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Page 25 at best; Ophelia’s corpse is the occasion upon which Hamlet and Laertes try to reclaim their reputations as honorable and loving gentlemen; and the corpse of selfless Lucrece, in death, is primed for appropriation by father and husband because her unselfish suicide goes a long way toward cleansing their reputations, which were tarnished by her rape.9 In death, both women have tremendous exchange value; like the supposedly dead Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, they will appear “[m]ore moving-delicate, and full of life,/ …/Than when [they] lived indeed” (Much Ado 4.1.227, 229). Material bodies have become pure exchange value, markers of cultural capital, opportunities for meaningful appropriation. Shakespeare may serve as the single most powerful signifier in literary culture, but it is culture that inscribes and reinscribes his name—that names and renames his name—and that gives local habitation and a name to his corpus. Shakespeare’s literary body, therefore, is neither the desecrated body of Milton nor the stuffed head and dressed-up skeleton of Bentham; rather, it resembles the chaste but absent bodies of Ophelia and Lucrece and the chaste body-in-hiding of Hero. In a twisted reading of Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14”, we might suggest that, like Donne’s speaker, Shakespeare’s text must be battered, broken, ravished, and violated if it is to be “chaste” and ‘‘free.” Many scholars have observed that the scarcity of information about the historical Shakespeare (who apparently is absent from his grave), as well as his “absence” from the moral universe of his plays, make Shakespeare supremely receptive to interpretation and appropriation. Indeed, as Michael Bristol puts it, it is “Shakespeare’s radically disembodied and culturally promiscuous character” that assures his privileged place in our world today (1996:90). Shakespeare’s promiscuity, however, does not appear to affect the “chastity” of his reputation. On this point, the similarity between Shakespeare and his female characters breaks down. When physically violated (Lucrece), thought to have been violated (Hero), or might-as-well-have-been violated (Ophelia), each female character loses her reputation as chaste. Circulation amounts to loss of chastity. Lucrece understands that if she is to minimize the damage done to Collatine’s name, she must irrevocably remove herself from circulation. The only way to “prove” her chastity is to kill herself. Likewise, Ophelia, though she may not have slept with Hamlet, is no longer fit for social circulation because her intense emotional commitment to the prince has left her severely damaged. She withdraws from Elsinore society, first |
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