The King Within

This book contrasts the portrayal of kings and kingship in the drama of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-81), concentrating on the ways in which both dramatists use the individual complexities of their kingly characters to address the intellectual and moral dilemmas of the ideological backgrounds that helped to create them. Against the background of seventeenth-century Europe, when religious and political reformation was leading to reconstructions of concepts of authority and personal and national identity, these two dramatists of early modern England and Spain use the increasingly theatrical facades of absolutist power to explore the internal drama of individual psychology and the kinship of flawed humanity.

Autorentext
The Author: Anita Howard studied English and Spanish at Somerville College, Oxford, and wrote the Ph.D. thesis on which this book is based at University College Cork. She has tutored and lectured in English and Spanish at University College Cork and University College Dublin, and continues to teach both subjects.

Inhalt

Contents: England and Spain: Reformations of Power - The Drama Within: Staging Kingship - Searching for Authority: King Richard II and El príncipe constante - The King's Soul: King Henry VIII and La cisma de Ingalaterra - From Kingship to Kinship: The Tempest and La vida es sueño - The Internal Theatre: Kingship Among Subjects.