Making Trifles of Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in Shakespeare

Description

This collection of essays includes some of the most recent work of a master critic at the height of his powers. Of the fourteen essays, written from the late 1970's to the present, three have never before been published; the essays' appearance in a single volume makes available for the first time the full scope of Berger's unique approach to ethical discourses in Shakespeare's plays. The sequence of essays displays both the continuity and the revisionary development that mark his critical practice since the early work on The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, and the Elizabethan theater. When one compares Berger's earlier work from the 1960's with the writing from the 1980's and 1990's in the present collection, one sees that the difference stems primarily from the impact on the later work of his encounters with the whole range of structuralist and poststructuralist theory. Much of the excitement and vitality of Berger's current work comes from his efforts to incorporate new methodological influences into his previous system. Because he comes to poststructuralism as a mature critic whose larger interpretive framework is already in place, his response is not simply to immerse himself in the new theoretical modes and adopt them wholesale, but rather to make them his own. Among the plays discussed are The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Macbeth, 2 Henry IV, Richard II―and, in two of the new essays, 1 Henry IV and Measure for Measure. Also new is Berger's retrospective account of his critical development in the extensive opening "Acknowledgments." Cover Title Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Marriage and Mercifixion in 'The Merchant of Venice': The Casket Scene Revisited 2. Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in 'Much Ado About Nothing' 3. 'King Lear': The Lear Family Romance 4. Text Against Performance: The Gloucester Family Romance 5. The Early Scenes of 'Macbeth': Preface to a New Interpretation 6. Text Against Performance: The Example of 'Macbeth' 7. Sneak's Noise, or, Rumor and Detextualization in '2 Henry IV' 8. Psychoanalyzing the Shakespeare Text: The First Three Scenes of the 'Henriad' 9. Textual Dramaturgy: Representing the Limits of Theater in 'Richard II' 10. 'Ars Moriendi' in Progress, or, John of Gaunt and the Practice of Strategic Dying 11. What Did the King Know and When Did He Know It? Shakespearean Dicourses and Psychoanalysis 12. Food for Words: Hotspur and the Dicourse of Honor 13. Making Trifles of Terrors: Redistributing Complicities in the Ethical Discourses 14. What Does the Duke Know and When Does He Know It? Carrying the Torch in 'Measure for Measure' Notes Acknowledgments Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Credits Index of Names Fictional, Fantastical, and Factual Index of Topics Back Cover