Shakespeare and Bagehot: a Study in Drama and Politics

Roberts, David Henry (2023) Shakespeare and Bagehot: a Study in Drama and Politics. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

Walter Bagehot (1826 – 1877) demonstrated his interest in Shakespeare in his essay, Shakespeare – The Individual (1853). That essay betrays Bagehot’s emerging political theories, casting him as a constitutional dichotomist. The proposition is that Shakespeare shows the same political sensibility and can therefore be placed usefully with Bagehot in Harootunian’s ‘thickened present’.

Shakespeare’s Roman Plays are chosen as the testing ground for the proposition. Critical methods employed fuse together historicism, presentism, and impure aesthetics in an attempt at Grady’s desired ‘myriad-minded Shakespeare studies’. Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus are, in turn, set alongside Bagehot texts, principally his Letters from the 1851 Paris Coup, The English Constitution, and Physics and Politics. Shakespeare and Bagehot’s own immediate contexts are considered but the emphasis is on their respective texts operating within ‘non-contemporaneous contemporaneities’ per Harootunian’s characterisation of history.

Titus gives us a gory demonstration that political ethics are not immutable. Julius Caesar is designedly enigmatic – a fractured aristodemocracy turning inward and devouring itself. Antony and Cleopatra is described as a play of multiple dramatic oppositions that mirror the dignified/efficient dichotomy underpinning The English Constitution. Coriolanus, a far starker play, reinforces the conclusion that a man cannot be author of himself at that point where a conception of due process of law asserts itself in society. Cymbeline may be markedly the least Roman of the Roman Plays but its climactic accommodation between Rome and Britain comes as close to philosophical clarity as can be expected with Shakespeare’s deliberate political anamorphism.

The shared dualism of Shakespeare and Bagehot grants us a tool for understanding political systems and sits well with modern theorists such as Snyder. The proposition of the thesis stands – Bagehot and Shakespeare are at home in our own ‘thickened present’ and each aids comprehension of the other.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:
Date
Event
29 September 2022
Submitted
11 October 2023
Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords: Shakespeare; Walter Bagehot; Roman Plays
Subjects: CAH19 - language and area studies > CAH19-01 - English studies > CAH19-01-03 - literature in English
CAH25 - design, and creative and performing arts > CAH25-02 - performing arts > CAH25-02-03 - drama
Divisions: Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > School of English
Depositing User: Jaycie Carter
Date Deposited: 05 Sep 2024 08:58
Last Modified: 05 Sep 2024 08:58
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15794

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