This thesis is an examination of the theoretical concepts of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) and their relation to the Elizabethan theatre. I propose that the dramas of the age of Shakespeare and the environment in which they were produced should be seen as an integral part of the Theatre of Cruelty and essential to its very understanding. The development of the English Renaissance public theatre was at the mercy of periods of outbreaks and abatements of plague, a powerful force that Artaud considers to be the double of the theatre. The claim for regeneration as an outcome of the plague, a phenomenon causing intense destruction, is very specific to Artaud. The cruel and violent images associated with the plague also feature in the theatre, as do its destructive and regenerative powers. The plague and its surrounding atmosphere contain both the grotesque and sublime elements of life Artaud wished to capture in his theatre. His theory of cruelty is part of a larger investigation into the connection between spectacle, violence, and sacrifice explored by Mikhail Bakhtin, René Girard, and Georges Bataille.

<div>This dissertation brings together studies of early modern subjectivity, material culture, and dramatic performance in ways that address the myriad ways in which material objects—in this case, clothing and costumes—can act as catalysts for change in a work of the dramatic literature of the period. Literary studies of the twenty-first century has done little to examine the ways in which costumes on the early modern English stage functioned to convey relationships between outward expression and inner self. Despite critical agreement that staged objects in early modern England were significant for creating meaning in theatrical performances, the presentation of material objects in early modern English drama with respect to a performed selfhood continues to be underappreciated or misunderstood, if not entirely neglected.</div><div> </div><div>In response to this problem, I argue that an examination of the history of costumes on the early modern English stage is necessary to discover how costumes functioned over time to indicate both complete and incomplete transformations in performance. On-stage clothing, particularly when it is removed from or placed upon an actor’s body, effectively added to the performed narrative. Within any given work of drama, of course, the act of changing costumes often coincides with the potential for a change of one’s character. Examining elements of identity including political alignment, social status, religion, gender, and sexuality as features that can be defined and redefined through costuming, it is possible to trace the ways in which costumes have the power to transform. </div><div><br></div>

Cross-gender casting (i.e. the casting of female performers for male parts and vice versa) of plays by William Shakespeare is not a scarce phenomenon and is getting more and more popular in the recent years. In spite of the frequent claim of the theatre-makers and critics that it is in fact a gender blind casting, where the gender of the performer does not matter, the thesis attempts to prove that, in fact, it is not the case. This is exemplified on three most frequently staged and also most commonly cross-gender cast plays: Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. Via these examples the thesis shows the variability of approaches to cross-gender casting and the differences in realization. In the first chapter, the key terminology is defined, in order to avoid confusion, discussing the differences between cross-dressing, travesty and cross-gender casting. That is followed by subchapters in which the basic frame of thought is suggested, building on Judith Butler's deconstruction of gender and the concept of gender performativity. The last subchapter of this section deals with the history of cross-gender casting, including the Elizabethan all-male staging tradition. The next three chapters are then devoted to each of the plays, analyzing the possible interpretive keys and motivations for a cross-gender cast...

Towards the end of the 19th century Oscar Wilde wrote the four society plays that would become his most famous dramatical works: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The plays combined characteristic Wildean witticisms with cunning social criticism of Victorian society, using stereotypical characters such as the dandy, the fallen woman and the “ideal” woman to mock the double moral and strict social expectations of Victorian society. These plays, and to an extent also Wilde’s symbolist drama Salomé (1891), have been the object of a great deal of scholarly interest, with countless studies conducted on them from various angles and theoretical perspectives. Widely under-discussed, however, are Wilde’s two Elizabethan-Jacobean tragedies, The Duchess of Padua (1883) and A Florentine Tragedy (1894). This thesis therefore sets out to explore The Duchess of Padua and A Florentine Tragedy in order to gain a broader understanding of Wilde’s forgotten dramatical works, while also rediscovering two of Wilde’s most transgressive female characters—Beatrice and Bianca. Challenging traditional ideas of gender and female sexuality, Beatrice and Bianca can be read as proto-feminist figures who continually act transgressively, using their voice and agency to stand up against patriarchy and asserting their rights to experience their lives on their own terms. Through an in-depth study of these plays, this thesis will demonstrate that Wilde’s Elizabethan-Jacobean tragedies, with their strong, modern female characters Beatrice and Bianca deserve greater critical attention on a par with the extensive scholarship on Wilde’s well-known dramatical works.

My dissertation explores Shakespeare’s negotiation of Reformation controversy about theories of salvation. While twentieth century literary criticism tended to regard Shakespeare as a harbinger of secularism, the so-called “turn to religion” in early modern studies has given renewed attention to the religious elements in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Yet in spite of the current popularity of early modern religion studies, there remains an aura of uncertainty regarding some of the doctrinal or liturgical specificities of the period. This historical gap is especially felt with respect to theories of salvation, or soteriology. Such ambiguity, however, calls for further inquiry into historical theology. As one of the “hot-button” issues of the Reformation, salvation was fiercely contested in Shakespeare’s day, making it essential for scholarship to differentiate between conformist (Church of England), godly (puritan), and recusant (Catholic) strains of soteriology in Shakespearean plays. I explore how the language and concepts of faith, grace, charity, the sacraments, election, free will, justification, sanctification, and atonement find expression in Shakespeare’s plays. In doing so, I contribute to the recovery of a greater understanding of the relationship between early modern religion and Shakespearean drama. While I share Kastan’s reluctance to attribute particular religious convictions to Shakespeare (A Will to Believe 143), in some cases such critical guardedness has diverted attention from the religious topography of Shakespeare’s plays. My first chapter explores the tension in The Merchant of Venice between Protestant notions of justification by faith and a Catholic insistence upon works of mercy. The infamous trial scene, in particular, deconstructs cherished Protestant ideology by refuting the efficacy of faith when it is divorced from ethical behaviour. The second chapter situates Hamlet in the stream of Lancelot Andrewes’s “avant-garde conformity” (to use Peter Lake’s coinage), thereby explaining why Claudius’s prayer in the definitive text of the second quarto has intimations of soteriological agency that are lacking in the first quarto. The third chapter argues that Hamlet undermines the ghost’s association of violence and religion, thus implicitly critiquing the proliferation of religious violence on both sides of the Reformation divide. The fourth chapter argues that Calvin’s theory of the vicarious atonement of Christ, expounded so eloquently by Isabella in Measure for Measure, meets substantial resistance, especially when the Duke and others attempt to apply the soteriological principle of substitution to the domains of sexuality and law. The ethical failures that result from an over-realized soteriology indicate that the play corroborates Luther’s idea that a distinction must be maintained between the sacred and secular realms. The fifth chapter examines controversies in the English church about the (il)legitimacy of exorcising demons, a practice favoured by Jesuits but generally frowned upon by Calvinists. Shakespeare cleverly negotiates satirical source material by metaphorizing exorcisms in King Lear in a way that seems to acknowledge Calvinist scepticism, yet honour Jesuit compassion. Throughout this study, my hermeneutic is to read Shakespeare through the lens of contemporary theological controversy and to read contemporary theology through the lens of Shakespeare. / Graduate / 2023-11-20