Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kelly, Joseph L.

Titel

The Role of the Reluctant Harbinger in Arden of Faversham and A Woman Killed with Kindness

Ist Teil von

• Studies in the literary imagination, 2021, Vol.54 (1-2), p.23-40

Ort / Verlag

Atlanta: Studies in the Literary Imagination

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Literature Online (LION eBooks)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [...]I argue that these seemingly forgotten characters uniquely serve the narrative of either play as an often compromised front line of defense for the greater household, as well as a crucial plot device, that strengthens these respective plays' immediate audience impact as well as their enduring theatrical influence. Each of these harbingers become material participants in the plots of both plays, which originate in the central event of infidelity As such, the dramatic tensions at issue concern not merely the modern understanding of domestic strife, as in a central fact of infidelity but rather as Lena Orlin suggests in her 2002 essay "Domestic Tragedy: Private Life on the Public Stage," the genre implicates the entire complex unit of the household that stands at risk in the tumult that ostensibly involves only spouses and rival. [...]the locus of domestic tragedy lies with the defense of the household in which I argue the harbingers serve a crucial role. Note, for example, the comic insouciance and/or lack of awareness, even ignorance, of numerous attempts by the cutthroats Shakebag and Black Will to ambush Arden and Franklin; and Woman Killed's Frankford's determined ignorance of the potential impropriety of his insistence that an unsupervised eligible bachelor reside at his home, followed by determined disbelief in his wife Anne's infidelity both of which Nicholas must overcome by equally determined witness. b. Journey and Ordeal Both plays borrow a type of medieval genre inserted as an isolated episode or interlude that departs from what might otherwise be a linear narrative.