Stephen White and Gianni Vattimo have argued in favor of weak ontological thought. Particularly for White, weak ontology's contestable fundamentals are a superior response to strong ontologies, including the violence linked to them. I make a historically comparative evaluation of their arguments. The evaluation draws on William Davenant's Restoration revision of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Davenant's play defends Charles II's sovereignty against the strong ontological claims of orthodox Anglicans. Lady Macduff's much expanded role and the death she suffers, in contrast to her counterpart in Shakespeare's Folio, are key vehicles for this defense. Davenant's revisions are linked in this interpretation to Charles II's Happy Act of Indemnity and Oblivion of 1660. Also explored are new connections between Macduff and the witches. I argue Davenant exemplifies a contingency unanticipated by weak ontology advocates: he is both antifoundational and in favor of violence. Antifoundational arguments aid more political persuasions than often imagined.
Stephan K.White, Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 6-8.
2.
The temptations Walter Benjamin experienced with "divine violence" have, of course, been explored. See Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence" in Reflections, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 277-300, and Derrida, "Force of Law: The `Mystical Foundation of Authority,'" in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, David G. Carlson (New York: Routledge , 1992), 3-67, esp. 29ff. Early moderns are never far from these discussions.
3.
[William Davenant], "Macbeth, A Tragædy. With All the Alterations, Amendments, Additions and New Songs," in Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare , ed. Christopher Spencer ( Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 32-107. All citations to Davenant's Macbeth will be to this edition, hereafter referred to as "D." See the Preface, addressed to Hobbes, and his reply, Sir William Davenant's Gondibert, ed. David Gladish (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 3-55, esp. 54.
4.
The "de facto" theorists of the Engagement controversy may be a part of this story. Views on who is a de facto theorist and what that might have meant are in flux. See Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. III (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press , 2002), Chapters 7, 9, 10, and esp. p. 232. Many others, too numerous to mention, have now also weighed in on the debate. Davenant was confronting a rather different set of questions.
5.
Strictly speaking, it is misleading to speak of "Shakespeare's" Macbeth. There is no access to something scholars wish to call the original. The Folio version contains known modifications, including the witches' songs borrowed from a Middleton play. We know, in part, because Davenant himself was in possession of the (still modified) earliest known copy. See, "Introduction" in Macbeth, ed. Stephan Orgel ( New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000). All quotations (and lineation) to the Folio Macbeth are from this edition. Minor variations from the Folio are noted on pp. xlv-xlvi. See also Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, William Shakespeare, A Textual Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 543-44; Christopher Spenser, Davenant's Macbeth from the Yale Manuscript: An Edition, with a Discussion of the Relation of Davenant's Text to Shakespeare's (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).
6.
Freud's interpretation rests on the assumption that Lady Macbeth could not produce an heir. The historical Macbeth's eventually becomes a "sanguinary tyrant" because "his actions lose all purpose and are transformed into the blind fury of one doomed to destruction, who is resolved to destroy beforehand all he can reach." Sigmund Freud, "Some Character-Types Met With in Psycho-Analytic Work"(1915) in Collected Papers , trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Basic Books, 1959), 328-33.
7.
The literature here is immense, see, however, E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Macmillan , 1944); Stephan Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); The Essays in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Johathan Dollimore and Allan Sinfield (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), esp. Greenblatt's "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion"; Deborah K. Shugar, Political Theologies in Shakespeare's England: The Sacred and the State in Measure for Measure (Houndmills, UK: Houndmills Palgrave, 2001), and, although not specifically concerned with Shakespeare, Debora K Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and Dominant Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
8.
Likewise missing are Lady Macbeth's, "Hell is murky" V, 1, 36. There are many such "secularizations" of the language of the original. Thus, in I, 2: 47: Ross greets his sovereign, "God save the king." In Davenant's, Macduff speaks the part, "Long live the king." D, I, 2, 47. Any interpretation of Davenant's Macbeth centered on words substituted, as Richard Kroll was careful to note, must be made in light of Davenant's charge-as a part of the royal patent he wrote assigning himself and Thomas Killigrew-to "reform" the earlier play's language. Such "reforms" should be read as not merely as fulfilling Charles II's purposes, but Davenant's as well. Richard Kroll, "Emblem and Empiricism in Davenant's Macbeth," ELH, 57 (1990): 835-64.
9.
If husbands can be purchased at market, "Then," he replies, "you'll buy'em to sell again." This is more than a plea not to disown his father. He inverts the moral hierarchy implicit in his mother disdain for Macduff. He reduces her, as buyer, to the same debased status as the goods for which she might shop. If she can use the market, she must also be of the market.
10.
Politics, Book I, 13, and 1277b16-25; 1313b33-39.
11.
In IV, 3 Malcolm falsely confesses, in detail, that he is the very opposite of all the attributes of good kingship. When Macduff's resolve to return to miserable Scotland and assist Malcolm breaks, Malcolm confesses the lie of his first confession. Macduff thereby passes Malcolm's test. Space limitations do not permit a comparison of Davenant's equivalent (D, IV, 3), other than to note that in the Folio Malcolm is permitted to articulate the high (strong ontological) ideals of kingship in reverse and at length, whereas in Davenant's play this opportunity is entirely forgone.
12.
Mary Edmond, "Davenant, Sir William (1606-1668)," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Rare Sir William Davenant: Poet Laureate, Playwright, Civil War General, Restoration Theatre Manager (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press, 1987), 195. The other major biographies are: Arthur Nethercot, Sir William D'avenant: Poet, Laureate and Playwright-Manager (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1938); Alfred Harbage, Sir William Davenant, Poet Venturer, 1606-1668 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935).
13.
Public Records Office, London, manuscript SP29/8/1. Allardyce Nicoll, A History of Restoration Drama: 1660-1700 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1923), esp. 268, and "The Rights of Beeston and D'Avenant in Elizabethan Plays ," The Review of English Studies, 1 (1925): 84-91.
14.
William Davenant , Poem to the King's Most Sacred Majesty (London: 1663), esp. 7: Victors by conqu'ring Realms are not secure; Nor seem of any thing, but hatred sure. A king who conquers Minds does so improve The Conquer'd that they still the Victor love. How can You rest where Pow'r is still alarm'd: Each Crowd a Faction, and each Faction arm'd?
15.
The Restoration stage in general, "marks a desperate reactionary attempt after the English Civil War to reinscribe feudal, aristocratic, monarchical ideology," J. Douglas Canfield, Heroes & States: On the Ideology of Restoration Tragedy (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2000), 1. Cf. Derek Hughes, English Drama, 1660-1700 ( Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Susan Owen, Restoration Theater in Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Nancy Kline Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660-1671 (Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
16.
Tim Harris , Politics under the Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society 1660-1715 (New York: Longman, 1993) 35, 54-65.
17.
See Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts, and, for example, the common point of these two very different perspectives: William Walwyn, God Save the King, or a Sermon of Thanksgiving for His Majesties Happy Return to the Throne ( London, 1660); Anon.The Army's Declaration: being a true alarum in answer to . . . a member of that destable [sic] Rump( London: 1660).
18.
Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts, 27-33; and London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press , 1987); Paul Seward, The Restoration (Houndmills , UK: Houndmills Macmillian, 1991 ), 1-10. See also Jonathan Scott , England's Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), which places the Restoration in broader contexts.
19.
Kroll, " Emblem and Empiricism"; Hughes, English Drama, 1660-1700, 127; Maguire , Regicide and Restoration, 97.
20.
Ronald Hutton, "Monck, George, First Duke of Albemarle (1608-1670)," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18939 (accessed September 26, 2007).
21.
Sir William Davenant, A Panegyrick to His Excellency, The Lord Generall Monck ( London: [1660]). The copy in the British Library is annotated "March 24."
22.
Paul Seaward, The Restoration (London: MacMillan , 1991), 46; Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts, 32. Charles II's liberty to tender consciousness was announced in his declaration from Breda, April, 1660. Monck was seeking toleration for Presbyterians, not for those of more radical sects. Hutton, "Monck, George."
23.
Sir William Davenant, Poem upon His Majesties Most Happy Return to His Dominions (London: 1660).
24.
Ronald Hutton , The Restoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 125-84. See Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts, on the Act of Oblivion, summary of the Corporation Act of 1661, the 1662 Act of Uniformity, 1662 Quaker Act, Conventicle Act of 1664, and the Five Mile Act of 1665. Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts, 39-41. See also Seaward, The Restoration, 36-7, and also, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime, 1661-1667 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), for the resentment generated by the Act itself.
25.
Davenant, Poem to the King's Most Sacred Majesty, 10. See also Davenant, Poem upon His Majesties Most Happy Return.
26.
Richard Allestry[Allestree], A Sermon Preached in St. Peters's Westminister on Sunday Jan 6, 1660 (London: 1660), 37. Allestree was Canon of Christ Church Oxford, and a Chaplain to Charles II.
27.
Gilbert Sheldon , David's Deliverance and Thanksgiving: A Sermon Preached before the King . . . June 28, 1660, (London: 1660). On Sheldon's importance in seeing orthodoxy enforced see John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1649-1689 (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1991), esp. 48-61; Hutton, The Restoration, 176-77; R.A. Beddard, "Sheldon and the Anglican Recovery" (review article), The Historical Journal, 19 (1976): 1005-17; For a general picture, see Seaward, The Restoration, chap. 3, esp. 44-47.
28.
Walwyn, God Save the King , esp. 4-5.
29.
Hutton, The Restoration, 166-80; Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 50; on Davenant, Edmond, Rare Sir William Davenant, 103, who tentatively follows Anthony Wood's lead in making him a convert. Harbage, Sir William Davenant, Poet Venturer, 104-06, casts doubt. Both authors and others (Gladish, "Introduction") find a skeptic, and possibly a Deist in Davenant.
30.
Davenant, Poem to the King's Most Sacred Majesty, 1-2.
31.
Ibid., 6.
32.
Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 42-61.
33.
Deborah Paine Fiske, "The Restoration Actress" in A Companion to Restoration Drama, ed. Susan J Owen ( Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 69-91, esp. 88.
34.
Censured political conduct and female characters that transgress and are often connected in Restoration Theater (Owen, Restoration Theater in Crisis). An unruly woman may be linked to an unruly subject, or commonwealth. See Lady Macbeth's ex post lament in D, IV, 4, 53-57, for example. Lady Macduff is more complex. She is Lady Macbeth's opposite, but unsympathetic. In the political macrocosm she is therefore not unlike the orthodox Anglicans. They too claim a husband (Charles II) as a part of their formerly "divided soul:" state church and monarch. As the play develops, exaggerated pleas for family values may parallel this faction's overbearing expectations.
35.
"I am afraid you have some other end, Than merely Scotland's freedom to defend. You'd raise your self, whilst you wou'd him dethrone; And shake his Greatness, to confirm you own. (17-20)
36.
Roger L'Estrange was soon to become an even more vigorous and vindictive conservative propagandist, but he was more generous in his praise of Monck. During his ascent he could, nevertheless, express similar suspicions to Lady Macduff's. See, For His Excellency Gen. Monck (London, 1660 ) [annotated 1659].
37.
See, for example, John Dauncey, An Exact History of the Several Changes of government in England . . . (London, 1660); esp. sig, A4, 335, 359, 370, 376-8, 384-6; Francis Walsall, The Bowing of the Hearts of Subjects to their Sovereign, . . . Preached 24th of May, 1660 (London: 1660), esp. 19-20. See also, Anon ("F.G."), Advise to a Friend Discontented at Some Proceedings in His Majesties Royall Court (London: 1660), which pleads on behalf of the compromising spirit.
38.
Sheldon, David's Deliverance and Thanksgiving.
39.
Eikón basiliké , The Pourtracture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings (London, 1649 ).
40.
Maguire, Regicide and Restoration , 13-42.
41.
"[H]e delivers by them if you will; and he too without them when he will; no Means too weak with him, none strong enough without him." Sheldon, David's Deliverance and Thanksgiving, 17.
42.
Compare this to the very different logic of Anon, The Deliverer in a Panegyric Spoken to His Excelency [sic] General Monck at Skinner Hall on Wednesday, April 4th (London: 1660 ).
43.
Sheldon speaks of allowing "State-Atheists" to sit on King's council, and likens these to the Priests and Pharisees referenced in John 11:47. With this he now inverts the narrative linking Stuart-Kings to Christ, and links their compromises with nonconformists with his persecutors. See Sheldon, David's Deliverance and Thanksgiving. He may have been referring to Presbyterians who sat in high office, including Monck's own position as captain-general of the army, the lord Chamberlin, and the infamous Lord Ashley (later Earl of Shafestbury) as chancellor of the exchequer. Seaward, The Restoration, 37.
44.
...to shew To Future Ages what to those is due, Who others Right, by Lawless Power pursue. (D, V. 9, 32-34) The bodies of Charles I's regicide suffered similar treatment; Hutton, The Restoration , 134.
45.
Ibid., 41-42.
46.
Davenant's revision is therefore much more radical than that of Polanski who, in his (film) version of Macbeth closes with a return to the witches who seem to promise more trouble down the road.
47.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol. 8, ed. Robert Latham and William Mathews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970-1983), 7 (January 7, 1667).
48.
Cf. Maguire, Regicide and Restoration, 42, 79, on the Restoration's (and Restoration playwright's) need for multiple perspectives and how this was reflected in the dominance of tragicomedy during this period.
49.
Gianni Vattimo, "Postmodernity, Technology, Ontology" in Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, & Law, ed. Santiago Zabala, trans. William McCuaig ( New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). White finds affinities between his preferred weak ontology and the "weak thinking" Vattimo references in his early work. White, Sustaining Affirmation, 7 n 10. Vattimo's project for an "accomplished nihilism" rooted in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger was articulated earlier in Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture, trans. Jon R. Snyder (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1988 [1985]). Vattimo's recent work illustrates more dedicated attention to metaphysical violence, and a more urgent and plaintive formulation concerning its reduction.
50.
Davenant, Poem upon His Majesties Most Happy Return, 3-4.
51.
See also Davenant, Sir William Davenant's Gondibert, 59-60 [Book I, i, § 3-7]. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Space does not permit a full exploration of Davenant's understanding of the role of the sovereign who decides the exception. An exploration of his securing of the patents for the theater companies in London, however, reveals that he did not merely articulate this doctrine but also tried to put it to use in the world. Davenant and Killigrew's monopoly was the King's exception. Leslie Hotson, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 197-241, and John Freehafer's revised history of this period, "The Formation of the London Patent Companies in 1660 ," Theatre Notebook20 (1965): 6-30.
See also Vattimo, "Hermeneutics and Democracy," in Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, & Law, ed. Santiago Zabala, 94-5, and 98. Vattimo defines violence as the silencing of the other; this closes the gap from the opposite direction.
54.
Gianni Vattimo , "The Ethics of Provenance," in Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, & Law, ed. Santiago Zabala, 46-7.
