Overview

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners is a highly original contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. It breaks important new ground in introducing readers, lay and scholarly alike, to the existence and character of the political culture of the mass of ordinary commoners in Shakespeare's England, as revealed by the recent findings of 'the new social history'. The volume thereby helps to challenge the traditional myths of a non-political commons and a culture of obedience. It also brings together leading Shakespeareans, who digest recent social history, with eminent early modern social historians, who turn their focus on Shakespeare. This genuinely cross-disciplinary approach generates fresh readings of over ten of Shakespeare's plays and locates the impress on Shakespearean drama of popular political thought and pressure in this period of perceived crisis. The volume is unique in engaging and digesting the dramatic importance of the discoveries of the new social history, thereby resituating and revaluing Shakespeare within the social depth of politics.

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9780198806899

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Reviews

[Annabel] Patterson contributes a lively afterword to this excellent collection that reopens some of the questions posed by her work ... Chris Fitter makes a compelling case that this represents a neglected opportunity ... and provides a valuable overview of the key conclusions reached by a generation of social historians. A new understanding of politics as involving continuous interaction between commoners and elites has been one of the signal achievements of this continuing historical research ... as the editor concludes, 'The politically thinkable in Shakespeare's England traversed an astoundingly wide discursive spectrum' ... This collection demonstrates how dialogue between historians and literary critics can be convened ... and the approaches of social history inspire new critical readings. * Dermot Cavanagh, Review of English Studies * A welcome intervention * Walter Cohen, Modern Philology * What this collection does, eruditely and provocatively, is set the political cat loose among the pigeons. For the past forty years we have seen what has become something of a stalemate develop in the debate between New Historicists and Cultural Materialists over ideas of subversion of authority within Shakespeare's texts and performance, and the containment of any such subversion through state censorship and aristocratic patronage. What Chris Fitter and his contributors manage to do is bring significant historical evidence to bear on this debate and reignite arguments surrounding the politics of power on the early modern stage. * Ben Haworth, Early Theatre * This is a rich and rewarding collection that merits and will surely receive serious critical attention. * Rory Loughnane, Modern Language Review * Overall, this is a rich and rewarding collection that merits and will surely receive serious critical attention. * Rory Loughnane, University of Kent, The Modern Language Review * For Fitter, Shakespeare is a 'protest playwright' who 'anatomizes the hard heart of early modern England in solidarity with the subjected and the unfranchised', a 'radical' who stages 'the anguish displacing commonweal, and the aching politics of commoners' (p. 233). * Vanessa Lim, The English Association *

Chris Fitter's rich introduction to this collection masterfully surveys recent developments in the 'new social history' and then considers the range of contemporary criticism in terms of the politics of the plays ... Taken as a whole, this collection demonstrates that there really is a 'new', or newly rediscovered, social criticism that excavates the voices and politics of commoners. * William Carroll, Shakespeare Quarterly * For Fitter, Shakespeare is a 'protest playwright' who 'anatomizes the hard heart of early modern England in solidarity with the subjected and the unfranchised', a 'radical' who stages 'the anguish displacing commonweal, and the aching politics of commoners' (p. 233). * Vanessa Lim, The English Association * Overall, this is a rich and rewarding collection that merits and will surely receive serious critical attention. * Rory Loughnane, University of Kent, The Modern Language Review * This is a rich and rewarding collection that merits and will surely receive serious critical attention. * Rory Loughnane, Modern Language Review * What this collection does, eruditely and provocatively, is set the political cat loose among the pigeons. For the past forty years we have seen what has become something of a stalemate develop in the debate between New Historicists and Cultural Materialists over ideas of subversion of authority within Shakespeare's texts and performance, and the containment of any such subversion through state censorship and aristocratic patronage. What Chris Fitter and his contributors manage to do is bring significant historical evidence to bear on this debate and reignite arguments surrounding the politics of power on the early modern stage. * Ben Haworth, Early Theatre * A welcome intervention * Walter Cohen, Modern Philology * [Annabel] Patterson contributes a lively afterword to this excellent collection that reopens some of the questions posed by her work ... Chris Fitter makes a compelling case that this represents a neglected opportunity ... and provides a valuable overview of the key conclusions reached by a generation of social historians. A new understanding of politics as involving continuous interaction between commoners and elites has been one of the signal achievements of this continuing historical research ... as the editor concludes, 'The politically thinkable in Shakespeare's England traversed an astoundingly wide discursive spectrum' ... This collection demonstrates how dialogue between historians and literary critics can be convened ... and the approaches of social history inspire new critical readings. * Dermot Cavanagh, Review of English Studies *

A welcome intervention * Walter Cohen, Modern Philology *

Author Information

Chris Fitter is Professor of English at Rutgers University. He gained his PhD from St. John's College, University of Oxford and has taught at Wroxton College and the University of Mississippi. His leading interests are in literature and the natural world, the politics of Shakespearean drama, and representations of poverty in Western literature.

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