The history of Western theater has always been associated with cities, their politics, their customs, their geography, their audiences -- and the price of admission. Since theater depends upon its paying audiences if it is to exist, does it merely reflect the values of the society that has created it, or is its function also critical, even subtly subversive, in an effort to persuade that society towards some ideal? Given that ancient Greek democracy gave birth to tragedy and comedy in civic praise of the god Dionysos - from a special coupling of the worldly and the sacred -- what happens when these genres recrudesce in the professedly Christian but paradoxically unsavory precincts that house the theaters of late Elizabethan London? We are lucky to have Shakespeare as our representative and articulate spokesperson for that theater in that city, and we can look in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor for some answers to our questions. Seminar led by Joseph Lauinger, Literature Faculty.
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