Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality: Unfinished Business in Cultural Materialism (review)

Why does Shakespeare continue to be read, discussed, taught, performed—and why should critical theorists care? While theory has been vitally engaged in questions of agency and subjectivity, elsewhere, Shakespeare is often still studied with a disregard for new perspectives on race, gender, and sexuality. If educators are often reluctant to enter into debate of issues that are commonplace in critical theory, then we are well reminded how limited the impact and effects of theory can be. And, if this is true, how do students learn the skills in the classroom to interrogate conservative readings of Shakespeare, especially relating to matters of gender or race, when so many educators continue to embrace conventional readings, and the mainstream literary canon retains its commitment to texts from a largely white male authorship? Alan Sinfield’s recent study Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality poses precisely this question, asking whether cultural producers will ever escape ideological complicity with the status quo when senior colleagues in English continue to look for an ideal collaboration of writer and ruler (43). Sinfield suggests that we focus on dissident readings that question “agency and the dominant ideology; author; reader; interventions; and gender and sexuality” (6). Although Sinfield’s central preoccupation is a reassessment of problems within cultural materialism, his strategies and argument for “reading against the grain” (15) are valuable to all theoretical positions and practices, especially those presented in the literary studies classroom.