Early Modern Tragicomedy

Fresh explorations of the tragicomic drama, setting the familiar plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries alongside Irish and European drama.

Fresh explorations of the tragicomic drama, setting the familiar plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries alongside Irish and European drama.

Tragicomedy is one of the most important dramatic genres in Renaissance literature, and the essays collected here offer stimulating new perspectives and insights, as well as providing broad introductions to arguably lesser-known European texts. Alongside the chapters on Classical, Italian, Spanish, and French material, there are striking and fresh approaches to Shakespeare and his contemporaries -- to the origins of mixed genre in English, to the development of Shakespearean and Fletcherian drama, to periodization in Shakespeare's career, to the language of tragicomedy, and to the theological structure of genre. The collection concludes with two essays on Irish theatre and its interactions with the London stage, further evidence of the persistent and changing energy of tragicomedy in the period.

Contributors: SARAH DEWAR-WATSON, MATTHEW TREHERNE, ROBERT HENKE, GERAINT EVANS, NICHOLAS HAMMOND, ROSKING, SUZANNE GOSSETT, GORDAN MCMULLAN, MICHAEL WINMORE, JONATHAN HOPE, MICHAEL NEILL, LUCY MUNRO, DEANA RANKIN

Introduction
Aristotle and Tragicomedy - Sarah Dewar-Watson
The Difficult Emergence of Pastoral Tragicomedy: Guarini'sIl Pastor Fido and its Critical Reception in Italy, 1586-1601 - Matthew Trehrene
Transporting Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and the Magical Pastoral of the Commedia dell'Arte - Robert Henke
The Minotaur of the Stage: Tragicomedy in Spain - Geraint Evans
Highly Irregular: Defining Tragicomedy in Seventeenth-Century France - Nick Hammond
In Lieu of Democracy, or How Not to Lose Your Head: Theatre and Authority in Renaissance England - Ros King
TakingPericles Seriously - Suzanne Gossett
`The Natural Term?': Shakespearean Tragicomedy and the Idea of the `Late Play' - Gordon McMullan
Shakespeare by the Numbers: On the Linguistic Texture of the Late Plays - Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore
Turn and Counterturn: Merchanting, Apostasy and Tragicomic Form in Massinger'sThe Renegado - Michael Neill
Dublin Tragicomedy and London Stages - Lucy Munro
`Betwixt Both': Sketching the Borders of Seventeenth-Century Tragicomedy - Deana Rankin