This collection recovers the continuities between three forms of romance that have often been separated from one another in critical discourse: early modern prose fiction, the dramatic romances staged in England during the 1570s and 1580s, and Shakespeare’s late plays. Although Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest have long been characterized as "romances," their connections with the popular prose romances of their day and the dramatic romances that preceded them have frequently been overlooked. Constructed to explore those connections, this volume includes original essays that relate at least one prose or dramatic romance to an English play written from 1570 to 1630. The introduction explores the use of the term "dramatic romance" over several centuries and the commercial association between print culture, gender, and drama. Eight essays discuss Shakespeare’s plays; three more examine plays by Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger. Other authors treated at some length include Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Sidney, Greene, Lodge, and Wroth. Barbara Mowat’s afterword considers Shakespeare’s use of Greek romance. Written by foremost scholars of Shakespeare and early modern prose fiction, this book explores the vital cross-currents that occurred between narrative and dramatic forms of Greek, medieval, and early modern romance.
Author(s): Valerie Wayne:
Edition: 1
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 261
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Part I Continuities and Incongruities......Page 12
1 Introduction: Into the Forest......Page 14
2 The Sources of Romance, the Generation of Story, and the Patterns of Pericles Tales......Page 34
3 “Asia of the One Side, and Afric of the Other”: Sidney’s Unities and the Staging of Romance......Page 60
Part II Page and Stage......Page 86
4 “A Note Beyond Your Reach”: Prose Romance’s Rivalry with Elizabethan Drama......Page 88
5 Hamlet and Euordanus......Page 104
6 Reading the Book of the Self in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Wroth’s Urania......Page 120
7 Virtual Audiences and Virtual Authors: The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Old Wives’ Tales......Page 135
Part III Gender and Agency......Page 156
8 The Issue of the Corpus Christi Cycles, or “Religious Romance,” in The Winter’s Tale......Page 158
9 Romancing the Wager: Cymbeline’s Intertexts......Page 176
10 John Fletcher’s Women Pleased and the Pedagogy of Reading Romance......Page 201
11 Undoing Romance: Beaumont and Fletcher’s Resistant Reading of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia......Page 216
12 Probable Infidelities from Bandello to Massinger......Page 232
13 Afterword: Shakespeare and Romance......Page 249
Contributors......Page 260
Index......Page 264
