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Provincial Shakespeare
Donald Wolfit, Marginality, and The Merry Wives of Windsor
in Critical Survey
Author:
Christopher Marlow
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5278-6039
Christopher Marlow
University of Lincoln, UK cmarlow@lincoln.ac.uk
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Abstract
With reference to aspects of the career of the twentieth-century actor-manager Donald Wolfit and the use of the concept of provincialism in English criticism, this article argues that idealist and universalist values are repeatedly valorised in order to devalue materialist and what might be called ‘provincial’ interpretations of Shakespeare's plays. I pay attention to conditions of production of early modern drama in the sixteenth century, and to Wolfit's Second World War performances of Shakespeare, the reception of which is offered as evidence for the persistence of a critical prejudice against what is understood as provincial marginality. The article concludes with a reading of The Merry Wives of Windsor that argues that the play supports the provincial values that have so often been dismissed by critics.
Contributor Notes
Dr Christopher Marlow is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research deals primarily with Shakespeare and early modern literature, and he is particularly interested in masculinity, friendship, sexuality and theory. He is the author of Performing Masculinity in English University Drama, 1598–1636 (Ashgate, 2013) and Shakespeare and Cultural Materialist Theory (Bloomsbury/Arden Shakespeare, 2017). Christopher has also published on Margaret Cavendish, William Cartwright and Doctor Who. Email: cmarlow@lincoln.ac.uk. ORCID