A defence of pretence : civility and the theatre in early modern England / Indira Ghose.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ghose, Indira, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Courtesy in literature.

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

English drama.

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

Physical Description:

ix, 166 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2025]

Summary:

How the drama of Shakespeare’s time demonstrates the tensions within civility. Is civility merely a matter of reinforcing status and excluding others? Or is it a lubricant in a polarised world, enabling us to overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good? In A Defence of Pretence, Indira Ghose argues that it is both. Ghose turns to the drama of Shakespeare’s time to explore the notion of civility. The theatre, she suggests, was a laboratory where many of the era’s conflicts played out. The plays test the precepts found in treatises on civility and show that, in the complexity and confusion of human life, moral purity is an illusion. We are always playing roles. In these plays, as in social life, pretence is inescapable. Could it be a virtue? Civility, Ghose finds, is radically ambiguous. The plays of Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton, grappling with dissimulation, lies and social performance, question the idea of a clear-cut boundary between sincerity and dissembling, between truth and lies. What is decisive is the use to which our play-acting is put. A pretence of mutual respect might serve an ethical end: to foster a sense of common purpose. In life, as in drama, the concept of the common good might be a fiction, but one that is crucial for human society.

Contents:

Introduction

1. Castiglione, The Merchant of Venice, and the Imperative of Style

2. Manners and the Market

3. Theatricality and Lies in Coriolanus

4. Sejanus and the Degradation of Civility

5. Wit and the Art of Jesting

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

069126998X

9780691269986

0691269998

9780691269993

OCLC:

1509185569