Making Make-Believe Real - Politics as Theater in Shakespeare's Time (Paperback)

A penetrating study of the images, symbols, pageants, and creative performances ambitious Elizabethans used to secure political power Shakespeare's plays abound with kings and leaders who crave a public stage and seize every opportunity to make their lives a performance: Antony, Cleopatra, Richard III, Othello, and many others. Such self-dramatizing characters appear in the work of other playwrights of the era as well, Marlowe's Edward II and Tamburlaine among them. But Elizabethan playwrights were not alone in realizing that a sense of theater was essential to the exercise of power. Real rulers knew it, too, and none better than Queen Elizabeth. In this fascinating study of political stagecraft in the Elizabethan era, Garry Wills explores a period of vast cultural and political change during which the power of make-believe to make power real was not just a theory but an essential truth. Wills examines English culture as Catholic Christianity's rituals were being overturned and a Protestant queen took the throne. New iconographies of power were necessary for the new Renaissance liturgy to displace the medieval church-state. The author illuminates the extensive imaginative constructions that went into Elizabeth's reign and the explosion of great Tudor and Stuart drama that provided the imaginative power to support her long and successful rule.

General

Imprint:	Yale University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	June 2015
Authors:	Garry Wills
Dimensions:	229 x 144 x 25mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	424
ISBN-13:	978-0-300-21271-6
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Plays & playwrights > General Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1500 to 1750 Books > Humanities > History > British & Irish history > General Books > History > British & Irish history > General Books > History > World history > 1500 to 1750
LSN:	0-300-21271-2
Barcode:	9780300212716

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