Black, Jeremy. England in the age of Shakespeare

Folger bibliographic ID: 357974
Folger call number: PR2910 .B53 2019
Folger holdings ID: 506205

"How did it feel to hear Macbeth's witches chant of 'double, double toil and trouble' at a time when magic and witchcraft were as real as anything science had to offer? How were justice and forgiveness understood by the audience who first watched King Lear; how were love and romance viewed by those who first saw Romeo and Juliet? In England in the Age of Shakespeare, Jeremy Black takes readers on a tour of life in the streets, homes, farms, churches, and palaces of the Bard's era. Panning from play to audience and back again, Black shows how Shakespeare's plays would have been experienced and interpreted by those who paid to see them. From the dangers of travel to the indignities of everyday life in teeming London, Black explores the jokes, political and economic references, and small asides that Shakespeare's audiences would have recognized. These moments of recognition often reflected the audience's own experiences of what it was to, as Hamlet says, 'grunt and sweat under a weary life.' Black's clear and sweeping approach seeks to reclaim Shakespeare from the ivory tower and make the plays' histories more accessible to the public for whom the plays were always intended"--

General notes

Includes bibliographical references and index Includes index

Contents

The imagination of the age -- The world of the plays -- A dynamic country -- London -- Narrating the past : history plays -- The narrative of politics -- The political imagination -- Social conditions, structures, and assumptions -- Health and medicine -- Cultural trends -- England and Europe -- The wider world : locating prospero -- As we like him

Extended title: England in the age of Shakespeare / Jeremy Black

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 England English literature Homes Intellectual life Manners and customs

author: Black, Jeremy, 1955-
subject: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616