In Environmental Degradation in Jacobean Drama, Bruce Boehrer provides the first general history of the Shakespearean stage to focus primarily on ecological issues. Early modern English drama was conditioned by the environmental events of the cities and landscapes within which it developed. Boehrer introduces Jacobean London as the first modern European metropolis in an England beset by problems of overpopulation; depletion of resources and species; land, water and air pollution; disease and other health-related issues; and associated changes in social behavior and cultural output. In six chapters he discusses the work of the most productive and influential playwrights of the day: Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Fletcher, Dekker and Heywood, exploring the strategies by which they made sense of radical ecological change in their drama. In the process, Boehrer sketches out these playwrights' differing responses to environmental issues and traces their legacy for later literary formulations of green consciousness.
• The first broad account of how environmental change affected the Shakespearean theater and will appeal to those interested in environmental history, theater history, ecostudies and ecocriticism • Considers Shakespeare alongside his principal contemporary playwrights and offers readers a range of different theatrical responses to ecological change as a model for distinguishing between these dramatists • Provides a general account of how human behavior changed the natural world of Shakespeare's England to offer an insight into how Shakespeare's contemporaries were changing - and being changed by - the natural world in which they lived
Contents
Introduction; 1. Middleton and ecological change; 2. Jonson and the universe of things; 3. Shakespeare's dirt; 4. John Fletcher and the ecology of manhood; 5. Dekker's walks and orchards; 6. Heywood and the spectacle of the hunt; Conclusion.
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