{"product_id":"shakespeares-violence-and-the-early-modern-spectator-9781350565388","title":"Shakespeare's Violence and the Early Modern Spectator","description":"\u003cb\u003eShakespeare's plays feature events of extreme violence. Investigating the ways in which the original early modern audiences might have reacted to their scenes of violence, this volume reveals too the complex web of factors that shape our present-day responses to violence and suffering.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on a mixed methodology, Rebecca Yearling combines close textual analysis with insights from the history of emotions, early modern theatre and cultural history, performance studies and contemporary psychological research to model a new way of approaching early modern audience response.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The book focuses on four key moments of violence: the rape and mutilation of Lavinia in \u003ci\u003eTitus Andronicus\u003c\/i\u003e, the beheading of Cloten in \u003ci\u003eCymbeline\u003c\/i\u003e, the blinding of Gloucester in \u003ci\u003eKing Lear\u003c\/i\u003e and the murder of Desdemona in \u003ci\u003eOthello\u003c\/i\u003e. Individual chapters situate these acts within their wider contexts, exploring how the performance conditions of Shakespeare's time and broader Renaissance discourses surrounding violence, morality and entertainment shaped audience reactions. By reconstructing these layered dynamics, Yearling illuminates the deeply social nature of violent spectacle. In addition, the book argues that responses to fictional violence can reveal insights into how people engage with real-world violence. In both cases, viewers confront moral dilemmas about who deserves empathy and who does not, in ways that reflect underlying social values and power structures.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Importantly, Yearling also looks forward, suggesting that studying early modern responses to violence can simultaneously shed light on our own. In an age saturated with violent media and real-world brutality, understanding how and why audiences respond to violence as they do is both historically significant and urgently contemporary. This book, therefore, is not only about Shakespeare's audiences - it is also about us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRebecca Yearling\u003c\/b\u003e is Senior Lecturer in English at Keele University, UK. Her previous publications include \u003ci\u003eBen Jonson, John Marston and Early Modern Drama\u003c\/i\u003e (2016).\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Arden Shakespeare","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52160340164882,"sku":"9781350565388","price":120.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_412b4d6f-c4ee-4397-9e18-c628b6f44045.jpg?v=1775054167","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/shakespeares-violence-and-the-early-modern-spectator-9781350565388","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}