Evento

Free Speaker - USC Professor Rebecca Lemon

Free Speaker - USC Professor Rebecca Lemon
March 25, 2018 at 2pm
FREE EVENT RESERVATIONS ARE RECOMMENDED.

Falstaff And His Critics
Come and learn from USC's Professor Lemon why Falstaff is one of Shakespeare's most popular characters!

Falstaff is arguablyShakespeares most popular character.One Shakespeare critic calls him"a kind of god in the mythology of modern man," while another writesWhen we are wholly human . . . we become most like either Hamlet or Falstaff."Thistalk considers the praise of Falstaff next to the critiques against him, as a Vice character or aMachiavel.What do we make of this larger than life figure, and how do we assess his friendship with Prince Hal, whobegins by funding Falstaff's drinking but ends inabandoning his friend? And ifPrince Hal banishes him, what might Queen Elizabeth have foundso appealing in this beloved"whitebearded Satan" and an "abominablemisleader of youth"?

Rebecca Lemon is Associate Professor of English Literatureat the University of Southern California. She is the author ofTreason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeares England(2006), co-editor ofThe Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature(2009), and associate editor of theBlackwell Encyclopaedia of English Renaissance Literature(2012).Her articles have appeared in numerous journals, and herELRpiece, Compulsory Conviviality in Early Modern England, received abiennial article prize. Her book,Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England,is forthcoming from Penn Press in 2018, and herwriting on Falstaff have appeared in Lapham's Quarterly.