Cahiers Élisabéthains 

About: Cahiers Élisabéthains is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Hamlet (place) & Tempest. It has an ISSN identifier of 0184-7678. Over the lifetime, 547 publications have been published receiving 1270 citations. The journal is also known as: Cahiers Elisabethains.

Lollardy in the Fifteenth Century–The Evidence from Some Orthodox Texts

Abstract: Quelque peu neglige jusqu'a present, le corpus de sermons heterodoxes moyen-anglais du XVe siecle temoigne de la nature et de la vitalite du mouvement heretique connu sous le nom de Lollardisme et associe a la pensee du theologien oxfordien John Wyclif. Ces textes contribuent a notre connaissance du phenomene: par leur insistance sur la theologie des sacrements-notamment de la confession et de l'eucharistie-(parfois enseignee sous forme d'exempla); par leur dependance partielle, mais parfois etroite, a l'egard de la Bible de Wyclif, dans la traduction des lectures evangeliques a la base de la predication; enfin par certains aspects de leur langage homiletique. Les sermons examines ici de ce point de vue constituent un cycle liturgique complet De Tempore qui, bien que parfaitement connu, reste en attente d'une veritable edition. Il est interessant de noter que l'image du lollardisme revelee par cette etude ne coincide pas en tous points avec le temoignage fourni par les registres episcopaux et autres sources historiques habituelles. Les resultats ici presentes laissent donc penser qu'une analyse plus approfondie de la litterature homiletique permettrait de brosser un tableau plus equilibre de la pensee heterodoxe en Angleterre a la veille de la Reforme

Historical Context and Henry V

Abstract: Date. The anticipation, in the Chorus to Act V, of a triumphal return by the Earl of Essex from Ireland shows that at least this much of the play-and therefore most probably the entire text-must at any rate have been written before Essex's Irish campaign ended in September 1599. But generations of editors and commentators have repeated the allegation-which even those who would prefer a late date have not seriously refuted-that the Letters ofJohn Chamberlain prove that in fact the play was actually finished, at the latest, by early June of that year: thus making HV a Curtain and not a Globe play. For Chamberlain, it is said, shows clearly that by Midsummer Londoners had already recognized that Essex would not be returning with rebellion broached upon his sword. Yet this is flatly untrue. For by midsummer Essex's performance, though certainly very disappointing, had not been catastrophic (and the history of this century has taught us how slow people can be to make any real link, even between expecting to lose the next battle, and actually expecting to lose the whole war). For most of the summer of 1599, though increasingly puzzled, irritated and cynical, Londonersmuch as in the early 1940s-genuinely went on hoping. John Chamberlain, if temporarily perhaps more defeatist on June 28th, shows this mood perfectly in his letters of August 1st and 9th, and even his letter of August 23rd is still not inconsistent with it. On balance, August really offers the likeliest completion-date. For one

The Story Shall Be Changed: The Senecan Sources of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Abstract: Whether Shakespeare was directly influenced by Seneca's writings or whether he assimilated into his works the Senecan elements that were pervasive in Elizabethan drama is a long-standing controversy in Shakespearian criticism. Important studies by Harold Brooks, Hardin Craig, and Inga-Stina Ewbank, however, show that in addition to the Senecan tone and mood evident in many of Shakespeare's plays, there are also some striking verbal and structural parallels between Seneca and Shakespeare, especially in such works as Macbeth and Richard III. 1 That Shakespeare would turn to Roman tragedies as a source for his own is not surprising, but it is not widely recognized that he used these same sources when writing his comedies. A good example of Shakespeare's adapting Senecan tragedy to the world of comedy is A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which Harold Brooks has identified a number of specific allusions to Seneca's Medea, Hippolytus, and Oedipus. 2 Our purpose is to examine Shakespeare's use of these and other Senecan tragedies in Dream in order to discover why Shakespeare turned to a dramatic milieu frought with «oppressive loneliness and exhausted alternativess t when he wished to present a world where the miraculous does not leave room for tragic possibilities. In many of Shakespeare's comedies we are repeatedly, if not seriously, threatened with the tragic situation. Dream is no exception for it is, as M.C. Bradbrook observes, a play in which «The marvellous elbows out the sinister».4 But just what is the nature of «the sinister» which Dream manages to elude ? To answer this, let us first examine another instance, identified by Emrys Jones, of how Shakespeare incorporates Seneca into a comedy.P In Much Ado About Nothing we find this exchange :

Antony and Cleopatra: An Ovidian Tragedy?

Abstract: Shakespeare's debt to Ovid in his comedies and romances is well-known but-Titus Andronicus apart----comparatively little has been done to extend the inve~ti~ation to th~ l!ag~dies. Recently, however, Jonathan Bate has argued convincingly for Ovidian influence on Othello and KingLear, drawing attention to the metamorphoses, occasioned by extreme suffering, in those plays, and suggesting that \"the allusions to Ovid became less frequent in the mature Shakespeare, as he no longer felt it necessary to display his literacy, but that the metamorphic affinities remained\".' In this note I wish to consider what light is thrown on Antony and Cleopatra by reading it with an eye to such affinities. Direct verbal debts to Ovid in the play are few, but they compare well with the examples examined by Dr Bate. They all occur in Act IV 2 and all focus upon Antony's suffering as he feels himself betrayed by Cleopatra. In addition to these echoes of the Metamorphoses, the reference to Dido and Aeneas as parallels to the lovers (I~14.53-4) appears to derive from Ovid's Heroides rather than from Virgil.! But it is hardly possible to read the play without being overwhelmed by a sense of Ovid's presence-the Ovid of the Amores and the Ars Amatoria as well as of the Metamorphoses-s-ui the hinterland of Shakespeare's imagination: and this affects our judgement of the play's tone and of the kind of tragedy it is. To develop these points, let us examine some aspects of the intellectual and poetic structure of the play. Although Antony and Cleopatra is sometimes described as a middle-aged counterpart to Romeo andJuliet that is clearly unsatisfactory: the whole situation of the lovers and our attitudes towards them are quite different. As a tragedy of love Antony might seem nearest to Othello among the 'great' tragedies, but there are no parallels between Othello and Antony or between Desdemona and Cleopatra. Equally, the love element clearly makes it unlike any other of the Roman tragedies. In fact, it is closest, not to any other tragedies at all, but rather to the Last Plays in its concentration on the emotional experience of older people, its combination of intensity and detachment and its employment of multiple perspectives and frames of reference which hint at the playwright's absorption in the technical possibilities of his medium. Ovid's best modern translator notes his \"capacity to operate on multiple levels of awareness, his preoccupation with facets of identity and the divided self', adding that \"his mythical constructs reveal socio-political undertones; metamorphosis becomes a metaphor for the human condition, offering a bridge between the real world and that of the imagination't.:' How closely this applies to Shakespeare's technique in Antony and Cleopatra! Moreover, the diffusion of sympathy between two protagonists, the play's divided catastrophe' and frequent touches of comedy and irony all militate against tragic intensity in ways which

Binding and unbinding: The seven publishing lives of William Shakespeare

Abstract: This essay sets out to analyse the seven successive or contemporary forms in which Shakespeare’s poems and plays were published from the 1590s until the end of the eighteenth century. It highlights...