Description
Book SynopsisTracing the changing speech patterns of confession and absolution in Shakespeare's work.
Trade ReviewSarah Beckwith's sensitive study starts from the Reformation’s subsuming of religion under politics, particularly in its abolition of the sacrament of penance.... Suggesting that, for early modern audiences, the theater replaced the Eucharist as a universally shared experience, she imagines a therapeutic effect in the present as well.
-- Lois Potter * Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 *
Beckwith presents a learned and penetrating study of the grammar of forgiveness in Shakespeare's late"post-tragic" (p. 2) plays: PericlesCymbelineThe Winter’s TaleThe Tempest.... With deep philosophical insights and a convincing mastery of historyBeckwith traces in the late Shakespeare the reinvention of a post-sacramental theatre." —Davide Crosara
* Memoria di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Promising, ForgivingPart One: Penance to Repentance
1. The Mind's Retreat from the Face
2. Rites of Forgiveness, Theater of ForgivenessPart Two: Promising
3. Repairs in the Dark: Measure for Measure and the End of ComedyPart Three: Forgiving
4. The Recovery of Voice in Pericles
5. Acknowledgment and Confession in Cymbeline
6. Shakespeare's Resurrections: The Winter’s Tale
7. Making Good in The TempestNotes
Bibliography
Index
