Shakespeare and Disgust, with Bradley J. Irish

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Maybe there really was something rotten in Denmark. On this episode, we talk with Bradley J. Irish about disgust in Shakespeare. In his new book, Irish identifies the emotion, which combines physical revulsion and moral outrage, as one of the central thematic emotions in Shakespeare’s plays. In his close readings across the canon, Irish finds disgust everywhere: in Caius Martius Coriolanus’s disdain for ordinary Romans, in the over-indulgent food Antony eats in Egypt, in Henry IV’s preoccupation with sickness and disease in Henry IV, and beyond. Bradley Irish is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Bradley J. Irish is a professor at Arizona State University. Shakespeare and Disgust: The History and Science of Early Modern Revulsion is out now from Bloomsbury Publishing. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published February 13, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu. We had technical help from Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Watching a great production of one of Shakespeare's plays always stirs strong emotions.
0:05.4	Anguish, anxiety, maybe fear, joy, camaraderie, even love.
0:11.6	Our guest on today's episode thinks the emotional key to many of the plays isn't any of these.
0:17.8	It's disgust.
0:25.2	Thank you. it's disgust. From the Folcher Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:29.2	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger director.
0:31.8	The words disgust or disgusting don't appear anywhere in Shakespeare's work.
0:37.2	Instead, he uses synonyms like foul or vile to get at that feeling we might call disgust.
0:43.8	It's an emotion that connects physical repulsion with a sense of moral outrage.
0:49.3	Arizona State University, Professor Bradley J. Irish, argues that this emotion plays a central thematic role
0:55.9	in plays as different as Titus Andronicus and Hamlet. In his book, Shakespeare and Disgust,
1:03.4	the history and science of early modern revulsion, Irish toggles between today's scientific
1:08.3	accounts of disgust and close readings of Shakespeare's plays.
1:12.8	He finds disgust everywhere in Shakespeare's canon. In the disdain Coriolanus feels for ordinary Romans,
1:20.7	in the overindulgent food Antony eats in Egypt. In the dwelling on sickness and disease in Henry
1:27.2	the 4th, Irish argues that Shakespeare
1:29.8	routinely uses disgust as an engine of his character's motives. Here's Bradley Irish in conversation
1:36.9	with Barbara Bogave. You've written broadly about emotion in Tudor Times.
1:45.5	So how did that research lead you to looking specifically at disgust?
1:51.2	So I've been working on disgust for close to 15 years now, I guess, going back to my days as a graduate student.
1:57.5	Wow.
1:57.8	My dissertation explored a variety of emotions in 16th century literature and discussed
	...

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