Volpone the Articles in This Study Guide Are Not Meant to Mirror Or Interpret Any Productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE AS TRIBUTARY: MERCANTILISM, NATIONALISM, and SOCIAL MOBILITY in THREE POPULAR DRAMAS a Thesis Submitted To
THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE AS TRIBUTARY: MERCANTILISM, NATIONALISM, AND SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THREE POPULAR DRAMAS A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts In the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By Adam Benn Keywords: Dekker, Heywood, Renaissance Drama, Mercantilism, Nationalism, Tudor Theatre. Copyright Adam Benn, August, 2011. All rights reserved. Permission to Use In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of material in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of English 320 Arts Building University of Saskatchewan 9 Campus Drive Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A5 Canada Benn i ABSTRACT This thesis examines the relationship between social mobility, early mercantilism, and nationalism in three Elizabethan Popular Dramas: Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, and Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West, Part I, and The Four Prentices of London. -
Simon Russell Beale Photo: Charlie Carter
Paddock Suite, The Courtyard, 55 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HA p: + 44 (0) 20 73360351 e: [email protected] Simon Russell Beale Photo: Charlie Carter Location: London Other: Equity Height: 5'7" (170cm) Eye Colour: Grey Playing Age: 51 - 55 years Hair Colour: Greying Appearance: White Hair Length: Short Stage 2018, Stage, The Lehman Trilogy, The National Theatre, Sam Mendes 2016, Stage, Prospero, The Tempest, Royal Shakespeare Company, Gregory Doran 2015, Stage, Mr Foote, Mr Foote's Other Leg, Hampstead Theatre/Haymarket (transfer), Richard Eyre 2015, Stage, The Dean, Temple, Donmar Warehouse, Howard Davies 2014, Stage, King Lear, King Lear, National Theatre, Sam Mendes 2013, Stage, Acting Captain Terri Dennis, Privates on Parade, Noel Coward Theatre, Michael Grandage 2013, Stage, Roote, The Hothouse, Trafalgar Studios, Jamie Lloyd 2012, Stage, Timon of Athens (Critics' Circle Award 2013), Timon of Athens, National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner 2011, Stage, Jimmy, Bluebird, Atlantic Theatre Company, New York, Gaye Taylor Upchurch 2011, Stage, Stalin, Collaborators, National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner 2010, Stage, Sydney, Deathtrap, Noel Coward Theatre, Matthew Warchus 2010, Stage, Sir Harcourt Courtly, London Assurance, National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner 2009, Stage, Lopahkin, The Cherry Orchard, Brooklyn Academy/World Tour/Old Vic, Sam Mendes 2009, Stage, Leontes, The Winter's Tale, Brooklyn Academy/World Tour/Old Vic, Sam Mendes 2008, Stage, Edward, A Slight Ache, National Theatre, Iqbal Khan 2008, Stage, Landscape, National Theatre, -
Jonson's Use of the Morality of Vice in Volpone and the Alchemist
JONSON'S USE OF THE MORTALITY VICE IN VOLPONE AND THE ALCHEMIST JONSON'S USE OF THE MORALITY VICE IN VOLPONE AND THE ALCHEMIST By JANE CHRISTINE GARRETT A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Jane Christine Garrett, September, 1990 MASTER OF ARTS (1990) McMaster University (English) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Jonson's Use of the Morality of Vice in Volpone and The Alchemist AUTHOR: Jane Christine Garrett, Hons. B.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Anthony Brennan NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 98 11 ABSTRACT This thesis is an attempt to demonstrate the ways in which Ben Jonson incorporates some of the qualities of the Morality Vice into the lead characters of Volpone and The Alchemist. While critics have often ignored Jonson's Morality heritage, the similarity between his lead cozeners and the Vice is often striking. Face and Mosca's overwhelming love of the theatre manifests itself in their superior ability to create a drama in which their scheming partners and ambitious clients expose the faults to which all humanity is prone. Certainly, as it strives to rule the dramatic world, the Vice forms a precarious bond with the audience. Its Morality traits underscore its evil nature and therefore alienate us from the Vice to some degree. However, this figure could imitate humanity and thus invites the audience into an uncomfortable camaraderie which exposes the spectators' own attraction to greed. The first chapter of my thesis examines many of the Vice's central characteristics, such as his love of masks and his ability to create and sustain anarchy. -
The Suburbs and the City in Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday
Sites of transgression: The suburbs and the city in Thomas Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday Paul J. C. M. Franssen Utrecht University ABSTRACT The early modern binary of the virtuous City of London versus the sinful suburbs clashes with an older binary pitting the countryside against the city. At the same time, the forces of urbanization along with early capitalism were undermining both binaries. This article traces how this is reflected in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday . The play not only represents the City of London under Simon Eyre’s rule as, potentially, possessing all the virtues of the pastoral, but also suggests that the surrounding countryside, in particular the village of Old Ford, was being corrupted by city values. Dekker’s play, therefore, deconstructs simple dichotomies between country and city, showing how the two inevitably influence each other. KEYWORDS : Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday , City Comedy, Countryside. Jean Howard’s fascinating study of City Comedy, or as she prefers to call it, London Comedy, is structured around a variety of real places within London, some specific (such as the Royal Exchange and the various Counters or debtors’ prisons), others generic (such as bawdy houses and dancing academies). Howard associates these places within London with various discourses of gender, national identity, class, and the new money values. She regards these discourses as not primarily reflections of what really happened at these sites, but at least as much as constituting ways of thinking about such places, turning them into meaningful social spaces (2007:3, 32). Howard shows how the explosive growth of London into a world city undermined old certainties, often cast in the form of simple binaries, Sederi 22 (2012: 139-154) P. -
Ben Jonson and the Mirror: Folly Knows No Gender
Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 6-2001 Ben Jonson and The Mirror: Folly Knows No Gender Sherry Broadwell Niewoonder Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Niewoonder, Sherry Broadwell, "Ben Jonson and The Mirror: Folly Knows No Gender" (2001). Dissertations. 1382. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1382 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEN JONSON AND THE MIRROR: FOLLY KNOWS NO GENDER by Sherry Broadwell Niewoonder A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan June 2001 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BEN JONSON AND THE M IR R O R : FO LLY KNOWS NO GENDER Sherry Broadwell Niewoonder, Ph.D. Western Michigan University, 2001 Ben Jonson, Renaissance poet and playwright, has been the subject of renewed evaluation in recent scholarship, particularly new historicism and cultural materialism. The consensus among some current scholars is that Jonson overtly practices and advocates misogyny in his dramas. Such theorists suggest that Jonson both embodies and promulgates the anti woman rhetoric of his time, basing their position on contemporary cultural material, religious tracts, and the writings of King James I. -
Download [ 11,08 MB ]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Part of the materials used in this block is drawn from self-learning materials developed by IGNOU, New Delhi and few other Open Education Resources duly acknowledge in the reference section at the end of the unit. BACHELOR OF ARTS (HONOURS) IN ENGLISH (BAEG) BEG-2 British Poetry and Drama: 17th And 18th Centuries BLOCK-3 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES DRAMAS UNIT 1 BEN JONSON: VOLPONE (PART I) UNIT 2 BEN JONSON: VOLPONE (PART II) UNIT 3 JOHN DRYDEN: ALL FOR LOVE (PART I) UNIT 4 JOHN DRYDEN: ALL FOR LOVE (PART II) UNIT 1 BEN JONSON: VOLPONE (PART I) STRUCTURE 1.1 Learning Objectives 1.2 Introduction 1.3 Ben Jonson: The Playwright 1.3.1 His Life 1.3.2 His Dramatic Career 1.3.3 Few Famous works Of Ben Jonson 1.4.4 Few Quotes on Jonson 1.4 Jonsonian Comedy 1.5 Critical Reception of Jonson 1.6 Let us Sum up 1.7 Answers to Check Your Progress (Hints Only) 1.8 Possible Questions 1.1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After going through this unit, you will be able to discuss Ben Jonson as an important English playwright of the 16th century make an assessment of Jonson and his works explain the nature of Jonsonian type of comedy provide a critical reception of Jonson 1.2 INTRODUCTION Volpone is Ben Jonson's most famous comedy . Written in 1606 and represented in March of the same year at the Globe Theatre in London by the King's Men , it was published for the first time in 1616 . -
The Economics of Gender Relations in London City Comedy
THE ECONOMICS OF GENDER RELATIONS IN LONDON CITY COMEDY BY KRISTIN WEISSE A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS English May, 2015 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Sarah Hogan, Ph.D., Advisor Olga Valbuena, Ph.D., Chair Susan Harlan, Ph.D. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Hogan— not only for her helpful input and guidance throughout the process of writing this thesis, but also for inspiring my interest in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature through her remarkable energy and enthusiasm. In addition, a special thanks to Dr. Harlan and Dr. Valbuena, whose Renaissance drama classes further solidified my desire to research London city comedy and whose suggestions were also integral to the completion of this project. I am immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such an intelligent and lively group of women. Moreover, I would like to thank my friends and teammates for their constant love and encouragement throughout my entire time as a graduate student at Wake Forest. Thank you especially to my “soulmates” Lizzie and Kelly for the endless trips to Camino (which made thesis writing so much more enjoyable), the ice cream dates, the epic road-trips, and for always being there for me to lean on and to learn from. Thank you also to Sam, Kaitlyn, Kathleen, Aubrey, and Chandler for the constant motivation both intellectually and physically (whether out on the trails, on the track, or even just lounging around the kitchen of 1022 Polo), and for the much-needed distractions from writing and reading. -
Sexual Disguise and Social Mobility in Jacobean City Comedy
2 Sexual Disguise and Social Mobility in Jacobean City Comedy In its representation oflove and sexuality, Elizabethan romantic comedy is not concerned with the problematic enactment of social and sexual roles in the institution of marriage. Rather, it concen trates on the complexities of eras, dramatized as sexual desire seek ing and finding fulfillment in the heroes' successful resolution of the process of courtship. In contrast, Jacobean city comedy brings into the light of representation precisely those dissociations and contradictions in English Renaissance sexual ideology which ro mantic comedy evokes but seeks to reconcile and contain. 1 Jaco bean satire, or city comedy, is a genre designed to dramatize the complex process of conducting economic and social relations in a newly forming urban environment. As is well known, city com edy as such began in the late 1590s with Ben Jonson's humor plays, achieved recognizable generic conventions by about 1605, and thrived during, roughly, the first decade of the seventeenth cen tury, when dramatists perceived the city of London as the setting in which those conflicts caused by the political, religious, and eco nomic upheavals that transformed Renaissance England were being enacted most intensely.2 I. See Louis Adrian Montrose, "'Shaping Fantasies': Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture, " Representations, 1 (Spring 1983), 61-94; and Jonathan Dollimore, "Subjectivity, Sexuality, and Transgression: The Jacobean Connection," Renaissance Drama, N.S. 17 (1986), 53-81. -
Ben Jonson, Volpone and the Gunpowder Plot Richard Dutton Frontmatter More Information
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-87954-5 — Ben Jonson, Volpone and the Gunpowder Plot Richard Dutton Frontmatter More Information BEN JONSON, VOLPONE AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT Ben Jonson’s Volpone is the most widely taught and commonly performed English Renaissance play apart from Shakespeare. However, the dramatic circumstances of its writing are little known. Jonson wrote the play very shortly after the Gunpowder Plot in 1605,an event in which he was personally involved. This book argues that the play alludes to the Plot as openly as censorship will allow, using the traditional form of the beast fable. As a Roman Catholic himself, Jonson shared in the repression suffered by his co-religionists in the wake of the Plot, and the play fiercely satirizes the man they chiefly blamed for this, Robert Cecil. The elaborate format which Jonson devised for the 1607 edition of Volpone, with a dedication, Epistle and numerous commendatory poems, is reproduced here photographically, allowing the reader to appreciate Jonson’s covert meanings and to approach the text as those in 1607 might have done. richard dutton is Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State University. He has published widely on censorship of Renaissance Drama, and is well known as a scholar of Ben Jonson and as an editor of Jonson’s works. He is the editor of Volpone for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-87954-5 — Ben Jonson, Volpone and the Gunpowder -
Seeing to Things in <I>Volpone</I>
SEEING TO THINGS IN VOLPONE Frances Nicol Teague NEAR THE END OF VOLPONE, Volpone turns on Corvino and says to him: Methinks Yet you, … the fine bird Corvino, That have such moral emblems on your name, Should not have sung your shame and dropped your cheese, To let the Fox laugh at your emptiness. (V.viii.9–14)1 This speech alludes to one of Aesop’s fables, but it also refers to images in emblem books. Emblems, combining the visual and the verbal, offer a resource for this play. In this instance, Gilles Corozet’s Hecatomgraphie (1542) has as its “eleventh fable that of the fox and the crow with its motto/title ‘Ne croire la louange des flateurs,’ and its woodcut of the crow dropping the cheese into the fox’s mouth.”2 Clearly, Volpone refers to this woodcut or one similar to it using the fable from Aesop (see Figure 1). The lines may also recall that one of the play’s sources is beast lore. D. A. Scheve explains that: The episode of the fox feigning death is set forth in detail in a book Jonson had in his own library,’ Conrad Gesner’s Historia Animahum (1557): When she [the fox] sees the flocks of birds flying about, she lies prone on the ground and at the same time shuts her eyes, and places her snout on the ground, and holds her breath, and at once assumes the appearance and likeness of one sleeping or rather dead. But when the birds see her thus stretched out upon the ground, thinking her dead, they glide down in flocks, and sitting on her, they mock her, as it were. -
Epicoene. for the Moment, I Want to Particularly Consider
DANGEROUS BOYS DANGEROUS BOYS AND CITY PLEASURES: SUBVERSIONS OF GENDER AND DESIRE IN THE BOY ACTOR'S THEATRE By ERIN JULIAN, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Erin Julian, September 2010 MASTER OF ARTS (2010) McMaster University (English and Cultural Studies) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Dangerous Boys and City Pleasure: Subversions of Gender and Desire in the Boy Actor's Theatre AUTHOR: Erin Julian, B.A. (Brock University) SUPERVISOR: Dr H.M. Ostovich NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 143 ii ABSTRACT: This thesis draws on the works of Will Fisher, Lucy Munro, Michael Shapiro, and other critics who have written on the boy actor on the early modem English stage. Focussing on city comedies performed by children's companies, it argues that the boy actor functions as a kind of "third gender" that exceeds gender binaries, and interrogates power hierarchies built on those gender binaries (including marriage). The boy actor is neither man nor woman, and does not have the confining social responsibilities ofeither. This thesis argues that the boy's voice, his behaviours, and his epicene body are signifiers of his joyous and unconfined social position. Reading the boy actor as a metaphor for the city itself, it originally argues that the boy's innocence enables him to participate in the games, merriment, and general celebration of carnival, while his ability to slip fluidly between genders, ages, and other social roles enables him to participate in and embody the productively disruptive carnival, parodic, and "epicene" spaces of the city itself. -
Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Invention of the Author
11 Donaldson 1573 11/10/07 15:05 Page 319 SHAKESPEARE LECTURE Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Invention of the Author IAN DONALDSON Fellow of the Academy THE LIVES AND CAREERS OF SHAKESPEARE and Ben Jonson, the two supreme writers of early modern England, were intricately and curiously interwoven. Eight years Shakespeare’s junior, Jonson emerged in the late 1590s as a writer of remarkable gifts, and Shakespeare’s greatest theatri- cal rival since the death of Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare played a leading role in the comedy that first brought Jonson to public promi- nence, Every Man In His Humour, having earlier decisively intervened— so his eighteenth-century editor, Nicholas Rowe, relates—to ensure that the play was performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who had ini- tially rejected the manuscript.1 Shakespeare’s name appears alongside that of Richard Burbage in the list of ‘principal tragedians’ from the same company who performed in Jonson’s Sejanus in 1603, and it has been con- jectured that he and Jonson may even have written this play together.2 During the years of their maturity, the two men continued to observe Read at the Academy 25 April 2006. 1 The Works of Mr William Shakespeare, ed. Nicholas Rowe, 6 vols. (London, printed for Jacob Tonson, 1709), I, pp. xii–xiii. On the reliability of Rowe’s testimony, see Samuel Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives (Oxford, 1970), pp. 19–35. 2 The list is appended to the folio text of the play, published in 1616. For the suggestion that Shakespeare worked with Jonson on the composition of Sejanus, see Anne Barton, Ben Jonson: Dramatist (Cambridge, 1984), pp.