Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:19:54.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘Amphitheaters in the Body’: Playing with Hands on the Shakespearian Stage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2007

Stanley Wells
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Get access

Summary

In more than one respect, man's hands have been his destiny.

Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power

The hand is a peculiar thing.

Heidegger

'Hath not a Jew hands?' What exactly does Shylock mean when he makes the hand a defining mark of humanity? The gesture called for by his rhetorical demand is likely to make us feel that something more than the mere possession of opposable thumbs is involved; but we might be hard pressed to say precisely what. I should like to begin answering the question in a somewhat oblique way by invoking a powerful piece of ritual from Frank McGuinness's drama, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, a play whose action displays an almost fetishistic fascination with the human hand - gesturing, reaching, clasping, crafting, drumming, striking, 'seeing', and bleeding. At the climax of the second act, the protagonist, Kenneth Pyper, signs his reluctant allegiance to the atavism of Protestant tribal history by slashing his left hand: 'Red hand,' goes the chant, 'Red sky. Ulster.' In the London production the significance of this gesture was underlined by the backdrop against which the entire action was performed - a huge Ulster flag with the blood-red hand at its centre. Despite the fact that the Red Hand was originally a native Irish device, the clan badge of the Northern O'Neill, and although (as the Irish Labour Movement's 'Red Hand of Liberty') it served as a Republican emblem in 1916, it has by now become almost exclusively associated in most minds with the intransigent politics of Orange Unionism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare Survey , pp. 23 - 50
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×