Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Review Of The Cambridge Edition Of The Works Of Anne Finch, Countess Of Winchilsea, Edited By Jennifer Keith Et Al, Melissa Schoenberger

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, edited by Jennifer Keith et. al.

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 …

Review Of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form From The Restoration To Jane Austen, By Marcie Frank, Kathleen E. Urda

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of Marcie Frank's The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen by Kathleen E. Urda

"In Loving Virtue": Staging The Virgin Body In Early Modern Drama, Miranda Viederman

Honors Projects

The aim of this Honors project is to investigate representations of female virginity in Renaissance English dramatic works. I view the period as one in which the womb became the site of a unique renewal of cultural anxieties surrounding the stability of the patriarchy and the inaccessibility of female sexual desire. I am most interested in virginity as a “bodily narrative” dependent on the construction and maintenance of performance. I analyze representations of virginity in female characters from four works of drama originating in the Jacobean period of the English Renaissance, during and after the end of the reign of …

Negotiating Space: Spatial Violation On The Early Modern Stage, 1587-1638, Gregory W. Sargent

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent criticism proves the malleability of theatrical space as a lens through which the discussion of Renaissance drama proliferates. Negotiating Space works towards the articulation of the importance of space in the representational mimesis of performance by examining moments of violence, violation, misuse, and misappropriation. I draw a connection between the lived, material sites of the plays’ action and the ideological import of representing those spaces dramatically using a focus on violation. Though much good scholarship exists detailing London-centric approaches to dramatic space, this study discursively reifies identifiable staged spaces to connect with the lives of theatrical patrons no matter …

Make Not A Mockery Of Me: Feminine Performance And Masculine Mockery In Medea And A Midsummer Night’S Dream, Emma Drever

Conspectus Borealis

The paper focuses on Euripides’ Medea and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to analyze how tragedy and comedy address female freedom. In a history of drama, women tend to be underrepresented and submissive to their fellow male players. This paper examines how gender dynamics work in theatre, with a focus on how men use their speech to inhibit the autonomy of women. Utilizing gender scholarship from Judith Butler, the argument justifies Medea’s seemingly horrific actions and spotlights Helena as the driver of her play. These women’s quests allow audiences to explore the roles of women in the theatre, where art …

Convents And Novices In Early Modern English Dramatic Works: In Medias Res, Vanessa L. Rapatz

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

Convents and Novices in Early Modern English Dramatic Texts: In Medias Res attends to the religious, social, and material changes in England during the century following the Reformation, specifically examining how the English came to terms with the meanings of convents and novices even after they disappeared from the physical and social landscape. In five chapters, it traces convents and novices across a range of dramatic texts that refuse easy generic classification: problem plays such as Shakespeare's Measure for Measure; Marlowe's comic tragedy The Jew of Malta; Margaret Cavendish's closet dramas The Convent of Pleasure and The Religious …

Saving Pocahontas: A Conversation On Gender, Culture, And Power In The Storied Saving Moment, Claire Ehr

Undergraduate Honors Papers

Pocahontas is a figure with much cultural capital, even today, and her influence was historically important to Native and European agendas alike. Pocahontas as a person indeed had a life that seemed to influence political relations between Native and European (specifically Powhatan, specifically English). However, the storied construct of Pocahontas has had significantly more cultural sway, influencing (or at least representing changes in) everything from gendered power dynamics to the interplay between the European Colonizer and the Indigenous Other.¹ Pocahontas’ image has been re-appropriated over and over throughout time to further political agendas and to represent the female and …

“Boadicea Onstage Before 1800, A Theatrical And Colonial History.” Studies In English Literature 1500-1900 49.3 (Summer 2009): 595-614., Wendy Nielsen

Wendy Nielsen

This essay examines the theatrical legacy of Boadicea, the British warrior queen defeated by the Romans around 61 AD, in three plays: John Fletcher's "The Tragedy of Bonduca, or the British Heroine" and two unrelated dramas titled "Boadicea" by Charles Hopkins and Richard Glover. Performance histories attempt to explain why audiences respond to Boadicea with ambivalence. Each production underplays the defeated queen and gives starring roles to one or more of her daughters and a male lead, who contrast with Boadicea's supposed brutality and provide British audiences with lessons about ways to rule in an ostensibly civilized fashion.

Editing Aphra Behn In The Digital Age: An Interview With Gillian Wright And Alan Hogarth, Laura Runge, Gillian Wright, Alan Hogarth

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This interview provides a view of the work in progress for the Cambridge University Press edition of the Complete Works of Aphra Behn. Gillian Wright serves as a general editor (with Elaine Hobby, Claire Bowditch, and Mel Evans) as well as the volume editor for Behn’s poetry. Alan Hogarth is the Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Mel Evans on the computational stylistics and author attribution testing. The discussion focuses on the scope and principles of editing the poetry of Aphra Behn, the role of stylometry in establishing the corpus, the status of work, a few particular poems, and some surprises.

The Many Faces Of Cleopatra: How Performance And Characterization Change Cleopatra In Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Legend Of Good Women," William Shakespeare's The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra, And John Dryden's All For Love; Or, The World Well Lost, Rebecca Piazzoni Chatham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and John Dryden presented the character of Cleopatra differently, through both the written language of their pieces and their own and others’ performances of her, in order to meet the demands of their respective audiences and performance conditions. Chaucer, in “The Legend of Cleopatra,” portrays and performs Cleopatra comically. Shakespeare, in his Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, characterizes Cleopatra as a complex woman. In All for Love; or, The World Well Lost, Dryden characterizes Cleopatra as sentimental, but the performance of her on stage by female actresses added depth to the role. For Chaucer and Dryden, …

Mansfield Park Comes To Life: Teaching And Staging Elizabeth Inchbald’S Lovers’ Vows In An Austen Course, Misty Krueger

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay discusses how I incorporated readers theatre into a senior seminar on Jane Austen and her contemporaries. The article recounts how my students read Elizabeth Inchbald’s 1798 drama, Lovers’ Vows, and Austen’s 1814 novel, Mansfield Park, and then were inspired at the end of the seminar to take part in a readers theatre production of the play. In order to set up this pedagogical example, the essay addresses the theatrical episode of Mansfield Park, the controversies surrounding Lovers’ Vows, and the ways in which I edited the play and prepared students to create a “little …

Playing Devil's Advocate: The Attractive Shakespearean Villain, Jonathan Montgomery Green

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The characters of William Shakespeare have spawned countless words of critical interpretation inspired by the playwright's aptitude for fashioning intricate and conflicted figures. As a master character craftsman, Shakespeare is consistent in creating fascinatingly deep characters, and many of them have even gone so far as to generate entire literary archetypes. From the contemplative Prince Hamlet to the despicable yet charming John Falstaff, Shakespeare's characters remain eternal representatives of what any good character should be: interesting, provocative, and complicated.

However, among the playwright's most hypnotic figures are his villains, those characters whom audiences should by all counts detest but cannot …

Review Of "Isaac's Eye," By Lucas Hnath, Ensemble Studio Theater, Karen Gevirtz

Karen Bloom Gevirtz

No abstract provided.

“Boadicea Onstage Before 1800, A Theatrical And Colonial History.” Studies In English Literature 1500-1900 49.3 (Summer 2009): 595-614., Wendy Nielsen

Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This essay examines the theatrical legacy of Boadicea, the British warrior queen defeated by the Romans around 61 AD, in three plays: John Fletcher's "The Tragedy of Bonduca, or the British Heroine" and two unrelated dramas titled "Boadicea" by Charles Hopkins and Richard Glover. Performance histories attempt to explain why audiences respond to Boadicea with ambivalence. Each production underplays the defeated queen and gives starring roles to one or more of her daughters and a male lead, who contrast with Boadicea's supposed brutality and provide British audiences with lessons about ways to rule in an ostensibly civilized fashion.

"A Comely Presentation And The Habit To Admiration Reverend": Ecclesiastical Apparel On The Early Modern English Stage, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

“An Vnder Black Dubblett Signifying A Spanish Hart”: Costumes And Politics In Middleton’S A Game At Chess, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

Stages Of Evil: Occultism In Western Theater And Drama, Robert Lima

Studies in Romance Languages Series

“The evil that men do” has been chronicled for thousands of years on the European stage, and perhaps nowhere else is human fear of our own evil more detailed than in its personifications in theater. In Stages of Evil, Robert Lima explores the sociohistorical implications of Christian and pagan representations of evil and the theatrical creativity that occultism has engendered. By examining examples of alchemy, astronomy, demonology, exorcism, fairies, vampires, witchcraft, hauntings, and voodoo in prominent plays, Stages of Evil explores American and European perceptions of occultism from medieval times to the modern age.

Christopher Fry's Contribution To Modern Drama, Jane Mcelroy

Graduate Thesis Collection

In a modern theatre increasingly preoccupied with the mundane, the sordid, the perverse, and the hopeless, Christopher Fry's plays loom like beacons~ For Hr. Fry finds the world, however chaotic, magnificent; and he chooses to explore its more civilized areas in a language undauntedly poetic, through characters cultivated enough to speak that poetry...