- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Introduction and acknowledgements
-
Part I Contexts and structures -
Chapter 1 Losing legitimacy: monarchical weakness and the descent into disorder -
Chapter 2 Disorder dissected (i): the inversion of the gender order -
Chapter 3 Disorder dissected (ii): the inversion of the social order -
Chapter 4 Hereditary ‘right’ and political legitimacy anatomised -
Chapter 5 How not to go there: 1 Henry VI as prequel and alternative ending -
Chapter 6 Richard III: political ends, providential means -
Chapter 7 Going Roman: Richard III and Titus Andronicus compared -
Chapter 8 The Elizabethan resonances of the reign of King John -
Chapter 9 The first time as polemic, the second time as play: Shakespeare’s King John and The troublesome reign compared -
Chapter 10 Richard II, or the rights and wrongs of resistance -
Chapter 11 Shakespeare and Parsons – again -
Chapter 12 The loss of legitimacy and the politics of commodity dissected -
Chapter 13 Learning to be a bastard: Hal’s second (plebeian) nature -
Chapter 14 Festive Falstaff: of popularity, puritans and princes -
Chapter 15 Henry V and the fruits of legitimacy -
Chapter 16 Contemporary readings: Oldcastle/Falstaff, Cobham/Essex -
Chapter 17 Oldcastle redivivus -
Chapter 18 The state we’re in -
Chapter 19 The politics of honour (in a popular state) -
Chapter 20 Performing honour and the politics of popularity (in a popular state) -
Chapter 21 The politics of popularity and faction (in a popular state) -
Chapter 22 The politics of prodigy, prophecy and providence (in a pagan state) -
Chapter 23 Between Henry V and Hamlet -
Chapter 24 Hamlet -
Chapter 25 The morning after the night before: Troilus and Cressida as retrospect -
Conclusion The history play and the post-reformation public sphere - Index
Contexts and structures
Contexts and structures
- Chapter:
- (p.1) Part I Contexts and structures
- Source:
- How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage
- Author(s):
Peter Lake
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
This introductory chapter provides an outline of some of the ideological, political, and institutional structures and contexts within which the plays under discussion in this study were produced and consumed. Shakespeare's stagings of history were peculiarly intense in their concentration on the doings of kings and princes. In an emergently absolutist personal monarchy and during a period in which issues of succession and legitimacy were much on people's minds, plays that were so insistently about kings and queens were also quintessentially political plays. As a great deal of recent work has shown, such political concerns could well structure and, in their turn, be structured by, parallel sets of concerns and beliefs about the workings of the social order and the gender hierarchy. Political narratives then became useful ways to figure and interrogate the dynamics of economic exchange and value determined by the market or the workings of the gender hierarchy.
Keywords: Shakespeare, personal monarchy, political plays, social order, gender hierarchy, political narratives
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Introduction and acknowledgements
-
Part I Contexts and structures -
Chapter 1 Losing legitimacy: monarchical weakness and the descent into disorder -
Chapter 2 Disorder dissected (i): the inversion of the gender order -
Chapter 3 Disorder dissected (ii): the inversion of the social order -
Chapter 4 Hereditary ‘right’ and political legitimacy anatomised -
Chapter 5 How not to go there: 1 Henry VI as prequel and alternative ending -
Chapter 6 Richard III: political ends, providential means -
Chapter 7 Going Roman: Richard III and Titus Andronicus compared -
Chapter 8 The Elizabethan resonances of the reign of King John -
Chapter 9 The first time as polemic, the second time as play: Shakespeare’s King John and The troublesome reign compared -
Chapter 10 Richard II, or the rights and wrongs of resistance -
Chapter 11 Shakespeare and Parsons – again -
Chapter 12 The loss of legitimacy and the politics of commodity dissected -
Chapter 13 Learning to be a bastard: Hal’s second (plebeian) nature -
Chapter 14 Festive Falstaff: of popularity, puritans and princes -
Chapter 15 Henry V and the fruits of legitimacy -
Chapter 16 Contemporary readings: Oldcastle/Falstaff, Cobham/Essex -
Chapter 17 Oldcastle redivivus -
Chapter 18 The state we’re in -
Chapter 19 The politics of honour (in a popular state) -
Chapter 20 Performing honour and the politics of popularity (in a popular state) -
Chapter 21 The politics of popularity and faction (in a popular state) -
Chapter 22 The politics of prodigy, prophecy and providence (in a pagan state) -
Chapter 23 Between Henry V and Hamlet -
Chapter 24 Hamlet -
Chapter 25 The morning after the night before: Troilus and Cressida as retrospect -
Conclusion The history play and the post-reformation public sphere - Index
