자아, 연극 그리고 영국을 개혁하기: 셰익스피어의 『한여름 밤의 꿈』에 나타난 변신/변화의 욕망

초록

This study attempts to read William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the context of the Reformation which particularly triggered a wave of changes and transformation in the late sixteenth century England. While taking up “reformations” as a major trope of this romantic comedy, this essay investigates the ways in which Shakespeare’s appropriation of classical texts and folkloric myths operates in representing the social and personal desire for reformations, and thus the resistances to them, on many different levels of society. The mechanicals’ amateur performance points to how the traditional festivals and religious performance are contained and exploited within the purview of early modern courtly entertainment apparatus. Inasmuch as the communal festivity is absorbed by the ruling class, the patriarchal order of society militates against the female autonomy that bodies forth through Hippolyta’s past as an Amazon, Titania's affection for the Indian child, and Hermia’s elopement. Shakespearean appropriation and imitation of classical texts and myths, thus, can be said to have enabled the play-text to bring onto stage the transformative effects of the Reformation on the lives of the English in early modern England. In doing so, this paper attempts to trace in Shakespeare's romantic comedy the so called ‘metamorphic sensibility’ of early modern period within the purview of the post-Reformation social dynamics.

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