Greeks and Trojans on the Early Modern English Stage

Description

No story was more interesting to Shakespeare and his contemporaries than that of Troy, partly because the story of Troy was in a sense the story of England, since the Trojan prince Aeneas was supposedly the ancestor of the Tudors. This book explores the wide range of allusions to Greece and Troy in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, looking not only at plays actually set in Greece or Troy but also those which draw on characters and motifs from Greek mythology and the Trojan War. Texts covered include Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Pericles and The Tempest as well as plays by other authors of the period including Marlowe, Chettle, Ford and Beaumont and Fletcher. Dedication Acknowledgements Contents Introduction Part I: Wandering Trojans 1 What’s Actaeon to Aeneas? 2 Aeneas and the Voyagers Part II: The Ruins of Troy 3 Troilus and Cressida: Shakespeare’s Wooden World 4 Where Is Hector Now? 5 Making Troy New Part III: Striking Too Short at Greeks 6 The Greek Actor: Art, Aesthetics, and Drama 7 Metatheatre and Metamorphosis in Thomas Tomkis’s Albumazar Part IV: Greece on the Edge 8 The Edge of the Hellenic World 9 What Venus Did with Mars: Love and War in the Mediterranean Conclusion Works Cited Index