Digging the Past by Frances E. Dolan
Author:Frances E. Dolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00
Figure 6. Hawthorn from Gerard’s Herbal. Reproduced by permission of the University of California, Davis, Special Collections Library.
Like compost, dung, and manure, discussed in Chapter 1, the word “hedge” can be a verb as well as a noun. The varied uses of “hedge” as a verb suggest its sprawling, even contradictory capacities. To hedge in is to protect but also to confine; to hedge out is to exclude. We see the notion of the hedge as protection in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when Claudius assures Gertrude that he is invulnerable because of the divinity that doth “hedge” a king and so protects him from treason (Hamlet 4.2.123–24). (Of course, he knows better than anyone that even the hedge of kingship cannot protect one who is sleeping in a garden.) In contrast, in Julius Caesar, Cassius warns Brutus not to “hedge” him in (4.3.30), activating the verb’s more negative connotations; Portia claims that her choice of spouse is limited because her father “hedged [her] by his wit” to yield herself only to the winner of the casket test (2.1.18).7 But as the play shows, she hedges her bets.
As a verb, “to hedge” can also mean “to go aside from the straight way; to shift, shuffle, dodge; to avoid committing oneself irrevocably; to leave open a way of retreat or escape” (OED). Falstaff, in Merry Wives of Windsor, confesses to Pistol that he is “fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch” (2.2.21). This meaning persists when we hedge our bets, funds, or risks. I turn to examples from Shakespeare as an efficient way to sketch out the word’s range of meanings and uses. But I also do so to suggest the ways that the hedge, as a feature of the landscape and of the language, straddles nature and art, material and figural, paralysis and agency, protection and entrapment, restriction and liberty. The hedge seems always to be a site of struggle and interpretation rather than a clear line.
Shakespeare’s entanglement in such hedge struggles is especially evident in attempts to make sense of his personal relationship to enclosure and hedges. In his 1976 play, Bingo, Edward Bond draws on the surviving documents regarding the Welcombe enclosure (1614–17) to depict Shakespeare as profiting from enclosure and colluding in the harsh punishment of hedge-breakers. While the documents suggest that the conflict focused on enclosure ditches (rather than hedges), Bond’s stage directions begin by stating that “a hedge runs across the top of the stage.” For Bond, the hedge divides the landowners from the poor and places Shakespeare firmly and shamefully with the landowners. “His behavior as a property-owner made him closer to Goneril than Lear,” Bond insists. Some literary critics have similarly argued that Shakespeare sided with the hedge builders against the hedge-breakers, not only in his own community but in his plays.8
In contrast, critics who wish to emphasize Shakespeare’s radical sympathy with the poor accept the hedge as a crucial dividing line but move Shakespeare to the other side. Chris Fitter, for example, avers that
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Ancient & Classical | Arthurian Romance |
Beat Generation | Feminist |
Gothic & Romantic | LGBT |
Medieval | Modern |
Modernism | Postmodernism |
Renaissance | Shakespeare |
Surrealism | Victorian |
4 3 2 1: A Novel by Paul Auster(11033)
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(6836)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin(5870)
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert(4717)
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking by M. Neil Browne & Stuart M. Keeley(4565)
On Writing A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King(4205)
Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday(3982)
Ken Follett - World without end by Ken Follett(3968)
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson(3789)
Bluets by Maggie Nelson(3705)
Adulting by Kelly Williams Brown(3663)
Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton(3578)
Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy(3505)
White Noise - A Novel by Don DeLillo(3430)
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda by Pablo Neruda(3358)
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read(3302)
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald(3220)
The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama(3212)
Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock(3206)