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. |
From inside the book
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... tion in A Midsummer Night's Dream . I construe this discourse as recip- rocally related to other modes of cultural , political , and socioeco- nomic organization and experience . In the second chapter of Part Two , I discuss Elizabethan ...
... tion in A Midsummer Night's Dream . I construe this discourse as recip- rocally related to other modes of cultural , political , and socioeco- nomic organization and experience . In the second chapter of Part Two , I discuss Elizabethan ...
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... tion in literary studies of which J. Hillis Miller and others have com- plained the turn from " language as such ... toward history , culture , society , politics , institutions " —might be better construed as a broad- ening and ...
... tion in literary studies of which J. Hillis Miller and others have com- plained the turn from " language as such ... toward history , culture , society , politics , institutions " —might be better construed as a broad- ening and ...
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... tion , predication or control , which has often explicitly or implicitly been used . ( 32 ) He concludes that " an active and self - renewing Marxist cultural tradition " must break with this figure , taking as a new point of departure ...
... tion , predication or control , which has often explicitly or implicitly been used . ( 32 ) He concludes that " an active and self - renewing Marxist cultural tradition " must break with this figure , taking as a new point of departure ...
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... tion of power . " " Thus , a generalized argument for the " containment 11. This essay has appeared in three successively revised and enlarged ver- sions : Glyph 8 ( 1981 ) , 40–61 ; Political Shakespeare : New Essays in Cultural ...
... tion of power . " " Thus , a generalized argument for the " containment 11. This essay has appeared in three successively revised and enlarged ver- sions : Glyph 8 ( 1981 ) , 40–61 ; Political Shakespeare : New Essays in Cultural ...
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... tion , formulation , or action but also the historical and social specificity of its subsequent representations — that is , the context of articulation ( or , following Tony Bennett , what we might also call the reading formation ) ...
... tion , formulation , or action but also the historical and social specificity of its subsequent representations — that is , the context of articulation ( or , following Tony Bennett , what we might also call the reading formation ) ...
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