Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama

A. D. Cousins, Daniel Derrin

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781107172548
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316782033
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama
• Index: Literature

Encompassing nearly a century of drama, this is the first book to provide students and scholars with a truly comprehensive guide to the early modern soliloquy. Considering the antecedents of the form in Roman, late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth century drama, it analyses its diversity, its theatrical functions and its socio-political significances. Containing detailed case-studies of the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Ford, Middleton and Davenant, this collection will equip students in their own close-readings of texts, providing them with an indepth knowledge of the verbal and dramaturgical aspects of the form. Informed by rich theatrical and historical understanding, the essays reveal the larger connections between Shakespeare's use of the soliloquy and its deployment by his fellow dramatists.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Roman Soliloquy
• Chapter 2 Tudor Transformations
• Chapter 3 Doubtful Battle: Marlowe’s Soliloquies
• Chapter 4 Shakespeare and the Female Voice in Soliloquy
• Chapter 5 Contemplative Idiots in Soliloquy: Rhetorical Parody, Laughable Deformity and the Audience
• Chapter 6 Giving Voice to History in Shakespeare
• Chapter 7 Hamlet and Of Truth: Humanism and the Disingenuous Soliloquy
• Chapter 8 Choosing between Shame and Guilt: Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear
• Chapter 9 ‘Too hot, too hot’: The Rhetorical Poetics of Soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Late Plays
• Chapter 10 Ben Jonson’s Roman Soliloquies
• Chapter 11 Ben Jonson’s Comic Selves
• Chapter 12 ‘In such a whisp’ring and withdrawing hour’: Speaking Solus in Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Lady’s Tragedy
• Chapter 13 John Ford’s Soliloquies: Solitude Interrupted
• Chapter 14 Davenant’s Macbeth: Soliloquy, Counter-Revolution and Restoration
• Chapter 15 What Were Soliloquies in Plays by Shakespeare and Other Late Renaissance Dramatists? An Empirical Approach
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index