In this thesis, I will apply Michel Foucault¡¦s knowledge/power theory to discuss gender politics in two Renaissance plays ¡V Ben Jonson¡¦s Epicoene or The Silent Woman and William Shakespeare¡¦s The Taming of the Shrew. The first chapter aims to delineate Foucault¡¦s discursive discipline and its exertion in Renaissance male-female relations. According Foucault, discourses are functional and regulative: they powerfully frame sciences and knowledges that have effects upon our souls and actions. Thus, ¡¥truth¡¦, or the so-called ¡¥self-evident¡¦ and ¡¥commonsensical¡¦ empowers articulators to discipline and control others. Gender discourses in the name of masculine or feminine ¡¥nature¡¦ are similarly little more than instrument of domination. Precisely, the phallo-centrical discourse of Renaissance age empowers contemporary men by subjecting, or explicitly formulating and shaping the ¡¥feminine nature¡¦ of obedient silence. The patriarchal assessment codifies two genders -- one subordinate to the other -- as a key element in its patriarchal view of the social order, and buttressed its gendered division of power. In other words, what lies beneath the discourse is patriarchal consideration for male domination. As long as contemporary women keep silent, the normative power would enable their fathers and husbands to regulate ¡¥womanly conducts¡¦ of all occasions. Then, I would examine how Morose and Epicoene wield disciplinary power by setting up certain ¡¥behavior norms¡¦ in Epicoene. Morose¡¦s ¡¥truth¡¦ of having his family members hold their tongue and make signs has been internalized by Mute: Mute is hence drilled to self-discipline himself to answer the family head¡¦s questions in rigidly prescribed signs or gestures. Mute reifies the formidable outcome of silent conformity to ¡¥reality¡¦: he takes for granted the ¡¥natural¡¦ routine of body language. However, Morose¡¦s wife Epicoene keeps correcting Morose¡¦s mistakes to reinforce her version of ¡¥right¡¦ and ¡¥wrong¡¦. In order to rehabilitate Morose, Epicoene and other characters further label his insanity in public. The conclusion they draw results from the same complicity to put badness to Morose¡¦s ¡¥crazy¡¦ will to discourses and goodness to the ¡¥reasonable¡¦ tolerance of their opinions. In The Taming of the Shrew, Katherina is frightening to the Renaissance males equally because of her undisciplined behavior, or her automatic discourse and self-assertion. The male characters in the play try their best to eschew from Katherina so as to defend themselves against the fear that they will not be capable of keeping ¡¥domestic order¡¦. In one word, talkative women as Katherina are frightening to Renaissance men because of their threat to the original ¡¥orders¡¦. Petruchio hence invalidates Katherina¡¦s judgments ever since they first meet: the purpose of his deliberate pretense of misunderstanding her words is to grant her discourses no influence on him since disciplinary power lies in influencing others¡¦ deeds. He vanquishes resistance from Kate by making her conformable to his ¡¥knowledge¡¦¡Xfemale obedience to male domination. Katherina¡¦s new identity is thus constructed according to Petruchio¡¦s ¡¥rules¡¦: by labeling goodness to female obedience and badness to female transgression, he thus produces another Kate obedient to his intentions. From this aspect, the gender politics between Petruchio and Katherina is essentially a battle for discourse; disciplinary power lies in voicing and reinforcing particular ¡¥truths¡¦. In one word, systematic knowledges are never power-free, but quite the contrary.

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.

This dissertation explores the relevance of recent studies of Aristotle’s comic theory to the central dramatists of early modern England, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Applications of the Poetics to Renaissance English drama tend to treat Aristotle’s theory historically, as a set of concepts mediated to England by continental redactions. But these often conflated the Poetics’ focus on literary form with the Renaissance’s predominant interest in literature’s rhetorical effect, reducing Aristotle’s genuinely speculative theory to a series of often pedantic literary prescriptions. Recent scholarship has both undone these misinterpretations and developed the comic theory latent in the Poetics. Ironically, these studies make Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s comedy look much more Aristotelian than do Renaissance ones. So rather than taking the Poetics simply as a possible source for each dramatist, I read it primarily as a literary theory that, when reinvigorated by modern scholarship, can explain structures and effects arrived at practically by these dramatists. Three recent hypotheses are especially pertinent to Jonson and Shakespeare: that comic hoaxes aim to expose comic error, which is for Aristotle a deviation from the mean of virtue; that “righteous indignation” is the comic emotion equivalent to the “pity and fear” of tragedy; and that catharsis is a clarification, rather than purgation, of reason and emotion. In light of these, I offer detailed readings of four plays that demonstrate these authors’ comic range: from Jonson’s satirical Every Man Out of His Humour to the almost farcical Epicoene, and from Shakespeare’s romantic Much Ado About Nothing to the tragicomic Measure for Measure. These plays demonstrate a variety of ways in which catharsis, the end of drama, results directly from the comic hoax and involves both the audience’s and characters’ experience of indignation and their comprehension of its relationship to the emotions of envy and pity. In each case, Aristotle’s incisive but flexible theoretical framework enables an explanation of the emotional pain present in the these “comedies of affliction” and reveals remarkable similarities between dramatists usually described as direct opposites.