scholarly journals The Mother, Who Is Not One: Reflections Of Motherhood In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, The Tempest, And The Taming Of The Shrew

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
HATICE KARAMAN
Keyword(s):  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
Absent Mothers

Abstract The lack of proper motherhood in Shakespeare's plays has been a point of attraction for many feminist critics actively engaged in emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Shakespeare's plays. This paper aims to analyze motherhood and the lack of mother/mother-figure in The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew through Luce Irigaray's theory of gender and the work of other feminist critics. The issues of gender, father-daughter relations and the reflections of the absent mothers will be discussed. Male/Female Subjectivity will also be questioned, in view of Irigaray's conceptualization of gender by relating it to Subject.

Shakespeare's Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Ability To Act

While ecocritical approaches to literary texts receive more and more attention, climate-related issues remain fairly neglected, particularly in the field of Shakespeare studies. This monograph explores the importance of weather and changing skies in early modern England while acknowledging the fact that traditional representations and religious beliefs still fashioned people’s relations to meteorological phenomena. At the same time, a growing number of literati stood against determinism and defended free will, thereby insisting on man’s ability to act upon celestial forces. Yet, in doing so, they began to give precedence to a counter-intuitive approach to Nature. Sophie Chiari argues that Shakespeare reconciles the scholarly views of his time with more popular ideas rooted in superstition and that he promotes a sensitive, pragmatic understanding of climatic events. She pays particular attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Taking into account the influence of classical thought, each of the book’s seven chapters emphasises specific issues (e.g. cataclysmic disorders, the dog days’ influence, freezing temperatures, threatening storms) and considers the way climatic events were presented on stage and how they came to shape the production and reception of Shakespeare’s drama.

scholarly journals Je suis Shakespeare: The Making of Shared Identities in France and Europe in Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (34) ◽  
pp. 31-53
Author(s):  
Nicole Fayard
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Shock Waves ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Strongly Connected

This essay investigates the ways in which Shakespearean production speaks to France and wider European crises in 2015 and 2016. The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet were directed by Jérôme Hankins and Eric Ruf respectively in December 2015 and reflected significant contemporaneous issues, including: (1) two Paris terrorist attacks which sent shock waves throughout France and Europe; (2) the belief that shared identities were under threat; (3) concerns over shifting power dynamics in Europe. The portrayal of these issues and their reception bring into question the extent to which cultural productions can help to promote social change or shape perceptions of national and pan-European events. This essay focuses on whether the plays successfully complicate binary narratives around cultural politics in a context of crises by creating alternative representations of difference and mobilities. It concludes that appropriating Shakespeare’s cultural authority encourages some degree of public debate. However, the function of Shakespeare’s drama remains strongly connected to its value as an agent of cultural, political and commercial mobility, ultimately making it difficult radically to challenge ideologies.

The ‘Science’ of Astrology in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Laroque
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As If

In chapter 1, François Laroque explores the paradoxical purposes of the science of astrology in two plays, namely Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, and in his sonnets. The craze for astrology clearly found its way into Shakespeare’s poetry. Take Sonnet 14, for example, where the speaker deliberately poses as a mock-astrologer, or Sonnet 107, where he playfully redefines what ‘poetic’ astrology should be, as his own astrological skills enable him to read the eyes of the young man as if they were two fixed stars. Astrology is therefore taken seriously, even though Shakespeare seeks to enlarge its meaning. In the plays, it can even be a structural device. Laroque argues that, in Romeo and Juliet, the “ancient grudge” of the Montagues and the Capulets is marked right from the beginning by its astrological connotations. Interestingly, Shakespeare kept thinking of the influence of the planets throughout his career, for a much later play like King Lear is similarly concerned with stars and disasters. The vivid opposition between Gloucester and Edmond allows Laroque to demonstrate that the playwright was particularly interested in the controversies that then emerged over the validity of the old science of astrology, even though Shakespeare refuses to take sides.

Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; The Merchant of Venice. Edited by Charles Edelman. $65 cloth; Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; The Taming of the Shrew. Edited by Elizabeth Schafer. $65 cloth; Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; King Henry V. Edited by Emma Smith. $23 paper.

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-161
Author(s):  
Michael Flachmann
Keyword(s):  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It

In their “Editors' Preface” to the Cambridge University Press Shakespeare in Production series, J. S. Bratton and Julie Hankey proudly describe the “comprehensive dossier of materials,” including “eye-witness accounts, contemporary criticism, promptbook marginalia, stage business, cuts, additions and rewritings,” that make up the heart of this brilliant and exceptionally useful collection of Shakespeare editions. Conceived by Jeremy Treglown and first published by Junction Books, the series was later printed by Bristol Classical Press as Plays in Performance, though none of the original four titles remains in print. Already published in the descendant Cambridge Shakespeare in Production series are nine plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice—with Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and As You Like It forthcoming.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document