Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Editor's note
- 1 Shakespeare and politics: an introduction
- 2 Shakespeare and politics
- 3 Henry VIII and the deconstruction of history
- 4 Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare's Coriolanus
- 5 Richard II and the realities of power
- 6 Plutarch, insurrection, and dearth in Coriolanus
- 7 Some versions of coup d'état, rebellion, and revolution
- 8 Language, politics, and poverty in Shakespearian drama
- 9 ‘Demystifying the mystery of state’: King Lear and the world upside down
- 10 Venetian culture and the politics of Othello
- 11 The Bard and Ireland: Shakespeare's Protestantism as politics in disguise
- 12 Henry V as working-house of ideology
- 13 ‘Fashion it thus’: Julius Caesar and the politics of theatrical representation
- 14 Take me to your Leda
- 15 Macbeth on film: politics
- 16 William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: everything's nice in America?
- Index
14 - Take me to your Leda
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Editor's note
- 1 Shakespeare and politics: an introduction
- 2 Shakespeare and politics
- 3 Henry VIII and the deconstruction of history
- 4 Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare's Coriolanus
- 5 Richard II and the realities of power
- 6 Plutarch, insurrection, and dearth in Coriolanus
- 7 Some versions of coup d'état, rebellion, and revolution
- 8 Language, politics, and poverty in Shakespearian drama
- 9 ‘Demystifying the mystery of state’: King Lear and the world upside down
- 10 Venetian culture and the politics of Othello
- 11 The Bard and Ireland: Shakespeare's Protestantism as politics in disguise
- 12 Henry V as working-house of ideology
- 13 ‘Fashion it thus’: Julius Caesar and the politics of theatrical representation
- 14 Take me to your Leda
- 15 Macbeth on film: politics
- 16 William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: everything's nice in America?
- Index
Summary
CRASH
Let me begin with two voices: ‘Give up literary criticism!’ – the exasperation of a philosopher – and ‘We are not on trial; it is the system under which we live … It has broken down everywhere’ – the desperation of a politician. Both utterances surfaced in the same year, and the peculiar resonance they retain for modern British ears probably results from the fact that the year was 1929. I open with them because the crisis of 1929–30 and its bitter fruit still finds sufficient parallels in our current situation to make any echoes from its depths somewhat disturbing. On that basis alone it would not be unreasonable to argue that the period marks a genuine watershed in the development of British ideology. In May 1929 a general election had produced the second Labour government (albeit a minority one). Confident, hopeful, even with Ramsay MacDonald at its head, it rode full tilt into the great stock market crash of October of that year, inheriting the debacle that MacDonald's words attempt to grapple with: ‘We are not on trial; it is the system under which we live’. The apocalyptic atmosphere was heightened by the ungraspable nature of the breakdown. It was inexplicable, a text impossible to decipher. And when readings were forthcoming, the man and woman in the street found these difficult to understand and very far from reassuring.
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- Information
- Shakespeare and Politics , pp. 219 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004