A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A01=John Pendergast
Antisemitism
Author_John Pendergast
Category=DDA
Category=DSG
Category=NHDL
Elizabethan Entertainments
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Renaissance Gender Theory
Shakespeare’s Comic Influences and Sources
Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
The Arts: Drama
The Merchant of Venice
The Nature of Comedy
The Tempest
World History
Product details
- ISBN 9781440857485
- Weight: 624g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 02 Dec 2019
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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With summaries, discussions, and excerpts from primary source documents, this book examines Shakespeare's world through careful consideration of the historical background of four of his comedies.
Comedy was popular during the Renaissance, and it was also one of Shakespeare's specialties. The four plays discussed in this book, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, span Shakespeare's career and remind us that Shakespeare, more than any of his contemporaries, explored the possibilities of comedy, consistently developing new approaches to the genre.
Shakespeare was a fairly traditional playwright, well aware of the long tradition of comedy, which dates back to the Greeks and Romans. This book places Shakespeare's comedies in their historical context. It includes dedicated chapters on each of the four comedies, with each chapter providing a plot summary, a discussion of the play's historical background and significance, and excerpts from primary source documents related to the play. An introduction surveys the historical background of the plays, while a timeline chronicles key events that influenced them. Suggestions for further reading direct readers to additional sources of information.
John Pendergast is professor of English at Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville. He has published two previous books as well as several journal articles.
