Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare's England

<p><em>Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare’s</em> <i>England</i> examines the intersection between art and culture and explains how ideas about age circulated in early modern England. Stephannie Gearhart illustrates how a variety of texts – including drama by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton – placed elders’ and youths’ voices in dialogue with one another to construct the period’s ideology of age and shape elder-youth relations.</p> <p>Introduction: historicizing generational conflict</p><p></p><p>Part I: Youth</p><p></p><p>1. Blood vs. manners: youth’s quest for independence in <em>The Merchant of Venice</em></p><p></p><p>2. Familial contracts: financial inheritance in the plays of Jonson and Middleton</p><p></p><p>Part II: Elders</p><p></p><p>3. "The very latest counsel that ever I shall breathe": <em>2 Henry IV</em>, <em>Hamlet</em>, and ideological inheritance</p><p></p><p>4 Old fools and serpents’ teeth: defining age and the terms of the parent-child relationship in <em>King Lear</em></p><p></p><p>Conclusion: A difficult age</p><p></p><p>Index</p>