Christopher Pye
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823265046
- eISBN:
- 9780823266678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265046.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter one—an overview--focuses on the relation between aesthetics, history and political formation, engaging As You Like It, King Lear and Dr. Faustus in order to specify the aesthetic as a problem ...
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Chapter one—an overview--focuses on the relation between aesthetics, history and political formation, engaging As You Like It, King Lear and Dr. Faustus in order to specify the aesthetic as a problem generally and for early modernity in particular. It considers the relation between aesthetic autonomy and early modern conceptions of sovereignty, suggesting among other things how such an orientation is distinct from current biopolitical analyses. The chapter further argues that early modern aesthetics needs to be dislocated from its familiar affiliation with commodification, suggesting that the aesthetic bears on the prior constitution of the very space of the social. That foundational aspect of the aesthetic brings to view the dimension of the works of the period that resists efforts to reconcile the defining antagonisms of historical society, whether that reconciliation is sought through reference to the state, to economy as an organizing metaphor, or by recourse to an artificially imposed distinction between civil and political spheres.Less
Chapter one—an overview--focuses on the relation between aesthetics, history and political formation, engaging As You Like It, King Lear and Dr. Faustus in order to specify the aesthetic as a problem generally and for early modernity in particular. It considers the relation between aesthetic autonomy and early modern conceptions of sovereignty, suggesting among other things how such an orientation is distinct from current biopolitical analyses. The chapter further argues that early modern aesthetics needs to be dislocated from its familiar affiliation with commodification, suggesting that the aesthetic bears on the prior constitution of the very space of the social. That foundational aspect of the aesthetic brings to view the dimension of the works of the period that resists efforts to reconcile the defining antagonisms of historical society, whether that reconciliation is sought through reference to the state, to economy as an organizing metaphor, or by recourse to an artificially imposed distinction between civil and political spheres.
Richard Dutton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198777748
- eISBN:
- 9780191823169
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198777748.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, Drama
There is debate about how and why Elizabethan play texts were revised. Did dramatists complete their plays in what were known as their ‘foul papers’ and then the players reduced them to playing ...
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There is debate about how and why Elizabethan play texts were revised. Did dramatists complete their plays in what were known as their ‘foul papers’ and then the players reduced them to playing length and form—like the 1600 quarto of Henry V? Are some texts garbled oral versions of more perfect originals that we possess, compiled perhaps by renegade actors or by shorthand, such as the first quartos of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet? This chapter argues that the earliest versions of these plays represent them, however inadequately, as first written and that their longer and more familiar versions were rewritings, probably for the court. It draws extensively on Philip Henslowe’s Diary and what it shows of playwrights like Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle being paid to revise plays ‘for the court’. Particular attention is paid to Dekker’s revision of Old Fortunatus, where we can reconstruct the process in some detail.Less
There is debate about how and why Elizabethan play texts were revised. Did dramatists complete their plays in what were known as their ‘foul papers’ and then the players reduced them to playing length and form—like the 1600 quarto of Henry V? Are some texts garbled oral versions of more perfect originals that we possess, compiled perhaps by renegade actors or by shorthand, such as the first quartos of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet? This chapter argues that the earliest versions of these plays represent them, however inadequately, as first written and that their longer and more familiar versions were rewritings, probably for the court. It draws extensively on Philip Henslowe’s Diary and what it shows of playwrights like Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle being paid to revise plays ‘for the court’. Particular attention is paid to Dekker’s revision of Old Fortunatus, where we can reconstruct the process in some detail.
Heather Hirschfeld
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452741
- eISBN:
- 9780801470639
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452741.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an ...
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This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, the book examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, the book suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots “to set things right” in a world shorn of the prospect of “making enough” (satisfacere). The book traces today's use of “satisfaction”-as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange-to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love's Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.Less
This book recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term “satisfaction” during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Focusing on the term's significance as an organizing principle of Christian repentance, the book examines the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatized the consequences of its re- or de-valuation in the process of Reformation doctrinal change. The Protestant theology of repentance, the book suggests, underwrote a variety of theatrical plots “to set things right” in a world shorn of the prospect of “making enough” (satisfacere). The book traces today's use of “satisfaction”-as an unexamined measure of inward gratification rather than a finely nuanced standard of relational exchange-to the pressures on legal, economic, and marital discourses wrought by the Protestant rejection of the Catholic sacrament of penance (contrition, confession, satisfaction) and represented imaginatively on the stage. In so doing, it offers fresh readings of the penitential economies of canonical plays including Dr. Faustus, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello; considers the doctrinal and generic importance of lesser-known plays including Enough Is as Good as a Feast and Love's Pilgrimage; and opens new avenues into the study of literature and repentance in early modern England.
Mark Stoyle
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780859898591
- eISBN:
- 9781781384978
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780859898591.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter argues that the remarkable success of the Observations owed much to the subtlety and skill with which its author tapped into a complex web of pre-existent ideas about the supernatural. ...
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This chapter argues that the remarkable success of the Observations owed much to the subtlety and skill with which its author tapped into a complex web of pre-existent ideas about the supernatural. Notions of the dog as a witch's attendant spirit, or ‘familiar’ – from the trial of Dame Alice Kyteler in 1324-5 right up until the trial of the Lancashire witches in 1634 - are discussed in depth, and particular attention is paid to the possibility that poodles and spaniels may have been regarded with an especially suspicious eye by contemporaries. The influence of a series of polemical works which were produced during 1641-42 – and particularly of the anti-puritan satires of John Taylor, the ‘water poet’ – on the author of the Observations is also explored. [125]Less
This chapter argues that the remarkable success of the Observations owed much to the subtlety and skill with which its author tapped into a complex web of pre-existent ideas about the supernatural. Notions of the dog as a witch's attendant spirit, or ‘familiar’ – from the trial of Dame Alice Kyteler in 1324-5 right up until the trial of the Lancashire witches in 1634 - are discussed in depth, and particular attention is paid to the possibility that poodles and spaniels may have been regarded with an especially suspicious eye by contemporaries. The influence of a series of polemical works which were produced during 1641-42 – and particularly of the anti-puritan satires of John Taylor, the ‘water poet’ – on the author of the Observations is also explored. [125]
