SHAKSPER 2000: Re: Henry V (and Branagh)

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 01/11/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0057  Tuesday, 11 January 2000.

[1]     From:   Judith Matthews Craig <je-mc@apex2000.net>
        Date:   Monday, 10 Jan 2000 22:44:09 -0600
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0046 Re: Henry V (and Branagh)

[2]     From:   Clifford Stetner <cstetner@liu.edu>
        Date:   Tuesday, 11 Jan 2000 01:18:03 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0037 Re: Henry V (and Branagh)


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Judith Matthews Craig <je-mc@apex2000.net>
Date:           Monday, 10 Jan 2000 22:44:09 -0600
Subject: 11.0046 Re: Henry V (and Branagh)
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0046 Re: Henry V (and Branagh)

Dear Tom Reedy,

I was merely stating that god-fearing or religious people can exist in a
capitalist society.  Not all nobles are god-fearing nor are all
god-fearing people nobility.  I just dislike the notion that a
mercantile or capitalist society that 16th century England was certainly
becoming was altogether godless as Marxist critics imply.  Marxism is
godless, but having grown up in a very capitalist and lawless society-an
oil boom and bust town in West Texas-I can vouch that religious people
can exist and even flourish in such a Protestant, capitalist pig kind of
society if there are churches present.

Judy Craig

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Clifford Stetner <cstetner@liu.edu>
Date:           Tuesday, 11 Jan 2000 01:18:03 -0500
Subject: 11.0037 Re: Henry V (and Branagh)
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0037 Re: Henry V (and Branagh)

Judy Craig says:

>Shakespeare might be coming from another angle than that implied in
>"Shakespeare in Love."

First: any offense I pretend to take in matters of religion is purely
ironic. Second: sorry; I've been meaning to get to Blockbuster, but I
am, as yet, unfamiliar with this work.

>Money as a substitute for nobility in a capitalistic society implies the
>Marxist view that no religious or god-fearing people exist in a
>capitalist society.

Not at all.  It suggests that the forces in power over the state in a
capitalist society are not primarily motivated by their fear of God and
that the possibility of social mobility that capitalism creates is not
proportional to the individual's piety, but to his wealth.

Seán Lawrence suggests that:

>...the Renaissance was trying to
>look beyond the rather superficial question of who happened to have a
>lot of dough to something which at least they considered to be more
>fundamental.  As in, yes, so-and-so has a lot of money, but he doesn't
>have any breeding, or manners, or education, or whatever.
>
>While this might strike our modern sensibilities as rather classist, it
>seems at least preferable to our habit of heaping mindless attention on
>even the most undeserving plutocrat.  Apart from actual cash or family
>name, anyone can obtain most of the other criteria.  In any case, not
>every depth model or appeal beyond material conditions is a
>mystification of those same conditions.

I believe that class distinctions were much easier to recognize. An
apprentice in the gentle trade given a wad of ducats and a ruffled
collar would only rarely be able to come off as an aristo.  A good
humanist education and Oxford English would, I guess, usually be readily
visible.  A possible exception would, of course, be an actor who has
played many noble roles (male and female).  We see this in Autolycus who
is given the prince's clothes and promptly plays the courtier to
advantage among the shepherds.  Becoming a nobleman may therefore have
involved no more than being able to pass yourself off as one, to hobnob
with them without standing out.  The more literary references you knew,
the better, no doubt, and, no doubt, the more cash you had, the more
convincing you could be.

Philip Sidney seems a good example of a commoner who took a very
dramatic approach to rising along the great chain of being (or the
"ladder of love" as he would have platonically euphemized).  However,
the old order had not yet given way sufficiently, and he became a martyr
to the cause of true noblesse for other poets to canonize.

I have no doubt that England was full of extremely devout Christians
during its Reformation.  But I believe that they were often used as
political pawns by a monarchy struggling for survival from internal and
external threats.  I further believe that before the term "propaganda"
came into use, there was no distinction between what we consider
literary and mythological and what we consider polemical and political.
Elizabethan poets were as aware as anyone that the triumph of the
Augustan empire had depended as much on the mythology of Vergil as on
military power, and they proferred their services to their monarch in a
similar capacity.  The reward for a good poet was a livery, for a great
poet, a coat of arms (even if you had to pay cash), and for the
greatest, the laurel, an honor for which Ben Jonson seems to have been
striving.

It's not, therefore, that cash=nobility.  But, in a Platonic world,
constructed according to an essentialist class hierarchy, social
mobility really meant moving closer to God.  At the same time that the
thousand year monopoly on God's grace of the Roman Church was being
challenged by the true English Church, the monopoly on the chain of
being of the aristocracy was being challenged by the true noblesse of
the innately noble individual. If capitalist wealth was clearly to
become the primary weapon of this challenge (well into the future, as
someone as astute as Shakespeare must have recognized), then (regardless
of a few scoundrels that were able to get wealthy) was it not at least
in part evidence of the world evolving towards a more platonic ideal
golden age (no pun intended)?

If so, then the pursuit of money could have been argued to be the
noblest of pursuits, as long as it was done in the right way.  A
distinction could be made between a Shylock type capitalist and an
Antonio type, or between an Edgar and an Edmund, but is there any doubt
that, despite the Christian volorization of poverty, for Bassanio,
Portia's wealth is not meant as a sign of God's disfavor?

Clifford


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