Shakespeare Among the Animals: Nature and Society in the Drama of Early Modern England

Front Cover
Springer, Mar 21, 2002 - Literary Criticism - 212 pages
Shakespeare Among the Animals examines the role of animal-metaphor in the Shakespeare stage, particularly as such metaphor serves to underwrite various forms of social difference. Working through texts such as Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream , Jonson's Volpone , and Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside , different chapters of the study focus upon the allegedly natural character of femininity, masculinity, and ethnicity, while a fourth chapter considers the nature of the natural world itself as it appears on the Renaissance stage. Addressing each of these topics in turn, Shakespeare Among the Animals explores the notions of cultural order that underlie early modern conceptions of the natural world, and the ideas of nature implicit in early modern social practice.
 

Contents

How to Do Things with Animals
1
Chapter 1 Shakespeares Beastly Buggers
41
Chapter 2 The Cuckoo and the Capon
71
Chapter 3 Dead Parrot Sketch
99
Chapter 4 Animal Fun for Everyone
133
Suggested Further Reading
169
Notes
183
Works Cited
194
Index
208
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2002)

BRUCE BOEHRER is Professor of English literature at Florida State University. He is the author of Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England and The Fury of Men's Gullets: Ben Jonson and the Digestive Canal along with numerous scholarly articles. He is also founding editor of the semiannual Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies.