Q1 Hamlet (1603) routinely sets prose speeches so that they appear to be blank verse. This articl... more Q1 Hamlet (1603) routinely sets prose speeches so that they appear to be blank verse. This article argues that such was an attempt to confer prestige upon the text, particularly in the wake of the saturation of Shakespeare books on the literary marketplace around 1600 – a phenomenon that saw his prose works achieve less favour than those in pentameter. The publishers of Q1 Merry Wives (1602) and Q1 Hamlet may have hedged their bets on these Shakespeare texts by amplifying their verse, long the gold standard of the Shakespearean brand. Like The True Tragedie of Richard III (published 1594) and The Famous Victories of Henry V (entered 1594), which presented their opening pages to readers as iambic pentameter, Q1 Hamlet seems to have beautified its dialogue for readers in the early modern book marketplace.
Although few terms have figured so centrally in current debates about Shakespeare, none has produ... more Although few terms have figured so centrally in current debates about Shakespeare, none has produced more ambiguity than 'the New Historicism'. Indeed difficult as definition has proved, so frequently do critics attempt this and so varied are their results that it is sometimes hard to tell whether New Historicism is, on the one hand, a large critical school unified by a common set of beliefs or, on the other, merely a handful of influential essays by a relative few individuals. Most definitions fall somewhere between these extremes and often involve divergent issues. One can define New Historicism, for example, as a rhetorical form, a generational project, an intensively interdisciplinary phenomenon, and a sign of analytical and ethical decay or progress. The partiality of these definitions is foregrounded by both the understandable reluctance of 'New Historicists' to wear that badge and the fact that academic presses continue to introduce, under this label, diverse work that compels us to expand our already capacious definitions of New Historicism. These complicating factors are joined by yet another hurdle confronting any attempt to define the term: the relation between New Historicism and previous forms of historicist criticism. For to ask seriously about the 'New' in 'New Historicism' is to do more than challenge the accuracy of an admittedly haphazard designation. It is to historicize a critical genre typically though mistakenly held to lack significant antecedents in Renaissance studies. Insofar as it posits a marked relation between the material world (however complex and changeful) and such cultural forms as art and literature, New Historicism has roots in earlier modes of scholarship that sought out the textual, cultural, and historical sources of literary works. Among this scholarship was something
The printers’ ornament that Richard Field originally used on the title pages of Venus and Adonis ... more The printers’ ornament that Richard Field originally used on the title pages of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece brought to Shakespeare’s first publications a meaningful set of associations, and over the next two decades would be affected by Shakespeare’s growing authority. Linked to France and Huguenot print culture, the ornament provides a clue to the aesthetic environment of Shakespeare’s works and the ways in which their heterogeneous content and style pleased his earliest admirers. As what we could call Shakespeare’s “Elizabethan brand,” this ornament offers insight to the cultural, political, and commercial contexts in and through which he was established as an author.
For his drama Richard III Shakespeare clearly relied on More’s narrative as filtered mainly throu... more For his drama Richard III Shakespeare clearly relied on More’s narrative as filtered mainly through the chronicles of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed. The complications of transmission and authority relating to Shakespeare’s use of More’s unfinished work, and to the numerous forms each text would come to assume, uncannily replicate the very issues of authority and validation their narratives scrutinize. With his account More produced an archetype of modern, cunning individualism, an archetype that Shakespeare would popularize in Richard III.
CHAPTER 4 ON A CERTAIN TENDENCY IN ECONOMIC CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE Douglas Bruster . Tor a long... more CHAPTER 4 ON A CERTAIN TENDENCY IN ECONOMIC CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE Douglas Bruster . Tor a long time most commentators ignored the economic basis of Shakespeare's theater. When critics mentioned it at all, they typi-cally portrayed it as regrettable. An old ...
... To be sure, DiPietro's narrative takes us at times to the National Library in Dublin (fo... more ... To be sure, DiPietro's narrative takes us at times to the National Library in Dublin (for Stephen Dedalus's thoughts on Hamlet) and to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford (for Theodore Komisarjevsky's Merchant of Venice). ...
Most Shakespeareans would freely acknowledge that the majority of the surviving information about... more Most Shakespeareans would freely acknowledge that the majority of the surviving information about Shakespeare's life derives from his pursuit of and exposure to the law. Most recognize the names of some notorious legal cases of the era: Hales v. Petit, for ...
... | Ayuda. SHAKESPEARE AND THE QUESTION OF CULTURE: Early modern literature and the cultural tu... more ... | Ayuda. SHAKESPEARE AND THE QUESTION OF CULTURE: Early modern literature and the cultural turn (Book). Autores: Lucy Munro; Localización: Times literary supplement, TLS, ISSN 0307-661X, Nº 5246, 2003 , pag. 35. ...
Q1 Hamlet (1603) routinely sets prose speeches so that they appear to be blank verse. This articl... more Q1 Hamlet (1603) routinely sets prose speeches so that they appear to be blank verse. This article argues that such was an attempt to confer prestige upon the text, particularly in the wake of the saturation of Shakespeare books on the literary marketplace around 1600 – a phenomenon that saw his prose works achieve less favour than those in pentameter. The publishers of Q1 Merry Wives (1602) and Q1 Hamlet may have hedged their bets on these Shakespeare texts by amplifying their verse, long the gold standard of the Shakespearean brand. Like The True Tragedie of Richard III (published 1594) and The Famous Victories of Henry V (entered 1594), which presented their opening pages to readers as iambic pentameter, Q1 Hamlet seems to have beautified its dialogue for readers in the early modern book marketplace.
Although few terms have figured so centrally in current debates about Shakespeare, none has produ... more Although few terms have figured so centrally in current debates about Shakespeare, none has produced more ambiguity than 'the New Historicism'. Indeed difficult as definition has proved, so frequently do critics attempt this and so varied are their results that it is sometimes hard to tell whether New Historicism is, on the one hand, a large critical school unified by a common set of beliefs or, on the other, merely a handful of influential essays by a relative few individuals. Most definitions fall somewhere between these extremes and often involve divergent issues. One can define New Historicism, for example, as a rhetorical form, a generational project, an intensively interdisciplinary phenomenon, and a sign of analytical and ethical decay or progress. The partiality of these definitions is foregrounded by both the understandable reluctance of 'New Historicists' to wear that badge and the fact that academic presses continue to introduce, under this label, diverse work that compels us to expand our already capacious definitions of New Historicism. These complicating factors are joined by yet another hurdle confronting any attempt to define the term: the relation between New Historicism and previous forms of historicist criticism. For to ask seriously about the 'New' in 'New Historicism' is to do more than challenge the accuracy of an admittedly haphazard designation. It is to historicize a critical genre typically though mistakenly held to lack significant antecedents in Renaissance studies. Insofar as it posits a marked relation between the material world (however complex and changeful) and such cultural forms as art and literature, New Historicism has roots in earlier modes of scholarship that sought out the textual, cultural, and historical sources of literary works. Among this scholarship was something
The printers’ ornament that Richard Field originally used on the title pages of Venus and Adonis ... more The printers’ ornament that Richard Field originally used on the title pages of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece brought to Shakespeare’s first publications a meaningful set of associations, and over the next two decades would be affected by Shakespeare’s growing authority. Linked to France and Huguenot print culture, the ornament provides a clue to the aesthetic environment of Shakespeare’s works and the ways in which their heterogeneous content and style pleased his earliest admirers. As what we could call Shakespeare’s “Elizabethan brand,” this ornament offers insight to the cultural, political, and commercial contexts in and through which he was established as an author.
For his drama Richard III Shakespeare clearly relied on More’s narrative as filtered mainly throu... more For his drama Richard III Shakespeare clearly relied on More’s narrative as filtered mainly through the chronicles of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed. The complications of transmission and authority relating to Shakespeare’s use of More’s unfinished work, and to the numerous forms each text would come to assume, uncannily replicate the very issues of authority and validation their narratives scrutinize. With his account More produced an archetype of modern, cunning individualism, an archetype that Shakespeare would popularize in Richard III.
CHAPTER 4 ON A CERTAIN TENDENCY IN ECONOMIC CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE Douglas Bruster . Tor a long... more CHAPTER 4 ON A CERTAIN TENDENCY IN ECONOMIC CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE Douglas Bruster . Tor a long time most commentators ignored the economic basis of Shakespeare's theater. When critics mentioned it at all, they typi-cally portrayed it as regrettable. An old ...
... To be sure, DiPietro's narrative takes us at times to the National Library in Dublin (fo... more ... To be sure, DiPietro's narrative takes us at times to the National Library in Dublin (for Stephen Dedalus's thoughts on Hamlet) and to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford (for Theodore Komisarjevsky's Merchant of Venice). ...
Most Shakespeareans would freely acknowledge that the majority of the surviving information about... more Most Shakespeareans would freely acknowledge that the majority of the surviving information about Shakespeare's life derives from his pursuit of and exposure to the law. Most recognize the names of some notorious legal cases of the era: Hales v. Petit, for ...
... | Ayuda. SHAKESPEARE AND THE QUESTION OF CULTURE: Early modern literature and the cultural tu... more ... | Ayuda. SHAKESPEARE AND THE QUESTION OF CULTURE: Early modern literature and the cultural turn (Book). Autores: Lucy Munro; Localización: Times literary supplement, TLS, ISSN 0307-661X, Nº 5246, 2003 , pag. 35. ...
This essay examines "The Tempest" as a fully materialized instance of metatheater. Taking serious... more This essay examines "The Tempest" as a fully materialized instance of metatheater. Taking seriously the idea of Prospero as a playwright figure, it untangles various correspondences between the structures of Shakespeare's late romance and the private theater in which it was primarily staged. Special attention is paid to Ariel's relation to the boy actor, Caliban's similarities to the boisterous tradition of clowning that Shakespeare had earlier criticized, and Miranda's doubling of audience functionality.
This essay explores the rise of "embodied" writing in Elizabethan England between the Marprelate ... more This essay explores the rise of "embodied" writing in Elizabethan England between the Marprelate Controversy and the Bishops' Ban on satire in 1599. Such writing excelled at putting both real and imagined bodies on the printed page, and helped usher in a new understanding of the relation between public and private in early modern England.
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