Shakespeare's Theory of Drama

'This is a groundbreaking book, the kind it is hard to believe hasn't already been written.' Shakespeare Survey

Pauline Kiernan (Author)

9780521633581, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 23 July 1998

232 pages, 24 b/w illus.
21.6 x 13.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.27 kg

' … an intellectually stimulating book which will provoke a good deal of thought and controversy'. The Review of English Studies

Why did Shakespeare write drama? Did he have specific reasons for his choice of this art form? Did he have clearly defined aesthetic aims in what he wanted drama to do - and why? Pauline Kiernan opens up a new area of debate for Shakespearean criticism in showing that a radical, complex defence of drama which challenged the Renaissance orthodox view of poetry, history and art can be traced in Shakespeare's plays and poems. This study, first published in 1996, examines different stages in the canon to show that far from being restricted by the 'limitations' of drama, Shakespeare consciously exploits its capacity to accommodate temporality and change, and its reliance on the physical presence of the actor. This lively, readable book offers an original and scholarly insight into what Shakespeare wanted his drama to do and why.

1. Introduction
2. Shakespeare and Sidney. Two worlds: the brazen and the golden
3. Shakespeare and Ovid: 'What strainèd 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'.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS]