The Supernatural In Shakespeare

This edited collection of twelve essays from an international range of contemporary Shakespeare scholars explores the supernatural in Shakespeare from a variety of perspectives and approaches.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Supernatural elements are of central significance in many of Shakespeare's plays, contributing to their dramatic power and intrigue. Ghosts haunt political spaces and internal psyches, witches foresee the future and disturb the present, fairies meddle with love and a magus conjures a tempest from the elements. Although written and performed for early modern audiences, for whom the supernatural, whether sacred, demonic or folkloric, was part of the fabric of everyday life, the supernatural in Shakespeare continues to enthrall audiences and readers, and maintains its power to raise a range of questions in contemporary contexts.This edited collection of twelve essays from an international range of contemporary Shakespeare scholars explores the supernatural in Shakespeare from a variety of perspectives and approaches, generating new knowledge and presenting hitherto unexplored avenues of enquiry across the Shakespearean canon.

Bringing together recent scholarship on religion and the spatial imagination, Kristen Poole examines how changing religious beliefs and transforming conceptions of space were mutually informative in the decades around 1600. Supernatural Environments in Shakespeare's England explores a series of cultural spaces that focused attention on interactions between the human and the demonic or divine: the deathbed, purgatory, demonic contracts and their spatial surround, Reformation cosmologies and a landscape newly subject to cartographic surveying. It examines the seemingly incongruous coexistence of traditional religious beliefs and new mathematical, geometrical ways of perceiving the environment. Arguing that the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century stage dramatized the phenomenological tension that resulted from this uneasy confluence, this groundbreaking study considers the complex nature of supernatural environments in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare's Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject English - History of Literature, Eras, grade: 80.00, Memorial University of Newfoundland, course: English 3200, language: English, abstract: Witchcraft and the supernatural has been a prevalent theme throughout theatre history, having many plays involving issues of witches, wizards, magic, ghosts, and other mysticisms. The world's most famous playwright, William Shakespeare, who wrote during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, was definitely no stranger to otherworldly premises. The ghost of the old king in Hamlet and the Weird Sisters in Macbeth are central to the plays' plots, they are a major force in determining the two heroes' actions, form the plays' opening scenes, and they are an important element in establishing the plays' atmosphere.