Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Devising Performance & Queer Futurity, Brendan F. Leonard

Honors Theses

This project argues that devising performance is an inherently queer and utopian form. In response to recent political movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, which seek to stage dissatisfaction with the systems of late capitalism, I turn to devising performance as a site. Informed by the queer and performance theories of Jose Esteban Munoz, Lee Edelman, and Jill Dolan, I argue that devised theater allows us to process disillusionment, rehearse collectivity, and stage futurity. In conversation with Munoz, I define futurity as an imaginative site that considers what will follow what some scholars suggest will be …

The Performance Of Melancholy: Understanding The Humours Through Burton, Jonson, And Shakespeare, Lindsey N. Betts

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis aims to explore the relationships between dramatic texts and the Elizabethan topic of the humours. It covers Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Jonson's plays Every Man Out of His Humour and Every Man in His Humour, and Shakespeare's plays Hamlet and As You Like It. Each of these works provides a glimpse into society and its opinions specifically on melancholy, from its most basic and complex definitions to how it is perceived and addressed.

The Filial Dagger: The Case Of Hal And Henry Iv In 1 & 2 Henry Iv And The Famovs Victories, Kristin M.S. Bezio

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

English culture and politics in the last decade of the sixteenth century were both patriarchal and patrilineal, in spite of— or, perhaps, in part, because of—the so-called bastard queen sitting on the throne. The prevailing political questions of the day concerned Elizabeth’s successor and the fate of the nation that, so many believed, hung precariously in the balance. Questions of legality, legitimacy, and fitness formed the crux of these debates, but almost all claimants attempted to justify their right by tracing their bloodlines back to either Henry VII or Edward III, the respective patriarchs of the Tudor dynasty and the …

John Byrne's The Slab Boys: Technicolored Hell-Hole In A Town Called Malice, William Donaldson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Presents a detailed discussion and appreciation of the Slab Boys tetralogy, a sequence of four plays by the Scottish playwright and painter John Byrne, beginning with The Slab Boys (1978), focused on a group of apprentices in the color-mixing room of a Paisley carpet-factory in the 1950s, and then tracing the divergence of their lives through three later plays, The Loveliest Night of the Year (1979, later titled Cuttin' A Rug), Still Life (1982), and Nova Scotia (2008); examines Byrne's characterization, "excoriatingly destructive wit," and "rambunctiously demotic language"; analyzes the tetralogy's continuing major themes of the relation between art …

"Pitiful Creature Of Darkness": The Subhuman And The Superhuman In The Phantom Of The Opera, Jessica Sternfeld

Music Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter focuses on The Phantom of the Opera, the megamusical that perhaps most boldly faces the idea of disability head-on, as it stars a character whose face, as one journalist described it, looks 'like melted cheese' (Smith, 1995). The musical's approach to the Phantom's disability is remarkably layered and inconsistent; the Phantom is portrayed in numerous ways (monster, criminal, genius, god, ghost) and his physical disability blurs regularly with his 'soul;' which is where numerous characters locate the origin of his problems. His face and its famous mask covering are both feared and thrilled over, but with a reassuring …

Living Between The Lines: Intersectionality And Self-Actualization In Shakespeare's Plays, Morgan L. Green

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

More than four hundred years after his death Shakespeare is still the most performed playwright in the English-Speaking World, and even in some cultures vastly different from Shakespeare’s England. Theatre companies continue to make him relevant by exploring new themes and tailoring the productions to the social mores of contemporary audiences. One particular theme being examined more and more by both scholars and theatre artists is diversity and the role of identity in Shakespeare’s works. Three works in which this can be easily examined are Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello with particular attention paid to …

Review Of Peggy Thompson, (Ed). Beyond Sense And Sensibility: Moral Formation And The Literary Imagination From Johnson To Wordsworth, Elizabeth A. Dolan

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

No abstract provided.

Fresh Shakespeare From The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

Some critics have argued against the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's contemporary English translation project, but Daniel Pollack-Pelzner argues it's part of the process of keeping Shakespeare alive.

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, …

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 …

Ophelia And The Feminine Construct, Lilly E. Romestant

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

In Shakespeare's celebrated tragic masterpiece, Hamlet, one of the most controversial and seminal characters, Ophelia, continues to have a heavy influence on contemporary culture today in some unexpected ways. Her prevalence in mainstream media––including film, literature, drama, and music homages––validates not only her importance now but also reimagines and reinforces her parallel importance at the time of her debut in 1603. Her association with global teenage culture, suicide, and mental illness, puts her in the unique position of being heralded, generation after generation, as an icon of depression in female youth. This can be both positive and negative, as …

Review Of Barbara K. Seeber, Jane Austen And Animals, Lucinda Cole

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

In this review of Barbara K. Seeber's Jane Austen and Animals (Ashgate, 2013) Lucinda Cole summarizes this foundational book and emphasizes the role of animal studies scholars in linking feminism and environmental issues.

Review Of Helen E.M. Brooks, Actresses, Gender, And The Eighteenth-Century Stage: Playing Women, Leslie Ritchie

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

No abstract provided.

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 …

Notes On How To Rework A Ph.D. Dissertation For Publication As A Book, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Living By The Code: Authority In Gerard Stembridge's The Gay Detective, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Irish drama has few representations of police officers as anything but a trope for authority, tending to avoid any substantive character development. Likewise, it has few representations of homosexual characters, and when such representations do exist they are often caricatures. Reductive portrayals of police often arise from the complex relationship the Irish have with authority and with the legal system. But one of the few exceptions to this trend, and the only play to tackle the representation of a police officer and a homosexual at once, is Gerard Stembridge’s play The Gay Detective (1996). The play offers up the character …

Hamlet Reinvents Himself, William Walsh

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

We see the early modern as an open carry society. Hamlet’s success in the swordplay at the end is usually seen as his triumph, fulfilling his father’s injunction at last. The 2013 RSC production of Hamlet projected ambiguity, which I share. The most intriguing angle was Hamlet’s costume. Jonathon Slinger very quickly donned half of a fencing jacket; but the straps of the jacket dangled, strongly suggesting a straight jacket. Half mad, half resolute, Hamlet is driven through much of the play until, I will argue, he reinvents himself as a mad version of divine providence. The providential idea is …

Redefining Irishness: Fragmentation Or Intercultural Exchange, Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

The traditional definition of Irishness has been overwritten by internationalization, cultural and political discourses. Globalisation today sets the ground for the redefinition of a “new Ireland” altering the ethnocultural base to the definitions of Irish national identity. Recent cultural criticism on modern Irish studies have described the Irish nation as undergoing moments of crisis and instability within a global context. This paper explores and analyzes the process by which literary dramatic works dealing with Irish national distinctiveness have been put subject to being written and re-written as the Irish nation passes through periods of instabilities and problematisations. Ireland has been …

Hamlet #Princeofdenmark: Exploring Gender And Technology Through A Contemporary Feminist Re-Interpretation Of Hamlet, Allegra B. Breedlove

Scripps Senior Theses

Exploring the process of designing, producing, directing and starring in a multimedia feminist re-interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in a contemporary social media landscape.

The Rape Of Blanche: An Examination Of Critical Analysis & Sexist Overtones, Audrey Thayer

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The first people to ever listen to the words of A Streetcar Named Desire were two women, Margo Jones and Joanna Albus. Tennessee Williams read them an uncompleted first draft of the play. Margo Jones was “supportive of the play but urged him to rewrite it and to soften Blanche's hysteria. He listened, and ignored her” (Rader 199). The very first people who were privy to the violent, sensual, chaotic world of Blanche and Stanley were two women who found fault in Stella's character. They saw her hysteria, no doubt an unbecoming trait, as “far out,” or perhaps unbelievable. Much …

Seventeenth-Century Social Hierarchy And Character Interpretation In "The Country Wife", Andrew Vorder Bruegge

College of Visual and Performing Arts Faculty Publications

Analysis of characters in the drama within their cultural context. Four of the principal female characters succeed in attaining upward mobility in social class over the course of the action. The URL for the full-text document is: http://dx.doi.org/10.15640/ijmpa.v2n2a3

Webster's Geometry; Or, The Irreducible Duchess, Benjamin Bertram Phd

Faculty Publications

This study of geometry, gender, and skepticism in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi argues that the play leaves us in a hall of mirrors, a horror show of optical tricks, delusion, narcissism, and perspectivism from which there seems to be no escape, no masterpiece of God’s creation upholding reality beyond sensory images. In the absence of a transcendental referent, the Duchess’ willful and fearful journey «into the wilderness» – the life she leads as a result of her furtive marriage to her steward Antonio – becomes an alternative to both the public sphere mapped by divine patterns of order …

Review Of Marilyn Francus, Monstrous Motherhood: Eighteenth-Century Culture And The Ideology Of Domesticity, Phyllis Ann Thompson

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

Review of Marilyn Francus. Monstrous Motherhood: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Ideology of Domesticity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2012. Xi + 297pp. Index. ISBN 978-1-4214-0737-1.

Review Of Bonnie Latimer, Making Gender, Culture, And The Self In The Fiction Of Samuel Richardson: The Novel Individual, Karen Lipsedge

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

Latimer’s Making Gender, Culture, and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson answers a need in eighteenth-century Richardsonian studies. It is also a thoughtful and long overdue study, which deserves praise and attention. Latimer provides the reader with a greater understanding of the notion of female individuality in Richardson’s novels, and also of eighteenth-century culture and contemporary literature. Her research is gratifying in its level of detail, and she is deft in showing correspondences between eighteenth-century culture, fiction and Richardson’s novels. Although Sir Charles Grandison lies at the heart of this study, Latimer is equally skilful in devoting attention …

Novels, Philosophies, And Sex, Aleksondra Hultquist

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Enit Karafili Steiner, Jane Austen's Civilized Women: Morality, Gender, And The Civilizing Process, Sarah Raff

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Paula Backscheider, Elizabeth Singer Rowe And The Development Of The English Novel, Sarah H. Prescott

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

No abstract provided.

Review Of Carol Stewart (Ed.), The Rash Resolve And Life's Progress, Sarah R. Creel

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

This review gives an overview of Carol Stewart's edition of Eliza Haywood's The Rash Resolve and Life's Progress. Providing a modern edition of these texts in print for the first time, Stewart's edition brings the two novels to life with careful attention to historical and contextual details.

You’Re An Austen Heroine! Engaging Students With Past And Present, Caroline Breashears

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

In my senior seminar on Jane Austen, I seek to engage students in multiple ways. On one hand, I want them to connect with Austen’s world and to reflect on what it means to them; on the other hand, I want them to understand the very real differences of that world and how they inform her novels. One strategy for engaging students in these ways is through interactive games. Studies have shown that many modern games have features similar to those stressed by engaged learning, so game design can be adapted for pedagogical purposes. I discuss the purposes, design, and …

Teaching Willmore, James Evans

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

Teaching Aphra Behn’s The Rover for nearly four decades, I have witnessed a considerable shift in students’ attitudes toward the play, especially toward Willmore. More positive about his character in the 1970s and 1980s, they have had a much more negative assessment since then. The only available video version, the Women’s Theatre Trust production, compounds my pedagogical problem through filming techniques and choice of actor; emphasizing male violence against women, its interpretation parallels feminist criticism of the 1990s. Asking students to examine theater history may lead them to see that Behn does not completely match this ideological paradigm. The original …