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Post by shaxper on Mar 28, 2002 22:34:56 GMT -5
Just curious who you'd pick as your favorite of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Personally, I love Marlowe and Middleton.
Marlowe has this unwavering passion to push boundaries in a way that expresses his contempt for the conventions and restrictions of his age (often humerously). When Tamburlaine spends an entire play conquering nations, without any dramatic conflict or reversal of fortunes, or when Faustus spends an entire scene simply kicking the Pope, I can almost feel myself standing along the Themes, biting my thumb at London.
I love Middleton for his versatility. On the one hand, The Changeling is one of the most psychologically rich and complex dramas produced during that time period. On the other, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is an unabashedly raunchy comedy that doesn't even try to disguise it's many double entandres that seem to occur at least once a line. I get that same "biting my thumb" feeling in this play, but it's less angry and more fun.
I still regard Shakespeare as the greatest genious the English Renaissance stage produced, and I find his ability to truly view characters as many sided humans and his ability to throw so much meaning into a single line, awe inspiring and amazingly fun, but sometimes my mind needs a rest for all that and I just prefer these guys for lighter entertainment or a simpler (though not always simple) story.
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Post by Ganymede on Mar 30, 2002 12:34:20 GMT -5
I like Webster. His Duchess of Malfi was pretty wild. I also like Middleton and Dekker for their potrayal of The Roaring Girl-- a play about a real London figure who cross-dressed. Her name was Mary Frith, but she is more commonly known as Moll Cutpurse. A very interesting read. I recommend it, especially if you're at all interested in gender studies.
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Desdemona
Money Lender
He was not of an age, but for all time!
Posts: 39
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Post by Desdemona on Apr 6, 2002 7:13:44 GMT -5
Shakespeare had many great English contemporaries of course, but of Marlowe, Chapman, Herrick, Lyly, Nashe, Jonson, Donne, ... I have only read fragments and/or a few poems, so I don't realy have an opinion about them. Except that I liked what I read so far. So my favourite contemporaries of Shakespeare are non-English. But perhaps this is not the place to digress on them; I'll start a new topic in 'Other Renaissance-Related Works'.
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Post by shaxper on Apr 27, 2002 18:49:17 GMT -5
(bumping this topic back up to the top of the forum )
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