The Drama of Memory in Shakespeare's History Plays

This book analyses the drama of memory in Shakespeare's history plays. Situating the plays in relation to the extra-dramatic contexts of early modern print culture, the Reformation and an emergent sense of nationhood, it examines the dramatic devices the theatre developed to engage with the memory crisis triggered by these historical developments. Against the established view that the theatre was a cultural site that served primarily to salvage memories, Isabel Karremann also considers the uses and functions of forgetting on the Shakespearean stage and in early modern culture. Drawing on recent developments in memory studies, new formalism and performance studies, the volume develops an innovative vocabulary and methodology for analysing Shakespeare's mnemonic dramaturgy in terms of the performance of memory that results in innovative readings of the English history plays. Karremann's book is of interest to researchers and upper-level students of Shakespeare studies, early modern drama and memory studies.

Introduction: forms of remembering and forgetting in early modern England and on the Shakespearean stage; 1. Media: oral report, written record and theatrical performance in 2 Henry VI and Richard III; 2. Ceremony: rites of oblivion in Richard II and 1 Henry IV; 3. Embodiment: Falstaff's 'shameless transformations' in Henry IV; 4. Distraction: nationalist oblivion and contrapuntal sequencing in Henry V; 5. Nostalgia: affecting spectacles and sceptical audiences in Henry VIII; Conclusion: Shakespeare's mnemonic dramaturgy; Bibliography; Index.

Isabel Karremann is Professor of English Literature at the Würzburg University, Germany. She is the co-editor of Forgetting Faith? Negotiating Confessional Conflict in Early Modern Europe (with Cornel Zwierlein and Inga Mai Groote, 2012), Shakespeare in Cold War Europe: Conflict, Commemoration, Celebration (with Erica Sheen, 2016) and Forms of Faith: Literary Form and Religious Conflict in Early Modern England (with Jonathan Baldo, forthcoming).