Shakespeare probed the bounds of artistic freedom, noted authority says

Shakespeare probed the bounds of artistic freedom, noted authority says

BY LIN FISH
Special to the Rice News

Drawing upon art, architecture, poetry and theater of the Renaissance for illustration, Stephen Greenblatt analyzed Shakespeare’s sense of artistic freedom and ideals of beauty in the first two talks in this year’s Campbell Lecture Series, presented last week by the Rice University School of Humanities.

	STEPHEN GREENBLATT

A former president of the Modern Language Association, Greenblatt is the Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and an editor and author of several books, including his New York Times best-seller “Will in the World.” He is a specialist in Shakespeare, 16th- and 17th-century English literature and literary theory.

Greenblatt posited that in Shakespeare’s work, ”autonomy, beauty and hatred are linked and can be glimpsed together in an instant, as if illuminated by lightning.” Citing examples from plays and poetry, Greenblatt demonstrated Shakespeare’s genius in exploring, then overturning, conventional views.

”Although the word ‘autonomy’ first appeared seven years after Shakespeare’s death, he might have recognized its origins in theories of princely power and the ruler’s limited right to make law,” Greenblatt said. He detailed numerous cases in which ”the law dictates much of the plot, and then allows the prince to ignore or overturn the law with a single sentence.”

Similarly, for Shakespeare, ”a work of art lives after its own laws, as a dream lives after its own laws,” Greenblatt said. Nevertheless, Shakespeare expressed reservations about artistic freedom.

Time and again, Shakespeare embraced the norms of his day, and then subverted them. In response to a question following the lecture, Greenblatt said Shakespeare ”shows a rare and astonishing genius to be able to go fantastically far beyond what he might, if said in his own voice. His work has an eerie quality of insulting authority without getting into trouble.”

The second lecture explored the contrast of Renaissance ideals of beauty — white, blonde, flawless, unemotional — with many of Shakespeare’s characters, and his growing desire to fashion them as blemished individuals, not as commonly recognized characters.

Greenblatt described a ”compulsion to erase birthmarks in paintings” during the Renaissance to comply with the day’s concept of ideal beauty: faultless white skin. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I as the Virgin Queen illustrated his point; her gown and jewels are exquisitely detailed, yet her face is so smooth and pristine as to be nearly featureless.

Yet, Shakespeare’s most intense celebrations of beauty violate the conventions of his time. Greenblatt said that in the sonnets to a dark lady, ”beauty survives the paradox” in Shakespeare’s praise of the dark lady. Shakespeare acknowledges (Sonnet 141) that his love transcends what he sees and what he knows is commonly accepted as beauty:

But my five wits nor my five senses can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.

In contrast to his contemporaries, Shakespeare sees individual beauty even in the flaws. ”Shakespeare routinely celebrates conventional beauty, then everything that makes his work come alive happens elsewhere,” Greenblatt said. ”He is not repudiating the official way of doing things, but is going off in another direction.”

Greenblatt’s closing lecture explored how Shakespeare’s views of individualized beauty and of absolute freedom ”repeatedly fuse in implacable, murderous hatred” in many of Shakespeare’s plays.

The Campbell Lectures Series was made possible by a $1 million gift from alumnus T.C. Campbell ’34, whose daughter, Sarah Campbell, and her family members attended this year. The late Campbell’s dream was ”to draw attention to the study of literature and for Rice to be known as a place on the literary map,” explained Gary Wihl, dean of the School of Humanities, in opening the series.

Wihl listed three features that set the Campbell Lecture Series apart from other universities’ programs: a speaker presenting original material; a topic of sufficient breadth for three lectures of interest to the academic community and the public; and publication of each lecture in book form. Author Ha Jin’s 2006 presentation, “The Writer as Migrant,” is available through the University of Chicago Press, and Wihl announced that the series presented by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky in 2005 will be published next spring.