This thesis explores the use of music in Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, histories and dramatic romances.

No description available.

This thesis presents a study of playhouse spaces and the theatre industry in early modern England, and how they developed from 1560-1670. The period considered spans the English civil wars and Commonwealth to complicate the notion of a cessation of theatrical activity in 1642, and argues against the division of theatre history into distinct Renaissance and Restoration periods. The study builds on recent scholarly trends which have productively read early modern playing companies as consistent cultural entities with individual identities, by extending and applying this methodology to playhouse spaces. As such, this thesis proposes that all early modern playhouses had unique identities, and suggests that the frequent division into amphitheatre and indoor playhouses can produce an oversimplified binary with homogenising consequences. Moreover, it argues that a problematic, undertheorized hierarchy of playhouses exists; a key factor being the strength of the playhouse's connection to Shakespeare, which has led to the prioritisation of the Globe in particular. This thesis problematises the metrics which have been used to assess the importance of playhouses; it offers alternative factors but also suggests it is more important to ascertain unique aspects of playhouse identities than to create a hierarchy between them. Case studies of the Curtain (c.1577-c.1625), Salisbury Court (1629-1666) and Gibbons' Tennis Court (1653-c.1669) demonstrate how distinct aspects of playhouses' identities can be established by proposing dimensions of their unique reputations based on their known repertories. Collectively, these studies also demonstrate how playhouse space developed over time. This study concludes that each of these playhouses have been undervalued in scholarly narratives. By producing substantial accounts of these neglected spaces this thesis contributes towards a rebalancing of emphasis in early modern scholarship, and it also demonstrates that a wider reappraisal of early modern playhouse space is necessary in the future.

This thesis explores male prostitution in early modern culture and calls for a reconsideration of linguistic representations of sodomy and homoeroticism in literary and historical criticism. It argues that as a variant expression of homoeroticism, its examination unfolds significant ideological and cultural implications for established perceptions of male relations. As instructed by classical textuality and misogynistic stigmatization of prostitution, the boy prostitute becomes a relational category that eludes easy classification, emerging syntactically alongside the female whore in English culture. Adopting a social constructionist approach, this dissertation traces male prostitution's ambivalent representational properties in various genres and discourses, namely poetry, plays, historical narratives, theatre historiography, defamation accounts, philosophical diatribes and lexicography. The diverse vocabulary employed to describe homoerotic relations and identities is closely scrutinised in order to expose the metaphoricity and ambiguity embedded in such terms as ‘Ganymede', ‘ingle', ‘mignon' and ‘catamite'. An analysis of the terminology demonstrates the ways in which discursive systems of language, within specific historical and cultural contexts, have facilitated the concomitant textual emergence of the sodomite with the male prostitute. The Introduction establishes the theoretical framework through which male prostitution from the medieval period until the mid-twentieth century has been discussed in twentieth-century criticism. Chapter One assesses its textual appearance in early modern Italy, France and Spain, while it sets the parameters for its examination in seventeenth-century England. Chapter Two analyses the representation of the male prostitute in Donne's, Marston's and Middleton's satires and Chapter Three examines the theatrical institution and the ways in which theatre historiography misdirects discussions on sodomy and prostitution. The penultimate chapter focuses on textual constructions of the male prostitute in educational contexts and the final chapter addresses possible interrelations between prostitution, servitude, favouritism and friendship as represented within lexicography, slanderous discourse and historical narratives on King James and Francis Bacon.

Our landfills are growing and constantly expanding with post-consumer waste in the form of cheap fast fashion garments. One way to deal with this problem is to upcycle the discarded material into new things with a higher value. There is one type of material though, that has a tendency to be forgotten about. This material is baby garments. Mother Elizabeth investigates how these discarded garments can be upcycled into womenswear fashion. The title of this work reflects the two areas investigated, baby garments and the Elizabethan era. With an aim of broadening the perspective of what type of discarded material can be upcycled into womenswear fashion, the areas of investigation are combined. Throughout the study, methods for exploring garments from the Elizabethan era were applied in order to create a reference library used as a base when making design decisions. The outcomes presented in this work aim to inspire other designers to broaden their perspective on what type of material can be used when working with upcycling. In addition to stressing the importance of using discarded textiles, this project also showcases how history can be used as a tool to make sure there is a future.

The object of this thesis is to produce a critical edition of Lording Barry's play Ram Alley (first published in 1611 by Robert Wilson and printed by George Eld). This edition will consist of (a) an annotated, modernised spelling version of the text, that text being based on a bibliographic study of the first quarto, and (b) an introduction which will cover: the printing of the first quarto, the life of Lording Barry and his critical reception, the play's place in and contribution to early Jacobean city comedy (particularly in relation to the use of wit and bawdy in masculine self-definition), and the problems of annotating a text which is so reliant for its humour on bawdy innuendo. The annotation will be very much fuller than is normal for an edition of an early modern play text, aiming to provide not just explanation but also commentary on and contextualisation of the language, contemporary and cultural references, characterisation, and action. This play is something of a by-way in the early Jacobean drama, and, like its author, is little known. It is, however, a competent example of the type of comedy produced for the private theatres and reflects, therefore, on the work of other, better known dramatists, in particular Thomas Middleton. In terms of original contribution to the field of study, this thesis will, it is hoped, add to our knowledge and understanding of: 1. the text of Ram Alley 2. the production of the first quarto of Ram Alley 3. the working practices of the printer, George Eld (who was also responsible for the first quarto of Troilus and Cressida and of Shakespeare's Sonnets) 4. the nature and hermeneutics of wit in Ram Alley 5. approaches to editing early modern dramatic comedy 6. Jacobean city comedy as a genre.

This interdisciplinary thesis explores how music is used in the art of healing in two distinct ways in the early modern period: namely, through the use of performed music accompanying the healing process itself, and as ‘speculative music', the latter providing a philosophical model for understanding the interplay of music with body, mind and soul. Redefining an existing enquiry in a specific way, my research seeks to enhance an understanding of the construction of a therapeutic modality that revitalizes the ancient belief in the healing powers of music, manifest since antiquity through the classical legends of Orpheus and Pythagoras. The Pythagorean hypothesis – that earthly music reflected the celestial harmony of the spheres – was believed to govern the internal music of the human body, giving credence to the notion of the harmonious balancing of the four bodily humours. Tracing the tradition of healing music from antiquity, I argue that Marsilio Ficino's paradigmatic magico-musical philosophy refashions the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic explanations of music's curative potentiality, offering a new interpretat ion of music's effective power to heal the rift between body and soul. I examine how this Ficinian interpretation is discernible in the work of Robert Fludd, Michael Maier, William Shakespeare, Robert Burton and Thomas Campion. I analyse their observations of the body's physical and emotional response to music's healing power. Drawing on early modern models that appropriate the rhetoric of the music of the spheres, I argue that a cultural moment is established in which the motifs and tropes of Neoplatonic love and the healing power of music culminate in allegories of philosophical contemplation and spiritual fulfilment in the Jacobean court masques. In conclusion, my thesis's examination of music as a healing modality provides a historical framework to support the contemporary use of music as a recognized therapeutic intervention.

This thesis considers the different ways Persia was perceived in early modern England. Persia, understudied in recent scholarship, played an important role in the early modern English imagination, both as a classical civilization and as a counterweight to the Ottoman threat to Christendom. This classical heritage and anti-Ottomanism, when intersected with a Persian Muslim identity, resulted in a complex phenomenon. This thesis is an attempt to understand the various cross currents that constructed this complex image. Chapter One discusses English interest in classical Persian themes in the wake of Renaissance humanism. It focuses on three classical ‘Persian' plays featuring Achaemenid Kings; Cambyses, Darius and Cyrus, and investigates how classical Persia became a focus of interest for Elizabethan playwrights. Chapter Two moves to the wars between the Ottomans and Safavids and how they fascinated many English writers of the time. Paying specific attention to Usumcasane in Marlowe's Tambulaine plays, the chapter suggests the significance of Persian references in the play and offers a new interpretation of the notorious Qur'an burning scene. Chapter Three analyses John Thomas Minadoi's Historie of Warres betweene the Turkes and the Persians and shows the significance of Christian knowledge of schism in Islam for Catholic-Protestant debates. Chapter Four concentrates on the representation of Persia in Romance texts from late Elizabethan England and shows that despite being hailed as an anti-Ottoman power, Persia's anti-Christian Islamic identity, which was also suggested by Minadoi, becomes manifest in the alliance of ‘Sultan' and ‘Sophy' against the Crusaders. Chapter Five combines two crucial moments in Anglo-Persian encounters: Jenkinson's trading mission and the ‘travailes” of the Sherley brothers. Through an analysis of the play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, the argument of the chapter is that it represents the cumulative experience of Englishmen in Persia in the early modern period.

This thesis examines the reciprocity of literary and legal cultures, and seeks to enhance understanding of cultural and socio-legal constructions of morality in early modern England. Identifying the tensions in an institutional legality in which both secular pragmatism and moral idealism act as formulating principals, it interrogates the sense of disjuncture that arises between imaginative concepts of moral justice and their translation into the formal structures of law. Chapter 1 investigates representations of rape in light of the legislative changes of the 1570s, and addresses the question of how literature shapes the legal imaginary of immorality. Literary models, notably Shakespeare's The Rape Of Lucrece (1594), and George Peele's Tale of Troy (1589), are examined together with the texts of Edward Coke and Thomas Edgar to argue that lawyers' mythopoeic interpretative strategies produce a form of legal fiction in relation to sexual crime. These strategies are contextualised in Chapter 2 in relation to the education and literary-legal culture at the Inns of Court, and the thesis progresses to an examination of the inns' literary and dramatic output – notably that of Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville's Gorbuduc, and Arthur Broke's contemporaneous revels' masque, Desire and Lady Bewty (1561-2) – to establish how the legal fraternity wielded significant authority over Tudor sexual politics, moral signification, and interpretative practices. Chapters 3 and 4 explore legal and ethical challenges heralded by the Jacobean accession, particularly those posed by the Somerset scandal. Analysis of histories, letters, and court satire, together with Thomas Campion's The Lord Hay's Masque (1607), and George Chapman's Andromeda Liberata (1614) and The Tragedy of Chabot (1639), illuminates the period's textual negotiations of legal, political, and personal ethics, and offers a revealing picture of the moral paradoxes produced by the opacity of the parameters between the personal and political lives of the ruling elite.

Esta dissertação apresenta uma tradução comentada de parte do livro The Unfortunate Traveller: or, The Life of Jack Wilton, escrito por Thomas Nashe em 1594 e discute os desafios de traduzir pela primeira vez para o português esse romance picaresco escrito durante o período elisabetano. As alterações estruturais, lexicais e semânticas ocorridas na língua inglesa durante esses anos e as diferenças culturais entre a Inglaterra do século XVI e o Brasil da atualidade são algumas das dificuldades enfrentadas no processo tradutório dessa obra. O primeiro capítulo apresentará uma leitura crítica da obra, do autor e uma contextualização do romance picaresco. No segundo capítulo haverá uma explanação das duas teorias de tradução usadas nesta dissertação: as tendências deformadoras propostas por Antoine Berman (1985), que propõem identificar as variações encontradas nas traduções em relação ao texto original; e o modelo descritivo das Modalidades de Tradução elaboradas pelo Prof. Dr. Francis H. Aubert (1998, 2006), derivado do modelo pedagógico dos procedimentos técnicos da tradução (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958, 1977). No terceiro capítulo usaremos essas duas teorias como ferramentas para análise das escolhas tradutórias adotadas e suas implicações na escrita do texto na língua de chegada. O quarto capítulo trará a tradução de 50% do livro ao lado do texto original em inglês com notas e comentários no rodapé. / This work presents an annotated translation of a part of the book The Unfortunate Traveller: or, The Life of Jack Wilton, written by Thomas Nashe in 1594 and discusses the challenges of translating for the first time into Portuguese this picaresque novel written during the Elizabethan period. Structural, lexical and semantic changes in the English language over the years and the cultural differences between the sixteenth-century England and contemporary Brazil are some of the difficulties in the translation process of this work. The first chapter will present a critical reading of the work and the author. In the second chapter there will be an explanation of the two translation theories used in this dissertation: the comparative method of deforming tendencies proposed by Antoine Berman (1985), which proposes to identify the variations found in translations from the original text. And the second, the The translation modalities descriptive model developed by Francis H. Aubert (1998, 2006), derived from the pedagogical model of the technical procedures of translation (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958, 1977). In the third chapter these two theories will be used as tools to analyze the translation choices and its implications in writing the text in the target language. The fourth chapter will bring the translation of 50% of the book side by side with the original text in English with notes and comments in footnotes.