The Performance of Pleasure in English Renaissance Drama [Hardcover]

Offering new and theatrically informed readings of plays by a broad range of Renaissance dramatists - including Marlowe, Jonson, Marston, Webster, Middleton and Ford - this new book addresses the question of pleasure: both erotic pleasure as represented on stage and aesthetic pleasure as experienced by readers and spectators. Some of the issues raised (the distribution of pleasure by gender, the notion of consent) intersect with feminist reinterpretations of Renaissance culture.Bibliographical Note Preface Interpreting Pleasure Tobacco and Boys: Christopher Marlowe A Shrew Yet Honest: Ben Jonson The Adverse Body: John Marston One Wench Between Them: Thomas Heywood, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Impossible Desire: John Webster An Art That Has No Name: Thomas Middleton Endless Dreams: John Ford Conclusion Bibliography Index

'Huebert's evident fascination with his subject results in a very readable and engaging book, both for scholars of the renaiisance and interested laymen...it is ultimately a highly interasting, thoughtful, well-structured, and 'pleasurable' encounter with an influential theme inherent in English Renaissance drama.' - Winter Elliott, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

RONALD HUEBERT is Professor of English at Dalhousie University and Carnegie Professor at the University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the current editor of The Dalhousie Review, the author of John Ford: Baroque English Dramatist and the editor of James Shirley's The Lady of Pleasure in the Revels series.