How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the History Plays

by Peter Lake

Overview

A masterful, highly engaging analysis of how Shakespeare’s plays intersected with the politics and culture of Elizabethan England  

With an ageing, childless monarch, lingering divisions due to the Reformation, and the threat of foreign enemies, Shakespeare’s England was fraught with unparalleled anxiety and complicated problems. In this monumental work, Peter Lake reveals, more than any previous critic, the extent to which Shakespeare’s plays speak to the depth and sophistication of Elizabethan political culture and the Elizabethan imagination. Lake reveals the complex ways in which Shakespeare’s major plays engaged with the events of his day, particularly regarding the uncertain royal succession, theological and doctrinal debates, and virtue and virtù in politics. Through his plays, Lake demonstrates, Shakespeare was boldly in conversation with his audience about a range of contemporary issues. This remarkable literary and historical analysis pulls the curtain back on what Shakespeare was really telling his audience and what his plays tell us today about the times in which they were written.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300222715
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Pages:	688
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.30(d)

About the Author

Peter Lake is university distinguished professor of history, professor of the history of Christianity, and Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History at Vanderbilt University. He divides his time between Nashville, TN, and London.

Table of Contents

Introduction and acknowledgements ix

Part I Contexts and structures

Part II Past into present and future; 2 and 3 Henry VI and the politics of lost legitimacy

1 Losing legitimacy: monarchical weakness and the descent into disorder 69

2 Disorder dissected (i): the inversion of the gender order 82

3 Disorder dissected (ii): the inversion of the social order 96

4 Hereditary 'right' and political legitimacy anatomised 108

Part III Happy endings and alternative outcomes: 1 Henry VI and Richard III

5 How not to go there: 1 Henry VI as prequel and alternative ending 125

6 Richard III: political ends, providential means 149

7 Going Roman: Richard III and Titus Andronicus compared 171

Part IV How (not) to depose a tyrant: King John and Richard II

8 The Elizabethan resonances of the reign of King John 181

9 The first time as polemic, the second time as play: Shakespeare's King John and The troublesome reign compared 195

10 Richard II, or the rights and wrongs of resistance 236

11 Shakespeare and Parsons - again 270

Part V Tile Essexian circle squared, or a user's guide to the politics of popularity, honour and legitimacy

12 The loss of legitimacy and the politics of commodity dissected 291

13 Learning to be a bastard: Hal's second (plebeian) nature 320

14 Festive Falstaff: of popularity, puritans and princes 331

15 Henry V and the fruits of legitimacy 349

Part VI Using plays to read plays: the court politics of the dramatic riposte

16 Contemporary readings: Oldcastle/Falstaff, Cobham/Essex 401

17 Oldcastle redivivus 417

Part VII Julius Caesar: the dangers of playing pagan and republican politics in a Christian monarchy

18 The state we're in 437

19 The politics of honour (in a popular state) 442

20 Performing honour and the politics of popularity (in a popular state) 463

21 The politics of popularity and faction (in a popular state) 476

22 The politics of prodigy, prophecy and providence (in a pagan state) 492

23 Between Henry V and Hamlet 501

Part VIII Disillusion; Christian and pagan style

24 Hamlet 511

25 The morning after the night before: Troilus and Cressida as retrospect 534

Conclusion 568

Notes 604

Index 650

Editorial Reviews

Subtle and insightful readings . . . The high point of Mr. Lake’s book is his masterly analysis of Henry V. . . . Anyone interested in Shakespeare should make the effort to read this book. Even someone intimately familiar with the plays will discover much that is new, from details of historical background to interpretations of specific passages.”—Paul A. Cantor, Wall Street Journal

“The most detailed, insightful study of [this] topic yet . . . masterful . . . invites readers to a renewed appreciation for Shakespeare’s work—and the intricacies of the dramatist’s mind.”—Dana Huntley, British Heritage

“[Lake] enriches and expands our sense of Shakespeare’s political whereabouts over the course of the 1590s and into the last days of Elizabeth’s reign.”—Lee Oser, Library of Law and Liberty

“Comprehensive . . . inventive . . . [Lake] enriches our understanding both of Shakespeare as a political playwright and of the public sphere that englobes us still.”—Andrew S. Brown, Marginalia

“The lucid, lively, memorable prose, and location at the heart of so many major plays of a bleak and secular vision of reality typified by Machiavellian “commodity politics” compose a landmark work of liberative demystification.”—Chris Fitter, Modern Philology
 

“[How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage] is an accessible and deeply researched contribution to the conversation about an endlessly fascinating group of plays . . . this book is surely a notable critical landmark.”—David Womersley, Huntington Library Quarterly

“This large and intricate study will be of strong interest to literary scholars of Shakespeare and the early modern. . . . [Lake] communicates with unprecedented vividness the horror Elizabethans felt as they contemplated a future that seemed to portend endless war and uncertainty.”—Leah S. Marcus, Renaissance Quarterly

“At this moment, when English history plays are experiencing a comeback in the theatre, Lake’s book will be of value to scholars, students, and the general reader seriously interested in Elizabethan history based on scrupulous research.”—Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance & Reformation

'An immensely learned and deeply insightful monograph disguised as a page-turner. Lake offers the most lucid and believable account to date of, as the title promises, how Shakespeare put politics on the stage. Required reading not only for all Shakespeareans but for anyone interested in how literature speaks to and is shaped by its historical moment.' - Debora Shuger, author of Political Theologies in Shakespeare's England
 


'Even as Shakespeare’s histories illuminate his times, his times cast light upon those plays. Peter Lake, whose grasp of the Elizabethan political scene is exceptional, illuminates both Shakespeare’s world and works. Historians and literary scholars alike will find this a deeply engaging and comprehensive study.'—James Shapiro, author of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606

'Peter Lake has written an astonishing book, even for Peter Lake. Learned, lively, provocative and often surprising, How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage is a brilliant account of Elizabethan politics and Shakespeare’s extraordinary mediation of them. It is a wonderfully sensitive and supple work of literary criticism as well as a deeply engaged account of how Shakespeare’s England (which only retrospectively became “his”) thought about the most urgent political issues of the day.' - David Scott Kastan, author of A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion

From the Publisher

“Subtle and insightful readings . . . The high point of Mr. Lake’s book is his masterly analysis of Henry V. . . . Anyone interested in Shakespeare should make the effort to read this book. Even someone intimately familiar with the plays will discover much that is new, from details of historical background to interpretations of specific passages.”—Paul A. Cantor, Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal - Paul A. Cantor

“In this huge chronologically ordered study, Peter Lake coalesces the English Histories with Shakespeare’s Roman plays to argue that the history plays reflect a distinct trace left by the real political manoeuvrings of the period, and provides a wealth of historical information to underpin his case.”—Rene Weis, BBC History

BBC History - Rene Weis

“The most detailed, insightful study of [this] topic yet . . . masterful . . . invites readers to a renewed appreciation for Shakespeare’s work—and the intricacies of the dramatist’s mind.”—Dana Huntley, British Heritage

British Heritage - Dana Huntley