The Child in Shakespeare
Published on 28. May 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-0-19-284307-4 (ISBN)
Description
This volume explores the character and representation of the child in Shakespeare's drama, not as a specific life stage but as a role.
As a life force, an impassioned plea for justice, a legacy, history, memory or image of love or violence, children are everywhere in Shakespeare's plays. Focusing on Shakespeare's unique interest in the young body, the life stage, and the parental and social dynamic, this book offers an account of the role and representation of the child in Shakespeare's dramatic imagination. Drawing on a vast range of contemporary texts, including parenting manuals and household and pedagogic texts, as well as books on nursing and maternity, child birth, and child rearing, The Child in Shakespeare explores the contexts in which the idea of the child is mobilised as a body and image on the early modern stage. Understanding the child, not only as a specific life stage, but also as a role and an abstraction of feeling, this book examines why Shakespeare, who showed little interest in writing for children in the playing companies, wrote so powerfully about them on his stage.
As a life force, an impassioned plea for justice, a legacy, history, memory or image of love or violence, children are everywhere in Shakespeare's plays. Focusing on Shakespeare's unique interest in the young body, the life stage, and the parental and social dynamic, this book offers an account of the role and representation of the child in Shakespeare's dramatic imagination. Drawing on a vast range of contemporary texts, including parenting manuals and household and pedagogic texts, as well as books on nursing and maternity, child birth, and child rearing, The Child in Shakespeare explores the contexts in which the idea of the child is mobilised as a body and image on the early modern stage. Understanding the child, not only as a specific life stage, but also as a role and an abstraction of feeling, this book examines why Shakespeare, who showed little interest in writing for children in the playing companies, wrote so powerfully about them on his stage.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
289 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-284307-4 (9780192843074)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Charlotte Scott has written widely on Shakespeare, including two books entitled Shakespeare and the Idea of the Book (OUP, 2007) and Shakespeare's Nature: from Culture to Cultivation (OUP, 2014) as well as articles and essays. She reviews for Shakespeare Survey and is a frequent contributor to literary festivals and public events. She has taught Shakespeare at Goldsmiths for 14 years.
Content
1: 'And all my children?'
2: Never such Innocence: Mourning Children in the History Plays
3: The end of the beginning: Shakespeare's Tragic Children
4: 'Love is proved in the letting go': Marriage, Space, and Gender in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado about Nothing
5: 'Time is chasing us'. Regret, Time, and the Child Eternal in the Late Plays
6: 'Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, / Lest child, child's children, cry against you woe!'
2: Never such Innocence: Mourning Children in the History Plays
3: The end of the beginning: Shakespeare's Tragic Children
4: 'Love is proved in the letting go': Marriage, Space, and Gender in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado about Nothing
5: 'Time is chasing us'. Regret, Time, and the Child Eternal in the Late Plays
6: 'Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, / Lest child, child's children, cry against you woe!'