Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare's England
Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama Series

Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare?sEngland examines the intersection between art and culture and explains how ideas about age circulated in early modern England. Stephannie Gearhart illustrates how a variety of texts ? including drama by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton ? placed elders? and youths? voices in dialogue with one another to construct the period?s ideology of age and shape elder-youth relations.

Introduction: historicizing generational conflict

Part I: Youth

1. Blood vs. manners: youth’s quest for independence in The Merchant of Venice

2. Familial contracts: financial inheritance in the plays of Jonson and Middleton

Part II: Elders

3. "The very latest counsel that ever I shall breathe": 2 Henry IV, Hamlet, and ideological inheritance

4 Old fools and serpents’ teeth: defining age and the terms of the parent-child relationship in King Lear

Conclusion: A difficult age

Index

Stephannie S. Gearhart is an Associate Professor at Bowling Green State University, USA.