Shakespeare's Dramatic GenresOxford Shakespeare Topics provides students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide to further reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. The history of the genres, or kinds, of drama is one of contradictory traditions and complex cultural assumptions. The divisions established by the original edition of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (the First Folio, 1623) give shape to whole curricula; but, as Lawrence Danson reminds us in this lively book, there is nothing inevitable, and much unsatisfying, about that tripartite scheme. Yet students of Shakespeare cannot avoid thinking about questions of genre; often they are the unspoken reason why classrooms full of smart people fail to agree on basic interpretative issues. Danson's guide to the kinds of Shakespearian drama provides an accessible account of genre-theory in Shakespeare's day, an overview of the genres on the Elizabethan stage, and a provocative look at the full range of Shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies. |
From inside the book
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Page 62
... authority as beneficent to individuals ' desires - constitutes part of what we call the happiness of his comic endings . In each of these comedies , masculine authority , embodied in duke or father or king , is reaffirmed , but in each ...
... authority as beneficent to individuals ' desires - constitutes part of what we call the happiness of his comic endings . In each of these comedies , masculine authority , embodied in duke or father or king , is reaffirmed , but in each ...
Page 63
... authority which was frequently , in the world outside comedy , gendered as masculine . A tumbling trick indeed , this comic feminization of authority , but it is not a trick entirely limited to the fantastic world of comedy . From 1556 ...
... authority which was frequently , in the world outside comedy , gendered as masculine . A tumbling trick indeed , this comic feminization of authority , but it is not a trick entirely limited to the fantastic world of comedy . From 1556 ...
Page 108
... authority . Queen Elizabeth ordered that An Homily Against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion should be preached ... authority . Confusing ? Not to a Protestant historian who believed that the Pope's authority was usurped rather than ...
... authority . Queen Elizabeth ordered that An Homily Against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion should be preached ... authority . Confusing ? Not to a Protestant historian who believed that the Pope's authority was usurped rather than ...
Contents
The Genres Staged | 30 |
Mr William Shakespeares Comedies | 57 |
History | 86 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
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