Resurrecting Lilian Winstanley

What we need in this world is a love for greatness and greatness uncovering greatness. I will revive one of the most underappreciated intellects of the modern post Renaissance era--Lilian Winstanley. Professor Winstanley, 1875-1960, made many contributions in the field of 16th-early 20th century literature. Beginning in 1920, she wrote three phenomenal works on the four major Shakespeare tragedies using the method of historical or higher criticism developed in part in the previous century used in Bible scholarship. As the blogs continue, the truth will as Martin Luther King said, flow like a river.

Ptolemaic vs Coopernican Investigation

``Neither can we judge Shakespeare completely by the effect produced on our own minds, we after all, are a remote posterity.'' Now the rub ``and nothing is more certain than that he did not write for us.''
Once we look at that audience and try to think what they were thinking and how they were thinking--a universe understood in the Coopernican rather than the Ptolemaic way--we will see matters differently. Many problems we have in understanding Shakespeare will go away, on the other hand many problems will arise.
Here Lilian Winstanley allows us a peak into her next book and asks why ``Macbeth''? One reason is a Scottish king had succeeded to the English throne, the play would have been viewed as a compliment to him, James I. Banquo was an acestor to the Stuarts and depicted favorably in light of the play. The main character in the play would bring about one of the Merlin prophecies in the foundation or re-foundation of the British empire. According to Winstanley's contemporary professor Thomas Gwynn Jones, these prophecies had political bearing in Wales and England and were celebrated by writers at the time of the Bard--including Edmond Spencer, Michael Drayton, and Ben Jonson.

Elizebethan Mentality

Lilian Winstanley wrote, ``The mentality of his audience provides him with at least half of his material. It is through that mentality that his plays must be reviewed and considered; it is to that mentality they must all appeal.''
Our age has ignored this and appealed to 20th-21st century readers of 20th-21st century psychology. Winstanley located this in 19th century psychology and has special criticism for AC Bradley, as his effort to masquerade the very 16th early 17th century Shakespeare in so called universals terms of reference, that is late 19th early 20th century psychological terms of reference.She proposes to put Shakespeare ``in his place'' in order to better understand him and his dialogue with his audience and thus enable us to have a more complete picutre of the man and his time..
So we must brush up on 16th century psychology, as well as its history.
``The mentality of his audience everywhere shapes and conditions his work as certainly as the work of a sculptor is shaped by the architecture and purpose of the building in which it stands. The sculpture of the Parthenon is not more certainly adapted to the purpose of the Parthenon than are the plays of a true dramatist to the mentality of his audience

Lilian Winstanley's Three Shakespeare Books

In her introduction, Lilian Winstanley writes, ``It is the purpose of the following essay to study the play `Hamlet' from a somewhat fresh point of view by endeavoring to show its relation or possible relation to contemporary history.'' To appreciate the mind-set of this Elizabethan audience and therefore the mind of Shakespeare we are about to receive a 16th century history lesson. It will cover the material suggested in the titles of Prof. Winstanley's three Shakespeare books:
1) Hamlet and the Scottish Succession: Being an Examination of the Relations of the Play of Hamlet to the Scottish Succession and the Essex Conspiracy
2) Macbeth, King Lear & contemporary history: Being a study of the relations of the play of Macbeth to the personal history of James I, the Darnley murder, ... and also of King Lear as symbolic mythology
3) "Othello" as the tragedy of Italy: Showing that Shakespeare's Italian contemporaries interpreted the story of the Moor and the lady of Venice as symbolizing ... of their country in the grip of Spain

The Stage Was the Message

At the turn of the 16th century there was no American first amendment, no radio, no newspaper, and of course no internet. News was presented in terms that Winstanley called ``symbolic mythology''. The main character names had to be changed or the author and actors risked being brought before the star chamber. That and the execution of Lord Essex aka Robert Devereaux who was a backer of ``Hamlet'' and other plays by the same author, for Essex's role in ``accelerating'' James to power, was a lesson not wasted on the interested parties.For the living reader several questions might be asked: Was Hamlet based on the 12th century Danish saga by Saxo Gramaticus? Or a history from the more recent Holinshed? Or was this well attended production aimed at a very curious audience as to who their next ruler might be? and what he might be? Things were looking good for James VI of Scotland, in spite of his existentialist doubts as revealed in privy correspondence between the young Scottish king and his cousin the more mature, educated in statecraft by both her ruthless father Henry VIII as well as personal experience, Queen Elizabeth as revealed by Lilian Winstanley in her Hamlet book.