Dissertation

Shakespeare's economic unconscious: Representations of emergent capitalism in Shakespeare's drama

Rich, Jennifer Andrea

2002

Overview

The present project examines representations of emergent capitalism in Shakespeare's drama. I argue that the profound restructuring of social relations of production brought about by the emergence of a world capitalist market made itself felt in key areas of social life and thought during this time. I contend that Shakespeare's plays bear the epistemological and semiotic marks of this profound social and economic reconfiguration, and that these indices may be read by attending to the ways in which conceptions of kingship, gender, loyalty and religion are represented in the plays under examination. I examine four key plays of Shakespeare's corpus: Henry VI, I, Hamlet, Merchant of Venice and Henry V. My reading of the Merchant of Venice examines the cultural anxieties around the rising merchant class in Shakespeare's England. I argue that this class was plagued by its cultural and historical association with Jewishness, especially the increasing numbers of merchants who engaged in “usury” or the lending of money at interest. The Merchant of Venice is an attempt to recuperate the merchant-class—represented in the play by Antonio—from the specter of Jewishness and Jewish usury that haunted its identity. My reading of Hamlet considers its representation of monarchy as the latter is figured in the characters of Old Hamlet and Claudius. I read the play against the backdrop of the ascension of James I to the throne and the struggles over market control that characterized the early part of his reign. In my consideration of Henry VI, I, I examine the way in which anxieties about economic speculation were frequently displaced onto anxieties about gender, particularly as the latter are figured in the central character of this drama, Joan de Pucelle. Finally, my reading of Henry V looks at the way in which the play represents the commodification of relationships of fealty, particularly those between the character of Henry V and his subjects.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903-1969) / Braudel, Fernand / British & Irish literature / British and Irish literature / Derrida, Jacques / Horkheimer, Max (1895-1973) / Lukacs, Georg (1885-1971) / Theater
• ISBN: 0493828540, 9780493828541