Shakespeare's History Plays - 9781138156463

Taylor & Francis

Shakespeare's History PlaysAuthor(s): Robert Watt\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9781138156463, 978-1138156463\nSynopsis\nShakespeare's history plays are central to his dramatic achievement. In recent years they have become more widely studied than ever, stimulating intensely contested interpretations, due to their relevance to central contemporary issues such as English, national identities and gender roles.\n\nInterpretations of the history plays have been transformed since the 1980s by new theoretically-informed critical approaches. Movements such as New Historicism and cultural materialism, as well as psychoanalytical and post-colonial approaches, have swept away the humanist consensus of the mid-twentieth century with its largely conservative view of the plays. \n\nThe last decade has seen an emergence of feminist and gender-based readings of plays which were once thought overwhelmingly masculine in their conc.