|
|
Article: "Talking" and reading Shakespeare in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.(William Shakespeare)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Wordsworth Circle
- Article date:
- January 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Wordsworth Circle. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
In Volume III of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), Fanny Price and Henry Crawford read Shakespeare's King Henry VIII out loud to Mrs. Bertram. Like Shakespeare's King Lear and Elizabeth Inchbald's Lover's Vows, two other plays Austen includes, King Henry VIII negotiates a theoretical relationship between the stage and the study, as well as a formal relationship between drama and the novel. However, unlike King Lear, which parallels the structure of the Bertram family, Austen does not invoke King Henry VIII simply as a resource of character types or names. In critical discussions of the interrupted performance of Lover's Vows and of Austen's treatment of theatricality ...