A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780691269993)

How the drama of Shakespeare's time demonstrates the tensions within civility

Is civility merely a matter of reinforcing status and excluding others? Or is it a lubricant in a polarised world, enabling us to overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good? In A Defence of Pretence, Indira Ghose argues that it is both. Ghose turns to the drama of Shakespeare's time to explore the notion of civility. The theatre, she suggests, was a laboratory where many of the era's conflicts played out. The plays test the precepts found in treatises on civility and show that, in the complexity and confusion of human life, moral purity is an illusion. We are always playing roles. In these plays, as in social life, pretence is inescapable. Could it be a virtue?

Civility, Ghose finds, is radically ambiguous. The plays of Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton, grappling with dissimulation, lies and social performance, question the idea of a clear-cut boundary between sincerity and dissembling, between truth and lies. What is decisive is the use to which our play-acting is put. A pretence of mutual respect might serve an ethical end: to foster a sense of common purpose. In life, as in drama, the concept of the common good might be a fiction, but one that is crucial for human society.

Author: Indira Ghose
ISBN-10: 0691269998
ISBN-13: 9780691269993
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/02/2025
Pages: 280
Format: Hardcover