Shakespeare's Golden Ages

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Shakespeare's Golden Ages is written by Kristine Johanson and published by . It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1474493572 (ISBN 10) and 9781474493574 (ISBN 13).

Diverging from critical paths that have focused on nostalgia as a memorializing practice or on Stuart nostalgia for Elizabeth, this book argues that Shakespeare's Elizabethan history plays stage nostalgia as a future-focused political rhetoric. In doing so, the book suggests new directions for studying nostalgia. Case studies including 'Richard II' and 'Julius Caesar' demonstrate how Shakespeare creates a dramatic argument for nostalgia's power and possibility, even as he represents the fruitlessness of trying to reclaim the past and the fiction of that past's ideal nature. In his dramaturgy, nostalgia functions as a persuasive call for (short-lived) political change. The book provides new interpretations of Shakespeare's contemporaries to illustrate how his use of nostalgia depends on, innovates from and influences his fellow playwrights.