Shakespeare and the Political Way

Release on 2020-08-30 | by Elizabeth Frazer

The real opposition between the aristocratic and the popular parties , and principled disagreement about distributive policy and ... George , ' Plutarch , Insurrection , 2000/2004 : 117–18 ; Patterson , Shakespeare and Popular Voice ...

Author: Elizabeth Frazer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780192588296
Category: Political Science
Page: 256
View: 749

Studies of Shakespeare and politics often ask the question whether his dramas are on the side of aristocratic or monarchical sovereign authority, or are on the side of those who resist; whether he endorses a standard view of male and patriarchal authority, or whether his cross-dressing heroines put him among feminist thinkers. Scholars also show that Shakespeare's representations of rule, revolt, and arguments about laws and constitutions draw on and allude to stories and real events that were contemporaneous for him, as well as historical ones. Building on scholarship about Shakespeare and politics, this book argues that Shakespeare's representations and stagings of political power, sovereignty, resistance, and controversy are more complex. The merits of political life, as opposed to life governed by monetary exchange, religious truth, supernatural power, military heroism, or interpersonal love, are rehearsed in the plots. And the clashing and contradictory meanings of politics — its association with free truthful speech but also with dishonest hypocrisy, with open action and argument as much as occult behind the scenes manoevring — are dramatized by him, to show that although violence, lies, and authoritarianism do often win out in the world there is another kind of politics, and a political way that we would do well to follow when we can. The book offers original readings of the characters and plots of Shakespeare's dramas in order to illustrate the subtlety of his pictures of political power, how it works, and what is wrong and right with it.

Language: en
Pages: 200

Shakespeare and Popular Music

Authors: Adam Hansen

Categories: Literary Criticism

Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-09-23 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Exploring the interactions between Shakespeare and popular music, this book links these seeming polar opposites, showing how musicians have woven the Bard into their sounds.

Language: en
Pages: 291

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture

Authors: Robert Shaughnessy

Categories: Literary Criticism

Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-06-28 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

A collection of essays on Shakespeare's life and works in popular forms and media, first published in 2007.

Language: en
Pages: 288

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners

Authors: Chris Fitter

Categories: Literary Criticism

Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-07-18 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners is a highly original contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. It breaks important new ground in introducing readers, lay and scholarly alike, to the existence and character of the political culture of the mass of ordinary commoners in Shakespeare's England, as revealed by

Language: en
Pages: 224

Shakespeare and Cultural Materialist Theory

Authors: Christopher Marlow

Categories: Drama

Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-08-24 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Cultural materialism is one of the most important and one of the most provocative theories to have emerged in the last thirty years. Combining close attention to Shakespearean texts and the conditions of their production with an explicit left-wing political affiliation, cultural materialism offers readers a radical avenue through which

Language: en
Pages: 256