Seizures of the Will in Early Modern English Drama [Paperback]

An analysis of Renaissance plays in the context of social rank, gender, kinship, and service relationships.Set in the context of social rank, gender, kinship and service relationships, this text includes detailed and innovative analyses of the following five English Renaissance plays: The Spanish Tragedy; The Duchess of Malfi; Arden of Faversham; The Miseries of Enforced Marriage; and A Yorkshire Tragedy.Set in the context of social rank, gender, kinship and service relationships, this text includes detailed and innovative analyses of the following five English Renaissance plays: The Spanish Tragedy; The Duchess of Malfi; Arden of Faversham; The Miseries of Enforced Marriage; and A Yorkshire Tragedy.Frank Whigham presents a detailed and innovative analysis of five English Renaissance plays, set in the context of social rank, gender, kinship, and service relationships. The Spanish Tragedy and The Duchess of Malfi, set at court, explore fantasies of the lurid and decadent life at the center of national culture. Arden of Faversham, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and A Yorkshire Tragedy examine the collisions between traditional rural values and newfangled behavior brought from London.Introduction; 1. Forcing divorce in The Spanish Tragedy; 2. Hunger and pain in Arden of Faversham; 3. The ideology of prodigality in The Miseries of an Enforced Marriage, and A Yorkshire Tragedy; 4. Sexual and social mobility in The Duchess of Malfi; Afterword. Whigham succeeds admirably in his effort to complicate and expand historicist analysis of the notion of will, and this book provides a fine map for further critical exploration of early modern English Drama. B.R. Siegfried, The Sixteenth Century Journal ...the analysis of the drama Whigham offers is... exhilirating... Karen Bamford, Essays in Theatre The analyses of the plays are rich, multilayered and open-ended, and each chapter provides a wealth of fascinating information about early modern culture and social structurl3“