Shakespeare's Drama of Exile (Palgrave Shakespeare Studies)

Exile defines the Shakespearean canon, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen . This book traces the influences on the drama of exile, examining the legal context of banishment (pursued against Catholics, gypsies and vagabonds) in early modern England; the self-consciousness of exile as an amatory trope; and the discourses by which exile could be reshaped into comedy or tragedy. Across genres, Shakespeare's plays reveal a fascination with exile as the source of linguistic crisis, shaped by the utterance of that word Banished. "'Banished!': the word resounds throughout the Shakespearean canon from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Tempest, yet the theme of exile in Shakespeare's plays has been largely neglected. Regardless of Shakespeare' own status as an exile, banishment was a highly visible condition in early modern England, enforced by the law against Catholics, gypsies and beggars and threatened against both the theatres and acting companies for which Shakespeare wrote. It was also explicitly theatrical, inspiring the performance of some new identity through the adoption of disguise or a new name, and often shaped by famous literary exiles such as Seneca, Ovid and Petrarch