"For pure need": Violence, terror and the common people in Henry VI, part 2

This paper looks at representations of the common people in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2 and shows how they were subject to the continual threat of violence and terror in Elziabethan society

Postcolonial/queer and the “new” South Africa: HIV/AIDS and the emerging queer transnational politics

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright © 2008 Klincksieck.Western AIDS education consultants initially failed to develop effective AIDS prevention programmes in South Africa. This essay engages the dialogical space between globalised representations in relation to localised AIDS activism and strategies of queer resistance

The Shakespeare authorship question – A suitable subject for academia

This paper considers whether the Shakespeare Authorship Question is a legitimate subject for study in academia

‘Thy Hunger-Starved Men’: Shakespeare’s Henry plays and the contemporary lot of the common soldier

Between 1589 and 1599 Shakespeare wrote six Henry plays, two on the reign of Henry IV, one on that of Henry V and three covering that of Henry VI. An important preoccupation, which runs through all of these plays, is the conditions in which common soldiers lived. The years leading up to the appearance of the first of the plays, 1 Henry VI, saw many outbreaks of discontentment on the part of the soldiers in Elizabeth I’s army. The mass recruitment of troops for Ireland in the 1590s increased such discontentment. This paper examines the contemporary lot of the common soldiers, and shows that Shakespeare’s interest in their situation was one that articulated pervasive, early modern anxieties

“All would be royal”: The effacement of disunity in Shakespeare’s Henry V

This paper seizes on the unresolved moment of conflict between Henry and the common soldier Williams in Shakespeare's Henry V to demonstrate the ways in which traditional criticism has occluded dissent and co-opted the common soldier on behalf of a perceived empathy towards the king on the part of the author. A look at documented evidence shows that Shakespeare was articulating a common reality in this unresolved moment, one which dsiplays rather than effaces contemporary discontent with the lot of the ordinary soldier

Propaganda or a record of events? Richard Mulcaster’s the passage of our most Drad Soveraigne Lady Quene Elyzabeth through the Citie of London Westminster the daye before her coronacion

The pamphlet written by Richard Mulcaster to commemorate the accession of Queen Elizabeth I to the throne, The Passage Of Our Most Drad Soveraigne Lady Quene Elyzabeth Through The Citie Of London To Westminster The Daye Before Her Coronacion, is central to our contemporary understanding of representations of the Queen and of this kind of early modern spectacle. This is demonstrated by the fact that it is a text that is, and has been, constantly used in studies of Elizabeth’s reign, her personality and the nature of spectacle itself. This use began with its appearance in Holinshed’s Chronicle, and the pamphlet continues to be referred to in most contemporary critical and historical studies. This paper questions whether, given its widespread use as both a historical and critical document, it is, in fact, reliable. The research presented here shows that it was something else entirely, and should be treated as such. In this sense, this document is seen to participate in what Walter Benjamin has described as a “triumphal procession”, whereby it has been transmitted throughout history in a normative fashion, being endlessly reproduced in a manner characterised by focusing upon the dominant figure of Elizabeth, occluding its status as a propagandist text

‘You cannot show me’: Two Tudor Coronation Processions, Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII and the Staging of Anne Boleyn

In this paper, Leahy argues that Shakespeare’s portrayal of Anne Boleyn in King Henry VIII has traditionally been regarded as one that does not take account of her ambiguous historical position, and he goes on to examine this portrayal in the light of her own coronation procession, as well as her representation in the coronation procession of her daughter, Elizabeth. These representations of Boleyn are then set against the famous letter written by Sir Henry Wotton to describe the burning down of the Globe Theatre during a production of King Henry VIII in 1613. Set within such a context, Leahy argues that the representation of Anne in the play is not what it has traditionally been made out to be, but demonstrates the difficulties inherent in staging such a problematic figure