`Whosoever Resisteth Shall get to Themselfes Dampnacioun': Tyranny and Resistance in Cambises and Horestes

Author: Ward, Allyna

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, 1 July 2008 , pp. 150-167(18)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

This chapter examines the interplay between Elizabethan discussions of tyranny and obedience and Elizabethan anxieties about damnation in Cambises (1560/1) and Horestes (1567). Both tragedies are important to the development of English Renaissance drama because they offer evidence of the impact of the discussions on tyranny and obedience and the impact of the fear that supernatural forces can infiltrate human actions. In determining what leads a king to behave like a tyrant, as in the example of Cambises, Elizabethans questioned whether the `role of the sinister', or, more broadly, the supernatural, was crucial to understanding acts of tyranny. That questioning, which comes through in the tragedies' concern with forms of obedience and resistance, is intimately bound up with the uncertainty in the period with regard to damnation and Hell. The primary aim of this article is to reconsider the plays in light of the contemporary attitudes to tyranny and resistance, the concern with damnation and Hell the plays engage with, and how this affects the development of Elizabethan tragedy.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Newcastle University

Publication date: 2008-07-01

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A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.