Links Between Ireland and Shakespeare
Author: Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton
Publisher:
Published: 1919
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13:
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Shakespeare and Ireland
Author: Mark Thornton Burnett
Publisher: Springer
Published: 1997-12-13
Total Pages: 271
ISBN-13: 1349259241
DOWNLOAD EBOOKShakespeare and Ireland examines the complex relationship between the most celebrated icon of the British establishment and Irish literary and cultural traditions. Addressing Shakespearean representations of Ireland as well as Irish writers' responses to the dramatist, it ranges widely across theatrical performances, pedagogical practices, editorial undertakings and political developments. The writings of Joyce, Heaney and Yeats are considered, in addition to recent nationalist discourses. In so doing, the collection establishes the multiple 'Shakespeares' and competing 'Irelands' that inform the Irish imagination.
Shakespeare was Irish!
Author: Brian Nugent
Publisher: Brian Nugent
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 0955681219
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs more and more scholars come to realise that the accepted story of William Shakespeare is untenable, this book tries to unmask the covert Irish influence on his work and the remarkable career of William Nugent, the only Irish candidate ever put forward for Shakespeare. It includes the full text of many original documents on Irish history, from the Reformation to the 1641 Rebellion. "That in these lines I could as well express, As in my soul I do admire her beauty, Or that great Daniel, fit for such a task, This wonder of our Isle, had seen, and heeded, Then should his glorious muse, her worth unmask, And he himself, himself should have exceeded; Then England, France, Spain, Greece and Italy, And all that th'Ocean from our shores divideth, Would over-run their bounds, and hither fly, To find the treasure, that our Ireland hideth, But best is, that we never do disclose it, Since known but of ourselves, we shall not lose it." - RIchard Nugent "Cynthia" (London, 1604)
Shakespeare on the Edge
Author: Professor Lisa Hopkins
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2013-04-28
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 1409489566
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen Shakespeare's John of Gaunt refers to England as 'this sceptred isle', he glosses over a fact of which Shakespeare's original audience would have been acutely conscious, which was that England was not an island at all, but had land borders with Scotland and Wales. Together with the narrow channels separating the British mainland from Ireland and the Continent, these were the focus of acute, if intermittent, unease during the early modern period. This book analyses works by not only Shakespeare but also his contemporaries to argue that many of the plays of Shakespeare's central period, from the second tetralogy to Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, engage with the idea of England's borders. But borders, it claims, are not only of geopolitical significance: in Shakespeare's imagination and indeed in that of his culture, eschatological overtones also accrue to the idea of the border. This is because the countries of the Celtic fringe were often discussed in terms of the supernatural and fairy lore and, in particular, the rivers which were often used as boundary markers were invested with heavily mythologized personae. Thus Hopkins shows that the idea of the border becomes a potent metaphor for exploring the spiritual uncertainties of the period, and for speculating on what happens in 'the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns'. At the same time, the idea that a thing can only really be defined in terms of what lies beyond it provides a sharply interrogating charge for Shakespeare's use of metatheatre and for his suggestions of a world beyond the confines of his plays.
Celtic Shakespeare
Author: Rory Loughnane
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-08
Total Pages: 406
ISBN-13: 1317169050
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDrawing together some of the leading academics in the field of Shakespeare studies, this volume examines the commonalities and differences in addressing a notionally 'Celtic' Shakespeare. Celtic contexts have been established for many of Shakespeare's plays, and there has been interest too in the ways in which Irish, Scottish and Welsh critics, editors and translators have reimagined Shakespeare, claiming, connecting with and correcting him. This collection fills a major gap in literary criticism by bringing together the best scholarship on the individual nations of Ireland, Scotland and Wales in a way that emphasizes cultural crossovers and crucibles of conflict. The volume is divided into three chronologically ordered sections: Tudor Reflections, Stuart Revisions and Celtic Afterlives. This division of essays directs attention to Shakespeare's transformed treatment of national identity in plays written respectively in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, but also takes account of later regional receptions and the cultural impact of the playwright's dramatic works. The first two sections contain fresh readings of a number of the individual plays, and pay particular attention to the ways in which Shakespeare attends to contemporary understandings of national identity in the light of recent history. Juxtaposing this material with subsequent critical receptions of Shakespeare's works, from Milton to Shaw, this volume addresses a significant critical lacuna in Shakespearean criticism. Rather than reading these plays from a solitary national perspective, the essays in this volume cohere in a wide-ranging treatment of Shakespeare's direct and oblique references to the archipelago, and the problematic issue of national identity.
Shakespeare's Binding Language
Author: John Kerrigan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-03-11
Total Pages: 635
ISBN-13: 0191074853
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges, and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama. Shakespeare's Binding Language gives a freshly researched account of these contexts, but it is focused on Shakespeare's plays. What motives should we look for when characters asseverate or promise? How far is binding language self-persuasive or deceptive? When is it allowable to break a vow? How do oaths and promises structure an audience's expectations? Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action. Each chapter gives an account of a play or group of plays, yet the study builds to a sustained investigation of some of the most important systems, institutions, and controversies in early modern England, and of the wiring of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Scholarly but accessible, and offering startling insights, this is a major contribution to Shakespeare studies by one of the leading figures in the field.
The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare
Author: R. Malcolm Smuts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-06-30
Total Pages: 946
ISBN-13: 0191074179
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare presents a broad sampling of current historical scholarship on the period of Shakespeare's career that will assist and stimulate scholars of his poems and plays. Rather than merely attempting to summarize the historical 'background' to Shakespeare, individual chapters seek to exemplify a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies currently used in historical research on the early modern period that can inform close analysis of literature. Different sections examine political history at both the national and local levels; relationships between intellectual culture and the early modern political imagination; relevant aspects of religious and social history; and facets of the histories of architecture, the visual arts, and music. Topics treated include the emergence of an early modern 'public sphere' and its relationship to drama during Shakespeare's lifetime; the role of historical narratives in shaping the period's views on the workings of politics; attitudes about the role of emotion in social life; cultures of honour and shame and the rituals and literary forms through which they found expression; crime and murder; and visual expressions of ideas of moral disorder and natural monstrosity, in printed images as well as garden architecture.
Food in Shakespeare
Author: Dr Joan Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2013-04-28
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13: 140948968X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA study of common and exotic food in Shakespeare's plays, this is the first book to explore early modern English dietary literature to understand better the significance of food in Shakespearean drama. Food in Shakespeare provides for modern readers and audiences an historically accurate account of the range of, and conflicts between, contemporary ideas that informed the representations of food in the plays. It also focuses on the social and moral implications of familiar and strange foodstuff in Shakespeare's works. This new approach provides substantial fresh readings of Hamlet, Macbeth, As you Like It, The Winter's Tale, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Pericles, Timon of Athens, and the co-authored Sir Thomas More. Among the dietaries explored are Andrew Boorde's A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Healthe (1547), William Bullein's The Gouernement of Healthe (1595), Thomas Elyot's The Castle of Helthe (1595) and Thomas Cogan's The Hauen of Health (1636). These dieteries were republished several times in the early modern period; together they typify the genre's condemnation of surfeit and the tendency to blame human disease on feeding practices. This study directs scholarly attention to the importance of early modern dietaries, analyzing their role in wider culture as well as their intersection with dramatic art. In the dietaries food and drink are indices of one's position in relation to complex ideas about rank, nationality, and spiritual well-being; careful consumption might correct moral as well as physical shortcomings. The dietaries are an eclectic genre: some contain recipes for the reader to try, others give tips on more general lifestyle choices, but all offer advice on how to maintain good health via diet. Although some are more stern and humourless than others, the overwhelming impression is that of food as an ally in the battle against disease and ill-health as well as a potential enemy.
Writing Renaissance Queens
Author: Lisa Hopkins
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 228
ISBN-13: 9780874137866
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines writing both by and about Renaissance women rulers. It offers detailed analyses of poems, letters, and other writings by both Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, and situates these firmly within the context of other literary figurings of Renaissance queens and queenship. It looks at a range of texts, ranging from the polemical (and largely ephemeral) treatises on the questions of female rule which were prompted by the sudden explosion of women rulers, to works by Shakespeare, Milton, and Elizabeth Cary, as well as the anonymous Arden of Faversham. The book as a whole thus explores both how Renaissance queens wrote themselves and how they were written by others.
