SHAKESPEARE’S CONTINUITY (Hard Cover)

SHAKESPEARE’S CONTINUITY Dianne Hunter.
The Edwin Mellon Press. Lewiston, N.Y. 2026
What images return/O my daughter-T.S.Eliot “Marina”
Reviewed by: Anselm Parlatore M.D.
This is a valuable, informative, and visionary book and a work of scholarship and research. It is also a very humane and entertaining book, often offering tidbits of a sly, ironic humor and warmth.
Dr. Hunter’s grasp and command and encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare allows for a many faceted elucidation of many of the plays but also of English history, mainly crucially important details from the Elizabethan through the Jacobean periods, the Tudor-Stuart transition, with an aim to detail the evolution of the English national character, and also reveals a sensitive and loving textural analysis prompting many startling visionary excursions into stimulating discussions of Shakespeare’s “continuity”, meaning the remarkable transition from a phase of “oedipal and fratricidal conflicts” in the early history and tragedies to a preservative grace in the later romances, witness to a period of emergence of the sisters and daughters.
Dr. Hunter’s clear and precise prose helps convincingly explain “the price of patriarchy” and, thankfully, the later daughters as “guardians of heritage” that reveal a previously little disclosed vulnerability and need of Shakespeare, The daughters-“they inspire paternal creativity.” Issues of genealogy and heritage preoccupied Shakespeare throughout this career and life. Dr. Hunter states, “Shakespeare’s future was female.” Her tracing of the astounding evolution and changes in the character of Ophelia serves as one example of how this healing was inevitable. A revealing discussion of the importance played of masques is undertaken given the detailed treatment always in view of Elizabeth’s passing. It was interesting and sobering to be reminded that when Shakespeare was in the process of changing the existing English language and creating a new and vital language with new words and phrases, that there still was no dictionary available or compiled. Dr. Hunter aptly states, “So, Shakespeare is the English language.”
The first chapter offers a stimulating, visionary discussion and review of the Celtic forces and especially ancient Welsh poetry, the occult and magic, the unconscious and creative forces, the “violent heterosexual yoking” and the “latent oral/primal scene fusion fantasy” . For example, Dr. Hunter’s invoking much of the later essence of Matthew Arnold, at this juncture, proved uniquely appropriate, given issues of “natural magic,” melancholy, “latent primal scenes” and “oral fusion fantasies.” A detailed view of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is undertaken. In chapter two the book’s understanding of hysteria proved not only clinically sound but inspiring, especially Dr. Hunter’s comment, “linguistic expression and gender are interdependent and how their interdependency is central to the ordering of literary form” is thoroughly explored. Dr. Hunter further explains, “These shifting, problematic, split gender identities and character splits are not only at the core of what could be regarded as unconscious fantasy, but they also define the drama’s manifold structuring design.’ This chapter ends with an intoxicating discussion of the importance of the ear as an admonishing organ, vis a vis attending the plays and especially how its symbolic importance is woven through Hamlet. Much of this chapter reveals a detailed reading of Hamlet in view of the ongoing evolution of the character of Ophelia. As a glancing overview of the chapter reveals a contextual acknowledgement of contributions from Pliny, Stanley Cavell, H.D., Virginia Woolf, and others.
In chapter three Macbeth is discussed as a patriarchal myth. There is a lengthy and succinct unraveling of much of René Girard’s theories and also the importance of the psychohistory found in ancient Scottish legends, always keeping Shakespeare’s plays in mind. With Macbeth especially in focus, the chapter terminates with a consideration of insights such as “the net result of these blurrings of traditional gender categories and crossings of identification is the construction of a single composite entity simultaneously impotent, mad, and monstrous.” Chapter four explores issues of banishment and dispossession in Timon of Athens and Timon is seen as a master of invective in a convincing expose. Dr. Hunter also mentions the importance of dogs in Shakespeare and mentions “fawning, licking, melting, and excrement run throughout Shakespeare’s drama.” One is not likely to encounter such statements in other similarly devoted critical analysis. Chapter five dedicates much to a further elaboration and development of the vision, and even metaphysics of the pattern of continuity through the daughter(s) into and through the late romances. The book pays close attention never to abandon its dedication to elucidating the dynamic quality, importance, and vectors of this evolution. There is a revealing expository treatment, at this point, of Twelfth Night. Highlighting the above dynamic concern is a sensitive detailing of the death of Shakespeare’s father, and more importantly, the death of his twin son Hamnet, given the ongoing elucidation of issues of heritage and biological, genetic continuity, especially, as mentioned, the ongoing continuity through the female(s)…father-daughter, perseverative relationships and dependence.
Chapter six invokes a more contemporary illustrative example by revealing the dynamic between Ted Hughes and his daughter Frieda! Daughters as healers, with issues of continuity and survival are highlighted. The “miraculous daughters of the late plays”, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and “The Tempest. Perdita, Prosperpina, Marina, Imogen, Miranda, all are present in the discussion. There is also a revealing reading, in this connection, of All’s Well That Ends Well.
Chapter seven and eight again continue the illuminating expository treatment and devotion by Dr. Hunter to Ophelia. Among many other things she serves as an example of what Dr. Hunter states, “Shakespeare’s famous young madwoman evolves with the history of gender psychology, showing how gender differences and images of femininity are constantly being renegotiated and reinterpreted as historical conditions change.” Dr. Hunter was a student of Norman Holland at the University of Buffalo and she distills much, in an objective and unbiased approach, of his ground breaking and seminal critical insights, and the reader benefits much from her historical perspective and also Dr. Hunter’s contemporary sense of irony and humor, as previously mentioned. The reader learns, for example, things about the famous drink, Drambuie, Marianne Faithful, Brian Jones, and a host of TV, stages and screen icons, even up through Kate Winslet! and also a revealing review and critique of how the movies illustrated, and distorted much of Shakespeare and his characters over the decades, for example, the films of Zeffirelli and Branagh. For example, Dr. Hunter states, Branagh “suppresses the gender ambiguity of Hamlet.”
There is much more to quote in this magisterial book (OED: “showing authority”) but a final point should be made: it is evident to the reader that the exquisitely rendered critical analysis presented to the fortunate reader by Dr. Hunter not only informs and delights but reveals a joy in expository and visionary excursions and, unlike most tomes of angry or hostile feminist literary criticism, her book proves, without a doubt, Dr. Hunter’s own excitement and joy in sharing this marvelous body of knowledge. Anselm Parlatore M.D. is a psychiatrist. He has taught and been an instructor on the faculty of Columbia College of Physician & Surgeons, Dartmouth Medical School, and lastly, previously Associate Professor SUNY @ Stoney Brook.

Introduction
A Moving Center of Gravity
Chapter I
Cultural Politics of Fantasy
Chapter II
Histrionic Impasse Chapter III
Female Power
Chapter IV
Soul of an Age
Chapter V
Continuity through the Daughter
Chapter VI
Miraculous Daughters Chapter VII
Ophelia’s Progress Chapter VIII
Recognizing the Shakespearean
References
About the Author
Index

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