Anselm Haverkamp. Shakespearean Genealogies of Power: A Whispering of Nothing in Hamlet, Richard II, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, and The Winter's Tale. Discourses of Law. New York: Routledge, 2011. x + 176 pp. index. $42.95. ISBN: 978–0–415–59345–8.

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 680-682
Author(s):  
Constance Jordan
2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Cary M. Mazer

Scholars preparing production histories of individual Shakespeare plays have long been faced with the challenges of structuring their studies. The scholar can choose to write a straightforward one-actor-or-production-after-another monograph (Rosenberg on Othello, Ripley on Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, Bartholomeuz on Macbeth and The Winter's Tale, etc.), a transhistorical encyclopedic scene-by-scene and line-by-line collation (Rosenberg on King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet), a transhistorical interlineated text (Bratton and Hankey's Shakespeare in Production editions, under a variety of different series titles and publishers), or an exemplary-production snapshot album (Mulryne and Bulman's Shakespeare in Performance series).


2021 ◽  
pp. 148-175
Author(s):  
Kent Cartwright

Chapter 5 argues for the lingering power of medieval values and imaginative forms in their relation to characters who seemingly return from the dead. Criticism has not recognized the extent of this motif in the comedies or the way that it figures in their ongoing actions as well as their endings. Among other values, return from the dead showcases the efficacy of desire on the part of those bereft and the sense of radiant new life that the revenant sometimes acquires. While this motif is usually oriented towards Shakespeare’s late romances, such as Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, it is strikingly pervasive, influential, and mysterious in the earlier comedies, as suggested by revenant characters ranging from Two Gentlemen’s Julia to All’s Well’s Helen. The chapter draws examples extensively from the comedies, including Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night. The motif lends uncanny power, emotional and intellectual depth, and memorability to Shakespearean comedy. It likewise helps us understand the persistence of medieval values into the early modern period.


2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Diana E Henderson

Placing two innovative, high-profile stagings of Shakespeare in dialogue, this essay emphasises the power of re-citations, both as aural echoes and as tableaux, across dramatic genres. Building on Martin Luther King’s self-quotation within his anti-Vietnam address, it reveals how the Compagnia de’ Colombari’s site-specific The Merchant of Venice, performed in the originary Jewish Ghetto, and the New York Public Theater’s Julius Caesar, which created a national furore, each employed non-traditional casting and Shakespeare’s Act 4 emphasis on threatened yet suspended male-on-male violence to create complex political theatre, addressing historical ethnic and racial inequalities within ‘the fierce urgency of now’.


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