Italian culture in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries rewriting, remaking, refashioning

Contents: Introduction: appropriating Italy: towards a new approach to Renaissance drama, Michele Marrapodi; Part I Rewriting Italian Prose and Drama: Pastoral jazz from the writ to the liberty, Louise George Clubb; Harlequin/harlotry in Henry IV, Part One, Frances K. Barasch; The mirror of all Christian courtiers: Castiglione's Cortegiano as a source for Henry V, Adam Max Cohen; Shakespeare's romantic Italy: novelistic, theatrical and cultural transactions in the Comedies, Michele Marrapodi; Virtuosity and mimesis in the Commedia dell'arte and Hamlet, Robert Henke; Gascoigne's Supposes: Englishing Italian 'error' and adversarial reading practices, Jill Phillips Ingram. Part II Remaking Italian Myths and Culture: 'At the cubiculo': Shakespeare's problems with Italian language and culture, Keir Elam; Between myth and fact: The Merchant of Venice as docu-drama, J.R. Mulryne; Harington, Troilus and Cressida, and the poets' war, Lisa Hopkins; Shakespeare's dreams, sprites, and the recognition game, Nina daVinci Nichols; Re-make/re-model: Marston's The Malcontent and Guarinian tragicomedy, Jason Lawrence. Part III Refashioning Ideology: Shakespeare and Venice, John Drakakis; 'As if a man were author of himself': the (re-)fashioning of the Oedipal hero from Plutarch's Martius to Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Claudia Corti; 'The strongest oaths are straw': ritual inversion in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Victoria Scala Wood; Learning to spy: The Tempest as Italianate disguised-duke play, Michael J. Redmond; The courtesan revisited: Thomas Middleton, Pietro Aretino, and sex-phobic criticism, Celia R. Daileader. Part IV Coda: The music of words. From madrigal to drama and beyond: Shakespeare foreshadowing an operatic technique, Giorgio Melchiori; Select bibliography; Index.