The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Parallel lives: Shakespeare and the Debate over emotional involvement

Parallel lives: Shakespeare and the Debate over emotional involvement
Parallel lives: Shakespeare and the Debate over emotional involvement
The decades around 1600 saw a Europe-wide vogue for artists, writers, orators, and actors to fully identify with their sitters, subjects, or characters, the practice often being justified with the Horatian dictum, ‘If you want me to cry, mourn first yourself’ (Russell and Winterbottom 1972: 282 [Ars 101]). Among the more extreme manifestations are the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who in 1617 burnt himself while preparing to carve the martyrdom of St Lawrence on a gridiron, and the French actor Montdory, famous for full-throttle mad scenes, who in 1637 suffered a paralytic stroke to the tongue and right arm while acting Herod (Bernini 1713: 15; Bernini 2011: 103; Wiley 1960: 103–6).1 The philosopher and heretic Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) cited Horace’s dictum in his treatise of rhetoric (Campanella 1954: 751, 763), adding yawning to the roster of expressions — ‘if you want me to yawn, yawn first yourself…’. When Campanella was in the Inquisition’s prison, he became notorious for mimicking people’s physiognomy, sometimes only on the basis of a verbal description, claiming it enabled him to read their mind. He would grimace as he imagined he possessed their features and even hair, so that visitors thought he was suffering the permanent affects of torture, or was insane (Campanella 2007: 116–17; Gaffarel 1629: 266–70). The purpose of this essay is two-fold. I want to historicize this ‘baroque’ fashion, arguing that the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics helped put what I term sympathetic mimicry centre stage. I will also analyse four relevant scenes from Shakespeare — three of which centre on portrait painting — in which the issue of sympathetic mimicry is explored in various ways. I shall argue that Shakespeare exhibited both fascination and scepticism for this classical technique and the raw power it unleashes, and that he particularly associated it with painters.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Empathy, Painters
Hall, James
48dd240e-f874-4d3a-9c4a-17464d5d14c6
Hall, James
48dd240e-f874-4d3a-9c4a-17464d5d14c6

Hall, James (2021) Parallel lives: Shakespeare and the Debate over emotional involvement. Classical Receptions Journal, 13 (1). (doi:10.1093/crj/claa017).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The decades around 1600 saw a Europe-wide vogue for artists, writers, orators, and actors to fully identify with their sitters, subjects, or characters, the practice often being justified with the Horatian dictum, ‘If you want me to cry, mourn first yourself’ (Russell and Winterbottom 1972: 282 [Ars 101]). Among the more extreme manifestations are the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who in 1617 burnt himself while preparing to carve the martyrdom of St Lawrence on a gridiron, and the French actor Montdory, famous for full-throttle mad scenes, who in 1637 suffered a paralytic stroke to the tongue and right arm while acting Herod (Bernini 1713: 15; Bernini 2011: 103; Wiley 1960: 103–6).1 The philosopher and heretic Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) cited Horace’s dictum in his treatise of rhetoric (Campanella 1954: 751, 763), adding yawning to the roster of expressions — ‘if you want me to yawn, yawn first yourself…’. When Campanella was in the Inquisition’s prison, he became notorious for mimicking people’s physiognomy, sometimes only on the basis of a verbal description, claiming it enabled him to read their mind. He would grimace as he imagined he possessed their features and even hair, so that visitors thought he was suffering the permanent affects of torture, or was insane (Campanella 2007: 116–17; Gaffarel 1629: 266–70). The purpose of this essay is two-fold. I want to historicize this ‘baroque’ fashion, arguing that the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics helped put what I term sympathetic mimicry centre stage. I will also analyse four relevant scenes from Shakespeare — three of which centre on portrait painting — in which the issue of sympathetic mimicry is explored in various ways. I shall argue that Shakespeare exhibited both fascination and scepticism for this classical technique and the raw power it unleashes, and that he particularly associated it with painters.

Other
J Hall Shakespeare Parallel Lives - Accepted Manuscript
Download (796kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 12 June 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 January 2021
Published date: 11 June 2021
Keywords: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Empathy, Painters

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 438439
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/438439
PURE UUID: 1a9d8642-7497-4518-bf5d-2f697f9f67b1

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 10 Mar 2020 17:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:24

Export record

Altmetrics

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×