Intertextuality and Romance in Renaissance Drama: The Staging of Nostalgia [Hardcover]

These essays apply the postmodernist theory of intertextuality to romantic drama of the English Renaissance, including work by Heywood, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, and especially Shakespeare. Placing the plays into dynamic relation with a wide variety of literary, cultural, and political 'intertexts' causes them to signify in ways not previously appreciated, as well as to define neglected features of the staged romance of the period. Equally important is the development of intertextuality as a critical methodology with a particular affinity for the genre and the period.Introduction - 'Not Amurath an Amurath Succeeds': Striking Crowns into the Hazard and Playing Doubles in Shakespeare's Henriad - Re-inscribing Romance in Troilus and Cressida - Killing (a Woman) with Kindness: Duplicitous Intertextuality and the Domestication of Romance - Attribution and Tribute in Pericles - Deceiving Appearances: Neo-Chaucerian Magic in The Tempest - (Mis)Appropriating the Romance Past in The Two Noble Kinsmen - Romance Exhausted: Philaster and The Broken Heart - Works Cited - Index