This project shows how Jonson and Shakespeare represent dissatisfactions with filiation and paternity as discontents with other early modern discourses of cultural reproduction, and vice versa. Chapters on six plays analyze the father-child tie as it articulates sensitivities and hopes in remote arenas, from usury law to mourning rites, humanism to Judaism, witchcraft to visions of heaven. In every play, the father is disembodied. He is dead, invisible, physically separated from his child, or represented in consistently incorporeal terms. In its very formlessness, the vision of paternity as abstraction is what makes it such a flexible metaphor for Renaissance attitudes to so many different forms of cultural cohesion and replication. The Shakespeare plays treat the somatic gulf with ambivalence. For Shakespeare, who ultimately rejects a world beyond the impermanent material one, incorporeality is both the father's prestige and his punishment. But for Jonson, the desomatization more often indicates paternal privilege. Jonson wants filiation and fathering to counteract the progression of history, and since time destroys the concrete, abstraction and disembodiment are necessary for the process to work. His plays initially envision a paternally imagined rule of law achieving permanence for those under it. But Volpone undermines Every man in his humour's fantasy of law, and The staple of news dismantles it still more. Ultimately, in Staple's schematically represented father and son, a pair whose reunion allows them a courtroom triumph, Jonson resorts to an abstractly figured paternity itself to justify other abstractions, legal and literary. As with law in Jonson, so for religion and the supernatural in Shakespeare. Shakespeare's body of work eventually renounces the religious faith whose representation it interweaves with portraits of children and fathers. It does so first in Merchant's intimidating Judaism and hypocritical Christianity, then in Twelfth night's more subtly referenced Catholicism, mournful and aestheticized, and finally in The tempest's various abjurations. Monotheism vanishes altogether in the last play, replaced by a dead witch and multiple spirits and deities who do the bidding of a conjuror who plans to give them up. Both playwrights ultimately reduce their investment in other forms of cultural transmission in favor of more intimate parent-child structures, embodied or not. / text

Student Number : 8701228T - PhD thesis - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / The argument that unfolds throughout this thesis represents the development of my own understanding of the Renaissance conception and application of alchemical theories and philosophies, especially as it applies to my appreciation of the works of two of the crucial figures of the period – Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. These men were far more than entertainers. They were committed to their art as an essential component in the shaping and maintenance of the societal conscience. As dramatist-philosophers, they not only treated issues of topical interest and debate around the individual in relation to individual, and the individual in relation to the larger worlds of nature and politics, but also provided learned and insightful comment on the possible nature and function of the individual soul/mind in relation to itself. My deepening sensitivity to and comprehension of early modern alchemical philosophies and practices as apt analogies for psychological development led me to believe that Jonson and Shakespeare, separately though similarly, externalized, or dramatized, the inner trajectory of self-knowledge. This thesis, then, represents my own exploratory expedition into Renaissance epistemological thought as embodied in various alchemical texts. The correlations between alchemy and early modern psychologies become more apparent with each chapter. In the opening chapters, the historical and intellectual context for an hypothesis of a Renaissance psychology is set out. Chapter Three focuses on Renaissance conceptions of self-knowledge. The classical dictum of nosce teipsum is explored in relation to a range of contemporary alchemical arguments about the nature of philosophy and knowledge. In Chapter Four, I present a proposal of a Renaissance ‘model’ of psychological development, which may be seen to be analogous to the alchemical process as widely understood and depicted in the literature of the time. The fifth chapter is a ‘bridge’ between the foregoing thesis and the expository analysis of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist and Shakespeare’s The Tempest: it particularizes the foregoing argument and attempts to come to some apprehension of Jonson’s individual conception of self-knowledge and psychological development. The sixth chapter demonstrates this apprehension in relation to Jonson’s The Alchemist. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is thus seen as being in direct conversation with both Jonson’s The Alchemist, and with the philosophical and artistic trends of the period. In Chapter Seven, I explore the evidence that Shakespeare was drawing from a ‘common pool’ of intellectual material with Jonson. However, I also suggest that Shakespeare presents a differing, though in some ways complementary, view of self-knowledge. Both Shakespeare and Jonson, I propose, are drawing on alchemical language and imagery to present contrasting characterizations of human potential and evolution. In effect, the respective dramatic texts present two distinct conceptualizations of the ‘philosopher’s stone’, which, in turn, suggests two models of human perfectibility that seem to be poles apart. These two works, however, are undeniably related and mutually effective within the Renaissance crucible of alchemy.

This thesis involves a study of theatre in early 17th century London, focussing on the work of the boy companies. These were theatre companies made up entirely of child actors, who performed on the stages of the private theatres up until about 1609. The attitude that I take is that the performances staged by these companies constituted a separate theatre-form or performance-practice of its own, and accordingly I approach the plays put on by these companies as being part of a specific repertoire, the study of which nevertheless bears wide implications for our understanding of the culture of early modern London. Regarding their performances in terms of the possibilities which they offered for the de-familiarisation of cultural practices, of selfconsciously staging conventions in high relief, I have followed a seam of scepticism surrounding the representation of identity in this culture. My 'thesis' is that within the cultural practice that this theatre constituted there was an acute awareness of the inconsistencies and evasions which existed within the strategies of self-fashioning in the urban setting, an awareness which was ironically distinguished by a highly ambivalent theatricality. The first chapter involves a reading of one of the last and certainly most demanding plays written for this theatre, Epicoene or The Silent Woman by Ben Jonson. Growing out of Jacques Lacan's studies of subjectivity and the subjective gaze, I approach this playas a performance-text which directly and self-consciously addresses issues of performance and dramaturgy. In chapter two I site the space of the theatre itself with reference to other available 'playing spaces', in particular the banqueting-house and the city itself, as I draw in other plays of the repertoire. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the body of the child as being constructed in this culture as an ambiguous site of passivity and self-avoidance, out of which I turn to deal with the constituting and performing of male and female gender.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of English Language and Literature, August 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2005. / Advisor: Helen Ostovich. Includes bibliographical references (p. 248-259). Also available via World Wide Web.

abstract: This dissertation considers why several characters on the Early Modern Stage choose to remain silent when speech seems warranted. By examining the circumstances and effects of self-silencing on both the character and his/her community, I argue that silencing is an exercise of power that simultaneously subjectifies the silent one and compels the community (textual or theatrical) to ethical self-examination. This argument engages primarily with social philosophers Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Badiou, and Emmanual Levinas, considering their sometimes contradictory ideas about the ontology and representation of the subject and the construction of community. Set alongside the Early Modern plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Thomas Kyd, these theories reveal a rich functionality of self-silencing in the contexts of gender relations, aberrant sociality, and ethical crisis. This multi-faceted functionality creates a singular subject, establishes a space for the simultaneous existence of the subject and his/her community, offers an opportunity for empathetic mirroring and/or insight, and thereby leads to social unification. Silence is, in its effects, creative: it engenders empathy and ethical self- and social-reflection. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2011

Cette thèse propose d’étudier la place et la portée de l’Italie comme lieu scénique dans les pièces de deux célèbres dramaturges de la période élisabéthaine. L’introduction met en lumière la présence et l’influence de l’Italie durant la période qui précède l’essor du théâtre à Londres, ainsi que l’omniprésence de la péninsule au théâtre entre 1580 et 1620, en particulier chez William Shakespeare. La première partie de l’étude s’attache à mettre en évidence la façon dont le décor italien se met en place et dont se construit la figure de l’Autre sur la scène élisabéthaine. Sur une scène où le décor physique est limité, les procédés de création d’une couleur locale prennent des formes diverses et variées et révèlent la nature de la dualité entre identité et altérité pour le spectateur de la Renaissance anglaise. C’est alors que l’on entrevoit les différences entre la représentation satirique de Ben Jonson et celle de William Shakespeare, dont la vision de l’Italie apparaît bien plus vague, complexe et changeante. La seconde partie de ce travail repose sur l’étude des différents topoï auxquels est liée l’Italie au théâtre. Ces derniers permettent de comprendre que la représentation de la péninsule s’appuie sur un certain nombre de codes en partie attendus du public. Ils démontrent en outre combien l’identité anglaise se construit à la fois à travers le rejet et l’imitation de la patrie de la Renaissance, en un temps où l’Europe est coupée en deux sur le plan politique et religieux. / This dissertation proposes the study of the place and significance of Italy as a dramatic setting in the plays of two famous dramatists of the Elizabethan period. The introduction describes the presence and influence of Italy during the period preceding the rise and blossoming of the theatre in London, as well as the omnipresence of the Italian peninsula in drama between1580 and 1620, particularly in that of William Shakespeare. The first part of the study aims to show how the Italian setting is constructed and how the figure of the Other is represented on the Elizabethan stage. In a theatre where the physical décor is limited, the methods for creating local colour take diverse and varied forms and reveal the nature of the duality between identity and otherness for the English Renaissance spectator. This then brings into focus the differences between the satirical representation of Ben Jonson and that of William Shakespeare, whose vision of Italy appears far more vague, complex and mutable. The second part of this work focuses on the study of the different topoi to which Italy is linked in their plays. They reveal the extent to which representation of the Italian peninsula is based on a collection of codes shaped in part by the expectations by the public. Moreover, they demonstrate the importance of the simultaneous rejection and imitation of the homeland of the Renaissance in the construction of English identity,at a time when Europe is divided in two on political and religious grounds.

Ben Jonson wrote Volpone when England's pamphlet wars and the rule of Queen Elizabeth I contributed to an environment in which the "woman question" was forefront in many minds. These social concerns echo in Volpone, resulting in a play that not only deals with vices and greed, but that also, to a limited degree, contributes to the querelle de femmes. The play's numerous animal metaphors create distinctions between characters; among other things, animalistic surnames represent the vices and complexities of humanity, and, more specifically, reverberate with judgments that seem to underscore the injustices of misogynistic pamphleteers. Moreover, Jonson's characters Bonario and Celia represent the ideal images of manhood and womanhood and are armed with various virtues that allow them to overcome trials. Ultimately, when read in the context of the Early Modern pamphlet wars, Volpone's animal metaphors form a conservative defense of women that condemns misogyny and advocates a partnership between virtuous men and women for the sake of moral social order.

This study discusses the evolution of the English country-house poem from its inception by Ben Jonson in "To Penshurst" to the present. It shows that in addition to stylistic and thematic borrowings primarily from Horace and Martial, traditional English values associated with the great hall and comitatus ideal helped define features of the English country-house poem, to which Jonson added the metonymical use of architecture. In the Jonsonian country-house poem, the country estate, exemplified by Penshurst, is a microcosm of the ideal English social organization characterized by interdependence, simplicity, service, hospitality, and balance between the active and contemplative life. Those poems which depart from the Jonsonian ideal are characterized by disequilibrium between the active and contemplative life, resulting in the predominance of artifice, subordination of nature, and isolation of art from the community, as exemplified by Thomas Carew's "To Saxham" and Richard Lovelace's "Amyntor's Grove." Architectural features of the English country house are examined to explain the absence of the Jonsonian country-house poem in the eighteenth century. The building tradition praised by Jonson gradually gave way to aesthetic considerations fostered by the professional architect and Palladian architecture, architectural patronage by the middle class, and change in identity of the country house as center of an interdependent community. The country-house poem was revived by W. B. Yeats in his poems in praise of Coole Park. In them Yeats reaffirms Jonsonian values. In contrast to the poems of Yeats, the country-house poems of Sacheverell Sitwell and John Hollander convey a sense of irretrievable loss of the Jonsonian ideal and isolation of the poet. Changing social patterns, ethical values, and aesthetics threaten the survival of the country-house poem, although the ideal continues to reflect a basic longing of humanity for a pastoral retreat where life is simple and innocent.