This thesis undertakes an original analysis of the incidence and influence of memory in Shakespeare's second tetralogy. It is the first full-length study of memory in Shakespeare to show not only how memories can lock characters into history but also how memories can be released from history in order to engender radically different futures. This thesis offers detailed close readings of key scenes in the second tetralogy to substantiate this argument and to illuminate afresh issues at the heart of the plays, such as identity, time and death. It builds on previous and current research on memory in Shakespeare, as well as considering how he may have engaged with original archival sources such as Petrus's 'Art of Memory' and Gratarolo's 'Castle of Memory'. The first chapter of this thesis provides an overview of Shakespeare's use of and reliance on memory in the canon, supplies a review of previous works on memory, and explains the scope and structure of the thesis. The second chapter defines terms and clarifies the method of the thesis, considers the phenomenology of memory, and elucidates the crucial concept of forward recollection. The third chapter explores how and why Shakespeare's drama is an especially apt vehicle for memory. These three chapters prepare the ground for the subsequent four chapters, which examine each of the plays in the second tetralogy in turn. The chapters on the plays focus on key aspects of memory that exemplify the wider argument of the thesis: memory and identity in Richard 11; memory and time in 1 Henry IV; memory and death in 2 Henry IV; and memory and forward recollection in Henry V. 3

The twenty-first century has seen a marked change in approaches to understanding Shakespeare's texts through literary and theatrical criticism and also performance. This thesis argues that performances of Shakespeare in Britain between 1997 and 2008 staged by Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company enabled audiences to have increased physical and intellectual access to the plays and that as a result literary and theatrical critical readings of the texts became more productively complicated. It is argued that this increased access came as a response to political initiatives to democratise culture in Britain. It was also partly the result of transferring staging practices used in more intimate theatrical spaces to main house environments where they were developed further. By analysing particular scenes from Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, King Henry V and King Lear in case studies of the plays observed in the theatrical spaces and conditions in which they were encountered in performance, it is possible to demonstrate that production practices during this time gave new dimensions to the plays and deepened our understanding of their processes and textual meanings. The identification of these processes and their uses extends our knowledge of Shakespeare's work as a dramatist. Discussion of the plays is enriched through a combined consideration of (a) the methods used to analyse the difficulties emerging from their staged performance, and (b) the problems identified by literary and theatrical accounts of the texts. These difficulties and problems include apparent structural inconsistencies in the texts, the purposes of character interaction and the diverse nature of audience reception in the particular spatial and temporal conditions~ in which the plays are encountered. It is argued that by conducting a multiperspectival analytical approach and recognising the subsequent beneficial complications more detail about Shakespeare's meaning-making processes can be revealed.

In this thesis, I analyse the interpretations and reception of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Polish theatre between 1946 and 1970. My main focus is to investigate the influence of political, historical and economic circumstances on the shape of five specific productions. Thus, A Midsummer Night's Dream emerges as a political play, which - to Polish audiences in the specified period - addressed the issues of subversion and challenge to the established authority, social distinctions and conflicts and the nature of performance under political oppression. I take Jan Kott's reinterpretation of the play in Shakespeare Our Contemporary as a vantage point for discussion about the factors that caused this shift from operatic/fairy-tale interpretations, to socio-political/anthropological readings. The first three chapters of this thesis offer insight into the cultural, historical and political background of understanding and performing Shakespeare in Poland. I demonstrate the significance of Polish Romantic and neo-Romantic drama in shaping attitudes towards Shakespeare's plays facilitating the cultural adoption of Shakespeare as a quasi-national poet. The historical chapter presents an overview of the political changes in post-war Poland, explaining how these impacted on the social and theatrical life, including the funding of the arts and the degree of state control over Polish theatre. In the critical chapter, I collate Polish scholarly approaches to A Midsummer Night's Dream, presenting socio-political, historicist and anthropological interpretations that anticipate certain trends in modem Western criticism. An overview of Slavic mythology presents ideas applicable to domesticating and visualising the supernatural elements of the play. The five post-war productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream I reconstruct in the subsequent chapters demonstrate gradual reinterpretation of the play from a feerie (B. Dabrowski, 1947), through monumental post-Romantic approach (W. Horzyca, 1946, 1948, 1953) and modernised commedia dell'arte (A. Bardini, 1959) to anthropological and socio-political readings (L. Zamkow, 1963; K. Swinarski, 1970).

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Humiliation has a powerful presence in Shakespeare's tragedies and late plays. With an unusual ability to reform and redeem, humiliation is not employed in these plays as one might expect. Cast in a form much influenced by the Protestant theology of Shakespeare's England, the humiliation that falls upon some of Shakespeare's most prominent characters is one that offers great hope and clarity. Drawn from the theology of three prominent Protestant Reformers, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Richard Hooker, humiliation in Shakespeare's Hamlet serves to save the fragile queen and her sinister new husband from certain damnation. In The Tempest Prospero is humiliated in like fashion. This experience results in a more-than-magical reformation that turns the island into a place of reconciliation. King Lear's humiliation cures his faulty vision, allowing him to recognize a true love that pursues him with great passion and sacrifice. In Henry VIII the great Cardinal is averted from certain damnation, humiliation drawing him from a life of violence and manipulation. The jealous tyrants in The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and Othello are powerfully humiliated. This humiliation allows Leontes, Posthumus, and Othello to be released from their fearful bondage, at last made capable of seeing the true love of their wives. This thesis casts significant new light upon how much Shakespeare was influenced by the Protestant Reformation. Through a detailed examination of the use of theological language and concepts in the plays examined, this thesis argues that Reformation theology affords a powerful lens through which to read the journeys of the protagonists in Shakespearean tragedy and late plays. This powerful lens of Reformation theology brings to focus the way in which Shakespeare transforms, with great mastery, the humiliation of a man into the redemption of a soul.