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The book, first published in 1988, examines the role of magic in Elizabethan and Shakespearean theatre. The author observes how certain plays, including Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, rationalise the unrealism and improbabilities typical of romantic comedy as miracles wrought by specifically magical intervention. The author also explores the ways in which playwrights justify structural discontinuity by the working of magic. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance.
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgments; 1. The Fabric of This Vision: Magic Illusion, Time, and Space 2. "More than Magic Can Perform": Greene and Peele 3. Over-reaching Fantasies: Marlovian Magic 4. Anticipating the Promised End: Magical Discontinuity in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ 5. Shakespeare’s Dissolving Magic: ‘The Tempest’; Works Cited
About the author
Elissa Hare
Summary
The book, first published in 1988, examines the role of magic in Elizabethan and Shakespearean theatre. The author observes how certain plays, including Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, rationalise the unrealism and improbabilities typical of romantic comedy as miracles wrought by specifically magical intervention.
