Description
Book SynopsisShakespeare's Tragedies Reviewed explores how the recognition of spectator interests by the playwright has determined the detailed character of Shakespeare tragedies. Utilizing Shakespeare's European models and contemporaries, including Cinthio and Lope de Vega, and following forms such as Aristotle's second, more popular style of tragedy (a double ending of punishment for the evil and honor for the good), Hugh Macrae Richmond elicits radical revision of traditional interpretations of the scripts. The analysis includes a major shift in emphasis from conventionally tragic concerns to a more varied blend of tones, characterizations, and situations, designed to hold spectator interest rather than to meet neoclassical standards of coherence, focus, and progression. This reinterpretation also bears on modern staging and directorial emphasis, challenging the relevance of traditional norms of tragedy to production of Renaissance drama. The stress shifts to plays' counter-movements to t
Trade Review«All in all, Richmond’s claim to offer a new perspective on the Italian-English cultural dialogue during the Renaissance and its contribution to intellectual history provides fresh insights into an exciting field.»
(Sonja Fielitz, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 255/2018)
Table of ContentsContents: The Spectator and the Dramatists – Renaissance Dramaturgy – Richard III as «a Tragedy with a Happy Ending» – A Spectator’s View of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Lope de Vega’s Castelvines y Monteses – Interlude: Mixed Modes Throughout Shakespeare – Julius Caesar and Neoclassicism 59 – Hamlet: The Spectator as Detective – Othello: Iago’s Audience – Macbeth: Satisfying the Spectator – Coriolanus: The Spectator and Aristotelianism – Enjoying King Lear – Antony and Cleopatra: Comical/Historical/Tragical – Cymbelene as Resolution: Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral – Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
