This book argues that Shakespeare was permanently preoccupied with the brutality; corruption; and ultimate groundlessness of the political order of his state; and that the impact of original Tudor censorship; supplemented by the relatively depoliticizing aesthetic traditions of later centuries; have together obscured the consistent subversiveness of his work. Traditionally; Shakespearersquo;s political attitudes have been construed either as primarily conservative; or as essays in richly imaginative ambiguation; irreducible to settled viewpoints. Fitter contends that government censorship forced superficial acquiescence upon Shakespeare in establishment ideologies mdash; monarchic; aristocratic and patriarchal mdash; that were enunciated through rhetorical set pieces; but that Shakespeare the dramatist learned from Shakespeare the actor a variety of creative methods for sabotaging those perspectives in performance in the public theatres. Using historical contextualizations and recuperation of original performance values; the book argues that Shakespeare emerged as a radical writer not in middle age with King Lear and Coriolanus mdash; plays whose radicalism is becoming widely recognized mdash; but from his outset; with Henry VI and Taming of the Shrew. Recognizing Shakespearersquo;s allusiveness to 1590s controversies and dissident thought; and recovering the subtextual politics of Shakespearersquo;s distinctive stagecraft reveals populist; at times even radical meaning and a substantially new; and astonishingly interventionist; Shakespeare.
#4378699 in eBooks 2007-05-09 2007-05-09File Name: B007GY703I
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