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This dissertation investigates representations of bureaucracy in early modern drama and culture. Focusing on a group of plays that feature bureaucratic figures among their characters, and reading those plays in the context of contemporary discussions of administration, this project attempts to understand the role played by the increasingly bureaucratic state in developing conceptions of individual subjectivity. Specifically, this dissertation seeks to show that bureaucratic administrative structures and the methods deployed to maintain them provide a conceptual space in which early modern writers could conceive of themselves as possessing a private, inscrutable interiority. Chapter Two argues that whereas the binary relationship of secretary and master is often characterized in contemporary accounts as intensely, and problematically, intimate, the multivalent bureaucratic relationship is characterized, for the most part, as impersonal. Chapter Three links bureaucratic labour with one product of that labour, the bureaucratic document, in order to analyze the way in which early modern representations and discussions of bureaucratic documents constitute a medium through which a form of bureaucratic identity is conceptualized. Chapter Four examines a problem inherent to the bureaucratic delegation of authority – the combination of a desire to see everything and an inability to trust in the observations of others to aid you in fulfilling that desire – and seeks to find a solution to that problem in the way in which Much Ado About Nothing presents a vision of a disciplinary surveillance that is diffused throughout society, rather than residing in one privileged figure. Chapter Five shifts the focus of inquiry from the bureaucracy and those in its employ to the subject of bureaucratic authority. The chapter reads Hamlet’s claims to inscrutable interiority in the context of the state’s desire to see, and document, its subjects. In it, I argue that, rather than deflecting questions, Hamlet’s assertions serve to align him with other targets of disciplinary surveillance. The dissertation ends by considering links between the representational crisis engendered by the growth of the early modern bureaucracy and the representational practices of the early modern theatre. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-30 12:50:35.596

This dissertation focuses on the particular ways in which early modern English playwrights connect geographical territory depicted in charts, travel, and colonial literature to the female body. By examining the rhetorical methods that both male and female writers employ, I demonstrate how the emerging imperial discourse relies upon the idea that through marriage, women represent and convey territory for their male relatives. But as physical embodiments of family wealth and property that serve as crucial links between males, these women can subvert this use of their bodies in order to formulate a site of resistance to masculine modes of mapping that penetrate, explore, and chart both territory and bodies. Beginning with depictions of Queen Elizabeth and English geography, I investigate plays from the 1570s to the 1670s that reflect and reshape Elizabeth's cartography of her virgin body. In my consideration of Christopher Marlowe's Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage, and Tamburlaine, I argue that although Dido and Zenocrate serve to represent their homelands and legitimize its conquest by their men, the two queens upset this rhetoric when they delineate their own geographic re-imaginings. Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam and The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II reveal how both Mariam and Isabel are inscribed by the same colonial rhetoric that imagines the women to be fertile land that can only be properly civilized by men. The next chapter reveals how Thomas Heywood's works reflect and legitimize the growing importance of trade rather than outright conquest in English overseas expansion. In If You Know Not Me, You Know No Bodie and The Fair Maid of the West, Heywood's Queen Elizabeth and her counterpart Bess Bridges demonstrate how any woman's virginity becomes a commodity to be used and traded as a representation of English virtue. The final chapter examines how Margaret Cavendish in Loves Adventures and Bell in Campo reclaims the body as a site of potential resistance by redeploying the rhetoric of virginity and cartography. The coda calls for continued investigation into the uses of geographic rhetoric through the example of Queen Anne.

This dissertation is a fully-annotated scholarly edition of John Fletcher's 1624 play <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>. Fletcher's comedy of intrigue about two couples who wed under false pretenses was his final non-collaborative play and represents the culmination of his achievements as a comic dramatist. It has received surprisingly little attention for a play that remained a staple of English and American theatres into the 1860s. The introduction to this edition is the most comprehensive study of the play to date. The critical examination of the domestic politics and structural patterning of the play argues that <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> presents marriages that become protective spheres to shield spouses from the twin depredations of economic necessity and tyrannical power once the spouses have given up the urge to dominate each other. A section on Fletcher's language and style explores what Dryden praised as its imitation of the "conversation of gentlemen." The study of Fletcher's source material considers not only the two Spanish narratives he adapted, but also the resources of the King's Men and their theatres which influenced the play's composition. The introduction then contextualizes the play in its initial historical moment and the ways it reacts to England's preparations for war and the marriage negotiations for Prince Charles. The final two sections of the introduction examine the play's circulation in print and on stage. The stage history is supplemented by two appendices: a calendar of nearly 800 known performances and a collation of changes made in acting editions of the play. A recognition of the style and ubiquity of <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> will aid scholars in understanding continuities of taste and repertoire in English drama.

This dissertation is a fully-annotated scholarly edition of John Fletcher's 1624 play <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>. Fletcher's comedy of intrigue about two couples who wed under false pretenses was his final non-collaborative play and represents the culmination of his achievements as a comic dramatist. It has received surprisingly little attention for a play that remained a staple of English and American theatres into the 1860s. The introduction to this edition is the most comprehensive study of the play to date. The critical examination of the domestic politics and structural patterning of the play argues that <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> presents marriages that become protective spheres to shield spouses from the twin depredations of economic necessity and tyrannical power once the spouses have given up the urge to dominate each other. A section on Fletcher's language and style explores what Dryden praised as its imitation of the "conversation of gentlemen." The study of Fletcher's source material considers not only the two Spanish narratives he adapted, but also the resources of the King's Men and their theatres which influenced the play's composition. The introduction then contextualizes the play in its initial historical moment and the ways it reacts to England's preparations for war and the marriage negotiations for Prince Charles. The final two sections of the introduction examine the play's circulation in print and on stage. The stage history is supplemented by two appendices: a calendar of nearly 800 known performances and a collation of changes made in acting editions of the play. A recognition of the style and ubiquity of <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> will aid scholars in understanding continuities of taste and repertoire in English drama.

The language used in critical readings of Hamlet is rife with implicitly teleological terms: according to many critics, and the ghost of King Hamlet, the story of his father's murder and Claudius' succession requires Hamlet to do something. I ask, why should Hamlet kill his uncle, revenge his father, correct his mother, become king, marry Ophelia, and produce heirs to rule when he is gone? While Hamlet's inaction is often described as delay or paralysis, I suggest that the Danish prince resists teleology through his studied ambivalence towards dynasty: land-owning, child-bearing, wars and marriage. Building on recent theoretical and historical work by scholars like Lee Edelman, Will Fisher, Margreta de Grazia and Madhavi Menon, I suggest that Hamlet, through the interventions of its main character, thwarts the assumption that the relationship between a nobleman and his land is natural, that the desire for possession and rule is inherent. Combining de Grazia's invaluable historicism with Fisher's discussion of prostheses, Ir ead the Renaissance nobleman as a prosthetic creature, physically and politically embodied by his marriage, his children, his land. In delaying the revenge he has been called upon to carry out, in hesitating to take up the crown, Hamlet defers the prostheses of nobility, and opens up a space from which to question the dynastic project.

The language used in critical readings of Hamlet is rife with implicitly teleological terms: according to many critics, and the ghost of King Hamlet, the story of his father's murder and Claudius' succession requires Hamlet to do something. I ask, why should Hamlet kill his uncle, revenge his father, correct his mother, become king, marry Ophelia, and produce heirs to rule when he is gone? While Hamlet's inaction is often described as delay or paralysis, I suggest that the Danish prince resists teleology through his studied ambivalence towards dynasty: land-owning, child-bearing, wars and marriage. Building on recent theoretical and historical work by scholars like Lee Edelman, Will Fisher, Margreta de Grazia and Madhavi Menon, I suggest that Hamlet, through the interventions of its main character, thwarts the assumption that the relationship between a nobleman and his land is natural, that the desire for possession and rule is inherent. Combining de Grazia's invaluable historicism with Fisher's discussion of prostheses, Ir ead the Renaissance nobleman as a prosthetic creature, physically and politically embodied by his marriage, his children, his land. In delaying the revenge he has been called upon to carry out, in hesitating to take up the crown, Hamlet defers the prostheses of nobility, and opens up a space from which to question the dynastic project.

The language used in critical readings of Hamlet is rife with implicitly teleological terms: according to many critics, and the ghost of King Hamlet, the story of his father's murder and Claudius' succession requires Hamlet to do something. I ask, why should Hamlet kill his uncle, revenge his father, correct his mother, become king, marry Ophelia, and produce heirs to rule when he is gone? While Hamlet's inaction is often described as delay or paralysis, I suggest that the Danish prince resists teleology through his studied ambivalence towards dynasty: land-owning, child-bearing, wars and marriage. Building on recent theoretical and historical work by scholars like Lee Edelman, Will Fisher, Margreta de Grazia and Madhavi Menon, I suggest that Hamlet, through the interventions of its main character, thwarts the assumption that the relationship between a nobleman and his land is natural, that the desire for possession and rule is inherent. Combining de Grazia's invaluable historicism with Fisher's discussion of prostheses, Ir ead the Renaissance nobleman as a prosthetic creature, physically and politically embodied by his marriage, his children, his land. In delaying the revenge he has been called upon to carry out, in hesitating to take up the crown, Hamlet defers the prostheses of nobility, and opens up a space from which to question the dynastic project. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation examines the representation of adoption in early modern English drama in order to analyze the language of social and familial relations in early modern culture. I propose that although these plays often ultimately support the traditional idea of a birth family, adoption challenges conventional notions of the family by making artificial, non-consanguine relations appear natural, thereby exposing the family unit as a social construction. I suggest further that adopted characters complicate notions of biological inheritance through their negotiations of language, place, and power. My dissertation thus explores the connections between historical language use and social status in early modern England; it couples early modern rhetorical theories and treatises with modern linguistic theory, drawing upon recent sociolinguistic scholarship. The result is to show that understanding how language demarcates social position is essential to illuminating the cultural intricacies of the plays of the period. In Chapters 1 and 2, I investigate the social and economic repercussions of adoption. Chapter 1 discusses the previously overlooked cultural importance of horticultural metaphors of adoption in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and All’s Well That Ends Well. In this chapter, I explore the ways in which early modern culture explained adoption by depicting it in a particular kind of figurative language. Chapter 2 focuses on the economic consequences of, and motivations for, adoption in Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. In my final two chapters, I scrutinize the relations between the early modern family and linguistic practice. Chapter 3 explores the connections between genetics, physical likeness, and language in Lyly’s Mother Bombie and Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Finally, in Chapter 4 I investigate familial relation as a source of linguistic and social power. Middleton’s Women Beware Women, I argue, suggests that kinship exists within language and grants particular speakers linguistic and social authority.