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Monstrous!: Actors, Audiences, Inmates, And The Politics Of Reading Shakespeare, Matt Kozusko
Monstrous!: Actors, Audiences, Inmates, And The Politics Of Reading Shakespeare, Matt Kozusko
English Faculty Publications
This essay considers the use of Shakespeare as marker of authenticity and as a therapeutic space for performers and audiences across a number of genres, from professional actors in training literature to prison inmates in radio and film documentaries. It argues that in the wake of recent academic trends—the critique of "Shakespeare" as an author figure; the privileging of the text as a source of multiple, potentially conflicting readings—Shakespeare's function as cultural capital has shifted sites, from "Shakespeare" to the playtexts themselves.
Shakespeare's Richard Ii And Henry V And Political Rebellions In The Reign Of Queen Elizabeth I, Sarah J. Scannell
Shakespeare's Richard Ii And Henry V And Political Rebellions In The Reign Of Queen Elizabeth I, Sarah J. Scannell
Honors Scholar Theses
The purpose of this thesis will be to examine how two acts of rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I influenced Shakespeare's writing of Richard II and Henry V, as well as the performance and publication of these plays. The treasonous plots and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in the 1580s, as well as the failed Essex Rebellion of 1601, resulted in a sensitivity towards any writings that seemed to support a coup d'état. Shakespeare, being a well-informed and fairly well-connected playwright, wrote passages in the afore mentioned plays that clearly reflect the political turmoil of the times. Thus, his plays …
The 'To Be, Or Not To Be' Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, And The Editing Of Hamlet, James Hirsh
The 'To Be, Or Not To Be' Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, And The Editing Of Hamlet, James Hirsh
English Faculty Publications
Substantial, conspicuous, and varied pieces of evidence demonstrate that Shakespeare designed the 'To be, or not to be' speech to be perceived by experienced playgoers of his time as a feigned soliloquy. Plentiful evidence within the play implies that Hamlet pretends to speak to himself but actually intends the speech itself or an account of it to reach the ears of Claudius in order to mislead his enemy about his state of mind. External evidence demonstrates that experienced playgoers of the period did indeed make the inference intended by Shakespeare. I pointed out much of this evidence in a 1981 …