Abstract
This concluding chapter discusses the effects and afterlives of dissembling disability. Although it was a fictional trend that focused on fraudulent action, the counterfeit-disability tradition instructed audiences to approach disability with suspicion, both on the stage and in the streets of London. The tradition demanded that genuinely disabled people perform their disabilities to, paradoxically, prove the reality of their impairments. Although the counterfeit-disability tradition shaped the lived experiences of early modern disabled people, it also suppressed knowledge of that experience by prioritizing narratives of counterfeit disability over genuine disability. The chapter concludes by tracing the enduring presence of the counterfeit-disability tradition on contemporary literature, culture, and, even, social policy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Quoted in John Pitcher, Introduction to The Winter’s Tale, by William Shakespeare, ed. John Pitcher, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London: Methuen, 2010), 84–5.
- 2.
For more on Forman (including the authorship debate surrounding his “Book of Plays” manuscript), see Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician, Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- 3.
Tom Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2014), 84–8.
- 4.
Sujata Iyengar, “Introduction: Shakespeare’s ‘Discourse of Disability,’” in Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, ed. Sujata Iyengar (New York: Routledge, 2015), 3.
- 5.
Peter Hyland, Disguise on the Early Modern English Stage (Farnham: Routledge, 2011), 27.
- 6.
See A. L. Beier and Robert Finlay, “The Significance of the Metropolis,” in London, 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis, ed. A. L. Beier and Robert Finlay (London: Longman, 1986), 1–33.
- 7.
For gender-focused cross-dressing on the early modern stage, see Jean E. Howard, “Crossdressing, The Theater, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 418–40; Michael Shapiro, Gender Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), among many others. For cross-racial dressing, see Ian Smith, “White Skin, Black Masks: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage,” Renaissance Drama 32 (2003): 33–67; and Andrea Ria Stevens, Inventions of the Skin: The Painted Body in Early English Drama, 1400–1642 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). For cross-class dressing, see Richard Levin, “The Economics and Erotics of Cross-Class Dressing in Early Modern (formerly Renaissance) English Drama,” Journal of Theater and Drama 3 (1997): 93–101; and Cristine M. Varholy, “‘Rich Like a Lady’: Cross-Class Dressing in the Brothels and Theaters of Early Modern London,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2008): 4–34.
- 8.
For more on this, see Valentin Groebner, Who Are You?: Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe, trans. Mark Kyburz and John Peck (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).
- 9.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring: How We Look (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 83.
- 10.
For more on the humorally inflected imperative for health in early modern England, see Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds., Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Michael C. Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., eds., Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), among many others.
- 11.
William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. R. A. Foakes, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 4.6.145.
- 12.
For information on the ars moriendi tradition in early modern England, see L. M. Beier, “The Good Death in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, ed. Ralph Houlbrooke (London: Routledge, 1989), 43–61, and Danae Tankard, “The Reformation of the Deathbed in Mid-Sixteenth-Century England,” Mortality 8, no. 3 (August 2003): 251–67.
- 13.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept,” Hypatia 26, no. 3 (Summer 2011), 597.
- 14.
Casey Cora and Rodney Thrash, “Treatment of Disabled Man Attracts National Spotlight,” St. Petersburg Times, February 13, 2008, accessed June 1, 2017, http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/13/Hillsborough/Treatment_of_disabled.shtml.
- 15.
For a representative example, see William J. Peace, “The Outrage is Grossly Misplaced,” CounterPunch, February 16–17, 2008, accessed January 14, 2017, http://www.counterpunch.org/peace02162008.html.
- 16.
See, for example, research on disability, suspicion, and legitimacy by Jill C. Humphrey, “Researching Disability Politics, or Some Problems with the Social Model in Practice,” Disability and Society 15, no. 1 (2000): 63–85, and Susan Wendell, “Who Is Disabled?: Defining Disability,” The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability (New York: Routledge, 2000), 11–34. For a discussion of how suspicion colors all elements of the disabled experience, see Catherine Kudlick, “The Price of ‘Disability Denial,’” The New York Times, May 24, 2017, accessed June 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/opinion/disability-denial.html?_r=0.
- 17.
Deborah A. Stone, The Disabled State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 23.
- 18.
Ibid., 53.
- 19.
David M. Turner affirms this, noting that, “far from bringing an end to crude stereotyping of fraudulent claimants, [fears of fraudulent disability] provided new ways of stigmatising recipients of benefits in which the interests of the taxpayer are set against those of the claimant.” What’s more, in contemporary use, “although attacks on ‘cheats’ and ‘scroungers’ are often presentedas defending the interests of the genuinely vulnerable, this is often framed alongside the need to protect the interests of the taxpayer.” “‘Fraudulent’ Disability in Historical Perspective,” History and Policy, February 1, 2012: n.p., accessed June 1, 2017, http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/fraudulent-disability-in-historical-perspective.
- 20.
Richard K. Scotch, “American Disability Policy in the Twentieth Century,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 386.
- 21.
This is really just the institutionally enforced version of Tobin Siebers’s “disability masquerade” demanded by compulsory able-bodiedness. “Disability as Masquerade,” Literature and Medicine 23, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 18. For more how the twenty-first-century British system of disability welfare descends from early modern English fears of counterfeit disability, see Turner, “‘Fraudulent’ Disability.”
- 22.
“Charity,” in The Office: Complete Series (UK), season 2, ep. 5, writ. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, dir. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (BBC Home Entertainment, 2011).
References
Beier, A. L., and Robert Finlay. “The Significance of the Metropolis.” In London, 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis, edited by A. L. Beier and Robert Finlay, 1–33. London: Longman, 1986.
Beier, L. M. “The Good Death in Seventeenth-Century England.” In Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, edited by Ralph Houlbrooke, 43–61. London: Routledge, 1989.
“Charity”. In The Office: Complete Series (UK), season 2, episode 5. Written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. BBC Home Entertainment, 2011.
Cora, Casey, and Rodney Thrash. “Treatment of Disabled Man Attracts National Spotlight.” St. Petersburg Times, 13 February 2008. Accessed 1 June 2017. http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/13/Hillsborough/Treatment_of_disabled.shtml.
Floyd-Wilson, Mary, and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., eds. Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept.” Hypatia 26, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 591–609.
———. Staring: How We Look. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Groebner, Valentin. Who Are You?: Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Mark Kyburz and John Peck. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.
Howard, Jean E. “Crossdressing, The Theater, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 418–40.
Humphrey, Jill C. “Researching Disability Politics, or Some Problems with the Social Model in Practice.” Disability and Society 15, no. 1 (2000): 63–85.
Hyland, Peter. Disguise on the Early Modern English Stage. Farnham: Routledge, 2011.
Iyengar, Sujata. “Introduction: Shakespeare’s ‘Discourse of Disability.’” In Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, edited by Sujata Iyengar, 1–19. New York: Routledge, 2015.
Kassell, Lauren. Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kudlick, Catherine. “The Price of ‘Disability Denial.’” The New York Times, 24 May 2017. Accessed 1 June 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/opinion/disability-denial.html?_r=0.
Levin, Richard. “The Economics and Erotics of Cross-Class Dressing in Early Modern (formerly Renaissance) English Drama.” Journal of Theater and Drama 3 (1997): 93–101.
Orgel, Stephen. Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
———. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Paster, Gail Kern, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds. Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Peace, William J. “The Outrage is Grossly Misplaced.” CounterPunch, 16–17 February 2008. Accessed 14 January 2017. http://www.counterpunch.org/peace02162008.html.
Pitcher, John. “Introduction.” In The Winter’s Tale, by William Shakespeare, edited by John Pitcher, 1–135. Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series. London: Methuen, 2010.
Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Scotch, Richard K. “American Disability Policy in the Twentieth Century.” In The New Disability History: American Perspectives, edited by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, 375–92. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2014.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by R. A. Foakes. Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series. London: Bloomsbury, 1997.
Shapiro, Michael. Gender Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Siebers, Tobin. “Disability as Masquerade.” Literature and Medicine 23, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 1–22.
Smith, Ian. “White Skin, Black Masks: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage.” Renaissance Drama 32 (2003): 33–67.
Stevens, Andrea Ria. Inventions of the Skin: The Painted Body in Early English Drama, 1400–1642. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Stone, Deborah A. The Disabled State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.
Tankard, Danae. “The Reformation of the Deathbed in Mid-Sixteenth-Century England.” Mortality 8, no. 3 (August 2003): 251–67.
Turner, David M. “‘Fraudulent’ Disability in Historical Perspective.” History and Policy, 1 February 2012: n.p. Accessed 1 June 2017. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/fraudulent-disability-in-historical-perspective.
Varholy, Christine M. “‘Rich Like a Lady’: Cross-Class Dressing in the Brothels and Theaters of Early Modern London.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2008): 4–34.
Wendell, Susan. “Who Is Disabled?: Defining Disability.” In The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability, 11–34. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Row-Heyveld, L. (2018). Conclusion: Early Modern Fantasies and Contemporary Realities. In: Dissembling Disability in Early Modern English Drama. Literary Disability Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92135-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92135-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92134-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92135-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)