Publisher's Synopsis
This text offers a series of readings of tragicomedy from Shakespeare's late plays to the Interregnum. Rejecting both the customary chronological span bounded by the years 1603-1642 (which presumes dramatic activity stopped with the closing of the theatres), and the negative critical attitudes that have dogged the study of tragicomedy, the essays in this collection examine a series of issues central to the possibility of a politics for the genre. Individual essays offer important contributions to continuing debates over the role of the drama in the years preceding the Civil War, the colonial contexts of "The Tempest", the political character of Jonson's late plays, and the agency of women as public and theatre actors. The introduction presents a strong challenge to previous definitions of tragicomedy in the English context, and the collection as a whole is characterized by its rejection of absolutist strategies for reading tragicomedy.;This book should be of interest to students and teachers of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama.
