A.ANACHRONISM AS THE UNIVERSAL FATE OF LITERATURE
Investigating the topic of anachronism in literature requires that we take into account two defining contexts. The first context, which could be referred to as the authorial moment, looks back at the historical conditions in which a text was written: literature is addressed as the product of material and cultural contingencies. However, the meaning of a literary work cannot be reduced exclusively to the historical moment of its production. Underlying the idea of literature is a constantly shifting present that gestures towards another crucial literary moment: that of ‘reading’. This second context corresponds to the critical or interpretive moment. The present chapter suggests that, in order to make sense of what has been called ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’, both authorial and interpretive moments need to be addressed—although more emphasis is put on the latter, as will soon be made clear. The thesis’s preoccupation with literature as an essentially interpretive process springs from the sense that a text ‘exists’ through the cultural conditions in which it is received and distributed. Accordingly, this chapter
1 Peter Brook, ‘Shakespeare on Three Screens’, quoted in Roger Manvell, Shakespeare and the Film
is not so much concerned with text (e.g. ‘Shakespeare’s works’) as with con-text, namely the web of invisible threads through which a text is woven into existence at a particular time. In this sense, it can be said that textuality has a temporality of its own, which always implicitly refers to a ‘present’, but every time a different one—for there are as many presents as there are readings or theatrical representations. The différance that springs from this endless division of the present within itself is a crucial aspect of literature, explored in this chapter. Thus, the notion of ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’ is not viewed in terms of discrete, disconnected instances but rather as evidence of the intrinsic disjointedness of literature itself. In many ways, the starting point here is the sense that it is not possible to think about literary anachronisms without first recognising anachronism as the universal fate of literature. As soon as we start thinking about its implications, ‘anachronism ceases to be a local and occasional phenomenon; it becomes a universal fate,’ Thomas Greene suggests.2
The genre labels that have been used extensively to classify Shakespeare’s plays are artificial and often misleading—e. g. Hamlet as ‘tragedy’, Henry V as ‘history play’,
etc. Thematically, the plays themselves can be said to be concerned with an
irremediable overlapping of genres; a good example would be Polonius’ pompous distinction, in Hamlet, between ‘tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastorical-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical [and] tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’ (2.2.379-381). Such systematic labelling can only distract us from the fact that all Shakespearean writing is, by essence, ‘historical’. The vast majority of the plays deal with a historical context (a ‘setting’) that is brought to a present, that of a reader or a playgoer at a given time. With their multi-layered temporality, Shakespeare’s plays address the disjointedness of the present in relation to ‘the dark backward and abysm of
2 Thomas McLernon Greene, ‘History and Anachronism’, The Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance
time’, thus problematising the sense of an irrecoverable gap between past and present (The Tempest, 1.2.50). On many occasions, they fashion themselves in terms of a deliberate operation of re-presentation of the past to a present readership or theatrical audience. For instance, the epic tirades of the Chorus in Henry V draw our attention to the self-conscious theatrical strategy that consists in ‘jumping o’er times’ and ‘Turning th’accomplishment of many years / Into an hour-glass’ (Prologue, 29-31). In Stages of
History, Phyllis Rackin suggests that a central feature of Shakespeare’s theatre is ‘the
consciousness of anachronistic distance from a lost historical past.’3 Such a recognition undermines the very possibility of investigating the so-called topic of ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’—for the good reason that everything in Shakespeare is anachronistic. The notion of theatre as a historiographic project is thwarted from the beginning, as the numerous metadramatic references in the Chorus of Henry V illustrate. For this very reason, it seems difficult—not to say impossible—to say anything at all about ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’ (which ones, anyway?). It seems more interesting and feasible, on the other hand, to historicise the concept of anachronism in relation to Shakespeare criticism. Where does the idea of ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’ originate from? What historical conditions allowed it to appear? At what point did ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘anachronism’ become associated in the criticism and in popular culture? What can be the meaning of such crystallisation? As should now be clear, the aim here is not to compile an exhaustive list of all the anachronisms that appear in Shakespeare’s plays— an impossible task as there will always be more anachronisms than can be counted. Rather, the chapter looks at what critics mean when they refer to ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’. The thesis’s interest in the moments in which a literary text is performed,
3 Phyllis Rackin, Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press, 1990), p. 88. Rackin’s study has been very helpful for the elaboration of this chapter. A thought-provoking ‘attempt to historicize Shakespeare’s historical practice,’ it explores Shakespearean historiography and its socio-cultural context (p. ix). See in particular the chapter on ‘Anachronism and Nostalgia’ (pp. 86-145).
received, interpreted and criticised leads to a thorough questioning of what every act of criticism reveals about the context of its production.
B.THE CONSTITUTIVE ANACHRONISM THAT HAUNTS LITERARY CRITICISM
From the seventeenth century, commentators have been eager to pick on temporal and geographical inconsistencies in Shakespeare’s plays. One of the most famous and earliest recorded examples is Ben Jonson’s reported comment that ‘Sheakspear in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered Shipwrack in Bohemia, wher there is no Sea neer by some 100 Miles.’4 For Jonson, this anachorism (a derivative of anachronism that signals a geographical misplacement) testifies to Shakespeare’s lack of a formal education.5 Following in the tracks of Jonson, many critics went on a systematic anachronism-hunt in Shakespeare’s plays. In most cases, this type of critical project is grounded in the implicit sense that under the anachronistic blemishes lies a pure, accurate historical drama: getting rid of the anachronisms should allow us to retrieve the primal, unspoilt historical scene. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century critics did not address the possibility that anachronisms could have been part of a deliberate strategy of dramatisation of the historical distance between past and present. However, the powerful sense of anachrony that pervades Shakespeare’s work invites us to reconsider the relation between literary texts and their historical sources.
4 ‘Conversations with Drummond’, Ben Jonson, edited by Charles Harold Herford and Percy Simpson
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 138. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare blithely contravenes the most elementary neoclassical rules: the play stages kingdoms hundreds of miles apart, features several subplots and spans over sixteen years. Although some of these ‘errors’ appear in Robert Greene’s Pandosto (the source for the play’s main plot), a common view now is that ‘Shakespeare added most of them, provocatively, to make the action even more implausible’ (The Winter’s Tale, edited by John Pitcher (London: Arden, 2010), p. 61).
5 Critics have pointed out many other instances of anachorism in Shakespeare’s plays. For instance, in the
first act of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine takes a sea-voyage from Verona to Milan, though both are inland cities.
What have been viewed as discrete anachronistic instances might actually be entry points into the uniformly anachronistic backdrop composed by Shakespeare’s meta-historical writing. The notion that, since the seventeenth century, anachronisms have been generally treated as an undermining feature of literary works is examined in the present chapter. Historical accuracy itself is often used as a critical barometer to assess the intrinsic quality of literary texts, and especially those dealing with official recorded history in one way or another. The intense scrutiny to which Shakespeare’s historiography has been subjected provides a very good example of the hegemonic status of the authorial moment in literary criticism—the notion of a gap between ‘historicist’ and ‘presentist’ approaches to textuality is deeply ingrained in critical practices. In some aspects, the present thesis springs from the conviction that such a gap is artificial and that it can be bridged through a rigorous critical historicisation, which implies that we carefully historicise every act of criticism. This particular methodology is rooted in the recognition that, no matter what we do, ‘our modernity is sure to betray us in ways we can neither predict nor control,’ as Jonas Barish warns in an essay investigating ‘Some Shakespearean Anachronisms’.6
Because the interpretive moment is a defining feature of literature, this requires that literary criticism itself should be scrutinised, challenged and historicised. Historicising critical practices entails that we acknowledge the extent to which these practices are conditioned by their own historical moment. Amongst other things, this means applying to historicist criticism the same methods that it uses to investigate so- called ‘primary’ texts—such distantiation precisely destabilises notions of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ textuality. A central motif in this thesis is the sense that Shakespearean
6 Jonas Barish, ‘Hats, Clocks and Doublets: Some Shakespearean Anachronisms’, Shakespeare’s
Universe: Renaissance Ideas and Conventions, edited by John Mucciolo (Hants: Scolar Press, 1996),
drama can be viewed as reflecting on the aesthetics of its own representation: this is notably illustrated in its compulsive staging of theatre in the act of representing itself. In a way, this introductory chapter obeys a similar metadramatic logic by questioning the processes through which literature is passed on, represented and interpreted through time. Investigating the theme of anachronism in relation to literature implies that we take into account the overarching anachronism that haunts every critical operation: towards the end of the twentieth century, critics have started to realise that ‘whether a given representational work contains an anachronism depends upon the kind of representation it is and this in turn depends upon how we interpret the work.’7 Recently, Jeremy Tambling has emphasised the idea that ‘reading creates anachronistic thinking’ and that ‘who defines what is anachronistic is crucial.’8 Along the same lines, Rackin notes that ‘all historical narratives are ideologically motivated’ and that ‘it is therefore necessary to historicize historical practice, to focus more on the temporal and social site on which a historical narrative is constructed than upon the historical facts it purports to represent.’9 Relying on the premise that literary criticism is shaped by the historical conditions in which it is produced, this chapter sets out to historicise the practice of critics—mainly those who talk about anachronism in relation to Shakespeare’s works, but not exclusively—since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Putting every act of literary criticism back in its cultural context, whenever possible, can help us grasp the theoretical implications of the concept of anachronism.
7 Annette and Jonathan Barnes, ‘Time Out of Joint: Some Reflections on Anachronism’, The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47(3) (1989), 253-61, p. 257.
8 Jeremy Tambling, On Anachronism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010),
pp. 13 and 1.
C. A ‘DISGRACE TO THE STAGE’: SHAKESPEARE’S ANACHRONISMS IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
In the eighteenth century, a fashionable mode of criticism consisted in scanning Shakespeare’s English history plays for anachronisms. The two Henry IV plays, in particular, proved extremely popular with regard to that practice. In the first part of the play, King Henry rebukes Prince Harry: ‘Thy place in Council thou hast rudely lost’ (3.2.32). In a footnote to his edition of 1 Henry IV, Edmund Malone observes that ‘the prince’s removal from the council in consequence of his striking the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne [took place] some years after the battle of Shrewsbury (1403).’ Thus, the event could not have taken place in the time span covered by the play, Malone is eager to point out: therefore, ‘our author is guilty of an anachronism.’10 This remark mirrors a preoccupation with historical chronology that prevailed in much eighteenth-century criticism. Critics were puzzled by the intrusion of Elizabethan commodities in plays supposedly set in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ‘But take my pistol if thou wilt,’ Falstaff advises Hal at the end of 1 Henry IV (5.3.51). Although firearms were invented in China in the twelfth century, they were not transmitted to Europe before the late Renaissance. 11 Commenting on this anachronism, Samuel Johnson notes that ‘Shakespeare never has any care to preserve the manners of the time’—‘pistols were not known in the age of Henry’ but ‘they were, in our author’s time, eminently used by the Scots,’ he points out in a footnote.12 These considerations by some of the most respected eighteenth-century Shakespeareans sum up the period’s generally hostile
10 The reference originally appears in Malone’s sixteen-volume edition of the works (1790) and is
reprinted in A New Variorum Edition of Henry the Fourth Part I, edited by Samuel Burdett Hemingway (Philadelphia and London: Joshua Ballinger Lippincott, 1936), p. 210n.
11 Joseph Needham, Science & Civilisation in China, volume 5 [Chemistry and Chemical Technology],
part 7 [‘Military Technology; The Gunpowder Epic’] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 1-3.
12 The reference originally appears in Samuel Johnson’s edition of ‘The Plays of William Shakespeare’
disposition towards what was viewed as temporal deviations: they are ‘faults’ perpetrated by a ‘violator of chronology,’ to use Johnson’s memorable expression.13 In his survey of anachronism in Shakespearean drama, the English antiquary Francis Douce also deplores the playwright’s ‘absurd violations of historical accuracy.’ These manifold ‘errors’, as he calls them, should be hunted down because they are ‘transgressions against the rules of chronology.’ Throughout the essay, they are variously referred to as ‘incongruities,’ ‘whimsicalities,’ ‘blemishes,’ ‘impostures on the public’ and even a ‘disgrace [to] the stage.’ As an example, Douce refers to Shakespeare’s dramatis personae lists, which he suggests almost always consist in ‘a medley of ancient and modern names that is often extremely ridiculous.’14 The French critic Paul Stapfer later suggested that Douce’s survey of Shakespearean anachronism was ‘written chiefly in the cavilling spirit of a mere pedant’ and that it ‘enters into none of those higher considerations that the subject admits of.’15 Both Douce and Stapfer provide a tentative, but of course by no means exhaustive, list of what they see as ‘Shakespeare’s anachronisms’. The fact is that such a list cannot ever be exhaustive and can only ever remain incomplete. This is the shopping list syndrome—a shopping list, its very possibility, depends on everything that is not on it but could potentially be on it. ‘By definition the list has no taxonomical closure,’ Derrida remarks in Positions.16 ‘Faced with the ghostliness of Derrida’s shopping list,’ Nicholas Royle observes, ‘we
13 Johnson uses the expression in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare’s plays. Reprinted in Critical
Theory Since Plato, edited by Hazard Adams (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 333.
14 Francis Douce, ‘On the Anachronisms and some other Incongruities of Shakspeare’, Illustrations of
Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: With Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on the Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris Dance (London:
Richard Taylor, 1807), pp. 281-96.
15 Paul Stapfer, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity: Greek and Latin Antiquity as Presented in
Shakespeare’s Plays, translated from the French by Emily Jane Carey (London: Kegan Paul, 1880),
p. 107.
16 Jacques Derrida, Positions, translated from the French by Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University
must reckon with the sense that there might be nothing to it, in it or on it (no “contents”) and/or that it might in fact be endless, an interminable shopping list.’17 For this very reason, any attempt at drawing up a comprehensive list of Shakespeare’s anachronisms is doomed to failure. Ultimately, Douce’s judgemental remarks on Shakespeare’s dramas illustrate the extent to which literary criticism is contingent on its own cultural moment.