The Fairytale in Crisis: Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus and Cressida and All’s Well That Ends Well

Shakespeare ◽  
1993 ◽  
pp. 154-169
Author(s):  
Susan Bassnett
Keyword(s):  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
Troilus And Cressida

Much Ado About Nothing

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Shakespeare
Keyword(s):  
Much Ado About Nothing

Perceptual load theory: Much ado about nothing

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yehoshua Tsal ◽  
Hanna Benoni
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Load ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
Load Theory

Lesse Greeke? Homer in Jonson and Shakespeare

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Miola
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Troilus And Cressida ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Love's Labor's Lost ◽  
And Function

Throughout their careers both Jonson and Shakespeare often encountered Homer, who left a deep impress on their works. Jonson read Homer directly in Greek but Shakespeare did not, or if he did, he left no evidence of that reading in extant works. Both Jonson and Shakespeare encountered Homer indirectly in Latin recollections by Vergil, Horace, Ovid and others, in English translations, in handbooks and mythographies, in derivative poems and plays, in descendant traditions, and in plentiful allusions. Though their appropriations differ significantly, Jonson and Shakespeare both present comedic impersonations of Homeric scenes and figures – the parodic replay of the council of the gods (Iliad 1) in Poetaster (1601) 4.5 and the appearance of “sweet warman” Hector (5.2.659) in the Masque of the Nine Worthies (Love's Labor's Lost, 1588–97). Homer's Vulcan and Venus furnish positive depictions of love and marriage in The Haddington Masque (1608) as do his Hector and Andromache in Julius Caesar (1599), which features other significant recollections. Both Jonson and Shakespeare recall Homer to explore the dark side of honor and fame: Circe and Ate supply the anti-masque in the Masque of Queens (1609), and scenes from Chapman's Iliad supply the comical or tragical satire, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1601). Both poets put Homer to abstract and philosophical uses: Zeus's chain and Venus's ceston (girdle), allegorized, appears throughout Jonson's work and function as central symbols in Hymenaei (1606); Homer's depiction of the tension between fate and free will, between the omnipotent gods and willing humans, though mediated, inflects the language and action of Coriolanus (c. 1608). Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare practice a kind of inventive imitatio which, according to classical and neo-classical precept, re-reads classical texts in order to make them into something new.

Emulous Factions and the Collapse of Chivalry: Troilus and Cressida

1990 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric S. Mallin
Keyword(s):  
Troilus And Cressida
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