{"id":1687,"date":"2018-12-13T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2018-12-31T09:03:07","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:03:07","slug":"copyright-not-applied-shakespeare-mouvance-and-the-medieval-era%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/copyright-not-applied-shakespeare-mouvance-and-the-medieval-era%ef%bb%bf\/","title":{"rendered":"Copyright Not Applied: Shakespeare, Mouvance, and the Medieval Era\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cWelcome to the Renaissance<\/p><p>Where our printing press has the fancy fonts,<\/p><p>That\u2019s right we\u2019re fancy, and very literary, theatrical too\u2026\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cWelcome to the Renaissance,\u201d <em>Something Rotten! A Very New Musical<\/em><br><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shakespeare may be a name that you wouldn\u2019t expect to hear around these parts. \u201cBut, this is a blog about medieval literature,\u201d you may be protesting! Yes, yes, that is true \u2013 but as an Early Modernist, Shakespeare seems to permeate just about everything I do. Of course, this blog is no exception. Further, there is a great deal of overlap between the medieval and the early modern. Despite the convention of pitting the medieval versus the early modern (the hit musical <em>Something Rotten! <\/em>begins by listing the plague, the War of the Roses, the Holy Crusades, &nbsp;and the feudal system as being \u201cso Middle Ages\u2026[and] so Charlemagne\u201d), in practice, much of the means of assessing medieval texts can be carried over to the early modern. Fundamental textual issues from our course included text circulation, medieval literacy, and mouvance. Not much of this changes between 1400 and 1600!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That being said, one major change does happen: the printing press is introduced to England in 1476 by Caxton, and thus changes the landscape of book creation. Plus, I\u2019m preparing you for that inevitable Final Jeopardy question about 1476. The printing press revolutionized how books are created in England; books in England could now be printed, and text became a bit more settled. However, book text would still remain fluid for the next few centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube alignright wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oDWV_b3mgPk?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><figcaption>Horrible Histories Special on Shakespeare&#8217;s Plots<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of course, one of the major questions that first-time students have about Shakespeare is a (usually snarky) insinuation that Shakespeare \u201cstole\u201d all of his plots. You can see this addressed by the British kids show <em>Horrible Histories <\/em>in their video \u201cShakespeare goes to School\u201d where Shakespeare\u2019s claims that he \u201cborrowed\u201d his plots. Shakespeare\u2019s plots come from Ovid and Greek myth, but more relevant to our discussion, Shakespeare takes from Saxo for <em>Hamlet<\/em>, Geoffrey of Monmouth for <em>Lear<\/em>, Chaucer and Caxton for <em>Troilus and Cressida<\/em>, Chaucer alone for <em>Two Noble Kinsmen<\/em>, and Holinshed\u2019s <em>Chronicles <\/em>for the Henriad (Cooper). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;As the unnamed gentleman in <em>Hamlet <\/em>says about responses to Ophelia\u2019s words, that they \u201cbotch the words up to fit their own thoughts,\u201d so does Shakespeare in his own rendition of medieval sources (4.5.11). This quote is typically used to describe adaptation of Shakespeare, but here it can readily explain the textual instability inherent in studying Shakespeare. Not only do adaptors of Shakespeare \u201cbotch\u201d his words, so does Shakespeare \u201cbotch up\u201d the words of medieval writers before him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This reworking is a symptom of <em>mouvance<\/em>, credited to Paul Zumthor. You can read more about mouvance in my previous blog post, accessible <a href=\"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/franken-reading\/\">here<\/a>. Mouvance is the idea that \u201cmedieval vernacular works were not normally regarded as the intellectual property of a single, named author, and might be indefinitely reworked by others, passing through a series of different <em>\u00e9tats du texte <\/em>(\u2018textual states)\u201d (Millett). While mouvance relates more to the question of editing medieval texts, it can also describe how and why Shakespeare\u2019s plays rewrite previous plays. In short, Shakespeare borrowed just as other authors borrowed; this pattern can be traced through Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Troilus and Cressida<\/em>: inspired by Chaucer\u2019s <em>Troilus and Criseyde <\/em>who sourced his story from Boccaccio\u2019s <em>Il Filostrato<\/em>, who sourced his text from Sainte-Maure\u2019s <em>Roman de Troie <\/em>(&#8220;Dates and Sources&#8221;). Mouvance at its finest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s look, then, at a specific example of this textual instability in practice. Alongside this class, I have been annotating Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Henry V <\/em>in conjunction with its historical sources. In reading <em>Henry V <\/em>it becomes clear that textual instability and mouvance are of utmost importance to the play. For all of you non-Shakespeare fans out there, <em>Henry V <\/em>is the final play in the \u201cHenriad,\u201d or the collection of four history plays (<em>Richard II<\/em>, <em>Henry IV Pt. 1, Henry IV Pt. 2, <\/em>and <em>Henry V<\/em>) detailing the ascent of <em>Henry V<\/em> and the Plantagenet line, that would lead into his previously written but chronologically later history cycle comprising <em>Henry VI, Pts. 1, 2, <\/em>and <em>3, <\/em>and <em>Richard III<\/em>. These two sets of plays make up the majority of Shakespeare\u2019s History plays, and with the category of \u201cHistory,\u201d it\u2019s pretty clear that these plays need to address, y\u2019know, <em>history<\/em>. Clearly, Shakespeare was not alive for the events of these history plays. Richard II began his rule in 1377 and Richard III died in 1485, making the events of the play almost a century older than Shakespeare himself (born 1564). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/5RPuhgCCaGD6OfrnSpXB2oI_eSMH8BH3bUqx0ikAexnavGn96eH3gaAKbBSDo3o679-cw4f0kBGwiILOXvjtbBmIgX0d_I7fYrc2M4vpsg0qaeq_krpQM-OS1EESgmWoDnnjoPQB\" alt=\"\" width=\"314\" height=\"519\" \/><figcaption>Front page of Holinshed&#8217;s Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How, then, would he go about writing plays about these characters? History!<strong> <\/strong>This meant turning to Holinshed\u2019s <em>Chronicles<\/em> and Hall\u2019s <em>Chronicles<\/em>. The chronicle format flourished in the Early Modern era, especially because of \u2013 you guessed it! \u2013 Caxton and the printing press because of the relative ease of printing. Chronicles existed prior to the Battle of Hastings: see the Anglo Saxon Chronicle or Monmouth\u2019s <em>Historia regum Britanniae<\/em> (History of the Kings of Britain) or Wyntoun\u2019s <em>Orygynale Cronykil<\/em>. As a genre, chronicles were narrative devices; they provided the history of a kingdom compiled in one place and written in an elevated style, marking an attempt to add formality and structure to English history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hall\u2019s <em>Chronicle <\/em>came first; it was written in 1548 and revised and enlarged in 1550. In his <em>Chronicle<\/em>, Hall included historical events from 1399 to 1509. This covers the death of John of Gaunt and Bolingbroke\u2019s return to England from exile while Richard II was in Ireland in 1399 to Henry VIII\u2019s ascension to the throne in 1509. You may note that this suspiciously follows most of Shakespeare\u2019s plays from <em>Richard II <\/em>to <em>Richard III<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This becomes the basis for Holinshed\u2019s works of 1577, and the revised 1587, which is the one that I have been consulting for my own research into the sources of <em>Henry V<\/em>. This text encompasses 1066 and the Battle of Hastings to 1587 and the death of Mary Queen of Scots (Holinshed Project). Hall took the approach of discerning causation of events rather than simply retelling the events. Despite being the \u201csource\u201d for Shakespeare\u2019s texts, even Holinshed suffers from anachronism and narrativization. Harriet Archer notes in her essay for <em>The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed\u2019s Chronicles <\/em>that Holinshed seems to ignore the Middle Ages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>For Holinshed, there was no such thing as the Middle Ages. In the <em>Chronicles<\/em>, we witness the years between 500 to 1500, from the classical past to the early modern present, by turns flattened by anachronism and divvied up by dynasty. Nowhere, though, are they made to form a single and distinct historical period. <br><\/p><cite>(Archer, Harriet 171)<br><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even the sources suffer from textual instability, as Holinshed and Hall permeate their text with anachronism and editorializing.&nbsp;Hall and Holinshed further influenced one another. Holinshed\u2019s <em>Chronicle <\/em>follows much of the same history as Hall, and uses Hall\u2019s distinctive style.  Is it any real wonder, then, that Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Henry V <\/em>deviates from historical record in many ways?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of this comes together when examining how Hall and Holinshed influenced Shakespeare\u2019s texts as sources. In fact, even Hall and Holinshed borrow text from one another, as Holinshed borrows the colloquial style of Hall. The most obvious description of this can be found in the Salic Law description from the Archbishop of Canterbury in the first act of <em>Henry V<\/em>. The Salic Law scene can be found in 1.2.37-100 (yes, it\u2019s long!); it is essentially a description of succession laws in fifteenth century England and France. For the too long, didn\u2019t read version: The Archbishop says \u201cFrench claim\u201d = bad claim. This scene remains important, despite its flaws, because of how it demonstrates Shakespeare\u2019s reliance on Holinshed. In the 1587 edition of the <em>Chronicle<\/em>, Holinshed includes a description of the \u201c<em>archbishop of Canturburie<\/em>\u201d making \u201ca pithie oration\u201d about \u201cSalike law\u201d (Holinshed). Much of the language of this speech in <em>Henry V<\/em> \u2013 structure, form, and content \u2013 is lifted from Holinshed almost directly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not only does the lifting of this speech speak to textual mouvance, but it highlights how strategic lifting of language in later texts by later authors can add legitimacy to a later work. In a theatre review of the Public Theatre performance of <em>Henry V <\/em>in 2003, critic Ron Rosenbaum calls the speech \u201ccomplicated, arcane, esoteric, [and] a challenge to actors and directors,\u201d all of which are true (Rosenbaum). He goes on to note, however, that Shakespeare singles this speech out as a means to frame the play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I agree with Rosenbaum\u2019s assessment of the speech, but perhaps for different reasons; while he goes on to describe how the speech can be used to frame the titular Henry as a Machiavel or a hero, I would point out that Shakespeare uses this direct lift from Holinshed to provide legitimacy to his own retelling of history. Rather than attempting to delineate the rules of succession on his own, Shakespeare follows the seeming idea of \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d Not only does Holinshed describe the rules of succession in an honestly less complicated manner than it easily could be, but it would also be familiar to audience members who had read Holinshed\u2019s work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can see the surprising overlap between Shakespeare&#8217;s early modern period and&nbsp; the medieval period our class has been exploring all semester. Issues of textual instability and mouvance have shifted and changed, but are still prevalent. My research on <em>Henry V <\/em>and reading of Holinshed and Hall&#8217;s <em>Chronicle<\/em>s from the 1500s has grown my appreciation for the physical book of the era. So, while &#8220;our printing press [may have] the fancy fonts,&#8221; skills learned in this class for working with medieval books can transfer to the Chronicles of the early modern.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Archer, Harriet. &#8220;Holinshed and the Middle Ages.&#8221; <em>The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed&#8217;s Chronicles<\/em>, edited by Paulina Kewes, Ian W Archer, and Felicity Heals, Oxford UP, 1 March 2013, pp. 171-186.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Archer, Ian W. and Felicity Heal, Paulina Kewes, and Henry Summerson. <em>The Holinshed Project<\/em>. Southampton, 2013. http:\/\/www.cems.ox.ac.uk\/holinshed\/<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cooper, Helen. &#8220;Shakespeare&#8217;s Medieval World.&#8221; <em>University of Cambridge Research<\/em>, 1 May 2010. https:\/\/www.cam.ac.uk\/research\/news\/shakespeares-medieval-world<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Dates and Sources.&#8221; <em>The Royal Shakespeare Company,<\/em> n.d. https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/troilus-and-cressida\/about-the-play\/dates-and-sources<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Holinshed. <em>Chronicles<\/em>. Folger Shakespeare Library, Early English Books Online. Web. http:\/\/gateway.proquest.com\/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&amp;res_id=xri:eebo&amp;rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:259710137<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Horrible Histories. &#8220;Shakespeare goes to school.&#8221; CBBC, 15 April 2016. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oDWV_b3mgPk<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Millett, Bella. \u201cWhat is Mouvance?\u201d Wessex Parallel Web Text, 9 Sept. 2014, accessed 22 Oct. 2018.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/~wpwt\/mouvance\/mouvance.htm\">https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/~wpwt\/mouvance\/mouvance.htm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rosenbaum, Ron. &#8220;Theater; The Crucial First Clue to &#8216;<em>Henry V<\/em>.&#8217; New York Times Archives, 29 June 2003, https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/06\/29\/theater\/theater-the-crucial-first-clue-to-henry-v.html?ref=oembed.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shakespeare, William. <em>Henry V<\/em>. Folger Digital Texts, ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles, https:\/\/www.folgerdigitaltexts.org\/?chapter=5&amp;play=H5&amp;loc=p7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWelcome to the Renaissance Where our printing press has the fancy fonts, That\u2019s right we\u2019re fancy, and very literary, theatrical too\u2026\u201d \u201cWelcome to the Renaissance,\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/copyright-not-applied-shakespeare-mouvance-and-the-medieval-era%ef%bb%bf\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Copyright Not Applied: Shakespeare, Mouvance, and the Medieval Era\ufeff<\/span> <i class=\"fas fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2973,"featured_media":1689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[144,141,143,142,110,145,140,111],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-graduate","category-student","tag-chronicles","tag-early-modern","tag-hall","tag-holinshed","tag-mouvance","tag-printing-press","tag-shakespeare","tag-textual-instability","entry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/235\/2018\/12\/Screen-Shot-2018-12-12-at-9.26.33-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AbKE-rd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2973"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/hargretthoursproject\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}