Greeks and Trojans on the Early Modern English Stage (Late Tudor and Stuart Drama)

No story was more interesting to Shakespeare and his contemporaries than that of Troy, partly because the story of Troy was in a sense the story of England, since the Trojan prince Aeneas was supposedly the ancestor of the Tudors. This book explores the wide range of allusions to Greece and Troy in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, looking not only at plays actually set in Greece or Troy but also those which draw on characters and motifs from Greek mythology and the Trojan War. Texts covered include Shakespeare’s __Troilus and Cressida__, __Othello__, __Hamlet__, __The Winter’s Tale__, __The Two Noble Kinsmen__, __Pericles__ and __The Tempest__ as well as plays by other authors of the period including Marlowe, Chettle, Ford and Beaumont and Fletcher. Dedication Acknowledgements Contents Introduction Part I: Wandering Trojans 1 What’s Actaeon to Aeneas? 2 Aeneas and the Voyagers Part II: The Ruins of Troy 3 Troilus and Cressida: Shakespeare’s Wooden World 4 Where Is Hector Now? 5 Making Troy New Part III: Striking Too Short at Greeks 6 The Greek Actor: Art, Aesthetics, and Drama 7 Metatheatre and Metamorphosis in Thomas Tomkis’s Albumazar Part IV: Greece on the Edge 8 The Edge of the Hellenic World 9 What Venus Did with Mars: Love and War in the Mediterranean Conclusion Works Cited Index Explores the cultural uses of Greek and Trojan settings and allusions to Greece and Troy in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.