Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Stages of Transgression

   • Rory Loughnane

   Pages 1-23

3. ‘On the most Eminent seate thereof is Gouernement Illustrated’: Staging Power in the Lord Mayor’s Show

   • Tracey Hill

   Pages 24-36

4. The Transgressive Stage Player

   • William Ingram

   Pages 37-48

5. ‘Ha, Ha, Ha’: Shakespeare and the Edge of Laughter

   • Adam Smyth

   Pages 49-62

6. ‘Have we done aught amiss?’: Transgression, Indirection and Audience Reception in Titus Andronicus

   • Darragh Greene

   Pages 63-75

7. The King’s Three Bodies: Resistance Theory and Richard III

   • Rob Carson

   Pages 76-88

8. Marriage, Politics and Law in The Tragedy of Mariam and The Duchess of Malfi

   • Christina Luckyj

   Pages 89-103

9. Incapacitated Will

   • Rebecca Lemon

   Pages 104-119

10. Transgression Embodied: Medicine, Religion and Shakespeare’s Dramatized Persons

    • Thomas Rist

    Pages 120-135

11. The Taming of the Jew: Spit and the Civilizing Process in The Merchant of Venice

    • Brett D. Hirsch

    Pages 136-152

12. ‘Edgar I Nothing Am’: Blackface in King Lear

    • Benjamin Minor, Ayanna Thompson

    Pages 153-164

13. Marrying the Dead: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline and The Tempest

    • Lisa Hopkins

    Pages 165-179

14. Speaking Out of Turn: Gender, Language and Transgression in Early Modern England

    • Danielle Clarke

    Pages 180-193

15. Rethinking Transgression with Shakespeare’s Bawds

    • Edel Semple

    Pages 194-208

16. ‘Nothing but pickled cucumbers’: the Longing Wives of Middletonian City Comedy

    • Celia R. Caputi

    Pages 209-223

17. Lady Macbeth and Othello, Convention and Transgression in Early Modern Tragedy

    • Andrew J. Power

    Pages 224-238

18. ‘How to vse your Brothers Brotherly’: Civility, Incivility and Civil War in 3 Henry VI

    • Christopher Ivic

    Pages 239-251

19. Afterword: Thinking Staged Transgression Literally

    • Jean E. Howard

    Pages 252-259

20. Back Matter

    Pages 260-298

    PDF

Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England is a groundbreaking collection of seventeen essays, drawing together leading and emerging scholars to discuss and challenge critical assumptions about the transgressive nature of the early modern English stage. These essays shed new light on issues of gender, race, sexuality, law and politics. Staged Transgression was followed by a companion collection, Staged Normality in Shakespeare's England (2019), also available from Palgrave: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-00892-5

• comedy
• drama
• England
• Hamlet
• King Lear
• law
• Macbeth
• stage
• tragedy
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

"Wisely, the editors have not grouped the essays according to categories that one might expect in a book on transgression (race, gender, politics, etc), thereby leaving the reader free to make their own connections in a series of essays well worth reading in their entirety... Scrutinizing different transgressive behaviour produces some fresh insights into familiar plays throughout... overall a very rich, intelligent and rewarding book." Sarah Dustagheer, The Review of English Studies

• Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA

  Rory Loughnane

• School of English, University College Cork, Ireland

  Edel Semple

Rory Loughnane is Associate Editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He has previously worked at Trinity College Dublin, where he held an IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Syracuse University, where he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Modern Literature. He is the editor of Late Shakespeare, 1608–1613 (2012) with Andrew J. Power, Celtic Shakespeare: the Bard and the Borderers (2013) with Willy Maley, and The Yearbook of English Studies for 2014, dedicated to Caroline Literature, with Andrew J. Power and Peter Sillitoe.


Edel Semple is Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies in the School of English at University College Cork, Ireland. She has previously worked at University College Dublin (UCD), where she was a Teaching Fellow in Renaissance Literature. Edel held a Government of Ireland IRCHSS postgraduate scholarship in UCD and received her PhDfor a thesis on representations of whoredom in early modern drama, prose, and polemic. She is currently preparing a series of articles based on this research and on her recent studies of early modern drama and Shakespeare on film.

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