Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1982. The Poetics of Jacobean Drama argues for a rediscovered approach to the study of Renaissance drama. Coburn Freer observes that most modern criticism of this drama treats the plays as if they were written in prose, thus overlooking whole areas of dramatic meaning that were understood in the past. Such an understanding, he asserts, was common among writers, actors, audiences, and readers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, and a knowledge of it is essential to a full appreciation of the characterization and dramatic structures in these plays. Freer explores the evolution of the modern reluctance to approach Renaissance drama as one would dramatic poetryfrom the standpoint of a listener. Blank verse, the author shows, provided Jacobean dramatists with a poetic form against which they could work the pressures of experience within their characters. The writers' ability to work with and against this form provided infinite resources for delineating character an
Trade ReviewThis bold and interesting book sets out to show that poetry functions integrally with characterization, structure and action in Jacobean drama.
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Times Higher Education SupplementTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
A Note on Texts
Chapter 1. Poetry in the Mode of Action
Chapter 2. Contexts of Blank Verse Drama
Chapter 3. The Revenger's Tragedy
Chapter 4. Cymbeline
Chapter 5. The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi
Chapter 6. The Broken Heart
Epilouge. The Metamorphosis Transformed
Notes
Index
