Category: Reading
![A row of stage crew and actors in eighteenth-century-style costumes stands on a stage; an actor stands in front of them reading from a small piece of paper; the shadowed heads of audience members are visible in the foreground.]](https://i0.wp.com/broadlytextual.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/mike-pence-hamilton.jpg?resize=790%2C550&ssl=1)
Persuasive Performance: Theater and Conversion
“We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all
Un/natural Citizens: Naturalization and Conversion
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President …” (US Constitution) “Naturalization is the process by which U.S. citizenship is granted to a foreign citizen or national after he or she fulfills
“Report Me and My Cause Aright:” Hamlet and the Political Power of Dramatic Narrative
During the final scene of Hamlet, the titular prince makes use of his dying breaths to command two things of Horatio. First, he commands Horatio to affirm that Fortinbras “has his dying voice” (5.2.393) thus giving him legitimacy to take the throne of Denmark. Second, he orders Horatio to tell Fortinbras the story of Hamlet’s
“Bring in The Crows to Peck the Eagles:” Rewriting the Politics of “Coriolanus”
Compared to a number of Shakespeare’s other tragedies, Coriolanus does not frequently enter into the popular consciousness. While T.S. Eliot may have called it Shakespeare’s “[m]ost assured artistic success,” the play has not historically been viewed as one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies. Despite this, the play has long been the subject of critical scrutiny over
“In Troy There Lies the Scene”: Teaching Students to Think about Shakespeare
While teaching Troilus and Cressida this semester, one of the assignments that my students were tasked with was to write an essay on the ways in which the play made visible or commented upon an issue that was facing 16th century England. Students were given a brief lesson on the political and social troubles of
“Popp’d in between th’ election and my hopes:” Using Shakespeare to Understand Contemporary Politics
“Living when he did, Shakespeare could no more be democratic or anti-democratic then he could be a motorist.” -Thomas Marc Parrott, Twenty-Three Plays and Sonnets On October 8th, Stephen Greenblatt wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times which sought to argue that through a detailed close reading of Shakespeare’s Richard III, we
Hated, Feared and Loved: Popular Representations of Nicollò Machiavelli
“A controversy has risen about this: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or vice versa. My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than
A Match Made in the Archive: Reading and Poaching Through Ngrams and Rare Books
On a hunch, I went home after the DH events last September and typed “Jesuit” into the English corpus of Google Books’ Ngram Viewer. The tool is more powerful than what I used it for, but my search revealed how popular the word was in the English-language books that Google has digitized and made searchable.
The English Renaissance “Timeline”: Part III
“Habits of behavior begin with the control of the hand, with the formations of the hand.” – Jonathan Goldberg[1] In “The English Renaissance ‘Timeline’: Part II,” I discussed how I came upon the works of English Renaissance calligrapher Esther Inglis, specifically through her drawing of an emblem from Jean-Jacques Boissard’s Emblemes (1588). The emblem became
The English Renaissance “Timeline”: Part II
Last week, I discussed illustrations, or “drawings,” of printed media from Thomas Fella’s commonplace book with the aim of thinking more broadly about the relation between printed media, visual culture, and memory in Renaissance England. This week, I’d like to explore these ideas further by turning to the work of another English Renaissance calligrapher, Esther