{"id":151,"date":"2014-01-07T15:22:41","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T15:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/?p=151"},"modified":"2014-02-24T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T12:27:00","slug":"abstract-dr-harry-newman-theories-of-blood-in-late-medieval-and-early-modern-english-literature-and-culture-st-annes-college-oxford-8th-10th-january-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/2014\/01\/07\/abstract-dr-harry-newman-theories-of-blood-in-late-medieval-and-early-modern-english-literature-and-culture-st-annes-college-oxford-8th-10th-january-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"ABSTRACT: Dr Harry Newman @ Theories of Blood in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Culture St Anne\u2019s College, Oxford: 8th-10th January, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\u2018[T]his painting \/ Wherein you see me smeared\u2019: Blood, Character and Metatheatre in Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus<\/i><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

To what extent did stage blood function as an agent of characterisation on the early modern stage? How instrumental were bloody displays in the construction of dramatic identities, and what roles were they expected to play in the cognitive transactions that took place between actors and playgoers? This paper addresses these questions by focusing on Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus<\/i>, a persistently metatheatrical play that explores the ways in which the identities of characters and actors can \u2013 and I hope to show the pun isn\u2019t gratuitous \u2013 bleed into one another.<\/p>\n

Blood is ostensibly a marker of character for the war-like Coriolanus; it is the recognisable \u2018stamp of Martius\u2019 (I.vi.23) on the battlefield when the warrior appears before Cominius as \u2018a thing of blood\u2019 (II.ii.107). And yet we are repeatedly reminded that the blood we see is just a special effect which allows Coriolanus to perform a part: it is a cloak that has \u2018mantled\u2019 him (I.vi.29), \u2018painting\u2019 that has been \u2018smeared\u2019 on him (I.vi.68-9), a vizard that has \u2018masked\u2019 him (I.viii.11). Coriolanus revels in the theatrical agency of blood, but the same cannot be said of his scars, those permanent material traces of the drops he has shed for Rome. Cynthia Marshall has convincingly argued that the protagonist\u2019s refusal to show his scars to the people is a key part of the process by which the play makes the audience complicit in constructing his characterological \u2018interiority\u2019 or \u2018subjectivity\u2019. We might question, however, Marshall\u2019s contention that his bloody exhibitionism on the battlefield grants us a \u2018visual intimacy and hence, in the play\u2019s terms, a knowledge of Martius that is subsequently denied to the plebeians in the marketplace\u2019.[1]<\/a> The character\u2019s bloodiness is arguably alienating rather than revelatory, and the figure who \u2018appears as he were flayed\u2019 (I.vi.22) is actually engaged in a self-conscious illusion that frustrates knowledge instead of facilitating it.<\/p>\n

This paper suggests that Coriolanus\u2019 stage blood represents the fluidity between the identity of the character and that of the actor playing him, the boundaries between which are ruptured by the play\u2019s metatheatricality. In doing so, it aims to address the relationship between blood, character and metatheatre in early modern drama more generally, paying particular attention to the role of the audience, whose apprehending souls \u2013 according to the antitheatrical tracts with which Coriolanus<\/i> was in dialogue \u2013 could be wounded and made to bleed by what they saw and heard on stage.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Marshall, \u201cWound-Man: Coriolanus<\/i>, Gender, and the Theatrical Construction of Interiority,\u201d in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects<\/i>, ed. Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan (Cambridge: CUP, 1996): 93-118; 107.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018[T]his painting \/ Wherein you see me smeared\u2019: Blood, Character and Metatheatre in Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus To what extent did stage blood function as an agent … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5522,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57665],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5522"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/englishresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}