A Fine, Frenzied Figure: The place of the poet in Shakespeare’s play-world

2002. Submitted for MA at Royal Holloway (University of London) – awarded a distinction.   This dissertation is a study of the poet-figures in Shakespeare’s plays. It takes as a starting point the tension between critical views of Shakespeare-as-poet and Shakespeare-as-dramatist, exploring the theoretical implications of the dichotomy between page and stage. After this introduction, the dissertation analyses the ways in which Shakespeare’s dramatic representations of poets can provide insight into the nature, function, value and limitations of poetry. There is, firstly, a discussion of how and why Shakespeare depicts poets being persecuted (the most obvious case is Cinna the poet in Julius Caesar; this section also contains an assessment of the political undertones in other Roman plays, such as Coriolanus). Secondly – with reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labours Lost and Anthony and Cleopatra among others – there is an explication of the apparently binary opposition between, on the one hand, Platonic accusations that poetry entails falsity, and on the other hand, Sidney’s defence of poetry as a form of edification that offers access to truth. Thirdly, there is a section on the age-old association between poets and love (this takes into account some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, as well as Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It). The final section explores the less salubrious aspects of the poetic enterprise as demonstrated on the Shakespearean stage: the flattery and greed of the poet in Timon of Athens, the forked tongues of Paroles and Pandarus in All’s Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida respectively, and even the megalomania of Prospero in The Tempest. Finally (focusing on the “ancient” poetic figure of Gower, who functions as chorus in Pericles), the argument returns to the differing configurations of authorship/authority manifested in writing for performance on a stage and writing for publication in a book – including questions of both ‘morality’ and ‘originality’.

 

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