Gentlemen’s Anxiety: Contesting Authority in Shakespeare’s Plays

This thesis examines how Shakespeare engages with early modern debates about gentility through close readings of The Taming of the Shrew, Henry VI, Part 2, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet. Rather than treating gentility in Shakespeare's drama as a broad social identity or a loose symbolic repository of moral and cultural values, this study approaches Shakespeare's representation of gentility as a historically situated form of authority that is inherently unstable and consistently contested. Drawing on recent historiographical developments in the study of early modern gentility and combining them with historically informed close readings of these four plays, this thesis demonstrates that Shakespeare repeatedly stages the pressures on gentlemanly authority across multiple social spheres, from the domestic household to the realm of national politics. By investigating how these plays engage with contemporary debates over gentility in relation to household governance, popular politics, honour culture, and statecraft, this thesis argues that Shakespeare does not merely register the fluidity of early modern gentility. Instead, he actively dramatizes the sustained effort required to maintain gentlemanly authority under conditions of domestic strain, social unrest, and political uncertainty. In doing so, this thesis explores how these plays articulate what this study terms ‘gentlemen’s anxiety’: a pervasive cultural response to the growing recognition that authority conventionally grounded in gentility was increasingly vulnerable to challenge, negotiation, and failure.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• Xiao Wang (21620375)

• Shakespeare
• gentlemanly identity
• early modern literature
• gentility
• authority
• anxiety

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved
• Open Access after 2028-01-08

Identifier

10779/exe.32941649.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32941649