Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

“Before Your Honour?”: Divine Morality And Women Reclaiming Power In Ben Jonson’S Volpone And William Shakespeare’S Measure For Measure, Delilah G. Fleming

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how the female protagonists in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Jonson’s Volpone navigate and combat corrupting patriarchal forces through moral religious speech. In both plays, the male characters have allowed false gods and hypocrisy to dictate and justify their corrupt behavior. By engaging with the historical significance of early modern female rhetoric this thesis examines Jonson’s Celia and Shakespeare’s Isabella, and how they operate in the interest of godly virtue rather than blind obedience to patriarchal figure heads.  Volpone’s Celia is a character largely neglected in the canon, and whose speech emphasizes the relationship between female agency …

Gender Wobbles But It Don’T Fall Down: Feste And The Instability Of Gender In Twelfth Night, Evangeline Thurston Wilder

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night appears to some readers as a conservative story of gender-bending, in which all is made “right” in the end. The central character, Viola, disguises herself as Cesario in order to survive. In the final scenes of the play, this character reveals herself to have been a woman all along, and immediately enters a cis-heterosexual marriage with the Duke Orsino. To other readers, the play appears to be an early depiction of what we might now call transmasculinity. In this view, the central character is not just dressing up as a man to survive; he really is Cesario. …

The Bard’S Precursors To Psychology: Exposing Dark Sides Of Human Nature, Rebecca Parsons '23

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

"Why Do You Keep Alone?:" Isolated Women In The Plays Of Shakespeare, Alexus Litchfield

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The works of William Shakespeare have been well explored, but there is a lack of criticism that examines how the depiction of women is shaped by the genre of the play. Linda Bamber is one of the few critics who have explored this connection between gender and genre. However, while she focuses on the plays’ psychological dynamics, I examine the social dynamics between characters in my study of gender and genre. I suggest that, in both tragedy and comedy, isolation is a strong marker of unhappiness for Shakespeare’s female characters. Examining three tragedies, I find that Lady Macbeth, Goneril, Regan, …

A Man Not A Monster : Reimagining Disability In Hollow Crown's Richard Iii, Taylor E. Uphus

Honors Theses

Traditional portrayals of William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592) in film interpret Richard’s physical disability as an outward reflection of his evil. In recent years, disabilities studies scholars have reconsidered the historic association of Richard’s physical deformity with immorality. Unlike previous Richard III films, the BBC’s Hollow Crown: Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016) highlights Richard’s mental abuse and trauma. While the film does not shy away from Richard’s villainy, its more empathic depiction of Richard contests the one-dimensional stage and film representation of him as a conniving monster. Ultimately, this film presents Richard III to critique society’s treatment of disabled individuals.

Fun With Palamon And Arcite: Rationale And Strategies For Teaching The Two Noble Kinsmen As The Culmination Of The Shakespearean Canon, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Hardly noticed in the reception of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human several years ago was his hint that not The Tempest but The Two Noble Kinsmen makes an appropriate final accomplishment. On one level, the play is merely a stage adaptation of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, with a rather crude couple of subplots thrown in, perhaps to please the commoners. In an undergraduate forum, I am less inclined to evaluate Fletcher's contribution as distinct from Shakespeare, but I do think the play important for how it is representative of many of the co-authored English Renaissance plays …

Excremental Ecofeminism: Unearthing Waste’S Feminine And Narrative Agency In Early Modern Literature, Courtney Druzak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to understand the role of forms of waste in early modern literary texts. It both offers up a theory—known as early modern excremental ecofeminism—for reading period specific texts in relation to waste and articulates how we may do so through close analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the elegies of Mary Sidney Herbert, the sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Mary Wroth, John Evelyn’s Fumifugium, and finally, William Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra. It chooses a variety of genres across texts from the 1580s to the 1660s both to interrogate …

Alt Wars Of The Roses: A Guide To The Women In Shakespeare's First Tetralogy (Especially Richard Iii) For Fans Of Philippa Gregory's White Queen Series, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Since The Other Boleyn Girl made such a splash, especially with its 2008 film adaptation starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, novelist Philippa Gregory has turned out book after book of first person female narratives, historical fiction of the era of the early Tudors and the Cousins’ War. (Gregory has an aversion to calling it "Wars of the Roses" but seems to be the sole voice against that classification.) With the film series of The White Queen released in 2013, we have what some consider a fuller pop culture alternative perspective on the women who intersect with the plays that …

What Happens (And Doesn't) In Hamlet (And Who Cares?), Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This lecture, sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, uses the classic text by John Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, to initiate some important considerations on appreciating and teaching Hamlet. Attached as addenda 3 is a Handout which includes the list of soliloquies, keyed to act, scene, lines, as recorded in both the Riverside 2^nd edition and Norton 3^rd edition texts.

Wilson often gravitates to conundrums of the text. Is Hamlet fearing his own mental instability when he warns Marcellus and Horatio that he may put an "antic disposition" on? Why does Shakespeare give us two versions …

Teaching Titus Andronicus In Order To Re-Examine Shakespeare's Evolution Of The Tragic Form, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This paper revisits classroom strategies of two decades ago and the conference presentation that developed from them. Critics have come to regard Shakespeare's early tragedy Titus Andronicus as more than an early and inferior drama or one whose excess of violence makes it flawed. The early play merits attention for its insights in how Shakespeare evolved to write his mature tragedies Hamlet and Othello. A class in the Early Plays of Shakespeare (EH 403) usually studies the mature tragedies early in the semester, then revisits them with more insight after coverage of Titus Andronicus. Central to classroom debate is …

Shakespeare’S Deviation From His Predecessors: Aligning "Romeo And Juliet" With Italian Renaissance Marriage Culture, Tara Lynn Hohn

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Shakespeare's Globe Archive: Theatres, Players & Performance, Rob Tench

Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Sacramental Anxiety In Richard Ii And The Comedy Of Errors, Aria Casey

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Following England’s break from the Catholic Church in 1534, Protestant thought gradually transformed the English Church’s understanding of sacraments. The influence of Reformation thinkers such as Thomas Cranmer, the author of The Book of Common Prayer, propelled the idea that that a ritual is only as good as the worthiness of a recipient. Ritual, the “outer” component of a sacrament, now had the potential to be distant from divine favor, the “inner” component of a sacrament. This potential distance caused anxiety over the authenticity of sacraments, affecting English thought well into Shakespeare’s day. Shakespeare’s plays Richard II and The Comedy …

Forgotten Fairies: Traditional English Folklore In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Alexandra Larkin

The Criterion

While the fairies shown in the play would have been known by Shakespeare’s audience, there was a clear difference between the fairies of traditional folklore and the fairies that Shakespeare describes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In traditional English folklore, fairies were “made” for, and by, the middle and lower classes; their stories were most believed and the most encounters were experienced by these people. Fairies in folklore were alternatingly deadly and wildly helpful, giving humans who stumbled upon them presents or death. In the play, Shakespeare departs from more traditional depictions of fairies and instead characterizes these magical creatures …

Something In Nothing: A Discussion Of Madness And Wisdom In King Lear, Leela Mennillo

The Criterion

This essay argues against Shakespeare critic David Kastan’s nihilistic reading of King Lear. While I agree that nothingness lies at the heart of the tragedy, I maintain that the recurring theme of nothing does not depict a world devoid of meaning. Rather, Shakespeare suggests that the recognition of the abyss is necessary in the quest for higher meaning. I approach this debate through various philosophical lenses, presenting a reading that equates wisdom and nothingness. Cordelia’s recognition of the limitations of human knowledge first introduces this idea. I detect elements of the divine nature of nothingness in the seemingly nonsensical speeches …

Quoting Shakespeare In The British Novel From Dickens To Wodehouse, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

Novelists heralded as Victorian Shakespeares frequently navigated the varied nineteenth-century practices of Shakespeare quotation (in the classroom in compilation books, in stage spoofs) to construct the relationship between narrator and character, and to negotiate the dialogue between Shakespeare's voice and the voice of the novel. This chapter looks at three novelists whose practices intersect and contrast: George Eliot, who resists the Bardolatrous imputation of a Shakespearean character's wisdom to its author by distinguishing her own characters' inept Shakespeare quotations from her narrative voice; Thomas Hardy, who claims the authority of Shakespearean pastoral, regional language against the glib quotations of his …

The Second Pen, Nicholas D. Brennan

Theses and Dissertations

"The Second Pen" evaluates the historical relevancy of prevalent monikers for William Shakespeare-- namely, "The Bard," "Swan of Avon," and "Upstart Crow." While Brennan finds the general concept of the moniker to encapsulate Shakespeare's current historical legacy, he equally finds the aforementioned monikers to misrepresent this. Brennan offers "The Second Pen" as a moniker for Shakespeare that redresses the distortions of the others. He concentrates his defense of its relevancy around a defense of William Shakespeare as the "second pen" which Ben Jonson's 1605 Sejanus quarto names as a collaborator in the writing of a preceding stage version of the …

Suffering In The Human Experience: An Examination Of The Book Of Job And King Lear, Allison Denton

English Department Student Scholarship

This thesis uses the Old Testament figure of Job and the Shakespearean character King Lear to examine how suffering calls us to question life and its meaning. These works were chosen because of their authors' demonstrated value of life despite their protagonists' pain. This project originated from a desire to answer questions about the meaning of life that had arisen during four years of study at the College of the Holy Cross.

Partnering Is Such Sweet Sorrow: Establishing Campus And Community Collaboration To Host William Shakespeare’S First Folio At Kansas State University., Casey 'D Hoeve

Collaborative Librarianship

Between October 2014 and February 2016, Kansas State University partnered with academic, Manhattan city community, and local business organizations to host an exhibit displaying William Shakespeare’s First Folio. University and community organization came together to collaborate and host over 14 programs showcasing the works of William Shakespeare, along with providing educational lectures to the community regarding Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The Libraries were able to secure funding to obtain modern Shakespeare materials, filling in critical humanities collection gaps, along with illustrating modern adaptions of Shakespeare’s works to students. The exhibit was a resounding success, attracting more than 4,000 attendees and …

The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Daniel Gordon

Winthrop Faculty and Staff Publications

The Merry Wives of Windsor A story of LUST, GREED, and DIRTY LAUNDRY
By William Shakespeare, adapted by Daniel Gordon.

Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor uses more prose than any of his other plays, for indeed, these characters are simple folk. His setting of the countryside of Windsor also offers clues to how I might interpret this play for a South Carolina audience. To reinforce the tight-knit community or provincial common folk that is wary of outsiders, I set this production in a southern trailer park. The script and rhythms fit remarkably well with a southern twang. Knowing the …

Temptation, Sin, And The Human Condition In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Maria Cusimano

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is colored with religious overtones. His play incorporates elements of religious beliefs of Renaissance England. Aside from its historical basis, Shakespeare’s Macbeth alludes to stories from Scripture as well as Renaissance religious practices and beliefs, particularly regarding witchcraft, prophecy, and the dangers of sin. Through this myriad of sources, Shakespeare offers a vivid and grotesque depiction of a man demise due to his involvement with sin, offering a profound caution to his audience of the dangers of temptation and sin.

Hamlet And Amleth, Princes Of Denmark: Shakespeare And Saxo Grammaticus As Historians And Kingly Actions In The Hamlet/Amleth Narrative, Megan Arnott

The Hilltop Review

Shakespeare played a decisive role in creating a Middle Ages for the generations that came after him. The two tetralogies, which include Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Part 1-3 and Richard III, comprise the body of work that is commonly studied for medievalisms, and in these plays Shakespeare’s interpretation of the past demonstrates nation building, ‘Englishness,’ and a concern about the nature of power. A different kind of engagement with the medieval past is occurring in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, though Hamlet is no less concerned with …

Shakespeare's Dictionary: One Playwright's Influence On The Modern English Lanugage, Jennifer Walton

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

William Shakespeare is considered to the be the father of Modern English, but what most people do not realize is that he influenced much more in English than just the language. The number of phrases and words he created is over-exaggerated, he borrowed from many other languages, and he was one of the first people to document modern medical disorders. Not to mention Shakespeare was writing during one of the most lexically innovative time periods, so he helped aid in the transition from using “thee” to using “you” when addressing another person. Moving away from language specifically, Shakespeare’s writing has …

Burbage's Father's Ghost, James J. Marino

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Relation And Responsibility: A Levinasian Reading Of King Lear, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Emmanuel Levinas’s ideas about intersubjectivity can change our reading of Shakespeare by putting philosophical pressure on Shakespeare’s dramatization of human relatedness in The Tragedy of King Lear (1607–8). Even though Levinas does not discuss Lear at length in any of his published work, this difficult philosopher and this difficult play have much to say to one another. Levinas can be fruitfully brought to bear on Shakespeare’s great tragedy, generating fresh and productive ideas about its most pivotal moments, its most perplexing questions, and its most popular interpretations. In addition, Levinas can provide a useful frame for discussing the nature of …

Bringing Down The Island: Rebellion, Colonial Hierarchy, And Individualized Leadership In Nuñez’S Novel Prospero’S Daughter, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

“Bringing Down the Island: Rebellion, Colonial Hierarchy, and Individualized Leadership in Nuñez’s novel Prospero’s Daughter” offers an analysis of Elizabeth Nuñez’s (2006) novel Prospero’s Daughter and Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest (1969), both of which draw upon multicultural tradition of European and Caribbean literatures, retelling Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). The paper is concerned with the ways in which leadership has been transformed from the original story, through Césaire’s text, and into Nuñez’s. Each work acts as an agent of leadership in literary and social terms, attempting to enact paradigmatic shifts away from hierarchy and classification and toward individualized transformational leadership.

“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the way women cross-dressing as men functions as a crime in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night. While many modern scholars have discussed cross-dressing in these plays, many look to the end of the plays as the foundation for their analysis rather than the play as a whole. Because of this oversight, scholars deem the characters in the plays not transgressive, when, in fact, cross-dressing is transgressive. They ignore the way cross-dressing is often presented in writing in the Renaissance, i.e. as a type …

Acting, Integrity, And Gender In Coriolanus, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Shakespeare's Coriolanus... anticipates and corroborates modern-day analyses emphasizing the sociopolitical dimensions and determinants of antitheatrical discourse. In the present essay, I would like to shift my focus from questions of class/status to questions of sex/gender, endeavoring to trace the links between Coriolanus’s antiperformative zeal and his ultra-masculine identity. For though it is true that Coriolanus opposes the dissimulation of others on political grounds (i.e., it creates social confusion), what causes him to reject play-acting in his own person is the sexualized fear that it will unman him (i.e., turn him into a squeaking virgin or crying boy). In this manner, …

Jane Austen, The Prose Shakespeare, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

This essay explores the connection between Shakespearean drama and the novel’s representation of interiority. Jane Austen’s celebrated use of free indirect discourse, I argue, is linked to Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, which turned dramatic soliloquies into prose narration, rendering a character’s thought and idiom in a third-person voice. Heralded as a “prose Shakespeare” by nineteenth-century critics, Austen also developed an inverse free indirect discourse, the infusion of the narrative voice into characters’ dialogue. Scenes from Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion offer mini-Shakespearean plays of attention, for Shakespearean technique and quotation script Austen’s dramas of reading.

Staged Magic: Performing Witchcraft In Macbeth, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The three witches who initiate William Shakespeare's (1564 - 1616) Macbeth (1606) are the play's primary figures of theatrical spectacle, their bodies and actions the products of the 'magic of the theatre.' While much critical attention has been paid to the interpretive significance of the witches in Macbeth, much less has focused on the practical physicality of the witches' presence and the methodology of their theatrical presentation. The witches' entrance open Macbeth and is central to understanding their role within Macbeth's Scotland. The 'magic' that appears on stage is acknowledged by its audience as a series of illusions that …