Shakespeare was not a citizen of London. But the language of his plays is shot through with the concerns of London 'freemen' and their wives, the diverse commercial class that nevertheless excluded adult immigrants from country towns and northern Europe alike. This book combines London historiography, close reading, and recent theories of citizen subjectivity to demonstrate for the first time that Shakespeare's plays embody citizen and alien identities despite their aristocratic settings. Through three chapters, the book points out where the city shadows the country scenes of the major comedies, shows how London's trades animate the 'civil butchery' of the history plays, ans explains why England's metropolis becomes the fractured Rome of tragedy,

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About the author

John Michael Archer is Professor of English at New York University, USA.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Citizen Shakespeare
Book Subtitle: Freemen and Aliens in the Language of the Plays
Authors: John Michael Archer
Series Title: Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981295
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2005
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6666-7Published: 06 September 2005
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-52970-4Published: 06 September 2005
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4039-8129-5Published: 19 August 2005
Series ISSN: 2634-5897
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5900
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 211
Topics: Poetry and Poetics, Literary Theory, Cultural Theory, Early Modern/Renaissance Literature

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Table of contents (4 chapters)

Front Matter

Introduction

Comedy: Civil Sayings

History: Civil Butchery

Tragedy: What Rome?

Back Matter

About this book