The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan TheatrePart of a larger project to examine the Elizabethan politics of representation, Louis Montrose's The Purpose of Playing refigures the social and cultural context within which Elizabethan drama was created. Montrose first locates the public and professional theater within the ideological and material framework of Elizabethan culture. He considers the role of the professional theater and theatricality in the cultural transformation that was concurrent with religious and socio-political change, and then concentrates upon the formal means by which Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays called into question the absolutist assertions of the Elizabethan state. Drawing dramatic examples from the genres of tragedy and history, Montrose finally focuses his cultural-historical perspective on A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Purpose of Playing elegantly demonstrates how language and literary imagination shape cultural value, belief, and understanding; social distinction and interaction; and political control and contestation. |
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... early modern England . It is my conviction that by focusing the analytical resources and techniques of literary criticism upon the historical , cultural , and sociopolitical dimensions of texts , we can work toward a mode of crit- ical ...
... early modern England . It is my conviction that by focusing the analytical resources and techniques of literary criticism upon the historical , cultural , and sociopolitical dimensions of texts , we can work toward a mode of crit- ical ...
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... early modern state , and the degree Content of the Form : Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation ... pre - existing external force . Yet it is fair to say , looking at many applications of Marx- ist cultural analysis , that it ...
... early modern state , and the degree Content of the Form : Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation ... pre - existing external force . Yet it is fair to say , looking at many applications of Marx- ist cultural analysis , that it ...
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... early modern state , as personified in the monarch , to contain apparently subversive ges- tures , or even to produce them precisely in order to contain them . According to a now - notorious argument in Stephen Greenblatt's es- say ...
... early modern state , as personified in the monarch , to contain apparently subversive ges- tures , or even to produce them precisely in order to contain them . According to a now - notorious argument in Stephen Greenblatt's es- say ...
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Contents
The Reformation of Playing | 19 |
A Theatre of Changes | 30 |
Anatomies of Playing | 41 |
The Theatre the City and the Crowns | 53 |
From the Stage to the State | 66 |
The Power of Personation | 76 |
The CrossPurposes of Playing | 99 |
THE SHAPING FANTASIES OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM | 107 |
Common terms and phrases
actors Amazons Andrew Gurr articulation artisans audience authority Bottom Bottom's Dream Chambers civic comedy comic commercial theatre construed context Corpus Christi Corpus Christi play court courtly critical Cynthia discourse dominant drama Earl Early Modern England Elizabe Elizabethan culture Elizabethan Stage Elizabethan theatre Endimion English entertainments Essex fantasy forms gender Globe Greenblatt Hamlet hath Henry Hermia Hippolyta Hippolytus ideological King late Elizabethan literary London Lord Chamberlain's Lord Chamberlain's Men Majestie marriage masculine material metatheatrical Midsummer Night's Dream modes mother Oberon Oxford patriarchal performance perspective play's playes playhouse playwright political popular practice Prince printed Privy Council professional players professional theatre public theatre purpose of playing quarto Queen Elizabeth quotation relationship Renaissance representation Revels Richard Richard II royal sexual Shakespeare's Shakespeare's play social society speare's Stephen Greenblatt Stephen Orgel structure studies subjects subversion suggest theatrical Theseus Theseus's tion Titania traditional Tudor women