A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England

How the drama of Shakespeare’s time demonstrates the tensions within civility

Is civility merely a matter of reinforcing status and excluding others? Or is it a lubricant in a polarised world, enabling us to overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good? In A Defence of Pretence, Indira Ghose argues that it is both. Ghose turns to the drama of Shakespeare’s time to explore the notion of civility. The theatre, she suggests, was a laboratory where many of the era’s conflicts play...