Laurence Publicover
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198806813
- eISBN:
- 9780191844362
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198806813.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Introduction lays out the argument of the book, in part through discussion of critical responses to the geography of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Situating the book’s critical approach within the ...
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The Introduction lays out the argument of the book, in part through discussion of critical responses to the geography of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Situating the book’s critical approach within the several scholarly fields it engages, including theatre history, theories of genre, Mediterranean studies, and theories of intertextuality, it then outlines the contribution Dramatic Geography makes to existing discussions of early modern Mediterranean plays. The Introduction goes on to offer an overview and analysis of how early modern drama stages space and location, working through episodes from plays including Henry V, Hamlet, and Antony and Cleopatra. Finally, it differentiates early modern ways of staging space from those employed in the Restoration theatres, stressing the greater flexibility and complexity of early modern methods, and makes a case for the importance of understanding dramatic geography if we are better to comprehend the ways in which drama creates meaning.Less
The Introduction lays out the argument of the book, in part through discussion of critical responses to the geography of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Situating the book’s critical approach within the several scholarly fields it engages, including theatre history, theories of genre, Mediterranean studies, and theories of intertextuality, it then outlines the contribution Dramatic Geography makes to existing discussions of early modern Mediterranean plays. The Introduction goes on to offer an overview and analysis of how early modern drama stages space and location, working through episodes from plays including Henry V, Hamlet, and Antony and Cleopatra. Finally, it differentiates early modern ways of staging space from those employed in the Restoration theatres, stressing the greater flexibility and complexity of early modern methods, and makes a case for the importance of understanding dramatic geography if we are better to comprehend the ways in which drama creates meaning.
David Carnegie
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introduction describes the structure of the book and the arguments of each contributor. It also outlines the main questions around the lost play Cardenio: was it really by Shakespeare and ...
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This introduction describes the structure of the book and the arguments of each contributor. It also outlines the main questions around the lost play Cardenio: was it really by Shakespeare and Fletcher? Was Theobald’s Double Falsehood really based on Cardenio? If so, how much did Theobald adapt it, and how much is original? Or was it his own forgery passed off as Shakespeare, as Theobald’s enemies claimed? How closely did the original Cardenio follow its source material in Cervantes’s Don Quixote? What can we learn from close scrutiny of the available documents? Can computer-aided stylometric tests establish convincing proof of Shakespeare and Fletcher authorship lying behind Theobald’s eighteenth-century adaptation? Can close critical analysis reveal what Theobald probably cut? Can modern stage adaptations of Double Falsehood recreate something akin to the lost original? All these questions are central to one of the great current debates about Shakespeare and early modern drama.Less
This introduction describes the structure of the book and the arguments of each contributor. It also outlines the main questions around the lost play Cardenio: was it really by Shakespeare and Fletcher? Was Theobald’s Double Falsehood really based on Cardenio? If so, how much did Theobald adapt it, and how much is original? Or was it his own forgery passed off as Shakespeare, as Theobald’s enemies claimed? How closely did the original Cardenio follow its source material in Cervantes’s Don Quixote? What can we learn from close scrutiny of the available documents? Can computer-aided stylometric tests establish convincing proof of Shakespeare and Fletcher authorship lying behind Theobald’s eighteenth-century adaptation? Can close critical analysis reveal what Theobald probably cut? Can modern stage adaptations of Double Falsehood recreate something akin to the lost original? All these questions are central to one of the great current debates about Shakespeare and early modern drama.
Jennifer Higginbotham
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748655908
- eISBN:
- 9780748684397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748655908.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Using the two parts of Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold as a case study, this chapter charts the emergence of ‘girl’ into early modern English, tracing two major shifts in ...
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Using the two parts of Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold as a case study, this chapter charts the emergence of ‘girl’ into early modern English, tracing two major shifts in the development of the vocabulary of female youth in dictionaries, midwifery manuals, literature, and drama. The first shift began in the early sixteenth century and involved the proliferation of specialised terms for female children. Following this period of elaboration, a second shift took place in the mid-seventeenth century, when ‘girl’ and the other terms in its semantic network began to be defined as separate categories of female youth.Less
Using the two parts of Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold as a case study, this chapter charts the emergence of ‘girl’ into early modern English, tracing two major shifts in the development of the vocabulary of female youth in dictionaries, midwifery manuals, literature, and drama. The first shift began in the early sixteenth century and involved the proliferation of specialised terms for female children. Following this period of elaboration, a second shift took place in the mid-seventeenth century, when ‘girl’ and the other terms in its semantic network began to be defined as separate categories of female youth.
Laurence Publicover
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198806813
- eISBN:
- 9780191844362
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198806813.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Focusing on early modern plays that stage encounters between peoples of different cultures, this book asks how a sense of geographical location was created in early modern theatres that featured ...
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Focusing on early modern plays that stage encounters between peoples of different cultures, this book asks how a sense of geographical location was created in early modern theatres that featured minimal scenery. While previous studies have stressed these plays’ connections to a historical Mediterranean in which England was increasingly involved, this book demonstrates how their dramatic geography was shaped through a literary and theatrical heritage. Reading canonical plays including The Merchant of Venice, The Jew of Malta, and The Tempest alongside lesser-known dramas such as Soliman and Perseda, Guy of Warwick, and The Travels of the Three English Brothers, Dramatic Geography illustrates, first, how early modern dramatists staging foreign worlds drew upon a romance tradition dating back to the medieval period, and second, how they responded to one another’s plays to create an ‘intertheatrical geography’. These strategies, the book argues, shape the plays’ wider meanings in important ways, and could only have operated within the theatrical environment peculiar to early modern London: one in which playwrights worked in close proximity, in one instance perhaps even living together while composing Mediterranean dramas, and one where they could expect audiences to respond to subtle generic and intertextual negotiations. In reassessing this group of plays, the book brings into conversation scholarship on theatre history, cultural encounter, and literary geography; it also contributes to current debates in early modern studies regarding the nature of dramatic authorship, the relationship between genre and history, and the continuities that run between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.Less
Focusing on early modern plays that stage encounters between peoples of different cultures, this book asks how a sense of geographical location was created in early modern theatres that featured minimal scenery. While previous studies have stressed these plays’ connections to a historical Mediterranean in which England was increasingly involved, this book demonstrates how their dramatic geography was shaped through a literary and theatrical heritage. Reading canonical plays including The Merchant of Venice, The Jew of Malta, and The Tempest alongside lesser-known dramas such as Soliman and Perseda, Guy of Warwick, and The Travels of the Three English Brothers, Dramatic Geography illustrates, first, how early modern dramatists staging foreign worlds drew upon a romance tradition dating back to the medieval period, and second, how they responded to one another’s plays to create an ‘intertheatrical geography’. These strategies, the book argues, shape the plays’ wider meanings in important ways, and could only have operated within the theatrical environment peculiar to early modern London: one in which playwrights worked in close proximity, in one instance perhaps even living together while composing Mediterranean dramas, and one where they could expect audiences to respond to subtle generic and intertextual negotiations. In reassessing this group of plays, the book brings into conversation scholarship on theatre history, cultural encounter, and literary geography; it also contributes to current debates in early modern studies regarding the nature of dramatic authorship, the relationship between genre and history, and the continuities that run between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Frederika Bain
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719090783
- eISBN:
- 9781781708866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090783.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Focusing on early modern accounts of execution and murder in drama and cheap print, this chapter draws upon a group of broadside and pamphlet execution narratives from the late sixteenth to the ...
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Focusing on early modern accounts of execution and murder in drama and cheap print, this chapter draws upon a group of broadside and pamphlet execution narratives from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, including accounts of the regicide of Charles I, and upon Thomas Preston’s (1537-1598) Cambyses, King of Persia (1569) and Shakespeare’s Richard III (c.1592-3). In their representation of the rhetorical performances of the passions of the key players, these texts illustrate not only how emotion might be communicated from one character to another, but also how they might persuade and ‘infect’ audiences and readers with contagious passion by manipulating the linguistic and dramatic conventions deemed appropriate in such deadly situations. Through dramatic performances of passion, the texts communicate important (and at times subversive) political arguments about the nature of tyranny versus legitimate rule, illustrating the potency of emotional performance on the early modern page and stage.Less
Focusing on early modern accounts of execution and murder in drama and cheap print, this chapter draws upon a group of broadside and pamphlet execution narratives from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, including accounts of the regicide of Charles I, and upon Thomas Preston’s (1537-1598) Cambyses, King of Persia (1569) and Shakespeare’s Richard III (c.1592-3). In their representation of the rhetorical performances of the passions of the key players, these texts illustrate not only how emotion might be communicated from one character to another, but also how they might persuade and ‘infect’ audiences and readers with contagious passion by manipulating the linguistic and dramatic conventions deemed appropriate in such deadly situations. Through dramatic performances of passion, the texts communicate important (and at times subversive) political arguments about the nature of tyranny versus legitimate rule, illustrating the potency of emotional performance on the early modern page and stage.
Andrea Stevens
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748670499
- eISBN:
- 9780748693757
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748670499.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This book challenges the narrative of Shakespeare's ‘bare’ stage by looking at the ‘ground zero’ of early modern theatrical representation: the painted body of the actor. Organised as a series of ...
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This book challenges the narrative of Shakespeare's ‘bare’ stage by looking at the ‘ground zero’ of early modern theatrical representation: the painted body of the actor. Organised as a series of studies and considering the impact of the materiality of stage properties on live performance, the four chapters of the book examine goldface and divinity in York's Corpus Christi play; bloodiness in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including the unexpected use of blood as a disguise device; blackface performance within seventeenth-century court masques and in popular plays performed at the public playhouses; and finally whiteface, death, and stoniness in two King's Men plays of 1611. Not only did dramatists turn to paint to sustain a variety of theatrical illusions, they also strategically manipulated the multiple significations of this technology to create stage characters with complex effects of depth; allude to past and to contemporary performances; and thrill audiences by showcasing actors’ virtuoso transformations. Addressing current debates about the relationship between pre- and early modern subjectivity and embodiment, this book challenges the persistent notion that the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries was built predominantly around a new, ‘modern’ language of interiority. As a whole, the book questions the boundaries of the period categories ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ by demonstrating important continuities in theatrical labour and theatrical materials from medieval cycle drama through to the popular and courtly drama of the 1630s.Less
This book challenges the narrative of Shakespeare's ‘bare’ stage by looking at the ‘ground zero’ of early modern theatrical representation: the painted body of the actor. Organised as a series of studies and considering the impact of the materiality of stage properties on live performance, the four chapters of the book examine goldface and divinity in York's Corpus Christi play; bloodiness in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including the unexpected use of blood as a disguise device; blackface performance within seventeenth-century court masques and in popular plays performed at the public playhouses; and finally whiteface, death, and stoniness in two King's Men plays of 1611. Not only did dramatists turn to paint to sustain a variety of theatrical illusions, they also strategically manipulated the multiple significations of this technology to create stage characters with complex effects of depth; allude to past and to contemporary performances; and thrill audiences by showcasing actors’ virtuoso transformations. Addressing current debates about the relationship between pre- and early modern subjectivity and embodiment, this book challenges the persistent notion that the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries was built predominantly around a new, ‘modern’ language of interiority. As a whole, the book questions the boundaries of the period categories ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ by demonstrating important continuities in theatrical labour and theatrical materials from medieval cycle drama through to the popular and courtly drama of the 1630s.
William M. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199684113
- eISBN:
- 9780191764677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199684113.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, European Literature
This chapter centres on the claim that John Florio's translation of the Essays lends a strongly theatrical inflection to Montaigne's original French. Not only at the level of dramatic allusion, but ...
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This chapter centres on the claim that John Florio's translation of the Essays lends a strongly theatrical inflection to Montaigne's original French. Not only at the level of dramatic allusion, but within the very fabric of diction, idiom, and metaphor, Florio renders Montaigne into an English sharply attuned to contemporary interest in stage-plays and spectacle. The voice of Montaigne, for Jacobean poets, playwrights, and readers, is a voice exhibiting profound affinities with a theatrical orientation toward the world.Less
This chapter centres on the claim that John Florio's translation of the Essays lends a strongly theatrical inflection to Montaigne's original French. Not only at the level of dramatic allusion, but within the very fabric of diction, idiom, and metaphor, Florio renders Montaigne into an English sharply attuned to contemporary interest in stage-plays and spectacle. The voice of Montaigne, for Jacobean poets, playwrights, and readers, is a voice exhibiting profound affinities with a theatrical orientation toward the world.
Katherine Gillen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474417716
- eISBN:
- 9781474434539
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417716.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Chaste Value reassesses chastity’s significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage’s production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. ...
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Chaste Value reassesses chastity’s significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage’s production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity—itself a quasi-commodity—to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. The economic imagery surrounding chastity ranges from romantic evocations of treasure to more quotidian references to usury, counterfeiting, and commodity exchange. Attending to such discourse in late Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, Chaste Value argues that representations of chastity (married fidelity as well as virginity) figure centrally within the early modern theatre’s interrogation of early capitalism, particularly with regard to the incorporation of people into commercial exchange. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labour can be incorporated into market exchange.Less
Chaste Value reassesses chastity’s significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage’s production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity—itself a quasi-commodity—to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. The economic imagery surrounding chastity ranges from romantic evocations of treasure to more quotidian references to usury, counterfeiting, and commodity exchange. Attending to such discourse in late Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, Chaste Value argues that representations of chastity (married fidelity as well as virginity) figure centrally within the early modern theatre’s interrogation of early capitalism, particularly with regard to the incorporation of people into commercial exchange. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labour can be incorporated into market exchange.
Cory A. Reed
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190256555
- eISBN:
- 9780190256579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190256555.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Cognitive approaches to literature and culture hold promise for the analysis of theatrical performance in general, and early modern drama in particular. A cognitive approach to the complex dynamics ...
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Cognitive approaches to literature and culture hold promise for the analysis of theatrical performance in general, and early modern drama in particular. A cognitive approach to the complex dynamics of live performance sheds light on the ways an audience responds emotionally to, and engages with intellectually, the actions it perceives on stage. Assuming that human physiology and cognitive processes remain constant across time, cognitive approaches to live performance may allow us to approximate the emotional and intellectual dimensions of audience–performer interactions in the shared space of the theatrical corrales centuries ago. Cervantes’ early play, El trato de Argel [The Trade of Algiers], may have participated in a campaign to raise public awareness of the plight of enslaved Spaniards in Algerian prisons. Hence it lends itself to a cognitive analysis of the role of empathy in creating audience sympathy that might ultimately lead to an early modern form of proto-activism.Less
Cognitive approaches to literature and culture hold promise for the analysis of theatrical performance in general, and early modern drama in particular. A cognitive approach to the complex dynamics of live performance sheds light on the ways an audience responds emotionally to, and engages with intellectually, the actions it perceives on stage. Assuming that human physiology and cognitive processes remain constant across time, cognitive approaches to live performance may allow us to approximate the emotional and intellectual dimensions of audience–performer interactions in the shared space of the theatrical corrales centuries ago. Cervantes’ early play, El trato de Argel [The Trade of Algiers], may have participated in a campaign to raise public awareness of the plight of enslaved Spaniards in Algerian prisons. Hence it lends itself to a cognitive analysis of the role of empathy in creating audience sympathy that might ultimately lead to an early modern form of proto-activism.
Claire Kenward
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198804215
- eISBN:
- 9780191842412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198804215.003.0029
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In c.1537 Thersites made his entrance on the English stage, and declared himself as belonging to Homer at the start of a comic interlude that has typically been considered (like Thersites himself) as ...
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In c.1537 Thersites made his entrance on the English stage, and declared himself as belonging to Homer at the start of a comic interlude that has typically been considered (like Thersites himself) as travestying high epic into low, scurrilous entertainment. This chapter examines the intersection between staged versions of the character Thersites and the early modern period’s ongoing reception of Homer’s Iliad. Considering the Thersites interlude as representative of a broader cultural conception of Thersites, the chapter argues that a peculiarly English, and explicitly metatheatrical, Thersites emerges from a series of receptions-within-receptions, as Homer’s character was approached via refractions across a number of later classical texts. Moreover, when resurrected on the public stage in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (c.1602) and Thomas Heywood’s two-part drama The Iron Age (c.1611), this alternative, composite Thersites offers a significant commentary on the offstage reception of Homer’s epic text.Less
In c.1537 Thersites made his entrance on the English stage, and declared himself as belonging to Homer at the start of a comic interlude that has typically been considered (like Thersites himself) as travestying high epic into low, scurrilous entertainment. This chapter examines the intersection between staged versions of the character Thersites and the early modern period’s ongoing reception of Homer’s Iliad. Considering the Thersites interlude as representative of a broader cultural conception of Thersites, the chapter argues that a peculiarly English, and explicitly metatheatrical, Thersites emerges from a series of receptions-within-receptions, as Homer’s character was approached via refractions across a number of later classical texts. Moreover, when resurrected on the public stage in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (c.1602) and Thomas Heywood’s two-part drama The Iron Age (c.1611), this alternative, composite Thersites offers a significant commentary on the offstage reception of Homer’s epic text.
R. S. White and Ciara Rawnsley
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719090783
- eISBN:
- 9781781708866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090783.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The suggestive phrase ‘discrepant awareness’ was coined in 1960 by Bertrand Evans to explore the ways in which Shakespeare presents differences in knowledge and understanding between characters, and ...
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The suggestive phrase ‘discrepant awareness’ was coined in 1960 by Bertrand Evans to explore the ways in which Shakespeare presents differences in knowledge and understanding between characters, and between characters and audience, in order to build up irony and suspense, and to complicate plotting. This device, Evans suggests, is crucial to Shakespeare’s dramatic craftsmanship and a clue to the great range of theatrical effects he creates, respecting the multiplicity of perceptions that coexist and interact. However, while Evans shows how narrative complexity is enhanced by studying the limitations of what each individual knows or is ‘aware of’ at a particular moment he pays little attention to what each character is feeling. The argument advanced in this chapter is that the neglected notion of discrepant awareness can fruitfully be developed to include consideration of emotional fluctuations in each play, including passions (fixed obsessions), affects (humoral aspects in character creation), and emotions (fleeting situational responses). We explore emotional complexity of scenes for both characters and audiences, using scenes respectively from The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Cymbeline. It might be regarded as a distinctive hallmark of Shakespeare’s dramatic method in dealing with emotional complexity.Less
The suggestive phrase ‘discrepant awareness’ was coined in 1960 by Bertrand Evans to explore the ways in which Shakespeare presents differences in knowledge and understanding between characters, and between characters and audience, in order to build up irony and suspense, and to complicate plotting. This device, Evans suggests, is crucial to Shakespeare’s dramatic craftsmanship and a clue to the great range of theatrical effects he creates, respecting the multiplicity of perceptions that coexist and interact. However, while Evans shows how narrative complexity is enhanced by studying the limitations of what each individual knows or is ‘aware of’ at a particular moment he pays little attention to what each character is feeling. The argument advanced in this chapter is that the neglected notion of discrepant awareness can fruitfully be developed to include consideration of emotional fluctuations in each play, including passions (fixed obsessions), affects (humoral aspects in character creation), and emotions (fleeting situational responses). We explore emotional complexity of scenes for both characters and audiences, using scenes respectively from The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Cymbeline. It might be regarded as a distinctive hallmark of Shakespeare’s dramatic method in dealing with emotional complexity.
Gavin Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198734321
- eISBN:
- 9780191799167
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198734321.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Drama
This book examines why early modern drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of ...
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This book examines why early modern drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration: no play is set in the Americas; few plays treat colonization as central to the plot; and a handful feature Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise). However, advocates of colonialism in the seventeenth century denounced playing companies as enemies on a par with the Pope and the Devil. Instead of writing off these accusers as paranoid cranks, this book takes as its starting point the possibility that they were astute playgoers. By so doing we can begin to see the emergence of a “picture of America,” and of the Virginia colony in particular, across a number of plays performed for London audiences: Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, and his collaboration with Marston and Chapman, Eastward Ho!; Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso; Massinger’s The City Madam; Massinger and Fletcher’s The Sea Voyage; Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl; Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Fletcher and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. We can glean the significance of this picture, not only for the troubled Virginia Company, but also for London theater audiences. And we can see that the picture that was beginning to form was, as the anti-theatricalists surmised, often slanderous, condemnatory, and, as it were, anti-American.Less
This book examines why early modern drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration: no play is set in the Americas; few plays treat colonization as central to the plot; and a handful feature Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise). However, advocates of colonialism in the seventeenth century denounced playing companies as enemies on a par with the Pope and the Devil. Instead of writing off these accusers as paranoid cranks, this book takes as its starting point the possibility that they were astute playgoers. By so doing we can begin to see the emergence of a “picture of America,” and of the Virginia colony in particular, across a number of plays performed for London audiences: Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, and his collaboration with Marston and Chapman, Eastward Ho!; Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso; Massinger’s The City Madam; Massinger and Fletcher’s The Sea Voyage; Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl; Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Fletcher and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. We can glean the significance of this picture, not only for the troubled Virginia Company, but also for London theater audiences. And we can see that the picture that was beginning to form was, as the anti-theatricalists surmised, often slanderous, condemnatory, and, as it were, anti-American.
Helen Barr
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719091490
- eISBN:
- 9781781707319
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091490.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
What happens when Chaucer turns up where we don’t expect him to be? Transporting Chaucer draws on the work of the British sculptor Antony Gormley alongside more traditional literary scholarship to ...
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What happens when Chaucer turns up where we don’t expect him to be? Transporting Chaucer draws on the work of the British sculptor Antony Gormley alongside more traditional literary scholarship to show that Chaucer’s play with textual history and chronological time prefigures how his poetry becomes incorporate with later (and earlier) texts. The shuttling of bodies, names, and sounds in and amongst works that Chaucer did write anticipates Chaucerian presences in later (and earlier) works that he did not. Chaucer’s characters, including ‘himself’ refuse to stay put in one place and time. This book bypasses the chronological borders of literary succession to read The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer’s Dream Vision poetry in present company with Chaucerian ‘apocrypha’, and works by Shakespeare, Davenant and Dryden. Conventional models of source and analogue study are re-energised to reveal unexpected (and sometimes unsettling) literary cohabitations and re-placements. Transporting Chaucer presents innovative readings of relationships between medieval texts and early modern drama, and between literary texts and material culture. Associations between medieval architecture, pilgrim practice, manuscript illustration, and the soundscapes of dramatic performance reposition how we read Chaucer’s oeuvre and what gets made of it. Written for scholars and students (undergraduate and graduate) who work in medieval English literary studies and early modern drama, Transporting Chaucer offers a new approach to how we encounter texts through time.Less
What happens when Chaucer turns up where we don’t expect him to be? Transporting Chaucer draws on the work of the British sculptor Antony Gormley alongside more traditional literary scholarship to show that Chaucer’s play with textual history and chronological time prefigures how his poetry becomes incorporate with later (and earlier) texts. The shuttling of bodies, names, and sounds in and amongst works that Chaucer did write anticipates Chaucerian presences in later (and earlier) works that he did not. Chaucer’s characters, including ‘himself’ refuse to stay put in one place and time. This book bypasses the chronological borders of literary succession to read The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer’s Dream Vision poetry in present company with Chaucerian ‘apocrypha’, and works by Shakespeare, Davenant and Dryden. Conventional models of source and analogue study are re-energised to reveal unexpected (and sometimes unsettling) literary cohabitations and re-placements. Transporting Chaucer presents innovative readings of relationships between medieval texts and early modern drama, and between literary texts and material culture. Associations between medieval architecture, pilgrim practice, manuscript illustration, and the soundscapes of dramatic performance reposition how we read Chaucer’s oeuvre and what gets made of it. Written for scholars and students (undergraduate and graduate) who work in medieval English literary studies and early modern drama, Transporting Chaucer offers a new approach to how we encounter texts through time.
András Kiséry
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198746201
- eISBN:
- 9780191808814
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746201.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Hamlet’s Moment reveals how plays written in the first decade of the seventeenth century were shaped by forms of professional political knowledge and the social promises such knowledge held. This ...
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Hamlet’s Moment reveals how plays written in the first decade of the seventeenth century were shaped by forms of professional political knowledge and the social promises such knowledge held. This argument presupposes that there was such a thing as a political profession, however loosely understood: that there was a career path associated with political employment that was assumed to be a means to social advancement, and that there was a recognizable body of knowledge and mode of thinking defining it. To illustrate this, the first half of the book focuses on Hamlet and its reflection on the conditions of political employment, the education and intellectual work required for advancement in political careers, and the characteristics of a politic style, arguing that in Shakespeare’s play, drama turns from open, military conflict to diplomacy and court policy, and from the public contestation of power to the technologies of government. The second half of the book turns to plays that follow in the wake of Shakespeare’s path-breaking tragedy. Plays written by Ben Jonson, John Marston, George Chapman and others invited the public to imagine what it meant to have a political career. In doing so, they transformed political knowledge into a more broadly useful type of cultural capital, something even people without political agency could deploy in conversation and use. The book suggests that the demand for this social asset was a driving force behind the burgeoning public discussion of the seventeeth century, and thus, behind the rise of the modern public sphere.Less
Hamlet’s Moment reveals how plays written in the first decade of the seventeenth century were shaped by forms of professional political knowledge and the social promises such knowledge held. This argument presupposes that there was such a thing as a political profession, however loosely understood: that there was a career path associated with political employment that was assumed to be a means to social advancement, and that there was a recognizable body of knowledge and mode of thinking defining it. To illustrate this, the first half of the book focuses on Hamlet and its reflection on the conditions of political employment, the education and intellectual work required for advancement in political careers, and the characteristics of a politic style, arguing that in Shakespeare’s play, drama turns from open, military conflict to diplomacy and court policy, and from the public contestation of power to the technologies of government. The second half of the book turns to plays that follow in the wake of Shakespeare’s path-breaking tragedy. Plays written by Ben Jonson, John Marston, George Chapman and others invited the public to imagine what it meant to have a political career. In doing so, they transformed political knowledge into a more broadly useful type of cultural capital, something even people without political agency could deploy in conversation and use. The book suggests that the demand for this social asset was a driving force behind the burgeoning public discussion of the seventeeth century, and thus, behind the rise of the modern public sphere.
