Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Jonson, and Comic Androgyny

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University of Delaware Press, 1995 - Drama - 237 pages
The voluminous contemporary critical work on English Renaissance androgyny/transvestism has not fully uncovered the ancient Greek and Roman roots of the gender controversy. This work argues that the variant Renaissance views on the androgyne's symbolism are, in fact, best understood with reference to classical representations of the double-sexed or gender-baffled figures, and with the classical merging of the figure with images of beasts and monsters.

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Contents

Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters Two Forms of Classical and Renaissance Androgyny
23
Mazes Water Dolphins Beasts The Shakespearean Androgynes Defiance of Closure
68
Jonson Satire and the Empty Hermaphrodite
105
Experimental Androgynes Falstaff Ursula and The New Inn
136
That Reason Wonder May Diminish The Androgyne and the Theater Wars
170
Epilogue
198
Notes
203
Bibliography
224
Index
233
Copyright

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Page 170 - I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions...
Page 129 - The third requisite in our poet, or maker, is imitation, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use, to make choice of one excellent man above the rest, and so to follow him till he grow very he, or so like him as the copy may be mistaken for the principal...
Page 142 - By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters: was it for me to kill the heir-apparent ? should I turn upon the true prince? why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter; I was now a coward on instinct.
Page 58 - The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
Page 170 - Shakespeare puts them all down, aye, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the Poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him...
Page 172 - Few of the university pen plays well; they smell too much of that writer Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, aye, and Ben Jonson too.
Page 114 - Whence should this flood of passion, trow, take head ? ha ! Best dream no longer of this running humour, For fear I sink; the violence of the stream Already hath transported me so far, That I can feel no ground at all: but soft—- Oh, 'tis our water-bearer: somewhat has crost him now.
Page 216 - he had many quarrels with Marston, beat him and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him ; the beginning of them were that Marston represented him on the stage in his youth given to venery.
Page 71 - Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet a union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.

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