The provocative preposition in the title of Margaret Tudeau-Clayton's recent book Shakespeare's Englishes: Against Englishness offers a small glimpse into the different and frequently conflicting opinions about the “proper” (3) character and ownership of English, or perhaps the English, in post-Reformation England. The book offers a nuanced study of politics, linguistics, clothing, and, of course, wordplay in the 1590s and early 1600s, setting Shakespeare's early uses of linguistic variety, elaborate wordplay, and vibrant characters against several larger cultural trends. Even as many political, religious, and cultural leaders attempted to standardize the notion of English by excluding words and individuals considered strange or foreign, Shakespeare's plays, Tudeau-Clayton argues, consistently and insistently celebrate “gallimaufry,” or a “mobile and inclusive mix of (human and linguistic) ‘strangers’” (5) that had recently come under political and literary attack. Through a series of careful close readings of early Shakespearean dramas, she successfully shows how the plots and rhetoric of Shakespeare's early plays celebrate the varied, inclusive, and unpredictable aspects of the English language and people, resisting the ideologies of plainness invoked by several larger projects of cultural reformation initiated in post-Reformation England.
Tudeau-Clayton's first three chapters document Shakespeare's consistently positive portrayals of gallimaufry across Falstaff 's multiple appearances, several early comedies, Richard II, and even King John. In each of these chapters, Shakespeare emerges as a writer who depicts (the) English as specifically inclusive, and all the better and richer on this account. Where contemporaneous texts about language, finance, and even clothing reflected writers’ desire to simplify and standardize these and other arenas, Shakespeare's characters highlight “the mobile, unpredictable character of a living language” (63) and the impossibility of grounding the notion of Englishness in specific, fixed behaviors. Yet while tensions between ideas of English versus foreign, strange, or straying languages or people emerge throughout these early chapters, the fourth chapter addresses this perceived division most vigorously, arguing that Shakespeare's plays repeatedly promote inclusive and biblically grounded attitudes toward the figure of the stranger, often contravening contemporary cultural values in the process. The fifth and final chapter illustrates Shakespeare's use of several rhetorical techniques, most prominently synonymia, to free the English language from the confines of “plainness,” to educate audience members, and to inspire audiences to “active reflection” on the Christian calling (217).
In addition to its expert grounding in existing Shakespearean scholarship, Shakespeare's Englishes is rich in references to primary texts, both Shakespeare's early plays and a host of political, religious, and literary texts from the relevant eras. In one instance, Tudeau-Clayton meticulously documents the mid-sixteenth-century divide in English attitudes toward foreigners and outsiders. Where the Bible specifically depicts the Christian Church as a body comprised of disparate strangers and urges charity toward all as a reflection of Christ's charity toward his people, Tudeau-Clayton notes that these teachings became increasingly at odds with standards of conformity promoted by several sixteenth-century clerics and politicians. Several attempts to simplify language and dress are carefully detailed, then convincingly contrasted with the so-called extravagances of Shakespeare's plays, which Tudeau-Clayton eventually positions as linguistic forms of the unrestrained giving recommended by early Christian models of charity.
While deriving most of its positive examples from early Shakespearean dramas (though Barack Obama and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks do earn a brief nod in chapter 4), the themes in Shakespeare's Englishes apply equally well to twenty-first-century concerns surrounding national identities, religious obligations, and cultural inclusiveness, among others. In the process, the book subtly manages to highlight the continued cultural relevance of Shakespeare's language, characters, and modest calls to Christian charity, making it a strong resource for instructors who teach Shakespearean survey courses. Thought-provoking and itself diverse in the topics and plays covered, Shakespeare's Englishes connects urgent twenty-first-century topics with a meticulously documented survey of relevant Elizabethan and early Jacobean texts, contrasting publicly stated concerns about language, identity, and the unfamiliar or strange with Shakespeare's extravagantly expansive uses of a rich variety of English languages and English identities that he had encountered or imagined. The nuances of Tudeau-Clayton's argument abound, and her close readings of passages, scenes, and character arcs from more than a dozen plays are particularly worth examining in more detail.
