Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 20

ODAK

20 • Anthony P. Pennino
is one of virtue in the sparing of the even more monstrous Antony,“Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers” (II.i.173). Spence
has a very specific purpose as Anne Janowitz explains: “In Pig’s
Meat, Spence advances a concept of tradition which, though not
posed in the language of class, will define a ‘people’s’ literary
heritage, even while claiming figures from the hegemonic culture. Using the form of Knox’s Elegant Extracts, in Pig’s Meat,
Spence pries loose Shakespeare and Goldsmith from one position in culture and shapes them into another, situated along more
contemporary works” (76). In so doing, Spence thus invites a
political reading of the works of these authors. Spence is also
clever in his choice of literary icons, belonging to the “hegemonic culture” as they may. The biographies of Shakespeare and
Goldsmith (as well as of Milton who figures quite prominently
in the periodical) can easily be cast as having resonance with the
working class readership. Shakespeare is of humbler origins,
while both Goldsmith and Milton had to contend with economic
deprivation and/or political oppression. Their personal histories
are of as great value as their works, and hence the university-educated Christopher Marlowe or the court apparatchik Ben
Jonson do not grace the pages of Pig’s Meat. Janowitz further
notes that the periodical “sets a precedent for organizing and inventing a cultural tradition, laying claim to texts from the past,
and juxtaposing them in such a way as to generate new meanings which fasten these texts to the social and political claims

The Reconstructed Bard: Chartism and Shakespeare • 21

being made by the unenfranchised and the labouring poor” (76).
Spence laid the groundwork for Chartist cultural argumentation.

That Shakespeare should become a critical figure in the
establishment of a Chartist cultural project is not as surprising
as may at first seem. Antony Taylor discusses the accessibility of the playwright’s works: “The role of Shakespeare within
popular politics reflects his importance within plebeian culture
more generally. Many working-people learnt to read from his
plays, others saw them or experienced them at second hand in
popular almanacs, bowdlerized versions, or in Friendly Society
tableaux” (359).Shakespeare thus became an important touchstone within the Chartist cultural construct. The Chartist poet
Thomas Cooper established an adult school in Leicester in 1841.
According to Timothy Randall, he had the students “compose
hymns for the Sunday meetings, which he collected and published as The Shakespearean Chartist Hymnbook” (184). While
they were in prison, Jones and George Julian Harney, another
Chartist leader, requested the tragedies of William Shakespeare,
among other works, as reading material. They were denied
these requests. Janowitz also reports that in the Spring of 1840
the leading Chartist newspaper The Northern Star published an
ongoing series entitled “Chartism from Shakespeare”, “culling passages from the plays with which to exemplify Chartist
principles and issues” (146). Indeed, the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebration in London in 1864 would quickly dissolve

monograf 2014/1