Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama

Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama

by Doyeeta Majumder
Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama

Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence in Early Modern Drama

by Doyeeta Majumder

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Overview

In the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the 'tyrant by entrie' or the usurper, who supplanted earlier 'tyrant by the administration' as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own 'virtù' and through an act of 'lawmaking' violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare's history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence?

As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781786941688
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Publication date: 05/01/2019
Series: English Association Monographs LUP , #5
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 9.30(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Doyeeta Majumder is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Jadavpur University. Rajpurush, her translation of Niccolo Machiavelli's Il principe from the original Italian, was published by Jadavpur University Press in 2012.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Note on spellings viii

List of abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

1 The kingly vice: the tyrant in early Tudor drama 19

2 Sovereignty, counsel, and consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 50

3 Artful construction of the political realm: Buchanan and the legitimacy of resistance 70

4 Gorboduc: absolutist decision and the two bodies of the king 113

5 Tyranny added to usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard III 136

Epilogue 190

Bibliography 205

Index 223

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