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Elizabeth Frazer presents an examination of Shakespeare's thoughts and views on politics as expressed through many of his major plays, particularly the tragedies.

Although writers of the English Restoration tragedy were not able to continue the path of the magnificent Renaissance tragedy and to become the worthy heirs of Shakespeare, they were experimenting with the verse and themes leaving a few impressive tragic scenes. Therefore, the heroic tragedy, as a dramatic kind, did not achieve an enviable aesthetic value. On the other hand, writers of comedies have managed to adjust the traditional elements to the new literary trends and to the atmosphere of the epoch. They have created a comedy of character and humor with an appropriate and realistic prose dialogue full of wit and refined language which was the best media for depicting cheerful and immoral aristocratic life of that time. Preserving and highlighting these dramatic elements, the dramatists of the Restoration have influenced the successors of a typical British comedy that will come to life again, in its true and pure comic form, in the works of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

This paper presents an overview of my dissertation project. My project harnesses posthumanist and ecofeminist insights to illuminate how the category of the human—whether its metaphysical status, purview, or validity—is at the center of early modern understandings of classical moral and political philosophies. In doing so, my study redresses a gap in the critical reception of Shakespeare's Roman texts by challenging existing cross-historical, cross-cultural studies that (a) consider the human a stable construct and (b) overlook the capacity for nonhuman forces to impact humanity's discursive and material practices. I extend ongoing critical debates by demonstrating how the figure of Aristotle's "political animal" exceeds the human in Shakespeare's Roman plays (Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Cymbeline) and narrative poetry (Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece). Specifically, I argue that early modern literary representations of human agency in ancient Mediterranean sea- and land-scapes are positioned alongside, and often considered less favorably than, the forces exerted by other creatures, inert matter, or technologies.

A phenomenological analysis of Shakespeare's plays suggests that characters who testify after having witnessed intolerable conditions cause significant change by interrupting the actions of other characters and thereby enhancing the possibilities for egalitarian practices in the world of the play. The desire to testify is great enough that when public realms do not permit open disclosures, characters invent methods to give accounts of themselves or to bring their knowledge into discussion, either in soliloquy or through prompts to other characters. When possible, characters offer their personal narratives. With each divulgence, characters create greater access to information and present possibilities for alternate choices to participate in their communities, including deliberation and mutual disclosure, making it possible for others to see and recognize them, strengthening their public realms by rendering them more inclusive, and creating the potential for further disclosures. In III Henry VI, King Henry is brought to awareness of his role in England's civil war by the anonymous testimony of two soldiers and attempts to rule wisely thereafter. In Much Ado about Nothing, Dogberry employs the speech tools of the disenfranchised to disempower the homosocial and intolerant nobility without calling attention to himself. In Pericles, Marina deliberates with her interlocutors so they can understand their actions from her point of view. When she is prompted to share her personal narrative, she and her father, Pericles, understand that their isolated views of their lives were mistaken; they are characters in a single story that binds them to one another. The characters thereby uncover the meaning-giving nature of narrative: It enables a person to recognize what she or he has never known. The role of Gower augments the performative effect of wonder aroused by the reunion of Marina and Pericles by wielding the tools of narrative, which include imagining, predicting, and wishing.

Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays examines the changing ideological conceptions of sovereignty and their on-stage representations in the public theaters during the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods (1580-1642). The study examines the way in which the early modern stage presented a critical dialogue concerning the nature of sovereignty through the lens of specifically English history, focusing in particular on the presentation and representation of monarchy. It presents the subgenre of the English history play as a specific reaction to the surrounding political context capable of engaging with and influencing popular and elite conceptions of monarchy and government. This project is the first of its kind to specifically situate the early modern debate on sovereignty within a 'popular culture' dramatic context; its purpose is not only to provide an historical timeline of English political theory pertaining to monarchy, but to situate the drama as a significant influence on the production and dissemination thereof during the Tudor and Stuart periods. Some of the plays considered here, notably those by Shakespeare and Marlowe, have been extensively and thoroughly studied. But others-such as Edmund Ironside, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and King John and Matilda-have not previously been the focus of much critical attention. ; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1207/thumbnail.jpg

When Ibsen was first introduced to the audience, few might have thought that a new wit is coming up in the world theatre. His plays soon started to touch sharp social topics stigmatizing the political values of the leading class. This article analyzes the aspects that Ibsen's plays more often offered to the reader and to the audience: the socio-political ones. The plays taken into consideration are the most notable of the playwright, A Doll's House, Ghosts, Pillars of Society. The socio-political aspect in these plays is clearer and marks the starting point of a new epoch in which the writers began bringing to light real problems to the real world.The reader or the audience becomes a witness of the moral intrigue development; of the farce identity; where the high building of lies slowly begins to fall apart like a card-house. This article brings to comparison the main characters of these plays, the Ladies, respectively Mrs. Helmer, Mrs. Alving and Mrs. Bernick, which might have not been considered as the protagonists, but surely their position in the plays has been crucial in the tide of the events and in our analysis of the social and political aspect of Ibsen's plays. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p676

[Extract] The king is running out of money for his war in Ireland. So he confiscates Henry Bolingbroke's estate. Richard II's expropriation and exile of Bolingbroke proves a turning point in the history of the English state. The events that flow from it transform the nature of British political history in deep-going and unexpected ways.The banishment of Bolingbroke brings about the downfall of Richard.

AbstractPassion episodes such as the Buffeting are known for the powerful acts of compassion they occasioned within audiences through their performance of violence on the person of Jesus. Few critics, however, have considered that these episodes depend on antisemitic, Islamophobic, and anti-Black depictions of antagonists when engendering such emotional dispositions. By investigating the dynamics of mockery through a deeper look into the composite identities of Jesus's antagonists, this study reveals that these plays and the communities that produced them rely on a disingenuous stance of victimhood for their effectiveness. This 'victim play'—the collaborative community effort to claim the status of victim while simultaneously participating in the victimization of others—obscures that those who are attributed cruel acts of mockery are actually its targets. The powerful rhetorical strategies of the premodern English episodes are thus unearthed in this study.

The paper deals with the issue of values expressed in South African plays, and takes a look at representative plays from the entire spectrum of South African drama - Afrikaans, English, Black drama and alternative Theatre. Following a survey of the field, discussions are provided of selected plays in all the sections. It emerges that there is a fair amount of homogeneity right across the board in terms of sociocultural and political values. There is also a strong insistence on value linked to Black consciousness in the plays by Black playwrights, which is important in view of the fact that the Black playwrights often have an overtly didactic and propagandists intention.

C.J. Sisson (1885-1966) was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature in the University of London. His main research interest was Shakespeare, but in this study, first published in 1936, he explores what legal records can tell us about lost early modern plays and entertainments. The Court of Star Chamber prosecuted a number of offences against moral order and frequently took action against the dramatic representation of sedition and libel. Its records often provide the only evidence of Tudor plays and entertainments never printed and lost in manuscript. Sisson explores several.