Shakespeare--the histories / Graham Holderness.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Holderness, Graham.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Histories.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Historical drama, English--History and criticism.

Historical drama, English.

Literature and history.

History.

Great Britain--History--1066-1687--Historiography.

Great Britain.

Historiography.

Literature and history--Great Britain--History.

Kings and rulers in literature.

Physical Description:

ix, 231 pages : portraits ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Summary:

This new treatment of Shakespeare's historical dramas starts out from the social and cultural context in which these "historical" plays of chivalric antiquity, epic heroism, and masculine virtue were produced, and suggests that we need to understand these plays primarily in terms of historical, cultural, and sexual difference, and as the celebration and exploration of values that were relatively marginal to central priorities of the late Tudor state. The plays depict a history clearly and sharply differentiated from their own contemporary present, and therefore understandably remote and alien. They trace a historical line in which supreme power remains unassailably masculine, from the perspective of a familiarity with female rule and some measure of female cultural power. In a historical vision simultaneously influenced by aristocratic nostalgia and plebeian irony, they lament antique chivalric prowess, and glance critically, from a modern perspective, at antiquity's destructive self-contradictions, its legacy of glamour and glory, absurdity and arrogance.

Holderness brings a completely new approach to the corpus of Shakespeare's history plays, reviewing early modern sources in the light of modern theory and modern views informed by re-readings of the past. The early modern consciousness of history, obsessed by ghosts and resurrections, and modern preoccupations with language as absence and deferral, provide alternative interpretative contexts for reading the poetry of Shakespeare's history plays. Holderness concentrates on detailed readings of the plays in the light of these concerns, writing in an accessible way and with an intensified focus on history as writing.

Contents:

Introduction: The Histories 1

1 Rainbow and Sword 19

2 History 42

3 Hamlet 57

4 Richard III 79

5 Henry VI, Part One 109

6 Henry V 136

7 Henry IV 156

8 Richard II 175.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-224) and index.

ISBN:

0312227132

OCLC:

41932560