How to Read Shakespeare? Or Anyone Else?
by
Andrew Lomas
My text is “Appendix B” of Joseph Pearce’s Through Shakespeare’s Eyes, titled “How to Read Shakespeare (or
Anyone Else)”. An unashamedly dogmatic, one may say Bellocian, title for an
unashamedly dogmatic, very Bellocian piece. And one which, as Pearce well
recognizes, is essential to his whole project of “the Christian”, or “the
Catholic”, Shakespeare.
In his biographical studies of the Bard,
Pearce believes he has proven that Shakespeare was a Catholic—and I will be
accepting this in the present essay, for the purposes of argument. Pearce has
also concluded that the biographical discovery of Shakespeare’s Catholicism
“forces us to reread the plays in an entirely new light”(Through 207); that our interpretation of the plays should be
guided, indeed determined, by Shakespeare’s Catholicism. But to get from the
premiss of a Shakespeare who was Catholic to this conclusion, requires a
particular theory of literary interpretation. A theory which sets out that the
meaning of literary texts in general is decided by the author’s biography. “How
to Read” is Pearce’s attempt to establish such an account. If this
interpretative theory fails, so too does Pearce’s whole “Catholic Shakespeare”
programme. I will argue that the interpretative theory does fail.
So how does Pearce attempt to demonstrate
his account of literary interpretation? He begins from what he sees as the
anarchy of contemporary literary studies. The “doyens of postmodernity”(206) do
what they like with the texts, reading them according to their own subjective
prejudices. Thus with regard to Shakespeare’s plays, “For the proponents of
‘queer theory’, he becomes conveniently homosexual, for secular
fundamentalists, he is a protosecularist before his time”(206-7).
Pearce concedes, nonetheless, that there is
a genuine difficulty with literary interpretation. He allows that, if one
merely reads Emily Bronte’s great novel, “it is tempting to see Wuthering Heights
The only solution for the confusion, Pearce
argues, is to find an authority outside the welter of biases and
interpretations, outside the text. We need a fixed point, an Archimedean point,
outside literary texts, from which the meaning of the texts can be decisively,
objectively determined. And the only fixed point is the perspective of the
author. “[W]e should subject our judgement, and that of the critics, to the
authorial authority of the person...through whom the work was given life. This
is the literary litmus test”(204).
It follows that we can be sure Wuthering Heights
Pearce’s case for his interpretative theory
is a form of reductio ad absurdum
argument. Our present situation is absurd; there is only one way out: therefore
we must embrace extra-textual authorial authority. Of course this argument is
unlikely to persuade the “doyens of postmodernity”, who are quite content with
the present confusion. But they would be far less happy if their views on
multiple meanings were adopted by the bureaucrat writing their paycheques, or
the pilot flying their plane. I don’t find it a fatal blow to Pearce’s case
that it can only carry weight with people seeking determinate meaning in their
literary texts, as in their lives. What I do want to subject to critical
examination is whether Pearce’s theory can actually deliver the escape from
poly-valency he promises.
The first thing to note about Pearce’s
account, is that it is really tough on classical literary studies. We know
nothing from extra-literary sources about Homer’s beliefs and the intentions
behind his works, for instance;indeed, the existence of “Homer the man” has
often been doubted. Authorial authority cannot possibly fix the meaning of Homer’s works. The same holds true, to a
greater extent, for all the Greek tragedians, but also, moving forward, for the
authors of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, all those “anon” ballads, etc.,
etc..
And a little further reflection shows that
lack of biographical material is not only a problem in faraway times. Of the
millions of books published today, and in all the centuries past, we have
substantial information about the writers only in a tiny percentage of cases.
Not just classical literature, then, but the overwhelming majority of all
literature, must be abandoned to postmodern multiplicity of interpretation.
The difficulties wrought by insufficient
biographical information spread even to the examples Pearce cites in support of
his theory, and indeed deepen here. As is well known, Wuthering Heights
Yet the disturbing fluctuations are not
limited to the legitimacy of interpretations: they go to the very meaning of
literary texts. Let us now turn to Shakespeare, and his biography. A.L.Rowse’s William Shakespeare is a fair
representation of the state of Shakespearean biography in the middle of the
twentieth century—as I think Pearce would concede, since he states that the
facts which establish his different portrait are recent discoveries. For Rowse,
Shakespeare was baptized, married, and buried in the Church of England, and
consequently was an “orthodox, conforming member”(47) of this church.
Interpreting the plays in the 1950s, then, according to the biographical
method, we must have found a C.of E. meaning. Indeed, for three hundred and
fifty years Shakespeare’s plays, construed in the light of available
biographical knowledge, must have had non-Catholic meanings. It is only with
the recent discoveries which prove Shakespeare a Catholic, as Pearce believes, that
the plays take on a Catholic meaning.
Is this Catholic meaning, though, really
any more final than all the other meanings? A crucial piece of evidence in
Pearce’s case for Shakespeare the Catholic is the playwright’s purchase of
Blackfriars Gatehouse, which had been a centre for recusant Catholic
activities, years before. But what if further searches of the records turn up
that Shakespeare also owned a house known to be a base for Puritan agitators?
What if, in some dusty Tudor attic, a poem by Shakespeare is found which
eulogizes Good Queen Bess? The meaning of the plays would again metamorphosize,
by Pearce’s theory.
Still for Pearce this is not yet the worst.
There is an even more fundamental objection to Pearcean interpretative theory,
and it again shows up most spectacularly with Shakespeare. But I want to begin
by identifying the issue in the most “water-tight” of Pearce’s exemplars.
J.R.R.Tolkien once affirmed that The Lord
of the Rings is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”: Pearce concludes
that Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work. Surely
this is just simple commonsense? I recall, however, reading a non-Catholic
critic who noted that the letter in which Tolkien made this avowal was written
to a Catholic priest, Father Murray, S.J., and that in the letter Tolkien seems
rather eager to please the priest, and perhaps to reassure him about the
orthodoxy of the magnum opus. In
hundreds of other letters to non-clerics, rather less stress is placed on religious significance. The conclusion was
drawn that the letter to Father Murray is less central and decisive than Pearce
would have it.
At issue here is not whether this
alternative interpretation is the correct interpretation, or even a plausible
interpretation, but that it is an
interpretation. And so is Pearce’s view. The appeal to authorial authority,
recall, was supposed to deliver us from conflicting interpretations. Yet now we
find that the author’s intention is itself the subject of conflicting
interpretations.
And so on to
Shakespearean biography. As we have seen, Rowse records that Shakespeare was
baptized, married and buried in the Church of England, and he takes these facts
to mean that Shakespeare belonged to the Church of England. Pearce does not, I
think, dispute the facts here, but he fits them into a framework where they
don’t have the same significance: that is, he interprets them differently. The
most distinguished biographer of Shakespeare in contemporary academia, Samuel
Schoenbaum, seems aware of most of the evidence Pearce assembles to prove
Shakespeare a Catholic, but gives the evidence a different interpretation. Thus
we arrive again at conflicting interpretations. According to Pearce’s
interpretative model, the only way to resolve conflicting readings of an
author’s intentions would be to find an authority outside the author’s
biography, which determines the meaning of that biography. But it is difficult
to see what this external authority could be—and even harder to see how it
could avoid being subject to different interpretations.
The appeal to
authorial authority is presented by Pearce as the only way to secure clear-cut
meaning from the ravages of postmodernity. But having drawn out the logical
implications of Pearce’s account, what we find instead is a phantasmagoria.
First classical literature, then the great majority of all literary texts, are
surrended to the multiplicity of interpretations. Even with the few texts which
remain, valid interpretations switch suddenly to invalid, meanings transform into
their opposites, and may always change again. Finally, the proliferation of
interpretations spreads to the author’s intentions: what had been advertised as
solid ground, the Archimedean point, turns out to be just more shifting sand.
Drawing out the implications of Pearce’s theory, we arrive at a situation just
the same as that produced by the theories of Roland Barthes and Jacques
Derrida. Yes, it pains me to say it, but the truth is unavoidable: beneath his
conservative rhetoric, Joseph Pearce is just another doyen of postmodernity.
Is there then
really no way out of the disarray of contemporary literary criticism? Must we
simply stop worrying and learn to love indeterminacy? I don’t believe so. But
since the matter is very complex, the limitations of an essay, as well as
severe limitations in my abilities, mean that I will only be able to gesture in
the direction of a solution. An excellent example of the type of interpretation
I am looking towards is provided by the reading of Milton
John Milton
would seem an ideal subject for Pearce[1]’s authorial authority model. There is
an immense amount of evidence, both from his life and non-fictional writings,
that Milton
This version of
Pearce agrees with Blake that “ ‘Milton wrote in
fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils &
Hell’”(371); he contends that “Milton Milton ’s
authorial intention is at odds with what Milton Milton
This
alternative theory of interpretation may be formulated by considering literary
criticism as a branch of scientific, experimental reasoning. The critic’s
interpretation is his hypothesis, the text constitutes the factual matter he is
attempting to explain. If in a critical “experiment”, a confrontation of interpretation and text, it is found that the
interpretation does not account for elements of the text, or accounts for them inadequately, the
interpretation must be modified, or abandoned. The validity of an
interpretation is dependent, wholly objectively, on the text: it must conform
to the text, as the ultimate authority.
In my opinion
such an interpretative methodology underlies a great deal of literary
criticism, even today. As a consequence, there is in literary studies a
significant convergence of interpretations—though rarely, it is true, to the
point of complete agreement. As for the remaining large areas of conflict,
which so trouble Pearce: there is as much disagreement in history, sociology,
philosophy, and always has been, before postmodern and even modern times. It
has not stopped practitioners of these disciplines from continuing to argue
their positions.
Moreover to a
substantial degree disagreement in these disciplines, and in literary
criticism, is due not to the perversity of one or other party, but to actual,
objective complexity of the subject matter. Despite Pearce’s castigation of
those who resist his “Christianizing” interpretations, I believe this is true
of most of his examples of disputed texts. In Wuthering Heights highly charged Romantic passion is front and
centre, while the “deeply held Christian faith” of Emily Bronte is not
conspicuously present. A critic attempting to demonstrate an underlying
Christian structure to the novel has to work against the apparent meaning.
There are
also real complexities present in the
disputes of Shakespearean criticism involving the “queer theorists” and secularists.
If a male author chooses to write, in the first person, passionate love sonnets
to a beautiful young man, critics can hardly be blamed if their thinking turns
in a certain direction—even though these interpretations may eventually turn
out to be mistaken, or exaggerated. Then with the battle over Shakespeare’s
proto or anti secularism, consider the example of King Lear. This play clearly contains Christian themes, such as
Lear learning compassion through suffering. But it also contains elements that
are far from obviously Christian—the murder of the innocent Cordelia, Lear’s
agonized death—elements which even the great Doctor Johnson considered
unChristian—Doctor Johnson who was neither a postmodernist, a secularist, nor a
fool. If a “Christianizing” critic wants to argue, say, that the tragic ending
of Lear echoes the Crucifixion, and
so reveals a more profound understanding of Christianity, he will have to point
to textual components that his theory can explain, while rival theories cannot.
Strident insistence that Shakespeare the man was a Catholic, and so “must have”
intended the Christian meaning, will not cut it. For this is not how to read
Shakespeare, or anyone else.
WORKS CITED
Pearce, Joseph. Literary
Giants, Literary Catholics. San
Francisco
Pearce, Joseph. Through
Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays. San Francisco
Rowse, A.L.. William Shakespeare:
A Biography. London
