Abstract
There are no Jewish characters or developed Jewish subjects in any of Austen’s novels or fragments. Despite this absence, there is an intriguing if oblique connection in her letters: in March of 1814, just as she had finished a draft of Mansfield Park, Jane Austen comments on Edmund Kean, who had debuted in the role of Shylock on 26 January 1814 at Drury Lane. Visiting London in March, Austen refers to the great ‘rage for seeing Keen [sic]’ that she shares, and then comments again on Kean’s ‘exquisite acting’ after she sees him. But the question remains: Why was she so affected by Kean’s rendition of Shylock?
This question guides the present chapter. This chapter suggests that, having completed Mansfield Park, in which Fanny Price begins life as a kind of outcast, Austen was particularly susceptible to a play about Shylock, the dispossessed Jew. Moreover, Kean’s performance of Shylock (as simultaneously sympathetic, monstrous and fascinating) brought out seemingly contradictory, complex responses to Otherness in Austen, as well as in her contemporaries, such as Hazlitt. Her response gives us insight into the creation of Mansfield Park.
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- 1.
See Janine Barchas and Kristina Straub’s commentary on the Folger exhibition, Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity in Shakespeare & Beyond: https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2016/08/12/jane-austen-william-shakespeare/.
- 2.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (ed. Marilyn Butler. New York: Penguin Books, 1995).
- 3.
In my book Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture, I analyse the representation of Jews in the work of many of Austen’s contemporaries—such as Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt—but I did not consider Austen. This essay will fill in that gap. Representation of Jewish characters is not a frequent occurrence in the Christian writers of the period, but, as I argue in the book, there are notable examples and the representation of Jews and other minorities tells us a great deal about the prejudices and values of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.
- 4.
The letters in question are numbers 97 and 98 in Deidre le Faye, Jane Austen’s Letters (New York: Oxford University Press), 2–3 March and 5–8 March 1814. I also refer to letter 99 of 9 March 1814; see 255–62. Cited hereafter as Letters.
- 5.
Letters, 256.
- 6.
Letters, 258.
- 7.
Paula Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre (New York: Hambledon & London, 2002), 203.
- 8.
Penny Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 20, 22.
- 9.
For an interesting recent take on the comic source of the theatricals in the novel, see Sayre Greenfield, ‘The Source for the Theatricals of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: A Discovery’, Persuasions 38 (2016): 197–204. Web. 4 January 2018.
- 10.
Nina Auerbach, ‘Jane Austen’s Dangerous Charm: Feeling as One Ought about Fanny Price’ (1983; rpt. Mansfield Park. Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Claudia Johnson. New York: Norton, 1998), 447.
- 11.
In considering Fanny Price as an alienated figure in Mansfield Park, readers may also want to consult postcolonial readings and responses to the text. See, for instance, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s ‘Austen in the World: Postcolonial Mappings’, in The Postcolonial Jane Austen, ed. You-me Park and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), and Susan Fraiman’s ‘Jane Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture, and Imperialism’, in Jane Austen’s Disciples and Devotees, ed. Deidre Lynch. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000).
- 12.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Claudia Johnson. New York: Norton, 1998). Page references cited parenthetically in the text.
- 13.
Many writers have noted Kean’s legendary status and the difficulty of separating theatrical legend from the facts of Kean’s life and performance history. See, for instance, Donahue, Hillebrand, Kahan and Page, Imperfect Sympathies, especially 54–73. In the context of acting in the period, Thomson also makes this point (‘Acting and Actors from Garrick to Kean’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830, ed. Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007 [12–13]).
- 14.
William Hazlitt, The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, 21 vols. Ed. P. P. Howe, after A. P. Waller and Arnold Glover. (New York: ASM Press, 1967), 5:179.
- 15.
Hazlitt, The Complete Works, 5:180.
- 16.
Hazlitt, The Complete Works, 5:179.
- 17.
In this essay Hazlitt argues for the civil emancipation of the Jews based on his belief that the sympathetic imagination would triumph over the old myths and stereotypes associated with the Jewish people. For a more extended analysis, see Imperfect Sympathies, 46–51.
- 18.
Hazlitt, The Complete Works, 4:320.
- 19.
Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre, 53.
- 20.
Letters, 257.
- 21.
Letters, 258.
- 22.
Charles Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1878), 110.
- 23.
My text for The Merchant of Venice is the Folger Shakespeare Library edition, edited by Mowat and Werstine.
- 24.
William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, 5 vols, ed. Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940–1949), 2:513.
- 25.
The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, 3 vols. ed. W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 1800 Preface; Prose Works 1:146.
- 26.
Julie A. Carlson, ‘On Point’, in Minimal Romanticism, David L. Clark and Jacques Khalip. Romantic Circles Praxis Series.
- 27.
Carlson, ‘On Point’, 228.
- 28.
Peter Thomson, ‘Acting and Actors from Garrick to Kean’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830, ed. Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 13.
- 29.
M. M. Mahood, Introduction and editorial notes. The Merchant of Venice (The New Cambridge Shakespeare. London: Cambridge University Press), 1996.
- 30.
Barbara Benedict, “Jewels, Bonds and the Body”, 103.
- 31.
Hazlitt, The Complete Works, 4:322.
- 32.
F. W. Hawkins, quoted in Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre, 54.
- 33.
Elmer Edgar Stoll, ‘Shylock’. Shakespeare Studies: Historical and Comparative in Method (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960), 312.
- 34.
Mahood, ‘Introduction and editorial notes’, 112.
- 35.
John Russell Brown. ‘The Realisation of Shylock: A Theatrical Criticism’, Early Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 3. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), 187–203, 203–4.
- 36.
Stoll, ‘Shylock’, 318.
- 37.
Jackson Campbell Boswell, ‘Shylock’sTurquoise Ring’, Shakespeare Quarterly14:4 (Autumn 1963): 481–3, 482.
- 38.
Quoted in Boswell, ‘Shylock’s Turquoise Ring’, 481.
- 39.
Shylock’s noble attachment to the turquoise ring, because of its association with his beloved wife, contrasts with Bassanio and Gratiano’s questionable willingness to give up their respective rings in Act 4. There is also the point that the turquoise ring is central to the Tubal scene—and that Austen herself owned and was apparently attached to a turquoise ring. When this ring was put up for sale recently, it was the subject of media interest because American pop singer Kelly Clarkson first bought the ring, which was then re-purchased so that it would remain in England as a national treasure on display at Chawton Cottage. Like Shylock’s ring, this ring signified great value beyond its monetary worth. Austen did not write about her ring or the possible connection to the ring in The Merchant of Venice, but it is nonetheless interesting that the most affecting scene in the play for her involves just such a ring. See Tony Grant’s blog post for commentary and speculation on Austen’s turquoise ring: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/the-saga-of-jane-austens-ring-and-the-american-connection/.
- 40.
See also Grace Tiffany’s novel The Turquoise Ring (New York: Berkley Books, 2005) for a contemporary take on the emblematic and mysterious possibilities of the turquoise in The Merchant of Venice. I thank James Shapiro for this reference.
- 41.
Mary Shelley saw Kean play Shylock on 11 February 1817, when she was revising Frankenstein (The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814–1844,ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, 164). There are obvious echoes of Shylock’s ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’ speech and his call for revenge in the creature’s speech in Frankenstein: ‘I am malicious because I am miserable; am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? … I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly toward you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred’ (Journals, 117). In relation to my argument of the Romantic strangeness that Austen embraces, see Clara Tuite’s Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Here the author focuses not so much on the relationship to other Romantic authors, but on what she sees as Austen’s subversive qualities. For a more direct connection to Romantic writers, see William Deresiewicz’s Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
- 42.
Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre, 103.
- 43.
See Keats’s letter of Sunday, 21 December 1817, for his comments on ‘Negative Capability’, which he frames in terms of Kean’s acting. I discuss this connection in chapter 3 of Imperfect Sympathies, 71 and passim. In a letter of 21 December 1817, Keats refers to ‘Negative Capability’ as a state in which ‘a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’, a state of mind and being that he identifies with the poet as opposed to the scientist or philosopher. See John Keats, Selected Letters of John Keats (Rev. edn. Grant F. Scott. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 59–60.
- 44.
Sir Walter Scott follows the same pattern in Ivanhoe. See Michael Galchinsky,The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), and Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: The Jewish Question and English National Identity. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995) for extended discussions of Ivanhoe as a reinterpretation of The Merchant of Venice.
- 45.
Letters, 256.
- 46.
Byrne , Jane Austen and the Theatre, 53.
- 47.
We can get a taste of Fanny’s character and her relationship to Aunts Jane and Cassandra from references peppered throughout Jane Austen’s letters. Deirdre le Faye notes that ‘JA and her niece Fanny had a nonsense language between themselves, putting a P in front of everyword’, and Fanny had written a letter to her aunt in the character of Miss Darcy (Letters, 403 and 417).
- 48.
The OED notes the derivation of the word from the Latin ex-quaere˘re, to search out.
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Page, J.W. (2019). Shylock’s Turquoise Ring: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park and the‘Exquisite Acting’ of Edmund Kean. In: Cano, M., García-Periago, R. (eds) Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25689-0_10
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