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Equivocation is a condition of language that runs riot in Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. Whether as ambiguity or dissimulation, equivocation propels the plots of these plays to their tragic finales. The Doom as depicted in pre-Reformation churches is invoked in the plays as a force that could end both equivocation and tragedy. However, Shakespeare withholds this divine intervention, allowing the tragedy to play out. Chapter One outlines the thesis, explains the methodological approach, and locates the thesis in relation to the major fields of Shakespeare studies. Chapter Two focuses on the equivocal position of father-and-not-father occupied by Claudius and the Ghost in Hamlet, and the memento mori imagery in the play that reminds the audience of the inevitability of death and Judgement. Chapter Three on Othello examines Iago's equivocal mode of address, a blend of equivocations and lies that aims to move Othello from a valued insider to a detested outsider in Venice. Chapter Four argues that linguistic and temporal equivocations are the condition of Macbeth, where the trace of the future invades the present and the trace of vice invades virtue. In both Othello and Macbeth, the protagonists, in their darkest moments, summon images of apocalyptic damnation. Chapter Five proposes that the language of King Lear deconstructs the opposition between Christianity and paganism, and interprets Cordelia as both Lear's poison and remedy. Furthermore, it analyses the moment when Lear enters the stage carrying Cordelia's dead body as an equivocal invocation of the Doom. The methodological approach to this thesis draws on Derrida's conception of language as differential and without access to any divine guarantees that could anchor meaning. The tragedies, then, can be understood in relation to language: they are denied the divine force that could fix, resolve, and stabilize them.

This thesis is about reading. Working on the understanding that all texts read other texts, it aims to uncover something of how English poets from 1590-1650 read the Song of Songs, by analyzing when and how they use it in their poetry. By looking at poetic readings, rather than theological ones, it also explores the connections and distinctions between reading literature and reading Scripture. As both Scripture and lyric love poetry, the Song of Songs has participated in theological and literary discourse over a long period. The Introduction gives background on both kinds of reading, and how they have been applied to the Song of Songs. It also sets out the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 surveys theological writing about the Song of Songs produced during the period. The material includes sermons, commentaries, household advice books, hymns and translations, including poetic translations. There is a stable core of interpretation, which reads the Song as primarily about the relationship between Christ and the Church, or the individual soul, or both. Within this stable core, however, there is a wide variety of interpretations. Chapters 3-5 are themed, and look at how poets handle the three topics of the feminine voice, beauty and desire when they read the Song of Songs. The first poet considered in each chapter is Aemilia Lanyer, who provides a plumb-line for the exposition. As a poet seeking elite patronage, Lanyer is typical of her age in many important respects; but she also challenges expectations about poets of the period. The other poets considered are Shakespeare, Southwell, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, Spenser, Donne and Crashaw. The Conclusion considers what light these poetic readings shed on the relationship between Scripture and literature.

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In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century a large and complex English literature on the Ottoman Turks developed, characterised by its diversity in form, content, opinion and context. This was a literature in the sense of a large body of texts sharing a topic, written in a similar time and place and in similar context, but also in the sense of a discourse, sharing literary conventions, citing similar sources, recycling information, accepted ‘facts’, anecdotes and images and drawing upon the same authorities. I examine this literature from its sixteenth-century roots, tracing its growth at the turn of the seventeenth century and its development into a complex literature, influenced by English religious and political contexts as well as growing Anglo-Ottoman trade and diplomacy, until the dramatic changes brought by diminishing Ottoman power in Europe at the close of that century. I draw these sources together as a ‘literature’, by examining trends, chronological developments and connections between them, while on the other hand I focus upon the contexts of individual works and a nuanced reading of their representations of the Ottomans. Through this I seek to bring a broader and more balanced perspective on both English literature on the Ottomans as a whole and the diversity and complexity of the works of which it was comprised.

This thesis examines Marlowe‘s interest in the representation of European religion and politics in three selected plays. The Jew of Malta (c. 1590), The Massacre at Paris (c. 1592) and Edward II (c. 1592) consider various aspects of Protestant/Catholic clashes, anti-Catholic sentiment, and elaborate on Machiavellian policies during the late Elizabethan period. The relationship between England and France is governed by many factors. Responses towards Mary, Queen of Scots and to Elizabeth‘s proposed marriage to Anjou can be considered part of this relationship, whereas the representation of France and the French can be assessed by exploring Marlowe‘s texts, Holinshed‘s Chronicles and Foxe‘s Books of Martyrs. The reaction of the Elizabethan state to Catholics is governed by mutual interest and shared benefits, and not necessarily hatred. Marlowe‘s The Massacre at Paris contains similarities and differences with two French plays written by Pierre Mathieu (La Guisiade 1589) and Chantelouve (Coligny 1575). The plays will be analyzed with reference to characters, interests, and themes. Minions will be investigated in terms of their influence on the political order. Anti-catholic sentiment is clearly demonstrated. The Jew of Malta presents a variety of Machiavelli‘s thoughts, whether stated in Machiavelli‘s books or understood by Marlowe‘s contemporaries. Religious conflict between the two most prominent characters of Marlowe‘s play is manifested. Barabas‘ resistance to Ferneze is used to show the Catholic tyranny of Ferneze. Ferneze‘s tyranny is strongly associated with Machiavellianism, encouraging the investigation of themes such as policy, dominance, power and villainy. Political theories in Edward II could be seen to have parallels in the Elizabethan court. Marlowe‘s interest in Elizabethan politics is apparent in the topics of opposition to the ruler and of despotism. Minions, again, are presented as causing disorder and instability, whereas Mortimer appears to adopt Machiavellian statecraft. Religious antagonism is a relatively minor theme in this play, but remains a factor in Marlowe‘s political thought.

This dissertation examines the themes of epistemology related to the physiology of the humours and melancholy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English prose, with chief emphasis on Robert Burton’s (1577-1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). It charts the transformations of the humoural condition in philosophy, anatomy and the medical treatise throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the renewed interest in the Renaissance of the ‘inspired’ form of melancholy by Florentine Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) to the middle of the seventeenth century in the writings of Thomas Browne (1605-1682). The first chapter serves as an introduction to the approach of the dissertation, which integrates a cultural historical approach to literary analysis of the Anatomy as some form of an anatomical treatise in the sense that it treats both a body of knowledge and knowledge of the body. Chapter two interrogates the distinction made by scholars between the ‘Ficinian’ and ‘Galenic’ forms of melancholy, and argues that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century humoural physiology recognises no such distinction, but rather that they serve as mutually sustainable responses to the problem presented to humoural physiology of visualising the interior of the living human body. Chapter three argues that, rather than using ‘anatomy’ and ‘melancholy’ as metaphorical constructs for rhetorical aims, the Anatomy pursues the intellectual possibilities implicit in anatomy as a highly procedural mode of analysis toward comprehending knowledge of a humoural body described in Galenic medicine, but that the text, as a result of the complications with completing such a body of knowledge, instead voices disembodiment. The fourth chapter proposes an analysis of Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia, known also as Urn Burial (1658), as having thematic continuity with both Burton’s Anatomy but also seventeenth-century humoural physiology as well, in that, while studying the past from the perspective of antiquarian speculation and cultural history, it concludes similarly that knowledge of the complete is impossible by the analysis of ruined and fragmentary objects and surfaces.

Hitherto the study of Shakespeare's literary sources has mainly sought to establish their identity rather than to evaluate his use of them - not least for the comedies up to and including Twelfth Night. The present source-study, however, is critically oriented. It attempts a systematic comparison of the texts of these comedies with their sources, wherever there exists a reasonable measure of agreement as to their identity, in the hope of providing a firmer basis for critical interpretation proper.