but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too
This evening my aunt came by to take me out to dinner, in celebration of my recently having totally pwned my orals, and she brought with her a bunch of used books she'd bought for me as well. One of them is a 1951 edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, and some of the comments in the introduction are just hilariously...well, dated, I guess. For instance...
On Queen Elizabeth:
The most dominant, versatile, and beneficent figure of the reign was of Queen Elizabeth was the queen herself. Her character and her brains, her tastes and opinions, produced greater results than any other single force. On one side of her nature she was a masculine woman possessed of some of the finest of masculine qualities. Her judgment was sound, her policy simple and firm, and her courage strong.
But what about her feminine side?
The queen, being unmarried, made a cult of her virginity. Her vanity and her ridiculous affectation of youth and beauty, her greed of flattery and adulation, caused her to adopt favorite after favorite, often for no better reason than his charm of person and manner. But we needn't fret too much: Possibly her love affairs were silly rather than wicked.
There's also this wonderfully Toryish paragraph on Shakespeare's politics:
Shakespeare was on the side of the royal government; and, although he does not often expound the doctrines of Tudor absolutism, they are everywhere implicit in his treatment of society. They are in his delineations of kings and, particularly, in his descriptions of mobs like those in 2 Henry VI, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus. The reasons why this is not more apparent to the casual reader are that Shakespeare apparently was not anxious to expound this or any doctrine except dramatically, and that there is in Shakespeare always a quality of breadth and fairness. His common men have in them a dash of humanity and nobility, as his kings are made to have a kinship with common men; and both kings and common men have intelligible motives, as do even his worst villains. In his pictures of society there is always a coloring of elemental justice. But Shakespeare certainly entertained no views except those described above, and it is absurd to hunt in his works for nineteenth-century theories of social justice or to blame him for not expressing views possible only to later generations.
Shall I count how many things I find wrong with that? The whole thing is like that -- there are all sorts of "Elizabethans believed X" statements, and a lot of comments to the effect that "This may look nasty to modern eyes, but in Shakespeare's day it would have been understandable." It's very silly and really kind of irritating, but on the other hand the rather obvious efforts to make Shakespeare a nice establishment-oriented author instead of a threatening and subversive one is sort of perversely charming.
I do sort of wonder how the most recent Shakespeare editions will look to people in about fifty years, though. I mean, every generation does reconstruct Shakespeare in its own image, after all. On the other hand, I also wonder which views it is that this editor thinks were only accessible to modern people...
One of the other books she brought me, btw, is a 1913 edition of retellings of stories from Chaucer for young readers. Probably young female readers particularly, given that the three Canterbury Tales that get adapted in it are the Knight's, the Man of Law's, and the Clerk's. There's also a 1936 edition of the works of Shakespeare with illustrations by Rockwell Kent (including a fairly nifty one of Prince Hal, one of someone who may be Falstaff and who seems to have a pig on his helmet, a rather hideous Richard II, and a seriously disturbing picture of Henry V and a somewhat wilted-looking Katherine).
On Queen Elizabeth:
The most dominant, versatile, and beneficent figure of the reign was of Queen Elizabeth was the queen herself. Her character and her brains, her tastes and opinions, produced greater results than any other single force. On one side of her nature she was a masculine woman possessed of some of the finest of masculine qualities. Her judgment was sound, her policy simple and firm, and her courage strong.
But what about her feminine side?
The queen, being unmarried, made a cult of her virginity. Her vanity and her ridiculous affectation of youth and beauty, her greed of flattery and adulation, caused her to adopt favorite after favorite, often for no better reason than his charm of person and manner. But we needn't fret too much: Possibly her love affairs were silly rather than wicked.
There's also this wonderfully Toryish paragraph on Shakespeare's politics:
Shakespeare was on the side of the royal government; and, although he does not often expound the doctrines of Tudor absolutism, they are everywhere implicit in his treatment of society. They are in his delineations of kings and, particularly, in his descriptions of mobs like those in 2 Henry VI, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus. The reasons why this is not more apparent to the casual reader are that Shakespeare apparently was not anxious to expound this or any doctrine except dramatically, and that there is in Shakespeare always a quality of breadth and fairness. His common men have in them a dash of humanity and nobility, as his kings are made to have a kinship with common men; and both kings and common men have intelligible motives, as do even his worst villains. In his pictures of society there is always a coloring of elemental justice. But Shakespeare certainly entertained no views except those described above, and it is absurd to hunt in his works for nineteenth-century theories of social justice or to blame him for not expressing views possible only to later generations.
Shall I count how many things I find wrong with that? The whole thing is like that -- there are all sorts of "Elizabethans believed X" statements, and a lot of comments to the effect that "This may look nasty to modern eyes, but in Shakespeare's day it would have been understandable." It's very silly and really kind of irritating, but on the other hand the rather obvious efforts to make Shakespeare a nice establishment-oriented author instead of a threatening and subversive one is sort of perversely charming.
I do sort of wonder how the most recent Shakespeare editions will look to people in about fifty years, though. I mean, every generation does reconstruct Shakespeare in its own image, after all. On the other hand, I also wonder which views it is that this editor thinks were only accessible to modern people...
One of the other books she brought me, btw, is a 1913 edition of retellings of stories from Chaucer for young readers. Probably young female readers particularly, given that the three Canterbury Tales that get adapted in it are the Knight's, the Man of Law's, and the Clerk's. There's also a 1936 edition of the works of Shakespeare with illustrations by Rockwell Kent (including a fairly nifty one of Prince Hal, one of someone who may be Falstaff and who seems to have a pig on his helmet, a rather hideous Richard II, and a seriously disturbing picture of Henry V and a somewhat wilted-looking Katherine).