Shakespeare's domestic tragedies : violence in the early modern home / Emma Whipday.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whipday, Emma, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Domestic tragedies (Drama), English--History and criticism.

Domestic tragedies (Drama), English.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 262 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Domestic tragedy was an innovative genre, suggesting that the lives and sufferings of ordinary people were worthy of the dramatic scope of tragedy. In this compelling study, Whipday revises the narrative of Shakespeare's plays to show how this genre, together with neglected pamphlets, ballads, and other forms of 'cheap print' about domestic violence, informed some of Shakespeare's greatest works. Providing a significant reappraisal of Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, the book argues that domesticity is central to these plays: they stage how societal and familial pressures shape individual agency; how the integrity of the house is associated with the body of the housewife; and how household transgressions render the home permeable. Whipday demonstrates that Shakespeare not only appropriated constructions of the domestic from domestic tragedies, but that he transformed the genre, using heightened language, foreign settings, and elite spheres to stage familiar domestic worlds.

Contents:

Introduction: Shakespeare's domestic tragedies

Home: contesting domestic order in The taming of the shrew

Household: performing domestic relationships in Hamlet

House: staging domestic space in Othello

Neighbourhood: crossing domestic boundaries in Macbeth

Afterword: homeless: outside domestic tragedy in King Lear.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 17 Jan 2019).

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-108-61478-7

1-108-65706-0

1-108-56435-6