Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English ComedyCambridge University Press, 14 okt. 2004 - 243 sidor The courtship and remarriage of a rich widow was a popular motif in early modern comic theatre. Jennifer Panek brings together a wide variety of texts, from ballads and jest-books to sermons and court records, to examine the staple widow of comedy in her cultural context and to examine early modern attitudes to remarriage. She persuasively challenges the critical tendency to see the stereotype of the lusty widow as a tactic to dissuade women from second marriages, arguing instead that it was deployed to enable her suitors to regain their masculinity, under threat from the dominant, wealthier widow. The theatre, as demonstrated by Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher and others, was the prime purveyor of a fantasy in which a young man's sexual mastery of a widow allowed him to seize the economic opportunity she offered. |
Innehåll
1 | |
female remarriage in early modern England | 13 |
domestic government and male anxiety | 46 |
courtship and compensation | 77 |
the lusty widow as wife | 124 |
four Middletonian remarriage plots | 157 |
Notes | 202 |
Works cited | 222 |
237 | |
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anxiety audience Audley ballad Bill of Information Bould Captain Castiza chastity comedy comic conventional court Courtesan courtship coverture cuckoldry culture Cynthia Dampit desire Duchess of Malfi early modern English English Eudora evidence fact fantasy fear Fitchow fortune Greene's Tu Quoque Gwenthyan hath Hoard household Kate Kate's Keep the Widow kind Lady Goldenfleece Lambston London Lucre lusty widow stereotype Lysander maid male marital marriage marry masculinity match mercenary Middleton moral night play play's pleasure plot promise Pyeboord Quarlous Ram Alley remarried widow Ricardo rich widow scene second husband sexual appetite shee Sir Owen Spendall stage suggests suitors Tharsalio theatre thee Thomas Thomas Middleton Thomas Whythorne thou threat trick Tridewell unto Valeria Vallentine virility w[hi]ch wealth Weatherwise wedding Whythorne Widow Medler Widow Waking widow-wooing Widow's Tears widowhood wife Wit Without Money Witgood wives woman women wooing young youth