Boundaries of Violence in Early Modern England

Samantha Dressel, Matthew Carter, Samantha Dressel, Matthew Carter

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032333342
• eBook ISBN: 9781000933482
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Shakespeare Drama

This book explores the possibilities and limitations of violence on the Early Modern stage and in the Early Modern world.

This collection is divided into three sections: History-cal Violence, (Un)Comic Violence, and Revenge Violence. This division allows scholars to easily find intertextual materials; comic violence may function similarly across multiple comedies but is vastly different from most tragic violence. While the source texts move beyond Shakespeare, this book follows the classic division of Shakespeare's plays into history, comedy, and tragedy. Each section of the book contains one chapter engaging with modern dramatic practice along with several that take textual or historical approaches.

This wide-ranging approach means that the book will be appropriate both for specialists in Early Modern violence who are looking across multiple perspectives, and for students or scholars researching texts or approaches.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Contributor Biographies
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Boundaries of Theatrical Violence
• 2 “Witchy Woman”: Reading Women and Occult Power in Popular Literature of Early Modern England
• 3 The Grotesque Female Body on the Scaffold: The Execution of Annis Bankyn (1590)
• 4 “I Will Keepe None of There Bastardes”: The Violence of Scarcity in Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour
• 5 “A x to her, slaps her face—she kneels”: Violence between the Lines in 2.4 of Measure for Measure
• 6 ‘Villains, all three’: Object-led Violence in The Revenger’s Tragedy
• 7 Fool on the Body and Madness on the Mind in John Marston’s Antonio Plays
• 8 “Slack in [Neither] Tongue [Nor] Performance”: The Duchess’s Maternal Authority and Incestuous Revenge in The Revenger’s Tragedy
• 9 ‘This Stroke for the Most Wronged of Women’: Sexual Coercion and Revenge Violence in The Maid’s Tragedy
• Coda
• Index