Romance and Reformation: The Erasmian Spirit of Shakespeare's Measure for MeasureIt examines an assumption central to Shakespeare's inherited humanist tradition: that literature, and particularly drama, is capable of promoting a better society and it finds Shakespeare interrogating this assumption, asking whether drama that has been fashioned according to reformist principles of the great humanist educator Erasmus can, after all, achieve the remediating effects it seeks. |
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Page 26
... - nificant pronouncements in the apostolic writings were made . Ironically faulting Paul as a way of mocking the arrogance of his interpreters , Erasmus writes : If only he had told us one thing at least 26 ROMANCE AND REFORMATION.
... - nificant pronouncements in the apostolic writings were made . Ironically faulting Paul as a way of mocking the arrogance of his interpreters , Erasmus writes : If only he had told us one thing at least 26 ROMANCE AND REFORMATION.
Page 27
... thing at least : the persons , the time , the vest- ments , the rite , the wording customarily employed to ... things he preaches , he will easily inspire his listeners with that same feeling . 7 Chrysostom's combined alertness ...
... thing at least : the persons , the time , the vest- ments , the rite , the wording customarily employed to ... things he preaches , he will easily inspire his listeners with that same feeling . 7 Chrysostom's combined alertness ...
Page 30
... things , he disdains the give - and - take of the intellectual marketplace , he won't even acknowledge the common rule of the barroom , drink up or get out — all of which amounts to demanding that the play should no longer be a play ...
... things , he disdains the give - and - take of the intellectual marketplace , he won't even acknowledge the common rule of the barroom , drink up or get out — all of which amounts to demanding that the play should no longer be a play ...
Page 31
... things , took upon himself the part of a servant " ( 271 ) because this was " the one and only way to achieve the end which others pursue by differing means , that is , true felic- ity " ( 265 ) . Erasmus believed that the life of ...
... things , took upon himself the part of a servant " ( 271 ) because this was " the one and only way to achieve the end which others pursue by differing means , that is , true felic- ity " ( 265 ) . Erasmus believed that the life of ...
Page 35
... things and that right actions by humans in- volve a response in kind to Nature's promptings of the spirit : Lawes of reason have these markes to be knowne by . Such as keepe them , resemble most lively in their voluntarie actions , that ...
... things and that right actions by humans in- volve a response in kind to Nature's promptings of the spirit : Lawes of reason have these markes to be knowne by . Such as keepe them , resemble most lively in their voluntarie actions , that ...
Contents
24 | |
Measure for Measure as Comic Romance | 55 |
Fornication and Calumny The Conceptual Structure of Measure for Measure | 69 |
Factionalism and Social Reform The Dilemma of Humanist Drama | 88 |
The Rhetoric of the Logos in Measure for Measure | 102 |
Redemption and Damnation Measure for Measure and Othello as Contrasting Paired Visions | 150 |
Notes | 157 |
Works Cited | 176 |
Index | 185 |
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Common terms and phrases
Act Five action Angelo and Isabella audience authority bed-trick calumny Cambridge characters Christ Christian humanism Christian humanist classical Claudio comedy comic romance context D. H. Lawrence death Desiderius Erasmus disguise divine Dollimore drama Duke Vincentio Duke's dynamic Edited Elizabethan eloquence enforcement English Erasmian Erasmus Erasmus's Escalus fiction fornication Friar Friar Lodowick gelo grace Heraclitean Heraclitus Hooker human humanist rhetoric Iago Isabella James Jesus John judgment justice and mercy Lady Folly language LB IV literal literary Logos London Lucio Mariana means Measure for Measure mediating method Midsummer Night's Dream mind mirror moral Moria natural law Othello paradox person persuasion philosophical play play's playwright principle Puritan reciprocity redemption Renaissance role Saint scene Scripture sense sexual Shakespeare Survey Sileni slander society soul speak spirit Studies syphilis theatre things Thomas tion tradition truth University Press Vienna virtue vision words York
Popular passages
Page 117 - That skins the vice o' the top. Go to your bosom ; Knock there ; and ask your heart what it doth know That's like my brother's fault ; if it confess A natural guiltiness such as is his, Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Against my brother's life.
Page 61 - Heaven doth with us as we with torches do ; Not light them for themselves : for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not...
Page 42 - Do you hear, let them be well used ; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
Page 82 - I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry : be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go : farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.
Page 68 - But all the story of the night told over And all their minds transfigur'd so together, More witnesseth than fancy's images, And grows to something of great constancy ; But, howsoever, strange, and admirable.
Page 86 - But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. 37. For by thy words thou shall be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
Page 166 - Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influence; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice.
Page 81 - In all speech, words and sense are as the body and the soul. The sense is as the life and soul of language, without which all words are dead.