Portland Public Library

Making make-believe real, politics as theater in Shakespeare's time, Garry Wills

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-388) and index

index present

non fiction

Making make-believe real

bibliography

862098473

Garry Wills

politics as theater in Shakespeare's time

"Shakespeare's plays abound with kings and leaders who crave a public stage and seize every opportunity to make their lives a performance: Antony, Cleopatra, Richard III, Othello, and many others. Such self-dramatizing characters appear in the work of other playwrights of the era as well, Marlowe's Edward II and Tamburlaine among them. But Elizabethan playwrights were not alone in realizing that a sense of theater was essential to the exercise of power. Real rulers knew it, too, and none better than Queen Elizabeth. In this fascinating study of political stagecraft in the Elizabethan era, Garry Wills explores a period of vast cultural and political change during which the power of make-believe to make power real was not just a theory but an essential truth. Wills examines English culture as Catholic Christianity's rituals were being overturned and a Protestant queen took the throne. New iconographies of power were necessary for the new Renaissance liturgy to displace the medieval church-state. The author illuminates the extensive imaginative constructions that went into Elizabeth's reign and the explosion of great Tudor and Stuart drama that provided the imaginative power to support her long and successful rule"--, Provided by publisher

Make-believe (courtly) love. Loved ruler ; Loving ruler ; Love's rules ; Playing with the rules ; Transcending the rules -- Make-believe (divine) monarchy. Chrismed king ; Threatened queen ; Royal blood ; Antimonarch ; Fighting monarch ; Searching monarch -- Make-believe (cosmic) religion. The Book ; Revelation I ; Revelation II ; Ritual ; Stars in their courses ; Purity -- Make-believe (faerie) nation. Urban palimpsest ; Rural Camelot -- Make-believe (chivalric) war. Warrior queen ; War games ; Rules of the war games ; Knights of the sea -- Make-believe (courtier) warriors. Leicester ; Sidney : chivalry ; Sidney : pastoral ; Essex : favorite ; Essex : rival ; Essex : the Bacon calculus ; Ralegh : adventurer ; Ralegh : prisoner ; Prince Henry