Shakespeare, Marlow and the politics of France

Taking a wide-ranging intertextual approach, Richard Hillman sets Early Modern English play-texts against political and cultural discourses concerning France, as these informed contemporary English consciousness. The English works explored go beyond those directly representing French affairs; the French examples include dramatic treatments of Joan of Arc and of the assassination of the Guises by Henri III. In addition to its fresh readings of some familiar plays, the book proposes, as unique to the English-French dynamic, a theoretical model relating history, discourse and subjectivity.