Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 28

ODAK

28 • Anthony P. Pennino

The Chartists, as other critics have, often viewed Shakespeare’s plays, which are populated with characters from across
the social spectrum, through the prism of class conflict. For the
Chartists, that conflict can be viewed as both a political as well
as a cultural opposition both on the stage and in the audience.
In his discussion of The Merchant of Venice, however, Walter
Cohen finds a cultural cohesion in that audience, “Even more,
we may recall that Shakespeare’s plays, despite their elaborateness, appealed to a broadly heterogeneous primary audience:
an achievement that depended on a comparative social and cultural unity, long since lost, in the nation as well as the theatre. This underlying coherence emerges in the logical, and, it
would seem, inherently meaningful unfolding of the dramatic
plot” (72). The Chartist critique of Shakespeare is perhaps understandable given how the very ontological nature of theatre
evolved from the Elizabethan Era to Industrial Era. “The playwright in this world,” explains William Demaster, “was not an
eye/god who saw the mysteries of the cosmos: he was an eye/
god whose clear insights into objective realities of existence
directed him to preach how an imperfect social world could
be improved if only it would follow the prescriptions of this
eye/playwright” (79). To utilize Demaster’s terminology, the
Chartists conceived of Shakespeare as an “eye/god” from the
perspective of their own time, not his; logically, then, Shakespeare would be preaching against an “imperfect social world”.

The Reconstructed Bard: Chartism and Shakespeare • 29

To be clear, this re-appropriation of Shakespeare was
done for then current political practices and not historical pedagogy. Shakespeare himself was often guilty, of course, of this
practice in the creation of his history plays. The portrayal of
Richard III, for instance, was constructed for its value to the
Tudor Dynasty’s mythic conception of its own genesis. We
need to remind ourselves of Williams’s distinct definition of
history as geschichte from Keywords: that of a conversation between past, present, and future. This definition is particularly
apt given that it relies on Enlightenment notions of progress,
an intellectual construct in ascendency in the first half of the
nineteenth century (147). For Shakespeare, there is no clear
line dividing history from art just as for the Chartists there is
no clear line dividing culture from politics; here though culture is not a universal historic force, as considered in the Enlightenment Era, but as something that the working class can
develop as separate and distinct from that of the ruling classes.

McDouall’s Chartist and Republican Journal provides
insight into the matter. This newspaper published – across several issues – a play entitled Electioneering by “a Bristol radical”. In this work, Jonathan Holdfast, a shoemaker, turns his
back on both the Whig and Tory candidates for Parliament and
proclaims himself for the Charter and asks the audience to do
the same. Here we see how a work of art – in this case a play – is
crafted for specific political ends. The work of established au-

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