This thesis seeks to explore the ways in which Caryl Churchill has utilised existing dramatic structural models in six of her text-based stage plays. The study takes the three dramaturgical models most commonly found in Churchill's work, Brechtian epic, farce and absurdism and examines how the playwright appropriates these, adapting them to new content, and ultimately subverting them; transmuting their qualities into new innovative form. The study asserts the right of the playwright to use all of the dramaturgical knowledge at her* disposal against a background of theoretical writing, some of which attempts to attach an ethical or moral status to individual dramaturgical theories. This study concludes that no dramaturgical form is inherently moral or immoral, rather, it is the context in which it is used that determines the success and ethical status of a dramatic structural form in any given piece of drama.

This thesis offers a reappraisal of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s dramatic theory and writing. Although critical interest in Coleridge’s dramatic work is relatively small in comparison to other areas, it is increasing. A central aim of the thesis is to add to this field of criticism by suggesting a greater significance of the dramatic in Coleridge’s oeuvre. This is an area of Coleridge’s work that can be illuminated by way of its interpretation using Walter Benjamin’s reassessment of dramatic genres in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. A key assumption of the thesis is that Coleridge’s dramatic work extends beyond the parameters of his activity as a playwright. It therefore positions key moments of his critical theory and poetic writing as dramatic. In viewing selected works in this way, a greater coincidence between Coleridge and Benjamin’s work emerges most significantly through their shared themes of truthful representation and correct interpretation. A short introduction highlights common themes between Coleridge and Benjamin and proposes a view of the two writers that follows Benjamin’s concept of the ‘constellation’. Chapter One draws together key critical interest in Romantic drama. It also aims to connect Coleridge’s dramatic theory and works with key themes in On German Tragic Drama. Chapter Two explores Coleridge’s dramatic theory in his Lectures before 1812 and offers a reading of the ‘Critique of Bertram’ that seeks to reassert the importance of this piece. Chapter Three aims to reveal a dramatic current running through ‘The Eolian Harp’ and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The thesis culminates, in Chapter Four, with a reading of Remorse informed by Benjamin’s critical model of the Trauerspiel in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. In conclusion, the thesis offers up aspects of Coleridge’s works that can be termed as dramatic so as to reveal their anticipation of a Benjaminian modernity. In this sense, it proposes that drama should be accorded more significance within Coleridge’s oeuvre as it reveals a better understanding of some of his lesser known material and highlights some of his most original thinking.

The contemporary theatrical and performative trope that anything is stageable is strengthened and supported as technology mounts, as genres and media expand and traverse each others’ boundaries, and as the question of what theatre is, what performance is, becomes an ever-widening gyre of possibility. My doctoral thesis reflects on this breadth of expansion and observes its counterpart, the unstageable. A study of this chimerical term presents a shifting terrain of language, time, and context, and situates itself tangentially to, though not within, discussions of concepts of failure and impossibility in theatre and performance studies. Focusing on three examples drawn from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries respectively, the thesis’ case studies begin to suggest an alternative view of the history of staging, a history which tends to focus upon what theatre has been able to stage, and rarely upon what it has not. Taking this synchronic route through recent theatre history, and illuminating points of unstageability with the theoretical aid of Jacques Rancière’s writing on the unrepresentable in response to Jean-François Lyotard’s discussion of the unpresentable, the thesis’ examples engage with the broad spectrum of the term’s history, without suggesting a diachronic evolution or overview of its position in the field. Invoking the world premiere of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in 1876, and the demise of the Parisian Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in 1962, the first two case studies in the thesis engage with the possibilities of the unstageable as they emerge in particular historical contexts. Returning to the twenty-first century, the recent work of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio invites a dialogue regarding unstageability now, and the implications that this shifting signifier may continue to have for theatre and performance.

This thesis aims to explore Bernard Shaw’s religious and philosophical development and indicate how far his personal thoughts and religious ideas relate to his philosophical background and contemporaries, including his view as a philosophical artist. This study focuses on the particular plays, which use a variety of theatrical genres to explore Shaw’s development towards the full-blown myth of creative evolution during his life. The first part of the thesis, demonstrates that Shaw’s own religious and philosophical development and also considers that of his contemporaries and a review of the literary context in which Shaw’s plays were written. In the second part of the thesis, the eight plays in which Shaw’s philosophical religious ideas appear are critically examined especially by comparing the relationship of each character to the main action of the play and to the main theme or idea of the play. Through the chapters, this thesis shows how Shaw dramatizes the purpose of the life force, in order to make clear what humanity can do to aid its progress. This is because the life force is the central fact of Shaw ’s creative evolution. The life force provides the impetus for evolutionary progress as the basic structural element of Shaw ’s plays. This study explores the eight major plays which have a particular relation to his development of a religious dimension: The Man of Destiny, The Devil's Disciple , Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah. In focusing on these eight plays, the characters of the plays chosen reveal the progression of Shaw’s combination of social ideas with the religious dynamic that would culminate in his creed of creative evolution. These plays had explicitly their ideological origins in religious ideas. In these plays, therefore, religion is itself part of the texture of the social/historical material that Shaw chose to dramatize. Each play chosen will be analyzed from the perspectives established in the introductory chapters in relation to dramatic themes and types of genres by grouping the plays.

This dissertation examines film adaptations of Irish plays, applying theory from adaptation studies as well as using archival research to uncover how film technology, censorship, and industry concerns shape how plays are altered in their journey to the screen. Chapter One analyses silent film adaptations of Dion Boucicault's Irish plays and seeks to uncover why film versions of William Travers's Kathleen Mavourneen (1862) were mistakenly credited as being based on a play by Boucicault. Chapter Two focuses on space and place in theatre and film, focusing on Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars (1926) and Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow (1954). The second section considers the use of the Irish landscape in Jim Sheridan's film The Field (1990) and Brian Desmond Hurst's films of Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904) and The Playboy of the Western World (1907). Chapter Three analyses Brian Friel's exploration of subjectivity and memory in Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). The analyses of the film versions focus on subjective camerawork and the use of voiceover in film, with particular attention paid to the screenwriting process. Chapter Four looks at the complex dramaturgy of monologue plays and meta-theatrical two character plays, including Owen McCafferty's Mojo Mickybo (1998), Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs (1996), and Abbie Spallen's Pumpgirl (2006). It is argued that the growth of low budget and independent film making in Ireland has facilitated the creation of adaptations that draw from a wider range of theatrical sources that contain more multi-faceted approaches to both theatrical form and depictions of Irish society. I

This dissertation discusses the work of three Northern Irish playwrights: Stewart Parker, Christina Reid, and Gary Mitchell. Specifically, it examines the Protestant, unionist, and loyalist identities of the characters within their plays. During the Troubles and post-Good Friday Agreement era, during which these plays were written and performed, such identities were in flux, as the socio-political landscape of Northern Ireland was undergoing a volatile and violent upheaval. Chapter One discusses the roles and identities of the main ' actors ' in the Troubles: paramilitaries, the police, the British Army, and politicians. This chapter examines the identities of such actors themselves, and also their interactions with the civilians of the province. Chapter Two focuses on the performance of masculinities, and has its basis in contemporary theories of Western masculinities. The specific performance of Northern Irish masculinities is examined, as well as the potential for future masculinities posited by these playwrights. Chapter Three turns its attention to the roles of women in Northern Ireland and their representations on stage in the works of Parker, Reid, and Mitchell. The political, social, and cultural mores of the province are examined in detail, as it is these conditions to which the playwrights, and their works, are reacting against. Chapter Four examines the works for radio and television by Parker, Reid, and Mitchell. Within these mediums, these authors are able to more effectively write against media stereotypes perpetuated by news footage and inadequate reporting from the province, allowing their audiences to see the 'reality' of the everyday lives of Northern Irish men and women.

In this thesis, I analyse a series of plays from the early modern professional stage to argue that temporality is socially constructed in the early modern period and that time, like gender, class and race, is a category through which early modern subjectivity is negotiated. I suggest that the ’early modern temporal consciousness’ was dominated by a binary of action and delay and I explore the ways in which the axis of time, as it is defined by that binary, intersects the axis of gender on the early modern stage. Through my analysis of delay, and of action as its implicit opposite, in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama, I argue that a variety of gendered social identities are constructed temporally. -- I begin with the best known drama of delay, Hamlet. This play sets the terms for my exploration of the gendered experience of time through its engagement with three concepts which are, I suggest, structured by the opposition of action and delay which shapes temporality in early modern society: patience, prodigality and revenge. I proceed with chapters focused on these three thematic foci in turn, analysing a range of domestic comedies and revenge tragedies performed between 1585 and 1622. I argue that these dramatic genres mark fundamental differences in the experience of temporality by men and women and that those differences drive the plots and thematic concerns of the theatre at that time. I conclude by looking at how theatrical repertories informed the autobiographical writings of Lady Anne Clifford, a ’postponed heiress’ who structured her gender and her works through the dramatic models of patience, prodigality and revenge. Thus this thesis offers a double argument: it marks gender as a shaping factor in the experience of time and it helps define early modern gender categories by way of temporality.

My primary concerns are what vocatives were used and how they were used in Early Modern English 'gentry' comedies. As there are of course no authentic recorded data from the period, I have investigated a collection of drama texts in the Vocative-Focussed Socio-Pragmatic Corpus. Methodologically, I take a corpus-based approach, and combine quantitative and qualitative analyses in a historical pragmatic perspective. As a consequence, my research is interdisciplinary in nature in that it pivots on several linguistic fields, i.e. historical linguistics, pragmatics, stylistics, sociolinguistics, as well as corpus linguistics. In my thesis, compiling an annotated corpus is both an end product in itself as well as data. In the Introduction, I present my research questions and the overall scope of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of vocative by reviewing major works on address terms and politeness theory. Chapter 3 explains the annotation systems adopted in the corpus. Chapter 4 gives a general view of the distribution pattern and lexical components of vocatives in the corpus. Chapters 5-7 focus on the quantitative analysis of vocatives, in particular, the relation between the vocative form and the various attributes of the interlocutors. Chapter 8 discusses pragmatic functions of the vocatives by analysing examples in the corpus. Chapter 9 provides a case study in which shifts of vocatives are discussed from a stylistic and pragmatic perspective, using the notion of social network and the framework drawn from the analyses in the preceding chapters.

In 1951, G. K. Hunter wrote a piece for <i>The Library</i> drawing readers’ attention to certain kinds of marks in the margins of Elizabethan and Jacobean texts. Particular passages were emphasised, mainly using comma-shaped markings or a change of font. This thesis presents a thoroughly revised and expanded account of the field which Hunter first explored, establishing a grammar for reading marks which critical editions have rendered for the most part invisible. By situating gnomic marking in its historical context, from the first uses of the diple [“] by the Greek scholar Aristarchus, the thesis shows how it was the general uses which persisted into the early modern period. While Hunter suggested that emphatic marking was primarily attached to rhetorical figures, it is shown that printed marks were used by authors to achieve a rich variety of semantic effects and by their readers to create personal editions. The first chapter provides the historical background to early modern marking, from its Greek origins through its transmission across the medieval period to its adoption by continental printers and subsequent arrival in England. The way features of mis-en-page were translated along with the text of editions of Terence, Seneca, Chaucer and Robert Garnier is shown to be the primary factor for the development of marking practices, particularly when the annotations of previous readers were accidentally fossilised as printed marks. This lays the foundation for the thesis as a whole, where printed emphases stand witness to lost networks of readers and the circulation and emulation of valued editions. The second and third chapters present a detailed survey of the surviving marks in dramatic editions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, the developing role of publishers in calibrating mis-en-page to suit contemporary readers and shows how authors used marking as part of their overall style.

This thesis is concerned to show how the plays of George Bernard Shaw were the product of the historical circumstances in which they were written. Recent Marxist writing on the problem of determination is critically reviewed and an alternative solution, drawing on Lukacs and Goldmann, is proposed. It is argued that the 'world vision' articulated in a particular work can only be understood as a 'projection' based upon the historical circumstances of its production. The Fabian Society is located within the class structure of Britain and the nature of their political ideas examined. They are shown to be a group of intellectuals who aspired to a 'state capitalist' society but who found it difficult to identify an agency to achieve this. Shaw's early writings are shown to have the elements of the 'analytic' aspects of the Fabianism but only when he developed into a central thinker of this current could he complete his world vision with an 'executive' element. This allowed him to shift to playwriting. His plays are shown to be concerned with the same problem of agency as are the political writings. The ways in which this was handled was a product of the changing historical circumstances.