Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy

Building on a theoretical framework offered in the first chapter, this study examines the ideological repercussions of the staging of the Italian scene in prominent works by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe. By focusing on the self-conscious, overt rehearsal of existing texts and genres, Michael J. Redmond argues that these plays represent the political conflicts of Jacobean England within the context of previous writing about the crises of Cinquecento Italy.