Shakespeare's Monarchies: Ruler and Subject in the RomancesConstance Jordan looks at how Shakespeare, through his romances, contributed to the cultural debates over the nature of monarchy in Jacobean England. Stressing the differences between absolutist and constitutionalist principles of rule, Jordan reveals Shakespeare's investment in the idea that a head of state should be responsive to law, and not be governed by his unbridled will. Conflicts within royal courts which occur in the romances show wives, daughters, and servants resisting tyrannical husbands, fathers, masters, and monarchs by relying on the authority of conscience. These loyal subjects demonstrated to Shakespeare's diverse audiences that the vitality of the body politic, its dynastic future, and its material productivity depend on a cooperative union of ruler and subject. Drawing on representations of servitude and slavery in the humanist and political literature of the period, Jordan shows that Shakespeare's abusive rulers suffer as much as they impose on their subjects. Shakespeare's Monarchies recognizes the romances as politically inflected texts and confirms Shakespeare's involvement in the public discourse of the period. |
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Contents
Pericles | 35 |
Cymbeline | 69 |
The Winters Tale | 107 |
The Tempest i | 147 |
The Tempest ii | 175 |
Afterword | 211 |
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absolute absolutist action Andrew Gurr Antiochus Ariel authority and power Belarius body natural body politic Britain British Caesar Caliban Cambridge University Press character Charles Howard McIlwain Christian claims colonial common commonwealth conscience contract Cymbeline Cymbeline's daughter declared difference discourse divine drama effect empire England English equity faith father fiction figure Florizel Gonzalo Gower Guiderius Hayward heir Hermione human Imogen incest Indians insisted J. H. Hexter Jacobean James James's John John Ponet kind king king's kingdom language Leontes liberties London magic Marina marriage Miranda monarch moral natural law Parliament pastoral Paulina Perdita Pericles play play's Political Thought Polixenes positive law possession Posthumus Posthumus's practice prerogative prince Prospero Prospero's art relations Renaissance represented royal rule ruler sense servitude Shakespeare shepherds Sicilia speech status Stephen Orgel subjects Sycorax Tempest Thaisa tion treatise Trew Law tyranny tyrant Tyre virtue vnto wife Winter's Tale words