Service and Dependency in Shakespeare's Plays
Service and Dependency in Shakespeare's Plays
Considering the close associations of service and patronage with childhood or youth, marriage and friendship, Judith Weil sheds new light on social practice and dramatic action in Shakespeare's plays. Approached as dynamic explorations of a familiar custom, the plays demonstrate a surprising consciousness of obligations, and fascination with how dependants actively affect each other. Weil also emphasizes the linguistic ambiguities created by service relationships. The book includes detailed studies of dramatic sequences in twelve plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear.
- This unusual study considers an important aspect of Shakespeare's plays often overlooked
- Complements gender studies by stressing the enabling functions of subordination
- Combines literary close readings with a discussion of social and cultural history
Reviews & endorsements
'An … imaginative and unusual book, unusually well written … The book entertainingly and impressively negotiates the terrain between the plays and their circumambient culture.' Shakespeare Survey 59
Review of the hardback: 'Weil's study provides impressively detailed readings of the vocabulary, imagery and characteristic problems of service in Shakespeare's plays and engages a broad range of the contemporary intertexts. The author also draws from a valuable depth of literary scholarship as well as from social history and historical sociology. [This book] offers important new perspectives on Shakespeare's plays and the institutions of early modern service, especially in its emphasis on the varied forms and fears of agency and servility that such service allowed and provoked.' Renaissance Quarterly
Product details
July 2005Hardback
9780521844055
224 pages
236 × 159 × 26 mm
0.507kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- 1. Introduction: 'slippery people'
- 2. Sons, daughters and servants
- 3. Wives and servants
- 4. Friends and servants
- 5. Tragic dependencies in King Lear
- 6. Freedom, service and slavery in Macbeth
- 7. Epilogue: some reflections on the porter
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index.
