Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study

by Edward Berry

Overview

Shakespeare and the Hunt is the first book-length study of Shakespeare's works in relation to the culture of the hunt in Elizabethan and Jacobean society. Situating Shakespeare's works in this rich cultural context, Berry illuminates the plays from fresh angles. He explores, for example, the role of poaching in The Merry Wives of Windsor; the paradox of pastoral hunting in As You Like It; the intertwining of hunting and politics in The Tempest; and the gendered language of falconry in The Taming of the Shrew.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521800709
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2001
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Edward Berry is Professor of English at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; Glossary; 1. Introduction: the culture of the hunt and Shakespeare; 2. Huntresses in Venus and Adonis and Love's Labour Lost; 3. 'Solemn' hunting in Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar; 4. The 'manning' of Katherine: falconry in The Taming of the Shrew; 5. The 'rascal' Falstaff in Windsor; 6. Pastoral hunting in As You Like It; 7. Political hunting: Prospero and James I; 8. Conclusion: Shakespeare on the culture of the hunt; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Excellent study...The illustrations are fascinating Berry's writing style is graceful and clear" CHOICE Nov 2001

"This is a comprehensive study of nearly every Shakespearean allusion to hunting and a compelling account of the extent of Shakespeare's imaginative involvement with the hunt." Sixteenth Century Journal

"No other English Renaissance dramatist uses imagery of the hunt as pervasively as Shakespeare....Edward Berry's uniquely comprehensive examination of Shakespeare's presentation of hunting and its imagery, from Titus to The Tempest, is therefore very welcome, particularly since it is carefully grounded to contemporary debates on the morality of the hunt." Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"[This] is the first and only study of early modern hunting culture." Studies in English Literature

From the Publisher