This book explores the possibilities and limitations of violence on the Early Modern stage and in the Early Modern world.
This collection is divided into three sections: History-cal Violence, (Un)Comic Violence, and Revenge Violence. This division allows scholars to easily find intertextual materials; comic violence may function similarly across multiple comedies but is vastly different from most tragic violence. While the source texts move beyond Shakespeare, this book follows the classic division of Shakespeares plays into history, comedy, and tragedy. Each section of the book contains one chapter engaging with modern dramatic practice along with several that take textual or historical approaches.
This wide-ranging approach means that the book will be appropriate both for specialists in Early Modern violence who are looking across multiple perspectives, and for students or scholars researching texts or approaches.
This book explores the possibilities and limitations of violence on the early modern stage and in the early modern world.
Contributor Biographies
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter
1. The Boundaries of Theatrical Violence
Chapter
2. "Witchy Woman": Reading Women and Occult Power in Popular
Literature of Early Modern England
Chapter
3. The Grotesque Female Body on the Scaffold: The Execution of Annis
Bankyn (1590)
Chapter
4. "I Will Keepe None of There Bastardes": The Violence of Scarcity
in Ben Jonsons Every Man Out of His Humour
Chapter
5. "A x to her, slaps her faceshe kneels": Violence between the
Lines in 2.4 of Measure for Measure
Chapter
6. Villains, all three: Object-led Violence in The Revengers
Tragedy
Chapter
7. Fool on the Body and Madness on the Mind in John Marstons Antonio
Plays
Chapter
8. "Slack in [ Neither] Tongue [ Nor] Performance": The Duchesss
Maternal Authority and Incestuous Revenge in The Revengers Tragedy
Chapter
9. This Stroke for the Most Wronged of Women: Sexual Coercion and
Revenge Violence in The Maids Tragedy
Coda
Index
Samantha Dressel is Assistant Professor in Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, USA.
Matthew Carter is Assistant Professor of English at Clayton State University, USA.