Synopses & Reviews
François Laroque's new perspective on Shakespeare's relation to popular culture has quickly become a classic of scholarship. Available now in paperback, the book opens new possibilities for Shakespeare studies, revealing the connections between his plays and the folklore, customs, games, and celebrations of the Elizabethan festive tradition. This acclaimed study shows how Shakespeare mingled popular culture with aristocratic and royal forms of entertainment in ways that combined or clashed to produce new meaning.
Review
"[Laroque] has performed a service to the scholarly community in restoring history to the New Historicism. The publication of Shakespeare's Festive World is something to celebrate." London Review of Books
Review
"One of those rare books which teaches us to think like a person of a different culture... A lucid and imaginative book which combines an impressive breadth of knowledge with sensitivity to detail." Cahiers Elizabéthains
Review
"It will be very influential on the continuing effort to define Shakespeare's relation to the popular culture of his age." The Shakespeare Newsletter
Review
"French scholarship teaches us ample European perspectives for Shakespeare's Renaissance art, and François Laroque has the rare ability to move gracefully between the ritual history of theatre and the fine detail of the plays." Philip Brockbank
Review
"...a splendid and scholarly evocation of the Elizabethan response to time....[T]his book is a dense and satisfying survey of the temporal world that Shakespeare experienced and transformed." Ralph Berry, Dalhousie Review
Synopsis
This book offers an exciting new perspective on Shakespeare's relation to popular culture.
Synopsis
This book offers an exciting new perspective on Shakespeare's relation to popular culture. Shakespeare's plays draw extensively on the events and traditions of Elizabethan festivals and holidays, mingling popular and aristocratic or royal forms of entertainment. This process evolved from the early, romantic comedies into the late plays: the values of festivity are inverted in the comedy of misrule, and finally perverted in the darker forms of the history plays and tragedies. Francois Laroque reconstructs the principal events, customs and games of the Elizabethan festive tradition, and reconsiders Shakespeare's technique in this context.
Synopsis
Offering an exciting new perspective on Shakespeare's relationship to popular culture, this work reconstructs the principal events, customs and games of the Elizabethan festive tradition and reconsiders Shakespeare's techniques in this context.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Foreword Sir Keith Thomas; Preface; Part I. Introduction: Festivity During the Elizabethan