Shakespeare and the Mannerist Tradition: A Reading of Five Problem PlaysThis 1996 book offers an original approach to Shakespeare's so-called 'problem plays' by contending that they can be viewed as experiments in the Mannerist style. The plays reappraised here are Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. How can a term used to define a movement in art history be made relevant to theatrical analysis? Maquerlot shows how famous painters of sixteenth-century Italy cultivated structural ambiguity or dissonance in reaction to the classical canons of the High Renaissance. Close readings of Shakespeare's plays, from the period 1599 to 1604, reveal intriguing analogies with Mannerist art and the dramatist's response to Elizabethan formalism. Maquerlot concludes by examining Othello, which marks the end of Shakespeare's Mannerist experiments, and the less equivocal use of artifice in his late romances. |
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Shakespeare and the Mannerist Tradition: A Reading of Five Problem Plays Jean-Pierre Maquerlot No preview available - 2005 |
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Achilles action Aeneas aesthetic Agamemnon All's ambiguity Angelo anticlassical Antony appears artifice artists audience avenger Baroque Bertram Bronzino's Brutus characters Christ classical Claudius comedy comic contrapposto conventions death denouement Desdemona dramatic coquetry dramatist Duke effect Elsinore episodes evil expression eyes feeling figures Fortinbras Friedlaender give Gonzago Hamlet hand Hector Helena High Renaissance Horatio human Iago idea Isabella Jonson Julius Caesar King Laertes less madness maniera Mannerism Mannerist art Mannerist painting means Measure for Measure metaphor Michelangelo moral murder nature Ophelia Othello painters Pandarus Parmigianino personages perspective plate play's plot Polonius Pontormo present Problem Plays Quattrocento revenge rhetorical formalism role romances Rosso scene sense Shakespeare Shakespearian Shearman Shylock situation space Spanish Tragedy speak spectator speech spirit stage story structure style theatre theatrical thee theme Thersites things thought Tintoretto Tintoretto's tion tragedy Troilus and Cressida Trojan turn Ulysses Vasari Venice viewer words