"Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished": Medieval Dramatic Eschatology in Shakespeare

Authors

John W. Velz, University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

An Elizabethan dramatist whose early memories of theater centered on annual productions of a mystery cycle would unconsciously think of serious . drama as driving teleologically toward an eschatological resolution. This is an artistic cause and effect which apparently .operated in. William Shakespeare's life;¹ it seems very likely that he learned how to think about plays from seeing what was shown with defiant civic commitment and special emphasis in the streets of Coventry in the last years of the Corpus Christi cycle there. And a substantial number of plays in his canon include eschatological scenes, usually in Act V.²

Recommended Citation

Velz, John W. (1992) ""Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished": Medieval Dramatic Eschatology in Shakespeare," Comparative Drama: Vol. 26: Iss. 4, Article 2.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol26/iss4/2