We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Shakespeare shows how violence can be prevented by replacing retribution, or revenge, with “restorative justice”: renouncing punishment toward others and the self, thus transcending both shame and guilt ethics, and giving violent offenders the opportunity and means to restore to the community what they had taken from it, thus reconciling with their community. In Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio conducts a psychological experiment showing how the “retributive” apparatus of the state produced an attempted (judicial) murder and rape, whereas the Duke’s approach prevented all violence, by individuals and the state. The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale illustrate the same principles and outcome. The Merchant of Venice, however, shows how severely restorative justice is compromised when the primary cause and constituent of violence is ignored, and attention is paid only to its symptom or consequence (Shylock’s anger at Antonio’s anti-Semitism).
Chapter 6 challenges the orthodoxy that plays were essentially premiered on the public stages prior to their performance at court. Jason Lawrence focuses on the royal performances of Othello and Measure for Measure at Whitehall in late 1604, in an attempt to modify some critical statements about these plays. It is Lawrence’s contention that the court performances of both of these plays were effectively prepared as royal premieres for the king. The two new plays share a common source in Cinthio’s prose Hecatommitti, and Lawrence demonstrates how the significant alterations and additions made in each case engage directly with the interests of the new monarch, suggesting that Shakespeare was, at least partially, dramatising stories from his new-found Italian source with these royal performances in mind. Lawrence shows that, in each case, any prior performance might have been intended primarily as a rehearsal for the court appearance. The length of Othello in particular fits with Richard Dutton’s argument about the preparation of longer play texts specifically for Jacobean court performance, although, significantly, in this case it would be for a brand new rather than revised play.