Shakespeare's Domestic Tragedies: Violence in the Early Modern Home
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 10/8/2020
EAN 9781108463300, ISBN10: 1108463304
Paperback, 276 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Domestic tragedy was an innovative genre, suggesting that the lives and sufferings of ordinary people were worthy of the dramatic scope of tragedy. In this compelling study, Whipday revises the narrative of Shakespeare's plays to show how this genre, together with neglected pamphlets, ballads, and other forms of 'cheap print' about domestic violence, informed some of Shakespeare's greatest works. Providing a significant reappraisal of Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, the book argues that domesticity is central to these plays: they stage how societal and familial pressures shape individual agency; how the integrity of the house is associated with the body of the housewife; and how household transgressions render the home permeable. Whipday demonstrates that Shakespeare not only appropriated constructions of the domestic from domestic tragedies, but that he transformed the genre, using heightened language, foreign settings, and elite spheres to stage familiar domestic worlds.
Introduction
Shakespeare's domestic tragedies
1. Home
contesting domestic order in The Taming of the Shrew
2. Household
performing domestic relationships in Hamlet
3. House
staging domestic space in Othello
4. Neighbourhood
crossing domestic boundaries in Macbeth
Afterword – outside domestic tragedy in King Lear.