Manchester University Press
6 A Yorkshire Tragedy
Abstract
Perhaps the overriding meanings of ‘household’ in A Yorkshire Tragedy are family and lineage, and it offers a complex examination of the intergenerational pull of the ‘house’ as contained by the family seat. It is in the context not only of his role as head of his nuclear family but also as representative of his ancestral heritage that the husband's actions are judged, resulting in a play whose temporal perspective is as wide as that of A Woman Killed With Kindness. A Yorkshire Tragedy treats the familiar domestic themes of the pain of familial rupture and the relationship between household and community, but it does so in a very different theatrical form. The opening scene, in which the servants discuss their London wares, has a familiar social particularity to it, but the rest of the play is totally dissimilar in tone: the physical articulation of rooms and spaces and specifically localised areas of the house are pared down to one significant example. Images that connect earth to heaven, soiling money to ethereal purity, set the play firmly within the morality tradition.
Abstract
Perhaps the overriding meanings of ‘household’ in A Yorkshire Tragedy are family and lineage, and it offers a complex examination of the intergenerational pull of the ‘house’ as contained by the family seat. It is in the context not only of his role as head of his nuclear family but also as representative of his ancestral heritage that the husband's actions are judged, resulting in a play whose temporal perspective is as wide as that of A Woman Killed With Kindness. A Yorkshire Tragedy treats the familiar domestic themes of the pain of familial rupture and the relationship between household and community, but it does so in a very different theatrical form. The opening scene, in which the servants discuss their London wares, has a familiar social particularity to it, but the rest of the play is totally dissimilar in tone: the physical articulation of rooms and spaces and specifically localised areas of the house are pared down to one significant example. Images that connect earth to heaven, soiling money to ethereal purity, set the play firmly within the morality tradition.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Note on the text xiii
- Introduction 1
- 1 ‘My narrow-prying neighbours blab’ 26
- 2 ‘Choose thee a bed and hangings for a chamber; Take with thee everything that hath thy mark’ 64
- 3 Arden of Faversham 104
- 4 Two Lamentable Tragedies 128
- 5 A Woman Killed With Kindness 150
- 6 A Yorkshire Tragedy 175
- Conclusion 193
- Appendices 206
- Bibliography 217
- Index 232
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations ix
- Acknowledgements xi
- Note on the text xiii
- Introduction 1
- 1 ‘My narrow-prying neighbours blab’ 26
- 2 ‘Choose thee a bed and hangings for a chamber; Take with thee everything that hath thy mark’ 64
- 3 Arden of Faversham 104
- 4 Two Lamentable Tragedies 128
- 5 A Woman Killed With Kindness 150
- 6 A Yorkshire Tragedy 175
- Conclusion 193
- Appendices 206
- Bibliography 217
- Index 232
