The Devil's Party: Critical Counter-interpretations of Shakespearian Drama

by Harriet Hawkins

Overview

This survey of past and present controversies about Shakespearian drama asks about the question: Do the plays hold a mirror up to nature? If so, what is the nature of the "nature" reflected in plays as different as Hamlet and As You Like It Is the poet on the side of the angels or, in fact, "of the devil's party" in a play like Richard III? Are Hamlet and Cleopatra more to be morally censured than pitied or admired? How seriously should we take the comedies? Rather than attempting to answer these questions, the author here explains why it is that the plays remain open to critical debate. She concludes that Shakespearian drama provides us with the most artistic challenges to any one-sided account of the ways of the wold it reflects and for this reason, for students and teachers, and for actors and audiences alike, its impact is ultimately liberating.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198128144
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/18/1985
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Linacre College, Oxford

Table of Contents

	Introduction: In Pursuit of the Fox: Some Examples of Critical Action and Reaction	1
Chapter 1.	The Questions of Mimesis and Morality: Some 'Footnotes to Plato'	14
i.	The Question of Representation in Shakespearian Drama and Criticism: How Does a Play Look?	17
ii.	The Question of Morality in Shakespearian Drama and Criticism: The 'Screw-guns' of Plato	38
	Notes	55
Chapter 2.	The 'Books' and 'Counterbooks' of Shakespearian Drama and Criticism	61
i.	'The Art of the Insoluble': Some Open Questions in Measure for Measure and Hamlet	61
ii.	'On the Other Hand': The 'Counterbooks' of Criticism	83
iii.	In Particular: What Neo-Classical Criticism Has to Tell About What Shakespeare Does Not Do	93
	Notes	102
Chapter 3.	'Conjectures and Refutations': The Positive Uses of Negative Feedback in Criticism and Performance	109
i.	The Burden of Disproof	109
ii.	The Popperian Alternative	124
iii.	Some Dramatic and Critical Constructions and Misconstructions: The Problem of the Obvious	133
	Notes	137
Chapter 4.	Some Current Themes for Critical Disputation	143
i.	Female Virtues and Vices in Shakespearian Drama and Criticism	143
ii.	The Poetic and Critical 'Rape of Lucrece'	149
iii.	Some Recent Examples of the Dialectical Process	164
iv.	Shakespeare's Construction and Characterization: The Questions of Technique and of Vision	172
	Notes	183
	Index	191

Editorial Reviews

"[A] teasing and provocative disquisition on contemporary Shakespeare criticism."—Renaissance Quarterly

"The Devil's Party is a book of genuine literary criticism...it refuses to stay within the safe borders of academic scholarship and insists on engaging the general questions of aesthetics and morality that the works of Shakespeare always raise."—Shakespeare Quarterly

"This is a serious and subtle contribution to the understanding of Shakespeare, as well as a lively and amusing account of current interpretive methods."—Times Higher Education Supplement

From the Publisher