Shakespeare and the crisis of absolutism in seventeenth-century England

The thesis studies three late Shakespearean dramas for their insights into the crisis of absolutism in early seventeenth-century England. It describes how the plays give dramatic form to ideological anxieties, and analyzes the historical pressures that generated those anxieties. Chapter 1 summarizes the historical background of the seventeenth-century crisis, arguing that it did not result from a straightforward conflict between opposed views of social order, but rather from an evolving historical process in which ideological positions only gradually became polarized. The chapter concludes by reading King James's Trew Law of Free Monarchies, in order to exemplify the internal strains and contradictions that arise in proclaiming a theory of absolute monarchical power. Chapters 2 through 4 investigate three plays written early in James I's reign which refract contemporary historical crises: King Lear, Macbeth and Cymbeline. King Lear depicts ideological expressions as provoked by crisis and suggests how efforts to consolidate or justify authority contain the seeds of their own undoing. Macbeth addresses a tension within absolutist theory arising from its need to justify the legitimacy of tyrants. Finally, Cymbeline, a tragicomedy, dramatizes the inability of tragic paradigms used in absolutist writings to resolve the uncertainties of a society in crisis.;The Conclusion uses the perspective gained from the previous readings of the plays to reexamine recent accounts of Shakespearean drama. The thesis rejects the argument that drama, and tragedy in particular, precipitated the English Civil War, and argues that instead of reading the plays as radical critiques of the Stuart regime, we should read them for their insights into historical crises and the ways in which such crises shape--and complicate--the development of ideological thought.