Enchanted Shows: Vision and Structure in Elizabethan and Shakespearean Comedy about Magic / Edition 1

by Elissa Hare

Overview

The book, first published in 1988, examines the role of magic in Elizabethan and Shakespearean theatre. The author observes how certain plays, including Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, rationalise the unrealism and improbabilities typical of romantic comedy as miracles wrought by specifically magical intervention. The author also explores the ways in which playwrights justify structural discontinuity by the working of magic. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138234956
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/25/2018
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments; 1. The Fabric of This Vision: Magic Illusion, Time, and Space 2. "More than Magic Can Perform": Greene and Peele 3. Over-reaching Fantasies: Marlovian Magic 4. Anticipating the Promised End: Magical Discontinuity in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ 5. Shakespeare’s Dissolving Magic: ‘The Tempest’; Works Cited