Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare's England [Hardcover]

Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in ShakespearesEnglandexamines the intersection between art and culture and explains how ideas about age circulated in early modern England. Stephannie Gearhart illustrates how a variety of texts  including drama by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton  placed elders and youths voices in dialogue with one another to construct the periods ideology of age and shape elder-youth relations.

Introduction: historicizing generational conflict

Part I: Youth

1. Blood vs. manners: youths quest for independence in The Merchant of Venice

2. Familial contracts: financial inheritance in the plays of Jonson and Middleton

Part II: Elders

3. The very latest counsel that ever I shall breathe : 2 Henry IV, Hamlet, and ideological inheritance

4 Old fools and serpents teeth: defining age and the terms of the parent-child relationship in King Lear

Conclusion: A difficult age

Index

Stephannie S. Gearhartis an Associate Professor at Bowling Green State University, USA.