Measure For Measure: As Royal Entertainment
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
What if Shakespeare's most enigmatic problem play was never meant for the public stage at all, but was instead a lavish gift crafted for a king? Josephine Waters Bennett's Measure for Measure as Royal Entertainment presents a compelling scholarly argument that Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure specifically for performance before King James I, recontextualising the play's perplexing moral ambiguities, its preoccupation with clemency and governance, and its curious dramatic structure as deliberate, politically charged choices designed to flatter and engage a royal audience. Bennett's meticulous analysis draws on historical records, Jacobean court culture, and close textual reading to illuminate how profoundly the circumstances of a royal command performance shaped one of Shakespeare's most debated works. Her argument challenges centuries of critical tradition and forces a fundamental reconsideration of the play's Duke Vincentio as a mirror held up to James I himself. Written with scholarly precision yet accessible authority, this study remains an essential and provocative intervention in Shakespeare studies — one that leaves the reader wondering just how many other works bear the hidden fingerprints of royal patronage.
Author: Josephine Waters Bennett
Format: Hardback
Published: 1966, Columbia University Press
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
What if Shakespeare's most enigmatic problem play was never meant for the public stage at all, but was instead a lavish gift crafted for a king? Josephine Waters Bennett's Measure for Measure as Royal Entertainment presents a compelling scholarly argument that Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure specifically for performance before King James I, recontextualising the play's perplexing moral ambiguities, its preoccupation with clemency and governance, and its curious dramatic structure as deliberate, politically charged choices designed to flatter and engage a royal audience. Bennett's meticulous analysis draws on historical records, Jacobean court culture, and close textual reading to illuminate how profoundly the circumstances of a royal command performance shaped one of Shakespeare's most debated works. Her argument challenges centuries of critical tradition and forces a fundamental reconsideration of the play's Duke Vincentio as a mirror held up to James I himself. Written with scholarly precision yet accessible authority, this study remains an essential and provocative intervention in Shakespeare studies — one that leaves the reader wondering just how many other works bear the hidden fingerprints of royal patronage.