Toxic Masculinity on the London Stage, 1600-1610

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-89044-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 144 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Focus on Literature

The idea of toxic masculinity might feel like a very modern, even twenty-first century notion, but similar concerns about male behaviour, also often characterised in terms of poisons and poisoning, can be identified in the literature of 400 hundred years ago, not only in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Winter’s Tale but also lesser-known plays that were popular on the London stage in the 1600s. Poison-related tropes, and the recurrent plot device of a man trying to poison a woman, expressed complex and sometimes contradictory attitudes towards socially unacceptable male behaviour. These plays depict the early modern male as both poisoned and poisoner – poisoned by inherited misogynistic ideas and attitudes, and poisoner of women, both literally and metaphorically. Seeing them as enacting problematic situations and raising difficult questions rather than simply offering the moral certitudes of Christianity or the prescriptions of contemporary conduct book, the book points to these plays as evidence of disquiet and anxieties to which we can still easily relate today. The fact that some plays responded to real-life events such as familicide is an indicator of this socially responsible role of the theatre, engaging its audience in current issues and controversies. The use of the poison theme in relation to male violence and misogyny shows that the early modern theatre was raising awareness of the same problems that are identified as toxic masculinity today.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Archdeacon, Anthony

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Dramen und Dramatiker

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Poisoned Minds: cuckoldry, jealousy and insecure masculinity

Chapter 3 Poisonous Words: misogynistic discourses and men slandering women

Chapter 4 Tragic Masculinity: theatrical responses to real life domestic violence

Chapter 5 Poisons and antidotes: fake poisonings, rehabilitated men, and strong women

Über Autor(innen)

Anthony Archdeacon has an MPhil in medieval literature from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in renaissance literature from the University of Southampton.