When Honour's at the Stake (Routledge Revivals)

<p>Renaissance ideas of honour had a profound influence on the English people who formed Shakespeare’s audiences. In <i>When Honour’s at the Stake</i> first published in 1973 Norman Council describes the increasing importance of these ideas to the themes and structure of a number of Shakespeare’s major plays. </p><p>The validity of the most widely approved code of honour was being challenged on a variety of fronts yet both personal standards of behaviour and public affairs were habitually understood in terms of honour. A series of tragedies are given their basic form by dramatizing the pernicious effects of man’s disobedience to the various demands of honour; in <i>Julius Caesar</i> <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> <i>Hamlet</i> <i>Othello</i> and <i>King Lear</i> honour is among the principal motives of tragedy. In this way the modern reader’s comprehension of the plays can be greatly enhanced by reference to Elizabethan honour codes. </p>