Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T05:21:55.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The literary and dramatic contexts of the last plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2010

Catherine M. S. Alexander
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Get access

Summary

Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is an untidy thing, growing from classical roots and also, more importantly, from the allegorical moralities and interludes and the old mystery drama, cycles dramatising the history of the world from Creation to Last Judgement. The experience of those plays, whatever the polite dressing on top, provided the theatrical language of Shakespeare's generation. The mysteries were played in some parts until well into the 1570s, despite Privy Council prohibition. Their mix of highly ritualised performance, grotesque and horrifying suffering and broad vulgar comedy is all held within a frame where the tragedy of Calvary is not the end but the necessary preparation for the moment of Resurrection and the challenge of forgiveness. At the same time a growing body of critical theory, based on Aristotle and his Italian interpreters, was beginning to define tragedy more severely than simply the turning of Fortune's wheel - a concept Shakespeare never, in fact, quite abandons. Comedy recognisably divided into 'City' comedy, using elements of the Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence and based on a money nexus, and romantic comedy, based on 'love will find a way'. But, though he could keep minutely, as in The Tempest, to the three unities if he wished, Shakespeare throughout his career showed scant concern for purist classical generic prescriptions enunciated by critics like Sidney in his Apologie for Poesie, and cheerfully mingles classical dramatic forms with the modes of vernacular drama.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×