Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 articles from March 1994

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 archives from March 1994

"Fellows of infinite tongue": Henry V and the king's English.
March 22, 1994... Wooing Princess Catherine after the conquest of France, Henry denies all sophistication of speech; his only language, he asserts, is that of the plain-spoken soldier who says what he means, and means what he says: "But before God, Kate, I cannot...

'Hamlet' and the Scottish succession?
March 22, 1994... Surveying earlier topical interpretations of Tudor drama, David Bevington observed in 1968 that "Hamlet offers a rich field for topicality... and reveals perhaps most clearly the basic error of the lockpicking sleuth." Among the theories that...

Volpone's "sport" and the structure of Jonson's 'Volpone.' (Ben Jonson)
March 22, 1994... Save what is in destroying, other joy To me is lost. Paradise Lost, 9.478-79 Mosca's last speech in Volpone, after which he "never will speak word," is bitterly addressed to Volpone: "Bane to thy wolfish nature."(1) This curse serves as a...

The humiliation of Iago. (Othello)
March 22, 1994... What does Iago want and why does he do what he does? These questions, endlessly fascinating, often discussed, stand no greater chance of being definitively answered today than they did two hundred years ago, when Coleridge spoke of the...

Punishing adultery in 'A Woman Killed with Kindness.'
March 22, 1994... In 1608 when Thomas Heywood published A Woman Killed with Kindness, a domestic tragedy centering on a man's discovery and punishment of his wife's unfaithfulness, adultery was officially an ecclesiastical offense which, if detected by the church...

Speech acts, generic differences, and the curious case of 'Cymbeline.'
March 22, 1994... Cymbeline, one of the most unwieldy of Shakespeare's plays, exhibits a sprawling plot, an overwhelming number of characters, a striking lack of coordination between these characters and their language,(1) and a last act invariably challenging at...

Of vagabonds and commonwealths: 'Beggars' Bush,' 'A Jovial Crew', and 'The Sisters.'
March 22, 1994... When we think of non-Shakespearean comedies of the early seventeenth century the examples that come to mind are invariably city comedies about money, sex, and social status. The dominant figures in this environment are the city rogues and...

The appropriation of pleasure in 'The Magnetic Lady.'
March 22, 1994... What is true pleasure, and who is allowed to have it? Or rather, who is allowed to have her? In The Magnetic Lady, Ben Jonson reduces these questions to matters of gender and class, allegorizing pleasure as two nubile fourteen-year-old girls, one...

Recent studies in Tudor and Stuart drama.
March 22, 1994... performances of Dream. That reservation voiced, I want to say that Calderwood has taught me much about a play I thought I knew well. His book will join David Young's Something of Great Constancy (1966) and T. Walter Herbert's Oberon's Mazed World...