Shakespeare's Political Realism


Book Description

Explores the continuing relevance of important political themes in five of Shakespeare's English History plays.




Shakespeare and Realism


Book Description

This collection of essays examines the works of the most famous writer of plays in the English language within the most culturally pervasive genre in which they are performed. Though Realist productions of Shakespeare are central to the ways in which his work is produced and consumed in the 21st century-and has been for the last 100 years-scholars are divided on the socio-political, historical, and ethical effects of this marriage of content and style. The book is divided into two sections, the first of which focuses on how Realist performance style influences our understanding of Shakespeare’s characters. These chapters engage in close readings of multiple performances, interrogating the ways in which actors’ specific characterizations contribute to extremely varied interpretations of a single character. The second section then considers audiences’ experiences of Shakespearean texts in Realist performance. The essays in this section-all written by theatre directors-imagine out what might constitute Realism. Each chapter focuses on a particular production, or set of productions by a single company, and considers how the practitioners utilized critically informed notions of what constitutes “the real” to reframe what Realism looks like on stage. This is a book of arguments by both theatre practitioners and scholars. Rather than presenting a unified critical position, this collection seeks to stimulate the debate around Realist Shakespeare performance, and to attend to the political consequences of particular aesthetic choices for the audience, as well as for Shakespeare critics and theatre artists.




A New Mimesis


Book Description

In pursuit of a powerful, common-sense argument about realism, renowned scholar A. D. Nuttall discusses English eighteenth-century and French neo-classical conceptions of realism, and considers Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and both parts of King Henry IV as a prolonged feat of mimesis, with particular emphasis on Shakespeare’s perception of society and culture as subject to historical change. Shakespeare is chosen as the great example of realism because he addresses not only the stable characteristics but also the flux of things, and he is thus seen as a perceiver of that flux and not a mere specimen. An acknowledged classic of literary studies, A New Mimesis is reissued here with a new preface by the author.




How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage


Book Description

The politics of virtue -- Honour and its enemies: women on top - again -- Anti-popery -- Divided we fall: the politics of faction in time of war -- CHAPTER 6 Richard III: political ends, providential means -- The making of a Machiavel -- Monstrous bodies and providential signs -- Signs and prophecies -- The audience as 'high all- seer' -- Ambiguities of 'evil counsel' -- From providence to predestination: the return of legitimacy -- Richard III as a guide to the past, present and future -- CHAPTER 7 Going Roman: Richard III and Titus Andronicus compared




Hans Kelsen's Political Realism


Book Description

In a lively account of Kelsen's life and political thinking, Robert Schuett introduces him as a political realist and brings his thought on human nature, the state and war into productive tension with today's Schmittians and conventional views of foreign policy realism.




Double Shakespeares


Book Description

Double Shakespeares examines contemporary performances of Shakespeare plays that employ the “emotional realist” traditions of acting that were codified by Stanislavski over a century ago. These performances recognize the inescapable doubleness of realism: that the actor may aspire to be the character but can never fully do so. This doubleness troubled the late-nineteenth-century actors and theorists who first formulated realist modes of acting; and it equally troubles theorists and theatre practitioners today. The book first looks at contemporary performances that foreground the doubleness of the actor’s body, particularly through cross-dressing. It then examines narratives of Shakespearean rehearsal—both fictional representations of rehearsal in film and video, and eye-witness narratives of actual rehearsals—and how they show us the process by which the actor does or does not “become” the character. And, finally, it looks at modern performances that “frame” Shakespeare’s play as a play-within-a-play, showing the audience both the character in the Shakespeare play-within and the actor in the frame-play acting that character.




Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare


Book Description

Political science is becoming ever more reliant on abstract statistical models and almost divorced from human judgment, hope, and idealism. William Shakespeare offers the political scientist an antidote to this methodological alienation, this self-imposed exile from the political concerns of citizens and politicians. Shakespeare, the most quoted author in the English-speaking world, presents his characters as rulers, citizens, and statesmen of the most famous regimes, governed by their respective laws and shaped by their respective political and social institutions. The actions, deliberations, mistakes, and successes of his characters reveal the limitations and strengths of their regimes, whether they be Athens, Rome, or England. The contributors to this volume, esteemed scholars of political science, show us that Shakespeare's poetic imagination displays the very essence of politics and inspires valuable reflection on the fundamental questions of statesmanship and political leadership. Perspectives on Shakespeare's Politics explores such themes as classical republicanism and liberty, the rule of law and morality, the nature and limits of statesmanship, and the character of democracy.




Shakespeare in the World of Communism and Socialism


Book Description

The works of William Shakespeare have long been embraced by communist and socialist governments. One of the central cultural debates of the Soviet period concerned repertoire, including the usefulness and function of pre-revolutionary drama for the New Man and the New Society. Shakespeare survived the byzantine twists and turns of Soviet cultural politics by becoming established early as the Great Realist whose works should be studied, translated, and emulated. This view of Shakespeare as a humanist and realist was transferred to a host of other countries including East Germany, Hungary, Poland, China, and Cuba after the Second World War. Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism traces the reception of Shakespeare from 1917 to 2002 and addresses the relationship of Shakespeare to Marxist and communist ideology. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price have brought together an internationally-renowned group of theatre historians, practitioners, and scholars to examine the extraordinary conjunction of Shakespeare and ideology during a fascinating period of twentieth-century history. Roughly historical in their arrangement, the essays in this collection suggest the complicated and convoluted trajectory of Shakespeare's reputation. The general theme that emerges from this study is the deeply ambivalent nature of communist Shakespeare who, like Feste's 'chev'ril glove,' often simultaneously served and subverted the official ideology. Contributors: Alexey Bartoshevitch Laura Raidonis Bates Maria Clara Versiani Galery Lawrence Guntner Werner Habicht Maik Hamburger Martin Hilský Krystyna Kujawinska-Courtney Irena R. Makaryk Zoltán Márkus Sharon O'Dair Arkady Ostrovsky Joseph G. Price Laurence Senelick Shu-hua Wang Robert Weimann Xiao Yang Zhang




Shakespeare and the Political


Book Description

Shakespeare and the Political: Elizabethan Politics and Asian Exigencies is a collection of essays which show how selected Shakespearean plays and later adaptations engage with the political situations of the Elizabethan period as well as contemporary Asian societies. The various interpretations of the original plays focus on the institutions of family and honour, patriarchy, kingship and dynasty, and the emergent ideologies of the nation and cosmopolitanism, adopting a variety of approaches like historicism, presentism, psychoanalysis, feminism and close reading. The volume also looks at Shakespearean adaptations in Asia – Taiwanese, Japanese, Chinese and Indian. Using Douglas Lanier's concept of the 'rhizomatic' approach, it seeks to examine how Asian Shakespearean adaptations, films and stage performances, appropriate and reproduce originals often 'unfaithfully' in different social and temporal contexts to produce independent works of art.




Shakespeare’s Italy and Italy’s Shakespeare


Book Description

Shaul Bassi is Associate Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Italy. His publications include Visions of Venice in Shakespeare, with Laura Tosi, and Experiences of Freedom in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures, with Annalisa Oboe.