Thesis (M. A. (English)) --University of the North, 1989 / Refer to the document

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, [1918] / Also available in digital form on the Internet Archive Web site.

This dissertation examines three generations of the Beeston family and its revolutionary impact on the developing world of seventeenth-century London theatre management. Like other early modern businesses, the Beeston enterprise thrived on commercial innovation, the strategic cultivation of patronage, and a capacity to perpetuate itself dynastically. England’s mid-century political crisis disrupted the family’s commercial supremacy but its management system would endure as the de facto standard structuring successful theatre business long after the Restoration. Following a critical introduction to the early history of theatrical management, the thesis’s four chapters chart the creation and institution of the Beeston management model. Chapter One examines the early career of Christopher Beeston, a minor stageplayer from Shakespeare’s company in the 1590s who set out ambitiously to reshape theatrical management at Drury Lane’s Cockpit playhouse in 1616. Chapter Two analyzes Beeston’s later career, particularly his unique appointment as “Governor” of a new royal company in 1637. New evidence suggests that the office was a reward for service to the aristocratic Herbert family and that traditional preferment was therefore as important as market competition to the creation of the Caroline paradigm of autocratic theatrical “governance.” Chapter Three explores the overlooked career of Elizabeth Beeston who, upon inheriting the Cockpit in 1638, became the first woman in English history to manage a purpose-built London theatre. New evidence concerning her subsequent husband, Sir Lewis Kirke, an adventurer to Canada, ship-money captain, and Royalist military governor, indicates political ideology motivated their joint effort to keep the Beeston playhouse open during the civil wars. Chapter Four addresses the question of why the larger Beeston enterprise eventually collapsed even as the management system it refined continued to support later theatrical entrepreneurs. During the Interregnum, contemporaries anticipated that William and George Beeston, Christopher’s son and grandson, would eventually dominate a renascent London stage; however, managers such as William Davenant and Thomas Betterton ultimately adapted the Beeston system more efficiently to the political environment after 1660. Thereafter, exhausted patronage, lost assets, and the abandonment of family tradition marked the end of the Beestons’ influential association with the London stage.

This dissertation examines three generations of the Beeston family and its revolutionary impact on the developing world of seventeenth-century London theatre management. Like other early modern businesses, the Beeston enterprise thrived on commercial innovation, the strategic cultivation of patronage, and a capacity to perpetuate itself dynastically. England’s mid-century political crisis disrupted the family’s commercial supremacy but its management system would endure as the de facto standard structuring successful theatre business long after the Restoration. Following a critical introduction to the early history of theatrical management, the thesis’s four chapters chart the creation and institution of the Beeston management model. Chapter One examines the early career of Christopher Beeston, a minor stageplayer from Shakespeare’s company in the 1590s who set out ambitiously to reshape theatrical management at Drury Lane’s Cockpit playhouse in 1616. Chapter Two analyzes Beeston’s later career, particularly his unique appointment as “Governor” of a new royal company in 1637. New evidence suggests that the office was a reward for service to the aristocratic Herbert family and that traditional preferment was therefore as important as market competition to the creation of the Caroline paradigm of autocratic theatrical “governance.” Chapter Three explores the overlooked career of Elizabeth Beeston who, upon inheriting the Cockpit in 1638, became the first woman in English history to manage a purpose-built London theatre. New evidence concerning her subsequent husband, Sir Lewis Kirke, an adventurer to Canada, ship-money captain, and Royalist military governor, indicates political ideology motivated their joint effort to keep the Beeston playhouse open during the civil wars. Chapter Four addresses the question of why the larger Beeston enterprise eventually collapsed even as the management system it refined continued to support later theatrical entrepreneurs. During the Interregnum, contemporaries anticipated that William and George Beeston, Christopher’s son and grandson, would eventually dominate a renascent London stage; however, managers such as William Davenant and Thomas Betterton ultimately adapted the Beeston system more efficiently to the political environment after 1660. Thereafter, exhausted patronage, lost assets, and the abandonment of family tradition marked the end of the Beestons’ influential association with the London stage.

This thesis seeks to investigate the ways in which late medieval English drama produces and theorises emotions, in order to engage with the complex nexus of ideas about the links between sensation, emotion, and cognition in contemporary philosophical and theologial thought. It contributes to broader considerations of the cultural work that religious drama performed in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England in the context of the ongoing debates concerning its theological and social relevance. Drawing on recent research in the cognitive sciences and the history of emotion, this thesis conceives of dramatic performances as passionate encounters between actors and audiences – encounters which do not only re-create biblical history as a sensual reality, but in which emotion becomes attached to signs and bodies through theatrical means. It suggests that the attention paid to the processes through which audiences become emotionally invested in a play challenges assumptions about biblical drama of the English towns as a negligible contribution to philosophical and theological thinking in the vernacular. The analysis is conducted against the background of medieval and modern conceptions of emotions as ethically and morally relevant phenomena at the intersection between body and reason, which is outlined in chapter one. Each of the four main chapters presents a detailed examination of a series of pageants or plays drawn mainly from the Chester and York cycles and the Towneley and N-Town collections. These are supplemented, on occasion, with analysis of individual plays from fragmentary cycles and collections. The examinations undertaken are placed against the devotional and intellectual backdrop of late medieval England, in order to demonstrate how dramatic performances of biblical subject matter engage with some of the central issues in the wider debate about the human body, soul, and intellect. The second chapter focuses on the creation of living images on the stage, and specifically on didactically relevant stage images, in the Towneley Processus Prophetarum, the Chester Moses and the Law, and the N-Town Moses. The third chapter shifts the focus to the performance of the Passion in the N-Town second Passion play and the York Crucifixio Christi, concentrating on the potential effects of the perception of physical violence on audience response. The subject of chapter four is the emotional behaviours and expressions accorded to the Virgin Mary in the Towneley and N-Town Crucifixion scenes, and those of her precursors, the mothers of the innocents, in the Digby and Coventry plays of the Massacre of the Inncocents. In chapter five, the analysis finally turns to dramatisations of the Resurrection, examining its realisation on stage in the Chester Skinners’ play, as well as staged responses to the event by the apostles and the Marys in the N-Town The Announcement to the Three Marys; Peter and John at the Sepulchre and the Towneley Thomas of India. These four central chapters pave the way for a summary, in the conclusion, of the central problematic underpinning this thesis: how the evocation of emotion in an audience is linked to embodiment in theatrical performance, and tied to a certain awareness, on the part of playwrights, of the popular biblical drama’s potential as a locus of philosophical-theological debate.

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This dissertation analyzes melodrama as a common mode of mid-nineteenth century cultural expression. The dissertation centres on the melodrama in Bulwer Lytton's novels, emphasizing Lytton's use of melodrama as a form of radical social criticism. The first novels expose contemporary social inequities, but employ melodramatic techniques sparingly. Later, Lytton shows complete understanding of the melodramatic method and the 'political' basis of melodrama, resulting in novels such as Paul Clifford and Night and Morning. Other novels, though, display, uneasiness with the one-sided analysis of life presented in melodrama, while Zanoni attacks the naivety of melodramatic social criticism. Most of the last novels condemn melodrama for its simple-mindedness, or falsification of human experiences. In addition, 'reactionary' novels such as The Parisians reject the radical social vision of melodrama as neither attainable nor desirable.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. List of figures shows incorrect page numbers. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 670-720).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, (1918).