval preoccupation with corporeal needs. "Caroline Bynum suggests "while we may think today of bodies primarily in sexual terms, for medieval people other concerns were paramount [...] food, and the status of the body after death" (151). Jumping forward to the "Late medieval" period, she notes that "The relation between sex and death [...] is even more complex but equally ubiquitous" (153). As such, there is an elusive erotic connection between death and sexuality that is perfectly embedded in the erotic images of Lucretia at the moment of her suicide.
Have a good look at the face of Gentileschi's Lucretia (image 3). It ambiguously invokes as much of a sense of guilt and perhaps even ecstasy, as it does sacrifice. Bissell describes the image as “a figure frozen in the anticipation of guidance from beyond” (Bissell 12). Relegating the image to a strictly religious anguish and/or ecstasy seriously overlooks “the expressive range (from the reflective to the startlingly dramatic) of which Artemisia was capable” (Bissell xxii). “Works of art, speaking across the centuries, hold new meanings for successive generations but it can be hazardous to ascribe these meanings to the artist or period under review” (Bissell 10). However, I argue that some images hold meanings and generate physiological reactions that are more biologically fundamental, and have been present over a vast stretch of human history. Sexual imagery that appeals to the male mind and libido has changed very little. The poses and depictions of Gentileschi’s Lucretia and Cleopatra (images 3 and 4) are identical to those contrived poses of women in such current erotic magazines as Playboy and Penthouse. Furthermore, these paintings by Gentileschi, when compared to other nudes of her genre, and when compared against other depictions of the subjects, are extremely and unnecessarily erotic. There is no specific need to represent Cleopatra or Lucretia so blatantly sexually, nor to have the sexuality supersede the less noticeable accoutrements of suicide.
The sensuality of the image is obvious. “In a gesture clearly reminiscent of nursing, Lucretia proffers her left breast as if to the suspended dagger” (Bissell 11). The connection to breastfeeding may well have prompted a Freudian sexual response in its male viewers. Lucretia sensually elevates and presents her own breast, as if for viewing. Mann’s book also includes an article by Ann Sutherland Harris called Artemisia and Orazio: Drawing Conclusions in which she posits that “Women’s breasts are regularly placed too high in Renaissance and seventeenth-century […] images of nude and dressed women, apparently as a matter of male taste” (Harris 137). Bissell poetically unpacks the image of Lucretia. “No wound yet marring her flesh nor blood tinging her weapon, she teeters on a bed of turbulent drapery, trussed by her shift and gripped by psychic anxiety” (Bissell 11). The undamaged flesh maintains a specifically sexual image not yet marred by the didacticism of her suicide; that her trussed shift is evidence of a dramatic or performative invocation, as is her “psychic anxiety”, which I suggest may also be interpreted as sexual ecstasy. At least the image may have been unconsciously received that way.
Bissell specifically disagrees. “Although not devoid of sexual appeal, [Artemisia’s depictions of Lucretia, Judith] do not explicitly spur fantasies of sexual availability, nor does eroticism prevail over meaning. All of these women have minds” (Bissell 13). Here, I firmly disagree with Bissell. Juan Luis Vives’ works inherently recognize a female intelligence and I posit that, even in Renaissance Italy, it was part of the social dynamic of sexual attraction, even if it was ignored or unknown. The fact that these women have minds actually empowers the already sexualized images of them to spur sexual fantasies with greater potency.
Historians, feminists and aestheticists are unanimous in reporting that the expropriation of sex from women was celebrated in art of patriarchal Renaissance Italy. Geraldine A. Johnson, in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, outlines the public sensibility held by men towards nude female statuary. “[T]he focus of this chapter will be primarily on the responses of male viewers to female public statuary” (Johnson 223). Although Johnson is exclusive to public and sculpture, from her observations on the male reception of these artworks, we can extrapolate and idea of the general ideology and reception that would have inevitably informed their private reception in the domestic space. “These female figures, which derived from the Bible as well as from allegory and myth, elicited responses from contemporary viewers that ranged from devotion and admiration to suspicion and outright fear. Such a variety of reactions suggests that the meanings of such works could be ambiguous” (Johnson 222). Piety was not singular in its interpreted authority. Johnson describes the dismantling of pagan nude statues of Venus and Judith. “In both situations, public images of women – the one an alluring idol, the other a dangerously triumphant heroine – were believed by at least some male viewers to be the cause of civic misfortune” (Johnson 232). “[T]he Venus’s aesthetic beauty, which had initially caused the Sienese to lavish so much praise on the statue, was apparently not enough to prevent its subsequent talismanic dismemberment and disposal” (Johnson 233). Clearly the sculpted images were perceived as sexual, so much so that they were dangerous!
Johnson quotes the words of “an early seventeenth-century visitor who observed that “in Florence women are more enclosed than in any other part of Italy; they see the world only from the small openings in their windows”” (Johnson 234). If the Lucretia was indeed housed in Florence, and women lived such tyrannically domestic lives, what motive would there be to adorn the domestic space with such a lascivious depiction as the Lucretia? In describing Giambologna’s sculpture, The Rape of Sabine, Johnson states, “Like the figure of Perseus, who proudly presents the head of Medusa, the young Roman man who abducts the Sabine woman demonstrates his power and virility by literally holding up a conquered female body as his trophy (Johnson 240). “According to Borghini, the abduction of the Sabines marked the historic beginnings of the institution of marriage in the Italian peninsula, an institution that was seemingly based from the start on men’s violent oppression of the opposite sex” (Johnson 241/42). As she proceeds to describe the male ideology, Johnson suggests that the entire professional identity of men may have been predicated on their domination of women. “This conclusion is telling, for it clearly links female sexual subjugation not only to the institution of marriage, but also to success in the wider historical political arena” (Johnson 243). Admittedly, there are differences in the reception and perception of a painting in the domestic space as compared against public statuary, but the male ego tied up with a need to sexually conquer women as Johnson describes it and the sensuality and nudity of an image would certainly not have been neutralized in the domestic space.
Moving from broad public male perception to focus more on erotic painting, Linda Wolk-Simon surveys Rapture to the Greedy Eyes: Profane Love in the Renaissance in which she identifies a “base lust […] that the vision of a naked goddess had the power to incite” (Bayer 48). In her article she offers a graphic of Giulio Romano’s Two Lovers (image 5). Both the presence of the voyeur at the door, and their positioning on the bed is very similar to Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia (image 6). Even more striking is Romano’s Olympia is Seduced by Jupiter (image 7). The image of the two lovers is overtly sexual. Audiences could not have been able to overlook the bold similarity in other depictions of Lucretia. Johnson argues that “the seductiveness of the female form [was] implicitly linked in texts and images throughout medieval and early modern Europe” (Johnson 232). In this way, similar images informed the myth, which in turn informed other images, like Gentileschi’s, in a cycle of mythical-sexual reciprocity.
Based on the impossibility of painting from certain postures and the availability of mirrors, Harris argues that “Artemisia must have had a model and the model must have posed for her away from Orazio’s studio with its male comings and goings” (Harris 143). Turner argues that though “the Platonist Ficino taught that lovers should communicate through gazing alone, he recognized that the soul imprints images while men and women are “making babies”, and describes eyesight in quite sexual terms: a stream of “sanguine spirits” penetrates the heart like sperm” (Turner 179). However, the image that exemplifies this sexual gaze provided by Turner is a ca. 1523-24 painting called Diana Transforming Actaeon into a Stag which depicts the naked goddess gazing into the eyes of the naked woman. These three ideas (Artemisia as a female artist imbued with sexuality, the sexualized myth of Lucretia, and the feminine sexual gaze) converge and lend themselves to a lusty image of the male patron of Gentileschi’s Lucretia lasciviously fantasizing about Artemisia gazing steadily at the nudity of her model and further impregnate the image with a sexual narrative.
Conflating Artemisia’s reputation with the sexually ambiguous narrative of the myth and the sensuality of the image itself, we reach a point of intersection that cannot deny the sexuality of the image beyond its mere aesthetics. Bissell even suggests that Artemisia may have taken professional advantage of her compromised reputation and the meaning she knew would be attached to her art. Orazio’s “daughter’s now public vulnerability began to be exploited” (Bissell 18). “[T]he conception of Artemisia Gentileschi as a woman of dubious rectitude […] was to have an effect on the nature of the commissions she was awarded and upon how her pictures were to be received” (Bissell 18). Men surely viewed the Lucretia as sexualized.
But who were these men? Patronage data surrounding the Lucretia is scant. Bissell places the Lucretia in Venice in 1627 and suggests “Gianfrancesco Loredan, famous-surnamed literary man-about-Venice” as “the patron of the Lucretia and the Susanna” (Bissell 42). What Bissell lays down as fact is that “Gentileschi supplied paintings to rulers” (Bissell 42). It is well documented that male members of the ruling elite were substantially bolder in their sexual conquests and rakishness, almost to the point of pride. In light of Johnson’s suggestion of rape and sexuality being a matter of male ego, Tarquinius may well have been their secret hero.
Feminist theory has been preoccupied with the expropriation of sex from women by men. We learn from Juan Luis Vives’ works that the reputation of chastity and piety was paramount for women. His treatise, On the Education of the Christian Woman delineates the role of the woman into stages of her life entirely in relation to the husband: the first anticipating her marriage and remaining chaste, the second describing her marriage and role as a wife, and the third outlining appropriate Christian behaviour for the widow. Vives, quoting the words of Paul, describes the first two of these phases in the following way. "Unmarried women are occupied with things that pertain to the lord, how they may please him; married women are concerned with the things of the world, how to please their spouse". He states that a “married woman ought to be of greater chastity than an unmarried. For if that thou then pollute and defile thy chastity, as God forbid thou shouldest, hark, I pray thee, how many thou shalt offend and displease at once with one wicked deed” (Kaplan 324). His work is an openly didactic piece that is designed to put forth a Christian paradigm of the perfectly educated woman and her exemplary behaviour. Inherent to the text are examples of behaviour that must have been common enough to merit chastisement and remediation. Goldthwaite suggests that the Renaissance domestic space was social and professional to the point of being public. Therefore, there would be a real need for women to be covert in their sexuality.
In her article entitled, Toys for Girls: Objects, Women and Memory in the Renaissance Household, Marta Ajmar states her thesis clearly. "I shall attempt to show that [Renaissance women and domestic objects] informed each other and that they were mutually influenced by their individual changes of status" (Ajmar 76). Ajmar goes on to introduce both theoretical and artefactual evidence to give voice to the often-silenced role, authority, and vested interest women had in domestic art and objects. She points out that the "'ideology' of domesticity has traditionally associated the 'domestic woman' with values imposed by men, with a 'passive feminine conformity'" (Ajmar 80). She immediately challenges the dogma by asking, "Is Margherita's reaction, as depicted by Vasari, just a projection of the male Florentine writer, determined to depict her as a worthy example of civic pride, or should we take at face value her emotional involvement in something in which she does not possess? And if so, why?" (Ajmar 77). Ajmar offers answers in the rhetoric of her following question. "Was it for reasons of family pride, personal virtue or 'professional' identity, as a housewife?" (Ajmar 77). "During the sixteenth century I would like to suggest, domestic memory was constructed along increasingly matriarchal lines" (Ajmar 78). In this way the role in object-display that women may have needed to disguise in their patriarchal abjection is perfectly served in Gentileschi's Lucretia. It represents the style and taste of refined Baroque art and superficially invokes the notion of high virtue in a sensual image of a woman (both of which would appeal to the male mind) while simultaneously, and perhaps covertly, invoking meaning surrounding the strength of women on behalf of the household matriarch.
The didacticism intended by the patriarchal society is ostensibly reflected in treatises that "promoted an image of the mulier economica - the housewife - as someone who was in charge of the moral and material identity of the household" (Ajmar 83). "[T]he house was therefore proactive in creating and fulfilling the demand for a new 'professional' figure: the housewife" (Ajmar 87). When examined against other research into the symbolic meaning and deployment of space and objects within the domestic space, a more complete view of its potential meaning, especially within a potentially domestic space, takes on broader possibilities. Judith Butler argues that women voluntarily participate in the social ritual of their culture. There is no evidence to suggest that women did not wholly concur with Vives’ views and welcome the conquest sexuality of their male counterparts. Beds stood in public areas of the house and sleeping occurred simultaneously with social activities which included individuals outside of the family. Given the notion of women as professionals within the domestic space who informed and had agency in that region, participation in the sexual ritual, and a social need to hide sexuality behind piety, it seems very likely that women would be complicit with men in the sexual interpretation of the image.
So powerfully imbued with sexuality, it is inevitable that the Lucretia defined whatever space in which it was housed. The University of Victoria DIDO database lists the Lucretia painting as having dimensions measuring 137 x 130 cm. Certainly that is sizeable enough to overpower pithy images on spalliere and cassone, and to contend with other larger paintings within a space. In Richard Goldthwaite’s Wealth and Demand for the Art in Italy 1300-1600, he describes how the earlier years of this Renaissance period suggest a domestic decor that included the patriarchal chamber as “the intimate core of the household” around which the entire space was organized (Goldthwaite 225). The space was multi-functional with most furniture and valuables concentrated there while the rest of the house was “sparsely furnished” (Goldthwaite 225). Even more interesting, for a culture stereotypified by its rich and lavish baroque renaissance art, is the fact that the “typology of furniture does not extend beyond basic functions of eating, sitting, sleeping and storage (Goldthwaite 225). Finally, the evolution of these household goods brought about interesting cultural corollaries. “[G]oods evolved into more complicated forms” (Goldthwaite 225). These more complicated forms resulted in the redefinition of the household spaces in which they were housed.
While “commerce was seen to have infected nearly every aspect of modern life, the realm of art was deemed free of its contagion” (Bermingham 5). At least it was free to maintain sexual meaning in the new household of the young married couple. In Hareven’s article The Home and Family in Historical Perspective, the “nuclear household structure has predominated in England and Italy since the twelfth century” (Hareven). Two major social characteristics of these archaic homes were that marriage “meant the establishment of a separate household by the new couple” and that the space served for domestic activities such as eating, sleeping and childrearing, as well as more social functions such as production, welfare agency, correctional institution and religious worship.
In Mary Douglas’ article, The Idea of Home a Kind of Space, she suggests that “home starts by bringing some space under control.” “[T]he home is the realization of ideas.” She focuses on art in the house and how it interacts with the perception of time and space. In Henri Lefebvre’s article The Production of Space, he describes the sociological notion of space as being “produced” rather than merely appropriated and filled with things (Lefebvre). He considers that “If space is a product [...] The ‘object’ of interest must be expected to shift from things in space to the actual production of space” (Lefebvre). He admits that in certain historical era/economic dichotomies, “the active groups did not ‘produce’ space in the sense in which a vase, a piece of furniture, a house, or a fruit tree is produced” but that space is produced in a less tangible and more perception-based way (Lefebvre).
In The Madonna and Child, a host of saints, and domestic devotion in Renaissance Florence, Jacqueline Musacchio states that "Dominici discussed what he considered the only justification for having art in the home: to aid in the education of children" (Musacchio 147). In the passage that follows she lists examples of art for that purpose. What is obviously lacking is the inclusion of pagan icons, or any of the images that might have the suspect sexuality so obvious in the depictions of Lucretia. Dominici did not include Lucretia in what he deemed suitable for children. Furthermore, Musacchio notes, "many of the paintings and sculptures associated with the domestic environment had intimate iconography” (Musacchio). When she notes that "the estate of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici contained seven Madonna images as well as nine other sacred paintings and sculpture", the reader cannot help but be inclined to ask what these 'others' were (Musacchio 149). Were any of them pagan icons? Might any of them have been Lucretia? If such is the case, and Lucretia was not considered appropriate for children, then what iconographic purpose could such an image have had? The inherent sensuality of Lucretia’s likeness is the only verifiable evidence. "As Kent Lydecker has observed, marriage prompted extensive purchases of all types of domestic art to outfit the personal chamber" (Musacchio 148). Not only does this statement relate to the accoutrements of marriage and marital gifts discussed in Randolph's article, it is reasonable to assume that the "personal chamber" may include some more sexualized images like that of Lucretia: "Marriage [...] focused attention on the continuation of the lineage through the conception [...] of children" (148). Once again, marriage and conception are linked through art for the bedchamber.
In James Grantham Turner’s article entitled Profane Love: The Challenge of Sexuality, he quotes Leonardo da Vinci as saying, “Painting moves the senses more readily than poetry does. . . . Painters have depicted libidinous acts, so lustful that they have incited the spectators to play the same party game” (Bayer 178). In Ian Woodward's The Material as Culture, he provides examples of "how apparently inanimate things within the environment act on people and are acted on by people, for the purposes of carrying out social functions, regulating social relations and giving symbolic meaning to human activity" (Woodward 3). Any room decorated with Gentileschi’s Lucretia would be overpowered by its sexual message and the energy, or at least the purpose of the room would be clear. According to da Vinci, the call to action would be equally clear.
In Bill Brown's article Thing Theory, he introduces the idea of “actants”, objects designed to perform some human function on behalf of humans. Although he is referring specifically to objects such as cellular telephones that conduct some specific action, if we consider that art defines a space, surely it must perform some semiotic function on behalf of the human occupants "They are questions that ask not whether things are but what work they perform" (Brown 142). The work of an image to prompt sexual interaction is globally ubiquitous.
Bissell describes four of Artemisia’s paintings as “marked by a heightened theatricality, of which a new conception of the viewer-painting relationship is the first indisputable sign” (Bissell 69). Although these four postdate the Lucretia and Bissell does not include it amongst them, I suggest that it was an obvious progenitor to this recognizable characteristic. Theatricality is already apparent in Gentileschi’s image of Lucretia and is preceded and proceeded by a theatrical history of the myth’s presentation. “The viewer now becomes the member of an audience, rather than someone who finds him/herself confronted one-on-one with reality” (Bissell 70). Bissell is careful to include both male and female viewers. Where it might seem that the intimacy of one-on-one sexuality is compromised by the perception of a larger audience, it is important to note that the audience perception was not tangible. In Artemisia’s work, “human drama is reduced to the core and presented close up, where idealization is rejected in favour of truth, where frankness counts more than beauty” (Bissell 10). The viewer took part with an absent audience in appreciating the art, but individuals were confronted by its sexual realism within the potentially intimate privacy of the space it defined. The perception of an audience by the viewer inherently suggests a theatricality which would have specifically resulted in a call for acting. The participation of the audience with the performer is a common tenet of theatrical performance.
In terms of the domestic space, Adrian Randolph’s position on the performance of the bridal body might be extended to that of the wife in general. His article follows a Marxist slant in an economic perspective that views marital gift-giving (especially of jewellery to women) as an equation that needs balancing. "[T]he exchange of women is a conversation between men and is the basis of all symbolic exchange". The article suggests that often a woman's only ability to balance the equation was by 'owing' her body to the marriage bed, and indeed how the system may have been biased in its design to require women to unconsciously recognize this debt and to ensure that it was in place. "I would like to question whether equilibrium was returned to this system of presentations or whether, instead, the balance was left skewed". "[T]he extralegal presentations to the bride from the bridegroom (and his family) functioned, unofficially, as a Maussian counter-gift, returning equilibrium to an unbalanced economy of exchange". "A gift results in a debt which must be repaid, repayment returning equilibrium to the system". "The mancia was a traditional payment made to the bride after consummation of the marriage [which] emphasized the conjugal pair and the sexual act". "The jewels functioned, too, in a symbolic sexual economy, one in which --despite the reciprocity of the Pauline notion of mutual corporeal authority of husband and wife -- the bride was sexually subjected". "In this Florentine 'potlatch' the bride loses. She cannot return the gifts; or rather, she pays for them with her body". The sensuality and iconography of Lucretia may have acted as a reminder to the wife of what is 'owed' to the husband: sexuality (in her suggestive posing and nudity), loyalty (in the invocation of her story), and morality (in the invocation of the requirement of death (or suicide) if another man enjoys her sexually, which is a debt of ownership belonging to the husband).
Ajmar outlines “new possibilities for the interpretation and meaning that […] objects may have represented”. In this way, exciting new meaning may be interpolated into Gentileschi’s Lucretia. Theory and fact conflate to present an undeniably sexualized depiction of the Lucretia. The public nature of Artemisia’s trial and the sexual stigma which was attached to her reputation are largely accepted as historical truth. Changing Renaissance perceptions of the Lucretia myth further impregnated the painting with sexual meaning that was amplified by dramatic coincidences with Gentileschi’s life. The sexual sensibilities of men and their inevitable perception of the painting must have been seconded by a complicit female population participating in the sexual culture. The definition of space, call to action of the painting, and motivating nature of sexual images would all have worked in concert to define a space endowed with the Lucretia as highly erotic and called to action the sexuality that a wife owed her husband.
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The Question is the Question
David Christopher
THEA 500
Dr. J. Wise
December 2009
From Provenance to Bardolatry: A Survey of the Motives for the Authorship Question.
Dozens of papers and books have been written on the subject of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Calling into question the probability or even the possibility of the man named Shakespeare being the true author, 'anti-stratfordians' have made the case for such authorship candidates as Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth I, and Edward de Vere the Earl of Oxford. The body of evidence supporting Shakespeare's authorship is convincing but not conclusive and the question continues to produce passionate responses from both pro- and anti-Shakespearean supporters. The doubter’s motives within the ongoing debate have only been explored incidentally as a function of discrediting the argument against Shakespeare. If the answer to the question is unprovable, why has it continued to be asked? The Shakespeare Authorship Question has been motivated by elitist sensibilities, personal ambition, academic insecurity, and a form of worship called bardolatry.
In her lectures at the University of Victoria, Dr. Jennifer Wise insists that Shakespeare wrote the texts. Yet, she concedes that “[m]any scholarly scandals have emerged out of a lack of due diligence in determining authentic external criteria” (Wise). In Nina Baym's 1996 article in the New England Quarterly, entitled History's Odd Woman Out, Baym had already agreed with Wise regarding Delia Bacon, the first author to become infamous for her anti-stratfordian text. Baym finds fault with Delia Bacon's naive belief that good interpretation could substitute for historical research and reveals a pattern of personal ambition couched in political beliefs she felt she could foster under the banner of Shakespeare's plays. In his preface to Delia Bacon's book, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded, Nathanial Hawthorne states that “External evidence, of course, will not be wanting; there will be enough and to spare, if the demonstration here be correct” (The Philosophy 7). Hawthorne's insecurity regarding the correctness of the demonstration was well founded. Baym points out that Delia Bacon's 'research' was seriously lacking in external evidence, and was based almost exclusively on a political interpretation of Shakespeare's original texts. Baym quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne's description of Delia Bacon's “magnum opus, The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays Unfolded” as a text which “fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public and [which] has never been picked up” (Baym 223). Sadly, for Delia Bacon, Hawthorne's contention proved untrue. The text was picked up by many critics as a paradigm example of the ulterior motives and poor scholarship which they found characteristic of the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
Baym’s article is effused with the ulterior motives ascribed to a somewhat troubled mind. Nevertheless, Baym tries to paint a picture of Delia Bacon not so heavily coloured by her later insanity and her attempts to posit Francis Bacon as the candidate for Shakespearean authorship. In the essay, Baym depicts a woman afflicted by a string of publication failures and with a deep need to prove herself academically and acquire “the approval of the people whose applause she coveted” (Baym 224). “These dreams were significantly underwritten by her conviction that she was a genius” (Baym 226) and “an ambition to excel in literature that it was bound to frustrate and an eventual belief in her own divine mission” (Baym 224). Unfortunately, she failed utterly. “Delia Bacon’s [...] repeated attempts to forge a literary career were just as repeatedly rebuffed during her lifetime” (Baym 223).
It is easy to ascribe questionable ulterior motives to Delia Bacon. Her family was suffering from social and financial slippage. They “had slid far down the social scale” (Baym 225). “Restoring Francis Bacon to his imagined place at the forefront of historical progress, Delia Bacon laid claim to a similar place for herself in her own time” (Baym 248). One might be inclined to interpret a personal ambition to elevate her family name by appropriating the glory of Shakespeare on to her descendants. Trosman quotes “Jones” - in the theory of Delia Bacon, [who] “suspected a vested interest” based on the coincidence of her name with Francis Bacon’s (Trosman 475). If Baym is to be taken at her word, then Delia Bacon sought the most likely candidate for a popular response as a topic for her “opus” to fulfill her dream of critical acclaim.
Hawthorne also says that Bacon “chose her readings over her religion - indeed, she made her readings into her religion. Shakespeare's plays as she read them were nothing less than a new gospel which she had been appointed to make known” (Baym 225). In her article, Print Culture as an Archive of Dissent: Or, Delia Bacon and the Case of the Missing Hamlet, Glazener commends Bacon’s rhetorical attack of Shakespeare worship. “Bacon’s debunking of Shakespearian hagiography was astute” (Glazener 3). Bacon sarcastically takes on the voice of those loyal to Shakespeare who had come to fully identify their British culture with him. “If you dissolve him do you not dissolve us with him? If you take him to pieces, do you not undo us also?” (An Inquiry 5). What Glazener fails to recognize is that Bacon was equally guilty. Baym indicates that in Bacon's mind, Shakespeare's plays “implied the perfection of the deity, who was the cause of it all” (Baym 236). Baym is unclear whether she ascribes Shakespeare or God as the cause inspiration but clearly, Baym locates Delia Bacon squarely in the arena of religious worship of Shakespeare's texts.
In Bacon’s own 1856 article in Putnam’s Magazine, William Shakespeare and his Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them, she deploys a religious language to describe the author and his texts. She calls the author “superhuman genius” (An Inquiry 3), “enthroned king of thought” (An Inquiry 4), and “master spirit” (An Inquiry 5). She refers to his texts as “miraculous inspiration” (An Inquiry 5) and “the monuments of a genius” (An Inquiry 1). She even suggests a similarity between the mysterious life of Jesus and the bard. Like Jesus, she notes that Shakespeare left us with only a text for our greatest critics (she names Pope and Johnson) “to waste their golden hours, year after year, in groping after and guessing out his hidden meanings” (An Inquiry 7). Her language becomes increasingly biblical. “He, at whose feet all men else are proud to sit” (An Inquiry 8), “whose name is, of mortal names, the most awe-inspiring” and who has “the blood of a new Adam bubbling in his veins” (An Inquiry 9). Bacon was attempting to suggest that Shakespeare worship had been the cause of unquestioning loyalty to the myth of the man as it stood. However, the language she uses is one of complicity and in so doing she reveals her own worship of the texts and a deeper need to reconcile their worship with a worthy author-god.
Glazener claims that Bacon “got the authorship wrong partly because of her elitist prejudices” (Glazener 3), but in her need to reconcile the author-god with the texts she worshipped, Delia Bacon was guilty of severe elitism. Bacon boldly refers to the man from Stratford as “that wretched player” (An Inquiry 14) and “a stupid, ignorant, illiterate, third-rate play-actor” (An Inquiry 19). Bacon suggests that it would be impossible to fully appreciate the glory of his text if we are confined in our thinking to define the author as this “vulgar, illiterate man” (An Inquiry 13). “[H]ow could any one dare to see what is really in [the texts]?” (An Inquiry 13). To mitigate these claims, she attempts to soothe readers with words obviously intended to garner complicity. She states that “we all know that to the last hour of his life, this fellow cared never a farthing for [the plays], but only for his gains at their hands” (An Inquiry 4). What “we all know” is not indisputable. In her book, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time, Knutson describes commercial motives in the Elizabethan era and claims that “the exigencies of making a living” fostered “company affiliation” rather than the popular notion of quarrelling theatre companies (Knutson 39). These exigencies may well have been the primary motivation of Shakespeare’s muse, as unappealing and unpoetic as that may seem. In her reasoning, Bacon requires Shakespeare to be more poetically god-like in his knowledge. She assumes Shakespeare’s behaviour based on knowledge he could not have had. Considering Hamlet’s speech to the players advising them on their performing, Bacon claims that Shakespeare “would, at least, know enough of the value of his own works to avail himself of the printing press, for their preservation” (An Inquiry 6). In order for this statement to be true, Shakespeare would have had to pursue a printing practice entirely uncommon for commercial playwrights, anticipate the date of his own death, and the canonized status his texts would attain.
In her elitism, Bacon attempts to gain the complicity of her reader. Calling on a sense of civic pride, she refers to Shakespeare as “our” poet and his loss as a loss to “us” (An Inquiry 5). She uses the genitive “her” to describe the British Isle’s ownership of the poet (An Inquiry 12). She was setting the stage for her imminent book release and attempting to establish a sensibility that the man from Stratford is a ridiculous candidate that is both anti-critical and anti-British to accept. But she doesn’t stop there. She goes on to claim that “there were men in England, in the age of Elizabeth, who had mastered the Greek and Roman history” (An Inquiry 16). Although she never submits a candidate in this article, her book, which came out the following year focuses exclusively on Francis Bacon as her champion.
Delia Bacon suffered from a need to reconcile her religious worship of the texts with a candidate that satisfied her sensibilities. She reiterates a need to discover, on behalf of Shakespeare’s texts, their “sources, beginning and end – for the modern critic, that is surely now the question” (An Inquiry 1). But her fanatical 582-page volume is almost entirely void of any verifiable research. Her endless poetic musings emulate Shakespeare more than debunk him. Much to Bacon’s chagrin, Hawthorne rationalizes the inconclusive nature of Bacon's book in its preface. He states that “the author of the discovery was not willing to rob the world of this great question; but wished rather to share with it the benefit which the true solution of the Problem offers - the solution prescribed by those who propounded it to the future” (An Inquiry 7). Inherent to his statements is both the admission that the “solution” provided by Delia Bacon requires further research, and that the entire value of Bacon's book is to continue the life of the question.
Bacon was also strongly motivated by a need to make a critical name for herself, and to demonstrate her genius, which required her to maintain some mystery about her answer to the question: “here in this daylight of our modern criticism, in its noontide glare, has he not contrived to hide himself in the profoundest depths of that stuff that myths are made of?” (An Inquiry 4). Baym suggests that “Bacon became quite secretive about her ideas - not because she doubted them but because she was afraid of being scooped” (Baym 238). Her fear of losing her claim to Shakespeare was an ulterior motive she shared with Mr. Thomas Looney.
Thomas Looney wrote a 536-page volume entitled Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere. Admittedly, a man with such a moniker is truly dedicated to take a position that has resulted in his name being identified as both “unfortunate” and “significant” (McRea, Lester, Hurst). As with Delia Bacon’s book, the sheer volume of the text indicates a fanatical obsession with proving Edward de Vere was the man responsible for the plays that we ascribe to Shakespeare. Almost every scholar that mentions the case for Edward de Vere since the publication of Looney's book identifies it as the definitive text on the subject. Criticism has taken aim at Looney’s arguments and evidence. However, it appears that no-one has bothered to examine the text specifically in an effort to justify his dedicated motivation.
In the preface of the book, there are subtle indications of his personal ambition that are similar to Delia Bacon’s ‘scoop’. He eagerly states that “steps had to be taken to ensure that the results achieved should not be lost, and also to safeguard what I believed to be my priority of discovery”. The “results” he refers to represent the investment of research he had made and dedicated to producing his lengthy text. Even more obvious is his self-protectionism. Like a school-boy with a precious secret or a competing inventor rushing to the patent office with some new idea, he is evidently eager to reveal his “discovery” as quickly as possible in order to protect his “priority” before it is credited to someone else. Like Delia Bacon’s argument for Francis Bacon, Looney’s desire to posit Edward de Vere as the real author comes two hundred years after his death. Looney’s motives can only be ascribed to personal ambition and not some noble quest to champion the poor unaccredited Earl of Oxford.
Looney also demonstrates a Freudian insecurity in his attempts at self-validation. He begins his book with a short 'dedication' which is actually a list of people whom he has convinced, complete with their inscrutable academic accreditation, against an active admission that many might not be. He posits the “complete acceptance of my solution” by his “brother-in-law, Mr. M. Gompertz, B.A., Head Master of the County High School, Leystone” and to one “Mr. W. T. Thorn” (Looney 5). He lists the publisher, a “Mr. Cecil Palmer” as having “adopted its conclusions with enthusiasm” (Looney 5-6). Looney then states that he has “not the slightest doubt” as to the success of his plans to prove Oxford the author. His voice, however, reads as not much but self-assurance against an insecurity about which he notes it will be “another matter” to “present the case as to establish an equally strong conviction in the minds of others” (Looney 17).
Looney’s new candidate represents a recurrence of elitist thinking so evident with Delia Bacon. The entire argument is imbued with a strong desire for Shakespeare to be more than a mere peasant. The only reasonable basis for this desire is that it is uncomfortable that a low-bred candidate be the locus of worship and genius. Unfortunately, as with all the arguments founded on this discomfort, Looney's book relies heavily on conjecture and evidence of what is not there as 'proof'. The lack of evidence regarding Shakespeare is tantamount to the lacking evidence for all Elizabethan writers, with the exception of Ben Jonson who was a man “much concerned with his historical reputation and took efforts to make his memory known” (Trosman 487). What is left, then, are the fantastical desires to make a normal life of reasonable explanation legendary to align with the worship his texts have projected on to the man.
In Roland Barthes' text The Death of the Author, he refers to the misconception of the “Author-God” (Leitch 1468). Theories posited by Barthes' and Foucault were amongst several in the critical discourse of the twentieth century that threatened to marginalize the importance of the author. The fanatical backlash was inevitable. When generations had come to worship the idea of the author Shakespeare, the threat to his divine position called for nothing shy of open revolt. Ironically, by taking part in this very discourse to try and discredit Shakespeare, the anti-Stratfordians achieved two results against the death of the author. First, they demonstrated the very problem Barthes was observing, that the importance of the author is not central. Anti-Stratfordians were simply displacing authorship into another candidate. Secondly, that by questioning Shakespeare, they ensured his continued relevance within the new critical framework. So much for the death of the author.
The name of the author thus works to confuse the texts with the person. Roland Barthes notes that “The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire's work is the failure of Baudelaire the man. [...] The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it” (Leitch 1466). Foucault expands the discourse and states that “a number of texts were attached to a single name [which] implies that relationships of homogeneity, filiation, reciprocal explanation, authentification, or of common utilization were established amongst them. Finally, the author's name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse” (Leitch 1627). Al Pacino, in his movie, Looking for Richard, demonstrates this use of the name of the author. He states, “It has always been a dream of mine to share with others how I feel about Shakespeare” (Pacino 11:39). However, there is nothing in the movie to even hint that Pacino has any knowledge of the man named Shakespeare at all. The movie focuses on the thrilling process surrounding the decoding of Shakespeare’s text Richard III in anticipation of staging it. Clearly, Pacino uses the word Shakespeare to refer to the works ascribed to that man. The name ‘Shakespeare’ is therefore an idea which ostensibly refers to a man but effectively refers to a specific canon of texts in a specific era in a specific cultural setting ascribed to the genius of one man.
Looney conveniently overlooks the impossibility of his own claim and the agency given to the idea of authorship. The name Shakespeare, whether accurate or not, cannot simply be erased from a worshipped canon of texts. Foucault quite accurately hypothesizes that “[d]iscourse that possesses an author's name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten” (Leitch 1627). Even in the event that Looney's 'proof' were conclusive to the point of being undisputable, it would inevitably result in the name of Oxford being transferred into the idea of Shakespeare and not the name of Shakespeare being universally replaced with that of Oxford. Prince became the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince as would Edward de Vere become the Earl formerly known as Shakespeare. Looney attempts to address this problem with modesty. “[I]t will be impossible ever totally to dissociate from the work and personality of the great one, the figure and name of his helper” (Trosman 486). His modesty, however, is only overshadowed by the obvious fact that his 'definitive volume' has done little to prove anything, but has successfully injected his own name into the history of the Shakespeare myth for all time.
One need not even read his exhaustively detailed academic arguments on Oxford's behalf to discover hidden motive in his publication. In his introduction he self-aggrandizes and fantasizes about a legendary contribution to the literary canon of critical works. “The transference of honour of writing the immortal Shakespeare dramas from one man to another, if definitely effected, becomes not merely a national or contemporary event, but a world event of permanent importance, destined to leave a mark as enduring as human literature and the human race itself” (Looney 13). At some point, Looney seems to have confused the act of ascribing Shakespeare's work to another man with the discovery of fire. The remainder of the introduction reads like the false-modest musings of a man who has volunteered to take on the most momentous self-sacrificing literary excursion that has ever been undertaken. He proposes that the “greater responsibility had to be incurred” (Looney 14) and that if he can see the “truth prevail”, he “shall be content” (Looney 6). Looney uses epic poetic language such as “judgment” and “imperil” as he fully envisions himself being sacrificed to the critical gods and that “he is bound to implicate himself so deeply as to stake publicly his reputation for sane and sober judgment, and thus to imperil the credit of his opinion on every other subject” (Looney 13). At least he got that right.
Thomas Looney and Delia Bacon are both easy targets out of which critics could make 'straw-men'. The coincidence of her actual insanity with his unfortunate name is rhetorically and emphatically repeated within the discourse. Each of the major candidates for alternate authorship, Bacon and Oxford, now had singular identifiable champions in Delia Bacon and Looney respectively. The ensuing criticism focused on weaknesses in their arguments, rather than original document proof and the question of Shakespeare's authorship moved even farther away from the source. The expected result is that the discourse would lose momentum, which is exactly what it did until Freud's loyalty to Looney's thesis caused a disruption in psychoanalytical theory that brought the question back to the discursive foreground.
In the newspaper article entitled, We’re Not a Lot of Mad People, Hurst quotes Freud as echoing both Looney and Bacon. “The man of Stratford seems to have nothing at all to justify his claim, whereas Oxford has almost everything” (Hurst). Trosman quotes Freud in his 1930 Goethe Prize acceptance speech. Freud reports doubts that “the untutored son of a provincial citizen of Stratford” was the true author “or whether it was, rather, the nobly-born and highly cultivated, passionately wayward, to some extent declasse aristocrat, Edward de Vere, hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England” (Trosman 477). Three things are immediately obvious in this statement. First, that Freud had doubts. Second, that he considered de Vere as the only other acceptable candidate. Third, and most important, is the language which demonstrates a pre-occupation with Shakespeare's low-breeding and Edward de Vere's aristocracy, with particular mention of their father's stations in both cases. Freud becomes his own example of the oedipal complex. He is pre-occupied with the fathers of long-dead icons to the point of personal anxiety which he appears to need to resolve conclusively.
Freud is a problematic Pandora’s Box. He had partly used the life of William Shakespeare, specifically the death of his father and of his son Hamnet, to explain oedipal phenomena in Hamlet. In An Autobiographical Study, Trosman quotes Freud as having written “Shakespeare wrote Hamlet very soon after his father's death” (Trosman 478). Hamlet is the pivotal textual example that Freud employs in his Oedipal Theory. “The issue of the Shakespearean authorship controversy appears to be a long-standing unresolved preoccupation with doubts concerning rightful paternity” (Trosman 495). The 'fathership' of the texts, so to speak, was a locus of anxiety for Freud. “He responded to the poor historical documentation as a challenge to his psychological skill” (Trosman 479). As such, he seems guilty of a sort of oedipal bardolatry. Now, having convinced himself of another candidate, he needed to make the life of de Vere fit into his oedipal model, or abandon his life's work as evidentially flawed. Trosman reports that Freud transferred biographical evidence from de Vere's life into the model to replace the Shakespeare example. In An Outline of Psychoanalysis, “he related Hamlet's Oedipus complex to the fact that the Earl of Oxford's father died when the presumed author was a boy and shortly thereafter his mother whom he repudiated remarried” (Trosman 479). Although this biographical coincidence is more similar to the story in the text of Hamlet, it is actually a less convincing argument for the Oedipal Theory as Freud presents it in the Oedipus Complex section of his The Interpretation of Dreams (Leitch 922-3). The coincidence of greater relevance, however, is Freud's actions of fatherly pre-occupation, especially projected into the lives of long-dead icons, and his transference of their biographies into his theory.
Looney uses Shakespeare's texts as a point of departure and in them makes efforts to provide evidence that what can be read as necessary biographical knowledge on the part of the author coincides most specifically with the life of Edward de Vere. The interpretation of text as a sort of psychological mystery to be solved was a method that must have appealed to Sigmund Freud (Trosman 493). It coincides with the methodology of psychoanalysis that Freud writes about in many of his texts, and its use of interpretation of text is highly reminiscent of the theory in The Interpretation of Dreams. “Jones observes of Freud that two of the great mysteries that had 'always perplexed him to distraction' were telepathy & the Shakespeare authorship controversy” (Lester 4 – footnotes). “Freud did not settle on any one claimant until 1923, when he was sixty-seven years old” (Trosman 475). Lester claims that “Mr. Looney's intervention therefore came as a welcome relief to him” (Lester 5 - column 2). In Looney's book, Freud had found a relief to his own longstanding oedipal anxiety, and a published practitioner of his methodology to soothe his ego further.
I found Lester's interpretation to be a little too convenient. But in his vein of thinking, I discovered that Freud's language sounds much like the rhetoric of a person trying to convince themselves of a convenient solution to an irksome problem, which they know to be otherwise untrue. In his Goethe prize speech, he demonstrates an awkward uncertainty. He uses the phrase “whether it was in fact” and “or whether it was rather” (Trosman 477). He follows both of these phrases with descriptions of the candidates aimed at questioning the one and propagating for the other. He includes the phrase “It is undeniably painful to all of us” in an attempt to gain complicity. Trosman quotes a 1930 letter to a German translator regarding the sonnets in which Freud says, “I am indeed almost convinced that none but this aristocrat was our Shakespeare” (Trosman 478). The phrase “almost convinced” resounds with uncertainty. In the 1935 second edition of An Autobiographical Study, he adds a footnote that repeats the phrase “almost convinced” of his belief in Edward de Vere. It all sounds like a man seeking to gain external support to alleviate the anxiety of his own doubt.
There is a clear pattern of anxiety amongst the anti-Stratfordians pertaining to evidence that is not there. Early in his book, Smith presents a one-page second chapter that insists “William Shakespeare is indeed a negative history” followed by three sentences about Shakespeare. Each begins with, “We do not know...” (Smith 2). Specifically Smith targets a suspicious lack of knowledge pertaining to Shakespeare’s birth, death, education, marriage, and dates of textual production. Delia Bacon and Thomas Looney are both guilty of academic anxiety based on what we do not know and what feels as though it is missing. They chose to reveal what they deemed ‘proof of identity’ based on their own interpretations of Shakespeare’s texts. Freud needed to relieve an oedipal anxiety that stemmed from a lack of information regarding the father-author-god.
Lester argues that “Realism” is the movement that has caused the question to remain. “There was as a consequence a quest - which was a prominent motive in the Shakespearean author-as-source debate - to re-write history & re-read literature in realist, & essentially 'consumerist' terms” (Lester 1 - column 1). “[W]ith it was enshrined a particular conception of 'the author' & his properties” (Lester 1 - column 1). Lester suggests that in examining the texts, many academics had a “need to apply to a concrete situation before their meaning can be securely determined” (Lester 2 - column 2). The concrete situation could be found in “the author whose genius lies behind [the text]” (Lester 2 - column 2). “References to knowledge or events or places or people [are] picked out from throughout the text & then the chosen candidate is shown to have known about or been at these things, known or been with these people” (Lester 2 – column 2). “This reductive criticism & detective quest that services it needs not only a source, the fixed author or fixity of authors, but a reason for the text” (Lester 4 - column 2). The texts are then a mere source for the detectives to construct a more plausible picture of the author as source” (Lester 3 - column 1). A pattern emerges in which, it appears, that many academic writers attempt to pin down a definitive identity for Shakespeare from which their academic integrity and authority on the subject is impervious to future re-evaluation. “Everything is locked into a safe place - the mystique of authorship, the consumerisation of readership, and language itself” (Lester 4 - column 2). Once the author is stable, the meaning of the texts could be “securely determined” and presented to students with confidence.
Lester also suggests that academics were aware that the “discourse of the Shakespeare authorship debate [was] regularly fortified by the multiplication of possible authorship candidates” (Lester 1 - column 1). He states that new candidates, enigmas, and interpretations were regularly emerging. The inability to locate the authorship definitively had a twofold effect on the academic community. Not only did it fortify the academic insecurity caused by a lack of authoritative Shakespearian evidence, it also ensured the ongoing production of academic text around a self-perpetuating question. “From the Freudian perspective it may be postulated that the literary detectives - most frustrated authors themselves - are trying to [...] atone for orthodoxy's literary parricide” (Lester 2 - column 2). Never in history has a single author garnered the passionate debate and published comment that Shakespeare has. Never before have texts been revered so wholly as to merit the debate.
Lester introduces bardolatry as both a source and a result of the ongoing debate. He sees amongst academics an “unquestioning, unproblematical worship of the accredited 'source' that has [...] helped provoke the excesses of the self-styled literary detectives” (Lester 1 - column 2). Lester draws a specific bridge between worshipping an author and the enigma that it inevitably creates. “We have what little we know of the supposed 'great author' - a gnawing & irritating enigma” (Lester 1 - column 2). In order to fill the void and satisfy the itching of the enigma, the “literary detectives [...] marshal all the biographic evidence for their particular candidate to the exclusion of all evidence to the contrary” (Lester 2 - column 1). Lester reiterates what he deems to be the fundamental rationale for the authorship debate. “The author cannot be the Stratford man because he could not have been literate enough” (Lester 2 - column 1). “The author of Shakespeare's works could not just be a country yokel or litigious bumkin or a ham actor from Stratford; he must, as it were, justify his consummate literary genius by his royalty or nobility” (Lester 2 - column 1 & 2). The words of academic writers are replete with comments regarding the desire to mould Shakespeare into the myth we would like him to be. Cyril Connoly states that “[e]verything we know about William Shakespeare contributes little or nothing to the image we should like to form of Europe's greatest writer” (McManaway 1). For anti-stratfordians, the perceived disparity between the Stratford man and the literary legend creates a problem already seen in the elitism of Bacon, Looney and Freud.
When one is seeking to establish a pattern of idolatry towards a literary 'god' it is difficult to overlook very obvious similarities with deeply entrenched religious myths. The similarities between the myth and enigma of Shakespeare and those of Jesus are too strong to ignore. Whereas Jesus was the character in the book associated with him (i.e. the New Testament), Shakespeare was the author of his texts. Nevertheless, those whom I accuse of bardolatry have been nothing if not guilty of attempting to locate Shakespeare in his texts. Looney himself states “The personality which seems to run through the pages of the drama I felt altogether out of relationship with what was taught of the reputed author and the ascertained facts of his career” (Looney 14). Finding the messiah within the text, or failing to, relegates the interpreter to one of two camps. With Jesus you either have faith or you are an atheist. Likewise, with Shakespeare you are either a 'Stratfordian' or an 'anti-Stratfordian', the heresy of those in the latter category becomes a matter of risible folly to those in the former and/or vice versa. Strong atheists find it necessary to disprove Jesus and have 'identified' a disparity between the man of Nazareth who was a mere carpenter and a deity who was crucified and resurrected. Similarly, anti-Stratfordians are loyal to an idea that the likely uneducated lower-class man from Stratford could not possibly be responsible for the literary genius that manifests itself in the Shakespearean texts. Ironically, atheists seem to take the route of requiring verifiable evidence before they will have faith whereas the Stratfordians need it to lose theirs. Nevertheless, I daresay that to atheists who feel it necessary to disprove Jesus as a messiah, Jesus has become as important to them as to those who believe. As such, they are guilty of a certain type of Jesus-worship themselves. Similarly, the identity of Shakespeare has become a locus of anxiety to both Stratfordians and anti-Stratfordians alike and so I categorize them together under the same worship umbrella known as bardolatry.
Historically, bardolatry has been evident. Delia Bacon tipped her hand by using biblical, or at least religious, language. The magnitude of Looney’s research in order to locate the life of Oxford within the canon of Shakespeare's work must have been immense. Looney openly calls the texts “the immortal Shakespeare dramas” (Looney 13). Like Delia Bacon, he deems his exposure to Shakespeare’s texts to empower him to authoritatively question their provenance. “This continued familiarity with the contents of one play induced a peculiar sense of intimacy with the mind and disposition of its author and his outlook upon life” (Looney 13). Another obvious bardolator who has not questioned Shakespeare’s authorship is George Bernard Shaw. For a man who claimed to have despised Shakespeare, Shaw wrote exhaustively about the man and his works, almost to the exclusion of all other playwrights. Shaw proudly made personal comparisons to Shakespeare and staged a festival called Shak vs. Shav. The unsaid worship inherent in such exclusionary attention is textbook psychoanalytical repressed hero worship.
Presently, bardolatry is as pervasive as ever. In his documentary, Looking for Richard, filmed in the early 1990’s, Pacino makes several excursions to the streets to ask the ‘average’ person about their exposure to ‘Shakespeare’. He laments at one point that “no-one does!” (I.e. knows Shakespeare). The worship of the idea appears to have lost momentum in popular culture as ‘Shakespeare’ became more and more academically and artistically stigmatized. It appears that a fear of Shakespeare becoming less revered manifests itself in apparent bardolators. They seem to believe that if the texts are deemed too inaccessible for worship, refocusing on the man, via controversial questioning, will suffice. The texts and the man are confused under the idea of authorship posed by Foucault. Therefore, using either one as a focus of popular worship meets the needs of the bardolator.
Derek Jacobi makes use of the Shakespeare Authorship Question in an attempt to rejuvenate bardolatry for personal gain, and perhaps out of the fear of Shakespeare losing popularity. Sir Derek Jacobi has appeared in many film and stage productions of Shakespeare’s plays. His career is typically Shakespearean and he has associations with such famous Shakespeareans as Ian McKellan and Kenneth Branagh. His professional career was built on Shakespeare’s back so to speak. Recently Jacobi “unveiled a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” as to the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Again, preoccupied with evidence that is not there, the “document says that there are no records that any William Shakespeare received payment or secured patronage for a writing” (Thespians). Rylance unveiled with Jacobi and is the former artistic director of the new Globe theatre in London. The article quotes him as saying, “You get more of a rise if you say Shakespeare didn’t write the work than if you say there isn’t a God” (Hurst). The word unveiled suggests intent for a public audience. Whether the play will be remounted remains to be seen, but the article intimates that “the attackers [who are] saying the dramatist was Somebody Else entirely or a Front Man for a group of writers, [are] all trying to make a living in the frantic world of Elizabethan theatre” (Hurst). Jacobi’s public unveiling suspiciously followed “the final matinee of “I am Shakespeare,” a play investigating the bard’s identity” (Thespians). Whether or not Jacobi cashes in on a remounting of the production remains to be seen. Either way, his ‘coming out’ on the authorship question was clearly part of the overall marketing for his production: an attempt to capitalize on the authorship question and the bardolatrous emotional reactions it creates.
Trosman refers to bardolatry as the “unqualified supremacy attached to the work” (Trosman 490). While Shakespeare's works are arguably superior, ultimately that is a matter of critical opinion and cultural perspective. But “Looney's reference to the dramatic work as the best in the English language is typical for the anti-Stratfordian point of view” (Trosman 490). Having been indoctrinated to revere his works, like atheists who find Jesus important, there falls out a need to reconcile the god with his miracles. Ultimately, all doubters appear guilty of this bardolatry in a Freudian style. The religious belief in the supremacy of the work is transferred to the author-god as its source and reconciliation must be made with the miracle of the text and the man-who-would-be-god who created them. The truth, however, is that the author-god responsible for their worship is only a projection from the minds of those who have become psychologically dependent on the legendary status ascribed to the man and a fanatical loyalty to the supremacy of the texts. However, the incredible quality of Shakespeare’s works is only miraculous to those who have chosen to worship. To the factual historian, they are acceptably attached to a mere man from Stratford.
What is not absolutely certain is that the man named William Shakespeare from Stratford wrote the plays. What is nearly conclusive is that the man who wrote the plays was named William Shakespeare. What is highly likely is that they are the same man. Arguments against this likelihood are all based on what is not known and what can be interpreted as biographical evidence within the texts. The little evidence we do have strongly favours the one man named Shakespeare and any position to the contrary is a losing argument. “William Leahy, […] is shortly to risk academic scorn, if not suicide, by convening the first-ever graduate course on the subject at London’s Brunel University” (Hurst). In surveying the most influential doubters of Shakespeare’s authorship, three distinct patterns emerge: personal ambition, academic insecurity, and the leviathan phenomenon of bardolatry in which stratfordians and anti-stratfordians alike have come to worship the text and choose to continue the debate so that Shakespeare never becomes stationary; to proliferate a state of perpetual controversy about which to continue the Shakespearian discourse.
Bibliography:
Bacon, Delia Salter, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere
Unfolded. London: Groombridge and Sons, 1857.
Bacon, Delia Salter. “William Shakespeare and his Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them.”
Putnam's Magazine (January 1856): 1-20.
Bretzius, Stephen. “Dr. Jacques L. and Martin Hide-A-Guerre: The Subject of New
Historicism.” Diacritics 27.1 (1997): 73-90.
Dawkins, Peter. The Shakespeare Enigma. London: Polair, 2004.
Fields, Bertram. “Did Shakespeare Really Write Those Plays?” Edmonton Journal Aug 7
2005: E.12.
Glazener, Nancy. “Print Culture as an Archive of Dissent: Or, Delia Bacon and the Case
of the Missing Hamlet.” American Literary History 19.2 (2007): 329-49.
Halliday, F. E. Shakespeare and His Critics. London: G. Duckworth, 1958.
Hurst, Lynda. “'We're Not a Lot of Mad People” We have Nothing Against the Man from
Stratford-upon-Avon, but ...'.” Toronto Star Sep 16 2007: ID.1.
Knutson, Roslyn Lander. Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time.
Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 1st ed. New York: Norton, 2001.
Lester, Paul. The Author in Shakespeare. Birmingham: P. Lester, 1981.
Looney, J. Thomas. “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward De Vere, the Seventeenth Earl
of Oxford. London: C. Palmer, 1920.
McManaway, James Gilmer. The Authorship of Shakespeare. Washington, D.C: Folger
Shakespeare Library, 1962.
McCrea, Scott. The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question.
Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005.
Pacino, Al. Looking for Richard. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 1996
Parsons, John Denham. Sir Sidney Lee & Absolute Proof : Being the Case for an
Exhaustive Inquiry as to the Full Extent, and Correct Interpretation, of the Sub
Surface Signalling about the Poet Shakespeare shown by the Author's Four
Letters in the Athenaeum to have Come Down to Us on at Least One Page of the
First Folio. London: Published by the author, 1920.
The Shakespeare Controversy: A Digest of Comment in Recently Published Books on
Stratford and the Shakespeare Controversy. -----. London: Francis Carr
Publications, 1968.
Shaw, Bernard. Shaw on Shakespeare: An Anthology of Bernard Shaw's Writings on the
Plays and Production of Shakespeare. [1st ed.] New York: Dutton, 1961.
Smith, William Henry, fl., and Tobie Matthew Sir. Bacon and Shakespeare: An Inquiry
Touching Players, Playhouses, and Play-Writers in the Days of Elizabeth.
London: J.R. Smith, 1857.
“Thespians Challenge the Bard.” Prince George Citizen Sep 10 2007: 2.
Trosman, H. “Freud and the Controversy Over Shakespearean Authorship.” Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association 13 (1965): 475-98.
Wise, Jennifer. Theatre 500: Methods and Materials of Theatre Research. University of
Victoria. Phoenix rm. 141, Victoria, BC. 19 November 2009. classroom lecture.
THEA 500
Dr. J. Wise
December 2009
From Provenance to Bardolatry: A Survey of the Motives for the Authorship Question.
Dozens of papers and books have been written on the subject of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Calling into question the probability or even the possibility of the man named Shakespeare being the true author, 'anti-stratfordians' have made the case for such authorship candidates as Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth I, and Edward de Vere the Earl of Oxford. The body of evidence supporting Shakespeare's authorship is convincing but not conclusive and the question continues to produce passionate responses from both pro- and anti-Shakespearean supporters. The doubter’s motives within the ongoing debate have only been explored incidentally as a function of discrediting the argument against Shakespeare. If the answer to the question is unprovable, why has it continued to be asked? The Shakespeare Authorship Question has been motivated by elitist sensibilities, personal ambition, academic insecurity, and a form of worship called bardolatry.
In her lectures at the University of Victoria, Dr. Jennifer Wise insists that Shakespeare wrote the texts. Yet, she concedes that “[m]any scholarly scandals have emerged out of a lack of due diligence in determining authentic external criteria” (Wise). In Nina Baym's 1996 article in the New England Quarterly, entitled History's Odd Woman Out, Baym had already agreed with Wise regarding Delia Bacon, the first author to become infamous for her anti-stratfordian text. Baym finds fault with Delia Bacon's naive belief that good interpretation could substitute for historical research and reveals a pattern of personal ambition couched in political beliefs she felt she could foster under the banner of Shakespeare's plays. In his preface to Delia Bacon's book, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded, Nathanial Hawthorne states that “External evidence, of course, will not be wanting; there will be enough and to spare, if the demonstration here be correct” (The Philosophy 7). Hawthorne's insecurity regarding the correctness of the demonstration was well founded. Baym points out that Delia Bacon's 'research' was seriously lacking in external evidence, and was based almost exclusively on a political interpretation of Shakespeare's original texts. Baym quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne's description of Delia Bacon's “magnum opus, The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays Unfolded” as a text which “fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public and [which] has never been picked up” (Baym 223). Sadly, for Delia Bacon, Hawthorne's contention proved untrue. The text was picked up by many critics as a paradigm example of the ulterior motives and poor scholarship which they found characteristic of the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
Baym’s article is effused with the ulterior motives ascribed to a somewhat troubled mind. Nevertheless, Baym tries to paint a picture of Delia Bacon not so heavily coloured by her later insanity and her attempts to posit Francis Bacon as the candidate for Shakespearean authorship. In the essay, Baym depicts a woman afflicted by a string of publication failures and with a deep need to prove herself academically and acquire “the approval of the people whose applause she coveted” (Baym 224). “These dreams were significantly underwritten by her conviction that she was a genius” (Baym 226) and “an ambition to excel in literature that it was bound to frustrate and an eventual belief in her own divine mission” (Baym 224). Unfortunately, she failed utterly. “Delia Bacon’s [...] repeated attempts to forge a literary career were just as repeatedly rebuffed during her lifetime” (Baym 223).
It is easy to ascribe questionable ulterior motives to Delia Bacon. Her family was suffering from social and financial slippage. They “had slid far down the social scale” (Baym 225). “Restoring Francis Bacon to his imagined place at the forefront of historical progress, Delia Bacon laid claim to a similar place for herself in her own time” (Baym 248). One might be inclined to interpret a personal ambition to elevate her family name by appropriating the glory of Shakespeare on to her descendants. Trosman quotes “Jones” - in the theory of Delia Bacon, [who] “suspected a vested interest” based on the coincidence of her name with Francis Bacon’s (Trosman 475). If Baym is to be taken at her word, then Delia Bacon sought the most likely candidate for a popular response as a topic for her “opus” to fulfill her dream of critical acclaim.
Hawthorne also says that Bacon “chose her readings over her religion - indeed, she made her readings into her religion. Shakespeare's plays as she read them were nothing less than a new gospel which she had been appointed to make known” (Baym 225). In her article, Print Culture as an Archive of Dissent: Or, Delia Bacon and the Case of the Missing Hamlet, Glazener commends Bacon’s rhetorical attack of Shakespeare worship. “Bacon’s debunking of Shakespearian hagiography was astute” (Glazener 3). Bacon sarcastically takes on the voice of those loyal to Shakespeare who had come to fully identify their British culture with him. “If you dissolve him do you not dissolve us with him? If you take him to pieces, do you not undo us also?” (An Inquiry 5). What Glazener fails to recognize is that Bacon was equally guilty. Baym indicates that in Bacon's mind, Shakespeare's plays “implied the perfection of the deity, who was the cause of it all” (Baym 236). Baym is unclear whether she ascribes Shakespeare or God as the cause inspiration but clearly, Baym locates Delia Bacon squarely in the arena of religious worship of Shakespeare's texts.
In Bacon’s own 1856 article in Putnam’s Magazine, William Shakespeare and his Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them, she deploys a religious language to describe the author and his texts. She calls the author “superhuman genius” (An Inquiry 3), “enthroned king of thought” (An Inquiry 4), and “master spirit” (An Inquiry 5). She refers to his texts as “miraculous inspiration” (An Inquiry 5) and “the monuments of a genius” (An Inquiry 1). She even suggests a similarity between the mysterious life of Jesus and the bard. Like Jesus, she notes that Shakespeare left us with only a text for our greatest critics (she names Pope and Johnson) “to waste their golden hours, year after year, in groping after and guessing out his hidden meanings” (An Inquiry 7). Her language becomes increasingly biblical. “He, at whose feet all men else are proud to sit” (An Inquiry 8), “whose name is, of mortal names, the most awe-inspiring” and who has “the blood of a new Adam bubbling in his veins” (An Inquiry 9). Bacon was attempting to suggest that Shakespeare worship had been the cause of unquestioning loyalty to the myth of the man as it stood. However, the language she uses is one of complicity and in so doing she reveals her own worship of the texts and a deeper need to reconcile their worship with a worthy author-god.
Glazener claims that Bacon “got the authorship wrong partly because of her elitist prejudices” (Glazener 3), but in her need to reconcile the author-god with the texts she worshipped, Delia Bacon was guilty of severe elitism. Bacon boldly refers to the man from Stratford as “that wretched player” (An Inquiry 14) and “a stupid, ignorant, illiterate, third-rate play-actor” (An Inquiry 19). Bacon suggests that it would be impossible to fully appreciate the glory of his text if we are confined in our thinking to define the author as this “vulgar, illiterate man” (An Inquiry 13). “[H]ow could any one dare to see what is really in [the texts]?” (An Inquiry 13). To mitigate these claims, she attempts to soothe readers with words obviously intended to garner complicity. She states that “we all know that to the last hour of his life, this fellow cared never a farthing for [the plays], but only for his gains at their hands” (An Inquiry 4). What “we all know” is not indisputable. In her book, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time, Knutson describes commercial motives in the Elizabethan era and claims that “the exigencies of making a living” fostered “company affiliation” rather than the popular notion of quarrelling theatre companies (Knutson 39). These exigencies may well have been the primary motivation of Shakespeare’s muse, as unappealing and unpoetic as that may seem. In her reasoning, Bacon requires Shakespeare to be more poetically god-like in his knowledge. She assumes Shakespeare’s behaviour based on knowledge he could not have had. Considering Hamlet’s speech to the players advising them on their performing, Bacon claims that Shakespeare “would, at least, know enough of the value of his own works to avail himself of the printing press, for their preservation” (An Inquiry 6). In order for this statement to be true, Shakespeare would have had to pursue a printing practice entirely uncommon for commercial playwrights, anticipate the date of his own death, and the canonized status his texts would attain.
In her elitism, Bacon attempts to gain the complicity of her reader. Calling on a sense of civic pride, she refers to Shakespeare as “our” poet and his loss as a loss to “us” (An Inquiry 5). She uses the genitive “her” to describe the British Isle’s ownership of the poet (An Inquiry 12). She was setting the stage for her imminent book release and attempting to establish a sensibility that the man from Stratford is a ridiculous candidate that is both anti-critical and anti-British to accept. But she doesn’t stop there. She goes on to claim that “there were men in England, in the age of Elizabeth, who had mastered the Greek and Roman history” (An Inquiry 16). Although she never submits a candidate in this article, her book, which came out the following year focuses exclusively on Francis Bacon as her champion.
Delia Bacon suffered from a need to reconcile her religious worship of the texts with a candidate that satisfied her sensibilities. She reiterates a need to discover, on behalf of Shakespeare’s texts, their “sources, beginning and end – for the modern critic, that is surely now the question” (An Inquiry 1). But her fanatical 582-page volume is almost entirely void of any verifiable research. Her endless poetic musings emulate Shakespeare more than debunk him. Much to Bacon’s chagrin, Hawthorne rationalizes the inconclusive nature of Bacon's book in its preface. He states that “the author of the discovery was not willing to rob the world of this great question; but wished rather to share with it the benefit which the true solution of the Problem offers - the solution prescribed by those who propounded it to the future” (An Inquiry 7). Inherent to his statements is both the admission that the “solution” provided by Delia Bacon requires further research, and that the entire value of Bacon's book is to continue the life of the question.
Bacon was also strongly motivated by a need to make a critical name for herself, and to demonstrate her genius, which required her to maintain some mystery about her answer to the question: “here in this daylight of our modern criticism, in its noontide glare, has he not contrived to hide himself in the profoundest depths of that stuff that myths are made of?” (An Inquiry 4). Baym suggests that “Bacon became quite secretive about her ideas - not because she doubted them but because she was afraid of being scooped” (Baym 238). Her fear of losing her claim to Shakespeare was an ulterior motive she shared with Mr. Thomas Looney.
Thomas Looney wrote a 536-page volume entitled Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere. Admittedly, a man with such a moniker is truly dedicated to take a position that has resulted in his name being identified as both “unfortunate” and “significant” (McRea, Lester, Hurst). As with Delia Bacon’s book, the sheer volume of the text indicates a fanatical obsession with proving Edward de Vere was the man responsible for the plays that we ascribe to Shakespeare. Almost every scholar that mentions the case for Edward de Vere since the publication of Looney's book identifies it as the definitive text on the subject. Criticism has taken aim at Looney’s arguments and evidence. However, it appears that no-one has bothered to examine the text specifically in an effort to justify his dedicated motivation.
In the preface of the book, there are subtle indications of his personal ambition that are similar to Delia Bacon’s ‘scoop’. He eagerly states that “steps had to be taken to ensure that the results achieved should not be lost, and also to safeguard what I believed to be my priority of discovery”. The “results” he refers to represent the investment of research he had made and dedicated to producing his lengthy text. Even more obvious is his self-protectionism. Like a school-boy with a precious secret or a competing inventor rushing to the patent office with some new idea, he is evidently eager to reveal his “discovery” as quickly as possible in order to protect his “priority” before it is credited to someone else. Like Delia Bacon’s argument for Francis Bacon, Looney’s desire to posit Edward de Vere as the real author comes two hundred years after his death. Looney’s motives can only be ascribed to personal ambition and not some noble quest to champion the poor unaccredited Earl of Oxford.
Looney also demonstrates a Freudian insecurity in his attempts at self-validation. He begins his book with a short 'dedication' which is actually a list of people whom he has convinced, complete with their inscrutable academic accreditation, against an active admission that many might not be. He posits the “complete acceptance of my solution” by his “brother-in-law, Mr. M. Gompertz, B.A., Head Master of the County High School, Leystone” and to one “Mr. W. T. Thorn” (Looney 5). He lists the publisher, a “Mr. Cecil Palmer” as having “adopted its conclusions with enthusiasm” (Looney 5-6). Looney then states that he has “not the slightest doubt” as to the success of his plans to prove Oxford the author. His voice, however, reads as not much but self-assurance against an insecurity about which he notes it will be “another matter” to “present the case as to establish an equally strong conviction in the minds of others” (Looney 17).
Looney’s new candidate represents a recurrence of elitist thinking so evident with Delia Bacon. The entire argument is imbued with a strong desire for Shakespeare to be more than a mere peasant. The only reasonable basis for this desire is that it is uncomfortable that a low-bred candidate be the locus of worship and genius. Unfortunately, as with all the arguments founded on this discomfort, Looney's book relies heavily on conjecture and evidence of what is not there as 'proof'. The lack of evidence regarding Shakespeare is tantamount to the lacking evidence for all Elizabethan writers, with the exception of Ben Jonson who was a man “much concerned with his historical reputation and took efforts to make his memory known” (Trosman 487). What is left, then, are the fantastical desires to make a normal life of reasonable explanation legendary to align with the worship his texts have projected on to the man.
In Roland Barthes' text The Death of the Author, he refers to the misconception of the “Author-God” (Leitch 1468). Theories posited by Barthes' and Foucault were amongst several in the critical discourse of the twentieth century that threatened to marginalize the importance of the author. The fanatical backlash was inevitable. When generations had come to worship the idea of the author Shakespeare, the threat to his divine position called for nothing shy of open revolt. Ironically, by taking part in this very discourse to try and discredit Shakespeare, the anti-Stratfordians achieved two results against the death of the author. First, they demonstrated the very problem Barthes was observing, that the importance of the author is not central. Anti-Stratfordians were simply displacing authorship into another candidate. Secondly, that by questioning Shakespeare, they ensured his continued relevance within the new critical framework. So much for the death of the author.
The name of the author thus works to confuse the texts with the person. Roland Barthes notes that “The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire's work is the failure of Baudelaire the man. [...] The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it” (Leitch 1466). Foucault expands the discourse and states that “a number of texts were attached to a single name [which] implies that relationships of homogeneity, filiation, reciprocal explanation, authentification, or of common utilization were established amongst them. Finally, the author's name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse” (Leitch 1627). Al Pacino, in his movie, Looking for Richard, demonstrates this use of the name of the author. He states, “It has always been a dream of mine to share with others how I feel about Shakespeare” (Pacino 11:39). However, there is nothing in the movie to even hint that Pacino has any knowledge of the man named Shakespeare at all. The movie focuses on the thrilling process surrounding the decoding of Shakespeare’s text Richard III in anticipation of staging it. Clearly, Pacino uses the word Shakespeare to refer to the works ascribed to that man. The name ‘Shakespeare’ is therefore an idea which ostensibly refers to a man but effectively refers to a specific canon of texts in a specific era in a specific cultural setting ascribed to the genius of one man.
Looney conveniently overlooks the impossibility of his own claim and the agency given to the idea of authorship. The name Shakespeare, whether accurate or not, cannot simply be erased from a worshipped canon of texts. Foucault quite accurately hypothesizes that “[d]iscourse that possesses an author's name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten” (Leitch 1627). Even in the event that Looney's 'proof' were conclusive to the point of being undisputable, it would inevitably result in the name of Oxford being transferred into the idea of Shakespeare and not the name of Shakespeare being universally replaced with that of Oxford. Prince became the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince as would Edward de Vere become the Earl formerly known as Shakespeare. Looney attempts to address this problem with modesty. “[I]t will be impossible ever totally to dissociate from the work and personality of the great one, the figure and name of his helper” (Trosman 486). His modesty, however, is only overshadowed by the obvious fact that his 'definitive volume' has done little to prove anything, but has successfully injected his own name into the history of the Shakespeare myth for all time.
One need not even read his exhaustively detailed academic arguments on Oxford's behalf to discover hidden motive in his publication. In his introduction he self-aggrandizes and fantasizes about a legendary contribution to the literary canon of critical works. “The transference of honour of writing the immortal Shakespeare dramas from one man to another, if definitely effected, becomes not merely a national or contemporary event, but a world event of permanent importance, destined to leave a mark as enduring as human literature and the human race itself” (Looney 13). At some point, Looney seems to have confused the act of ascribing Shakespeare's work to another man with the discovery of fire. The remainder of the introduction reads like the false-modest musings of a man who has volunteered to take on the most momentous self-sacrificing literary excursion that has ever been undertaken. He proposes that the “greater responsibility had to be incurred” (Looney 14) and that if he can see the “truth prevail”, he “shall be content” (Looney 6). Looney uses epic poetic language such as “judgment” and “imperil” as he fully envisions himself being sacrificed to the critical gods and that “he is bound to implicate himself so deeply as to stake publicly his reputation for sane and sober judgment, and thus to imperil the credit of his opinion on every other subject” (Looney 13). At least he got that right.
Thomas Looney and Delia Bacon are both easy targets out of which critics could make 'straw-men'. The coincidence of her actual insanity with his unfortunate name is rhetorically and emphatically repeated within the discourse. Each of the major candidates for alternate authorship, Bacon and Oxford, now had singular identifiable champions in Delia Bacon and Looney respectively. The ensuing criticism focused on weaknesses in their arguments, rather than original document proof and the question of Shakespeare's authorship moved even farther away from the source. The expected result is that the discourse would lose momentum, which is exactly what it did until Freud's loyalty to Looney's thesis caused a disruption in psychoanalytical theory that brought the question back to the discursive foreground.
In the newspaper article entitled, We’re Not a Lot of Mad People, Hurst quotes Freud as echoing both Looney and Bacon. “The man of Stratford seems to have nothing at all to justify his claim, whereas Oxford has almost everything” (Hurst). Trosman quotes Freud in his 1930 Goethe Prize acceptance speech. Freud reports doubts that “the untutored son of a provincial citizen of Stratford” was the true author “or whether it was, rather, the nobly-born and highly cultivated, passionately wayward, to some extent declasse aristocrat, Edward de Vere, hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England” (Trosman 477). Three things are immediately obvious in this statement. First, that Freud had doubts. Second, that he considered de Vere as the only other acceptable candidate. Third, and most important, is the language which demonstrates a pre-occupation with Shakespeare's low-breeding and Edward de Vere's aristocracy, with particular mention of their father's stations in both cases. Freud becomes his own example of the oedipal complex. He is pre-occupied with the fathers of long-dead icons to the point of personal anxiety which he appears to need to resolve conclusively.
Freud is a problematic Pandora’s Box. He had partly used the life of William Shakespeare, specifically the death of his father and of his son Hamnet, to explain oedipal phenomena in Hamlet. In An Autobiographical Study, Trosman quotes Freud as having written “Shakespeare wrote Hamlet very soon after his father's death” (Trosman 478). Hamlet is the pivotal textual example that Freud employs in his Oedipal Theory. “The issue of the Shakespearean authorship controversy appears to be a long-standing unresolved preoccupation with doubts concerning rightful paternity” (Trosman 495). The 'fathership' of the texts, so to speak, was a locus of anxiety for Freud. “He responded to the poor historical documentation as a challenge to his psychological skill” (Trosman 479). As such, he seems guilty of a sort of oedipal bardolatry. Now, having convinced himself of another candidate, he needed to make the life of de Vere fit into his oedipal model, or abandon his life's work as evidentially flawed. Trosman reports that Freud transferred biographical evidence from de Vere's life into the model to replace the Shakespeare example. In An Outline of Psychoanalysis, “he related Hamlet's Oedipus complex to the fact that the Earl of Oxford's father died when the presumed author was a boy and shortly thereafter his mother whom he repudiated remarried” (Trosman 479). Although this biographical coincidence is more similar to the story in the text of Hamlet, it is actually a less convincing argument for the Oedipal Theory as Freud presents it in the Oedipus Complex section of his The Interpretation of Dreams (Leitch 922-3). The coincidence of greater relevance, however, is Freud's actions of fatherly pre-occupation, especially projected into the lives of long-dead icons, and his transference of their biographies into his theory.
Looney uses Shakespeare's texts as a point of departure and in them makes efforts to provide evidence that what can be read as necessary biographical knowledge on the part of the author coincides most specifically with the life of Edward de Vere. The interpretation of text as a sort of psychological mystery to be solved was a method that must have appealed to Sigmund Freud (Trosman 493). It coincides with the methodology of psychoanalysis that Freud writes about in many of his texts, and its use of interpretation of text is highly reminiscent of the theory in The Interpretation of Dreams. “Jones observes of Freud that two of the great mysteries that had 'always perplexed him to distraction' were telepathy & the Shakespeare authorship controversy” (Lester 4 – footnotes). “Freud did not settle on any one claimant until 1923, when he was sixty-seven years old” (Trosman 475). Lester claims that “Mr. Looney's intervention therefore came as a welcome relief to him” (Lester 5 - column 2). In Looney's book, Freud had found a relief to his own longstanding oedipal anxiety, and a published practitioner of his methodology to soothe his ego further.
I found Lester's interpretation to be a little too convenient. But in his vein of thinking, I discovered that Freud's language sounds much like the rhetoric of a person trying to convince themselves of a convenient solution to an irksome problem, which they know to be otherwise untrue. In his Goethe prize speech, he demonstrates an awkward uncertainty. He uses the phrase “whether it was in fact” and “or whether it was rather” (Trosman 477). He follows both of these phrases with descriptions of the candidates aimed at questioning the one and propagating for the other. He includes the phrase “It is undeniably painful to all of us” in an attempt to gain complicity. Trosman quotes a 1930 letter to a German translator regarding the sonnets in which Freud says, “I am indeed almost convinced that none but this aristocrat was our Shakespeare” (Trosman 478). The phrase “almost convinced” resounds with uncertainty. In the 1935 second edition of An Autobiographical Study, he adds a footnote that repeats the phrase “almost convinced” of his belief in Edward de Vere. It all sounds like a man seeking to gain external support to alleviate the anxiety of his own doubt.
There is a clear pattern of anxiety amongst the anti-Stratfordians pertaining to evidence that is not there. Early in his book, Smith presents a one-page second chapter that insists “William Shakespeare is indeed a negative history” followed by three sentences about Shakespeare. Each begins with, “We do not know...” (Smith 2). Specifically Smith targets a suspicious lack of knowledge pertaining to Shakespeare’s birth, death, education, marriage, and dates of textual production. Delia Bacon and Thomas Looney are both guilty of academic anxiety based on what we do not know and what feels as though it is missing. They chose to reveal what they deemed ‘proof of identity’ based on their own interpretations of Shakespeare’s texts. Freud needed to relieve an oedipal anxiety that stemmed from a lack of information regarding the father-author-god.
Lester argues that “Realism” is the movement that has caused the question to remain. “There was as a consequence a quest - which was a prominent motive in the Shakespearean author-as-source debate - to re-write history & re-read literature in realist, & essentially 'consumerist' terms” (Lester 1 - column 1). “[W]ith it was enshrined a particular conception of 'the author' & his properties” (Lester 1 - column 1). Lester suggests that in examining the texts, many academics had a “need to apply to a concrete situation before their meaning can be securely determined” (Lester 2 - column 2). The concrete situation could be found in “the author whose genius lies behind [the text]” (Lester 2 - column 2). “References to knowledge or events or places or people [are] picked out from throughout the text & then the chosen candidate is shown to have known about or been at these things, known or been with these people” (Lester 2 – column 2). “This reductive criticism & detective quest that services it needs not only a source, the fixed author or fixity of authors, but a reason for the text” (Lester 4 - column 2). The texts are then a mere source for the detectives to construct a more plausible picture of the author as source” (Lester 3 - column 1). A pattern emerges in which, it appears, that many academic writers attempt to pin down a definitive identity for Shakespeare from which their academic integrity and authority on the subject is impervious to future re-evaluation. “Everything is locked into a safe place - the mystique of authorship, the consumerisation of readership, and language itself” (Lester 4 - column 2). Once the author is stable, the meaning of the texts could be “securely determined” and presented to students with confidence.
Lester also suggests that academics were aware that the “discourse of the Shakespeare authorship debate [was] regularly fortified by the multiplication of possible authorship candidates” (Lester 1 - column 1). He states that new candidates, enigmas, and interpretations were regularly emerging. The inability to locate the authorship definitively had a twofold effect on the academic community. Not only did it fortify the academic insecurity caused by a lack of authoritative Shakespearian evidence, it also ensured the ongoing production of academic text around a self-perpetuating question. “From the Freudian perspective it may be postulated that the literary detectives - most frustrated authors themselves - are trying to [...] atone for orthodoxy's literary parricide” (Lester 2 - column 2). Never in history has a single author garnered the passionate debate and published comment that Shakespeare has. Never before have texts been revered so wholly as to merit the debate.
Lester introduces bardolatry as both a source and a result of the ongoing debate. He sees amongst academics an “unquestioning, unproblematical worship of the accredited 'source' that has [...] helped provoke the excesses of the self-styled literary detectives” (Lester 1 - column 2). Lester draws a specific bridge between worshipping an author and the enigma that it inevitably creates. “We have what little we know of the supposed 'great author' - a gnawing & irritating enigma” (Lester 1 - column 2). In order to fill the void and satisfy the itching of the enigma, the “literary detectives [...] marshal all the biographic evidence for their particular candidate to the exclusion of all evidence to the contrary” (Lester 2 - column 1). Lester reiterates what he deems to be the fundamental rationale for the authorship debate. “The author cannot be the Stratford man because he could not have been literate enough” (Lester 2 - column 1). “The author of Shakespeare's works could not just be a country yokel or litigious bumkin or a ham actor from Stratford; he must, as it were, justify his consummate literary genius by his royalty or nobility” (Lester 2 - column 1 & 2). The words of academic writers are replete with comments regarding the desire to mould Shakespeare into the myth we would like him to be. Cyril Connoly states that “[e]verything we know about William Shakespeare contributes little or nothing to the image we should like to form of Europe's greatest writer” (McManaway 1). For anti-stratfordians, the perceived disparity between the Stratford man and the literary legend creates a problem already seen in the elitism of Bacon, Looney and Freud.
When one is seeking to establish a pattern of idolatry towards a literary 'god' it is difficult to overlook very obvious similarities with deeply entrenched religious myths. The similarities between the myth and enigma of Shakespeare and those of Jesus are too strong to ignore. Whereas Jesus was the character in the book associated with him (i.e. the New Testament), Shakespeare was the author of his texts. Nevertheless, those whom I accuse of bardolatry have been nothing if not guilty of attempting to locate Shakespeare in his texts. Looney himself states “The personality which seems to run through the pages of the drama I felt altogether out of relationship with what was taught of the reputed author and the ascertained facts of his career” (Looney 14). Finding the messiah within the text, or failing to, relegates the interpreter to one of two camps. With Jesus you either have faith or you are an atheist. Likewise, with Shakespeare you are either a 'Stratfordian' or an 'anti-Stratfordian', the heresy of those in the latter category becomes a matter of risible folly to those in the former and/or vice versa. Strong atheists find it necessary to disprove Jesus and have 'identified' a disparity between the man of Nazareth who was a mere carpenter and a deity who was crucified and resurrected. Similarly, anti-Stratfordians are loyal to an idea that the likely uneducated lower-class man from Stratford could not possibly be responsible for the literary genius that manifests itself in the Shakespearean texts. Ironically, atheists seem to take the route of requiring verifiable evidence before they will have faith whereas the Stratfordians need it to lose theirs. Nevertheless, I daresay that to atheists who feel it necessary to disprove Jesus as a messiah, Jesus has become as important to them as to those who believe. As such, they are guilty of a certain type of Jesus-worship themselves. Similarly, the identity of Shakespeare has become a locus of anxiety to both Stratfordians and anti-Stratfordians alike and so I categorize them together under the same worship umbrella known as bardolatry.
Historically, bardolatry has been evident. Delia Bacon tipped her hand by using biblical, or at least religious, language. The magnitude of Looney’s research in order to locate the life of Oxford within the canon of Shakespeare's work must have been immense. Looney openly calls the texts “the immortal Shakespeare dramas” (Looney 13). Like Delia Bacon, he deems his exposure to Shakespeare’s texts to empower him to authoritatively question their provenance. “This continued familiarity with the contents of one play induced a peculiar sense of intimacy with the mind and disposition of its author and his outlook upon life” (Looney 13). Another obvious bardolator who has not questioned Shakespeare’s authorship is George Bernard Shaw. For a man who claimed to have despised Shakespeare, Shaw wrote exhaustively about the man and his works, almost to the exclusion of all other playwrights. Shaw proudly made personal comparisons to Shakespeare and staged a festival called Shak vs. Shav. The unsaid worship inherent in such exclusionary attention is textbook psychoanalytical repressed hero worship.
Presently, bardolatry is as pervasive as ever. In his documentary, Looking for Richard, filmed in the early 1990’s, Pacino makes several excursions to the streets to ask the ‘average’ person about their exposure to ‘Shakespeare’. He laments at one point that “no-one does!” (I.e. knows Shakespeare). The worship of the idea appears to have lost momentum in popular culture as ‘Shakespeare’ became more and more academically and artistically stigmatized. It appears that a fear of Shakespeare becoming less revered manifests itself in apparent bardolators. They seem to believe that if the texts are deemed too inaccessible for worship, refocusing on the man, via controversial questioning, will suffice. The texts and the man are confused under the idea of authorship posed by Foucault. Therefore, using either one as a focus of popular worship meets the needs of the bardolator.
Derek Jacobi makes use of the Shakespeare Authorship Question in an attempt to rejuvenate bardolatry for personal gain, and perhaps out of the fear of Shakespeare losing popularity. Sir Derek Jacobi has appeared in many film and stage productions of Shakespeare’s plays. His career is typically Shakespearean and he has associations with such famous Shakespeareans as Ian McKellan and Kenneth Branagh. His professional career was built on Shakespeare’s back so to speak. Recently Jacobi “unveiled a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” as to the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Again, preoccupied with evidence that is not there, the “document says that there are no records that any William Shakespeare received payment or secured patronage for a writing” (Thespians). Rylance unveiled with Jacobi and is the former artistic director of the new Globe theatre in London. The article quotes him as saying, “You get more of a rise if you say Shakespeare didn’t write the work than if you say there isn’t a God” (Hurst). The word unveiled suggests intent for a public audience. Whether the play will be remounted remains to be seen, but the article intimates that “the attackers [who are] saying the dramatist was Somebody Else entirely or a Front Man for a group of writers, [are] all trying to make a living in the frantic world of Elizabethan theatre” (Hurst). Jacobi’s public unveiling suspiciously followed “the final matinee of “I am Shakespeare,” a play investigating the bard’s identity” (Thespians). Whether or not Jacobi cashes in on a remounting of the production remains to be seen. Either way, his ‘coming out’ on the authorship question was clearly part of the overall marketing for his production: an attempt to capitalize on the authorship question and the bardolatrous emotional reactions it creates.
Trosman refers to bardolatry as the “unqualified supremacy attached to the work” (Trosman 490). While Shakespeare's works are arguably superior, ultimately that is a matter of critical opinion and cultural perspective. But “Looney's reference to the dramatic work as the best in the English language is typical for the anti-Stratfordian point of view” (Trosman 490). Having been indoctrinated to revere his works, like atheists who find Jesus important, there falls out a need to reconcile the god with his miracles. Ultimately, all doubters appear guilty of this bardolatry in a Freudian style. The religious belief in the supremacy of the work is transferred to the author-god as its source and reconciliation must be made with the miracle of the text and the man-who-would-be-god who created them. The truth, however, is that the author-god responsible for their worship is only a projection from the minds of those who have become psychologically dependent on the legendary status ascribed to the man and a fanatical loyalty to the supremacy of the texts. However, the incredible quality of Shakespeare’s works is only miraculous to those who have chosen to worship. To the factual historian, they are acceptably attached to a mere man from Stratford.
What is not absolutely certain is that the man named William Shakespeare from Stratford wrote the plays. What is nearly conclusive is that the man who wrote the plays was named William Shakespeare. What is highly likely is that they are the same man. Arguments against this likelihood are all based on what is not known and what can be interpreted as biographical evidence within the texts. The little evidence we do have strongly favours the one man named Shakespeare and any position to the contrary is a losing argument. “William Leahy, […] is shortly to risk academic scorn, if not suicide, by convening the first-ever graduate course on the subject at London’s Brunel University” (Hurst). In surveying the most influential doubters of Shakespeare’s authorship, three distinct patterns emerge: personal ambition, academic insecurity, and the leviathan phenomenon of bardolatry in which stratfordians and anti-stratfordians alike have come to worship the text and choose to continue the debate so that Shakespeare never becomes stationary; to proliferate a state of perpetual controversy about which to continue the Shakespearian discourse.
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