Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Diversifying Shakespeare, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

Fluellen’S Foreign Influence And The Ill Neighborhood Of King Henry V, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

This essay considers Shakespeare’s attention to Fluellen’s foreignness in King Henry V amid the play’s exploration of a nebulous cultural/national English identity, and it argues that the play’s emphasis on cultural and religious difference serves to underscore Elizabethan England’s tenuous sense of self. The imagined English fellowship under God that Henry evokes is at odds with the divided community at the margins of his play and the fractured identity of Shakespeare’s own England. Through Fluellen, then, difference is marked as concurrently strange and surprisingly stable.

Shakespeare And Immigration, Ruben Espinosa, David Ruiter

Ruben Espinosa

The essays in this collection examine the role of, and reaction to, the issue of immigration in Shakespeare’s drama and culture. This volume not only seeks to interrogate how the massive influx of immigrants during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I influenced perceptions of English identity, and gave rise to anxieties about homeland security in early modern England, but they also aim to understand how our current concerns surrounding immigration shape our perception of the role of the alien in Shakespeare’s work and expand the texts in new and relevant directions to a contemporary audience.

Masculinity And Marian Efficacy In Shakespeare's England, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

This book offers a new approach to evaluating the psychological "loss" of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England by illustrating how, in the wake of Mary's demotion, re-inscriptions of her roles and meanings only proliferated, seizing hold of national imagination and resulting in new configurations of masculinity. I survey the early modern cultural and literary response to Mary's marginalization, and argue that Shakespeare employs both Roman Catholic and post-Reformation views of Marian strength not only to scrutinize cultural perceptions of masculinity, but also to offer his audience new avenues of exploring both religious and gendered subjectivity. By deploying Mary's symbolic …

"Can No Prayers Pierce Thee?": Re-Imagining Marian Intercession In The Merchant Of Venice, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

In post-Reformation England, anti-Catholic polemics delineated Marian devotion as dangerous, if not idolatrous, and attacked the Virgin Mary’s influence by contending that belief in her intercessory power posed a threat to God’s authority. But the very existence of these polemics indicates that prayer to, and desire for, the Virgin Mary’s intercession endured the Reformation. This article addresses Shakespeare’s attention to this Marian strength in The Merchant of Venice to demonstrate how he draws on Mary’s “lost” intercessory power in his development of Portia as a character reminiscent of the compassionate Virgin Mary of Catholic tradition. By casting Marian intercession in …