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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in History
Recognizing Traps And Frightening Wolves: Foxes And Lions As A Representative Of Machiavellian Political Ideology In Shakespeare’S Comedies, Grace A. Powell
Recognizing Traps And Frightening Wolves: Foxes And Lions As A Representative Of Machiavellian Political Ideology In Shakespeare’S Comedies, Grace A. Powell
Student Scholar Showcase
While William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have been discussed time and time again over the past few centuries, one topic that has been less traversed is the connection between his Comedies and Niccolò Machiavelli’s political ideologies. This project will explore references of lions and foxes in Shakespeare’s Comedies and the leaders and monarchs within them to determine how beliefs about Machiavelli’s political ideology influenced Shakespeare’s literature and became symbols for leadership and power. This project will be important for gaining historical context on Machiavellian political discourse and how it was represented in the contemporary dramatic literature of William Shakespeare. I …
Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor On The Early Modern Stage, Evan Alexander Hixon
Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor On The Early Modern Stage, Evan Alexander Hixon
Dissertations - ALL
This dissertation, "Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor on the Early Modern Stage," builds upon critical scholarship pertaining to early modern service and political theory to interrogate the imagined economic and social functions of clandestine service in the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Webster. Drawing heavily on the works of András Kiséry, David Schalkwyk, Elizabeth Rivlin, and Michael Neill, I look at the exchange of service between spy and spymaster as an accumulation of social and cultural capital. Thinking through spying in this light, this dissertation explores how playwrights represent these service relationships which fall outside of systems of patronage-driven …
Love And Romance In Early Modern British Literature, Sophia Szeneitas
Love And Romance In Early Modern British Literature, Sophia Szeneitas
Senior Honors Projects
This paper seeks to describe and analyze the way in which themes of love and romance were presented in literature in early modern Britain, and how those may differ from or be similar to romantic themes in the media of today. The works being analyzed include plays by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, as well as some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A few different lenses will be explored, including the interaction that love could have with the societal power structure and hierarchy present within the literature (such as the ways in which someone being the lover of a powerful person might …
England's Fairest Creatures, Madison Hart
England's Fairest Creatures, Madison Hart
MSU Graduate Theses
Set in 1616 Jacobean England, surrounding a tragic chamber pot incident, the place setting of the small fishing town of Lechlade, England, begins our story. From generations of fisherman, Elias Eaton, is the first Eaton not to bear a son. Instead, his fierce daughter in her mid-twenties, Julia, our protagonist, helps her father at the docks daily. Although Julia is a champion for women of her time, she dreams of there being something more out there for her than the town that has shackled Eatons for centuries. Julia’s mother, Sybil, is the daughter to the town baker. Her literate father …
In This Harsh World, We Continue To Draw Breath: Queer Persistence In Shakespeare And Hamlet, Beck O. Adelante
In This Harsh World, We Continue To Draw Breath: Queer Persistence In Shakespeare And Hamlet, Beck O. Adelante
Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and most often (mis-)quoted works. The central and titular character has likewise been an endless source of academic and artistic inquiry and exploration since nearly the creation of the work itself. However, this paper argues that a crucial and enlightening piece of the puzzle has, until recently, been left unexplored for the most part, considered a frivolous or non-serious pursuit: Hamlet’s and Hamlet’s queerness. Using historical research and evidence, close readings of the text, and examples of recent productions that have taken this element seriously, this paper argues that to fully understand the …
Wherein To Catch The Conscience Of The Queen: Dystopian Politics In Elizabethan Drama, Helen Fielding
Wherein To Catch The Conscience Of The Queen: Dystopian Politics In Elizabethan Drama, Helen Fielding
Senior Honors Theses
Though established English history portrays Elizabeth I (1533-1603) as uniting England under the new Protestant religion, recent historical evidence reveals that extensive counter-currents still existed. This thesis examines how the politico-religious beliefs of Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights manifest themselves in their drama, particularly through imagery and allusions. It draws especially from Frances Yates to assert that imagery of white magic, Christian Cabala, and alchemy in these dramatists’ works refers to the pure imperial reform movement of Elizabeth’s reign, and also from Clare Asquith to illuminate a reading of Shakespeare as a playwright who encoded in his plays a Catholic message …
Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc
Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc
History Honors Papers
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …
The Downfall Of Chivalry: Tudor Disregard For Medieval Courtly Literature, Jessica G. Downie
The Downfall Of Chivalry: Tudor Disregard For Medieval Courtly Literature, Jessica G. Downie
Honors Theses
In this thesis, I have examined the notion of the gradual demise of chivalric ideals throughout the late-Middle Ages and culminating in the sixteenth century, analyzing how and why the developments of the sixteenth century both enabled and required the English monarchy and the aristocracy to redefine social identities and values, public responsibilities, political duties, and national and religious power. This thesis addresses why the Tudor monarchs appear to have disregarded the examples of chivalric behavior championed by late-medieval writers like Sir Thomas Malory and Jean Froissart, and instead, relied on new works of literature that were more relevant forms …
Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie
Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Anna Larpent (1758-1832) is a crucial figure in theater history and the reception of Shakespeare since drama was a central part of her life. Larpent was a meticulous diarist: the Huntington Library holds seventeen volumes of her journal covering the period 1773-1830. These diaries shed significant light on the part Shakespeare played in her life and contain her detailed opinions of his works as she experienced them both on the page and on the stage in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. Larpent experienced Shakespeare’s works in a variety of forms: she sees Shakespeare’s plays performed, both professionally and by …
Remembering Agincourt: An Analysis Of King Henry V'S Impact On English National Identity, Nathan C. Harkey
Remembering Agincourt: An Analysis Of King Henry V'S Impact On English National Identity, Nathan C. Harkey
Tenor of Our Times
King Henry V is one of the best remembered monarchs in English History. Although he died at the untimely age of 36 after only nine years on the throne, his reign saw England's empire in France reach its highest point, an accomplishment that was actualized in the of the Battle of Agincourt. In the six centuries since, both Henry's reign as a whole and the battle itself have impacted the identity of the English nation in many ways. This paper analyzes the influence of these events on those who followed, ranging from the use of heraldry after the battle to …
“But I Must Also Feel It Like A Man”: Redressing Representations Of Masculinity In Macbeth, Caitlin H. Higgins
“But I Must Also Feel It Like A Man”: Redressing Representations Of Masculinity In Macbeth, Caitlin H. Higgins
The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research
The most popular characters in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, second only to Macbeth himself, are the Weird Sisters. Despite being called “Sisters” the women are oddly androgynous and there is very little in their physical appearance or behavior to indicate their gender. Even more importantly, there is nothing to indicate their place in the Scottish patriarchy of which Macbeth and Banquo are firmly established. As the first actors to appear on stage and arguably the manipulators of Macbeth’s fate, the genderless Weird Sisters would have disturbed deeply rooted understandings of gender definition and hierarchy in viewers. This disturbance allows Shakespeare …
"Crawling Between Earth And Heaven" : Shakespeare And Elizabethan Aristotelianism, Matthew Fairchild Vivyan
"Crawling Between Earth And Heaven" : Shakespeare And Elizabethan Aristotelianism, Matthew Fairchild Vivyan
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
From the twelfth century well into the seventeenth century, Aristotelianism was the dominant philosophical system in Europe, and William Shakespeare's life and professional career coincided with a broad and significant revival of interest in Aristotelianism in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare responded to this intellectual movement, and in Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Timon of Athens, he demonstrates a highly sophisticated, comprehensive understanding of Aristotelian moral philosophy which, I argue, he gained by reading John Case's Speculum quaestionum moralium (1585), the standard Elizabethan commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. William Shakespeare, the man who over the centuries has become all …
Racial Impersonation On The Elizabethan Stage: The Case Of Shakespeare Playing Aaron, Imtiaz Habib
Racial Impersonation On The Elizabethan Stage: The Case Of Shakespeare Playing Aaron, Imtiaz Habib
English Faculty Publications
The article focuses on the implications of playwright William Shakespeare performing racial roles himself, such as Aaron in "Titus Andronicus." Several plays are discussed, including "Titus Andronicus," "The Merchant of Venice," and "Othello." The SHAXICON database, which compiles the text of Shakespeare's plays, is the primary source of evidence to suggest Shakespeare acted in his plays. Information about race relations in Great Britain's society during Shakespeare's time is also given.
Taking Liberties, Matt Kozusko
Taking Liberties, Matt Kozusko
English Faculty Publications
The 'place' scholars have assigned to the stage in early modern London is as much a reflection of the procedures of contemporary literary criticism as a reflection of the cultural function of popular drama in the early modern period. Modern critics are often not engaged in re-examining available data, preferring instead to rest on a conjectural paradigm or heuristic that has hardened, over the past couple of decades, into a New Historicist version of 'fact'. Critics have collapsed boundaries and important distinctions in London jurisdiction and geography in the interest of a unified critical narrative that characterizes the theatre as …