Skip to content

Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance

Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance Paperback - 2004

by Richard Wilson

  • New
  • Paperback

Description

Manchester Univ Pr, 2004. Paperback. New. 326 pages. 9.00x6.00x1.00 inches.
New
NZ$74.81
NZ$21.00 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 14 to 21 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from Revaluation Books (Devon, United Kingdom)

Details

About Revaluation Books Devon, United Kingdom

Biblio member since 2020
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 3 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

General bookseller of both fiction and non-fiction.

Terms of Sale: 30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

Browse books from Revaluation Books

From the publisher

Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived.

Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist.

This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.

From the rear cover

Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived.

Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist.

This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.

About the author


Richard Wilson is Professor of Renaissance Literature in the Department of English at the University of Lancaster