The stories of Hagar, Dinah, and Tamar stand out as strangers in the ancestral narrative. They deviate from the main plot and draw attention to the interests and fates of characters who are not a part of the ancestral family. Readers have traditionally domesticated these strange stories. They have made them "familiar"--all about the ancestral family. Thus Hagar's story becomes a drama of deselection, Shechem and the Hivites become emblematic for ancestral conflict with the people of the land, and Tamar becomes a lens by which to read providence in the story of Joseph. This study resurrects the question of these stories' strangeness. Rather than allow the ancestral narrative to determine their significance, it attends to each interlude's particularity and detects ironic gestures made toward the ancestral narrative. These stories contain within them the potential to defamiliarize key themes of ancestral identity: the ancestral-divine relationship, ancestral relations to the land and its inhabitants, and ancestral self-identity. Perhaps the ancestral family are not the only privileged partners of God, the only heirs to the land, or the only bloodline fit to bear the next generation.

The essays in this collection, contributed by an internationally distinguished group of scholars, bring up to date many aspects of the criticism of the English Interludes. The development of these plays was a significant part of the history of the growth of English drama in the sixteenth century to the extent that they may be regarded as its main stream. Arising by means of a felicitous combination of the development of printing and the growth of a professional theatre, plays of this type quickly became a forum for the presentation and exploration of many contemporary themes. They became a useful means of disseminating a wide variety of opinions and public concerns as well as exhibiting at times the intellectual brilliance of the Renaissance.The essays here are concentrated upon power, particularly in its religious and political aspects, gender and theatricality. The political and religious upheavals of the Reformation under the Tudor monarchy form a background as well as a focus at times. In particular the position of women in sixteenth-century society is examined in essays on several plays. There is also discussion of the development of theatrical techniques as playwrights worked closely with small acting companies to reach a wide audience ranging from the royal court to the common streets. This was achieved, as a number of essays make clear, through a variety of entertaining theatrical devices.ContentsPeter HAPPE: IntroductionJean-Paul DEBAX: Complicity and Hierarchy: A Tentative Definition of the Interlude GenusLynn FOREST-HILL: Maidens and Matrons: The Theatricality of Gender in the Tudor InterludesPeter HAPPE: Skelton's Magnyfycence: Theatre, Poetry, InfluenceMike PINCOMBE: Comic Treatment of Tragic Character in Godly Queen Hester Janette DILLON: Powerful Obedience: Godly Queen Hester and Katherine of AragonBob GODFREY: Feminine Singularity: The Representation of Young Women in Some Early Tudor InterludesDavid MILLS: Wit to Woo: The Wit InterludesDermot CAVANAGH: Reforming Sovereignty: John Bale and Tragic DramaGreg WALKER: Flytyng in the Face of Convention: Protest and Innovation in Lindsay's Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisJohn J. MCGAVIN: Working Towards a Reformed Identity in Lindsay's Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisPaul Whitfield WHITE: The Pammachius Affair at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1545Roberta MULLINI: Impatient Poverty: The Intertextual Game of SatirePeter THOMSON: Sound City Jests and Country Pretty Jests: Jack Juggler and Gammer Gurton's NeedleAlice HUNT: Legitimacy, Ceremony and Drama: Mary Tudor's Coronation and RespublicaDavid BEVINGTON: Staging the Reformation: Power and Theatricality in the Plays of William Wager

Darryll Grantley has created a comprehensive guide to the interlude: the extant non-cycle drama in English from the late fourteenth century up to the period in which the London commercial theatre began. As precursors of seventeenth-century drama, not only do these interludes shed important light on the technical and literary development of Shakespearean theatre, but many are also works of considerable theatrical or cultural interest in themselves. This accessible reference guide provides an entry for each of the extant interludes and fragments (c.100) typically containing an account of early editions or manuscripts; authorship and sources; modern editions; plot summary and dramatis personae; list of social issues present in the plays; verbal and dramaturgical features; songs and music; allusions and place names; stage directions and comments on staging; and modern productions, among other valuable and informative details. There are full bibliographies, indexes of characters and songs, and appendices.

The Hill Times: Best Books of 2016 An overview of the history of elections and voting in Canada, including minority governments, dynasties, and social movements. Dynasties and Interludes provides a comprehensive and unique overview of elections and voting in Canada from Confederation to the most recent election. Its principal argument is that the Canadian political landscape has consisted of long periods of hegemony of a single party and/or leader (dynasties), punctuated by short, sharp disruptions brought about by the sudden rise of new parties, leaders, or social movements (interludes). This revised and updated second edition includes an analysis of the results of the 2011 and 2015 federal elections as well as an in-depth discussion of the “Harper Dynasty.”