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Huw Griffiths

The University of Sydney, English, Faculty Member

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Address: English Department, John Woolley Building (A 20), University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

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Papers by Huw Griffiths

When Coriolanus was Hot: Reading for Homoeroticism Across Time

Shakespeare / Sex Contemporary Readings in Gender and Sexuality (Ed. J. Drouin), 2020

Huw Griffiths Coriolanus used to be hot when he was younger. Or so his mother claims. Volumnia de... more Huw Griffiths Coriolanus used to be hot when he was younger. Or so his mother claims. Volumnia describes to her daughter-in-law, Virgilia, a time ‘when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way’ (1. 3. 6–7) . Volumnia imagines her son doing a fair amount of ‘plucking’; not only did his youthful beauty ‘pluck’ everybody’s appreciative gazes, she now imagines the mature Coriolanus ‘plucking’ his Volscian enemy, Aufidius. Volumnia invites Virgilia to picture the two men together: ‘See him pluck Aufidius down by th’ hair’ (1. 3. 32) . Her language conflates the erotic with the militaristic, a conflation realized in an extended syllepsis where the verb ‘pluck’ is applied both to the enraptured eyes of his admirers and to his defeated and degraded enemy. This imbrication of the martial with the erotic is a well-known characteristic of Coriolanus. Ralph Berry identifies this connection, going so far as to suggest...

John Ford's Soliloquies: Solitude Interrupted

John Ford’s Soliloquies: Solitude Interrupted, 2018

"Muted All with Hawkes"

Huw Griffiths, "Muted All with Hawkes" /Shakespeare Studies/ 44 (2016), 112-24. (extract here)

Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced at STC (performance review)

Sovereignty, Synecdoche, and the Prosthetic Hand in King John

The word “hand” appears more times in King John than in any other Shakespeare play. The focus in ... more The word “hand” appears more times in King John than in any other Shakespeare play. The focus in Shakespeare’s history plays on bodies and body parts allows for the central questions of sovereign relations to be asked over and over again: on whose behalf does a person act and to whom does their body belong? King John construes the political relations of early modern sovereignty through the “hand.” This article argues that this construal allows the play to critique sovereign agency, representing it through synecdoche and understanding sovereign agency as a form of prosthesis.

Passports and the Locations of Sovereignty in The Reign of Edward III

This article provides a critical analysis of the language and dramatic action of the anonymous 1... more This article provides a critical analysis of the language and dramatic action of the anonymous 1590s play, The Reign of Edward III, alongside a discussion of Edward III’s reputation in the Elizabethan period. Through this, it emerges that the play is more searchingly engaged with questions of sovereign power than has usually been argued in its critical reception. The idea of the “passport”, a relatively new concept in sixteenth- century Europe, is handled interestingly in the play. This and other representations of sovereign agency (warrants, oaths, even sonnets) are mobilized in the play’s action and dialogue to interrogate a central question of sixteenth-century political thought and practice: where is sovereignty located, in the body of the monarch or in the workings of the state?

Seventeen at Belvoir (performance review)

Adapting same-sex friendship: Fletcher and Shakespeare's The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Davenant's The Rivals

In adapting The Two Noble Kinsmen as The Rivals, William Davenant minimizes the affective power o... more In adapting The Two Noble Kinsmen as The Rivals, William Davenant minimizes the affective power of same-sex love and friendship that is present in the original, at the same time as eliminating most of Shakespeare's contribution to the original script. Tracing this process of adaptation allows us not only to see what happens to Renaissance idealizations of philia in the later period, but also to reexamine the relationship between Fletcher and Shakespeare. Their collaboration emerges as, itself, potentially rivalrous, as they promote quite different understandings of the values attached to same-sex friendship.

Friendless Hamlet in Sydney

Full Text: On the evening that I went to see Simon Stone's Hamlet (Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney, A... more Full Text: On the evening that I went to see Simon Stone's Hamlet (Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney, Australia 2013), just as the house lights were going down at the start of the performance and as the singer, Maximillian Riebl, walked down the vom and into the playing space, poised to start the opening song as a prologue to the action, a woman from the front row got up from her seat, and walked on to the stage. She tip-toed past Hamlet (Toby Schmitz) who had been on stage the whole time, nervously twitching on one of the chairs that lined both sides of the stage. She went over to the piano player, Luke Byrne, who had been calmly playing a particularly restrained version of Satie's Gnossiene no. 1 whilst the audience had come in and sat themselves down. The rogue audience member knelt down and, I assume, asked the musician what it was that he was playing. Or perhaps she was complimenting him on his elegant concert pianist costume, the black tie in perfect keeping with the black drapes that, in the first half of this performance, lined the back of the entire stage.

Hotel Rooms and Bodily Fluids in Two Recent Productions of Measure for Measure, Or, Why Barnardine is Still Important

Shakespeare Bulletin, Dec 9, 2014

The character of Barnardine ties together two of Measure for Measure’s concerns: substitution, or... more The character of Barnardine ties together two of Measure for Measure’s concerns: substitution, or personation and the processes of the law. In two recent productions of the play, directed by Benedict Andrews (Belvoir Theatre, Sydney 2010) and Thomas Ostermeier (Schaubühne, Berlin 2011) particular “Barnardine effects” were at work that drew attention to the obdurate fleshiness of this character. The Sydney production contained a visceral performance, with Barnardine trashing the sleek hotel room set and smearing bodily fluids across the set’s multiple screens. In the other, the position of Barnardine, in some parts of the narrative, was taken up by half the carcass of a butchered pig. If, in the seventeenth century, Measure for Measure was an attempt to make sense of the relationship between the person and the law, then these contemporary productions revealed where those concerns continue to be under examination in the early twenty-first century: in the body itself and its relationship both to the spaces of “supermodernity” and to various kinds of abjection and torture.

"Shall I Never See a Lusty Man Again?": John Fletcher's Men, 1608-1715.

The Creation and Re-Creation of Cardenio: Performing Shakespeare, Transforming Cervantes, Eds. Terri Bourus and Gary Taylor (New York: Palgrave, 2013)

The Lecture as Theatre: Learning the Boundaries of Scepticism in The Winter's Tale

Peny Gay, Kate Flaherty, and Liam Semler (Eds.) Teaching Shakespeare Beyond the Centre: Australasian Perspectives. Palgrave: London, 2013. 87-96

The Friend in Cardenio, Double Falsehood, and Don Quixote

The History Cycle after Brecht: Sovereignty, Pathos and Violence in The War of the Roses (Sydney Theatre Company, 2009)

A 2009 Sydney Theatre Company production of Shakespeare’s history plays, The War of the Roses (di... more A 2009 Sydney Theatre Company production of Shakespeare’s history plays, The War of the Roses (dir. Benedict Andrews), could best be seen as a belated and divergent response to earlier, 1960s Brechtian and neo-Brechtian stagings of these plays as a cycle. I trace the relationship between pathos, sovereignty and sovereign violence from the original Shakespearean text and its contemporary contexts, through this Brechtian tradition and into the recent production. However, where a Brechtian intervention into the plays’ uses of pathos may have invited a materialist reading of their depictions of violence and political machinations, the Sydney production’s theoretical parameters were more closely related to Foucault’s and Agamben’s ‘‘biopolitics’’, in which sovereign authority is secured on the basis of the abject and suffering human body.

'O, I am ignorance itself in this!' Listening to Welsh in Shakespeare and Armin

Letter-writing Lucrece: Shakespeare in the 1590s

Shakespeare, Pathos and Sovereign Violence: 3 Henry VI and King Lear

'O, I am ignorance itself in this!' Listening to Welsh in Shakespeare and Armin'

The Sonnet in Ruins: Time and the Nation in 1599

The Geographies of Shakespeare's Cymbeline

English Literary Renaissance, Jan 1, 2004

When Coriolanus was Hot: Reading for Homoeroticism Across Time

Shakespeare / Sex Contemporary Readings in Gender and Sexuality (Ed. J. Drouin), 2020

Huw Griffiths Coriolanus used to be hot when he was younger. Or so his mother claims. Volumnia de... more Huw Griffiths Coriolanus used to be hot when he was younger. Or so his mother claims. Volumnia describes to her daughter-in-law, Virgilia, a time ‘when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way’ (1. 3. 6–7) . Volumnia imagines her son doing a fair amount of ‘plucking’; not only did his youthful beauty ‘pluck’ everybody’s appreciative gazes, she now imagines the mature Coriolanus ‘plucking’ his Volscian enemy, Aufidius. Volumnia invites Virgilia to picture the two men together: ‘See him pluck Aufidius down by th’ hair’ (1. 3. 32) . Her language conflates the erotic with the militaristic, a conflation realized in an extended syllepsis where the verb ‘pluck’ is applied both to the enraptured eyes of his admirers and to his defeated and degraded enemy. This imbrication of the martial with the erotic is a well-known characteristic of Coriolanus. Ralph Berry identifies this connection, going so far as to suggest...

John Ford's Soliloquies: Solitude Interrupted

John Ford’s Soliloquies: Solitude Interrupted, 2018

"Muted All with Hawkes"

Huw Griffiths, "Muted All with Hawkes" /Shakespeare Studies/ 44 (2016), 112-24. (extract here)

Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced at STC (performance review)

Sovereignty, Synecdoche, and the Prosthetic Hand in King John

The word “hand” appears more times in King John than in any other Shakespeare play. The focus in ... more The word “hand” appears more times in King John than in any other Shakespeare play. The focus in Shakespeare’s history plays on bodies and body parts allows for the central questions of sovereign relations to be asked over and over again: on whose behalf does a person act and to whom does their body belong? King John construes the political relations of early modern sovereignty through the “hand.” This article argues that this construal allows the play to critique sovereign agency, representing it through synecdoche and understanding sovereign agency as a form of prosthesis.

Passports and the Locations of Sovereignty in The Reign of Edward III

This article provides a critical analysis of the language and dramatic action of the anonymous 1... more This article provides a critical analysis of the language and dramatic action of the anonymous 1590s play, The Reign of Edward III, alongside a discussion of Edward III’s reputation in the Elizabethan period. Through this, it emerges that the play is more searchingly engaged with questions of sovereign power than has usually been argued in its critical reception. The idea of the “passport”, a relatively new concept in sixteenth- century Europe, is handled interestingly in the play. This and other representations of sovereign agency (warrants, oaths, even sonnets) are mobilized in the play’s action and dialogue to interrogate a central question of sixteenth-century political thought and practice: where is sovereignty located, in the body of the monarch or in the workings of the state?

Seventeen at Belvoir (performance review)

Adapting same-sex friendship: Fletcher and Shakespeare's The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Davenant's The Rivals

In adapting The Two Noble Kinsmen as The Rivals, William Davenant minimizes the affective power o... more In adapting The Two Noble Kinsmen as The Rivals, William Davenant minimizes the affective power of same-sex love and friendship that is present in the original, at the same time as eliminating most of Shakespeare's contribution to the original script. Tracing this process of adaptation allows us not only to see what happens to Renaissance idealizations of philia in the later period, but also to reexamine the relationship between Fletcher and Shakespeare. Their collaboration emerges as, itself, potentially rivalrous, as they promote quite different understandings of the values attached to same-sex friendship.

Friendless Hamlet in Sydney

Full Text: On the evening that I went to see Simon Stone's Hamlet (Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney, A... more Full Text: On the evening that I went to see Simon Stone's Hamlet (Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney, Australia 2013), just as the house lights were going down at the start of the performance and as the singer, Maximillian Riebl, walked down the vom and into the playing space, poised to start the opening song as a prologue to the action, a woman from the front row got up from her seat, and walked on to the stage. She tip-toed past Hamlet (Toby Schmitz) who had been on stage the whole time, nervously twitching on one of the chairs that lined both sides of the stage. She went over to the piano player, Luke Byrne, who had been calmly playing a particularly restrained version of Satie's Gnossiene no. 1 whilst the audience had come in and sat themselves down. The rogue audience member knelt down and, I assume, asked the musician what it was that he was playing. Or perhaps she was complimenting him on his elegant concert pianist costume, the black tie in perfect keeping with the black drapes that, in the first half of this performance, lined the back of the entire stage.

Hotel Rooms and Bodily Fluids in Two Recent Productions of Measure for Measure, Or, Why Barnardine is Still Important

Shakespeare Bulletin, Dec 9, 2014

The character of Barnardine ties together two of Measure for Measure’s concerns: substitution, or... more The character of Barnardine ties together two of Measure for Measure’s concerns: substitution, or personation and the processes of the law. In two recent productions of the play, directed by Benedict Andrews (Belvoir Theatre, Sydney 2010) and Thomas Ostermeier (Schaubühne, Berlin 2011) particular “Barnardine effects” were at work that drew attention to the obdurate fleshiness of this character. The Sydney production contained a visceral performance, with Barnardine trashing the sleek hotel room set and smearing bodily fluids across the set’s multiple screens. In the other, the position of Barnardine, in some parts of the narrative, was taken up by half the carcass of a butchered pig. If, in the seventeenth century, Measure for Measure was an attempt to make sense of the relationship between the person and the law, then these contemporary productions revealed where those concerns continue to be under examination in the early twenty-first century: in the body itself and its relationship both to the spaces of “supermodernity” and to various kinds of abjection and torture.

"Shall I Never See a Lusty Man Again?": John Fletcher's Men, 1608-1715.

The Creation and Re-Creation of Cardenio: Performing Shakespeare, Transforming Cervantes, Eds. Terri Bourus and Gary Taylor (New York: Palgrave, 2013)

The Lecture as Theatre: Learning the Boundaries of Scepticism in The Winter's Tale

Peny Gay, Kate Flaherty, and Liam Semler (Eds.) Teaching Shakespeare Beyond the Centre: Australasian Perspectives. Palgrave: London, 2013. 87-96

The Friend in Cardenio, Double Falsehood, and Don Quixote

The History Cycle after Brecht: Sovereignty, Pathos and Violence in The War of the Roses (Sydney Theatre Company, 2009)

A 2009 Sydney Theatre Company production of Shakespeare’s history plays, The War of the Roses (di... more A 2009 Sydney Theatre Company production of Shakespeare’s history plays, The War of the Roses (dir. Benedict Andrews), could best be seen as a belated and divergent response to earlier, 1960s Brechtian and neo-Brechtian stagings of these plays as a cycle. I trace the relationship between pathos, sovereignty and sovereign violence from the original Shakespearean text and its contemporary contexts, through this Brechtian tradition and into the recent production. However, where a Brechtian intervention into the plays’ uses of pathos may have invited a materialist reading of their depictions of violence and political machinations, the Sydney production’s theoretical parameters were more closely related to Foucault’s and Agamben’s ‘‘biopolitics’’, in which sovereign authority is secured on the basis of the abject and suffering human body.

'O, I am ignorance itself in this!' Listening to Welsh in Shakespeare and Armin

Letter-writing Lucrece: Shakespeare in the 1590s

Shakespeare, Pathos and Sovereign Violence: 3 Henry VI and King Lear

'O, I am ignorance itself in this!' Listening to Welsh in Shakespeare and Armin'

The Sonnet in Ruins: Time and the Nation in 1599

The Geographies of Shakespeare's Cymbeline

English Literary Renaissance, Jan 1, 2004

Shakespeare's Body Parts: Figuring Sovereignty in the History Plays

Uncovers the workings of sovereign power in Shakespeare’s history plays Presents a sustained, fo... more Uncovers the workings of sovereign power in Shakespeare’s history plays

Presents a sustained, formalist reading of Shakespeare’s history plays
Reads Shakespeare’s history plays for their contribution to political thought, and to theories of sovereignty
Delivers a thorough and wide-ranging formal analysis of Shakespearean body parts, both literal and figurative
Presents a particular view of Shakespeare’s language-use as "baroque", its convolutions contributing to complex articulations of sovereign will
Capitalises on current theories of authorship in relation to the history plays in order to assess Shakespeare’s particular contribution to how sovereignty is imagined in the late sixteenth century
This book provides a sustained, formalist reading of the multiple body parts that litter the dialogue and action of Shakespeare’s history plays, including Henry V, Richard III, Richard II, King John and Henry IV. With a starting point in literary critical analyses of these dislocated bodies, the book tracks Shakespeare’s relentless pursuit of a specific political question: how does human flesh, blood and bone relate to sovereignty? Griffiths advances our understanding of how human bodies are captured by — and escape — the grip of political systems.

Hamlet: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism