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This thesis attempts to solve the problem of metricality that is central to any discussion of Shakespeare's versification. In what sense can such a vast diversity of lines all be said to be 'metrical'? What structural features enable us to distinguish metrical and unmetrical lines? We cannot discuss coherently the special and local effects of metre unless we have a clear understanding of how that metre works; yet, as I show in Part I, all previous attempts to provide such an understanding have failed, because they have been unable to account for the fact that we can perceive a distinction between metrical and unmetrical lines. In Part II I propose a theory of the heroic line which attempts to solve this problem, and I relate it to a general theory of metrical systems; Part II also provides, in illustration, an exposition (though not a history) of Shakespeare's metrical practice. I have focussed on Shakespeare's prosody, partly because it is so copious, so various, so complex, and so little respectful of Renaissance metrical theory, and thus presents the problem of metricality in its most acute form; and partly because Shakespeare has suffered at the hands of reductivist prosodic pedantry, that has sought to tidy his metre into neat a priori schemes. Metre is not a set of abstract relations, like a grammar, but a species of rhythm; I am interested in how this rhythm is transmitted and perceived, and I believe therefore that a metrical theory must take account of performance as well as competence. For this reason my theory represents a reaction against various recent attempts (structural and generative metrics) to appropriate metrics as a branch of linguistics; despite its considerable debt to that science, the study of metro must remain at bottom a part of evaluative criticism.

This thesis concerns emergent representations of psychological epistemology in Elizabethan fictions. For Elizabethan writers, does self-consciousness exist as consciousness of an actual <i>something</i> that makes meaning out of experience? The thesis explores how an Elizabethan poetics of inquiry develops this question on its own terms, seeking to represent and question the reality of an originary dialogic inner voice – a voice in the head – as the heuristic moment-to-moment experience of the self as a thinking thing. I argue that the problem of the reality, the <i>actualité </i>of such an inner voice, fundamental to the history of the philosophy of mind, emerges as such for a range of major authors in fictions composed c.1580-97. My thesis aims accordingly to recover an understanding of how imaginative literature in this period conceptualised fundamental questions about the experience of consciousness itself. Literary writing is seen to address poetically, developmentally and variously central questions about the experience of human inquiry in ways that do not accrue to separate philosophical speculation during this period. Part 1 discusses the confusing and confusedly related idioms for self-perception – of the mind’s eye and the ‘talk which the soul has with itself’ – that are epistemologically troublesome for Plato and the Platonic tradition but less so for Aristotle and post-Aristotelian traditions. This part of the thesis traces how these Platonic idioms are shared and altered by Ovid’s highly inventive and influential epistolary poems, the <i>Heroides</i>, and theorises how a strange and powerful coupling of Platonic and Ovidian texts creates the core intertextual features of an Elizabethan poetics of inquiry. The latter stages of part 1 historically and critically contextualise this intertextual framework for handling the phenomenon of the voice in the head. In part 2, five detailed case studies consider works by Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, George Chapman and John Donne.

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This dissertation is about the use of animals in early modern English drama between 1558-1642. There are two main aims of this investigation: to determine the dramaturigcal effects of animals on the stage and to historicise the plays by setting them in their epistemological context. My work compares the plays' different treatments of animals in order to ascertain whether there can be said to be a coherent early modern 'dramaturgy of animals'; how it differs from the employment of animals in Medieval and Classical drama; and how genre is affected by their use. The introductory Chapter 1 recapitulates the critical contexts into which may work fits and sketches out the early modern literary and natural-historical background to the plays. Chapter 2: In the drama of the period, apes heighten awareness of man's humanity: some writers consider that dressing up as an animal threatens man's soul because it denies his 'godlike' image. Specifically with apes, of course, this 'denial' is parodic, but this makes it more, rather than less, dangerous to the divine order. Travel literature as well as drama (including <I>The Tempest</I>), is used to interrogate the usefulness of metaphorical monkeys. <I>Mr Moore's Revels</I> and other masques draw attention to parallels between apes and Africans, and women and apes. Chapter 3: Reading the real dogs in <I>The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Every Man Out of His Humour, </I>and <I>The Staple of News</I> as light entertainment, as previous critics have, constitutes a misinterpretation of the drama in its historical context. This involvement in the plots and imagery demonstrates that the playwright's intention was to elucidate the relationship between man and animal. A dog on the stage interrogates the 'realness' of stage business with a more direct, and more problematical method, than pleas from Prologues for the audience to suspend its disbelief. The 'dogginess', and the dramatic effect, of the costume devil-dog in <I>The Witch of Edmonton </I>is discussed.

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