Ways Of Reading The Tempest Essay Research — страница 2

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Strachey’s report too disturbing to allow it into print (Greenblatt 148). Shakespeare was also a shareholder in a joint-stock company, the King’s Men, as well as its principal playwright and sometime actor (Greenblatt 148). Neither joint-stock company was a direct agent of the crown and thus could not rely on royal financial support in times of need. Committed for their survival to attracting investment capital and turning a profit, both companies depended on their ability to market stories that would excite, interest, and attract supporters (Greenblatt 148). In his article, Greenblatt proposes that the relation between the play and its alleged source is a relation between joint-stock companies. He does, however, emphasise that these affiliations do not amount to a direct

transfer of properties. What takes place is “a system of mimetic rather than contractual exchange” (Greenblatt 149). Greenblatt advocates that the conjunction of Strachey’s unpublished letter and Shakespeare’s play signals an institutional circulation of culturally significant narratives. This circulation has as its central concern the public management of anxiety. In his article, Greenblatt demonstrates how the Bermuda narrative is made negotiable, turned into a currency that may be transferred from one institutional context to another (Greenblatt 155). Greenblatt argues that this process allows elements from Strachey’s letter to be transformed and recombined with materials drawn from other writers about the New World. One such final product is William Shakespeare’s

The Tempest. As a significant point of reference, Schneider mentions Ruth Kelso’s bibliography of Renaissance books pertaining to the Doctrine of the English Gentleman (1929) and The Doctrine for the Lady (1956). Schneider emphasises the link between Shakespeare’s play and Professor Kelso’s findings, summarized in her second book: “the bulk of all that these treatises contain is made up of commonplaces, culled mostly from the ancients, whose names besprinkle the pages of all writers …. There is plenty of evidence that these same commonplaces were not of mere academic interest, for the letters, speeches and fiction of the time are full of the same ideas and rules for conduct” (Schneider 130). Schneider points out that since both rhetoric and history were given strong

moral emphasis, it may be said that the universities were to a great extent schools of virtue. Furthermore, Professor Kelso’s list of those ancients most commonly cited in conduct books consists soley of Plato, Aristotle,Cicero and Seneca (Schneider 131). Schneider holds that since only scholars during the Renaissance period commonly read Greek, Cicero and Seneca provided the greatest influence in terms of the reading public (Schneider 131). According to Schneider, Cicero’s De Officiis and Seneca’s Essays and Epistles comprised the principal conduits of classical moral thought in Shakespeare’s time. Schneider adds to his argument that of Ann Jennalie Cook’s, featured in her book The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare’s London 1576-1642. Cook’s evidence suggests

that the best educated and most well-read segment of society composed the main body of Shakespeare’s audience. Schneider advocates that the field of discourse mentioned above, would have been a major means of communication between Shakespeare and a audience which was “steeped in classical morality” (Schneider 132). This platform provides Schneider with the ammunition for his assertion that Stoicism, like feminist discourse nowadays, acted as the prevalent discourse during the Renaissance period and consequently dominated the way other discourses were understood. Schneider’s assertions raise as many questions as they seems to answer – the pitfall of any theoretical discourse perhaps. In Schneider’s quest for a linear progression of moral ideas and values, the argument

he constructs rests on another. It assumes two things. First, that Shakespeare’s audience predominantly consisted of the best educated and most well-read segment of society. Second, that the audience who went to watch The Tempest, or any other play for that matter, must have been versed or at least familiar with the principles advocated by Cicero and Seneca. If this is not the case, then Schneider’s argument appears to have no grounding whatsoever. What occurs is a break in Schneider’s linear, causal chain. One might argue that such values were inherent in Renaissance society, and when performed were easily identifiable. Such a reply, however, seems to break away from the fixed, causal relationship that Schneider wishes to impose and appears to enter the realm of