From tyranny to authority: The dynamics of power relations in Shakespeare's comedies.
Creators: name: Straznicky, Marta.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 1989
Subjects: subject: Theater.

description: This dissertation argues that the representation of authority in the comedies of William Shakespeare is more complex than the models of Renaissance authority advanced by New Historicists would seem to allow. The study suggests, first, that authority in the comedies is shaped by the requirements of genre at least as much as it is by the playwright's engagement with contemporary political debates. Second, the dissertation insists on the importance of maintaining distinctions between authority and power, and between just and unjust rulership, both as they are made in the comedies and, implicitly, as they inform Renaissance political theory. The New Historicists typically use the term "authority" in a derogatory sense; according to this view, the monarch is the source of oppression, manipulation, and unyielding restriction, while the dramatist is confined either to endorsing or subverting the status quo. This conclusion about Renaissance political authority and its control over artistic creation inadequately accounts for the representation of authority in Shakespeare's comedies, failing as it does to recognize the benevolent manifestations of authority in the social organizations dramatized in these plays, the distinction repeatedly made there between its proper use and abuse, and the influence of formal--as opposed to political--constraints upon expression. Viewed in terms of genre and with an acknowledgement of some measure of artistic independence from the dominant discourse, the authority dramatized in the comedies poses a fundamental challenge to received theories regarding the prescriptive power of socio-political structures over Renaissance representations of authority. The dissertation aims to elucidate the ways in which Shakespeare's comedies bring about a change in the definition of authority. I suggest that he stages the operations of three potentially subversive alternative powers: the power of action, the power of voice, and the power of knowledge. But Shakespeare does not simply propose to replace tyranny with one or all of these alternative means of exerting control; rather, he suggests that their temporary ability to undermine authority is itself potentially undermined by the same forces that deny false authority full supremacy, namely self-interest. The power of action, therefore, is extended only to those characters who define themselves as members of a community and who do not act solely in their own best interests; the power of voice is extended to those characters who use language as a bond between individuals rather than as a deceptive means of self-advancement; and the power of knowledge is given legitimacy only when used to strengthen social cohesion. In other words, Shakespeare's comic structure explores the nature of false authority by unmasking its fundamental flaw, self-centredness, and by examining its generation of alternative powers each of which rehearses the primary defect of its parent. Over the course of the play, authority is reclaimed as a vital communal force whose right to power rests on the absorption of the independent strength of those to whom it is bound and who legitimize it by consenting to be bound. This transformation--much like the inversion typical of the carnival tradition--occurs within a well-defined forum where the false authority is only temporarily impotent. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)