Lisa Kings

"This book analyses works by not only Shakespeare but also his contemporaries to argue that many of the plays of Shakespeare's central period, from the second tetralogy to Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, engage with the idea of England's borders. But borders, it claims, are not only of geopolitical significance. In Shakespeare's imagination and indeed in that of his culture, eschatological overtones also accrue to the idea of the border. This is because the countries of the Celtic fringe were often discussed in terms of the supernatural and fairy lore and, in particular, the rivers which were often used as boundary markers were invested with heavily mythologized personae."--Jacket.

"This book offers a unique, easily accessible overview of key dates relevant to Marlowe's life and works. It charts the main events of his education, theatrical career, brushes with the law and apparent involvement in spying, and then continues with an account of the ongoing and indeed increasing importance of his texts after his death, keeping careful track of the points at which various pieces of information have emerged about him. Where events are difficult to date securely, it outlines the various theories and enables readers to navigate their way through the various pieces of evidence for the hotly contested dating of his plays and poems. Since Marlowe's plays often focus on real historical figures, details of their lives are also included to allow readers to see what choices and, occasionally, liberties Marlowe has taken in his dramatisation of their lives."--BOOK JACKET.

"This book considers the ways in which the idea of evolution has been used in popular fiction, focusing mainly on novels of the Victorian and Edwardian periods but also including a closing section on Steven Spielberg's first two Jurassic Park films. The book's overall argument is that in many of these texts the version of origins proffered by Darwinian theory is suggestively played off against both the version of human origins offered by Milton (and, the book suggests, implicitly supported by Shakespeare) and the version of national origins offered by Virgil and by the myth of Brutus, legendary grandson of Aeneas and supposed first founder of Britain. Nevertheless, although these novels tend to give such prominence to alternatives to Darwinian theory, they are also very ready to draw on any aspects of it which will lend support to their own agendas, especially when it comes to drawing sharp distinctions between races and sexes. Although Darwinian theory posed challenges to contemporary orthodoxies and pieties, it could thus also be used in the support of some of them."--BOOK JACKET.

"This book focuses on female tragic heroes in English Renaissance drama from c.1610-c.1645, characters who differ from previous tragic heroines because they were not passive victims but active agents. Their sudden appearance can be linked to a specific historical moment and to highly contested debates within early modern England, including changing ideas about the relationship between bodies and souls, men's and women's bodies, marriage and mothering, and law and religion. Though the vast majority of these characters are not what we would now call heroines but were closer to villainesses, the staging of a constant stream of bad or fallible women did not in fact work to reinforce misogyny, but to prise it open, revealing the grounds on which it was constructed. Consequently these plays did not merely reflected their culture but changed it."--BOOK JACKET.