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novel, like the play, begins, and in the central plot, concerning the murder of a head of state by an ambitious underling, who is then haunted, literally and metaphorically, by his deeds. The novel also reper-forms the tragedy of Julius Caesar , which offers a dramatic prefiguration of the plot-line in which the protégé of a political leader becomes his assassin. Rushdie summons the spirit of tragedy in Shame for a number of reasons. In the first place the strong intertextual bond between Rushdie’s novel and tragic narrative serves to
begin to emerge between Kilpatrick’s slaying and the assassination of Julius Caesar, as depicted in Shakespeare’s famous play. When Ryan delves deeper still, he also finds connections (some of them linguistic) with Macbeth. Eventually the truth emerges: Kilpatrick was a traitor who, once his treachery had been exposed, agreed to participate in an elaborate theatrical performance designed to cement his own heroic profile and thus to expedite the revolution. Kilpatrick must be assassinated, and his ‘martyrdom’ must become a rallying point for those whom he had betrayed
Ralph Knevet's Supplement of the Faery Queene (1635) is a narrative and allegorical work, which weaves together a complex collection of tales and episodes, featuring knights, ladies, sorcerers, monsters, vertiginous fortresses and deadly battles – a chivalric romp in Spenser's cod medieval style. The poem shadows recent English history, and the major military and political events of the Thirty Years War. But the Supplement is also an ambitiously intertextual poem, weaving together materials from mythic, literary, historical, scientific, theological, and many other kinds of written sources. Its encyclopaedic ambitions combine with Knevet's historical focus to produce an allegorical epic poem of considerable interest and power.
This new edition of Knevet's Supplement, the first scholarly text of the poem ever published, situates it in its literary, historical, biographical, and intellectual contexts. An extensive introduction and copious critical commentary, positioned at the back of the book, will enable students and scholars alike to access Knevet's complicated and enigmatic meanings, structures, and allusions.
particularly affronted by Scroop’s 30 The Judas kiss treason that he likens it to ‘Another fall of man’ (477). Coriolanus points up the potential contradictions between political allegiance and personal integrity: the tragic hero’s resolute desire to remain ‘constant’ (703) to himself soon implicates him in ‘Manifest treason’ (718). While in a famous speech from another of the Roman tragedies, Julius Caesar, Antony uses rhetoric to unpick the rhetorical distinction between honour and treason (834–6). In many of the plays, interpersonal deceit and political treason are
. S. Brewer, 2003), p. 57; Cooper, Shakespeare and the Medieval World . 11 Claude Fretz, ‘“Full of Ugly Sights, of Ghastly Dreams”: Dreams and Tragedy in Shakespeare’s Richard III’, Cahiers Elizabethiens , 92.1 (2017), 32–49, and ‘“Either His Notion Weakens, or His Discernings | Are Lethargied”: Sleeplessness and Waking Dreams as Tragedy in Julius Caesar and King Lear’ , Etudes Episteme , 30 (2017); Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare ; Totaro, ‘Securing Sleep in Hamlet’; see
black-eyed queen is Cleopatra, who escorted Julius Caesar along the Nile. 61] Ganges: river in northern India, sacred to Hindus. 62] Banians: Hindu traders. 63–64] calcined; purifying waves: Hindu dead are cremated (calcined: turned to ashes), and their ashes are thrown into the water of the Ganges. 69] Tiber; Horatius’ valour: The Tiber is the river on which Rome stands. Horatius Cocles (530–500 BC) defended the Sublician bridge against invasion, and swam back across the Tiber in full armour once it had been demolished (Eardley, Lady Hester Pulter). 101 Women
-Martialian tradition, or at least to deny these elements in their own work. Renaissance practitioners and theorizing A theoretical understanding of the epigram in the Renaissance may be derived from both the poetic treatises of the period – such works as Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetices Libri Septem, Jacobus Pontanus’s Poeticae Institutiones, and Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie – a nd from the prefatory material to published epigram collections.76 Treatises were fairly uniform in their description of the genre, but Scaliger was the most frequently cited by later writers.77 His
object of the Israelites’ idolatry; see Exodus 32:4. 99] Basan bull: a notoriously strong bull from the fertile region of Bashan (Psalm 22:12). Cavendish puns on ‘Basan’ and ‘brazen’ (of brass). 101] Mahomet: Proverbially, Mahomet called the mountain to come to him. 103] Pompey: a Roman leader, defeated by Julius Caesar and then killed. 204 Margaret Cavendish When killed was Caesar, his great enemy. The wooden-horse that did great Troy betray, Have told what’s in him, and then run away; Achilles’ arms against Ulysses plead, And not let wit against true valour
Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1985), pp. 638–44, p. 638. He describes the elder Scaliger (Julius Caesar) as ‘a major exponent of epigrammatic sequences’ (640) without giving a reference. 67 Reynolds, Epigrammata (1611). 68 Niccols, The Furies, sig. A3r. Epigrams in print187 69 Charles Cathcart, ‘John Davies of Hereford, Marston, and Hall’, Ben Jonson Journal, 17(2010), pp. 242–8, p. 243. 70 Jonson, ‘To All to Whom I Write’, Ep. 9. 71 Partridge, ‘Jonson’s Epigrammes: The Named and the Nameless’, p. 155. 72
. Margoliouth, Legouis, Donald Friedman, and Nigel Smith have caught allusions to Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Henry V in other parts of the poem.9 But no one seems to have noticed that ‘I saw him dead’ is a direct quotation of Hal’s startled response to Falstaff’s rising from the dead in Henry IV, Part 1. Shortly after Douglas appears to have slain Falstaff in Act 5, Prince John sees Falstaff alive and asks Hal, ‘Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?’ Hal insists, ‘I did, I saw him dead, / Breathless and bleeding on the ground