Poison on the early modern English stage
eBook - ePub

Poison on the early modern English stage

Plants, paints and potions

  1. 312 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Poison on the early modern English stage

Plants, paints and potions

About this book

Many early modern plays use poison, most famously Hamlet, where the murder of Old Hamlet showcases the range of issues poison mobilises. Its orchard setting is one of a number of sinister uses of plants which comment on both the loss of horticultural knowledge resulting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and also the many new arrivals in English gardens through travel, trade, and attempts at colonisation. The fact that Old Hamlet was asleep reflects unease about soporifics troubling the distinction between sleep and death; pouring poison into the ear smuggles in the contemporary fear of informers; and it is difficult to prove. This book explores poisoning in early modern plays, the legal and epistemological issues it raises, and the cultural work it performs, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender, and humans' relationship to the environment.

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Yes, you can access Poison on the early modern English stage by Lisa Hopkins,Bill Angus, Lisa Hopkins, Bill Angus in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Theatre History & Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-Title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Notes on contributors
  7. Introduction
  8. Part I Sources of poison
  9. 1 ‘Balms and gums and heavy cheers’: Shakespeare’s poison gardens
  10. 2 Shakespeare and the snakehandlers: venom, vermin and the circulation of eco-social energy in Renaissance drama
  11. 3 Shakespeare’s ‘baleful mistletoe’
  12. 4 Poisoning and poisonous Black bodies: Egyptian magic on the early modern stage
  13. Part II Poisoners
  14. 5 ‘Spit thy poison’: the rhetoric of poison in Marston’s and Webster’s Italianate drama
  15. 6 Poisonous intent, or how to get away with attempted murder on the early modern stage
  16. 7 ‘Let this deadly draught purge clean my Soul from sin’: poisons and remedies in Margaret Cavendish’s drama
  17. 8 Poxy doxies and poison damsels: venereal infection and the myth of the venomous woman in early modern literature
  18. Part III Victims
  19. 9 ‘Thou didst eat my lips’: swallowing passion in William Davenant’s The Tragedy of Albovine
  20. 10 ‘The leperous distilment’: authority, informers and the poisoned ear
  21. 11 Playing with poison: murder, proof and confession in early modern revenge
  22. 12 ‘No healthsome air breathes in’: spiritual poison in Romeo and Juliet
  23. 13 ‘Death’s counterfeit’: the art of undying and the Machiavels in The Jew of Malta and Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany
  24. Works cited
  25. Index