> But - those who heard the broadcast - wasn't there a sleight of hand in
his
> argument? He started by asking for a polyphonic reading of Shakespeare,
but
> ended by arguing for a single interpretation of the key scene of
Coriolanus
I don't know that a reading of the polyphony of Shakespeare's language would
necessarily imply the possibility of multiple interpretations. The point
seemed to be that the language itself bears witness to what none of the
speakers speaking it can quite bring themselves to know or recognize.
Polyphony isn't quite the same as ambiguity or polysemy; I think it's more
like an orchestral score - it has many parts, but one doesn't choose which
part to play - the different voices are simultaneous, and work to a combined
effect. Of course, multiple interpretations of that effect are possible
(else what are conductors / directors for?); but it isn't the polyphonic
texture that makes them so.
> (where C is persuaded by his mother) and caricaturing as sentimental the
> response that C is right to give in to maternal pressure.
> I think that
> Shakespeare leaves both ethical possibilities open, and the power of the
> scene comes precisely from the incompatibility of the two responses. By
> arguing purely for the tough Roman virtues, Hill runs the risk of reducing
> the scene to something less complex.
Perhaps he's suggesting that the language itself arbitrates between two
incompatible responses; that it contains the "complexity" of different
"ethical" possibilities, but also enacts its own judgement - which is where
the real "ethics" happens - on the "sentimentality" of the one as well as
the "toughness" of the other. I didn't find that Hill was "arguing purely
for the tough Roman virtues", since as he points out their embodiment in C
is a kind of petulance and unawareness. C's problem is that he can either be
the "killing machine" he is deterministically programmed to be, or he can be
"infected" by sentimentality: his inability to be someone who could resist
both his mother and his programming, who could embody a discriminating adult
virtue instead of a childish petulance vulnerable - at the crucial point -
to sentimental appeals, is what the language of the play reveals.
I may be relieved that C does not destroy the city, but I also believe that
he refrains from doing so for the wrong reasons: that instead of forging a
true compromise, he allows himself to be compromised...
- Dom
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