A Serious Kind of Laughter

Shakespeare's Grief and Mardi Gras 2006

Authors

Oliver Hennessey Xavier University of Louisiana

Abstract

"Shakespeare's Grief and Mardi Gras 2006" approaches the critical controversy over the festive structure of 1 Henry IV from a post-Katrina perspective. The carnival staged in New Orleans in 2006 demonstrates how popular festivity can restore order, channeling collective grief and anger through satirical and ludic rites. This specific carnival symbolized continuity and renewal for New Orleans's citizens and therefore defied the order/disorder binary frequently invoked by carnival theorists, and specifically by C. L. Barber in his celebrated exegesis of the "saturnalian pattern" in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy. As such, this essay argues for an understanding of carnival phenomena as more than mere temporary inversions of the status quo, a line of thinking that bolsters Michael D. Bristol's critique of Barber's paradigm. The example of Mardi Gras 2006 invites us to consider anew the continued role of carnival in collective civic life and to reach a deeper understanding of how a denuded popular-festive culture might have affected Shakespeare's drama in the mid-1590s.

Author Biography

Oliver Hennessey, Xavier University of Louisiana

Oliver Hennessey teaches at Xavier University of Louisiana. His publications include "Joyless Jonson: Theorizing Motivation and Pleasure in Volpone," in English Literary Renaissance 38.1 (Winter 2007), and "Talking With the Dead: Leo Africanus, Esoteric Yeats, and Early Modern Imperialism," in English Literary History 71:4 (Winter 2004). His research interests include Shakespeare appropriation during the Irish Literary Revival and presentist approaches to Shakespeare and carnival.