Staging Early Modern Romance

<p>This collection recovers the continuities between three forms of romance that have often been separated from one another in critical discourse: early modern prose fiction, the dramatic romances staged in England during the 1570s and 1580s, and Shakespeare’s late plays. Although <em>Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale</em>, and <em>The Tempest</em> have long been characterized as "romances," their connections with the popular prose romances of their day and the dramatic romances that preceded them have frequently been overlooked. Constructed to explore those connections, this volume includes original essays that relate at least one prose or dramatic romance to an English play written from 1570 to 1630. The introduction explores the use of the term "dramatic romance" over several centuries and the commercial association between print culture, gender, and drama. Eight essays discuss Shakespeare’s plays; three more examine plays by Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger. Other authors treated at some length include Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Sidney, Greene, Lodge, and Wroth. Barbara Mowat’s afterword considers Shakespeare’s use of Greek romance. Written by foremost scholars of Shakespeare and early modern prose fiction, this book explores the vital cross-currents that occurred between narrative and dramatic forms of Greek, medieval, and early modern romance.</p> <p>Acknowledgments </p><p>Part I: Continuities and Incongruities</p><p>1 Introduction: Into the Forest </p><p>Mary Ellen Lamb and Valerie Wayne </p><p>2 The Sources of Romance, the Generation of Story, and the Patterns of the Pericles Tales </p><p>Lori Humphrey Newcomb</p><p>3 "Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other": Sidney’s Unities and the Staging of Romance </p><p>Cyrus Mulready</p><p>Part II: Page and Stage</p><p>4 "A Note Beyond Your Reach": Prose Fiction’s Rivalry with Elizabethan Drama </p><p>Steve Mentz</p><p>5 Hamlet and Eourdanus </p><p>Goran Stanivukovic</p><p>6 Reading the Book of the Self in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Wroth’s Urania </p><p>Sarah Wall-Randell</p><p>7 Virtual Audiences and Virtual Authors: The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Old Wives’ Tales </p><p>Mary Ellen Lamb </p><p>Part III: Gender and Agency</p><p>8 The Issue of the Corpus Christi Cycles, or "Religious Romance," in The Winter’s Tale </p><p>Gloria Olchowy</p><p>9 Romancing the Wager: Cymbeline’s Intertexts </p><p>Valerie Wayne</p><p>10 John Fletcher’s Women Pleased and the Pedagogy Reading of Romance </p><p>Joyce Boro</p><p>11 Undoing Romance: Beaumont and Fletcher’s Resistant Reading of the The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia</p><p>Clare R. Kinney</p><p>12 Probable Infidelities from Bandello to Massinger </p><p>Lorna Hutson</p><p>13 Afterword: Shakespeare and Romance </p><p>Barbara Mowat</p><p>Notes on Contributors </p><p>Index </p>