Rewriting the Renaissance

"This is an essay collection from the mid 1980s and it exemplifies the movement known as new historicism, which was a new development which tried to bring together history and literary criticism in a new dynamic way, to show the way that literature is situated in history and history is made up of texts and always open to interpretation. It is a school of criticism that is also very interested in how power circulates, and in gender and sexuality, and that is exemplified in this collection. It contains a particularly important essay by Louis Montrose called ‘Shaping Fantasies’ which is about A Midsummer Night’s Dream . This essay appeared in several different versions, but this is a place you can easily get hold of it. What was new about it was the way that Montrose brought A Midsummer Night’s Dream into contact with Elizabeth I. There is a passage in the play called Oberon’s vision where Oberon is describing how the flower became the love charm, and this happens because there is ‘a fair vestal throned by the west’, who is obviously Elizabeth, and Cupid fires his bow at her but she is immune to his arrows. So his arrow falls on this flower that becomes the love charm. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Oberon’s vision is often read as a passage of praise of Elizabeth, but Montrose shows that if you put it in context in relation to the rest of the play and other things that are being said and written about Elizabeth at the time, then it is really critical of Elizabeth. Once you start thinking about this it is quite obvious – you have Titania the Fairy Queen who is infatuated with an ass. Well, you can’t think about the Fairy Queen without thinking about Elizabeth because of Spenser. Titania is made to be a slave to lust, a comical figure, her powers are mocked and she is brought back under the authority of a husband. That is implied to be the norm. By that stage of her reign Elizabeth was too old to have children, she was still unmarried and there was this anxiety about who would be her successor because she refused to name one. Many people felt that was deeply irresponsible of her and that it was her duty as the Queen to get married and produce an heir. So there is this sense she is going to die soon, she is getting old and what will happen next? And I think once you start thinking of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in relation to Elizabeth the play looks quite different, and it gives you a new insight into how people were feeling about the Queen at the time. This was a new move that Montrose made in the 80s which has been hugely influential and has led to lots of other readings of Shakespeare’s plays to shed light on Elizabeth’s reign."