This thesis examines how the dislocation of old beliefs in post-Reformation England affected perceptions of the soul in the work of Donne and Shakespeare. The introduction, using Augustinian discourses on the tri-partite soul, explores how the soul is imagined in post-Reformation England. Current debates on interiority, the climate of anxiety that surrounds religious upheaval, historical readings of the composition of the soul and the problems of its actual representation on the page and stage are discussed. The patterning of Augustine‟s tri-partite model of Reason, Will and Memory is examined, and the regenerative power of concordant Memory that can bind together a harmonic trinity is offered as a solution to the fractured soul. The first part of the thesis concentrates on writings that represent Donne‟s anxieties over the fate of the soul as he contemplates conversion from Catholicism to the new religious order. Chapter One is an enquiry into his unpublished works from 1601 to 1611 and examines the idea of the wandering soul, from The Progresse of the Soule, to the Divine Poems and finally to the redeemed soul seen in the form of Elizabeth Drury in the Anniversaries. In this chapter, I argue that Donne is searching for an alternative Marian aesthetic as he leaves behind his Catholic past, a new image of divine intercession for the Protestant world that might offer him comfort and a route to salvation. Chapter Two explores his very public sermons after he enters the ministry until his death. Here, a pattern of redemption is argued through the salvic properties of the living Word of the sermon that is relayed through the performative power of the preacher. The preacher‟s working space and the power of the Word to viscerally transform the congregation are central here to the soul‟s salvation. The second part examines how Shakespeare explores the „journey‟ of the soul through a selection of his plays, but where the limits of genre impose restrictions on Shakespeare‟s development of an image of redemption. Chapter Three examines the wandering soul in The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Through the trope of marriage, the fate of the souls of Jessica and Othello are explored as they find themselves marginalized in an inhospitable Venice, while their pasts have been forgotten in the attempt to convert to Christianity. Chapter Four explores the use of the female character as an image of Memory that can generate hope, reading Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Cordelia in King Lear as “soul agents”, whose beneficence can bring about redemptive change. However, the thesis argues that the genre of tragedy examined here limits the soul agent. Chapter Five argues for an alternative genre that opens up the possibilities for the successful portrayal of the soul agent. In the romance plays, the representation of the soul can be seen working successfully to a redemptive conclusion. Romance dramas foreground their slippages in plot and take us into dreamscapes at the centre of which is an essential female influence. Marina in Pericles, Perdita in The Winter‟s Tale, Innogen in Cymbeline and Ariel/Miranda in The Tempest provide a link with Donne‟s presentation of the soul as female in the Anniversaries. Both Donne and Shakespeare suggest the idea of the female in literature as a redemptive figure, away from earlier discourses on the soul that finds itself at the mercy of epistemological wrangling. Donne and Shakespeare re-instate that sacredness and place it within art as an image of Memory, a vital component of Augustine‟s tri-partite soul, but also as an active and vibrant image of possibility

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The Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser published his sonnet sequence Visions of the Worlds Vanitie in a collection called Complaints in 1591, and the Amoretti and Epithalamion in 1595. I am analysing these poems and other appropriate early modern texts by using the allegorical vehicle of the Renaissance medical and philosophical notion of lovesickness. However, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, lovesickness is either interchangeable with or replaced by love-melancholy, which is a more fashionable illness describing the courtly Lover's suffering for his Lady. I am arguing that lovesickness is a more extreme illness. In Spenser's sonnet sequences Visions of the Worlds Vanitie and the Amoretti, I will analyse how the male Lover describes a bestial and grotesque condition as a destructive force, which invokes the courtly conflict between Lover and Lady. Spenser will also be compared and contrasted with other early modern sonnet sequences to identify different evocations of lovesickness, which employ language that is less hyperbolic than that found in Visions of the Worlds Vanitie and the Amoretti. Lovesickness will also be used to analyse the conflict between internal and external space, with a concept I have termed the lovesick womb. In early modern England, the womb is a powerful signifier because it is the source of extreme carnal desires, which are hidden from the patriarchal gaze. However, the lovesick womb not only conceals itself from patriarchal influence but it can also harm patriarchal law by intensifying its desire. The lovesick womb's inferred promiscuity that leads to unplanned pregnancies increases the desire of patriarchal law - to domineer and control. A political allegory of lovesickness and the lovesick womb will be used to provide an insightful critique of Queen Elizabeth I and her court. It also has implications for Spenser's own sense of identity as a representative New VllEnglish settler living in Ireland from 1580-1598. These implications serve further as a critique of Elizabethan colonial practice in which the queen's physical presence in Ireland is advocated as a solution to its problems.

This thesis contributes to the growing interest in early modern masculinity and its literary representations by introducing texts by women writers into dialogue with their male-authored counterparts. It argues for a more nuanced approach that recognises that the concepts of masculinity and femininity can only be fully understood when studied in relation with each other. The first chapter explores how, notwithstanding the wisdom of conduct books and marriage guides, the demands of the state may not always be commensurate with those of the domestic realm and shows that this conflict necessitates a rethinking of existing definitions of masculinity by focusing on selected writings of the Tudor sisters Mary and Elizabeth and Jane Fitzalan’s *Tragedie of Iphigeneia*. The second chapter identifies how Elizabeth’s unique discursive strategies were designed to elicit support from her male subjects and subdue the belligerence that simmered under polemic like John Stubbs’ *Gaping Gulf*. In her letters to Anjou, the chapter examines how Elizabeth manoeuvred around her position as a beloved and as a monarch to fashion a husband who would not only be sympathetic but also subordinate to her political authority. This chapter also shows how the fabulous world of John Lyly’s *Galatea* consummates the Queen’s desire for the ideal male subject. The final chapter investigates the construction of martial manhood. It juxtaposes Mary Sidney’s *The Tragedy of Antonie* with William Shakespeare’s *Antony and Cleopatra* to determine how the figure of Cleopatra, common to both plays, challenges and revises the martial code of masculinity as embodied by Antony. By examining the authorial position appropriated by Cleopatra in the plays and its impact on the narrative, this chapter also extends this thesis’ interest in the extent to which female characters within texts compete for diegetic control with male protagonists.

This study attempts to follow the stage history of three of Marlowe's plays, Dr. Faustus, Edward II, and The Jew of Malta, from Marlowe's own time to our own time. It also attempts to discuss changes in critical attitudes to these plays in particular, and to Marlowe in general, and to relate these to the plays' theatrical fortunes. Each of the first and last three chapters is devoted to one play. The first three deal with the early stage history of the three plays under discussion. Chapter One discusses that of Dr. Faustus, Chapter Two discusses that of The Jew of Malta, and Chapter Three, that of Edward H. On the basis of what is known with reasonable certainty, and of what can be deduced from a general knowledge of the Elizabethan theatre, the first three chapters explore dates, places and circumstances of the performances of these plays. They also attempt to reconstruct the stage action of major scenes in the plays and to investigate what theatrical techniques were available or were made exclusively available for staging these scenes. In the light of the social, political, and cultural climate of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, there is also an attempt to study what the thematic issues in each play represented for Elizabethan audiences, and this is juxtaposed in the three last chapters with what they now represent for modern audiences. This juxtaposition hopefully illuminates our understanding of the plays in their own time and shows how some aspects of these plays which do not appeal to modern audiences and directors were, in fact, of great significance to their first audiences. Chapters Six, Seven and Eight deal with the twentieth-century stage history of the plays in the same order as that of the three early chapters. The large number of performances in the twentieth century made the approach to these chapters inevitably selective. Therefore, in each chapter a certain number of performances have been chosen for detailed analysis, some of which have been seen; other performances have been discussed more briefly and only with a view to their effect in the stage history of the plays. For the productions discussed in detail, promptbooks and reviews have been examined, and, where possible, directors have been interviewed. Together, the early and the modern period seem to exhibit two peaks of Marlowe's popularity on the stage. These are bridged by Chapters Four and Five, where the lack of Marlowe performances formed a kind of valley between two mountains. Thus these two middle chapters, as it were, provide the stepping stones between the first and the last three chapters. Chapter Four deals with the period between 1642 and 1800, reviewing the prevailing critical attitudes to Marlowe, and their relation to his absence from the stage. Chapter Five opens with a study of Edmund Kean's revival of The Jew of Malta in 1818 and of how the play was adapted to the social and theatrical climate of the time. The Chapter also reviews the critical attitudes to Marlowe's plays in the nineteenth century, as seen in editions of, and essays on, the plays; and it ends with a study of William Poel's revivals of two of the plays under discussion, Dr. Faustus and Edward II, in 1896 and in 1903, respectively. All the eight chapters attempt to discuss the stage history of the plays in the light of the theatrical conditions of the times, and the ways in which these influenced the staging and interpretation of the text. There is no claim that it is possible to reconstruct the effect of a certain performance or how words were spoken, but, where promptbooks are available, there is a fair degree of certainty concerning what was spoken in the production. Thus, a study of cuts and additions made by actor-managers and directors proved necessary. In cases where further extracts from the promptbooks may be helpful to the reader, such extracts have been provided in appendices. There are also lists of dates and places of modern professional and amateur productions of these plays, which are useful though by no means exhaustive. Illustrations have also been provided, to illuminate points made in the discussion of particular productions. The conclusion sums up the reasons why Marlowe's plays were popular only at certain times and in certain climates, discusses how certain difficulties experienced in staging them are still seen as major obstacles in productions. It finally focuses on Marlowe's position in the theatre of today.

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The thesis is a critical edition of <i>Roland Furious, </i>part of manuscript Adv.19.2.6 in the National Library of Scotland, written by John Stewart of Baldynneis in c.1585. The poem in question has never been extensively noted and annotated. The only full edition of the text in existence is the Scottish Text Society edition of 1913 (Vol.II), edited by Thomas Crockett. This is a poor rendering of the text only. The notes and introduction, which would have comprised Vol.I, did not appear. This critical edition of the poem will provide a useful academic tool for tracing the developmental of Scottish poetry and of influences, European and otherwise, on it. The structure of the thesis is as follows: 1. A critical introduction which seeks to place the poem in its literary, historical, and political context; 2. An editorial policy which clearly explains the editorial decisions taken. This section will also look at the linguistic and orthographic vagaries contained in the manuscript itself; 3. The text itself, comprising five introductory poems and twelve cantos of varying length, with a total of 3184 lines. This will have editorial side notes; 4. A full appendix of mythological, historical, and literary proper and place names; 5. Extensive footnotes to the text in the following categories: stylistic; comparative; and translations from other texts; 6. Full glossary of every word in the text.

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