Making Make-Believe Real - Politics As Theater in Shakespeare''s Time

"Shakespeare's plays abound with kings and leaders who crave a public stage and seize every opportunity to make their lives a performance: Antony, Cleopatra, Richard III, Othello, and many others. Such self-dramatizing characters appear in the work of other playwrights of the era as well, Marlowe's Edward II and Tamburlaine among them. But Elizabethan playwrights were not alone in realizing that a sense of theater was essential to the exercise of power. Real rulers knew it, too, and none better than Queen Elizabeth. In this fascinating study of political stagecraft in the Elizabethan era, Garry Wills explores a period of vast cultural and political change during which the power of make-believe to make power real was not just a theory but an essential truth. Wills examines English culture as Catholic Christianity's rituals were being overturned and a Protestant queen took the throne. New iconographies of power were necessary for the new Renaissance liturgy to displace the medieval church-state. The author illuminates the extensive imaginative constructions that went into Elizabeth's reign and the explosion of great Tudor and Stuart drama that provided the imaginative power to support her long and successful rule"--

Product details

• Authors: Garry Wills, Wills Garry
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 04.08.2015
• EAN: 9780300212716
• ISBN: 978-0-300-21271-6
• No. of pages: 424
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; European History, English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Stuart Era (1603-1714), British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, 17th century, c 1600 to c 1699, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599, c 1500 to c 1600, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600