Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England

Rory Loughnane is Associate Editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He has previously worked at Trinity College Dublin, where he held an IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Syracuse University, where he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Modern Literature. He is the editor of Late Shakespeare, 1608–1613 (2012) with Andrew J. Power, Celtic Shakespeare: the Bard and the Borderers (2013) with Willy Maley, and The Yearbook of English Studies for 2014, dedicated to Caroline Literature, with Andrew J. Power and Peter Sillitoe.Edel Semple is Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies in the School of English at University College Cork, Ireland. She has previously worked at University College Dublin (UCD), where she was a Teaching Fellow in Renaissance Literature. Edel held a Government of Ireland IRCHSS postgraduate scholarship in UCD and received her PhDfor a thesis on representations of whoredom in early modern drama, prose, and polemic. She is currently preparing a series of articles based on this research and on her recent studies of early modern drama and Shakespeare on film.

• List of Illustrations.- Acknowledgements.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction: Stages of Transgression; Rory Loughnane.- 1. "On the most Eminent seate thereof is Gouernement Illustrated": staging power in the Lord Mayor's Show; Tracey Hill.- 2. The Transgressive Stage Player; William Ingram.- 3. "Ha, Ha, Ha": Shakespeare and the edge of laughter; Adam Smyth.- 4. "Have we done aught amiss?": Transgression, Indirection and Audience Reception in Titus Andronicus; Darragh Greene.- 5. The King's Three Bodies: Resistance Theory and Richard III; Rob Carson.- 6. Marriage, Politics and Law in The Tragedy of Mariam and The Duchess of Malfi; Christina Luckyj.- 7. Incapacitated Will; Rebecca Lemon.- 8. Transgression Embodied: Medicine, Religion and Shakespeare's Dramatised Persons; Thomas Rist.- 9. The Taming of the Jew: Spit and the Civilizing Process in The Merchant of Venice; Brett D. Hirsch.- 10. 'Edgar I Nothing Am': Blackface in King Lear; Benjamin Minor and Ayanna Thompson.- 11. Marryingthe Dead: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline and The Tempest; Lisa Hopkins.- 12. Speaking Out of Turn: Gender, Language and Transgression in Early Modern England; Danielle Clarke.- 13. Rethinking Transgression with Shakespeare's Bawds; Edel Semple.- 14. 'Nothing but pickled cucumbers': The Longing Wives of Middletonian City Comedy; Celia R. Caputi.- 15. Lady Macbeth and Othello, Transgression and Convention in Early Modern Tragedy; Andrew J. Power.- 16. "How to vse your Brothers Brotherly": Civility, Incivility and Civil War in 3 Henry VI; Christopher Ivic.- Afterword; Jean E. Howard.- Bibliography.- Index.-

"Wisely, the editors have not grouped the essays according to categories that one might expect in a book on transgression (race, gender, politics, etc), thereby leaving the reader free to make their own connections in a series of essays well worth reading in their entirety... Scrutinizing different transgressive behaviour produces some fresh insights into familiar plays throughout... overall a very rich, intelligent and rewarding book." Sarah Dustagheer, The Review of English Studies