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The scholars who assert that motherhood acquires new favor in the early modem period and the critics who contend that male subjectivity and patriarchy in Shakespeare's plays depend on the repudiation of the mother both base their perspectives on an understanding of motherhood which is too monolithic. To contribute to a more historically specific understanding, I draw on the work of numerous historians and examine humanist and reformist writings, the Corpus Christi cycles, and two Shakespearean plays. I find that the medieval "calculative" and "incarnational" versions of motherhood enabled women to exercise considerable control over their sexuality and fertility and clout in their families and communities, and that the Corpus Christi cycles served as a mechanism to extend multiple facets of these versions of the maternal. While the early modern period inherited the expansive, medieval versions of motherhood, the "new," restrictive form of motherhood advocated by the humanists and reformers helped to devalue the inherited forms, promote a greater spiritual, physical, and economic dependence of women on men, and enlarge the scope of the paternal at the expense of the maternal. My examination of Macbeth demonstrates that the play employs Scottish history so as to heighten attention to the risks produced by Elizabeth I's and James I's adaptations of the competing versions of motherhood available in the early modern period. It suggests that James's adaptation is especially conducive to instability, since it generates a contradiction in the hereditary system of political power-the simultaneous need for and exclusion of women/mothers. This contradiction coupled with the diminution of the feminine/maternal makes it more likely that murder will be construed as an alternative means of being "born" into the succession. Whereas Macbeth shifts from constructions more aligned with incarnational and calculative mothers to constructions more affiliated with new mothers, Coriolanus appears nearly throughout to be informed by the contest over motherhood. By exploring this contest, I add to the understanding of the economic, political, familial, and theatrical aspects of the play, and make it possible to suggest that Coriolanus demonstrates peace is achieved when a version of motherhood resembling the expansive, medieval forms is embraced.

This thesis seeks to examine not any single theory of kingship in Shakespeare's 'Henriad', but the evolving methods of its representation from Richard II's assumed embodiment of monarchic authority to Henry V's unapologetic performance of the kingly role. As well, it explores how a shared awareness of authority's performed nature forces the spectator into knowing her own creative authority and in doing so, heightens not only the tension between gazer and gazed-upon, but also lays bare the spectator's need to watch a desired object and the performing object's overarching wish to be watched. The paper's critical foundation ranges from phenomenological approaches to the theatre and gender performance to studies on the spectacle of kingship.

The scholars who assert that motherhood acquires new favor in the early modem period and the critics who contend that male subjectivity and patriarchy in Shakespeare's plays depend on the repudiation of the mother both base their perspectives on an understanding of motherhood which is too monolithic. To contribute to a more historically specific understanding, I draw on the work of numerous historians and examine humanist and reformist writings, the Corpus Christi cycles, and two Shakespearean plays. I find that the medieval "calculative" and "incarnational" versions of motherhood enabled women to exercise considerable control over their sexuality and fertility and clout in their families and communities, and that the Corpus Christi cycles served as a mechanism to extend multiple facets of these versions of the maternal. While the early modern period inherited the expansive, medieval versions of motherhood, the "new," restrictive form of motherhood advocated by the humanists and reformers helped to devalue the inherited forms, promote a greater spiritual, physical, and economic dependence of women on men, and enlarge the scope of the paternal at the expense of the maternal. My examination of Macbeth demonstrates that the play employs Scottish history so as to heighten attention to the risks produced by Elizabeth I's and James I's adaptations of the competing versions of motherhood available in the early modern period. It suggests that James's adaptation is especially conducive to instability, since it generates a contradiction in the hereditary system of political power-the simultaneous need for and exclusion of women/mothers. This contradiction coupled with the diminution of the feminine/maternal makes it more likely that murder will be construed as an alternative means of being "born" into the succession. Whereas Macbeth shifts from constructions more aligned with incarnational and calculative mothers to constructions more affiliated with new mothers, Coriolanus appears nearly throughout to be informed by the contest over motherhood. By exploring this contest, I add to the understanding of the economic, political, familial, and theatrical aspects of the play, and make it possible to suggest that Coriolanus demonstrates peace is achieved when a version of motherhood resembling the expansive, medieval forms is embraced. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is a study of the anticipatory remarks and choric comments in Richard II, Parts I and II of Henry IV, and Henry V.

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1948 M35 / Master of Science

In this study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Measure for Measure I argue that the surface plots of these comedies point us to a philosophic understanding seldom discussed in either contemporary public discourse or in Shakespearean scholarship. The comedies usually involve questions arising from the conflict between the enforcement of law (whether just or not) and the private longings (whether noble or base) of citizens whose yearnings for happiness tend to be sub- or even supra-political. No regime, it appears, is able to respond to the whole variety of circumstances that it may be called upon to judge. Even the best written laws meet with occasional exceptions and these ulterior instances must be judged by something other than a legal code. When these extra-legal instances do arise, political communities become aware of their reliance on a kind of political judgment that is usually unnoticed in the day-to-day affairs of public life. Further, it is evident that the characters who are able to exercise this political judgment, are the very characters whose presence averts a potentially tragic situation and makes a comedy possible. By presenting examples of how moral and political problems are dealt with by the prudent use of wisdom, Shakespeare is pointing the reader to a standard of judgment that transcends any particular (or actual) political arrangement. Once we see the importance of the prudent use of such a standard, we are in a position to judge what this philosophic wisdom consists of and where it is to be acquired. It is just such an education with which Shakespeare intends to aid his readers.

Examines the functions of messengers in six plays by Shakespeare.