Description
Book SynopsisUnpicking the ecopolitics of Shakespeare''s plays at the Stuart court, Shakespeare Beyond the Green World establishes that the playwright was remarkably attentive to the environmental issues of his era. As a court dramatist, he designed his plays to captivate a patron deeply involved in both the conservation and exploitation of a burgeoning empire''s natural resources. Spurred by James'' campaign to unify his kingdoms, the Jacobean Shakespeare ventures beyond the green and pleasant lowlands of England to chart the wild topographies of an expansionist Great Britain: the blasted heath in Macbeth, the caves and mines of Timon of Athens, the overfished North Sea in Pericles, the Welsh mountains in Cymbeline, the Arctic fur country in The Winter''s Tale, the fens in The Tempest, overcrowded London and empty Ulster in Measure for Measure and Coriolanus, and the night in Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear. While these plays often simulate a monarch''s-eye-view of the natural world, they also
Table of ContentsIntroduction: From Tudor England's Green World to Stuart Britain's Iridescent Empire 1: The 'Blasted Heath' and Agrilogistics in Macbeth 2: Timon of Athens and Scottish Mines: The Folio's Gold as Vibrant Matter 3: 'Watery Empire': Pericles, British Sea-Sovereignty, and the Fisheries 4: Wales, Alpine Pastoral, and Eco-Masculinity in Cymbeline 5: Performing The Winter's Tale in 'the Open': Bears, Ermines, Feral Children, and the White Sea Fur Trade 6: Caliban and the Fen Demons of Lincolnshire: The Englishness of Shakespeare's Tempest 7: 'Purple Plagues or Crimson War': Population Control in Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, London, and Ulster 8: Staging Darkness at Whitehall and Blackfriars: Nocturnalization in the Stuart Masque and Shakespeare's Late Tragedies Conclusion: The Anthropocene as Species Tyranny
