Farah Karim-Cooper. The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of Dismemberment. New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Pp. xiii +309. $114.00 cloth, $35.95 paper, $28.99 eBook. Continuing the long-standing yet ever evolving scholarly treatment of the early modern body, Farah Karim-Cooper crafts a study that is narrow in focus yet wide-ranging in breadth by casting attention upon the early modern hand. Like previous notable contributions to early modern body studies, Karim-Cooper takes a historicist approach, culling the archives to uncover discourses about the hand in pamphlets, art manuals, anti-theatrical tracts, and conduct books, among other texts. These varied discussions of the hand, Karim-Cooper demonstrates, significantly informed its presentation on the early modern stage, and more specifically, in Shakespeare's oeuvre. The hand in early modern England, she argues, "was viewed as a microcosm of the self and could indicate the moral character and physical health of the person to whom it was attached" (2). She notes that even today, "the hand is the instrument with which we engage with the physical world and it is the part of our body, apart from the face, with which we communicate most expressively and passionately" (3). For early moderns, the hand even served as a part that distinguishes the human from animal-kind. As such, "The hand is and always has been a symbol of our dignity as human, as civilized beings" (3). It is unsurprising then, that the hand has garnered attention in texts such as Jonathan Sawday's The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture and David Hillman and Carla Mazzio's collection The Body in Parts. Karim-Cooper productively builds upon these accounts by concentrating on the hand "as a sign of character and identity" (5). Whether "attached or amputated," she contends, the hand on Shakespeare's stage continuously communicated facets of the self, particularly "character and identity" (5). Across six chapters, Karim-Cooper reveals the capacious symbolic capacity of the hand in early modern culture and, attendantly, on the stage. The hand signaled on a metaphysical scale by revealing a person's character, gesturing toward the pursuit of knowledge, or serving as a reminder of human dignity and the "omnipresence of God" (27). On a more personal and interpersonal level, the hand communicated qualities like gentility, beauty, and foreignness. Karim-Cooper ably weaves the connections between these significations and numerous early modern concerns, such as aesthetics, music, clothing, medicine, and more. The female hand, for example, served a key role in romantic exchanges with its visible whiteness, cleanliness, and sleekness signaling for suitors a woman's beauty and suitability. In order to highlight these qualities, artists therefore commonly painted women's hands holding "something, like gloves, an elaborate fan or a handkerchief" (60). Her study thus shows the hand's key role in the philosophical as well as in day to day life. As her title suggests, it also served an important purpose on Shakespeare's stage. Of particular interest to readers of Comparative Drama would be chapters 3, 5, and 6, which focus most extensively on Renaissance plays. In chapter 3, Karim-Cooper turns to an act of the hand--gesture--and considers how early modern actors may have performed gestures that emphasized the hand. Karim-Cooper notes how gestures on stage served many functions, one of the most important being the communication of emotions. Because emotions are so wide ranging, and because they were at times represented as being fabricated, Karim-Cooper makes the case that gestures on the early modern stage were not performed in any one particular way. "It is unnecessary for gestures to adhere to one particular form," she explains (78). Rather, "My contention in this study is that gestures were fundamentally varied: sometimes iconic [meaning a 'formal hand (or body) movement or sequence of movements that would have been highly recognizable to an early modern audience' (82-83)], sometimes natural or drawn from everyday life; sometimes subtle, other times transgressively passionate" (78). …

中文翻译：

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莎士比亚舞台上的手：手势、触摸和肢解的奇观 作者 Farah Karim-Cooper

法拉·卡里姆-库珀。莎士比亚舞台上的手：手势、触摸和肢解的奇观。纽约：布卢姆斯伯里雅顿莎士比亚，2016 年。Pp。十三 +309。布 114.00 美元，纸 35.95 美元，电子书 28.99 美元。Farah Karim-Cooper 继续对早期现代身体进行长期但不断发展的学术处理，通过将注意力集中在早期现代人身上，精心制作了一项重点狭窄但范围广泛的研究。与之前对早期现代身体研究的显着贡献一样，卡里姆-库珀采用历史主义的方法，挑选档案以发现小册子、艺术手册、反戏剧小册子和行为书籍等文本中关于手的论述。Karim-Cooper 展示了手的这些不同的讨论，为它在早期现代阶段的展示提供了重要信息，更具体地说，在莎士比亚的作品中。她认为，现代早期英国的手“被视为自我的缩影，可以表明它所依附的人的道德品质和身体健康”（2）。她指出，即使在今天，“手是我们与物理世界互动的工具，它是我们身体的一部分，除了脸，我们用它来表达最富有表现力和热情”（3）。对于早期的现代人来说，手甚至是区分人类与动物的一部分。因此，“手一直是我们作为人类和文明人尊严的象征”（3）。毫不奇怪，手在诸如乔纳森·索迪 (Jonathan Sawday) 的《身体纹饰》(The Body Emblazoned) 等文本中引起了注意：文艺复兴文化中的解剖和人体以及大卫·希尔曼和卡拉·马齐奥的作品《身体的部分》。卡里姆-库珀通过专注于“作为性格和身份的标志”（5），有效地建立在这些帐户的基础上。她争辩说，无论是“附加的还是截肢的”，莎士比亚舞台上的手不断地传达着自我的各个方面，特别是“性格和身份”（5）。在六个章节中，卡里姆-库珀揭示了手在早期现代文化中以及随之而来的舞台上巨大的象征能力。手通过揭示一个人的性格、指向追求知识的手势或作为人类尊严和“上帝无所不在”的提醒，在形而上学的尺度上发出信号（27）。在更个人和人际关系的层面上，手传达了诸如绅士，美丽和异国情调等品质。Karim-Cooper 巧妙地将这些含义与众多早期现代关注点（例如美学、音乐、服装、医学等）联系起来。例如，女性的手在浪漫的交流中扮演着关键角色，其明显的白度、清洁度和光滑度向求婚者发出了女性的美丽和合适的信号。为了突出这些品质，艺术家们因此通常画女性的手拿着“一些东西，比如手套、精致的扇子或手帕”（60）。因此，她的研究显示了手在哲学和日常生活中的关键作用。正如她的标题所暗示的那样，它在莎士比亚的舞台上也发挥了重要作用。比较戏剧的读者特别感兴趣的是第 3 章，5 和 6，最广泛地关注文艺复兴时期的戏剧。在第 3 章中，Karim-Cooper 转向了一种手势——手势——并考虑了早期现代演员可能如何表现出强调手部的手势。Karim-Cooper 指出舞台上的手势如何发挥多种功能，其中最重要的功能之一是情感交流。由于情绪的范围如此之广，而且有时它们被描绘成是捏造的，因此卡里姆-库珀认为，早期现代舞台上的手势并没有以任何一种特定的方式表现出来。“手势没有必要遵循一种特定的形式，”她解释说 (78)。相反，“我在这项研究中的论点是，手势从根本上是多种多样的：有时是标志性的 [意思是‘ 正式的手（或身体）动作或动作序列，这些动作对早期现代观众来说是高度可识别的（82-83）]，有时是自然的或来自日常生活；有时是微妙的，有时是过分热情的”（78）。......