...threats take different forms, and that Catholics and Protestants can--and indeed should--work together to defeat the 'Turk'. After all, it is in striking the balance *between* seafaring potency and trading deals that an English Christian identity is protected. James, it seems, is finally able...

...edges of which the English Protestant self can be framed. Jessica's careful and convincing readings of the plays challenge simplistic interpretations of the themes they depict. Certainly, Catholics and Muslims are both 'threats' to England's Protestantism, but these plays show that the...

...James VI & I posed a challenge to his more pacifist approach—a challenge that is interrogated in Massinger’s play, which attempts to refigure potent masculinity in firm Christian faith. Both texts play with the idea of the Spanish Catholic and the Islamic Ottoman Other against and through the...

...shows that their differences tell us a lot about English fears around religion and expansionism. For Jessica, _Fair Maid_ presents and shapes a national identity based on a form of popular and potent English seafaring masculinity compliant with Elizabeth I’s international politics, which under...

...more love (my chapter is the only other one that includes him), and giving Massinger some deserved attention, Jessica draws attention to the reflexive way drama reflected contemporary fears with a learned subtlety that is a pleasure to read. While the two plays have much in common, Jessica...

...in Heywood’s _The Fair Maid of the West, Part 1_ and Massinger’s _The Renegado_, the former of which reflects the Elizabethan regime’s expansionism, while the latter grapples with the implications of James VI & I’s (self-)fashioning as the rex pacificus. In addition to giving Heywood some...

...victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, piracy and privateering were quasi-legitimate national pastimes in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Focusing on the construction of masculinities and national identity at the turn of the century, Jessica's chapter contrasts the depiction of piracy...

Came here to ask this!

Fuck, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck OFF.

that can perhaps be best described as thoroughly Hopkins-y. Have a great weekend, and tune in on Monday when I'll share details about Jessica Dyson's excellent chapter... be warned, there be pirates! 🥰

Another significant thing about Andrew's chapter is his deep engagement with French scholarship on Hardy, which both contextualises the play extremely well and makes clear Andrew's own contribution to the wider conversation. He also cites and quotes an incredible range of scholars with a generosity

One of Andrew's key observations that has stuck with me is how _Coriolan_ and _Coriolanus_ force us to consider the multifarious ways in which reception and inclusion may be enacted in bitterly divided cultures, underlining that it is not certain either that hospitality and peace are synonymous.

...between Coriolanus's Rome and Hardy/Henri's France. For Andrew, the figure of Coriolanus offers a telling insight into ongoing cultural debates about hospitality through the ways in which he assumes the (elective) identities of commander and pariah alternately for two different nations.

...regime more generally would have seen the encroachment on the royal prerogative (which changing the state's religion clearly is) as allowing "crows to peck the eagles". Given Henri IV's conversion and the various assassination attempts he had faced by c.1607, there are certainly parallels...

...Lives_ in the period, Shakey seems to have been responding to the "popularity of the theme of elite individualism and resistance" exemplified especially in Chapman's tragedies. To my mind, I've always thought Coriolanus could be considered a Gunpowder play, in the sense that James and the...

...of each other. In this way, the story of Coriolanus functions as an edge that both Shakey and Hardy cross and/or navigate. It is fascinating that two playwrights turned to the same Roman figure at about the same time: while we should not underestimate the huge appeal of Plutarch's _Parallel...