Shakespeare and the soliloquy in early modern English drama / edited by A. D. Cousins, Daniel Derrin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Cousins, A. D., 1950- editor.

Derrin, Daniel, 1980- editor.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Technique.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Language.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Soliloquy.

Speech in literature.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600--History and criticism.

English drama.

English drama--17th century--History and criticism.

English language--Early modern, 1500-1700--Style.

English language.

Drama--Technique.

Drama.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan.

English language--Early modern--Style.

Language and languages.

Technique.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

x, 278 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

"Encompassing nearly a century of drama, this is the first book to provide students and scholars with a truly comprehensive guide to the early modern soliloquy. Considering the antecedents of the form in Roman, late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth century drama, it analyses its diversity, its theatrical functions and its socio-political significances. Containing detailed case-studies of the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Ford, Middleton and Davenant, this collection will equip students in their own close-readings of texts, providing them with an indepth knowledge of the verbal and dramaturgical aspects of the form. Informed by rich theatrical and historical understanding, the essays reveal the larger connections between Shakespeare's use of the soliloquy and its deployment by his fellow dramatists"-- Provided by publisher.

"Beginning with an account of paradigmatic precedents in Roman drama (given its prominence in early modern English education), the book then proceeds to discuss the soliloquy's roles in English plays from the later fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. After those preparatory chapters, the book moves on to study the soliloquy from Marlowe to Davenant. The chapters on playwrights trace variations in theatrical conceptualizing of the soliloquy and in its use to represent individuated characterization (or, versions of selfhood). They also trace how, as indicated by a range of soliloquies, authors revisit and rewrite one another's texts in order to suggest authorial identity (for instance, how Davenant reworks Shakespeare)"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction / A.D. Cousins and Daniel Derrin

1. Roman soliloquy / Joseph A. Smith

2. Tudor transformations / Raphael Falco

3. Doubtful battle: Marlowe's soliloquies / L.E. Semler

4. Shakespeare and the female voice in soliloquy / Catherine Bates

5. Contemplative idiots in soliloquy: rhetorical parody, laughable deformity and the audience / Daniel Derrin

6. Giving voice to history in Shakespeare / David Bevington

7. Hamlet and Of truth: humanism and the disingenuous soliloquy / A.D. Cousins

8. Choosing between shame and guilt: Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear / Patrick Gray

9. 'Too hot, too hot': the rhetorical poetics of soliloquies in Shakespeare's late plays / Kate Aughterson

10. Ben Jonson's Roman soliloquies / James Loxley

11. Ben Jonson's comic selves / Brian Woolland

12. 'In such a whisp'ring and withdrawing hour': speaking Solus in Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy and the Lady's Tragedy / Andrew Hiscock

13. John Ford's soliloquies: solitude interrupted / Huw Griffiths

14. Davenant's Macbeth: soliloquy, counter-revolution, and restoration / A.D. Cousins and Dani Napton

15. What were soliloquies in plays by Shakespeare and other late Renaissance dramatists? an empirical approach / James Hirsh.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781107172548

1107172543

OCLC:

1005108233