Research Catalog

Title

Shakespeare's festive comedy : a study of dramatic form and its relation to social custom / C. L. Barber ; with a new foreword by Stephen Greenblatt.

Author

Barber, C. L. (Cesar Lombardi)

Publication

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xviii, 301 p.; 22 cm.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books

Subject

• Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
• Literature and society > England > History > 16th century
• English drama (Comedy) > History and criticism
• Literary form > History > 16th century
• Manners and customs in literature
• Festivals in literature
• England > Social life and customs > 16th century

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Introduction: The Saturnalian pattern -- Through release to clarification -- Shakespeare's route to festive comedy -- 2. Holiday custom and entertainment -- The May Game -- The lord of misrule -- Aristocratic entertainments -- 3. Misrule as comedy: Comedy as misrule -- License and lese majesty in Lincolnshire -- The May Game of Martin Marprelate -- 4. Prototypes of festive comedy in a pageant entertainment: Summer's last will and testament -- "What can be made of summer's las will and testament?" -- Presenting the mirth of the occasion -- Praise of folly: Bacchus and Falstaff -- Festive abuse -- "Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year" -- 5. The folly of wit and masquerade in Love's Labour's Lost -- "lose our oaths to find ourselves" -- "Sport by sport o'erthrown" -- "A great feast of languages" -- Wit -- Putting witty folly in its place -- "When ... then ..." -- the seasonal songs -- 6. May games and metamorphoses on a midsummer night -- The fond pageant -- Bringing in summer to the bridal -- Magic as imagination: The ironic wit -- Moonlight and moonshine: The ironic burlesque -- The sense of reality -- 7. The merchants and the Jew of Venice: Wealth's communion and an intruder -- Making distinctions about the use of riches -- Transcending reckoning at Belmont -- Comical / Menacing mechanism in Shylock -- The community setting aside its machinery -- Sharing in the grace of life -- 8. Rule and misrule in Henvy IV -- Mingling kings and clowns -- Getting rid of bad luck by comedy -- The trial of carnival in Part Two -- 9. The alliance of seriousness and levity in As you like it -- The liberty of Arden -- Counterstatements -- "all nature in love mortal in folly" -- 10. Testing courtesy and humanity in Twelfth Night -- "A most extracting frenzy" -- "You are betroth'd to a maid and man" -- Liberty testing courtesy -- Outside the garden gate.

ISBN

• 9780691149523
• 0691149526

LCCN

^^2010942114

OCLC

758391874

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library