The Unmasking of Drama: Contested Representation in Shakespeare's Tragedies

By Jonathan Baldo

No group of plays has been invested - by viewers, by readers and nations - with greater powers of representation than Shakespeare's. In The Unmasking of Drama, Jonathan Baldo reveals the flaws within the widespread assumption that Shakespeare's plays possess an almost limitless capacity to represent, to speak on behalf of subsequent generations and other cultures. He shows that one of the great ironies of such a universalist Shakespeare is that Shakespearean drama itself challenges the Renaissance era's dominant ideas about representation: for instance, the assumption that a single body, a monarch, can represent an entire people.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081432598X
• ISBN13: 9780814325988
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Wayne State University
• Length: 213 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.5"