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The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, And Cultural Performance In English Renaissance Drama, Nathaniel C. Leonard
The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, And Cultural Performance In English Renaissance Drama, Nathaniel C. Leonard
Open Access Dissertations
The critical discussion of metatheatre has historically connected a series of reflexive dramatic strategies - like soliloquy, chorus, dumb show, the-play-within-the-play, prologue, and epilogue - and assumed that because these tropes all involve the play's apparent awareness of its own theatrical nature they all have similar dramaturgical functions. This dissertation, by contrast, shows that the efficacy derived from metatheatrical moments that overtly reference theatrical production is better understood in the context of restaged non-theatrical cultural performances. Restaged moments of both theatrical and non-theatrical social ritual produce layers of performance that allow the play to create representational space capable of circumventing …
How Should I Act?: Shakespeare And The Theatrical Code Of Conduct, Ann E. Garner
How Should I Act?: Shakespeare And The Theatrical Code Of Conduct, Ann E. Garner
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation examines the intersection of English Renaissance drama and conduct literature. Current scholarship on this intersection usually interprets plays as illustrations of cultural behavioral norms who find their model and justification in courtly norms. In this dissertation, I argue that plays present behavioral norms that emerge from this nascent profession and that were thus influenced by this profession and the concerns of the people who worked in it, rather than by the court. To do so, I examine three behavioral norms that were important to courtiers, specifically Disguise, Moderation and Wit through the work of the English Renaissance theater’s …