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Page 24 for reading do not even begin to resemble the rules of scientific experimentation. There is no indication that literary criticism is moving any closer to “the” meaning(s) of Shakespeare, nor is there an indication that this is criticism’s goal (to have such a goal could spell professional suicide). In other words, at any given historical moment we are working within a certain range of academically and culturally possible and acceptable interpretations. There is no doubt that as institutions, journals, presses, and our culture change, there will be no future interpretation of Shakespeare so at odds with the text that it would be unacceptable in some as yet unimaginable context. The other side of that coin is, of course, that whatever interpretations of Shakespeare are currently imaginable and acceptable are, necessarily, just that: currently imaginable readings of Shakespeare. It probably will not be of much comfort to conservatives today, but there is no doubt in my mind that the wisdom of Greenblatt, Eagleton, Belsey, Dollimore, and Howard will some day—if they are lucky—have the same status now afforded to A.C. Bradley, E.M.W.Tillyard, Cleanth Brooks, and Muriel Bradbrook. What becomes clear here is that in the long run the body of Shakespeare—his corpus, and what it means or does not mean—is not particularly important. It is more important that one writes about Shakespeare than what one writes about him. This is not to say that critics at any given moment do not argue with a degree of sincerity about the meaning of the Shakespearean text. They do, for this is a necessary part of the convenient fiction that meaning matters. But over time, Shakespeare is far more important to criticism as a conduit, as a uniquely powerful academic interface, as that part of the academic body through which the most theoretical innovation and political energy course. Shakespeare’s name provides the critic with a forum; it is the occasion for literary criticism. The literary body has become largely inconsequential: it is present but often goes unnoticed; it is, as Kernan suggests, a means to something else— and it always was. Reading the current Shakespeare wars, therefore, is a lot like watching Hamlet and Laertes struggling in the grave to prove who loved Ophelia most (Hamlet 5.1). Or it is like watching Lucrece’s father and Collatine “weep with equal strife/Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife” (Rape of Lucrece 1791–92); ‘‘The one doth call her his, the other his,/Yet neither may possess the claim they lay” (1793–94). Dead Ophelia and dead Lucrece lie by as the men rage on, and the women’s presence is incidental to the drama |
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