Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare's England [Paperback]

Hamlin's study provides the first full-scale account of the reception and literary appropriation of ancient scepticism in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (c. 1570-1630). Offering abundant archival evidence as well as fresh treatments of Florio's Montaigne and Bacon's career-long struggle with the challenges of epistemological doubt, Hamlin's book explores the deep connections between scepticism and tragedy in plays ranging from Doctor Faustus and Troilus and Cressida to The Tragedy of Mariam , The Duchess of Malfi , and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore .Acknowledgments A Note on Citation, Quotation and Abbreviation Introduction: Engaging Doubt PART ONE: THE RECEPTION OF ANCIENT SCEPTICISM IN ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN ENGLAND The Continental Background Crossed Opinions: The Elizabethan Years Seeming Knowledge: The Jacobean Years and Beyond PART TWO: FOOLS OF NATURE, SCEPTICISM AND TRAGEDY Literary Adaptation: Sceptical Paradigms, Sceptical Values Casting Doubt in Doctor Faustus The Spanish Tragedy : Doom and the Exile of Justice The Plague of Opinion: Troilus and Cressida Temporizing as Pyrrhonizing in The Malcontent Mariam and the Critique of Pure Reason False Fire: Providence and Violence in Webster's Tragedies The Changeling : Blood, Will and Intellectual Eyesight Criterion Anxiety in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Select Bibliography Index

'William Hamlin engages with doubt in a refreshingly new and interdisciplinary manner, grounding his project in archival research and in a deep understanding of the ways in which literary and non-literary discourses can inform one another. Finding in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy a congenial environment for explorations of perception, knowledge and judgement, Hamlin masterfully combines a reading of Montaigne and the texts of ancient Pyrrhonism in order to clarify the historical reception of sceptical ideas in early modern England. The result is a book that convincingly approaches Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists from the perspl"