Archaism, the “Middle Age” and the Morality Play in Shakespearean Drama

Abstract

This essay explores the use of outmoded forms in the Shakespearean history play, examining the reanimation of the morality play and its implications for our thinking about periodization and the temporality of language. Focusing on the play-within-the-play in Sir Thomas More, it argues that paying close attention to the uses of theatrical archaism can provide us with a new perspective on Shakespeare and his collaborators' engagement with the past. In doing so, the essay engages with an important strand of recent criticism in the Humanities, which has focused on temporality and, above all, ambiguities and tensions in the ways in which time is conceptualized by artists and theorists.