Desire and Dramatic Form in Early Modern England

This wide-ranging study investigates the intersections of erotic desire and dramatic form in the early modern period, considering to what extent disruptive desires can successfully challenge, change or undermine the structures in which they are embedded. Through close readings of texts by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Middleton, Ford and Cavendish, Haber counters the long-standing New Historicist association of the aesthetic with the status quo, and argues for its subversive potential. Many of the chosen texts unsettle conventional notions of sexual and textual consummation. Others take a more conventional stance; yet by calling our attention to the intersection between traditional dramatic structure and the dominant ideologies of gender and sexuality, they make us question those ideologies even while submitting to them. The book will be of interest to those working in the fields of early modern literature and culture, drama, gender and sexuality studies, and literary theory.

Acknowledgments; Textual note; Introduction: consummate play; Part I. 'Come ... and Play': Christopher Marlowe, Beside the Point: 1. Genre, gender, and sexuality in 'The Passionate Shepherd' and Tamburlaine; 2. Submitting to history: Edward II; 3. 'True-loves blood': narrative and desire in Hero and Leander; 4. 'Thus with a kiss': a Shakespearean interlude; Part II. Desiring Women in the Seventeenth Century: 5. 'How strangely does himself work to undo him': (male) sexuality in The Revenger's Tragedy; 6. 'My body bestow upon my women': the space of the feminine in The Duchess of Malfi; 7. 'I(t) could not choose but follow': erotic logic in The Changeling; 8. 'Old men's tales': legacies of the father in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore; 9. The passionate shepherdess: the case of Margaret Cavendish; Afterword: for(e)play; Notes; List of works cited; Index.

This wide-ranging 2009 study uses close readings of texts by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Middleton and Ford to investigate the intersections of erotic desire and dramatic form in the early modern period, considering to what extent disruptive desires can successfully challenge, change or undermine the structures in which they are embedded.