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M.A. (English) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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"Shakespeare on the Verge: Rhetoric, Tragedy, and the Paradox of Place" describes the ideological geographies of Renaissance England and reads the ways "place" was rhetorically constructed in two of Shakespeare's late tragedies. By ideological geographies I mean the way in which Renaissance men and women understood spatially the constitution of their world--their spatialized "habits of thought." These habits were then undergoing a change from seeing the world as a vertical hierarchy of interrelated and dependent places to seeing it as a horizontal array of discrete places related to one another in a linear manner. Working from the theories of Agamben, Burke, Foucault, and Ong, I argue that Shakespeare constructs a paradox of place in which hierarchically elevated places subsume inferior ones and thereby double them. The paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is the king's mobile court, known at the time as the "Verge," which subsumed the places, the actual palaces and castles, of the king's subjects as it progressed across the kingdom. This phenomenon is paradoxical because, although the king's superior place subsumed those below it, it was always dependent on those inferior places, both logically (there can be no king without his subjects) and materially (as the king traveled, his household relied on the provisions supplied by subjects along the way). This paradox leads Shakespeare to double certain dramatic characters and their environments. It also leads him to set up oppositions between places constructed through violent means and places constructed through the "violence" of rhetoric. In my chapter on King Lear (1605), I argue that Edmund should be read as Lear's double, a doubling made manifest especially in the characters' stage movements as they effectively change places with one another. In Coriolanus (1608), I argue that its hero rejects his double, the Plebeian class of Rome, but that he eventually attempts to reconcile with them in large measure by changing his use of rhetoric. In my reading of these plays, as in my description of Renaissance ideological geographies, I aim to revise the way people look at place on the Shakespearean stage and at the complex interplay in them between physical violence and rhetorical action. / text

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This thesis attempts to resuscitate the use of the much-disparaged term "problem plays" to describe Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure; three works which, I argue, share a strong and unifying thematic interest in the vexed relationship between individual sexual desire and social cohesion. Although each of these plays offers a unique perspective on this conflicted interaction, I attempt to demonstrate through close readings of each work that the broad trajectory traced by the problem plays is a movement from the festive comedies' idealistic faith in the possibilities of both romantic and generic "happy endings," to the bleak cynicism which characterizes the great tragedies' depictions of sexual relationships and social structures. Finally, I point to the romances, particularly The Winter's Tale, which, I argue, rework the problem plays' interest in sexuality and social order in such a way that the growing pessimism and inconclusiveness of these earlier works is transformed into aesthetically balanced narratives of romantic reconciliation and social integration.

This thesis studies the human rights philosophy presented during the first productions of Shakespeare's plays, putting it in touch with that reflected in United Nations human rights law and the political theory of John Rawls. Its opening chapter discusses twentieth-century scholarship exemplary of the criticism relevant to human rights ideas in Shakespeare. The sixteenth-century historical context, so emphatically identified by historians with the institution of modern freedom, is kept in sight throughout, and provides, with the cultural context (especially the semantic context), the key to detailed explications, of four plays: King John, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well. Interpreted by these means, the first two plays are seen to have enacted, at the time of their first performances, the religious strife that ironically gave birth both to the ideal of freedom of conscience and ideological complications restricting its implementation. The latter plays unfolded arguments concerning the relationship between epistemology and freedom of conscience. The questions addressed in these four plays range from the relationship between social stability, moral values, and the practicability of freedom of conscience to the criteria whereby coercion and abuse of freedom of conscience may be distinguished from legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. The characteristics of epistemologies enhancing the implementation of freedom of conscience and the educational process that promotes the moral attributes and social conditions necessary for the adoption of these are delineated. The freedom of conscience theory the plays proposed for those members of their first audiences attuned to its metaphoric language is remarkably thought-provoking as regards current challenges in human rights philosophy and law, and reinforces the argument that literature, and in particular theatre, have vital roles in social change and intellectual development.

Critics have long neglected Shakespearean comedy's examination of the household's role in the formulation of community values by reading its references to domestic life allegorically as commentary on the ostensibly more important public realms of marketplace and state. This dissertation argues that representations of the household in the comedies are best understood as theatrical explorations of ethical inquiry as it pertains to everyday lived experience. Using contemporary sermons, political tracts, and conduct books to situate Shakespeare's plays within a larger cultural movement that was coming to understand the household as a foundation of the moral economy of early modern England, this study provides readings of The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest that emphasize each play's investigation of the household as a potential locus of the good life. The characters in these plays develop an awareness of themselves as members of broader communities by negotiating the particular details of household existence---by sharing meals, exchanging gifts, and falling in love. This awareness is in turn presented as a necessary component of personal happiness and a fundamental constituent of a just and merciful state. By developing an account of household life in the plays, this dissertation argues that recognizing the importance of affective domestic relations to constructions of the self as socially embedded moral agent is crucial to understanding the comedies' nuanced analysis of gender, class, and race relations.

This dissertation---"The Necessity of Affections: Shakespeare and the Politics of the Passions"---is a contribution to an important and interesting aspect of early modern thought. It examines the role of the passions or emotions in Shakespearean tragedy and in early modern politics. Shakespeare can be seen to share a perspective on tragedy and political thought with a number of other writers, some of whom were his contemporaries, and some of whom---like Thucydides and Tacitus---were classical writers. What these figures, here called 'politic historians,' have in common is an interest in using the passions as an explanatory category to reveal the states of mind of tyrants, princes and also other agents, including manipulative Machiavellians. Shakespeare's use of this politics of the passions is shown to be more acute and insightful than the rival treatments given by Stoicism, Hobbes and Machiavelli, in terms of explaining motives, agency and action. It is also argued that an understanding of the passions tells us something about tragedy, necessity and chance: namely, the need for realism about the dangers posed by those who seek to fashion or shape our minds. However, this dissertation proposes that this political realism does not go so far as to become the cynicism of realpolitik. A discussion of a number of important passages and themes in the tragedies---in particular, Hamlet, Macbeth and Coriolanus---shows how the notion of a rich and vividly articulated self plays a significant role in Shakespearean tragedy.