Intertexts

Shakespeare’s Ghost and Felicia Hemans’s The Vespers of Palermo: Nineteenth-Century Readings of the Page and Feminist Meanings for the Stage Maijean D. Purinton T E X A S T E C H U N I V E R S I T Y A c t I During the early nineteenth century, there was arestoration of Shakespeare onthepageintheformofreadinganthologiesandcriticalreviewsaswellas on the stage in productions that, like the printed Shakespeare, attempted to restore the “essential” Shakespeare that had been subsumed by eighteenthcenturyadaptationsandeditorialpractices (Taylor115-33).'ForRomantic writers,Shakespearewastheidealpoet,unshackledbyNeoclassicalconven¬ tionsthattheysoughttoreject.^AccordingtheMichaelDobson,Shake¬ spearehadalreadybeenelevatedtoBritain’s“nationalpoet,”aconstruction oftheRestorationandeighteenthcenturythatRomanticwritersinherited. ThepromotionofShakespeareassymbolofnationalidentitywasespecialy evidentinthe1769StratfordJubileeorchestratedbyDavidGarrick(Do ,185).By1759,Shakespearehadbeenrewritteninthetenorofnation¬ alism,imperialism,anddomesticmorality.Shakespeareofthe1780swas seen as the father of the British Constitution and the father of British litera¬ ture (Marsden, Te j c f 9 8 - 11 5 ; W a t s o n 7 4 ) . ^ Shakespeare was firmly established as idol in the Romantic-period imag ination;hewasaubiquitouspresenceinBritishculturethatsimplytoe Britishwastoinherithim(Dobson214).4InJaneAusten’sMmsfieMrarn (1814), Henry Crawford proclaims that he has had avolume of Shakespeare in his hand since he was fifteen years old, and adds; “But Shakespe^e one getsacquaintedwithwithoutknowinghow.ItisapartofanEnghsmans constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct’ (3.3.2 . Romantic drama. s o n One locus of Shakespearean “thoughts and beauties AlanRichardsondemonstratesthat“echoesandallusionstoSh^espeare proliferateRomanticdrama”(16),Romanticplaywrightsandtheirdramas have been discussed in the context and shadow of William Shakespeare, notablyLordByron,SamuelTaylorColeridge,RB.ShelleyandThomas LovellBeddoes.sShakespeareanplayswerestandardfareatRomanticthe¬ atres,withthegreatShakespeareanrolesperformedbySarahSiddonsand JohnPhilipKemble.*FromtheRomanticperiod,wereceivesomeofthe w a s 1 3 5 Intertexts, Vol. 8, No. 22004 ©Texas Tech University Press 1 3 6 I N T E R T E X T S most influential Shakespearean criticism, classics by William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Coleridge/ Julie Carlson has argued that Shakespeare served as the “master mind” for Romantic male poets. He became national property because he was the private property of privileged men. According to Carlson, the closeting of Shakespeare, the anti-theatricality position that claimed Shakespeare was better on the page than on the stage, actually preserved the homosociality of Romantic-period men by effacing the power of women. In keeping with the Cartesian dichotomy of mind/body, writers like Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, and Coleridge insisted that the pleasure of Shakespeare resides in the text, what Lord Byron called “mental theatre,” amasculine-identified activity, not itsembodiment,afeminizationofShakespearebyenactmentintheplay¬ house. In other words, the Bard’s words are superior to woman’s body.* Shakespeare’spresencewasinfusedinthespiritofRomanticism,andthe NationalBardwasasignificantplayerinRomanticdrama,butthemale-spe¬ cificcriticaltraditionhasdistancedShakespearefromRomantic-periodcriti¬ cism and drama written by women and from the popularity of actresses play¬ ing Shakespearean roles, Sarah Siddons, Helen Faucit, and Ellen Terry, duringthenineteenthcentury.Ironically,conventionallygenderedprivate andpublicspaceswerereversedbymaleplaywrightsandcriticswhoclaim their own i n superiority through Shakespeare’s legacy. Lord Byron was especiallyjealousof “scribblingwomen”writers,andwhenhewassentacopyof eliciaHemans’spoemModernGreecein1817byhispublisherJohnMur- ^y, he angrily wrote to send no more verse by this “Mrs He-Woman.” espitetheseeffortstoseparatewomenwritersfromShakespeare’slegacy, theyfoundwaystogivehomagetotheBardandtorevisehislegacyfortheir u s e . A c t I I 1ethere has been considerable scholarly work during the last decade in recovenng and reviving women’s dramatic contributions during the early nineteenthcentury,Shakespeare’sdebtasadramatisttowomenRomantic pay^ghte has been neglected. It has been only during the last five years or efforts have engaged in the recovery of adistincdy “female criticismofShakespeare,andyetRomanticwomenwriterswereinvolvedin thepopulardisseminationofShakespeareandthereevaluationofhisplays forfeminist”readers.^AccordingtoYounglimHan,therewas“afemale touchinliteraryrecognitionoftheimportanceofreadingShakespeare’s text (47).Anumber of Romantic-period women wrote critical analyses of Shakespeare’s plays and characters: Elizabeth Giffith’s The Morality of Shake¬ speare’s Drama Illustrated (1775); Joanna Baillie’s “Introductory Dis¬ course”tothePlaysofthePassions(1798);ElizabethInchbald’sTheBritish (1806-1809); Sarah Siddons’s, “Memoranda: Remarks on the Char¬ acter of Lady Mcbeth” (1815);Anna Jameson’s Characteristics of Women, PURINTON: Shakespeare’s Ghost and Felicia Hemans’s The Vespers of Palermo 1 3 7 Moral, Poetical, and Historical (1832). Asurprising number of Romanticperiod women published editions of Shakespeare’s plays or revised versions for specific audiences: Inchbald’s The British Theatre (1806-1809); Henriet¬ ta Bowdler’s The Family Shakespeare (1807); Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespear : Designed for the Use ofToung Persons (1807); Elizabeth Macauley’s Tales of the Drama: Founded on the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Massinger, Shirley,Rowe,Murphy,Lillo,andMoore,andonthecomediesofSteele,Farquhar , Cumberland, Bickerstaff Goldsmity, and Mrs. Cowley...