Shakespeare, Ideology and New Historicism

Stephen Greenblatt’s analysis of creative literature is primarily a rendition of an idea largely conceptualized by Michel Foucault, which is the idea that prevailing notions in society about certain aspects of living, such as sexuality, are in fact accessories of a greater order in a social system at hand. Although it is not easily found to be explicit in either Greenblatt’s or Foucault’s texts, their treatment of the operations of a social system labors firstly on the idea that these social systems sustain themselves by way of maintaining effects on subjects by various modes. In other words, social systems exist by claiming power over subjects.

Greenblatt’s main assertion in “Invisible Bullets” is that creative literature is one of these modes of power, and he uses William Shakespeare’s history plays as an example. Shakespeare’s plays are analyzed as such only in relation to Shakespeare’s own contemporaneous lifetime in the sixteenth century, because it is specifically that form of society, a Renaissance monarchy, that the plays operate systematically within. In other words, as texts written to be performed onstage before an audience, Shakespeare wrote his plays with his contemporary audience in mind. Consequently, Greenblatt stresses that the plays are effective only on Shakespeare’s audience, and we are only able to outline the deceptive political function of his plays in the present because “they no longer threaten us,” since we are outside the scope of its epoch (p.799).

To elucidate how the plays function as a mode of power in the sixteenth century, Greenblatt uncovers a thematic repetition in Shakespeare’s history plays. In essence, they all share a similar story line: the potential subversion of political authority and its resolution, or, more specifically, as Greenblatt calls it: “the powerful containment of that subversion” (p.792). For Greenblatt, this containment is performative of creative literature as a mode of power, for it means that Shakespeare’s history plays utilize the potential for subversion tactically in order to actually amplify the supremacy of political authority. To summarize, scenes are first played out in which dialogue of characters with considerable power or stature, such as the relative of a monarch, reveals a manipulative use of established beliefs such as religion in order to maintain or increase power or stature. After the initial setup and exposure of these “subversive doubts,” these same characters are then witnessed employing the same manipulative uses they were recently seen musing over, with complete impunity. It is in this impunity, backed by the logical force of ideological understandings to justify their actions, that power is reaffirmed. Hence, “the subversive doubts the play continually awakens originate… in an effort to intensify the power of the king…” (p.797).

Moreover, the “effect” of the plays on the sixteenth century audience as subjects relies heavily on its entertainment and theatrical value. By arousing the audience’s imagination, the glorification of the monarchy onstage translates into an idealized image of the real monarch: “The charismatic authority of the king, like that of the stage, depends upon falsification” (p.797).

Correspondingly, by virtue of the theatre, the audience is always confined them to their seats in a theatre, symbolically unable to become involved with the characters. “Elizabethan power…depends upon its privileged visibility…. In a theatre, the audience [is] powerfully engaged by this visible presence and at the same time held at a respectful distance from it” (p.798). Here Greenblatt continues to suggest that modes of power are limited to the form of society they function. For instance, the theatre does not have the same capabilities beyond the Elizabethan age because “privileged visibility” is not an important factor in other social systems.

Another example that Greenblatt gives in an attempt to show that modes of power vary with eras is the one of the optimized function of the realist novel. In contrast with the theatre, its operation would be most effective in a society with a “massive police apparatus, a strong middle-class nuclear family [and] an elaborate school system” (p.798). Naturally, these encompassing claims about creative literature beg questions of aesthetics, originality and artistry, but ultimately, however, Greenblatt’s claim of creative literature as a mode of power is not an end all, be all. While he contends that literature bears a bureaucratic function, in “Invisible Bullets” he never challenges the skill and creativity of the writer, as evident in his analysis of Shakespeare’s plays.

Texts of Reference
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan, Eds. Literary Theory: an Anthology. Blackwell Publishers, Inc. Great Britain, 1998.

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