As a meditation or memory exercise, I frequently revisit in my mind’s eye my childhood home in the Brazilian highlands, visualizing every detail I can. Our house became the center of our family life and the source of our family’s livelihood. Built when I was two years old, the house and adjacent buildings functioned as our family home, my father’s road-side café, and an all-purpose Brazilian venda—a family-run entrepôt, retail shop, and general store. Such multi-purpose compounds can be found around the world, early examples of which include the housing compound in eighteenth-century Liberia, West Africa. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century accounts of travel to the interior of Brazil include numerous references to similar vendas.
My family’s estate was known as Estiva, a word derived from Latin, æstivare, “to estivate,” to reside during the summer. In regional Portuguese, estiva also means a wooden bridge; and the verb “estivar” refers to the stowing, loading, and unloading of a ship. Although Estiva was my parents’ year-round residence, far away from any fluvial or sea port, and had no bridge, the name seemed oddly suitable: my school-age siblings and I, who attended school in nearby towns, used to return home only on weekends, for school holidays, and during the summer. Buses, private cars, trucks, and caravans of pack animals, following ancient trade routes, would regularly make a stop at our home, which bridged many worlds.
Eventually, home became a cluster of associations revolving around a commercial center, family life, and the uncultivated, wild countryside. Whenever I was home, I wanted to explore Estiva. Perhaps against their better judgment, my parents always granted permission for me to organize and lead day-long expeditions into the surrounding areas, provided that at least one adult came along. Almost anything would serve as an excuse for exploration, although I often made a case based on my credentials as a student of science and on the uncontestable scientific significance of the expedition: to collect exotic plants and flowers, study geological formations and geographical landmarks, and watch the birds and wildlife. Frequently, however, I simply argued that I wanted to gather wild mangaba, the fruit of the Hancornia speciosa, everybody’s favorite.
Estiva was my little corner of the universe. It afforded shelter, refuge, and security; yet it also seemed to abut not just the great unchartered wilds of the Brazilian interior but a mysterious, dangerous, sometimes tragic world, fraught with human drama. A close encounter with a rattlesnake in our own backyard, sightings of an onça-pintada (Panthera onca) or a very large sucuri or anaconda (Eunectes murinus), or reports of the dangers posed by the deadly venomous urutu (Bothrops alternata) were frequent reminders that a house can give us but a provisional sense of stability.
From time to time, a shocking event would dislocate our habits of mind and shake our sense of domestic security and stability. When I was growing up, I witnessed much suffering and poverty around us, but our home was a healing place, a place where those in trouble would stop for help, sometimes seeking transportation to the hospital in Patos de Minas or just to refresh themselves on a long journey. A complicated network of routes seemed to intersect our world, including the caravans of pack animals transporting merchandise to the deep interior, or the so-called paus-de-arara, truckloads of migrants who had left abject poverty behind and were following a dream of new life and opportunity in Brasilia, the newly-erected capital on the distant central plateau.
These childhood experiences, memories, and reflections have imbued the writing of this book with the passions of living. The anthropologist James Clifford must surely be right when he speaks of the roots and the routes of our lives. Estiva represents my deep roots but it also positioned my life in an intricate web of mysterious routes. With this childhood home, I associate solitude, introspection, and exploration of the natural world, as well as a vibrant sense of being part of a family, household and community. I am grateful to my parents for providing us the shelter, security and protection of a loving home and the comforts of life. Above all, our home was a place of rest, healing and rejoicing. I also thank all those whose lives intersected mine for a profound sense of spirituality, a love for story-telling, and the memories that still enrich my life and inform and guide my many pursuits.
In the process of researching and writing At Home in Shakespeare’s Tragedies, I have incurred many debts of gratitude. First I would like to thank Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, for granting me a sabbatical leave and therefore making it possible for me to begin research. My colleagues at Xavier were unfailingly supportive, and I want to thank Norman Finkelstein, Ernie Fontana, and Provost Roger Fortin in particular, as well as my friends in Xavier’s Office of Spiritual Development and in the Society of Jesus, especially Leo Klein. At the University of Kansas, I want to thank Dorice Elliott, chair of the English Department (2004–2009), especially for her patience and kindness to me; Richard F. Hardin, for reading drafts of the manuscript and sharing his vast knowledge and experience; Mary Rieser Davidson, for her helpful comments and suggestions on the chapter on Hamlet; Paul Lim, for his friendship, generosity, and sharing his vast film collection; and Marta and Byron Caminero-Santangelo for their friendship and support. I also thank Margaux LeRoux, Alicia Sutliff-Benusis, Gaywyn Moore, Brian Harries, Keri Behre, Andrew Kuhn, Kristin Bovaird-Abo, and Ann Martinez-Villalobos for helpful suggestions and encouragement. Likewise, I want to thank the Hall Center for the Humanities, especially director Victor Bailey, the Hall Center staff, and the British Seminar, which provided a forum for the presentation and discussion of the chapters on Hamlet and King Lear. I profited a great deal from these discussions. I am most grateful to all of my students at Xavier University and at the University of Kansas, with whom I shared ideas while writing this book.
I also thank the following institutions, libraries, museums, art galleries and foundations for supplying illustrations and for granting permission to reproduce them: Longleat House; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Folger Shakespeare Library; Special Collections, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. I want to thank the following persons in particular for their kindness and generosity: The Marquess of Bath, The Trustees of the Longleat Estates, and Dr Kate Harris, the Curator, Longleat Historic Collections; Richard W. Clement, Dean of Libraries, Utah State University; Karen Severud Cook, Special Collections, Spencer Research Library; William P. Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, Harvard University; Stacey Sherman, Imaging Services, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; and Auste Mickunaite, Permissions Office, The British Library. A generous grant from the Herbert and JoAnn Klemmer Fund, Endowment Association, English Department, University of Kansas, made the publication of these illustrations possible.
Chapter 2 incorporates ideas and materials from my essay “Unhoused in Othello,” published in Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Othello, ed. Peter Erickson and Maurice Hunt (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2005) 133–47, herein republished by permission of MLA. Throughout this book, all quotations from Shakespeare’s plays, unless indicated otherwise, are from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Orgel and A.R. Braunmuller (New York: Penguin, 2002).
I presented sections of this book at the annual congresses of the Mediterranean Studies Association at the University of Cagliari, Sardinia (2009); Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg, Germany (2008); Universidade de Évora, Portugal (2007); Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy (2006); Università degli Studi di Messina, Messina, Sicily (2005); Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (2004); and Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (2003). I am grateful to the congress participants for their comments, suggestions, support, and convivial discussions, including Richard and Franziska Raspa, Anna Leider, Karen Leider, Bob and Mary Dudy Bjork, Caroline Jewers, and David Johnson.
The staff of the following libraries, where I conducted research, deserve my gratitude: McDonald Library, Xavier University; Spencer Research Library, Watson Library, and Art and Architecture Library, University of Kansas; the British Library; and the Folger Shakespeare Library. I want to thank Gwen Claassen, Digital Media Services, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the University of Kansas, for her expert assistance in formatting, design, and helping me prepare the manuscript and illustrations for publication. This is an invaluable service that the University of Kansas provides the faculty. In Britain and in the United States, I thank the staff of Ashgate, especially Erika Gaffney, Whitney Feininger, Seth F. Hibbert, Nicole Norman, Suzanne Sprague, and Lee C. Kemsley, with whom it has been a pleasure to work, and the readers who read my manuscript for Ashgate for wonderful insights, comments, and suggestions.
Several friends, colleagues, and scholars have been extraordinarily kind and helpful to me. I would like to thank the following in particular: Dick and Franziska Raspa, Heather Dubrow, Mary Thomas Crane, Fran Teague, Coppélia Kahn, Bruce Smith, Jeanne Addison Roberts, Misty Schieberle, James W. Hartman, Judy Bissett, Marilyn Stokstad, Elise Goodman, Billy Joe and Susan Harris, William O. Scott, Laura Mielke, Jackson Boswell and Daryl Palmer. Elise Goodman read the manuscript in its entirety, helped with proofreading, and advised on art history in general and on Caravaggio scholarship in particular. Elise has been a faithful and generous friend, and I am much in her debt. Likewise, I would like to thank my friends and spiritual companions at Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence, Kansas, especially Rev. Dr Peter Luckey, whose sermons over the last few years seem to have intersected my work with amazing frequency. I also thank for their friendship and support Cliff VanBlarcom; Sister Mary V. Maronick of the Sisters of Charity, Leavenworth; Leon C. Bergeron; Judy and Gene Bauer; John and Ardith Pierce; John B. Timmer; Cindy West and Judith Galas; Marco Antonio de Sousa; and Ângela and Josafá do Couto.
Finally, I express my heartfelt gratitude to my friends Rick and Susanne Clement; my sister Rejânia Aparecida dos Reis Soares Araújo; and my faithful companion, David Bergeron, to whom I dedicate this book.