This thesis resulted from an examination of the influence of witchcraft superstitions upon Elizabethan-era dramas.

This dissertation examines representations of legal, theological, and medical modes of case thinking and case narration in the novella collections of four early modern authors: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549), Matteo Bandello (c.1485-1562), and Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). It further investigates how these collections perform and problematize practices of narrating and interpreting cases while framing such practices within the context of the navigation of daily news. Indeed, keen observers of the capacity of informal and formal networks to circulate information and opinions in unpredictable ways and on scales unprecedented, these authors also used the novella genre—and the polysemy of the term “novella”—to intervene in contemporary debates on the value of novelty and on the merits of popularizing expert knowledge. I argue that the early modern novella’s role as a literary mediator between professional forms of the case and popular forms of the news report was instrumental to its durable transnational European success. Over the course of this dissertation, I show how these collections depict the art of storytelling qua case narration as an essential ethical component of professional casuistries and of everyday information exchanges. I draw attention to specific professional inflections of the case-novella-news nexus, in order to highlight how each author conceives—and makes the case for—the indispensability of storytelling to spiritual and civic life. I demonstrate that a juridical approach to cases and novelty takes precedence in Boccaccio’s Decameron. I show that, in contrast, Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron relies on distinctly theological conceptions of cases and news. I proceed to compare the type of moral casuistry found in the Heptaméron to that found in Matteo Bandello’s Novelle. Finally, I investigate the consequences of Cervantes’ predilection for a medical approach to case analysis, novelty, and news in his Novelas ejemplares. The broader ambition of this investigation is twofold: first, to contribute a literary and historical perspective to contemporary methodological debates on the value of case thinking in the human sciences and in the liberal professions, and second, to pave the way for an exploration of the casuistical foundations of modern journalism at a time when its epistemological and ethical priorities are sorely in need of being reassessed.

It has been the purpose of this study to make a comparative analysis of the most significant characters in two selections of dramatic literature: Gordon Bottomley’s King Lear’s Wife and William Shakespeare’s King Lear. The significant characters are Goneril and Regan, the “evil influence” in both plays; the two Lears, the “neutral influence” in both plays; and Hygd and Cordelia in King Lear’s Wife and King Lear, respectively. Hygd and Cordelia are the “honorable influence” in the stories. It has been the further purpose of this thesis to delete from both plays all subplots which do not directly pertain to the Lear story and to include both plays in this volume for the use of presentation before an audience. The edited version of both plays uses Bottomley’s King Lear’s Wife as a prologue to Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is hoped that the total effect will give a new significance to the motives of Lear’s daughters and to the character of King Lear Goneril and Regan are given justification, through Bottomley’s play, for their evil actions in Shakespeare’s play.

‘The Ophelia Versions: Representations of a Dramatic Type from 1600-1633’ interrogates early modern drama’s use of the Ophelia type, which is defined in reference to Hamlet’s Ophelia and the behavioural patterns she exhibits: abandonment, derangement and suicide. Chapter one investigates Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet, finding that Ophelia is strongly identified with the ballad corpus. I argue that the popular ballad medium that Shakespeare imports into the play via Ophelia is a subversive force that contends with and destabilizes the linear trajectory of Hamlet’s revenge tragedy narrative. The alternative space of Ophelia’s ballad narrative is, however, shut down by her suicide which, I argue, is influenced by the models of classical theatre. This ending conspires with the repressive legal and social restrictions placed upon early modern unmarried women and sets up a dangerous precedent by killing off the unassimilated abandoned woman. Chapter two argues that Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen amplifies Ophelia’s folk and ballad associations in their portrayal of the Jailer’s Daughter. Her comedic marital ending is enabled by a collaborative, communal, folk-cure. The play nevertheless registers a proto-feminist awareness of the peculiar losses suffered by early modern women in marriage and this knowledge deeply troubles the Jailer’s Daughter’s happy ending. Chapter three explores the role of Lucibella in The Tragedy of Hoffman arguing that the play is a direct response to Hamlet’s treatment of revenge and that Lucibella is caught up in an authorial project of disambiguation which attempts to return the revenge plot to its morality roots. Chapters four and five explore the narratives of Aspatia in The Maid’s Tragedy and Penthea in The Broken Heart, finding in their very conformism to the behaviours prescribed for them, both by the Ophelia type itself and by early modern society in general, a radical protest against the limitations and repressions of those roles. This thesis is consistently invested in the competing dialectics and authorities of oral and textual mediums in these plays. The Ophelia type, perhaps because of Hamlet’s Ophelia’s identification with the ballad corpus, proves an interesting gauge of each play’s engagement with emergent notions of textual authority in the early modern period.

This thesis publicly displays the veracity of witchcraft and superstitious fables, which, many people believe to be irrational in nature. In this analysis, semiotics has been paraded in various versions from chapter to chapter-in order to illustrate the miscellaneous interpretations. The backbone of the investigation focuses on the philosophy and psychology of evil, a theoretical belief that is laid down by practical paradigms at the edge of each chapter. The point of departure of this investigation emanates from the Shakespearean literary work, Macbeth, which is popularly known for its inclusion of the witches in its illustration of the Scottish kingship. Therefore this thesis has adopted the practices of the witches and from there came out with what is commonly practiced by the Vatsonga people. Scotland, England, Germany and France of the 15th and 16th centuries were the countries best known as the most uncouthed centres for witchcraft and superstitions. Therefore leading stories from these European countries have made this project feasible. The study has leaked many of the unfounded stories about witchcraft and superstitions that were thought of as extraordinarily great but made real in this work. It has gone as far as windswept the kingship rites, coronation, the powers of the divine bones upon the anointed king, ritual ceremonies, causes of prosperity and failure, tales about stars, ghosts, reptiles, zombies and those hideous deeds that are not socially acceptable such as digging up of children's graves, convulsions, calling for rain, punishment meted out for a witch, prevention of adultery, changing oneself to a crocodile, rat, snake and many more stories. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

On the assumption that different registers of translated drama have different functions and that they therefore present information differently, the aim of the present study is to identify textual features that distinguish an Afrikaans stage translation from a page translation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The first issue addressed concerns the nature and extent of lexical cohesion in these two registers. The second issue concerns my contention that the dialogue of a stage translation is more "involved". (Biber 1988) than that of a page translation. The research was conducted within the overall Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) paradigm but the analytical frameworks by means of which these aims were accomplished were derived from text linguistics and register variation studies, making this an interdisciplinary study. Aspects of Hoey's ( 1991) bonding model, in particular, the classification of repetition links, were adapted so as to quantify lexical cohesion in the translations. Similarly, aspects of Biber's (1988) multi-dimensional approach to register variation were used to quantify linguistic features that signal involvement. The main finding of the study is that drama translation register (page or stage translation) does have a constraining effect on lexical cohesion and involved production. For Act IV of the play an overall higher density of lexical cohesion strategies was generated by the stage translation. In the case of the involved production features analysed, the overall finding was that the stage translation displayed more involvement than the page translation, to a statistically highly significant extent. The features analysed here cluster together sufficiently to reveal that in comparison with an Afrikaans page translation of a Shakespeare play, a recent stage translation displays a definite tendency towards a more oral, more involved and more situated style, reflecting no doubt a general modern trend towards creating more appropriate and accessible texts / Linguistics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Translation Studies)

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The present thesis deals with the impact of the ancient Greek farce on modem literature with specific reference to the play Kinkels innie Kabel (1971) by the contemporary Afrikaans author André P. Brink. This play is loosely based on Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which in tum derives from Plautus' Menaechmi. Brink's play thus resonates with an entire European tradition. The relationship between the modem and the ancient farce is studied with reference to the concept of comedy. Comic effects, the difference between comedy and tragedy in respect of the handling of vital issues and the comic vision of the playwright are all taken into account. The analysis of the development of Athenian Old Comedy to the Roman Comedy refers to the contribution of Plautus and Terence to the continuation and revitalisation of Greek New Comedy. A comparison of these two playwrights reveals the characteristics of the farce and the difference between farce and comedy. The modem relevance of the farce is studied on the basis of Brink's text. For this purpose Plautus' original plot, the Shakespearian version and Brink's rendition are discussed and compared. On the basis of the similarities and differences in plot, caricaturisation, misidentifications, politics, fantasy, coincidence, irony, farcical violence, mechanical structure, temporal structure and linguistic register, the influence of the ancient farce on its modem counterpart is demonstrated. In addition to farce, Brink employs the classical devices of satire and parody to drive home his (political) message. Finally it is shown that the farcical in Plautus, Shakespeare and Brink serves a significant and serious thematic purpose. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling handel oor die impak van 'n antieke Griekse komedievorm, die klug, op moderne werke en denke. A.P. Brink se verhoogstuk Kinkels innie Kabel (1971) is 'n vrye verwerking van William Shakespeare se The Comedy of Errors. Laasgenoemde werk is weer op sy beurt gebaseer op Plautus se Menaechmi. In sy verwerking van Plautus en Shakespeare laat A.P. Brink die hele Europese tradisie deurklink. Die verhouding tussen die moderne klug en die antieke klug word bestudeer deur te fokus op die term komedie: die verhouding daarvan met lag en hoe die komedie van die tragedie verskil ten opsigte van die hantering van lewensproblematiek en komiese visie van die komedieskrywer, maak deel uit van hierdie bespreking. Die komedie se herkoms en ontwikkeling vanaf die Ou Komedie tot die Romeinse Komedie, val ook onder die soeklig. In aansluiting hiermee word Plautus en Terentius bespreek as twee komedieskrywers wat 'n rol gespeel het in die oorlewering en verlewendiging van die Griekse Nuwe Komedie. Hierdie twee skrywers word ook met mekaar vergelyk sodat die eienskappe van die klug geïllustreer word, en hoe dit in wese verskil van komedie. Die relevansie van die klug in moderne denke word bestudeer aan die hand van Brink se teks. In hierdie verband word daar 'n uiteensetting gegee van die oorspronklike Plautiniese verhaal, die Shakespeariaanse weergawe en die Brinkiaanse teks. Aan die hand van die ooreenkomste en verskille in intrige, karikaturisering, identiteitsvergissings, politiek, die fantasie-element, toeval, ironie, klugtige geweld, die meganiese struktuur, die tydstruktuur en taalregister word die invloed van die antieke klug op die moderne klug geïllustreer. Benewens die klug word Brink se werk ook verder beïnvloed deur twee klassieke middele, met name satire en parodie. Hiermee bring Brink sy (politieke) boodskap tuis. Ten slotte word die dieperliggende temas in Plautus, Shakespeare en Brink se werk bespreek deur aan te toon dat die werk nie net om die klugtige gaan nie, maar ook die meer ernstige.

This thesis argues that social debt profoundly transformed the environment in which literature was produced and experienced in the early modern period. In each chapter, I examine the various ways in which social debt affected Renaissance writers and the literature they produced. While considering the cultural changes regarding patronage, love, friendship, and debt, I will analyze the poetry and drama of Ben Jonson, Lady Mary Wroth, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Middleton. Each of these writers experiences social debt in a unique and revealing way. Ben Jonson's participation in networks of social debt via poetry allowed him to secure both a livelihood and a place in the Jacobean court through exchanges of poetry and patronage. The issue of social debt pervades both Wroth's life and her writing. Love and debt are intertwined in the actions of her father, the death of her husband, and the themes of her sonnets and pastoral tragicomedy. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596), Antonio and Bassanio’s friendship is tested by a burdensome interpersonal debt, which can only be alleviated by an outsider. This indicated the transition from honor-based credit system to an impersonal system of commercial exchange. Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) examines how those heavily in debt dealt with both the social and legal consequences of defaulting on loans.

Renaissance and Baroque drama offers a view into gender dynamics of the time. What is seen is a development in the allowed expression and manifestation of desire by females, beginning from a point of near silence, and arriving at points of verbal statement and even physical violence. Specifically, in La Mandragola by Niccolò Machiavelli, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, and Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega, there appears a chronological progression, whereby using desire and its expression as a metric in conjunction with modern concepts of gender and sexuality to measure a shift in relation to what is and is not allowed to be expressed by women. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This dissertation considers the development of an ethics stemming from the Augustinian revival of early modern England, and the subsequent effect of this ethics on the literary culture of the period. The Preface claims that religious and textual communities operate according to a “cultural mobility” that eludes conventional neo-historicist approaches to literary culture, and Paul Ricoeur’s aphorism, “the symbol gives rise to thought,” serves as a model for thinking through this mobility. Augustinian ethics is a cultural phenomenon in the period, because people are thinking about Augustine, giving new life to his works through their own expressions of thought. After exploring the ways in which the Augustinian revival was brought about during the early modern period in the Introduction, one such expression of thought, John Donne’s relationship with early modern print culture, is examined in Chapter One. Following the theoretical outline of Augustine’s Christianization of Ciceronian rhetoric in his De Doctrina Christiana, it is suggested that though Donne’s aversion to the print publication of his poetry may have begun as a result of his “gentlemanly disdain” of the press, it ultimately found its sustenance in the form of an Augustinian ethic. Chapter Two examines the possibility of a metaphorical acquisition of Augustinian hermeneutics in the metadrama of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This hermeneutics ultimately calls into question the epistemological framework of Theseus’s skeptical aesthetics, suggesting that a more inclusive aesthetics based on charity can elevate the stage to its proper dignity. The last chapter turns from the communal implications of Augustinian ethics to its subjective implications by examining Augustine’s inner light theology and the role it plays in John Milton’s late poetry. Instead of falling in line with criticism that sees the simultaneous publication of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes as a dialectical meditation on the virtues of pacifism and the evils of religious violence, this reading suggests that the late poetry asserts the ethical rights of those who attend to the inner light, whether they be peaceful or violent. / text