Drama and the Transfer of Power in Renaissance England

Drama and the Transfer of Power in Renaissance England
Author: Martin Wiggins
Publsiher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2012-08-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780191650406

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The state is at its most volatile when supreme power changes hands. This book studies five such moments of transfer in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, from Henry VIII to the English Revolution, pazying particular attention to the political function and agency of drama in smoothing the transition. Masques and civic pageants served as an art form by which incoming authority could declare its power, and subjects could express their willing subordination to the new regime. The book contains vivid case studies of these dramatic works, some of which have never before been identified, and the circumstances for which they were written: the use of London street theatre in 1535 to promote Henry VIII's arrogation of Royal Supremacy; the aggressively Protestant court masque of 1559 which marked the accession of Elizabeth I, and the censorship which resulted when the same mode of dramatic discourse spread to more plebeian stages; the masques and entertainments of James I's initial year on the English throne, through which the new Stuart dynasty asserted its legitimacy and individual courtiers made their bids for influence; and the formal coronation entry to London, furnished with dramatic pageants, which London paid for but Charles I refused to undertake. The final chapter describes how, in 1642, a very different incoming regime planned to ignore drama altogether, until some surprisingly contingent circumstances forced its hand.

British Drama 1533 1642 A Catalogue

British Drama 1533 1642  A Catalogue
Author: Martin Wiggins,Catherine Richardson
Publsiher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2012-09-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780199265725

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Volume 3 covers the years 1590-1597 and sees the start of Shakespeare's career as a dramatist.

Shakespeare s Troilus and Cressida and the Inns of Court Revels

Shakespeare   s Troilus and Cressida and the Inns of Court Revels
Author: W.R. Elton
Publsiher: Routledge
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781351900676

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’No one of Shakespeare’s plays is harder to characterize’, said Coleridge of Troilus and Cressida. Over the centuries, generations of critics have faced the challenge of determining exactly what sort of play Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida is. Described by Victorian commentators as ’dark’, ’decadent’ and ’bitter’, the work has, until now, retained its designation as a ’problem play’. In this ground-breaking study, leading Shakespeare scholar, W R Elton attempts to dismantle this presumption. His research places the play in the historical context of the Inns of Court law-revels tradition. By close analysis of the text, Elton demonstrates his belief that Troilus and Cressida was written specifically for an audience of law students and lawyers and that the play manifests many elements of a law-revel, including misrule, inversion, mock rhetoric and logic, and mock trials. In so doing, he provides explanations for many of the puzzling and mysterious elements that have previously baffled critics.

Culture and Democracy

Culture and Democracy
Author: Hugh Dalziel Duncan
Publsiher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 650
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 141282107X

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This work by the late and great sociologist Hugh Dalziel Duncan, paints the great panorama of the Middle West, where egalitarianism is the most cherished value, and money is the most important vehicle of life. How art finds a place in this society is shown in the specific struggle between the architects, businessmen, unionists, and educators of Chicago. Into such specifics Duncan reveals the place of supposedly abstract theories developed by John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Thorstein Veblen, and above all, Louis H. Sullivan, whose school of architecture presents both a new form of physical design and a new order of society. The rise, seeming defeat, and final triumph of Sullivan's principles of order in architecture are related to his social and aesthetic theories of form in society. In democratic society, all individuals must be capable of art, just as all individuals share in art as experience. Sullivan's description of the development within the individual of the idea of architecture is treated as an allegory of such development in the spirit of democratic values. His life is offered as a parable of the problem facing American artists as they attempt to root art in democratic culture. In Sullivan's words: "The critical study of architecture becomes not merely the direct study of art, but "in extenso, a "study of the social conditions producing it. The study of a newly shaping type of civilization. By this light, the study of architecture becomes naturally and logically a branch of social science. . . ." Duncan's exceptional volume, written with grace and clarity, registers the achievements of this Chicago School, showing how culture and democracy reached a special moment of consensus with the money-based economy of our time.

The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama

The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama
Author: Thomas Betteridge,Greg Walker
Publsiher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 709
Release: 2012-07-19
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780199566471

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A study of Tudor drama that sees the long 16th century from the accession of Henry Tudor to the death of Elizabeth as a whole, taking in the drama of the 'mystery plays' and the early work of Shakespeare. It is an account of current scholarship and an introduction to the complexity of Tudor drama.

Lawyers at Play

Lawyers at Play
Author: Jessica Winston
Publsiher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-05-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780191082245

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Many early modern poets and playwrights were also members of the legal societies the Inns of Court, and these authors shaped the development of key genres of the English Renaissance, especially lyric poetry, dramatic tragedy, satire, and masque. But how did the Inns come to be literary centres in the first place, and why were they especially vibrant at particular times? Early modernists have long understood that urban setting and institutional environment were central to this phenomenon: in the vibrant world of London, educated men with time on their hands turned to literary pastimes for something to do. Lawyers at Play proposes an additional, more essential dynamic: the literary culture of the Inns intensified in decades of profound transformation in the legal profession. Focusing on the first decade of Elizabeth's reign, the period when a large literary network first developed around the societies, this study demonstrates that the literary surge at this time developed out of and responded to a period of rapid expansion in the legal profession and in the career prospects of members. Poetry, translation, and performance were recreational pastimes; however, these activities also defined and elevated the status of inns-of-court men as qualified, learned, and ethical participants in England's 'legal magistracy': those lawyers, judges, justices of the peace, civic office holders, town recorders, and gentleman landholders who managed and administered local and national governance of England. Lawyers at Play maps the literary terrain of a formative but understudied period in the English Renaissance, but it also provides the foundation for an argument that goes beyond the 1560s to provide a framework for understanding the connections between the literary and legal cultures of the Inns over the whole of the early modern period.

A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records

A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records
Author: Inner Temple (London, England)
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 654
Release: 1896
Genre: Inns of Court
ISBN: NYPL:33433081829354

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The Inner Temple

The Inner Temple
Author: Inner Temple (London, England)
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 648
Release: 1896
Genre: Courts
ISBN: UOM:35112104166246

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