Shakespeare's theory of drama
Shakespeare rejected many of the theories of his age on poetry, history and art to create an original theory of drama. This book, first published in 1996, provides a lively, readable but scholarly examination of works from different stages of Shakespeare's career and explores what he wanted his drama to do and why.
Print Book, English, 1998
1st pbk. ed View all formats and editions
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xii, 218 pages ; 22 cm
9780521633581, 9780521550468, 0521633583, 0521550467
40066489
1. Introduction
2. Shakespeare and Sidney. Two worlds: the brazen and the golden
3. Shakespeare and Ovid. 'What strained touches rhetoric can lend': poetry metamorphosed in Venus and Adonis and the Sonnets
4. 'In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life': exposing art's sterility. The Rape of Lucrece, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest
5. 'O'er-wrested seeming': dramatic illusion and the repudiation of mimesis. Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet
6. 'Thy registers and thee I both defy': history challenged. Richard III, Henry VIII, Henry V and Richard II
7. Antony and Cleopatra as 'A Defence of Drama'
Originally published: 1996