The king my father's wrack
Subtitle: the moral nexus of Shakespearian drama
By: Stephen K. Land
Series: AMS studies in the Renaissance -- no. 48
Publisher: AMS Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 177
ISBN-13: 9780404623487
Subjects: English Didactic drama; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Ethics; Ethics in literature; Moral conditions in literature
Description: In The King My Father's Wrack, Stephen K. Land sheds light on the issues of guilt and responsibility built into the structure of Shakespearian drama.

In his mature plays, Shakespeare presents moral failure its entailed upon mortality. Dying kings, such as Lear, Richard II, and the ghost in Hamlet, are emblematic of the paradoxical self-frustration of human aspiration. As Land Writes in his preface, "the hero's (or sometimes the heroines) confrontation with human weakness, with the fact of mortality ... became Shakespeare's central concern."

In order to study this underlying moral coherence of Shakespearian drama, Land examines the ways in which Shakespeare constructs his stories, comparing the plays with one another and with their chief sources. The result is an overview encompassing all the plays except the early histories and some of the collaborative works. Written ill plain terms and without theoretical assumptions, it will be of interest to all students of Shakespeare as well as to the specialist. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Inner worlds; danger of excess; lords of misrule; companions; denial of mortal nature; title: Stories of love and power; villains; victims; rejected heroines; the day of judgment; title: The dying king; King John; Richard II; Henry IV; Julius Caesar; The merchant of Venice; the ghost in Hamlet; the king of France; title: The pattern of the romances; King Lear; Pericles; Cymbeline; The winter's tale; The tempest; an art that nature makes.