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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Allyna Ward
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.
Author(s): Ward AE
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Yearbook of English Studies
Year: 2008
Volume: 38
Issue: 1-2
Pages: 150-167
Date deposited: 08/09/2010
ISSN (print): 0306-2473
ISSN (electronic): 0026-7937
Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
