| Description |
160 pages ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
1. Breaking boundaries: politics and play on the Renaissance stage -- 2. Theatre and punishment: spectacles of death and dying on the stage -- 3. Theatre and cruelty: Renaissance notions of alterity in Roman tragedies -- 4. Theatre and carnival licence: exploring the boundaries of comic freedom and tragic excess -- 5. Theatre and transgression: secularizing the sacred and sacralizing the secular -- 6. Theatre and the scaffold: social drama and public spectacle in 1649 |
| Summary |
The period 1585-1649 was rich in innovative drama which challenged the boundaries between social, political and cultural activities of various kinds. In this book, Molly Smith examines ways in which texts by Renaissance authors reflect, question and influence their society's ideological concerns. In the drama of Kyd, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, Massinger and Ford, she identifies the simultaneously serious and playful appropriation of popular cultural practices, an appropriation which is expertly reversed by authorities in the political drama of Charles I's public trial and execution in 1649. This compelling interpretation of Renaissance drama will prove of value to students of literature and social history |
| Notes |
Bibliography: p139-155. _ Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Bibliography: pages 139-155. - Includes index |
| Subject |
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Contemporaries.
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Political and social views.
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Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.
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English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism.
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European drama -- Renaissance, 1450-1600.
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Play in literature.
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Political plays, English -- History and criticism.
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English drama -- 17th century -- History and criticism.
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Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century.
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Politics and literature -- England -- History.
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Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.
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| LC no. |
97077874 |
| ISBN |
1859283950 |
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