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Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality: Unfinished Business in Cultural
Materialism
By Alan Sinfield
Routledge
£18.99
Dateline: 19th August, 2006
Alan Sinfield, one of the founding fathers of cultural materialism
and co-author of the influential Political Shakespeare, can always
be relied upon to enlighten, entertain and sometimes exasperate his
readers (particularly those of a deconstructionist bent). In this new
addition to Routledge's Accents on Shakespeare series he makes
a convincing case for the value of "reading against the grain"
of a play in order to produce "not a more elaborate realisation
of Shakespeare's texts but a critical perspective upon their ideological
assumptions and, indeed, our own". The result of looking at works
such as The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It from
a gay or feminist viewpoint is indeed surprising, and not always to
Shakespeare's credit as a fount of wisdom and humanity.
Although most of the book is devoted to Shakespeare's plays and sonnets,
Sinfield does not treat the Bard as an Ossa surrounded by warts. He
points out that all the early modern dramatists drew on the shared inheritance
of classical literature - which legitimised at least some kinds of homosexual
behaviour - and were fascinated by gender roles, cross-dressing and
same-sex relationships. Marlowe's frankness in depicting Edward II's
affair with Gaveston still astonishes first-time readers, and Edward's
close encounter with a red-hot poker need not be interpreted as punishment
fitting the crime; the respectably straight "good Duke Humphrey"
of Shakespeare's Henry VI was rumoured to have been murdered
by this agonising and humiliating method. And of course it is almost
impossible for 21st century audiences not to see Antonio and Bassanio
as lovers (platonic or otherwise).
Sinfield reminds us that Shakespeare's contemporaries regarded gay
relationships, if conducted discreetly, as being less reprehensible
than illicit heterosexual affairs. At least they did not result in the
birth of illegitimate children or, even worse, disrupt the inheritance
of land and titles by leaving cuckoos in the marital nest. He argues
that there is no reason why Antonio should not have continued with his
relationship with Bassanio after the latter's marriage to Portia, and
that his namesake in Twelfth Night could not improbably have
found a place near Sebastian in Olivia's household (leaving her to find
solace with Viola, who after all was the person she originally fell
in love with)…
The erotic appeal of boy actors dressed as girls dressed as boys was
not lost on Puritans who fulminated against the playhouses. Twelfth
Night was tame in comparison with other gender-bending plays of
the period such as Lyly's Gallathea, Chapman's May Day
and Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Love's Cure.
Page boys, the mortal counterparts of Jove's Ganymede, seem to have
been regarded as potential playthings for master and mistress alike,
and the word "boy" was used as an insult carrying overtones
of effeminacy (most notably by Aufidius to Coriolanus). Sinfield even
speculates on the age of the Indian boy quarrelled over by Titania and
Oberon - apparently at least one production has presented him as being
old enough to be of sexual interest to them both!
Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality is, at 204 pages, comparatively
brief, yet it covers a wide range of topics and is consistently readable.
Sinfield provocatively debunks the Golden Age pastoral of As You
Like It - in his view the exiled aristocrats are merely a government
in exile waiting to return to their rigidly hierarchical society. He
uses Shakespeare and Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen to shed
light on the sexual politics of A Midsummer Night's Dream, examines
the male rivalry of Troilus and Cressida and suggests that Shakespeare's
reworking of the source material of Measure For Measure is supportive
of the Duke's method of controlling Vienna - by undercover surveillance,
entrapment, suborning of witnesses, torture and capital punishment.
Those familiar with Sinfield's previous work will need no encouragement
to read the book, and newcomers will find it an excellent introduction.
J D Atkinson
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