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“Ornament of his[/her/their] cheek” The Implications and Interpretations of Obscuring the Face in Shakespeare
The face is perhaps the most vulnerable part of the body because it is the most at risk of interpretation and misinterpretation. In plays that rely on interpretation, judgment, façade, and likeness, such as Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, and Richard II, the importance of the face is preeminent. Hence, significance is placed on what we can do with the face, how we can obscure it, and how we can understand it. The exploration of the obscurants of the face in Shakespeare’s plays becomes gendered and aged through the interrogation of the blush—along with its extension, the veil—and the beard. As these encourage further interpretation and judgment, the final question is whether there are any ways to depart entirely from the vulnerability of the face.
Throughout Shakespeare’s works, the blush is interpreted as revealing inner thoughts and feelings, especially guilt and love. Diagnosing the blush became important as “early modern England saw nascent medical discourse and an evolving legal profession struggle to pinpoint what caused a blush” (Dunne 233). In All’s Well That Ends Well, as the Countess talks with Helena, Helena’s blush is interpreted as revealing her unspoken love for Bertram “You love my son! […] ‘tis so; for look, thy cheeks / Confess it” (All’s Well That Ends Well, I.iii.175,178-179). In Richard II, King Richard’s triumphant speech anticipating Bolingbroke’s failure, he asserts, “His treasons will sit blushing in his face, / Not able to endure the sight of day, / But self-affrighted tremble at his sin” (Richard II, III.ii.51-53). Here, Bolingbroke’s blush reveals unspoken guilt, shame, and fear. Similarly, in Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio believes Hero’s blush indicates her silent culpability of infidelity “She knows the heat of a luxurious bed; / Her blush is guiltiness” (Much Ado About Nothing, IV.i.40-41). Though the diagnoses aren’t identical, the idea that much can be told from a blush is congruent and seemingly ungendered. It seems like all humans blush and each blush is subject to similar interrogation.
However, as Elspeth Probyn states, “Part of the problem [with] the statement ‘all humans blush’ is the assumption that all people blush for the same reason and that therefore blushing’s significance is universal” (Probyn 29). Not all blushes are created equal. Instead, interpretations are overwhelmingly gendered because they indicate what society wants to reveal about women: sexuality. Early modern and Shakespearean women were expected to be passive, notably in matters of sexuality so as not to be considered whorish, which lends itself to silence and indirect modes of communication to retain modesty. When the Countess is talking with Helena, she insists on a verbal response, “Therefore tell me true; / But tell me then, […] Speak, is’t so? […] I charge thee, […] To tell me truly” (All’s Well That Ends Well, I.iii.177-187). Helena cannot find the words as she does not want to seem improper or immodest as a woman with a “low and humble name” (Ibid, II.ii.199). She doesn’t feel like she has the right to express her feelings due to her gender and class and can only say, “Good madam, pardon me! […] Your pardon, noble mistress!” (Ibid, I.iii.187-188). Hence, the Countess’ interpretation of her blush is the only way she can attempt to understand Helena’s sexuality in lieu of a verbal response. In stark contrast, Bertram, with all of the agency that early modern patriarchy allows, can immediately and concisely verbalize repulsion from Helena, “I cannot love her, nor will strive to do’t” (Ibid, II.iii.146), and attraction to Diana, “I was compelled to her, but I love thee” (Ibid, IV.ii.15), without need for interpretation.
Similarly, the juxtaposition of female silence and male verbalization of sexuality is present when Hero is given to Claudio in marriage. Claudio can speak, “Lady, as you are mine, I am yours” (Much Ado About Nothing, II.i.304-305), while Hero remains silent despite being nudged by Beatrice, “Speak, cousin” (Ibid, II.i.307). Hero’s blush when later accused at the altar can, therefore, be seen as a non-verbal indication of sexuality which Claudio, representing the prevailing misogynist and distrustful attitudes of men in the play, interprets as guilt of infidelity. Hence, as Helena and Hero feel as though they mustn’t speak openly about sexuality, the blush is a valid form of female communication, but, as it is non-verbal, the blush lends itself to forensic analyses prone to misogynist misunderstandings.
Conversely, a lack of sexuality—maidenhood and modesty—can also be insinuated by a female blush, important to the survival of young women in early modern society. Helena calls the court’s attention to her maiden blush, “I protest I simply am a maid. […] The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me” (All’s Well That Ends Well, II.iii.68-70). and Claudio alludes to the archetype of the blushing maid in front of the wedding party, “Like a maid she blushes here […] Would you not swear, / All you that see her, that she were a maid, / By these exterior shows?” (Much Ado About Nothing, IV.i.33, 37-39). The blush in maidenhood can therefore be seen as an important performance of modesty and sexual inexperience, a shyness when approached by men or bawdy topics of conversation, that occurs in the public sphere. Claiming the title of ‘maid’ is the safest and most virtuous act a young woman can perform in society’s eyes, as maidenhood is conflated with all other virtues, “maidhood, honor, truth, and everything” (Twelfth Night, III.i.152). In terms of Hero’s character, being a maid is intrinsically linked to living. When she is accused of infidelity, she dies both in reputation and in literally faking her death, “Your daughter here the princes left for dead […] publish it that she is dead indeed” (Much Ado About Nothing, IV.i.201-203). Her rebirth and life are concurrent with her maidenhood being reasserted, “And surely as I live, I am a maid” (Much Ado About Nothing, V.iv.64). Hence, obscuring the face with a blush is not only an involuntary shyness or innocence but a conscious performance of maidenhood to ensure a young woman’s own safety. Thus, the blush can be interpreted in two opposing ways, as Derek Dunne highlights, “a sign of guilt or indicative of chastity, albeit with an implicit awareness of sexuality” (Dunne 234). Society, armed with its misogynist biases, is given the power to interpret the blush, diagnosing a young woman’s inner world and putting her virtue and sexuality on the scales. The powerlessness of women subject to arbitrary patriarchal judgments of their faces brings to light “the precarious position of women in early modern society, even before the law” (Dunne 235).
In Twelfth Night, the veil becomes an extension of the maiden’s blush, in that it obscures the face to imply virtue and modesty. In her grief for her father and brother, the “virtuous maid” (Twelfth Night, I.ii.36), Olivia, “hath abjured the sight / And company of men” (Ibid, I.ii.40-41). In the absence of patriarchal familial figures who traditionally would guard her maidenhood, Olivia is left to safeguard her own honor and does so by removing herself entirely from any interaction with men, visually signified by obscuring her face with a veil. Valentine’s simile “like a cloistress she will veilèd walk” (Ibid, I.i.29). makes clear the religious implications of chastity and virtue that surround her veil. As such, the veil is a performance of grief, goodness, and maidenhood, in the same way a blush is for young women. Thus, the covering of the entire face with something external is still not immune to society’s gendered and sexualized interpretations.
For men, something very different is used to obscure the cheeks to indicate gender and sexual maturity: a beard. The beard as an indicator of binary sex is most clear in the categorization of Daniel Sennert’s medical text from 1661, “Men have beards, Women have none” (Sennert 2612). When discussing a man without a beard, Beatrice remarks “What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman?” (Much Ado About Nothing, II.i.34-36). The gendered interpretation of the beard is developed with judgments of age as Beatrice continues, “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man” (Ibid, II.i.36-37). Lafew reflects this as he sees beards as an analogy for the difference in age between him and the men of the court, “My mouth no more were broken than these boys’ / And writ as little beard” (All’s Well That Ends Well, II.iii.61-62), and later calls attention to his “old beard, / And ev’ry hair that’s on’t” (Ibid, V.iii.76-77). It is thus evident that the beard can ‘prove’ masculine age just as the blush can ‘prove’ female adolescent maidenhood, exhibiting the same forensic analysis to denote sex and age. The beard is something to be commented on and joked about in homosocial interactions, as with Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato discussing Benedick’s beard:
DON PEDRO. Hath any man seen him at the barber’s?
CLAUDIO. No, but the barber’s man hath been seen with him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis balls.
LEONATO. Indeed he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard. (Much Ado About Nothing, III.ii.42-47)
Viola-as-Cesario’s lack of beard is discussed just as much in homosocial company as she straddles both types of beardlessness: being female and performing as a young boy. Feste mocks Cesario’s lack of a beard with an expectation that it is to come, “Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard” (Twelfth Night, III.i.45-46), while Orsino imagines Cesario’s facial hair accompanying his future manhood, “what wilt thou be / When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case?” (Ibid, V.i.164-165). In this prepubescent phase of their lives, the twins Viola and Sebastian can fuse into “one face, one voice, one habit, and two persons” (Ibid, V.i.216), regardless of their difference in sex. Victoria Sparey highlights that the interchangeability of bodies and faces in the Viola/Cesario/Sebastian dynamic represents “a fantasy” of “bodies that do not exhibit the changes of puberty:” bodies who are made “blank” (Sparey 459). Though the ambiguity of “blank” prepubescent faces is significant, characters like Feste and Orsino cannot help extrapolating their expectations from Viola/Cesario’s face, imagining a bearded future for her. Hence, primordial “blankness” is interpreted as an absence of something that will one day come, rather than a haven from or a solution to interpretation.
How is it possible to depart from the face’s vulnerability to judgment and misinterpretation? The answer is not obscuring with a blush, veil, or beard, because these bring inescapable gendered and aged associations of whoredom, maidenhood, or masculine maturity. Even in a state before sexual maturity, before the blush and beard, these gendered associations persist as an imagination of one’s future face. Richard II presents a solution: iconoclasm, the complete destruction of face and likeness. The face, as a part of the body natural, represents Richard’s most earthly vulnerabilities of age, sickness, subjecthood, and sin as he looks at his reflection, “I do see the very book indeed, / Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself” (Richard II, IV.i.274-5). Thus, he destroys the mirror, “cracked in a hundred shivers” (Ibid, IV.i.288), and sees it also as “destroyed my face” (Ibid, IV.i.290). Richard is left with “no name, no title” (Ibid, IV.i.254). and no face, the former were taken away from him but the latter he has destroyed himself, freeing himself from the vulnerability of the body natural and the interpretations of others. Rather than obscuring the face with ornament, for Richard, it seems that the only way to escape interpretation is to depart from the face entirely. This is much in contrast to Anthony Nuttall and William McKenzie’s impressions of Richard II, “Shakespeare evokes Narcissus via images of reflective surfaces” (McKenzie 96), as, instead of representing “the most elaborately Narcissistic” (Nuttall 137) obsession with likeness, Richard enacts a rejection of face.
The Duchess replicates Richard’s indication that there is an alternative form of self-presentation possible, “Look upon his face. / His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest; / His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast” (Ibid, V.iii.99-101). This rejection of the “mouth” in favor of the “breast” is an argument against faces, suggesting something spiritually and morally significant as a complete departure from the performative, interpretable face and its ornaments. Instead, the Duchess’ refusal of the face aligns with Richard’s destruction of the mirror in presenting an alternative: the possibility of something radically immediate, internal, and truthful, a non-face self.
Identity will always be interlinked with faces, but the difference lies in when faces are given socially constructed interpretations or self-constructed ones. In the conscious or unconscious attempt to obscure the face through a blush, veil, or beard, gendered and age-related assumptions are inescapable and pivotal to the reputations and lives of Shakespearean characters from All’s Well That Ends Well and Much Ado About Nothing. Existing without these ornaments, as with Twelfth Night’s Viola/Cesario/Sebastian’s “blankness”, is still not free from interpretation. Hence, the complete departure from and destruction of the face, as evidenced in Richard II, represents a way for one to construct one’s own identity from the internal by eradicating external societal implications. Though this non-face self is presented as an optimistic alternative, Shakespeare’s drama can ultimately not facilitate it as playing lends itself to costume, makeup, performance, and their associated façades, farces, and interpretations.
Bibliography
Dunne, Derek. “Blushing on Cue: The Forensics of the Blush in Early Modern Drama” Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 34, no. 2, Summer 2016, pp. 233-252.
McKenzie, William. “Narcissism, Epochal Change and ‘Public Necessity’ in Richard II and ‘Of Custom, and Not Easily Changing an Accepted Law’” Shakespeare and Montaigne, edited by Engle, L., Gray, P., and Hamlin, W.H., Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 90-104.
Nuttall, Anthony D. “Ovid’s Narcissus and Shakespeare’s Richard II” Ovid Renewed, edited by Martindale, Charles, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Probyn, Elspeth. Blush: Faces of Shame. Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press, 2005.
Sennert, Daniel. The Art of Chirurgery Explained in Six Parts. London, 1661. Oxford Early English Books Online. https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/A59191 Accessed 27 November 2022.
Shakespeare, William. All’s Well That Ends Well. The Signet Classics Shakespeare, Second Revised Edition, edited by Barnet, Sylvan, New American Library, 2005.
Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. The Signet Classics Shakespeare, Second Revised Edition, edited by Stevenson, David, New American Library, 1998.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second. The Signet Classics Shakespeare, Second Revised Edition, edited by Muir, Kenneth, New American Library, 1999.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or, What You Will. The Signet Classics Shakespeare, Second Revised Edition, edited by Baker, Herschel, New American Library, 1998.
Sparey, Victoria. “Performing Puberty: Fertile Complexions in Shakespeare’s Plays” Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 33, no. 3, Fall 2015, pp. 441-467.