Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores how recollections and traces of the reign of Richard III survived a century and more to influence the world and work of William Shakespeare. In Richard III, Shakespeare depicts an era that had only recently passed beyond the horizon of living memory. The years between Shakespeare''s birth in 1564 and the composition of the play in the early 1590s would have seen the deaths of the last witnesses to Richard''s reign. Yet even after the extinction of memory, traces of the Yorkist era abounded in Elizabethan England - traces in the forms of material artefacts and buildings, popular traditions, textual records, and administrative and religious institutions and practices. Other traces had notoriously disappeared, not least the bodies of the princes reputedly murdered in the Tower, and the King''s own body, which remained lost until its dramatic rediscovery in the summer of 2012. Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III charts the often complex careers of these pieces of
Trade Reviewa nuanced and well-written study ... I would recommend this fascinating, engaging book to those interested in Shakespeare's drama, the reception history of Richard III, early modern collective memory, or sixteenth- and seventeenth-century attitudes towards the recent English past. * Chloe Kathleen Preedy, Renaissance Studies *
At a time when historicism as a method is frequently critiqued as an outmoded and limiting mode of literary scholarship, Schwyzer's study wonderfully achieves its goal of making readers 'think more deeply about what it means to set and see a work of art within its historical context'. Its concept of history is fluid and dynamic and its attention to both historical detail and textual nuance is exemplary. * Ian Frederick Moulton, Literature and History *
an excellent study in how his reputation was formed during the Tudor era. It is well written and contains several useful illustrations. * Matthew Ward, The Ricardian *
entrancing * Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Review of English Studies *
Table of Contents1. 'Where is Plantagenet?' ; 2. Lees and Moonshine: Memory and Oral Tradition ; 3. Trophies, Relics, and Props: The Life Histories of Objects ; 4. 'He lived wickedly, yet made good laws': Institutions and Practices ; 5. 'Every tale condemns me for a villain': Stories ; 6. Now
