Abstracts
Abstracts
Steven Marx, Cal Poly University
Time for the Plebs in Julius Caesar
Christopher Holmes, McGill University
Othello, the Baroque, and Religious Mentalities
Anthony Gilbert, University of Lancaster
Performance, Subjectivity and Slander in Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing
Adam Piette, University of Glasgow
Steven Marx, Cal Poly University.
The cinematic devices of Peter Greenaway's adaptation of The Tempest, Prospero's Books, highlight resemblances between Shakespeare's last complete play and the final book of the Christian Bible, Revelations. These include spectacles of apocalyptic destruction, the presence of a central character who functions as protagonist, author, and audience, the use of masquelike incidents and structures, and a coda of climactic and anticlimactic conclusions.
Othello, the Baroque, and Religious Mentalities
Anthony Gilbert, University of Lancaster.
Is Othello an early English example of the European baroque? Are the religious mentalities of the central figures related to this historic moment of religious doubt? Can we suggest that Othello touches on the central themes of the counter-reformation, and triumphantly reasserts old catholic belief against the dismissive cynicism of the reformed religion of protestant Europe? The writer suggests that these are possible implications in a play that explores the challenge of uncertainty as well as the recovery of faith.
Time for the Plebs in Julius Caesar
Christopher Holmes, McGill University.
When Cicero in Julius Caesar says "Indeed it is a strange-disposed time," he is right. Calendars are not the only source of confusion within this Roman world, and the recurring ambiguities and misapprehensions that occur throughout make Cicero's pithy remarks about interpretation emblematic for the whole play. But dates and their observances pose particular problems in Julius Caesar, both for characters within the play and for interpreters of it. This "strange-disposed time" is construed in so many different ways that it threatens the very idea of temporal organization itself. This need not have been Shakespeare's "purpose," or even the purpose of the play; it is unquestionably one of its effects. The time in Rome, as Hamlet would say, is out of joint. But who is trying to set it right?
Performance, Subjectivity and Slander in Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing
Adam Piette, University of Glasgow.
Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and its theory of the theatricality of team-generated subjectivity is used to analyze scenes from Hamlet and Much Ado in order to suggest that Shakespeare both questions the validity of private subjectivity and dramatizes such scepticism as a consequence of slanderous forces in early modern courtly culture. Subjectivity in the early modern period could be defined, in Goffman's terms, as the internalization of the slanderous secrets of the enemy team. Interiority is however also defined by Shakespeare in terms of social damnation through sacrifice to social networks of slander and misrepresentation.
© 2001-,
Lisa Hopkins (Editor, EMLS).