This dissertation identifies patterns in biographical drama during the long twentieth century, investigating the persistent popularity of the dramatic re-enactment of historical lives on both stage and screen. It demonstrates the diversity, depth and continuing relevance of a genre which has frequently been dismissed as conservative and unchallenging. The reaction against Victorian hagiography in early twentieth century life writing, coupled with the surge of interest in the potential of psychoanalysis to unlock the mysteries of the ‘inner’ self, led to heightened awareness of the discrepancy between the private (or unperformed) life and public self-presentation. This study contends that, as a direct consequence, biography came to be increasingly imbued with the language of theatre and role-play. It argues that a defining characteristic of twentieth century biography is its attraction to individuals who were, in some sense, actors during their lifetimes, constructing and performing fictionalised versions of themselves. This thesis argues that drama is both a logical and representative form for the expression of biography in the twentieth century, and that stage and screen biography actively engages with distinctively modern concerns about the relationship (or discrepancy) between social performance and the private self. The protagonists of modern biographical plays and films, contrary to the nineteenth-century ideal of extraordinary men and women as the shapers of historical events, are frequently presented as trapped within an inflexible or repetitions narrative structure, or imprisoned by an artificial public image, struggling – often unsuccessfully – for the freedom of self-authorship. Chapter One situates the discussion of dramatised biography within the framework of developments in the theory and practice of life writing from the 1920s to the present day. The four remaining chapters compromise detailed analysis of a selection of representative texts. Chapters Two and Three discuss versions of the lives of ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, contrasting Jeanne’s unwavering commitment to a single role with depictions of Lawrence’s descent into self-fragmentation and role-play. Chapter Four turns to recent dramatisations of royal lives, a significant subgenre of nominal authority of the monarch and the demands of his or her ‘audience’ for particular modes of public performance. Lastly, Chapter Five examines ‘metabiographical’ plays from the 1990s and early 2000s that self consciously dramatise the challenges of reconstructing and reinterpreting the past. The plays and films discussed illuminate the tension between the provision of a definitive account of a life and the presentation of identity as an ever-changing performance, subject to multiple interpretations.

This research forms a regional study of the theatres of the Peloponnese in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. It includes a Catalogue of all 29 monuments discussed with appended bibliography and separate chapters on each section of the theatre analyzed. More specifically, after an overall presentation of the methods of design used in the theatres of the Peloponnese, the elements of the theatre are examined in each section. The study concludes with the Reconstruction of the Deus ex Machina in the theatre of Phlious. The aim of the research is to present a detailed image of the theatres in the periods discussed, with the purpose of resolving problems related to the architecture of the monuments, with the aim of assessing the development of the theatre building in this area from the fourth century BC up to the end of the fourth century AD.

This thesis examines representations of Jewish women on the British stage from 1945 to the present. I interrogate the lack of varied and realistic Jewish women characters in the canon and discuss this in relationship to my own published and performed plays. The absence of Jewish women in British modern theatre is explored historically and as a phenomenon influenced by both Christian and Jewish traditions. My research probes how stereotypes from Christian medieval tropes have been transformed and re-awoken, particularly since the 1980s, and how this has impacted the representation of Jewish women. I highlight the importance of Yiddish theatre as a dynamic space where Jewish women’s representation broke the rule of exclusion from public performance and offered a variety of complicated and complex roles on the international stage. The thesis examines the post-war loss of Yiddish theatre and the Yiddish language, and the subsequent effect on the development of Jewish female dramatic characterisation onstage. I reveal the vacuum left with the death of Yiddish, and how with the destruction of the language and culture, the representation of a variety of Jewish women’s roles, created by the Yiddishists, was forgotten and lost to subsequent generations. Post-war playwrights are discussed to explore modern female Jewish characters that have been produced for the English stage. The creation of Anne Frank, as a dramatic figure, is examined to understand how the adaptation of her diary impacts on the representation of Jewish women. My contribution as a practitioner is revealed within the larger framework of the British cultural and political environments. I examine why there is this absence of Jewish female characters in British modern drama and reveal my own attempts to challenge this and to open up the experience of being a Jewish woman in its many facets and theatrical manifestations.

In the absence of concrete information about the Whitefriars stage, a prudent foundation on which to build is a model of a generic Jacobean playhouse stage platform, if any such thing can be said to have existed. This thesis discusses the various stage spaces of the period and attempts to construct a generalised vision of the early modem stage by breaking down the various early modem performance spaces into their pertinent features. In a comparative analysis, the corresponding stage fixtures of the Whitefriars playhouse are addressed In a similar manner, deconstructing the space with an aim toward its reconstruction. There are many gaps in the evidence regarding this particular performance space, but when the Whitefriars specific information is compiled and combined with the commonalities found between other comparable venues, this infamously obscure stage may begin to be conjecturally reconstructed.

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This thesis is the first study into the career, to date, of the current Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Gregory Doran. My thesis commences by identifying that, although he is one of the most prolific and high profile directors of Shakespearean plays working in Britain today, there has been no attempt thus far to articulate or analyse what characterises his work, or how he makes it. Acknowledging that he positions himself within a tradition of Shakespearean theatre directing that rhetorically locates the source of Shakespearean meaning and authority within the Shakespearean text, I argue that this locates him in critical territory at odds with performance critics who reject this paradigm, but rather see the theatrical event as a contested site of meaning(s) that are neither universal nor immanent in the text. His personal identification with Shakespeare, and his lengthy association with the RSC, a site of production identified as hegemonic and imperialistic by many scholars, has led to critical dismissal of Doran by some as a blandly conservative director. In this thesis I argue that Doran’s theatre-making craft, as he defines it, is an enabling one. His process, which draws on Stanislavskian ideas of character that are commonplace within British theatre, has distinctive elements that promote ensemble building, clarity and textual understanding. It is democratising in intent, opening up pathways for performance outcomes that are accessible to an audience without foreknowledge of the play. I further argue that Doran’s aesthetic negotiates tradition, design and space in ways that cannot be reductively dismissed as conservative, and that his work exhibits authorial traits linked to his sexuality and Catholic upbringing that are Doranian, not Shakespearean, in origin. I also argue that he has made an important contribution to the staging of lesser-known plays from the early modern repertoire.

This thesis examines the frameworks of writing and devising employed by two influential British theatre companies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Frantic Assembly and Forced Entertainment. I place these companies – not usually considered together – in dialogue, drawing on archive material from the decades-long span of their careers. Clues to the development of their creative methods are sought from rehearsal tapes and scripts, as well as other material surrounding each company’s output; this includes education packs, reviews, interviews (some newly conducted by myself), promotional videos and other manifestations of the rhetoric around the creation of the works in question. I focus closely on several specific productions for each company, but frame these detailed studies within a wider exploration of the developing styles, shifting methods and changing material circumstances within which these productions were created. My first chapter assesses existing proposed definitions of devising, adopting and nuancing certain key terms in the light of my observations of the companies examined. Within these frameworks, I use the particular case studies to illuminate concerns central to the creation of new theatrical work more widely, involving overlapping processes of devising and writing. In particular, I probe anxieties, paradoxes and revelations around the roles of writing and collaboration. By tracing the companies’ rhetorics and practices over a considerable length of time, I throw new light on the slow accretion and nuancing of process within both companies.

Ch. I. Grotius and Vondel chose the dramatic form for the embodiment of their Idea because drama had the widest appeal of those art-forms claiming the dual function of edification and Instruction. Ch.II (i) The account of the Fall in Genesis contains explicitly or implicitly all the elements required of a tragedy by the Humanist philologists interpretation of Aristotle and Horace. (ii) Senecan influence in Dutch drama is mainly attributable to the preference of Latin to Greek as the language used by the scholars end to the popularity of Seneca's rhetorical style andmoralising manner among those who inherited the Rederijkers' tradition. Ch. III. *ADAMUS EXUL* The play fails to achieve the balance necessary to form an integrated impression of tragedy because the predominant power and mood is of evil. Grotius fails to co-ordinate his art and scholarship. Ch.IV. "ADAM IN BALLINGSCHAP" (i) at the Literal Level. Its greatest achievement is its flawless structure in which the power of supernatural good and evil are perfectly balanced and reach a culminating point in the spiritual conflict of one man. (ii) the Theological Level. Vondel's views on the Cosmos, the soul and body, the mind, God in nature, obedience, free will and the Redemption are considered with reference to Grotius. (iii) the Symbolic Level. There are two important symbolic allegories to which most of the individual symbols contribute: God as the Sun and Light, Lucifer as Darkness; Adam as the Soul and Eve as the Body. Ch.V. "ADAM IN BALLINGSCHAP" is of all Vondel's drama the fullest externalisation of his spiritual life for in it are the red together all the aspects of virtue and sin expressed severally in his other plays. Conclusion. There can be no question of more than a superficial influence of Grotius' play on Vondel's.

"What we wanted was to create for Ireland a theatre with a base of realism, with an apex of beauty," Lady Gregory wrote of the early Abbey. This study examines, with special reference to the theatre movement in Ireland during the first two decades of this century, the dramatic theory and practice developed by William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and John Millington Synge, in their attempt to create an Irish literary theatre. It begins by considering the background of all three writers in an effort to place each within the aesthetic and national climate which nurtured their development and affected their aims and practice. This section traces the major European and Irish currents of thought in which they were involved. A theatre with a base of realism and an apex of beauty implies special qualifications and involves certain basic conflicts. The main body of the thesis is devoted to a study of the development in theory and craftsmanship of these three playwrights as each evolved a dramatic form which would satisfy his artistic theories. Emphasis is placed on the achievements of each during the period 1900 to 1919.The general development of the theatre as distinct from the individual work of its directors is then considered, and a survey made of the gradual evolution of a policy which gave rise to "the Abbey tradition" of writing and acting. A brief examination is made of the degree of interdependence between playwright, player, producer, and audience. The founders succeeded in creating a theatre, but not in realizing their dream. The final chapter places the individual achievement of Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Synge against this background of the general movement and the theatre they founded, in an effort to determine the cause of this success and failure, and the reality of the dream.

Patriotic and civic spirit in the theatre in eighteenth century France cannot be understood properly unless related to the general trends of thought of that period. A brief examination of the ideas of several leading thinkers and then of the diffusion of the spirit of patriotism through the works of various secondary writers helps to illustrate the two-fold nature of patriotism in the eighteenth century: "old" or nationalistic and emotional, and "new" or civic and philosophic. An increasingly important civic and patriotic role was assigned to the theatre, especially after the middle of the century. Apparently technical reforms were often closely related to this role, for they involved making the theatre more interesting, more accessible, and thus more influential in the diffusion of ideas. "Old" patriotism was an important element in a large number of dramatic works beginning as early as 1730 but developing particularly after 1755. It manifested itself in works based on French historical subjects or characters, in works based on French military exploits, and in works based on anti-foreign sentiments or on a desire to depict the character of the French people. This patriotism was largely royalist and conservative. "New" patriotism which tended to be republican in spirit without necessarily explicitly advocating republicanism appeared in works which were based on a wide range of subjects, but which were mainly concerned with social and political questions like the nature and basis of government, the structure of French society, the importance and the relationship to civic and social responsibility of the qualities of sensibilite and bienfaisance, and the problems of religious tolerance and political liberty. The two-fold nature of French patriotism was reflected in the theatre, but, in view of the influence of the non-nationalistic ideas of the philosophes, nationalistic patriotism played a larger role in the theatre than might have been expected.