Shakespeare's Universality. Here's Fine Revolution

Ryan, Kiernan. Shakespeare's Universality. Here's Fine Revolution. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. Pp. xvi, 141. ISBN: PB-978-1-4081-8349-6. Price not stated.This new volume in the Bloomsbury Arden Series entitled 'Shakespeare Now', "sets out to reclaim the concept of Shakespeare's universality from the reactionary misconstructions that have been placed on it by conservative and radical critics alike" (emphasis added). Even to 'set out' to achieve that-that too in a slim volume of less than one hundred fifty pages-is a formidable task. In particular, since at least from the late 1980s, the radical critics, who in spite of their mutual differences, have consistently debunked the idea of Shakespeare's universality. For that matter the concept of 'universality' in literature in general is quite justifiably a beleaguered idea in the present critical scenario.In the very first section of the first chapter (which has four sections for a 26-page long chapter), Ryan lists some of his major critical antagonists. As expected, apart from Dennis Kennedy, Leah Marcus and David Scott Kastan-all proponents of contextualizing Shakespeare's 'universal' reception- though Franco Moretti's denouncement is duly noted. This chapter along with the Preface, however, explicitly contextualizes this particular claim of universality with its ambition to distance itself from all historicizing claims. Even such a critic like Jonathan Bate whose position may be considered to be positively reconciliatory in this extremely partisan debate between the textual and contextual approaches is considered as a critical antagonist in this schema. The Preface goes on to call Bate's conclusion that "Shakespeare was supremely attuned to his own historical moment, but never wholly constrained by it" rather conventional and disagrees with Bate that Shakespeare's plays gained their enduring appeal "because they are so various and so open to interpretation, so lacking in dogma" (xiii). Instead, Ryan proposes a positive thesis that may account for the "true source and significance of Shakespeare's universality" by understanding "the perspective from which they [Shakespeare's plays] are depicted and from which we are invited to view them" that may also help us to "understand the power that Shakespeare's dramatic art possesses to keep the dream of revolutionary transformation alive" (xiv).Most of the rest of the three chapters are devoted to make this perspective clear with specific textual evidences. A fine balance between close reading of the passages and a clear contextual emphasis makes reading such an analysis an illuminating pleasure. Generally speaking it is also a welcome break from the unfortunate jargon-laden contemporary arcana that often at best adumbrate their stated critical thesis. The wide range of Shakespearean texts that are chosen for close reading includes approximately one-third of Shakespearean canon with all usual suspects in place.The binding argument that dictates the choice and reference to Shakespearean plays in this volume is strictly ordered by two guiding principles: Shakespeare's poetry and play show an extraordinary capacity of subversion of the prevailing order of things and they do that with a supreme assertion of authorial agency. Obviously as the first principle is demonstrated with remarkable success it contradicts the guiding methodology of the volume to underplay the 'contextual' criticism of the new historicist mode. …