Faith in Shakespeare
- ISBN-10
- 0190218657
- ISBN-13
- 9780190218652
- Category
- Drama
- Pages
- 194
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2015
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- Richard C. McCoy
Description
Speculation about Shakespeare's own religious beliefs and responses to the Reformation have dominated discussions of faith in the playwright's work for decades. As a result, we often lose sight of what's truly important-the plays themselves. By focusing on those plays in several succinct, fluently written chapters, Richard McCoy reminds us of the spell-binding power inherent in works like Othello, As You Like It, and The Winter's Tale and shows why they continue to cause audiences to gladly exercise what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief." Faith in Shakespeare ruminates on what it means to believe in the Bard's plays, exploring how their plots can be both preposterous and gripping, and how their characters seem more substantial and enduring than the people surrounding us in the theater. Informed by Coleridge's "poetic faith," the book discusses what this concept shares with religious faith and how it departs from recent historicist approaches to the dramatist's work. Faith in Shakespeare concentrates more on text than context, finding the afterlife of Shakespeare's language more vivid and engaging than theological controversies. The book confirms its convictions in literature's intrinsic powers by exploring the causes for our paradoxical belief in theater's potent but manifest illusions. Plays that ask their audience to "awake your faith" or "believe then, if you please" ultimately enable us to "mind true things by what their mockeries be." Rather than faith in God or the supernatural, McCoy argues that faith in Shakespeare is sustained and explained only by the complex, subtle, and entirely human power of poetic eloquence and dramatic performance.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Titus Andronicus: Revised Edition
By Jonathan BateA pioneering study by Philip Timberlake, long ignored by mainstream scholarship, revealed the huge difference in the number of lines with feminine endings ...
-
Winter Hill
By Timberlake WertenbakerQuestioning the lengths people should go in the name of a cause, Timberlake Wertenbaker's Winter Hill premiered at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in May 2017.
-
The Love of the Nightingale
By Timberlake WertenbakerThe Love of the Nightingale
-
Our Country's Good
By Timberlake WertenbakerBased on a historical incident.
-
Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early Modern England
By Karen CunninghamKaren Cunningham looks at contemporary records of three prominent cases in order to demonstrate the degree to which the imagination was used to prove treason: the 1542 attainder of Katherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, charged with ...
-
A Private Function
By Alan BennettThis classic collection contains a new essay by Alan Bennett, besides the original introductions to A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and The Madness of King George.
-
Invisible Friends
By Alan AyckbournWhen Lucy, an ordinary teenager, feels ignored by her family, she brings her childhood fantasy friend Zara back to life, only to have her materialize and bring with her a dream family for Lucy
-
Performing King Lear: Gielgud to Russell Beale
By Jonathan CroallIts greatest pleasure comes from Mr Plummer's taking you step by step through Lear's enormous changes in temperament and insight, and justifying every turn on both an intellectual and gut level. I have never seen an audience so ...
-
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
By William ShakespeareCast: Matte Osian (Richard), Barry Smith (Bolingbroke), Frank O'Donnell (Gaunt), Kadina de Elejalde (Queen), Robert F. McCafferty (Northumberland), David W. Frank (York). Running time 93 minutes. An independent film shot on a disused ...
-
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two: The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production
By J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John TiffanyThis edition also includes useful background information including the Potter family tree and a timeline of events from the Wizarding World prior to the beginning of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.