Shakespeare: The Drama of Generations—Time, Memory, and Intergenerational Conflict by Stewart Justman

Description

Shakespeare: The Drama of Generations offers a new interpretation of many of Shakespeare’s plays, among them A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. Like the world of myth and legend, Shakespeare’s plays are haunted with the killing of the young. King John orders the execution of his young nephew. Claudius plots against Hamlet. Macbeth orders the murder of Fleance and Macduff’s entire family. One after another, Shakespeare’s men of ambition find themselves living out the Machiavellian precept that one who intends to make his political fortune had better wipe out not only his enemy but also his enemy’s heirs. But Shakespeare’s interest in ambition goes beyond the portrayal of crimes against the young. It extends to the depiction of political violence against a background of hereditary practices, established norms and successive generations. This volume argues that the succession of the generations and the continuous renewal of the world constitute the framework within which the events of the Shakespearean stage have meaning. George Orwell once said that the Fool in King Lear reminds us that ‘somewhere or other, in spite of the injustices, cruelties, deceptions and misunderstandings that are being enacted here, life is going on much as usual’. In that ‘as usual’ lies all hope; for in Shakespeare the only possible renewal of the world is the renewal of life with each generation. Salient features Arguing that Shakespeare’s dramatic vision is profoundly generational – concerned with youth and age, parents and children, succession and renewal – this book brings out the war against the young in Shakespeare’s plays in all genres. Shakespeare: The Drama of Generations • views the plays both broadly and, at times, in detail, offering both comprehensive generalisations and close readings; • contends that the poet’s generational vision colours his portrayal of time itself; • disputes the fashionable doctrine that moral considerations have no place in the study of Shakespeare; • is written without jargon or displays of theory The crimes against the young, which are so plentiful in Shakespeare, connect his plays with the world of myth and legend on the one hand, and our own political era on the other.

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