Fairies, Fractious Women, and the Old Faith: Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture

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Susquehanna University Press, 2006 - Literary Criticism - 293 pages
Fairies, unruly women, and vestigial Catholicism constituted a frequently invoked triad in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century drama which has seldom been critically examined and therefore constitutes a significant lacuna in scholarly treatments of early modern theater, including the work of Shakespeare. Fairy tradition has lost out in scholarly critical convention to the more masculine mythologies of Christianity and classical Greece and Rome, in which female deities either serve masculine gods or are themselves masculinized (i.e., Diana as a buckskinned warrior). However, the fairy tradition is every bit as significant in our critical attempts to situate early modern texts in their historical contexts as the references to classical texts and struggles associated with state-mandated religious beliefs are widely agreed to be. fairy, rebellious woman, quasi-Catholic trio repeatedly stages resistance to early modern conceptions of appropriate class and gender conduct and state-mandated religion in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Cymbeline, All's Well That Ends Well, and Ben Jonson's The Alchemist.
 

Contents

The Story Shall Be Changed The Fairy Feminism of A Midsummer Nights Dream
38
Ferry Honest Knaueries in The Merry Wives of Windsor
61
The Fairy Quean Fairyland Meets the Fifth Monarchy in Ben Jonsons The Alchemist
87
Change You Madam Social Role Transgressions and Gender Transformations in Cymbeline
112
The Fairy Defense
144
Conclusion
177
Notes
180
Bibliography
235
Index
261
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