Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

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 …

“Lay Down My Soul At Stake”: Of Female Friendship In The Merchant Of Venice, Othello, And The Winter’S Tale, Audrey-Melody Cubas

Student Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I will not only shift a critical eye on both male and female friendship, but more specifically and extensively, I will examine how Shakespeare treats female friendship in three of his plays: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale. The female pairs of focus, in play order, will be Portia and Nerissa, Desdemona and Emilia, and Hermione and Paulina. Additionally, I will give an overlook of the history of Renaissance friendship portrayal in both the literary and historical accounts. This historical background will serve to highlight the clear contrast between the emphasized …

Toxic Masculinity In Henry V, Abigail King

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Toxic masculinity motivates the characters and plot of Henry V by William Shakespeare. The play revolves around King Henry V and how he is a model leader of England during the Hundred Years War. Henry uses what a “true” man should be to inspire his soldiers when morale is low. Further, manlihood is seen in the characters or lack thereof. Characters that fail to follow the high expectations of masculinity are killed. Audience members recognize the importance of masculinity throughout the play, although the outcomes of those stereotypes are dangerous seen in the superficial friendships and suppression of authentic self.

A Review Of Joanna Wharton, Material Enlightenment: Women Writers And The Science Of The Mind, 1770–1830, Kandice Sharren

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

A Review of Joanna Wharton, Material Enlightenment: Women Writers and the Science of the Mind, 1770–1830, by Kandice Sharren

Review Of Women’S Periodicals And Print Culture In Britain, 1690–1820s: The Long Eighteenth Century, Lisa Maruca

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

Review of Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain

Review Of Deborah Boyle, The Well-Ordered Universe The Philosophy Of Margaret Cavendish, Dustin D. Stewart

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

A review of Deborah Boyle's book The Well-Ordered Universe (2018), by Dustin D. Stewart.

Twinship And Marriage In The Comedy Of Errors, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article proposes that Shakespeare uses twinship and marriage in The Comedy of Errors to reflect on the importance of individuality and interrelation in the formation of identity. Specifically, this article shows how The Comedy of Errors sets the twin relation against the marital relation, ultimately implying that marriage—imperfect, everyday marriage—has as much subjective impact as the extraordinary bond between identical twins. As amazing as it might be to see two persons sharing "one face, one voice, one habit," The Comedy of Errors suggests that the twin relation does not surpass in significance the equally marvelous relation whereby husband and …

Too Young Or Too Old? Age And The Politics Of Performing King Lear - Successfully!, Jim B. Wallace

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

“It is sometimes said that the problem with the part of Lear is that by the time you are old enough to play it, you are too old to play it.” (Jonathan Bate)

Theatre critics rarely see an outstanding performance of King Lear. The thesis of this paper is that it is possible to successfully perform the role of Lear however it takes much more than excellent acting skills to do so. To successfully play Lear requires a visceral understanding of the profound psychological and physical changes that generally begin around age sixty-five. This paper demonstrates that what one learns …

‘...Arranged In A Fanciful Manner And In An Ancient Style’: The First Scenic Realisations Of Scott’S Work And The Desire For A New “Realism” On Scottish Stages, Barbara Bell

Studies in Scottish Literature

An illustrated essay examining the stage design and scenery in early dramatizations of Scott's fiction, specifically the designs by Alexander Nasmyth for versions of Scott's stage adaptations of Scott's The Heart of Mid-Lothian, in London in 1819 and in Edinburgh in 1820, arguing that the rise of scenic realism strengthened the relationship between the theatre and the broader population.

A Review Of Annika Mann, Reading Contagion, By Michael Edson, Michael Edson

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

A review of Annika Mann, Reading Contagion, by Michael Edson

Review Of Novel Ventures: Fiction And Print Culture In England, 1690-1730 By Leah Orr, Susannah Sanford

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

A review of Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690-1730 by Leah Orr by Susannah Sanford

"Within The Hollow Crown": Performing Kingship In Richard Ii And Henry Iv Part One, Angeline Morris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the parallels and connections between Richard II and Prince Hal in Shakespeare’sRichard II and 1 Henry IV and what the results would be if the characters were cross-cast, or played by the same actor onstage, in performance. Criticism on the plays has often addressed the parallels between the two characters, but as of yet no one has examined ways to show this in performance. This paper acts as a form of critical introduction for a proposed combined performance text of both Richard II and 1 Henry IV, arguing that the textual parallels between the two …

Mansfield Park By Kate Hamill (And Jane Austen), Christopher Nagle

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

This article reviews the world premiere of Kate Hamill's Mansfield Park directed by Stuart Carden and produced for the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in November and December 2018. Hamill’s bold new adaptation is notable for foregrounding the contexts of empire and the slave trade undergirding the novel, and in ultimately offering a feminist fairy-tale of radical self-assertion and self-determination for its heroine.

Neoclassicism And Camp In Sir William Hamilton’S Naples, Ersy Contogouris

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

Susan Sontag, in her now-classic “Notes on Camp” (1964), traces the origins of camp to the eighteenth century (13, 14, 33). And although it is precisely the baroque and rococo art movements against which Winckelmann rebelled that Sontag identifies as camp, it is worth reflecting on whether the notion of imitation that is central to both movements – imitation of ancient works in the case of neoclassicism, and imitation as parody in the case of camp (Meyer 7) – might not bring the two closer. Once the conceptual chasm separating neoclassicism and camp has begun to be bridged, we can …

Sterne’S Sentimental Temptations: Sex, Sensibility, And The Uses Of Camp, Julie Beaulieu

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

Laurence Sterne’s lack of commitment to the tenets of sentimentality in A Sentimental Journey—present in his ability to mock and praise the individual capacity to feel, and more precisely, in his satirical reading of the “cult of sensibility,” the new ideological imperative to have and to showcase deep, sentimental feelings—remains as one of the central challenges for readings of the novel. To explore Sterne’s portrayal of sensibility in A Sentimental Journey, I turn to camp sensibility, and the discussions that followed Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp.” Sterne’s novel could be read as camp, perhaps most notably in his …

Eighteenth-Century Camp Introduction, Ula Lukszo Klein, Emily Mn Kugler

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

A blend of the silly and the extravagant that puts the serious into conversation with the ridiculous, camp today is often signified by elements of eighteenth-century Europe with its elaborate hairstyles, exaggerated silhouettes, affected courtiers, and a rise in the consumption of exotic goods, candelabras, masks, and other markers of elite excess (often with a nod to the era’s demise in the form of either the French Revolution or subsequent Victorian strictures). Camp’s relation to queer modes of performance and its prioritization of style over (or in conjunction with) substance offers a queer aesthetic lens to re-evaluate the eighteenth century …

On The Variations Of 'Occupatio' In "Richard Ii", William Kelly Reeder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent scholarship of Shakespeare’s Richard II has been interested in or preoccupied with its historical relations. Particularly the plays association with the Essex Rising of 1601, and the censorship of the deposition scene, both of which seem to resonate for history with Elizabeth’s enigmatic comment expressing her identification with Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard II.

This paper proposes to resolve the question of the play’s censorship by interpreting the deposition scene as a dramatization of transubstantiation, perhaps triggering Elizabethan censors.

Transubstantiation is the doctrine by which the Catholic Church interprets the Eucharist using the distinction between substance and accidens (eternal and …

Queer Pregnancy In Shakespeare's Plays, Alicia Page Andrzejewski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bringing together queer and feminist theory, this dissertation examines Shakespeare’s representations of pregnancy divorced from their promised duration and promised end, revealing that the pregnant body is not wholly symbolic of futurity, chastity, or even heterosexual desire. In queer readings of Shakespeare’s plays and in the methodological debates that inform them, the pregnant body has been conspicuously absent, despite being often subsumed into definitions of heteronormativity and procreative reproduction. In feminist work on Shakespeare’s pregnant characters, scholars largely conflate pregnancy with maternity instead of considering the ways in which these women might engage in non-heterosexual forms of intimacy and eroticism. …

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 …

Subverting The Patriarchy And Its Ties To Feminism: Du Maurier And Her Adaptations, Samantha Koller

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

This paper describes the common (mis)reading of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca as upholding Victorian patriarchal values and attempts to demonstrate that the novel is indeed feminist and acts as a critique and subversion of those patriarchal standards; it then examines the film and stage adaptations of Rebecca, demonstrating via comparison to the original medium that feminism has begun to affect other cultural interpretations and depictions of the narrator, Mrs. Danvers, and Rebecca herself.

The Unruly Womb In Early Modern English Drama: Plotting Women's Biology On The Stage, Ursula Potter

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

This study provides an accessible, informative and entertaining introduction to women’s sexual health as presented on the early modern stage, and how dramatists coded for it. Beginning with the rise of green sickness (the disease of virgins) from its earliest reference in drama in the 1560s, Ursula Potter traces a continuing fascination with the womb by dramatists through to the oxymoron of the chaste sex debate in the 1640s. She illuminates how playwrights both satirized and perpetuated the notion of the womb’s insatiable appetite.

Kinship And Twinship In Jacob And Esau, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"The implications of these early stage directions are upheld and amplified elsewhere in the play. In what follows, I demonstrate this to be the case by reviewing some of the ways the interlude seeks to justify Jacob’s usurpation, most interestingly in its systematic and strategic deployment of kinship ties and familial terms. After explaining how the play leverages family relations to elevate Jacob and overthrow Esau, I concentrate on one family relation in particular: namely, the complicated bond between twin brothers. As I will make clear, the interlude’s treatment of twinship raises pressing questions about the way wealth, affection, and …

The Valiant Welshman, The Scottish James, And The Formation Of Great Britain, Megan Lloyd

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

When James VI of Scotland and I of England proclaimed himself King of Great Britain, he proposed a merger of the English and Scottish parliaments, and he looked to Henry VIII’s Acts of Union of England and Wales (1536/43) as an example for English Scottish union under one king. On the London stage after 1603 many plays paid tribute to the new king and provided a predominantly English audience a means of accepting the not so palatable ideas of Scottish power, assimilation and unity. The Valiant Welshman is distinctive among these works, as no other extant early modern English drama …

Monstrosity As A Problem Of Moral Proximity In Shakespeare’S Othello, Kyle Ward

Student Works

Abstract

In Othello, Shakespeare explores the idea of monstrosity through his titular character. This paper argues that Othello exemplifies the idea that monstrosity is not an inherent evil, but rather that it is a problem of Moral Proximity. The Problem of Moral Proximity, as it is explained in the paper, is the idea that good and evil are the moderation of or corruption of neutral traits. This paper not only argues that monstrosity is one of these neutral qualities, but also explores how Iago corrupts this monstrosity to bring about Othello's downfall.

Claimed By The Stage: Popular Dramatization And The Legacy Of The Lady Of The Lake, Mary Nestor

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses three stage adaptations of Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake, by Thomas Dibdin for the Surrey Theatre, London, John Edmund Eyre, for the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, and Thomas Morton for Covent Garden, arguing that these popular melodramas shaped popular perception of how Scott's poem engaged the Highland landscape.

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‘A’ That’S Past Forget – Forgie’: National Drama And The Construction Of Scottish National Identity On The Nineteenth-Century Stage, Paula Sledzinska

Studies in Scottish Literature

Focused on dramatic adaptations of Walter Scott’s Rob Roy and Waverley for the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, by Isaac Pocock and John W. Calcraft, this essay explores "how the conflicted Lowland and Highland traditions became incorporated into the new image of the nation," offering "a theatrical reflection of the dynamic process of identity building in the nineteenth-century Scotland."

From Meyerhold And Blue Blouse To Mcgrath And 7:84: Political Theatre In Russia And Scotland, Rania Karoula

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the 1920s Russian political theatre movement Blue Blouse, as seen in 1926 by the American Hallie Flanagan (later director of the Federal Theatre Project), the Scottish radical theatre group 7:84, the Scottish company's successful Russian tour in 1982, and parallels between the two in approach and staging as analysed by 7:84's John McGrath.

Scottish Demotics And Russian Soul: Liz Lochhead’S Adaptation Of Chekhov's Three Sisters, Ksenija Horvat

Studies in Scottish Literature

Explores theatrical issues and theoretical approaches to translating, adapting and staging Chekhov's classic play Three Sisters, through adaptations by the Irish playwright Brian Friel and (briefly) the Scot John Byrne, and then discusses more fully the adaptation by Liz Lochhead, premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in 2000.

Review Of Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind By Susan Carlile, Alexis Mcquigge

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

This article reviews Susan Carlile's recent biography of Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Because much of Lennox's life story, and many of her works, remain mysterious to contemporary readers, Carlile's work highlights some unique and important aspects of the life of a - at least in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, a celebrated literary minds. Carlile's work is an important and necessary addition to the study of women's writing in the period, and contributes a great deal to those studying the works of Charlotte Lennox.

Review Of Royal Shakespeare Company Production Of Mary Pix’S The Beau Defeated, Retitled The Fantastic Follies Of Mrs. Rich, Aparna Gollapudi

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

Jo Davies’s reprise of Mary Pix’s comedy The Beau Defeated, Or The Lucky Younger Brother,performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon under the title The Fantastic Follies of Mrs. Rich refocuses the comedy from its original engagement with primogeniture and middling class masculinity towards the female characters. It also diffuses Pix’s Whiggish moralism in Mrs. Rich's portrayal, highlighting instead her energy and verve. Overall, a very successful production, the performance is more Restoration comedy than the transitional work that Pix's play was when it opened in 1700.