Overview
Fathers are central to the drama of Shakespeare's time: they are
revered, even sacred, yet they are also flawed human beings who feature
as obstacles in plays of all genres. In Problem Fathers in Shakespeare
and Renaissance Drama, Tom MacFaul examines how fathers are paradoxical
and almost anomalous characters on the English Renaissance stage.
Starting as figures of confident authority in early Elizabethan drama,
their scope for action becomes gradually more restricted, until by late
Jacobean drama they have accepted the limitations of their power.
MacFaul argues that this process points towards a crisis of patriarchal
authority in wider contemporary culture. While Shakespeare's plays
provide a key insight into these shifts, this book explores the dramatic
culture of the period more widely to present the ways in which
Shakespeare's work differed from that of his contemporaries while both
sharing and informing their artistic and ideological preoccupations.