Misc. on C of L49 Jacobean Tragedy

[Johnny Marr]

Radio 4 had a quite good In Our Time about Elizabethan and Jacobean
Tragedies on Thursday

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > BUT, one fascinating tidbit....The cultural 'architecture' of Jacobean
> Tragedy combined
> > "Machiavellian cynicism... and the revival of the medieval notion that
> the world was running down!
> > .....and on the verge of dissolution."
>
> From J.W. Lever, The Tragedy of State: A Study of Jacobean Drama (2nd
> ed.  London/New York: Methuen,
> 1987 [1971]), Ch. I, "Tragedy and State," pp. 1-17 ...
>
>   "It is easy to understand why this play [Lorenzaccio], set in
> sixteenth-century Italy by a French writer [de Musset] living in the
> revolutionary currents of the eighteen-thirties, should have an
> electrifying effect upon Czech audiences in the winter of 1969-70.
> However, Lorenzaccio is only one example of an approach to drama which
> views immediate issues
> as part of a vast continuum and evokes history as an extension of
> individual memory.  DeMusset's play bears a generic resemblance to
> many Jacobean tragedies, with their court settings, their pervasive
> atmosphere of idealism and corruption, their ambivalent finales.  On
> the Jacobean stage contemporary issues constantly lurk below the
> surface of historical or fictitious settings.... for audiences of the
> time, the relevance was sufficiently clear.  Chapman explicitly drew
> attention to the parallels between his protagonist Byron and the Earl
> of Essex, executed for treason in 1601.  Less direct, but unmistakable
> in their tenor, are the recurrent allusions to royal favourites,
> scheming politicians, sycophants, and the network of informers and
> secret agents through which the contemporary state controlled the
> lives of its
> nationals....  [Jonson] was cited before the Privy Council in
> connection with [Sejanus].  Already in 1597 he had been imprisoned for
> his share in the comedy The Isle of Dogs, described as containing
> 'very seditious and slanderous' matter'; care was taken so that no
> trace of this play should survive.... In 1606 Marston was driven to
> hide away from London for approximately two years because of his share
> in the play Eastward Ho.  Chapman's two-part play Byron led, as a
> result of protests by the French ambassador, to the arrest of three of
> the actors.  Chapman himself managed to escape, but scenes from The
> Tragedy of Byron were cut out and never appeared in print, while most
> of Act IV in Byron's Conspiracy has similarly vanished.  Even closet
> dramas not intended for public performance, or publication, might
> endanger the author.  Fulke Grevile mentions that, following the
> advice of his friends, he destroyed his Antony and Cleopatra, written
> during the Queen's reign, rather than run the risk of parallels being
> found in it to the relationship of Elizabeth and Essex.  It seems to
> me a fair surmise that Shakespeare for similar reasons put off the
> writing, or at least
> the performance, of his own Antony and Cleopatra--the historical
> sequel to Julius Caesar--until some five years after Queen Elizabeth's
> death.
>   "That the theater should be intensely concerned with politics was
> inevitable in a time of acute tension...." (pp. 2-3)
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59185
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59131
>
>
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