Shakespeare and the Power of the Face

James A. Knapp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317056379
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Throughout his plays, Shakespeare placed an extraordinary emphasis on the power of the face to reveal or conceal moral character and emotion, repeatedly inviting the audience to attend carefully to facial features and expressions. The essays collected here disclose that an attention to the power of the face in Shakespeare's England helps explain moments when Shakespeare's language of the self becomes intertwined with his language of the face. As the range of these essays demonstrates, an attention to Shakespeare's treatment of faces has implications for our understanding of the historical and cultural context in which he wrote, as well as the significance of the face for the ongoing interpretation and production of the plays. Engaging with a variety of critical strands that have emerged from the so-called turn to the body, the contributors to this volume argue that Shakespeare's invitation to look to the face for clues to inner character is not an invitation to seek a static text beneath an external image, but rather to experience the power of the face to initiate reflection, judgment, and action. The evidence of the plays suggests that Shakespeare understood that this experience was extremely complex and mysterious. By turning attention to the face, the collection offers important new analyses of a key feature of Shakespeare's dramatic attention to the part of the body that garnered the most commentary in early modern England. By bringing together critics interested in material culture studies with those focused on philosophies of self and other and historians and theorists of performance, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face constitutes a significant contribution to our growing understanding of attitudes towards embodiment in Shakespeare's England.

PART I
Powerful Faces

Chapter 1
“Thy face is mine”: Faces and Fascination in Shakespeare’s Plays

Sibylle Baumbach

Faces in Shakespeare’s plays exert an irresistible attraction: they enthrall, enrapture, and enchant. They demand the immediate attention of both other characters and the audience by their bewildering, dangerous, or seductive looks. The androgynous appearance of the “three weird sisters” (Macbeth, 2.1.18)¹ with their bearded faces, which resists gender classification (“You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so”) leaves Macbeth “rapt” (1.3.43–5, 141). In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Helena accuses Hermia of having enthralled Demetrius with her beauty, especially by the power of her eyes, which Helena likens to “lodestars” (1.1.183), whereupon Hermia promises that “[h]e no more shall see my face” (1.1.202), as she is about to elope with Lysander. And the face of Cleopatra, the “serpent of old Nile” (1.5.25), whose “tawny front” (1.1.6) serves as title page to her “infinite variety” (2.2.241), has lured Antony away from Rome, and remains “catching” even beyond her death. As Octavius Caesar observes in the final scene of Antony and Cleopatra: “she looks like sleep, / As she would catch another Antony” (5.2.336–7). It is especially female faces, and above all women’s eyes, to which are attributed mesmerizing powers that originate in magic, love, or envy—powers that verge on early modern notions of fascination.

Shakespeare’s plays are replete with references to the human face, engaging their audience in a multilayered discourse on the art of physiognomy.² These references reveal a fascination with faces, driven by various trends and fashions of the time. First, they can be read as a response to an increasing interest in physiognomic discourse, which regarded human beings as decipherable documents. Second, they can be regarded as a reaction to the rising criticism and even censure of the art of face-reading, which drew attention to the manipulative quality of the human face that could be shaped according to one’s wit and will. And third, they might also be read as reflecting an increasing awareness of the possibility of self-fashioning and the skillful use of facial rhetoric. By affording a venue for exploring the powers of the human face, Shakespeare’s theater offered an arena for circulating and contesting physiognomic knowledge and thus became all the more compelling for an audience already sensitized to the versatility and manipulative quality of the countenance.

Shakespeare’s interest in the power of the human face, however, does not end here. As I will show, the controversy surrounding physiognomic discourse, the performative qualities of the human face, and the potentially perilous quality of performance, are interwoven with both a desire for and an anxiety of fascination—a dangerously captivating appeal, which, in Shakespeare’s plays, is associated with the power of the face, especially the eyes. In this context, the face becomes a contested object of both desire and dread, of repulsion and attraction. Before turning to the fascination with faces, I will briefly sketch Shakespeare’s art of physiognomy, which is designed to draw the audience’s attention to the power of the human face. Hence it provides the foundation for the intense focus on facial rhetoric, which, in its most extreme form, embodies early modern discourses of fascination.

Shakespeare’s Art of Physiognomy

Shakespeare’s plays are suffused with physiognomic knowledge in the broadest sense of the term, i.e. with both static (strictly speaking “physiognomic”) and movable (strictly “pathognomic”) features of the human face, which suggest specific character traits that can be deciphered by careful observation.³ In Shakespeare’s drama, practices of (self-)fashioning and deciphering (other) characters through careful scrutinization of their faces and their “engraved” messages are staged as dramatic acts where two characters are opposed onstage, facing each other.

Providing an opportunity for immediate characterization on stage, face-to-face encounters allow inferences by both the “reader” and his or her “document”: they might point out specific features in a character, scrutinize or underscore the attentiveness or skillfulness of the reader, as well as disclose some information about the agenda that has informed the face-reading. In any case, the focus on specific aspects of the human face serves to fix the audience’s attention to a focal point that might allow conflicting readings. Therefore, all face-readings that are performed onstage simultaneously serve as a means to activate the audience, urging them to participate in the physiognomic analysis and possibly add their own readings of the faces presented.

Drawing on popular notions of physiognomic knowledge circulating at the time—including Thomas Hill’s The Contemplation of Mankinde (1571), Giambattista Della Porta’s De Humana Physiognomonia (1586), and also Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde (1601)—Shakespeare’s plays deeply engage in the question of how faces are constructed, conveyed, and perceived, how they are formed, read, interpreted, and also manipulated.⁴ As confirmed by these physiognomic manuals, the success of face-readings depends on a deep awareness of both the eloquence of the human countenance and its manipulative quality. The latter even strengthened the need for physiognomic expertise, as this “lawdable science”⁵ offered a means for deciphering foul play.

Whenever faces are scrutinized, read, or misread as part of the dramatic action, the audience is not only reminded of the basic rules of performance, which govern the various stages (social, courtly, political, theatrical) of life; by disclosing the rules of play, Shakespeare’s drama also sensitizes them to the “art / Of physiognomy” (The Rape of Lucrece, 1394–5), to both the artistry of reading and the artifice of the human face, thereby enhancing their physiognomic knowledge.

Faces and face-readings in Shakespeare fulfill a broad spectrum of functions. First, faces serve as a key medium of identification. In Hamlet, the prince seeks to confirm the ghost’s identity by enquiring of the watchmen about its appearance, more specifically his face: “Then saw you not his face” (Hamlet, 1.2.226). In the case of Old Hamlet, the visor is lifted, enabling a face-reading that confirms his identity as the deceased king. In the case of young Hamlet, however, it is swiftly shut again, at least metaphorically, when the prince decides to “put an antic disposition on” (1.5.173) in order to protect himself in the courtly panopticon and to devise a play that serves to reveal the identity of the murderer.

Faces are also used to communicate emotional reactions instantly and incessantly. They openly display someone’s “character,” which is deeply “engraved” into the human countenance, as well as convey temporary passions of the mind. Faces speak when voices fail or are not yet raised. The Fool in King Lear, for instance, is silenced by Goneril’s mere look: “I will hold my tongue; so your face bids me, though you say nothing” (King Lear, 1.4.170–71). Due to their expressive quality, faces are also used as dramatic cues to admit messengers or (minor) characters to the floor, as suggested in Cymbeline when Cymbeline senses the urgency of the message about to be delivered by the physician and the ladies, claiming “There’s business in these faces” (5.6.23), or in Macbeth when Lennox directs the attention to the approaching Thane of Ross: “what haste looks through his eyes” (1.2.46).

Faces serve as documents of power. They are perceived as the seat of authority, bear “a command” (Coriolanus, 4.5.60), and indicate leadership and dominance. As Caesar claims of himself, “[t]he things that threatened me / Ne’er looked but on my back; when they shall see / The face of Caesar, they are vanishèd” (Julius Caesar, 2.2.10–12). As a consequence, the act of facing another character often serves as a trial of strength. Richard II, for instance, announces to “Face to face / And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear / The accuser and the accusèd freely speak” (Richard II, 1.1.15–17). This face-to-face confrontation might result in the outfacing of either one’s former identity or another adversary force or character. This is the case with Edgar in King Lear, who, as protective means, disguises himself as Poor Tom (“My face I’ll grime with filth” [King Lear, 2.3.9]) and dons his clothes in the attempt to “out-face / The winds and persecutions of the sky” (2.3.11–12).

The face also appears as versatile metaphor, used to animate and anthropomorphize nature (“the sweet face of heaven” [King Lear, 3.4.83]) and to underline the essential legibility of the world, as promoted by the Paracelsian doctrine of signatures. Consequently, where there is deceit, it is often indicated through the metaphor of a covered face (cf. Kent: “There is division, / Although as yet the face of it be covered / With mutual cunning” [King Lear, 3.1.19–21]).

Theatrical performance plays a key role in out-facing other characters. Despite the theatrical paradox—actors’ faces are faces framed to (almost) all occasions—Shakespeare introduces performance as the ultimate tool to decipher and unmask the “truth.” A vivid example is Hamlet, which has often been referred to as Shakespeare’s most theatrical play. Hamlet’s desire to disclose the murderer of his father leads to disguise: he slips into the role of a madman. His “antic disposition,” however, in turn facilitates a face-reading, which ultimately corroborates the identity of Old Hamlet’s murderer. It allows Hamlet to orchestrate a play, designed to “catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.582), i.e. to trigger emotional reactions in King Claudius’s “visor” that will display his guilt to his observers—notably, Hamlet, who announces, “I mine eyes will rivet to his face” (3.2.78), and his confidant Horatio, whom he asked to do the same: “Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt / Do not itself unkennel in one speech, / It is a damnèd ghost that we have seen … / Give him heedful note” (3.2.73–7).

In this act of joint attention, all eyes rest on Claudius. The onstage and the offstage audience to “The Mousetrap” become accomplices in a shared face-reading, which is expected to lift the murderer’s “visor”: “And after, we will both our judgments join / To censure of his seeming” (3.2.78–9). Though no details of Claudius’s reaction are offered in the text, Claudius’s face provides the ocular proof, as suggested by Hamlet who turns to Horatio: “Didst perceive? … Upon the talk of the pois’ning?” (3.2.264–6) and Horatio’s answer: “I did very well note him” (3.2.267).

There is indeed “method” (2.2.203) behind Hamlet’s attention to faces. Especially in this play, which is deeply concerned with the power of performance. As becomes most apparent in the Hecuba-speech and the characters’ reaction to it (2.2.499–533), faces are not only used to create presence or evidentia: they are also scrutinized as a significant tool both for encoding and decoding characters—a tool that gradually moves to the center of the action. From its opening and the very first remark, “Who’s there?” (1.1.1), which becomes the guiding question in this highly metatheatrical dra...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Shakespeare and the Power of the Face
• Part I Powerful Faces
• Part II Signifying Faces
• Part III Staged Faces
• Bibliography
• Index