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Social Anxieties In Shakespeares Imagined City Spaces
A critical consideration of the inclusion and manipulation of city spaces in Shakespeare`s work, whether real or imagined, and their impact upon the construction of social order
Date : 11/10/2017
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Uploaded by : Sarah
Uploaded on : 11/10/2017
Subject : English
Social
Anxieties in Shakespeare s Imagined City SpacesAdam Hansen notes that it
is due to the factors and conditions of London at the time of his writing that
Shakespeare s plays were made possible (2007:822). And yet, of all
Shakespeare s plays, only the ten English histories are set in London, with
nine of these incorporating other locations (Estill,2014). This is intriguing, immediately implying that
Shakespeare s repeated choice of overseas cities for his dramatic settings
ground his plays in the municipality of the imagined it is unlikely that his
audience, or he himself, were familiar with these places. The city space in
Shakespeare, then, is one of projection, often for London s own contemporary
social issues to be explored on stage. The
Merchant of Venice and Measure for
Measure are both plays set in imagined versions of Italian cities, which
offer such explorations specifically, of the social anxieties surrounding
emerging pecuniary systems in early modern London, and the morality thereof.Jean
E. Howard briefly alludes to this in her claim that in Merchant, Shylock is a symbol of certain anxieties in a
cosmopolitan centre for trade (2007:42).
These anxieties are palpable in his declaration to Bassino: I will buy
with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I
will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you (1.3.34-36).[1] Shylock engages with
Bassanio superficially and in terms of business, but not in activities leading
to deeper connections. This is an act of refusal by Shylock to identify with Bassino s
Christian community. Declining non-kosher food ( pork which your prophet the
Nazarite conjured the devil into (1.3.32-33)) and Christian prayer is an
attempt to preserve his Jewish culture. The shared activities which Shylock
consents to buying, selling, talking, and walking are all public ones it
is the private, domestic activities of eating and praying which Shylock
protects as part of his own cultural practice. Hansen notes that early modern Londoners
had a reputation for xenophobia, but argues that reactions to immigrants were
in fact varied (2007:833). The authenticity of early modern London is therefore
represented more accurately by Shakespeare in the fact that his Venice is
deliberately inauthentic there is no ghetto in the play, so the reality of
the spatial separation between Jews and other Venetians is omitted (Hansen,
2007:837). By writing Shylock as living and working among the Christians, Shakespeare
complicates, rather than segregates, his place in Venetian society given his
livelihood, Shylock s place as a moneylender in the emerging pecuniary system
is public, but he is anxious of the effect which this may have on his domestic
life, and keenly separates the two. Arguably, this is form of xenophobia on
Shylock s own part.A
pertinent example comes in act 2:Shylock:
What are there masques? Hear you me Jessica,Lock up
my doors, and when you hear the drumAnd
the vile squealing of the wry-neck d fifeClamber
not you up to the casements thenNor
thrust your head into the public streetTo
gaze on Christian fools with varnish d facesBut
stop my house s ears, I mean my casements,Let
not the sound of shallow fopp ry enterMy
sober house. By Jacob s staff I swearI
have no mind of feasting forth to-night. (2.5.28-39)Jordi Coral states that
Shakespeare characterises the usurer as a householder who is under constant
pressure to be vigilant (2015:289). Certainly, Shylock does his utmost to
protect his household in this scene, with a heavy focus on the aural rather
than visual. Shylock doesn t want his daughter to gaze on Christian fools as
the carnival passes their house, but his main concern is what she might hear
rather than what she might see, with five aural references ( hear , hear ,
squealing , ears , sound ). This is due to a conflation of listening and understanding,
beginning with hear you me Jessica . Shylock is asking her to listen, understand
what he s saying, and act accordingly. He may then be fearful of the same
happening with the noise made by Christian masques in the street below, the
sounds of a foreign culture infiltrating the Jewish household. It is noteworthy
that Shakespeare uses Jewish culture, as well as stereotypes of Jews as
anti-Christian, to make Shylock seem unreasonable and unfamiliar to his
contemporary audience I swear by Jacob s staff , Christian fools . Pity is
elicited for Jessica, who identifies as Christian and wishes to marry a
Christian ( I shall end this strife,/ Become a Christian and thy loving wife!
(2.3.20-21)). However Shylock s separation of himself from Christianity (1.3) in
order to protect his own culture makes his behaviour somewhat understandable
having suffered at the hands of Christians with repeated anti-Semitic acts
( You called me misbeliever / And spet upon my Jewish gabardine
(1.3.109-110)), he can t imagine his daughter being treated well by them either,
and attempts to protect both her and his entire household by removing them from
the public display of Venice s Christian culture.A
semantically playful retort from Jessica follows Shylock s demands, heard only
by the audience:Jessica: Farewell, and if my
fortune be not crost,I have a father, and you a
daughter, lost. (2.5.52-56.)Shylock is seeking to
preserve his monetary fortune, but is instead about to lose it both in the
gems which Jessica takes, and in Jessica herself (if we consider her in the
same terms that Shylock does, equated to his property in the instruction to
guard both herself and the house). Shakespeare s pecuniary vocabulary must be
deliberate here the notion of a fortune as inheritance, particularly when
Jessica speaks of my fortune .
Jessica sees herself as inheriting a loss but in the other sense of fortune
as luck, this is a loss which she desires. Losing a father is also the
condition for inheriting monetary fortune. These lines highlight social
anxieties over emerging pecuniary systems, and what could be lost in what Coral
terms an increasingly commercialised society (2015:286). Shakespeare seems to
suggest that the pursuit and guarding of personal wealth could separate families.The
pull between his public role and his domestic beliefs, then, complicates
Shylock s character, and the question of xenophobia itself. Shylock and Antonio
are both written as displaying unreasonable, xenophobic behaviour Shylock in attempted
control of Jessica, Antonio as anti-Semitic with Shakespeare not seeming to
reach a conclusion as to who should change. John W. Draper argues that the
conflict between Shylock and Antonio is not so much a matter of religion but of
mercantile ideals (1935:38). This is supported by one of Shylock s asides: I
hate him for he is a Christian:/ But more, for that in low simplicity/ He lends
out money gratis (1.3.40-42). The matters of religion and mercantile ideas may
be given different weight in Draper s eyes, but they are irrefutably
intertwined throughout the play. The xenophobic anxieties which Shakespeare
writes into Merchant are those of
contemporary London, where, Ian Archer claims, 20 per cent of adults living in
the city were born elsewhere (1999:44). By entwining this with anxieties over
emerging pecuniary systems, Shakespeare capitalises on real social anxieties in
London and projects them onto his imagined city stage space in a new light,
ready for his audience s imaginative consideration. This technique is also
palpable in Measure for Measure,
where Shakespeare explores morality alongside anxieties of pecuniary systems. He
focusses on sex work to unpick the moral implications of free currency. Coral contends
that in early modern England, a major effect of the
increasingly commercialised society was new systems and instruments of credit,
with credit itself becoming a contractual obligation between strangers rather
than a bond between two parties who knew and trusted each other he states
that this caused considerable moral confusion (2015:286). Coral s summation of the anxieties of emerging
pecuniary systems are easily paralleled to age old anxieties around sex work
between strangers, morally ambiguous. Reading Measure with this in mind reveals the domestic becoming public in
Shakespeare s Vienna, the usually domestic act of sex has become a recognised currency,
from sex workers earning money in the brothels, to Isobel s coercion into sex as
payment for her brother s legal pardon. Part of Vienna s economy is dependent
on sex work, underpinning such dialogue as Pompey and Mistress Overdone s:Pompey: All houses in the suburbs
of Vienna must be plucked down.Overdone: And what shall become of
those in the city?Pompey: They shall stand for seed:
they had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them.Overdone: But shall all our houses
of resort in the suburbs be pulled down?Pompey: To the ground, mistress. (1.2.92-104)The
geography of this dialogue is worth consideration. Shakespeare has located
Vienna s brothels and nunneries in its suburbs in London, Peter J. Smith notes,
theatres existed, both geographically and ideologically, in a liminal zone, on
the margins of the city they were outside the jurisdiction of the Lord
Mayor, on the South Bank, close to the brothels (2000:516). The nunneries in
England had been demolished by the time of Shakespeare s writing, due to
perceived corruption of the Catholic Church interestingly, Angelo issues the
order to demolish the nunneries for the same reason he views them as institutions
which are corrupting the city they encompass. It is significant, then, that
when Pompey speaks of the houses , Overdone
instantly recognises them as officially being outside the city yet, her
question of those in the city reveals that the attempt to locate brothels
outside the city boundary hasn t actually worked. There is therefore an issue around
whether the suburban brothels should be closed at all. Angelo s philosophy
suggests that changing the space of the city will change the people within it.
So then, is a city formed of its people or its spaces? An attempt to eradicate
brothels is an attempt to eradicate sex workers, a remarkably violent act
towards this group of Vienna s inhabitants. Pompey assures Overdone that
though you change your place, you need not change your trade (1.2.107-8),
recognising that demand for sex work will continue whether the brothels stand
or not. Here, Pompey identifies that the will of the people, rather than the
will of the state, dictates the continuation of sex work in the city, with the
will of the state seemingly divided on the matter too the city brothels shall
stand for seed , with the law remaining blind where it benefits the lawmakers
(the wise burgher who ensured their protection). The city is the people, not
the space. Semantically, standing
for seed references a method of farming where grain is left in the field
rather than harvested, in order to self-seed and provide the future crop
(Gibbons,2003:88). The burgher s decision to allow brothels within the city
to remain ensures their ultimate continuation, despite Antonio s attempts to
eradicate them. The only people which the law impacts, then, are the workers in
the suburban brothels, who lose their livelihood not as part of a greater moral
design, but as part of an unthinking, ineffective political move.The social anxieties
which Shakespeare explores in his imagined city spaces complicate rather than
dictate their morality prostitution is revealed to be integral to the
functioning of a city, and its eradication to be harmful to the citizens
xenophobia is made to seem understandable, becoming a reason for empathy with a
character. And both of these complications circle back to money. It is the
removal of currency in Measure, and
the gaining of it in Merchant which damages the cities
social relations. Measure and Merchant seem to be criticisms of
pecuniary systems which do not reach conclusions. This is worthy of
consideration in light of Howard s postulation what the theatre was popular in
part because it was not a moralizing institution but an opportunistic one,
making fictions from the arenas of life (2007:22). So then, Shakespeare s lack
of conclusion around the morality of xenophobia and prostitution makes sense
he himself was writing opportunistically, not morally. The production of these
plays which criticise pecuniary systems is, ironically, one which ultimately
intended to make a profit. AbbreviationsMeasure William
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure,
eds. Richard Proudfoot et al, The Arden
Shakespeare Complete Works, (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).Merchant William
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice,
eds. Richard Proudfoot et al, The Arden
Shakespeare Complete Works, (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).Overdone Mistress
OverdoneBibliographyArcher, Ian,
Shakespeare s London in A Companion to
Shakespeare, ed. by Davis Scott Kastan (Blackwell: Oxford, 1999), pp.43-56.Coral, Jordi, Anxious
householders: theft and anti-usury discourse in Shakespeare`s Venetian plays , The Seventeenth Century, 30 (2015),
285-300.Estill, Laura, List of settings for Shakespeare`s plays,
in Folgerpedia (Folger Shakespeare Library, 2014)
[accessed 31/01/2017].Gibbons,
Brian ed., Measure for Measure
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Hansen, Adam,
Shakespeare and the City , Blackwell
Literature Compass, 4 (2007), 820-850.Howard, Jean E, Theater of a City: The Places of London
Comedy, 1598-1642 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).Shakespeare,
William, The Arden Shakespeare Complete
Works, Richard Proudfoot et al eds., (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).Smith,
Peter J., Tales of the City: The Comedies of Ben Johnson and Thomas Middleton
in A Companion to English Renaissance
Literature and Culture, ed. by Michael
Hattaway (Oxford: Backwell Publishers Ltd., 2000), pp.513-524.[1]
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