| For centuries, audiences have viewed Shakespeare's lower-class characters as simple, comic types---the loyal servants, drunken louts, and naive peasants of lowbrow farce. Scholars and directors alike have missed what is obvious to some: that Shakespeare's "clowns" are representations of early modern poor people, that his portrayals of inter-rank encounters are serious and complex, and that his use of conventional comic roles works to conceal his representation of ongoing, small-scale lower-class resistance.;That subordinated people everywhere routinely resist the control of superiors is a claim of political scientist James C. Scott, who in Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance inventories the "meager arsenal" of resistance tactics employed by Malaysian peasants against their local elite. Scott's definition of class resistance suggests a dynamic relationship between the powerful and the weak, one in which both participate actively, if not equally, in negotiations. The dissertation argues that Scott's theory can be applied to Shakespeare's poor---the fools, peasants, servants and soldiers who populate the margins of Shakespeare's plays---and that the behavior of these simple-seeming characters is not only multi-layered, but rationally motivated within the complex dynamics of early modern class relations.;Three plays are chosen to illustrate lower-class resistance in operation. In The Taming of the Shrew, Grumio and Christopher Sly---two characters commonly seen as mere types---use a variety of covert resistance tactics against their masters. In King Lear, the witty, pragmatic Fool leaves in act three, not---as most critics surmise---because he lacks fortitude, or because he becomes superfluous to the plot, but because as a poor man he cannot otherwise survive. In 2 Henry VI, the comically violent depiction of Jack Cade and his rebellion succeeds in obscuring individual, everyday acts of resistance being carried out on stage, as well as---we are invited to presume---in Shakespeare's London.;Taken together, such ways of interpreting Shakespeare's poor constitute---as the conclusion argues---a working-class perspective: a critical position that views Shakespeare's plays through the lens of working-class experience, adding depth and interpretive value to characters critics have for centuries largely demeaned and dismissed. |
