Shakespeare's Drama of Exile

by Kingsley-Smith, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780333993446
• ISBN10: 0333993446
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Exile defines the Shakespearean canon, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen. This book traces the influences on the drama of exile, examining the legal context of banishment (pursued against Catholics, gypsies and vagabonds) in early modern England; the self-consciousness of exile as an amatory trope; and the discourses by which exile could be reshaped into comedy or tragedy. Across genres, Shakespeare's plays reveal a fascination with exile as the source of linguistic crisis, shaped by the utterance of that word "Banished".

Author Biography

Jane Kingsley-Smith is Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Hull.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

That One Word "Banishèd": Linguistic Crisis in Romeo and Juliet

'Still-breeding thoughts': <I>Richard II and the Exile's Creative Failure

Historical-Pastoral Exile in Henry IV

'Hereafter, in a better world than this': The End of Exile in As You Like It and King Lear

Coriolanus: The Banishment of Rome

'A world elsewhere': Magic, Colonialism and Exile in The Tempest

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index