Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy : Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage

Building on a theoretical framework offered in the first chapter, this study examines the ideological repercussions of the staging of the Italian scene in prominent works by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe. By focusing on the self-conscious, overt rehearsal of existing texts and genres, Michael J. Redmond argues that these plays represent the political conflicts of Jacobean England within the context of previous writing about the crises of Cinquecento Italy.

The use of Italian culture in the Jacobean theatre was never an isolated gesture. In considering the ideological repercussions of references to Italy in prominent works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Michael J. Redmond argues that early modern intertextuality was a dynamic process of allusion, quotation, and revision. Beyond any individual narrative source, Redmond foregrounds the fundamental role of Italian textual precedents in the staging of domestic anxieties about state crisis, nationalism, and court intrigue. By focusing on the self-conscious, overt rehearsal of existing texts and genres, the book offers a new approach to the intertextual strategies of early modern English political drama. The pervasive circulation of Cinquecento political theorists like Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Guicciardini combined with recurrent English representations of Italy to ensure that the negotiation with previous writing formed an integral part of the dramatic agendas of period plays.