How Shakespeare put politics on the stage power and succession in the history plays /
Peter Lake.
- Cumberland : Yale University Press, (c)2016.
- 1 online resource (683 pages)
Description based upon print version of record. From the reformation of the kingdom to rebellion, usurpation and regicide
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover page; Halftitle page; Title page; Copyright page; Dedication; Contents; Introduction and acknowledgements; PART I Contexts and structures; Back to the future: Catholics and protestants learn the lessons of history; Putting the (high) politics back into 'power'; Elizabethan political history, now; The arts of history; Putting history on the stage; History and the 'now' of performance; Getting the audience to do the work; Plays and pamphlets, pamphlets and plays; PART II Past into present and future: 2 and 3 Henry VI and the politics of lost legitimacy CHAPTER 1 Losing legitimacy: monarchical weakness andthe descent into disorderThe politics of faction anatomised; The 'good duke' (of Gloucester); Good counsellor/evil counsellor; True tragedy: the fall of Gloucester; Monarchical rule as the enabling condition of good counsel; CHAPTER 2 Disorder dissected (i): the inversion of the gender order; Disorderly wives and witches; Women on top: the resistible rise of Queen Margaret; The 'Amazonian trull'; Not clerical but lay: the cross-dressing Henry VI; Beyond evil counsel: the Christian prince as oxymoron CHAPTER 3 Disorder dissected (ii): the inversion of the social order'We are in order when we are most out of order'; Puritan popularity personified; A mirror for (dysfunctional) magistrates?; CHAPTER 4 Hereditary 'right' and political legitimacy anatomised; The right to rule unravelled; A monarchical republic (not); When honour becomes revenge; From Lancaster to Tudor; PART III Happy endings and alternative outcomes: 1 Henry VI and Richard III; CHAPTER 5 How not to go there: 1 Henry VI as prequel and alternative ending; Faction politics; Succession politics; The politics of virtue Honour and its enemies: women on top -- againAnti-popery; Divided we fall: the politics of faction in time of war; CHAPTER 6 Richard III: political ends, providential means; The making of a Machiavel; Monstrous bodies and providential signs; Signs and prophecies; The audience as 'high all- seer'; Ambiguities of 'evil counsel'; From providence to predestination: the return of legitimacy; Richard III as a guide to the past, present and future; CHAPTER 7 Going Roman: Richard III and Titus Andronicus compared; PART IV How (not) to depose a tyrant: King John and Richard II CHAPTER 8 The Elizabethan resonances of the reign of King JohnCatholic and protestant appropriations of King John; The Holinshed account; CHAPTER 9 The first time as polemic, the second time as play: Shakespeare's King John and The troublesome reign; Legitimacy problematised; The bastard; Commodity; Popery in The troublesome reign; Popery and the descent into tyranny in King John; The apotheosis of the bastard; England and providence; CHAPTER 10 Richard II, or the rights and wrongs of resistance; Tyranny anatomised; Tyranny outed; The fallacies of sacred kingship
9780300225662
Historical drama, English--History and criticism. Literature and history. Politics in literature.