Shakespeare's Staged Resurrections and What to Make of Them

It is said that in Shakespeare’s plays, all resurrections are staged, faked:
Much Ado About Nothing (Hero) [1]; Henry IV, Part 1 (Falstaff) [2].

Staging can fail badly: Romeo and Juliet [3] (as if to admit the limitations of such staging?).

Poor Tom/Edgar stages a miracle for Gloucester in King Lear [4].  

Sonnet 18 ends, “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,” as if the poem bestows (stages) everlasting life.

What to make of this?

As is said in Hamlet of Ophelia’s “mad” speech, many will “botch” these facts up “fit to their own thoughts” [5]:

Atheists may claim this proves Shakespeare’s atheism.

Christians may note: Miracle and Mystery Plays were banned by Henry VIII, still restricted in Elizabethan times. Even if Shakespeare wanted to portray resurrections, his hands were tied.

Many of Hamlet’s verbal tricks with Claudius [6] and Polonius [7] (and Claudius again [8]) – and the gravedigger’s with Hamlet [8] – depend on taking things too literally.
- Some may say that Shakespeare understood how the metaphors and analogies in scripture worked, and had moved beyond what Paul Ricouer later called a “first naiveté” (naive literal understandings) to a “second naiveté” that appreciates symbolic/figurative language (as many poets do).

Elizabethans could not announce having transcended such literal naiveté unless it had to do with a narrow Protestant list including Eucharist. Challenging a literal reading of scripture could bring accusations of atheism or heresy, so free-thinking playwrights had to be clever and subtle.

It is unlikely that Shakespeare was so adept at biblical and religious allusions (more than other playwrights of his time), and a hard-core atheist. But somewhere in between?

Some may say none of this matters, only whether the plays entertain. But perhaps they do entertain in part because it mattered to Shakespeare? [10]


NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu

[1]: In Much Ado About Nothing, Hero’s death is faked, her resurrection staged, to impress upon Claudio how much he hurt Hero by not trusting her.

[2] Falstaff plays dead at the battle of Shrewsbury in Henry IV, Part 1. Hal comes upon him and sees him, thinks he is dead, and is much aggrieved, but then Falstaff revives, to humorous effect.

[3] In with the help of Friar Lawrence, Juliet’s death is faked with a sleeping potion, but Romeo doesn’t get the memo and thinks she is dead; both commit suicide.

[4] In King Lear, Poor Tom (Edgar in disguise) stages the (deliberately unsuccessful) suicide of his blind father, Gloucester to restore his father’s hope with a faked miracle.

[5] Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts…
(4.5.9-12)

[6] KING: …But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—
HAMLET: [aside] A little more than kin and less than kind.
KING: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET: Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.
(1.2.66-69)

[7] POLONIUS: …What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET  Words, words, words.
POLONIUS  What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET  Between who?
POLONIUS  I mean the matter that you read, my lord.
(2.2.208-213)

[8] KING  Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
HAMLET  At supper.
KING  At supper where?
HAMLET  Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A
certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.
(4.3.19-24)

[9] HAMLET: Whose grave’s this, sirrah?
GRAVEDIGGER: Mine, sir. [...]
HAMLET  I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in ’t.
GRAVEDIGGER  You lie out on ’t, sir, and therefore ’tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in ’t, yet it is
mine.
HAMLET  Thou dost lie in ’t, to be in ’t and say it is thine. ’Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou
liest.
GRAVEDIGGER  ’Tis a quick lie, sir; ’twill away again from me to you.
HAMLET  What man dost thou dig it for?
GRAVEDIGGER  For no man, sir.
HAMLET  What woman then?
GRAVEDIGGER  For none, neither.
HAMLET  Who is to be buried in ’t?
GRAVEDIGGER  One that was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, she’s dead.
(5.1.120-141)

[10] One could add at least the following, if not more:
a) In Twelfth Night, Viola/Cesario believes her brother to have drowned in the shipwreck, just as her brother believes *her* to have drowned, so their appearance late in the play, alive, seems like an apparent resurrection.

b) In As You Like It, while Oliver is asleep or dead with a snake wrapped around him, Orlando saves him both from the snake and from a lioness, a kind of resurrection; this action reconciles them, figuratively resurrecting their brotherly love.

c) In The Winter's Tale, King Leontes' daughter Perdita and his wife, Queen Hermione, are believed to have died, but in the end, they are reunited in an apparent resurrection, especially in the case of Hermione, who is either miraculously resurrected from a statue, or who had been disguised as such to save her from her husband's wrath before his repentance. .

d) Kevin Connell notes that in The Tempest, Prospero uses magic to conceal Ferdinand from his father the king, and after Ferdinand falls in love with Miranda, Prospero's daughter, Ferdinand is reunited with his father, an apparent rescue from drowning at sea.

e) Dick Willis notes: "Add Claudio in Measure for Measure. Thought to have been beheaded. Then miraculously shows up in final scene."


IMAGES:
Upper Left:
Margaret Odette as Hero, Jeremie Harris as Claudio, in Much Ado About Nothing, 2019, Dir. Kenny Leon, Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park, via
“Public‘s “Much Ado About Nothing” takes Shakespeare to black Atlanta” by Lucy Komisar. Fair use via
https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Tyrone-Mitchell-Henderson-as-the-Friar-Margaret-Odette-as-Hero-Jeremie-Harris-as-Claudio-Billy-Eugene-Jones-as-Don-Pedro-Erik-Laray-Harvey-as-Antonio-photo-Joan-Marcus.jpg

Upper right,
Falstaff played by Simon Russell Beale, and Prince Harry, played by Tom Hiddleston. Dir. Richard Eyre, 2012, BBC series, The Hollow Crown. Photo fair use via
The Drunken Odyssey-dot-com, “The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #44: Henry IV, Part 1 (2012),” December 18, 2016, via https://thedrunkenodyssey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/henry-iv-9.jpg

Lower right:
Josh O'Connor and Jessie Buckley in Romeo and Juliet.
Dir. Simon Godwin, filmed on the National Theatre’s Lyttelton stage.
Photo: Rob Youngson, via The Stage-dot-co-dot-uk, April 4, 2021 review, fair use via https://d3s3zh7icgjwgd.cloudfront.net/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/209/Josh-OConnor-Romeo-and-Jessie-Buckley-Juliet-in-Romeo-_LargeLandscape.jpg

Lower left:
Oliver Johnstone as Edgar and David Troughton as the Earl of Gloucester, Dir. Gregory Doran, 2016-2018.
Image fair use via Red Fish on Substack, “King Lear: A Play for Our Times,” James Lee, Apr 17, 2024:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F31bb736d-aa67-4730-9215-94e61624e79f_1800x1200.png


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