Studies of the English Renaissance reveal a patriarchal structure that informed its politics and its literature; and the drama especially demonstrates a patriarchal response to what society perceived to be the problem of women's efforts to grow beyond the traditional medieval view of "good" women as chaste, silent, and obedient. Thirteen comedies, whose creation spans roughly the same time frame as the pamphlet wars of the so-called "woman controversy," from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, feature women who have no public power, but who find opportunities for varying degrees of power in the private or domestic setting.

In this thesis an attempt will be made to trace briefly the development of the domestic tragedy of blood on the English stage to the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century.

Typescript. Errata slip inserted. Bibliography: leaves 360-385.

Each chapter of Werewolves and Women with Whiskers: Figures of Estrangement in Early Modern English Drama and Culture explores a particular figure of fascination and fear in the early modern English imagination: in one it is owls, in another bearded women, in a third werewolves, and in yet another Jews. Drawing on instances from drama and other cultural forms, this thesis seeks to examine each of these phenomena in terms of their estrangement. There is a symbolic appositeness in each of these figures, whether in estranged and estranging minority groups, such as Catholics, Jesuits, Jews, Puritans, Italians, the Irish, and the Scots; or in transgressive behaviours, such as cross-dressing and gender trouble, infidelity and apostasy, intemperate passion and unnatural desire. Essentially unfixed and unstable, these emblematic figures are indicative of cultural uncertainty and therefore are easily adapted to suit changing political, religious, and social climates. However, adaptability and fluidity come at a price, since figures of difference have an uncomfortable way of transforming themselves into figures of resemblance. Thus, this thesis argues, each of these figures—owls, bearded women, werewolves, Jews—occupies an undefined and undefinable space on the precarious boundary between the usual and the unusual, between the strange and the strangely familiar, and, most strangely and paradoxically of all, between us and them.

Typescript / Errata slip inserted / Bibliography: leaves 360-385 / viii, 385 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, 1988

This thesis provides a detailed consideration of the family in Shakespeare’s canon and the engagement therewith in three South African novels: Hill of Fools (1976) by R. L. Peteni, My Son’s Story (1990) by Nadine Gordimer, and Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee. The study is divided into an introduction, three chapters each addressing one of the South African novels and its relationship with a Shakespeare text or texts, and a conclusion. The introductory chapter provides an analysis of the two strands of criticism in which the thesis is situated – studies of the family in Shakespeare and studies of appropriations of Shakespeare – and discusses the ways in which these two strands may be combined through a detailed discussion of the presence of power dynamics in the relationship between parent and child in all of the texts considered. The three chapters each contextualise the South African text and provide detailed discussions of the family dynamics within the relevant texts, with particular reference to questions of authority and autonomy. The focus in each chapter is determined by the nature of the intertextual relationship between the South African novel and the Shakespearean text being discussed. Thus, the first chapter, “The Dissolution of Familial Structures in Hill of Fools” considers power dynamics in the family as an inherent part of the Romeo and Juliet genre, of which William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is but a part. Similarly, the impact of a socio-political identity, and the secrecy it necessitates, is the focus of the second chapter, “Fathers, Sons and Legacy in My Son’s Story” as is the role of Shakespeare and literature within South Africa. These concerns are connected to the novel’s use of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, King Lear, and Hamlet. In the third chapter, “Reclaiming Agency through the Daughter in Disgrace and The Tempest”, I expand on Laurence Wright’s argument that Disgrace is an engagement with The Tempest and consider ways in which the altered power dynamic between father and daughter results in the reconciliation of the father figure with society. The thesis thus addresses the tension between parental bonds and parental bondage

This thesis seeks to place drama of the Caroline commercial theatre in its contemporary political and legal context; particularly, it addresses the ways in which the struggle for supremacy between the royal prerogative, common law and local custom is constructed and negotiated in plays of the period. It argues that as the reign of Charles I progresses, the divine right and absolute power of the monarchy on stage begins to lose its authority, as playwrights, particularly Massinger and Brome, present a decline from divinity into the presentation of an arbitrary man who seeks to impose and increase his authority by enforcing obedience to selfish and wilful actions and demands. This decline from divinity, I argue, allows for the rise of a competing legitimate legal authority in the form of common law. Engaging with the contemporary discourse of custom, reason and law which pervades legal tracts of the period such as Coke’s Institutes and Reports and Davies’ ‘Preface Dedicatory’ to Le Primer Report des Cases & Matters en Ley resolues & adiudges en les Courts del Roy en Ireland, drama by Brome, Jonson, Massinger and Shirley presents arbitrary absolutism as madness, and adherence to customary common law as reason which restores order. In this climate, the drama suggests, royal manipulation of the law for personal ends, of which Charles I was often accused, destabilises law and legal authority. This destabilisation of legal authority is examined in a broader context in plays set in areas outwith London, geographically distant from central authority. The thesis places these plays in the context of Charles I’s attempts to centralise local law enforcement through such publications as the Book of Orders. When maintaining order in the provinces came into conflict with central legislation, the local officials exercised what Keith Wrightson describes as ‘two concepts of order’, turning a blind eye to certain activities when strict enforcement of law would create rather than dissolve local tensions. In both attempting to insist on unity between the centre and the provinces through tighter control of local officials, and dividing the centre from the provinces in the dissolution of Parliament, Charles’s government was, the plays suggest, in danger not only of destabilising and decentralising legal authority but of fragmenting it. This thesis argues that drama provides a medium whereby the politico-legal debates of the period may be presented to, and debated by, a wider audience than the more technical contemporary legal arguments, and, during Charles I’s personal rule, the theatre became a public forum for debate when Parliament was unavailable.

My dissertation focuses on representations of women and ritual on the Renaissance stage, situating such examples within the context of the Protestant Reformation. The renegotiation of the value, place, and power of ritual is a central characteristic of the Protestant Reformation in early modern England. The effort to eliminate or redirect ritual was a crucial point of interest for reformers, for most of whom the corruption of religion seemed bound to its ostentatious and idolatrous outer trappings. Despite the opinions of theologians, however, receptivity toward the structure, routine, and familiarity of traditional Catholicism did not disappear with the advent of Protestantism. Reformers worked to modify those rituals that were especially difficult to eradicate, maintaining some sense of meaning without portraying confidence in ceremony itself. I am interested in how early Protestantism dealt with the presence of elements (in worship, daily practice, literary or dramatic representation) that it derogatorily dubbed popish, and how women had a particular place of importance in this dialogue. Through the drama of Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton, along with contemporary religious and popular sources, I explore how theatrical representations of ritual involving women create specific sites of cultural and theological negotiation. These representations both reflect and resist emerging attitudes toward women and ritual fashioned by Reformation thought, granting women a particular authority in the spiritual realm.

‘The Ophelia Versions: Representations of a Dramatic Type from 1600-1633’ interrogates early modern drama’s use of the Ophelia type, which is defined in reference to Hamlet’s Ophelia and the behavioural patterns she exhibits: abandonment, derangement and suicide. Chapter one investigates Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet, finding that Ophelia is strongly identified with the ballad corpus. I argue that the popular ballad medium that Shakespeare imports into the play via Ophelia is a subversive force that contends with and destabilizes the linear trajectory of Hamlet’s revenge tragedy narrative. The alternative space of Ophelia’s ballad narrative is, however, shut down by her suicide which, I argue, is influenced by the models of classical theatre. This ending conspires with the repressive legal and social restrictions placed upon early modern unmarried women and sets up a dangerous precedent by killing off the unassimilated abandoned woman. Chapter two argues that Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen amplifies Ophelia’s folk and ballad associations in their portrayal of the Jailer’s Daughter. Her comedic marital ending is enabled by a collaborative, communal, folk-cure. The play nevertheless registers a proto-feminist awareness of the peculiar losses suffered by early modern women in marriage and this knowledge deeply troubles the Jailer’s Daughter’s happy ending. Chapter three explores the role of Lucibella in The Tragedy of Hoffman arguing that the play is a direct response to Hamlet’s treatment of revenge and that Lucibella is caught up in an authorial project of disambiguation which attempts to return the revenge plot to its morality roots. Chapters four and five explore the narratives of Aspatia in The Maid’s Tragedy and Penthea in The Broken Heart, finding in their very conformism to the behaviours prescribed for them, both by the Ophelia type itself and by early modern society in general, a radical protest against the limitations and repressions of those roles. This thesis is consistently invested in the competing dialectics and authorities of oral and textual mediums in these plays. The Ophelia type, perhaps because of Hamlet’s Ophelia’s identification with the ballad corpus, proves an interesting gauge of each play’s engagement with emergent notions of textual authority in the early modern period.

Liao Weichun. / "August 2004." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-268). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.