'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in Context: Magic, Madness and Mayhem

by Keith Linley

Overview

Everything you need to know about the cultural contexts of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'. Is this just a light-hearted romp or is Shakespeare trying to make serious points about courtship, love, marriage and human folly? This book provides detailed in-depth discussion of the various influences that an Elizabethan audience would have brought to interpreting the play. How did people think about the world, about God, about sin, about kings, about civilized conduct, about the magic and madness of love and attraction? Historical, literary, political, sociological backgrounds are explained within the biblical-moral matrices by which the play would have been judged. This book links real life in the late 1590s to the world on the stage. Discover the orthodox beliefs people held about religion. Meet the Devil, Sin and Death. Learn about the social hierarchy, gender relationships, court corruption, class tensions, the literary profile of the time, attitudes to comedy – and all the subversions, transgressions, and oppositions that made the play a hilarious farce but also an unsettling picture of a world so close to disaster.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783085552
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	11/21/2016
Series:	Anthem Perspectives in Literature
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Poet, painter, teacher and academic, Keith Linley has lectured at university and given papers at conferences and book festivals on a range of literary subjects.

Table of Contents

Introduction; About this book – What is a context?; Part I. The Inherited Past; Prologue: The setting; i. The Historical Context; ii . The Elizabethan World Order: From Divinity To Dust; iii. Sin, Death and the Prince of Darkness; iv. The Seven Cardinal Virtues; v. Kingship; vi. Patriarchy, Family Authority and Gender relationships; vii. Man in His Place; viii. Images of Disorder: The Religious Context Unsettling Questions; Part II. The Elizabethan Present; ix. The Context of Comedy; x. Theseus and the Setting; xi. Puck’s Permutations: The Context of Love; xii. ‘Sweet Moon’: The Context of Magic; xiii. Literary Context; xiv. Playing Parts; xv. Transgressions and Translations; Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘A splendid, lucid and engaging work; the key to its success is the scholarly way we are drawn into the world which produced the Dream. Linley’s style adds to the reader’s experience: vibrant, lively and lit with real enthusiasm for his subject.’ —Wendy Ellis, OCR A Level English Literature Team Leader

‘This witty and scholarly companion will easily engage a range of readers, especially those wishing to gain an insight into the historical attitudes and the social and political systems that surrounded the creation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ —Jill Leese, English Teacher, OCR Team Leader

Editorial Reviews

"Shakespeare’s great comedy, to which Linley provides an excellent guide.'
—Henry S. Turner, 'Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama', SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 58, Number 2, Spring, 2018, pp. 473-537"

From the Publisher