Darlene McCoy
Jody Greene
Lit 101
8 March 2011
Shakespeare's Staggering Influence on Society
In Peter Stallybrass' essay, "Editing as Cultural Formation: The Sexing of Shakespeare's Sonnets," he claims that the making of genders and sexualities are materially embedded in the historical production and reproduction of texts. To reach this conclusion, he states that the post-Enlightenment concept of "literature" was a primary site of the formation of sexualities. He then uses the words of Walter Thomson, to comment that, Shakespeare, in the 19th century, was "the supreme literary ornament of our race." Next, Stallybrass employs the work of Edmond Malone to state that the Sonnets are central to understanding the inner workings of Shakespeare's life. The text of the Sonnets implies that Shakespeare may have committed the act of sodomy or have been a pederast. The implications of Shakespeare's character brought about the mass editorial work of 18th century editors, for they were not in accordance with their literary champion's association with pederasty and sodomy. And finally, the editorial work of 18th century editors, since it was mass-distributed to the public through academia, and therefore culturally relevant, brought about two different narratives of sexuality in soceity: heterosexual sex is normal and accepted, while homosexual sex is deviant from the norm and unacceptable. Thus, the making of genders and sexualities are materially embedded in the historical production and reproduction of texts.
After the introduction to his piece, Stallybrass historizes the production and reproduction of Shakespeare's Sonnets. He begins with John Benson, who published his version of the Sonnets in 1640. His version - an editorial mutilation of the Sonnets, in which he reordered them, gave some individual titles, combined others into larger poems, changed many a "he" to a "she," and added poems of his own to - prompted Edmond Malone to translate Shakespeare's work in order to preserve the character that wrote them. Many a scholar replied hysterically to Malone's work: the first Stallybrass mentions is John Boswell. Boswell, appalled at Shakespeare's implied character in Malone's translation, defends him by stating that:
(1) In the Renaissance male-male friendship was expressed through the rhetoric of amorous love. (2) Shakespeare didn't love the young man anyway, because he was his patron, and the poems are therefore written in pursuit of patronage. (3) The poems are not really about love or friendship, because sonnets are conventional. They are, then, less about a young man or a dark lady than about Petrarch, Ronsard, Sidney, and the like (a boy's club, but not that kind of boy's club). (4) Malone was wrong, and the sonnets are, after all, a miscellany. They "had neither the poet himself nor any individual in view; but were merely the effusions of his fancy, written upon various topicks for the amusements of a private circle."
Boswell's defense of the Sonnets set the precedent to the ideas presented in further defenses of Shakespeare's character: many followed the same thought process. Stallybrass uses Boswell's words to demonstrate the logical flaws in the arguments of the men who shaped Shakespeare, so that the reader can clearly see that Shakespeare has evolved from the man he once was to aman defined and debated over by countless numbers of editors.
Another scholar who replied to Malone's work was the critic George Steevens. His work criticized Malone's translation by pointing out that specifically, the phrase "man-mistress," while used by Shakespeare in the form of praise, has been used before in describing disgust, and may have a different meaning than the one Malone thought to have been implied by Shakespeare's text. More or less - Malone may have been wrong in his translation due to words having multiple meanings. Malone, in defense of his work, responded to Steeven's criticisms, saying that in Shakespeare's time, an address to a man as delicate as one found in the Sonnets was customary to the times, and did not imply "criminal" acts or affections. He continues, saying that to judge Shakespeare's words by modern times and customs is as absurd as judging his plays by the rules of Aristoltle. Malone's answer did not satisfy Steevens, who, in his next edition of Shakespeare's work, did not include the Sonnets - not because Malone failed to translate them correctly, but because his work was disgraced by the "objects of their culture." In the next century, Steevens' work received the same treatment that Malone's did - many a scholar took it upon himself to correct its "flaws."
With each new edition of his work published, Shakespeare became more and more heterosexualized, yet, the blatant, unreasonable, heterosexualizing of his character only pointed to his possible homosexuality. These hysteric and illogical attempts to cover up Shakespeare's sexuality imply that homosexuality is not acceptable. When a text is mass-produced and distributed through academia, as the Sonnets were, since Shakespeare was considered one of the greats of the literary canon, its ideas and implications assimilate themselves into public thought and society. Therefore, literature aided in the creation of genders and sexualities.
Stallybrass states, through his essay, that literature can aid in the formation of culture. To expand on his idea, he could define his idea of culture, and then explain why culture is relevant to human life. Then, he could ask more specific questions, such as: "How would the world differ if Shakespeare's character implied by Malone's work was accepted, as it was, and not altered to an extreme degree? Would society have been more accepting of different sexualities if those who edited Shakespeare were? And if society was more accepting, how would historical events associated with homosexuality have differed? How many lives could have been saved during the AIDs epidemic? And would society ever have felt the need to put Oscar Wilde on trial for his work?" and then give his answers for an even more expansive discussion of his topic.
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