The Absence of America
The London Stage, 1576-1642
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:17th Sep '15
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The Absence of America: the London Stage 1576â1642 examines why early modern drama's response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration: no play is set in the Americas; few plays treat colonization as central to the plot; a handful features Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise). However, advocates of colonialism in the seventeenth century denounced playing companies as enemies on a par with the Pope and the Devil. Instead of writing off these accusers as paranoid cranks, this book takes as its starting point the possibility that they were astute playgoers. By so doing we can begin to see the emergence of a "picture of America," and of the Virginia colony in particular, across a number of plays performed for London audiences: Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, and his collaboration with Marston and Chapman, Eastward Ho!; Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso; Massinger's The City Madam; Massinger and Fletcher's The Sea Voyage; Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl; Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Fletcher and Shakespeare's Henry VIII. We can glean the significance of this picture, not only for the troubled Virginia Company, but also for London theater audiences. And we can see that the picture that was beginning to form was, as the anti-theatricalists surmised, often slanderous, condemnatory, and, as it were, anti-American.
Gavin Hollis's interrogation of the presence of America on the London stage is deeply engaging, drawing on a large body of early modern theatre and employing several lenses, including gender, sexuality and race, to develop his convincing arguments ... It contains many beautiful illustrations, including reproductions of Theodor de Bry and Inigo Jones, and its structure of clearly signposted and digestible parts ensures that this text - full of detail and vivid imagery - is easily navigable. Hollis has made a perceptive new departure on a topic that has in recent years, as he acknowledges, stagnated. * Misha Ewen, History *
This is a book that has been waiting to be written. Deeply researched and clearly organized, it draws surprising connections between English antitheatricalism and New World colonialism, and discovers in early modern dramatic literature a sharp critique of incipient westward imperialism. ... Hollis's book, then, does much to reveal the presence of America on the early modern English stage. What I appreciated most about this book was its breadth of reference. * Jeremy Lopez, Renaissance Quarterly *
Hollis's study is to be recommended and makes a significant intervention in the field. It includes careful close readings of sometimes neglected dramatic writing and presents an insightful overview of the interplay between the early modern theatre and the social and economic concerns of the period. * Andrew J. Power, Modern Language Review *
This is a book that has been waiting to be written. Deeply researched and clearly organized, it draws surprising connections between English antitheatricalism and New World colonialism, and discovers in early modern dramatic literature a sharp critique of incipient westward imperialism ... Hollis's book, then, does much to reveal the presence of America on the early modern English stage. What I appreciated most about this book was its breadth of reference. In the table of contents alone we find a more eclectic range of dramatic texts than is ordinary for a monograph in this field. * Jeremy Lopez, Renaissance Quarterly *
The Absence of America stands out as one of the past year's most critically sophisticated studies ... the series will quickly establish itself as the home of our field's most innovative scholarship on issues of space, place, and environment. * Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *
- Winner of Shortlisted for the Shakespeare's Globe Book Award 2016.
ISBN: 9780198734321
Dimensions: 223mm x 155mm x 23mm
Weight: 486g
276 pages