Mrs Weil challenges two widely accepted views of Marlowe. He is not the poet and dramatist of heroic energy, 'daring God out of heaven' with his outrageous heroes. Nor is he a dogmatic moralist. Instead, he belongs to Merlin's race, as his contemporary Robert Greene suggested. An ironic writer of riddling plays, he does not endorse his characters, but cunningly manipulates our responses to them. Like Erasmus or Rabelais, he uses the knowledge of his audience in a variety of surprising ways. This approach is carefully argued for each play. The reader – perhaps initially sceptical – will find himself confronted with many features of the drama and the poetry not adequately accounted for in the conventional views, but persuasively explained here. The book may well permanently modify our attitudes toward Marlowe.
This is an unusual study of the nature of service and other types of dependency and patronage in Shakespeare's drama. By considering the close associations of service with childhood or youth, marriage and friendship, Judith Weil sheds light on social practice and dramatic action. Approached as dynamic explorations of a familiar custom, the plays are shown to demonstrate a surprising consciousness of obligations, and a fascination with how dependants actively change each other. They help us understand why early modern people may have found service both frightening and enabling. Attentive to a range of historical sources, and social and cultural issues, Weil also emphasises the linguistic ambiguities created by service relationships, and their rich potential for interpretation on the stage. The book includes close readings of dramatic sequences in twelve plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear.
This updated edition offers a strongly theatrical perspective on the origins of Shakespeare's First Part of King Henry IV and the history of its interpretation. The introduction clarifies the play's s
