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Doctor of Philosophy / ABSTRACT The notion of theatricality has, in recent years, emerged as a key term in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. Unlike most writings dealing with theatricality, this thesis presents theatricality as a rubric for a particular discourse. Beginning with a case-study of a theatre review, I read an anti-theatricalist bias in the writer’s genre distinctions of “theatre” and “performance”. I do not, however, test the truth of these claims; rather, by deploying Foucauldian discourse analysis, I interpret the review as a “statement” and analyse how the reviewer activates notions of “theatricality” and “performance” as objects created by an already existing discourse. Following this introduction, the body of thesis is divided into two parts. The first, “Mapping the Discursive Field”, begins by surveying a body of literature in which a struggle for interpretive dominance between contesting stakeholders in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies is fought. Using Samuel Weber’s reframing of Derrida’s analysis of interpretation of interpretation, in Chapter 2, I argue that the discourse of the field is marked by the struggle between “nostalgic” and “affirmative” interpretation, and that in the discourse that emerges, certain inconsistencies arise. The disciplines of Theatre, and later, Performance Studies in the twentieth century are characterised, as Alan Woods (1989) notes, by a fetishisation of avant-gardist practices. It is not surprising, therefore, that the values and concerns of the avant-garde emerge in the discourse of Theatre and Performance Studies. In Chapter 3, I analyse how key avant-gardist themes—theatricality as “essence”, loss of faith in language and a valorisation of corporeality, theatricality as personally and politically emancipatory—are themselves imbricated in the wider discourse of modernism. In Chapter 4, I discuss the single English-language book, published to date, which critically engages with theatricality as a concept: Elizabeth Burns’s Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and Social Life (1972). As I have demonstrated with my analysis of the discursive field and genealogy of avant-gardist thematics, I argue that implicit theories of theatricality inform contemporary discourses; theories that, in fact, deny this genealogy. Approaching her topic through the two instruments of sociology and theatre history, Burns explores how social and theatrical conventions of behaviour, and the interpretations of that behaviour, interact. Burns’s key insight is that theatricality is a spectator operation: it depends upon a spectator, who is both culturally competent to interpret and who chooses to do so, thereby deciding (or not) that something in the world is like something in the theatre. Part Two, “The Heritage of Theatricality”, delves further, chronologically, into the genealogy of the term. This part explores Burns’s association of theatricality with an idea of theatre by paraphrasing a question asked by Joseph Roach (after Foucault): what did people in the sixteenth century mean by “theatre” if it did not exist as we define today? This question threads through Chapters 5 to 7 which each explore various interpretations of theatricality not necessarily related to the art form understood by us as theatre. I begin by examining the genealogy of the theatrical metaphor, a key trope of the Renaissance, and one that has been consistently invoked in a range of circumstances ever since. In Chapter 5 explore the structural and thematic elements of the theatrical metaphor, including its foundations, primarily, in Stoic and Satiric philosophies, and this provides the ground for the final two chapters. In Chapter 6 I examine certain aspects of Renaissance theories of the self and how these, then, related to public magnificence—the spectacular stagings of royal and civic power that reached new heights during the Renaissance. Finally, in Chapter 7, I show how the paradigm shift from a medieval sense of being to a modern sense of being, captured through the metaphor of a world view, manifested in a theatricalised epistemology that emphasised a relationship between knowing and seeing. The human spectator thus came to occupy the dual positions of being on the stage of the world and, through his or her spectatorship, making the world a stage.

Doctor of Philosophy / ABSTRACT The notion of theatricality has, in recent years, emerged as a key term in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. Unlike most writings dealing with theatricality, this thesis presents theatricality as a rubric for a particular discourse. Beginning with a case-study of a theatre review, I read an anti-theatricalist bias in the writer’s genre distinctions of “theatre” and “performance”. I do not, however, test the truth of these claims; rather, by deploying Foucauldian discourse analysis, I interpret the review as a “statement” and analyse how the reviewer activates notions of “theatricality” and “performance” as objects created by an already existing discourse. Following this introduction, the body of thesis is divided into two parts. The first, “Mapping the Discursive Field”, begins by surveying a body of literature in which a struggle for interpretive dominance between contesting stakeholders in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies is fought. Using Samuel Weber’s reframing of Derrida’s analysis of interpretation of interpretation, in Chapter 2, I argue that the discourse of the field is marked by the struggle between “nostalgic” and “affirmative” interpretation, and that in the discourse that emerges, certain inconsistencies arise. The disciplines of Theatre, and later, Performance Studies in the twentieth century are characterised, as Alan Woods (1989) notes, by a fetishisation of avant-gardist practices. It is not surprising, therefore, that the values and concerns of the avant-garde emerge in the discourse of Theatre and Performance Studies. In Chapter 3, I analyse how key avant-gardist themes—theatricality as “essence”, loss of faith in language and a valorisation of corporeality, theatricality as personally and politically emancipatory—are themselves imbricated in the wider discourse of modernism. In Chapter 4, I discuss the single English-language book, published to date, which critically engages with theatricality as a concept: Elizabeth Burns’s Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and Social Life (1972). As I have demonstrated with my analysis of the discursive field and genealogy of avant-gardist thematics, I argue that implicit theories of theatricality inform contemporary discourses; theories that, in fact, deny this genealogy. Approaching her topic through the two instruments of sociology and theatre history, Burns explores how social and theatrical conventions of behaviour, and the interpretations of that behaviour, interact. Burns’s key insight is that theatricality is a spectator operation: it depends upon a spectator, who is both culturally competent to interpret and who chooses to do so, thereby deciding (or not) that something in the world is like something in the theatre. Part Two, “The Heritage of Theatricality”, delves further, chronologically, into the genealogy of the term. This part explores Burns’s association of theatricality with an idea of theatre by paraphrasing a question asked by Joseph Roach (after Foucault): what did people in the sixteenth century mean by “theatre” if it did not exist as we define today? This question threads through Chapters 5 to 7 which each explore various interpretations of theatricality not necessarily related to the art form understood by us as theatre. I begin by examining the genealogy of the theatrical metaphor, a key trope of the Renaissance, and one that has been consistently invoked in a range of circumstances ever since. In Chapter 5 explore the structural and thematic elements of the theatrical metaphor, including its foundations, primarily, in Stoic and Satiric philosophies, and this provides the ground for the final two chapters. In Chapter 6 I examine certain aspects of Renaissance theories of the self and how these, then, related to public magnificence—the spectacular stagings of royal and civic power that reached new heights during the Renaissance. Finally, in Chapter 7, I show how the paradigm shift from a medieval sense of being to a modern sense of being, captured through the metaphor of a world view, manifested in a theatricalised epistemology that emphasised a relationship between knowing and seeing. The human spectator thus came to occupy the dual positions of being on the stage of the world and, through his or her spectatorship, making the world a stage.

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By examining five types of astronomical and celestial phenomena—comets, constellations, the zodiac, planets, and the music of the spheres—this thesis posits not only that early modern dramatists were influenced by established and emerging natural philosophy as habits of thought that manifested in their writing, but also that astronomical phenomena operate within the drama, performance, and in the theatre as elements for creating and developing a distinctly spatial dramaturgy. Using theories from the spatial turn, this thesis maps the positions, edges, disturbances, and motions of celestial properties within the imaginary and physical space of early modern drama and theatre. It argues that the case study plays examined within this thesis demonstrate a period-wide engagement, rather than an authorial-, company-, theatre-, or even genre-specific practice. Dramatists developed techniques using astronomical phenomena as dramatic methods that occasionally underscored early modern astronomical thought. However, in many cases constructed plots, characters, visual and sound effects, and movements transgressed astronomical expectations. Dramatists broke down constellations, inserted new stars in the heavens, created zodiacal females, launched pyrotechnical comets, moved planets unexpectedly across the stage, and played (and refrained from playing) celestial "music" for the audience. Recognising composite and often contradictory astronomical constructions within the drama, this thesis moves the critical discussion away from an intellectual history of natural philosophy and gravitates toward an active astronomical dramaturgy.