"This volume's main focus is on the ways in which, over the past 400 years, Shakespeare has played a role of significance within a European framework, particularly where a series of political events and ideologically based developments were concerned, such as the early modern wars of religion, the emergence of "the nation" during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the First and Second World Wars, the process of European unification during the 1990s, the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, and Britain's participation in the war in Iraq." "The whole of the collection and particularly the opening section clearly invites a European and even a global perspective." "This book convincingly demonstrates that Shakespeare, both at the level of his meaning in his own time and at that of his reception in later ages, should no longer be studied only in relation to particular nations, but as Dirk Delabastita argues, also at various supranational levels." --Book Jacket.

This collection of essays explores the diverse ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries experienced and imagined Europe. The book charts the aspects of European politics and culture which interested Renaissance travellers, thus mapping the context within which Shakespeare's plays with European settings would have been received. Chapters cover the politics of continental Europe, the representation of foreigners on the English stage, the experiences of English travellers abroad, Shakespeare's reading of modern European literature, the influence of Italian comedy, his presentation of Moors from Europe's southern frontier, and his translation of Europe into settings for his plays.

Shakespeare's Political Imagination argues that to better understand Shakespeare's plays it is essential to look at the historicism of setting: how the places and societies depicted in the plays were understood in the period when they were written. This book offers us new readings of neglected critical moments in key plays, such as Malcolm's final speech in Macbeth and the Duke's inaction in The Merchant of Venice, by investigating early modern views about each setting and demonstrating how the plays navigate between those contemporary perspectives. Divided into three parts, this book explores Shakespeare's historicist use of medieval Britain and Scotland in King John and Macbeth; ancient Rome in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus; and Renaissance Europe through Venice and Vienna in The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Measure for Measure. Philip Goldfarb Styrt argues that settings are a powerful component in Shakespeare's worlds that not only function as physical locations, but are a mechanism through which he communicates the political and social orders of the plays. Reading the plays in light of these social and political contexts reveals Shakespeare's dramatic method: how he used competing cultural narratives about other cultures to situate the action of his plays. These fresh insights encourage us to move away from overly localized or universalized readings of the plays and re-discover hidden moments and meanings that have long been obscured.

Explores the continuing relevance of important political themes in five of Shakespeare's English History plays.

Andrew Hiscock locates Shakespeare's history plays within debates over the status and function of violence in a nation's culture.

In this book, Franssen investigates the use of Shakespeare as a fictional character in different literary genres, periods and cultures.

What has been the role played by principles, patterns and situations of conflict in the construction of Shakespeare's myth, and in its European and then global spread? The fascinatingly complex picture that emerges from this collection provides new insight into Shakespeare's unique position in world literature and culture.

The use of Italian culture in the Jacobean theatre was never an isolated gesture. In considering the ideological repercussions of references to Italy in prominent works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Michael J. Redmond argues that early modern intertextuality was a dynamic process of allusion, quotation, and revision. Beyond any individual narrative source, Redmond foregrounds the fundamental role of Italian textual precedents in the staging of domestic anxieties about state crisis, nationalism, and court intrigue. By focusing on the self-conscious, overt rehearsal of existing texts and genres, the book offers a new approach to the intertextual strategies of early modern English political drama. The pervasive circulation of Cinquecento political theorists like Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Guicciardini combined with recurrent English representations of Italy to ensure that the negotiation with previous writing formed an integral part of the dramatic agendas of period plays.

From the aftermath of World War II to the convulsions of Brexit, festivals have deployed Shakespeare as a model of inclusive and progressive theatre to seek cultural solutions to Europe's multi-faceted crises. Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is the first book to chart Shakespeare's presence at continental European festivals. It examines the role these festivals play in European socio-cultural exchanges, and the impact festivals make on the wider production and circulation of staged Shakespeare across the continent. This collection offers authoritative, lively and informed accounts of the production of Shakespeare at the following festivals: the Avignon Festival and Le Printemps des comédiens in Montpellier (France), the Almagro festival (Spain), Shakespeare at Four Castles (Czech Republic and Slovakia), the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova (Romania), the Shakespeare festivals in Elsinore (Denmark), Gdansk (Poland), Gyula (Hungary), Itaka (Serbia), Neuss (Germany), Patalenitsa (Bulgaria), Rome and Verona (Italy). Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in Shakespeare in performance, in translation and in a post-national Shakespeare that knows no borders and belongs to all of Europe.

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