This study examines the ways in which drama in the reign of William III interacted with the rhetorical and cultural conditions and contentions of the Glorious Revolution in England. By viewing the Revolution more as a cultural instead of a political event, I argue that the vocabulary, theory, and ideology formulated by the polemics of the Revolution in forms such as speeches, pamphlets, broadsides, glassware, and paintings provided a rhetorical repertoire for post-revolutionary drama and enabled multiple opportunities for interpretation in texts. Furthermore, the rhetoric and discourse formed by those polemics testified to the socio-economic changes that were not only identified but also debated and shaped by plays. In this light, I suggest that while we can read drama in relation to its historical and cultural contexts, we should not assign it a secondary and passive role. Instead, drama actively shaped and commented on the literary and social cultures in post-Revolution times by participating in the Revolution’s debates relevant to the everyday life of the 1690s. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part I examines the transmission of Revolution rhetoric from the above-named polemics to the literary arena and their levels of usage. Part II focuses on two interrelated linguistic cultures created by the supporters of William III and James II: the languages of triumphalism and deliverance in Chapter II, and the languages of lamentation and hope in Chapter III. Part III examines gender and economy in a socio-economic perspective. Chapter IV examines the questions of gender and domestic authority in drama and post-revolutionary society raised by the Revolution’s invention, Dual Monarchism, in which William III (husband) and Mary II (wife) shared regal authority. Chapter V shows how drama reacted to the social and economic changes engendered by the Nine Years’ War, a major consequence of the Revolution.

Families transact their relationships in a number of ways. Alongside and in tension with the emotional and practical dealings of family life are factors of an essentially moral nature such as loyalty, gratitude, obedience, and altruism. Morality depends on ideas about how one should behave, so that, for example, deciding whether or not to save a brother's life by going to bed with his judge involves an ethical accountancy drawing on ideas of right and wrong. It is such ideas that are the focus of this study. It seeks to recover some of ethical assumptions which were in circulation in early modern England and which inform the plays of the period. A number of plays which dramatise family relationships are analysed from the imagined perspectives of original audiences whose intellectual and moral worlds are explored through specific dramatic situations. Plays are discussed as far as possible in terms of their language and plots, rather than of character, and the study is eclectic in its use of sources, though drawing largely on the extensive didactic and polemical writing on the family surviving from the period. Three aspects of family relationships are discussed: first, the shifting one between parents and children, second, that between siblings, and, third, one version of marriage, that of the remarriage of the bereaved. The moral bases of all these relationships are derived in part from explicit precept, such as the requirement to honour parents, in part from cultural mores which shaped expectations about, for example, the treatment of elderly parents, and in part from a largely undefined sense of how things should be and were in the world. This last brings into play the concept of nature, an elusive but crucial point of reference for the moral basis of family life and often perceived as the drive behind behaviour. A play, therefore, may be a dynamic representation of the coming together of multiple ethical strands in specific circumstances in which sometimes conflicting ideas and impulses are worked out. The thesis is informed by the conviction that literature can yield understandings that are beyond the reach of linear reasoning and accessible only by an imaginative transcending of rationality. So, for example, when a homeless old king is bewildered by the breakdown of family morality as he sees it, and casts about for reasons, he must try out different explanations none of which is satisfactory on its own, and has therefore to attempt a synthesis of incompatible ideas which can be achieved only intuitively through the medium of poetic drama.

Silence, Speech and Gender in Early Modern Drama: A Presentist, Palestinian Perspective considers the dialogue between male-and female-authored dramas in early modern England and the competing ideologies on speech, silence, hearing and gender they enact. Following the methodology of presentism, the thesis deploys some examples of gendering speech and silence in contemporary Palestine to illuminate aspects of early modern tragedies. This approach is a step towards reading the early modern tragedies as texts which offer a model for contemporary Palestinian teachers and readers to challenge traditional ideas about gender, speech and silence. From a feminist standpoint,the thesis argues that Shakespeare‘s Titus Andronicus and Othello, Webster‘s The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi and Middleton‘s The Changeling and Women Beware Women deconstruct the binary opposites of speech and silence and highlight that gender difference is a self-defeating ideology. Following the critical line of new historicism, this thesis draws on the different cultural and historical contexts of both early modern England and contemporary Palestine. It interrogates new historicists‘ conception of the comprehensive operation of dominant ideology and their emphasis on containment following subversion. While Elizabethan tragedies as revealed in Titus Andronicus end in containing female figures‘ subversive voices and asserting male figures‘ authority, the thesis contends that Jacobean tragedies by Webster and Middleton place female figures centre stage to interrogate and subvert male figures‘ corrupt voices. I use the gendering of nationalism as feminine in Palestinian nationalist discourse in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict; honour killing; the Palestinian literary classic romance of Antar; the Palestinian practices of enforced marriage, rape and the circumscription of Palestinian women‘s voices by the discriminatory laws and legal systems as intertexts to analyse speech, silence and gender in the male-authored tragedies chosen here. This thesis proposes that male authority is unsettled rather than reaffirmed by the patriarchal construction of the binary opposites of speech and silence and by male deafness to female figures‘ voices. The thesis argues that the boy actors impersonating female characters‘ speeches and silences in male-authored tragedies open up a space for female characters to participate in the tragic events and question the masculine construction of the binary opposites of speech and silence. In addition, the final chapter of the thesis considers the different gendering of discourse in female-authored tragedies where there is a continuity between author, character, and actor in private performances. The thesis argues the Lady Jane Lumley‘s Iphigenia (1555), Mary Sidney‘s The Tragedy of Antonie (1595), and Elizabeth Cary‘s The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) reveal women‘s agency as writers and speakers in cultures antagonistic to female speech and writing. Fadwa Tuqan‘s Autobiography, A Mountainous Journey (1978) and the discourse of female martyrdom in contemporary Palestine are used as presentist intertexts that illuminate instances of transgressive public expression. Since the female texts under discussion are not parts of An-Najah University‘s curriculum, the thesis takes a step towards opening up discussion of female-authored texts and spotlighting women‘s voices.

This thesis addresses the representation of old wives' tales and the female storyteller in early modern English literature, with a focus on particular works of drama between 1590-1615. Drawing upon the debased cultural status of female storytellers and their tales, the texts under discussion in this thesis utilise their relationship to feminine tales to express their own engagements with issues both social and artistic: in their relationship to social distinction, to fiction-making, and to authorship. The first chapter investigates the generic associations of tale-telling as represented in literature, focusing on the key physical and social contexts invoked. An analysis of George Peele's The Old Wives' Tale focuses upon the play's central affiliation with oral forms in its representation of the social, thematic, structural setting of its tale-telling frame and inner-play. The chapter posits a social model of distinction in which old wives' tales are part of a larger category of popular pastimes and points toward broader dramatic engagement with the debased nostalgia associated with these pastimes. The second chapter considers the common association between women's tales and childhood, but diverts from the general critical focus on the subjectivity of former children and instead explores the adult patriarch's anxieties elicited around women's vocal sociability and their implied effect upon paternity through the female social dominance during childbirth. In this context, William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is fundamentally shaped by the extended birthing ritual of early modern England through its tale-like narrative structure. In doing so, the play engages with women's vocal role both in creating fiction and confirming paternity and women's denigrated social and artistic authority is shown to affirm the transformative power of tales as drama. The third chapter inspects an image of female tale-telling in garrulous alewives in the popular tradition. Examining representations of the bawdy and bodily excess of the jesting alewife and the repellent conviviality of the alehouse community, this chapter scrutinizes the ensuing implications for both authorial production and literary consumption. Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair is explored through Jonson's usage of the female victualler, Ursula the pig-woman, to engage with an ambivalent message of debasement as the common condition and the communal participation in morally relativistic modes of consumption.

This thesis examines the intellectual history of male friendship through its articulation in non-Shakespearean early modern drama; and considers how dramatic texts engage with the classical ideals of male friendship. Cicero’s \(De amicitia\) provided the theoretical model for perfect friendship for the early modern period; and this thesis argues for the further relevance of early modern translations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and in particular, Seneca’s De beneficiis, both of which open up meanings of different formulations and practices of friendship. This thesis, then, analyses how dramatists contributed to the discourse of male friendship through representations that expanded the bounds of amity beyond the paradigmatic ‘one soul in two bodies’, into different conceptions of friendship both ideal and otherwise. Through a consideration of selected dramatic works in their early modern cultural contexts, this thesis adds to our understanding of how amicable relations between men were arranged, performed, read and understood in the early modern period.

The aim of this thesis is to establish the canon of Thomas Kyd’s plays and to explore Shakespeare’s relationship with that oeuvre. Chapter One begins by examining Shakespeare’s verbal indebtedness to plays that have been attributed to Kyd for over two centuries, including The Spanish Tragedy (1587), Soliman and Perseda (1588), and The True Chronicle History of King Leir (1589). The first chapter argues that Shakespeare’s extensive knowledge of Kyd’s plays contributed towards the development of his dramatic language. The second chapter provides an overview of some of the complex methods for identifying authors utilized throughout the thesis. Chapter Three then seeks to establish a fuller account of Kyd’s dramatic canon through a variety of authorship tests, arguing that in addition to the three plays above Arden of Faversham (1590), Fair Em (1590), and Cornelia (1594) should be attributed to Kyd as sole authored texts. The fourth chapter examines the internal evidence for Kyd’s hand in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part One (1592). The chapter contends that Shakespeare’s chronicle history play was originally written by Kyd and Thomas Nashe for the Lord Strange’s Men, and that Shakespeare subsequently added three scenes for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The fifth chapter argues that Shakespeare and Kyd collaborated on The Reign of King Edward III (1593) and that Kyd should thus be recognized as one of Shakespeare’s earliest co-authors. Finally, Chapter Six, by way of conclusion, outlines other possible links between Kyd’s plays and Shakespeare. The thesis as a whole argues for a reconsideration of Kyd’s authorship of a number of key plays that influenced Shakespeare, and for a reconsideration of the collaboration between these two dramatists.

Contemporary British plays are commonly thought of as political if they address an issue that is already seen as political (Kritzer, 2008). This thesis explores the idea that the political stance of a play is articulated at the level of its structure, as well as in its content. Contemporary playwriting practices in British theatre are dominated by ‘serious drama’. Serious drama yokes together politics, dialectical structure and a realist dramaturgy and the resultant form is held up as an ideal against which the political efficacy of a play can be judged. Through an application of the concept of the ideology of form (Jameson, 1981), this thesis re-reads the structures of serious drama in terms of how they reflect the social and economic structures of post- Fordism in their representation of spatio-temporal structures, causation in the dramatic narrative and their imagining of the social subject. Through this reading, this thesis problematises serious drama’s claim to a progressive socialist politics. In contrast, the experimental dramaturgies of a range of contemporary British plays (1997-2011) are read as mediating, negotiating and critiquing the social and economic structures of post-Fordism through their dramatic structure, and so articulating a potentially radical politics. Caryl Churchill’s Heart’s Desire (1997), David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness (2005) and David Greig’s San Diego (2003) are read as negotiating the effects of spatio-temporal compression (Harvey, 1990). Mike Bartlett’s Contractions (2008), debbie tucker green’s Generations (2007) and Rupert Goold and Ben Power’s adaptation of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author are analysed in terms of their causal structures (Althusser, 1970). Finally Anthony Neilson’s Realism (2006), Simon Stephens’s Pornography (2007) and Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (2008) are investigated for the ways in which they re-imagine the social subject through subjective, narrative, unassigned and collective modes of characterisation.

My thesis journey was initially motivated by an interest in the individual’s search for God, the self and the other (neighbour, men/women and enemy) as represented in the play texts. This call for a personal relationship with the ‘other’ highlights the individual’s feelings of unease and strangeness at a time when, one might argue, the majority belittles the role of religion, in support of scientific discoveries and human rights. Here, the French philosopher René Girard - whose anthropological and scientific interest in violence, religion and human culture has shaped my research - argues that the progress of humankind would not have become a reality without what he terms sacrifice. Here, I should confirm that the main influence on the early steps of finding my research topic were Peter Shaffer, Slavoj Žižek, Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin rather than Rene Girard. This thesis explores several interconnected relationships, the most important of which is between humour and violence or forms of ‘sacrifice’ in the plays of six British playwrights – Peter Barnes and Peter Shaffer, Howard Barker and Sarah Kane as well as Caryl Churchill and David Rudkin. It is this strange relationship which leads me later on to uncover and explore the representations of the stranger, the victim/iser and the foreigner in their works. The return of the stranger – the dead, the ashes of victims of extreme violence, the ghosts, the prisoners and the children - is inseparable from the search for individuality in a world ruled by the gods of war, money and dark humour. My research findings are viewed in the light of two narratives: the first is to do with the upper world and the second is to do with the lower as defined by Bakhtin’s idea of the carnival and the culture of folk humour in the Middle Ages. The upper is serious, official, exclusive and authoritative whereas the second is festive, comic, mythical and popular. It is hard to describe the relationship between these narratives as simply oppositional (some say iconoclastic) because they are coexistent and rely on one another. At this point, the different professional and ideological positions of the playwrights are important aspects in arriving at an understanding of the ways they collapse the borders between humour and terror, the banquet and the battle, carnivals and trials, the parade and economic exploitation, clownery and politics. Though these playwrights are not preachers or reformers, they challenge our easy laughter and our role as we witness the risen from the dead, those in the flames or in the future signalling to us to halt our participation and face responsibility for the victims.

With a particular emphasis on Devon, this thesis examines cases of early-modern libel as performances devised and enacted in the provincial communities of South-West England. In particular, it focuses on the Star Chamber records of libel from the counties of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset during the reign of James I between 1603 and 1625. Whilst the performance-nature of libel has previously been acknowledged, there has not been any full scale analysis of early-modern provincial libels in terms of performance. This thesis argues that it was the performance of libel which made it a growing concern to those in authority and that provincial libel should be viewed in terms of a spectrum of performance. It also critically considers the view of this kind of libel that is currently implied by the selected publication of libel cases in the Records of Early English Drama volumes. The thesis includes an exploration of the uses of space and place by performance-based libel through the mapping of a sample of cases from Devon onto their contemporary landscape. The roles of women as spectators and engineers of libel performances are also examined, and this, in turn, necessitates careful consideration of the nature and limitations of the records through which accounts of provincial libel are received. Finally, the thesis applies literary analysis to the contents of those performance-based libels which used texts, in verse or prose, to defame their targets. From this analysis emerge features which can begin to define a genre of performance-based textual libel characterised by a distinctive authorial voice and a complex system of generic association. The study of the offence of libel at a local level in the South-West counties of England reveals sophisticated uses of performance in early-modern communal conflicts from all levels of society during a period of wider cultural, social and political change.

This thesis looks at occurrences of "living death" – a liminal state that exists between life and death, and which may be approached from either side – in early modern English drama. Today, reference to the living dead brings to mind zombies and their ilk, creatures which entered the English language and imagination centuries after the time of the great early modern playwrights. Yet, I argue, many post-Reformation writers were imagining states between life and death in ways more complex than existing critical discussions of “ghosts” have tended to perceive. My approach to the subject is broadly historicist, but informed throughout by ideas of stagecraft and performance. In addition to presenting fresh interpretations of well-known plays such as Thomas Middleton’s The Maiden’s Tragedy (1611) and John Webster’s The White Devil (1612), I also endeavour to shed new light on various non-canon works such as the anonymous The Tragedy of Locrine (c.1591), John Marston's Antonio's Revenge (c.1602), and Anthony Munday's mayoral pageants Chruso-thriambos (1611) and Chrysanaleia (1616), works which have received little in the way of serious scholarly attention or, in the case of Antonio's Revenge, been much maligned by critics. These dramatic works depict a whole host of the living dead, including not only ghosts and spirits but also resurrected Lord Mayors, corpses which continue to “perform” after death, and characters who anticipate their deaths or define themselves through last dying speeches. By exploring the significance of these characters, I demonstrate that the concept of living death is vital to our understanding of deeper thematic and symbolic meanings in a wide range of dramatic works.