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This thesis explores the work of three women practitioners in radio and examines the process of writing radio drama through a mixture of criticism and practice. It analyzes early theories about radio drama and compares them with those of today, in order to ascertain whether the early ideas are still relevant. Starkey points out that radio has been relatively undertheorized (2004: 204), so this evaluation of the practice of writing radio drama adds to knowledge of the medium as a whole. The work focuses on two women practitioners from the past: Hilda Matheson, whose book Broadcasting (1933), was the first single authored text on radio and broadcasting by a woman published in English (Crook 1999: 12) and Mabel Constanduros, who was a prolific writer and actress of the time, specialising in comedy. Matheson s ideas are compared with those of Val Gielgud and other early theorists, which were more accepted at the time. This analysis leads to close examination of a debate at the heart of radio drama, that being whether noises or dialogue are the best method of storytelling. Finally there is a consideration of the author s own writing practice, using three broadcast radio plays, 21 Conversations with a Hairdresser, 15 Ways to Leave Your Lover and Jesus, The Devil and a Kid Called Death. This provides insight into the changing methods of writing for radio. The findings create a story design for writing the Radio 4 Afternoon Drama. Final written drafts are included, along with audio copies of the plays as they were broadcast. Several different types of criticism create the theoretical base, including works on cultural theory, feminist theory and reception theory, as well as texts on radio, screen, play and comedy writing.

This thesis provides new and alternative readings of women’s opportunities for agency in sixteenth and early seventeenth century society, and of the ways in which this was represented in plays and masques of the time. The relationship between history and theatre is a two-way process. In light of this, the depiction of proactive female characters in public plays is examined alongside the appearance of proactive women in society and on stage in Jacobean court masques, through the different but complementary lenses of marriage and female alliances. After the Introduction (Chapter One), Part One (Chapters Two and Three) looks at female agency in marriage and the ways in which this was depicted in drama, from the perspective of two neglected social practices, spousals and wife sales. The spousal law offered women as well as men an opportunity to regulate their marriage without recourse to the church or parents and is a common, but under-studied, plot in Renaissance drama. Three of the most interesting and complex uses appear in George Chapman’s The Gentlemen Usher (1602-4), John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612-14) and Thomas Middleton’s The Widow (c. 1616). The spousal plot provides an alternative angle for the playwrights to explore and endorse female characters’ decision to rebel against male family members and marry men of their choice. Part Two (Chapters Four, Five and Six) analyses the opportunities for female agency at the Jacobean court from the perspective of female homosocial bonding, looking at Anna of Denmark (Queen consort of James I), her court women, and the masques in which they danced. Anna’s women were, like the Queen, trying to control their lives. Chapter Four shows that the Queen’s retinue provided a separate space for these women to gather, interact and create alliances and further, that this mutual support facilitated their agency at the Jacobean court, agency which often involved opposing the king.

This thesis explores the intersection between the study of Shakespearean drama and the theory and practice of early modern dramatic genres. It reassesses the significance of tragedy and the idea of the tragic within three separate yet related generic frames: tragedy, history, and tragicomedy. Behind this research lies the fundamental question of how newly emerging dramatic genres allow Shakespeare to explore tragedy within different aesthetic and dramatic contexts, and of how they allow his writing to move beyond tragedy. The thesis begins by looking at Shakespeare’s deployment of the complex trope of “nothing”. “Nothing” as a rhetorical trope and metaphysical idea appears across many of the tragedies, often becoming a focal point for the dramatic representation of scepticism, loss and nihilism. The trope is often associated with the space of the theatre, and sometimes with the dramaturgy of tragedy itself. However, it is also deployed within the histories and tragicomedies at certain moments which might equally be called tragic. “Nothing” therefore provides a starting-point for thinking about how the genres of history and tragicomedy engage with tragedy. Part I focuses on tragedy, including extended readings of Timon of Athens and King Lear. It explores Shakespearean drama as a response to the pressures of the early modern cultural preoccupation with, and anxiety about, scepticism. Stanley Cavell and other critics of early modern dramatic scepticism have tended to locate this engagement with scepticism within tragedy. However, this section shows that the same sceptical problematic is addressed across Shakespearean dramatic genres, with very different results. It then explores why scepticism should display a particular affinity for tragedy as a dramatic genre. Part II focuses on history, with particular reference to Richard II and Henry V. The trope of “nothing” is used as a starting-point to explore the intersection between Shakespearean history and tragedy. Engaging with Walter Benjamin’s theory of baroque tragedy as Trauerspiel (mourning-plays) rooted in history, it argues that Trauerspiel provides a useful generic framework against which to consider the mournful aesthetic of Shakespeare’s histories. Part III focuses on early modern tragicomedy and The Winter’s Tale, asking how Shakespeare achieves the transition from tragedy to tragicomedy in his later writing. It explores tragicomedy’s background on the early modern stage in theory and practice, paying particular attention to Guarini’s theory that pastoral tragicomedy frees its hearers from melancholy, and to the legacy of medieval religious drama and its engagement with faith and belief. Returning to the trope of “nothing”, this section shows that The Winter’s Tale addresses the same sceptical problematic as the earlier tragedies. Arguing that scepticism opens up a space for tragedy and nihilism in the first half of The Winter’s Tale, it demonstrates that Shakespeare finds in the genre of tragicomedy an aesthetic and dramatic form which allows him to move through, and beyond, the claims of tragedy.

The chief objective of this doctoral thesis is to identify the feasibility of interpreting non-Shakespearean plays written during the English Renaissance period in terms of their integral actors’ cued parts. The cued part is defined herein as the prevalent type of theatrical script received by an early modern professional actor. Unlike the familiarly linear, holistic guide to a play typically received by a twenty-first century actor, such a unique text consisted solely of the lines to be spoken by the player on behalf of the individual character he was to represent. Each moment of speech was prefaced by a short cue to facilitate effective timing on the stage. An actor’s cues, visually indicated on the part by ‘cue-tails’, the long horizontal lines which preceded them, would themselves be crucially distinguished from the speaking part, thus forming a detached peripheral ‘cue-text’ of their own (Palfrey and Stern, 2005). This thesis is situated in the context of seminal work by Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern (2005, 2007). Although the authors’ ground-breaking publications currently saturate the newly-emerging discipline, their content is almost exclusively confined to the plays of Shakespeare despite the non-Shakespearean provenance of extant early modern cued parts. Originality is demonstrated herein through extension of the field’s existing sphere of influence. The current study thus seeks to resolve whether the practice of performing from cued parts was unique to Shakespeare or common to a cross-section of Renaissance playwrights, united for analysis within the following chapters by one of two factors: the theatrical association of the dramatists’ plays with the Lord Admiral’s Men, the playing company for whom the known part-conversant actor Edward Alleyn performed and/or the existence of their plays in bibliographically inferior yet dramatically enlightening ‘bad’ quarto (Pollard, 1909) or ‘minimal text’ (Gurr, 1999) form. Whilst it has been largely critically overlooked, the cued part is hypothesised within this study to be an all-encompassing complete unit of text, performance and meta-performance. Although the original rationale for its production was firmly rooted in the practical, the revised agenda set by this thesis is predominantly interpretative. Adopting an actor-centred methodology, the present investigation represents an active contribution to understanding within the field, its most innovative inputs centring upon selected key areas. In terms of the dramatic, the study proposes an archetypal technical composition for the early modern professional actor’s customised text, venturing to assert a series of original classifications of cue type with far-reaching semantic repercussions, reinforced by supporting literary and cultural analysis. Establishing new terminology for the analysis of cued parts, the vast editorial potential inherent in the form begins to emerge. The comparative relationship between cued parts and ‘minimal text’ editions of plays written and performed during the period 1590 to 1620 is elucidated, the latter bibliographic grouping critically neglected on account of its compromised literary value. The surprising influence of the actor in shaping the composition, performance and direction of Renaissance plays is subsequently promoted. Finally, in the realm of the meta-dramatic, the thesis recommends the multi-dimensional self-reflexive potential of the cued part form. New evidence is provided for the existence of alternative texts within both play and part, tendering shifting perspectives on the whole play and simultaneously boasting immeasurable creative potential to contemporary directors, actors and scholars alike. Orienteering far beyond the accepted segmentation of the whole play into parts, the cued part itself is dissolved into interior and exterior meta-parts. The reader is ultimately presented with a selection of avant-garde reflections upon the broad interpretative facility of the small and quirky Renaissance theatrical text.

This thesis offers a materialist account of dramatic genre. It shows how English revenge tragedies were mediated by the social circumstances of their early modern dramatic production, and how in turn such circumstances found expression in dramatic form. Its method draws on Marxist critical theory, but the work also makes extensive use of traditions in English social history and more conventional literary criticism. Influenced by Walter Benjamin’s early work, 'Urprung des deutschen Trauerspiels', in which ‘origin’ (Ursprung) is distinguished from ‘genesis’ (Entstehung), the dissertation offers an account of the genre’s dialectical relationship with the social realities and legal circumscriptions accompanying theatrical performance at the time revenge plays became popular. Focusing on the characterization of avenging protagonists, the dissertation suggests how the ambivalent disposition of such figures to narrative and scene drew on historical problems of social and occupational identity in early modern England. The first chapter dwells on the ambiguities of the avenger’s marginalisation in Thomas Kyd’s seminal revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy. This chapter realizes the problem of revenge as one relating to the household, and in turn connects this to the image of the early professional theatre as a disorderly house. Building on this analysis of the historical grounds of Hieronimo’s disenfranchisement and revenge, the second chapter explores the resources of characterization provided for such avengers by the dramatic tradition of the Vice which, by the 1570s and 1580s, had become associated with the professional actor. The third chapter examines how the idiom of the ruin in the two tragedies of John Webster might invite a Benjaminian analysis of the revenge play as a vulnerable allegory of production. This chapter looks to link revenge plays’ representations of death to contingencies of performance. The final two chapters are connected by an interest in the relationship between characterization and forms of historical risk. Chapter 4 explores the duel at Hamlet’s climax from a variety of perspectives, arguing that its debased nature as a ritual of valour interacted in highly sophisticated ways with the problems of intentionality and invention associated with earlier revenge plays as well as with performance itself. The final chapter builds on the arguments of Chapter 4 while recalling many of the arguments made earlier in the thesis. Demonstrating the dialectical interaction of the actor-as-servant and the servant-intriguer, this fifth chapter situates the study of such characterization within the historiographical controversies surrounding the early-modern wage labourer. This dissertation aims (i) to provide innovative criticism of English revenge tragedy, insisting upon the genre’s dialectical foundation in processes of dramatic production; (ii) to outline a viable, dialectically materialist genre criticism; (iii) to show how changes in socio-economic dependencies produced specific dramaturgical effects, particularly as these related to the process of characterization.

My thesis is an exploration of the collaborations between British and Irish dramatists and Shakespeare over the past forty years. Within its bounds, there exists an extensive collection of innovative works produced in spaces from the community halls of the fringe to the main stages of the national theatres. The dramatists in question write from diverse perspectives. They may inflect elements in the work to counter stereotypes, employ intertextual images to subvert naturalistic scenes, or, alternatively, deploy the dark images inherent in the language in modern tragedies. It is helpful to think about this relationship in terms of a series of exchanges: contemporary dramatists influence Shakespearean production, offering fresh readings of the plays; and they value Shakespeare’s poetry and ability to address history in an enduring form. Although there are parallels with the present, denying Shakespearean resolutions can reflect present-day complexities. New plays are viewed as ‘collaborations’ rather than ‘appropriations’ or ‘adaptations’, so as to place the focus on the coming together of ideas from more than one source. It is not so much about what contemporary dramatists have done to Shakespeare, but how and why they have chosen to combine their ideas with those inherent in his works.

This thesis examines the relationship between the sexual formation of identity and three ‘impressing technologies’ (sealing, coining and printing) in Shakespearean drama. In a number of plays, Shakespeare uses the ‘language of impression’ to create metaphors that analogise sexual activities such as kissing, defloration and impregnation with acts of imprinting. In doing so, I argue, he establishes a rhetorical nexus that contributes to the construction of his characters’ sexual identities. Following a chapter on relevant historical contexts, each chapter close reads a single Shakespeare play, focusing on its language of impression. Chapter 2 considers the representation of wounds as impressions in Coriolanus and tracks the development of the protagonist’s identity as a hyper-masculine war machine that stamps and is stamped. Chapter 3 investigates the role of sealing imagery in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play which subverts the patriarchal figuration of women as impressionable wax to be transformed by the imprints of men. Chapter 4 analyses the recurring metaphor of counterfeit coining in Measure for Measure, a trope that associates figures of state with their sexually transgressive subjects. And chapter 5 addresses the analogy of procreation with printing in The Winter’s Tale, arguing that this aspect of the play’s rhetoric influenced the composition of the preliminaries to Shakespeare’s First Folio. The thesis concludes by comparing the plays and exploring what it is that makes Shakespeare ‘impressive’.

This thesis is a practice-as-research project ‘articulating and evidencing’ (Nelson, 2013, p. 11) research and practical explorations of Christopher Marlowe’s \(Hero\) \(and\) \(Leander\) and William Shakespeare’s \(Venus\) \(and\) \(Adonis\), using a method defined in the thesis as ‘dramatic ekphrasis’. A theatrical adaptation of the works — staged using the language of both poems as an amalgamated visual and acoustic theatre piece — exposes (through practice) the authors’ transgressive sexual and amorous themes. The narrative poems of Shakespeare and Marlowe are interpreted as having cultural purpose, and the exegesis explores how the poems expose and challenge biased Elizabethan gender paradigms, homosocial hegemony and moral stability in Elizabethan England. Through ekphrasis and contemporary performance methodology, the adaptation transposes the narrative verse to dramatic action in order to challenge our twenty-first century audience by destabilising gender and sexuality. By transposing the narratives into performance practice, the thesis strives to link the poems’ challenge to homosocial bias in the late sixteenth-century to our modern culture — to challenge present-day audience perspectives of gender-normative and heterocentric biases. Also, the thesis describes ways in which the practice illuminates and reinforces unique differences in the authors’ dramatic style. The thesis concludes by reflecting on and assessing the efficacy of both research and practice findings.

This thesis examines beds as stage properties in English Renaissance drama. It argues that their indissoluble associations with the major rites of passage in the early modern lifecycle – birth, marriage, and death – created particular dramatic effects in performance not immediately obvious to audiences today. Chapter one identifies the theoretical and methodological frameworks informing the thesis, and addresses assumptions about the physical structure of beds from the period and their appearance as props. The succeeding chapters each explore different rites of passage. Chapter two considers childbirth rituals in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and other plays depicting the lying-in ritual, and the bed’s function in these plays as a mockery of the religious and cultural ideals it was intended to represent. Chapter three focuses on marriage, exploring how the bed becomes a subversive emblem of female marital control through a comparison of the manuscript and Folio editions of The Woman’s Prize. Chapter four analyzes the death ritual in relation to Humphrey’s murder in Henry VI Part II, comparing the uses of the bed in the Quarto and Folio versions in order to consider the extent to which Humphrey ‘dies well’. Chapter five explores the inherent interconnectedness of all three rites in A Woman Killed With Kindness, and establishes the ways in which they converge upon the bed. As these case studies demonstrate, the use of the bed by playwrights as a prop in performance on the Renaissance stage was a not an incidental inclusion, but a considered choice intended to exploit the dramatic potential of the object’s multivalency to affect the scene in which it appeared, due to its rich symbolic association with the three major rites of passage.