- A-Z
- Zeitsprünge : Forsc...
- Jahrgang 26
- Heft 1–2
- Komplementäre Inter...
- Autor(in)
- Erschienen
- 1. Juli 2022
- ISSN
-
E-ISSN: 2751-515X
P-ISSN: 1431-7451
- DOI
- Seitenbereich
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1-17
- Zusammenfsg.
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Early modern plot-making has been described as the result of a superimposition of a relatively new linear plot system onto an older cyclical plot system. Toward the end of the 1590s, this leads in England, and above all on the Shakespearean stage, to the emergence of ›double worlds‹ and ›double stories‹, aesthetically exploring the linear logic of cause and effect. The article reads three of Shakespeare’s plays, Richard II, Julius Caesar and Hamlet, as (increasingly fictionalized) experiments in (sequential) ›punctuation‹ in the sense that, for a time at least, they complementarily, and self-contradictorily, open up the offer of interpreting the events of a succession on the top of the social pyramid both as (potentially) unlawful usurpation (Caesar, Claudius and, arguably, the real Earl of Essex in the role of a second Bolingbroke) and as heroic, lawful restitution of the established order (Brutus, Hamlet and, as for that, Elizabeth I as Richard), thus aesthetically negotiating political questions of souvereignty and authority as well as options of resistance and preventive action.