This dissertation examines social mobility as treated in stage comedies and litigation records circa 1603-1625. It argues that, in a historical context where rising in the world often awakened disapproval, stage representations of advantageous marriages negotiated cultural debates concerning socioeconomic change, political hierarchy, and individual aspirations. To understand the diverse meanings of social advancement, this study traces the discursive and narrative resemblances between two sets of texts: nearly two hundred Star Chamber cases that contested marital status incompatibility, and plays by Middleton, Jonson, Chapman, and their peers that dramatize intense competitions for marriages that could elevate characters in wealth and prestige. Pierre Bourdieu provides methods for approaching the multi-dimensional early modern social field with its many forms of status, and Frederic Jameson offers ways to consider the relation of fictional narratives to social and ideological problems. Using these theorists to align the two sets of texts, this dissertation reveals how London's theaters offered complex fantasies of achievement that balanced individual ambition against prevailing assumptions about gender, status, and social order. The Introduction traces relevant historical contexts, while Chapter One outlines the polyphonic features of the texts under investigation and culminates in an analysis of George Chapman's use of multiple temporal schemes in The Widow's Tears to represent a fantasy marriage as both an upstart's rise and a dynastic renewal. Chapter Two examines legal records to reveal how victims of alleged courtship frauds evoked a broad cultural script that represented social exogamy as a threat to the ruling elite. Chapters Three and Four focus on masculinity, arguing that both male defendants and playwrights like Thomas Middleton and Lording Barry responded to the cultural contradictions of social mobility by privileging alternative metrics of masculine worth and alternative trajectories of advancement. Chapter Five shows how female defendants positively rearticulated available negative stereotypes about women, especially servants, marrying up; in similar fashion Ben Jonson's The New Inn portrays a maidservant's engagement to an aristocrat as a triumph of merit. Finally, the Appendix examines one extensive case in which dozens of witnesses variously interpreted the scandalous elopement--or kidnapping--of a rich London woman. / 2019-08-01T00:00:00Z

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My dissertation examines how early modern metatheater enabled the Renaissance stage and its original audience to develop a complex and symbiotic relationship. Metatheater--by which I mean a particular mode of theatre, in which actors, playwrights, dramatic characters and/or (in particular) audiences express or share a perception of drama as a fictional and theatrical construct--pervaded Renaissance drama, not by simple happenstance but arising almost inevitably from the complex context within which it functioned. The early modern stage was a particularly conflicted forum, which monarchs and playwrights, town fathers and actors, censors and audiences, impresarios and anti-theatricalists, all strove to influence and control. The use of the metatheatrical mode allowed playwrights and players to better navigate this difficult, sometimes dangerous, space. In particular, the development of Renaissance metatheater derived from (and, simultaneously, affected) the unique nature of its original spectators, who practiced a much more actively engaged participation in the theater than is often recognized. Performers and playwrights regularly used metatheatricality to adapt to the needs and desires of their audience, and to elicit the intellectual and emotional responses they desired. My study utilizes a historically contextualized approach that emphasizes the material conditions under which Renaissance drama arose and functioned. It begins by examining the influence of the surrounding milieu on the Renaissance stage and its spectators, especially its facilitation of the development and use of metatheater. Then, via close readings of four plays--Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Shakespeare's Henry V and Antony and Cleopatra, and Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle--the dissertation indicates how varied and versatile early modern metatheater was, and how it responded to and influenced the nature of its audiences. My study demonstrates the centrality of metatheater to early modern theatrical practice, delineates its pervasive influence on the stage-audience relationship in Renaissance theaters, and underlines the influence of material conditions on the creation and dissemination of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. / English

This paper explores the depiction and function of madness on the Renaissance stage, specifically its development as trope of the English revenge tragedy from its Elizabethan conception to its Jacobean advent through a representative engagement of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Madness in these plays selectively departs from popular conceptions and archetypal formulas to create an uncertain dramatic space which allows its sufferers to walk moral lines and liminal paths unavailable to the sane. “Madness” is responsible for and a response to vision; where the revenger is driven to the edge of madness by a lapse in morality only visible to him, madness provides a lens to correct the injustice. It is the tool that allows them to escape convention, decorum and even the law to rout a moral cancer, and, in this capacity, is enabling rather than disabling.

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<p>The longstanding relationship between honour and violence has obvious martial and chivalric overtones. The prevalence of the duel in early modern England points to the developing performativity and growing symbolic meaning of violence during the period, a codified violence that relied heavily on hierarchical guidelines. The duel helped to stabilize social notions of rank and masculinity, and became a means of culturally validating masculinity and reifying honour codes. This thesis frames a study of violence and its relationship to honour and masculine identity through analysis of dramatized scenes involving masculine honour in three of Shakespeare’s plays – <em>Twelfth Night</em>, <em>Henry V</em>, and <em>Hamlet</em> – with a concurrent investigation of contemporary policies and essays on civility and honour. I examine instances of public violence that directly relate to private or personal concepts of honour, as well as the ways in which honour is conceived of and transmitted both linearly, through generations, and horizontally through discourses of national or social honour to one’s duty. This study contributes to a sense of honour as a dynamic and omnipresent discourse in the early modern era, one that structured and dictated the lives of the Elizabethan aristocracy.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Das Hauptziel der Arbeit ist die Rekonstruktion der sozialen und kulturellen Rahmenbedingungen, unter denen dramatische Stücke zwischen Shakespeares Tod im Jahre 1616 und der Schließung der Theater im Jahre 1642 produziert wurden. Mithilfe einer Vielfalt zeitgenössischer Quellen erfolgt eine Rekonstruktion des historischen Kontextes aus zeitgenössischer Sicht. Die Arbeit analysiert wer die Menschen waren, für die Shakespeares Nachfolger ihre Stücke für die öffentlichen und privaten Bühnen Londons schrieben. Des Weiteren stellt die Arbeit dar, wie der Gang ins Theater in einer bisher von der Forschung nur wenig beachteten Epoche aussah und zeigt auf, wer genau in diesen Jahren ins Theater ging und wie diese Zuschauer und ihre Erwartungen an die Bühne durch eine Vielzahl externer und stetig wechselnder kultureller, politischer und sozialer Faktoren (z.B. Bärenhatzen, Prostitution, Hinrichtungen etc.) beeinflusst wurden. Zudem liegt ein weiteres Hauptaugenmerk der Arbeit darauf, wie die drei Autoren John Ford, Richard Brome und James Shirley in den Prologen und Epilogen zu ihren Stücken die Gegenwart der Zuschauer thematisiert und die Entwicklung des frühneuzeitlichen Theaters metadramatisch und selbstreflexiv angesprochen haben.

This is the first full-scale study of Robert Greene’s drama, offering a new interpretation of the dramatic oeuvre of one Shakespeare’s most neglected literary predecessors. Recent criticism has emphasised Greene’s pioneering role as an author of Elizabethan romance. Yet, in contrast to the numerous prose works which were printed during his life time, his drama, which was printed posthumously, has received little attention. Greene’s plays are visually magnificent: madmen wander on stage waving the severed limbs of their victims (Orlando Furioso, c. 1591), the dead are resurrected (James IV, c. 1590), tyrants gruesomely mutilate their subjects (Selimus, c. 1591-4), extravagant stage properties such as the mysterious brazen head prophesy to the audience (Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, c. 1589), and sinners are swallowed into hell accompanied by fireworks (A Looking Glass for London and England, c. 1588). This thesis will examine the way in which these stage images evoke astonishment, which in turn encourages the audience to contemplate their symbolic significance. The triumph of Greene’s drama is not one of effects over affect; it lies in the interaction between effect and affect. My principal objective in this thesis is to develop a methodological strategy which will allow critics of non-Shakespearean plays, which frequently lack a substantial performance tradition, to study drama through the lens of performance. Engaging purposively with anachronism as an enabling mode of linking old and new, this thesis will draw analogies between the early modern stage and modern cinema in order to emphasise the relevance of early modern drama to today’s ocularcentric world, a relevance that more historical theoretical approaches would seek to deny. My opening chapter will try to establish Greene’s dramatic canon and assess the critical reception of Greene’s plays. Drawing on material from Greene’s entire oeuvre, Chapter Two will outline my methodological and conceptual approach. This chapter will include an extended analysis of Friar Bacon’s discussion of the ‘strategy with cunning shows’ in John of Bordeaux (JB. 735). Launching into detailed studies of specific spectacles, Chapter Three focuses on Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene’s collaborative effort, the biblical drama A Looking Glass for London and England. During the play, Prophet Jonah is ‘cast out of the whale’s belly upon the stage’ (LG. IV.i.1460-1). Focusing on this stage spectacle, this chapter seeks to emphasise the commercial appeal of this biblical drama. Examining another stage property, Chapter Four will explore the melodramatic and sensational potential of the tomb stage property in Greene’s James IV. Examining the apparent tension between the play’s two presenters, I will demonstrate that Bohan, a cynical Scot, and Oberon, the King of the Fairies, proffer two distinct, but not mutually exclusive, ways of conceiving of and interpreting theatrical spectacle. Completing my study of spectacular stage properties, Chapter Five examines the symbolic significance of the brazen head, which appears in two of Greene’s plays: Alphonsus, King of Aragon and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. In both plays, the brazen head becomes an object of excessive or supreme devotion as either a religious idol or a secular deity. The brazen head is perceived as monstrous not simply because it is a source of horror or astonishment but because it represents the misplaced veneration or worship of something other than God. Turning away from stage properties, my final two chapters look at how Greene exploited specific stage conventions. Directing my attention towards Greene’s Orlando Furioso (c. 1591), I will argue that the figure of Orlando Furioso bequeathed an enduring legacy to early modern theatrical discourse, contributing to the convention of the mad poet, which would be replicated and parodied by a new generation of dramatists. Orlando’s behaviour, which rapidly alternates between that of a madman and that of a poet, forces the audience to contemplate the link between the mania of the mentally ill and the melancholia of the creative genius. Ridiculing the concept of furor poeticus, Greene’s play interrogates the belief that great writers are divinely inspired by God through ecstatic revelation. My final chapter will explore the aesthetics of violence in Selimus. A relatively recent addition to the Greene canon, Selimus depicts the rise of an anti-hero amidst a cycle of brutal violence. My reading of this play posits Selimus as a surrogate playwright, arguing that the semiotics of dismemberment allows Greene to interrogate the concept of artistic autonomy. Widespread indifference to Greene’s work has facilitated critical blindness to the powerful aesthetic appeal of spectacle in early modern drama. This reassessment of Robert Greene’s dramatic oeuvre offers a new perspective on the aesthetics of spectacle in early modern drama.

This dissertation examines early modern literary engagements with the rhetorical and ethical dimensions of law reform. One of the most important mechanisms of social regulation in late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean England, law reform was a matter of, first, the “perfection” of the organization and expression of existing laws, legal instruments, and legal processes. However counter-intuitively, these officially-sponsored reforms were calculated to prevent more radical innovations that would generate “inconveniences,” systemic contradictions and uncertainties that threatened the law’s ability to produce just results. Second, law reformers generated a discourse on “execution” that targeted the character of legal representatives. This tradition of character criticism, delivered directly from the Lord Keeper’s mouth or circulated through other legal-political, literary, theatrical, didactic, and religious works, encouraged officers’ conscientious execution of their duties and alerted the English public to the signs of the abuse of authority. Law reform created a distinct critical orientation toward legal and governing activities that was reproduced throughout a system of justice in which an extraordinary number of subjects participated. It was a critical orientation, moreover, that was refracted in literature sensitive to the implications of the socio-political dominance of legal language, traditions, and officers. The principles and practices of law reform—along with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from them—were appropriated by amateur and professional writers alike. Close readings reveal that Inns-of-Court revellers, Francis Bacon, John Donne and Shakespeare all engaged deeply with the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of law reform’s central role in local and national governance. In the Gesta Grayorum and Donne’s “Satyre V,” the reveller and the satiric speaker improvise on legal forms to compensate for the law’s imperfections that threaten the security and prosperity of the English subject. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale, the character of the legal-political officer and reformer is tested as he attempts to put policies and principles into practice.

This dissertation examines early modern literary engagements with the rhetorical and ethical dimensions of law reform. One of the most important mechanisms of social regulation in late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean England, law reform was a matter of, first, the “perfection” of the organization and expression of existing laws, legal instruments, and legal processes. However counter-intuitively, these officially-sponsored reforms were calculated to prevent more radical innovations that would generate “inconveniences,” systemic contradictions and uncertainties that threatened the law’s ability to produce just results. Second, law reformers generated a discourse on “execution” that targeted the character of legal representatives. This tradition of character criticism, delivered directly from the Lord Keeper’s mouth or circulated through other legal-political, literary, theatrical, didactic, and religious works, encouraged officers’ conscientious execution of their duties and alerted the English public to the signs of the abuse of authority. Law reform created a distinct critical orientation toward legal and governing activities that was reproduced throughout a system of justice in which an extraordinary number of subjects participated. It was a critical orientation, moreover, that was refracted in literature sensitive to the implications of the socio-political dominance of legal language, traditions, and officers. The principles and practices of law reform—along with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from them—were appropriated by amateur and professional writers alike. Close readings reveal that Inns-of-Court revellers, Francis Bacon, John Donne and Shakespeare all engaged deeply with the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of law reform’s central role in local and national governance. In the Gesta Grayorum and Donne’s “Satyre V,” the reveller and the satiric speaker improvise on legal forms to compensate for the law’s imperfections that threaten the security and prosperity of the English subject. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale, the character of the legal-political officer and reformer is tested as he attempts to put policies and principles into practice.