Secret Shakespeare

Studies in theatre, religion and resistance

By (author) Richard Wilson

Publication date:

03 June 2004

Length of book:

336 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719070259

Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived.

Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist.

This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.

1. Wrapped in a player's hide: Shakespeare's secret history
2. Ghostly fathers: Shakeshafte and the Jesuits
3. Secret as a dumb man: Two comedies of Italy and the genesis of secrecy
4. No news but the old news: Shakespeare and the tragedy of Arden
5. A bloody question: The politics of 'Venus and Adonis'
6. Love in idleness: The stripping of the altars in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
7. Dyed in mummy: 'Othello' and the mulberries
8. The pilot's thumb: 'Macbeth' and the Jesuits
9. Voyage to Tunis: New history and the old world of 'The Tempest'
10. Unseasonable laughter: The context of 'Cardenio'
11. The statute of our queen: Shakespeare's open secret
12. A winter's tale: 'King Lear' in the Pennines

'But whether we can fully subscribe to all of these analogies or not, what always remains convincing is the author's understanding of the serial form and the logic of televisual storytelling, and the analyses point out instances of self-reflexivity in serial television drama with a sensitivity that is always revelatory. If we do not fail to heed the author's warnings about the real intentions of the volume, and we do not try to read the rich web of associations listed for each serial as potential sources or influences, but regard these correspondences indeed as cross-mappings, the volume will offer the reader the true pleasure of a creative and intellectual puzzle ... the volume can offer useful insights to anyone interested in adaptation studies, or who welcomes the challenge of finding traces of the Shakespeare phenomenon in contemporary culture, and most of all, it will delight readers who find pleasure in the rich and diverse world of serial drama available on quality television in the twenty-first century.'Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies