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Shakespearean and Marlovian Epyllion: Dramatic Ekphrasis of Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander

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Shakespearean and Marlovian Epyllion: Dramatic Ekphrasis of Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander Shakespearean and Marlovian Epyllion: Dramatic Ekphrasis of Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander By JONATHAN WADE DRAHOS A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Drama and Theatre Arts College of Arts and Law School of English, Drama and American Studies The University of Birmingham April 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis is a practice-as-research project ‘articulating and evidencing’ (Nelson, 2013, p. 11) research and practical explorations of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, using a method defined in the thesis as ‘dramatic ekphrasis’. A theatrical adaptation of the works — staged using the language of both poems as an amalgamated visual and acoustic theatre piece — exposes (through practice) the authors’ transgressive sexual and amorous themes. The narrative poems of Shakespeare and Marlowe are interpreted as having cultural purpose, and the exegesis explores how the poems expose and challenge biased Elizabethan gender paradigms, homosocial hegemony and moral stability in Elizabethan England. Through ekphrasis and contemporary performance methodology, the adaptation transposes the narrative verse to dramatic action in order to challenge our twenty-first century audience by destabilising gender and sexuality. By transposing the narratives into performance practice, the thesis strives to link the poems’ challenge to homosocial bias in the late sixteenth-century to our modern culture — to challenge present-day audience perspectives of gender-normative and heterocentric biases. Also, the thesis describes ways in which the practice illuminates and reinforces unique differences in the authors’ dramatic style. The thesis concludes by reflecting on and assessing the efficacy of both research and practice findings. To the loving memory of my father-in-law, Leon J. Marano and to Carolanne Marano ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. John Warrick, my initial supervisor, who spent many hours feeding me with helpful advice. I would also like to thank my current supervisor, Professor Russell Jackson, for his insightful and perceptive comments, proofreading and guidance, which have informed this thesis. Thank you also to all of the creative team that worked so hard to bring the practical exploration to the stage. Finally, I would like to thank my wife for her love and support through the process. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION GENESIS, CONTEXT, MAIN INQUIRY, AIMS 1 Articulating the Research Inquiry 2 The Unfolding of the Practice 5 Aims 9 Clarification of ‘Dramatic Ekphrasis’ 10 Poetry and Theatre 14 Who Is the Audience? 16 Filling a Gap in Research 18 Structure of the Adaptation 21 Further Staging Context 22 CHAPTER 1 APPROACHING CHARACTER AND STORY 24 Hero and Leander 25 Staging the Figure of Neptune 28 Treatments of Hero and Leander Influential to My Practice 30 Ben Jonson 30 Sir Robert Stapylton 32 Love at First Sight 34 Lord Byron and Antithesis 39 Influences in Staging Hero 40 Similarities of Hero and Venus Influential to My Practice 43 Treatments of Venus and Adonis Influential to My Practice 48 CHAPTER 2 HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF THE MINOR EPIC GENRE AND PRACTICE 53 Characteristics of Ancient Epyllion and Epic Narrative 54 Hecale 55 The Europa 56 Of the Argonauts and an Epithalamium for Peleus and Thetis 61 Italian Influence of Petrarch 65 CHAPTER 3 HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF SHAKESPEARE’S AND MARLOWE’S EPYLLIA AND PRACTICE 68 Contextualizing Gender Destabilisation in the Practice 69 Between Men and Women 76 Staging Subversive Elements in My Practice 81 Ovid’s Influence on Aspects of Staging Leander and Adonis 85 CHAPTER 4 PRACTICE: PROBLEM, SOLUTION, RESULT, PROBLEM 89 Problem: A Narrative Narrator 90 Solution: Clarity 94 Marlowe’s Mighty Line 96 Playing Marlowe 97 Marlowe and Brechtian ‘Distance’ 98 Problem: Playing the Style — the ‘World of the Play’ 101 Solution: Brechtian Episodes and Playing Marlowe 102 Approaching the Text 108 Antithetical Operatives 110 Problem — Realism 111 Solution — Rhetoric 111 Playing Active Intentions 115 Problem: Negative Language — Solution: Positive Intentions 116 Playing Venus 117 Aspects of Ancient Music and Dance 118 The Play-Within-a-Play 121 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 123 Function of the Practice Within the Research Aims 123 Discoveries in Relation to the Research Concerns 128 Limitations and Alterations in the Practice 132 Final Reflections 134 BIBLIOGRAPHY 136 APPENDIX — THE SCRIPT Hero and Leander (script) An Adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander with a Play-Within-a-Play of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Adapted by Jonathan Drahos 155 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page x.1a Dramatic re-presentation of Shakespeare’s poetic description of the ‘boar’ using puppet head mask and seven additional actors 13 x.1b The ‘boar’, in staging rehearsal 13 1.1a Dan Kent as Neptune, god of the sea at University of Birmingham, Cadbury Hall (June 2013) 30 1.1b The Fountain of Neptune by Bartolomeo Ammannati (1565) at the Piazza della Signoria next to the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy 30 1.2 Venus and Adonis by Titian (1553) 44 2.1 ‘The Kiss’ of Adonis and Venus in rehearsal at George Cadbury Hall University of Birmingham, UK 59 3.1 Jonathan Drahos as Venus — Ambiguous sexuality and gender in Venus 70 3.2a Carolanne Marano as ‘Ovid’, dressed in masculine attire to narrate Hero and Leander 72 3.2b Carolanne Marano as ‘Ovid’, dressed in feminine attire to narrate Venus and Adonis 72 3.3 The Chorus depicting erotic tableau in rehearsal for Hero and Leander — University of Worcester, UK 73 4.1 The Hellespont River and a detail of the Cape of Helles 95 4.2 Musician playing the auloi and dancer playing kratola 121 INTRODUCTION GENESIS, CONTEXT, MAIN INQUIRY, AIMS Progressive: ‘advocating or working towards change or reform in society, esp. in political or religious matters; committed to progress, forward-looking’ (2014 OED online 4. b.) The purpose of this project is to apply a unique method of interrogating and understanding the theatrical and theoretical relationship between William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593) and Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1593) — ‘two of the most popular poems of the age’ (Bate, 1993, p. 48). This thesis employs the methodology of practice to defamiliarise the poems by transposing them from the medium of early modern printed poetry to that of twenty-first century theatrical performance art. In light of this purposeful transformation, this thesis uncovers how my performance practice reacts to, and is guided by, key research findings concerning Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s minor epic stories, as well as the distinct theatrical language styles within their narratives. The genesis of this ‘practice-as-research’ project stems from my desire to explore the interaction between poetry and performance. My professional life has been balanced between the theatrical discipline of dramatic performance and directing practice, and the academic discipline of theoretical and critical study of early modern minor epic poetry, also known as ‘epyllion’. I am keen to bring aspects of these two disciplines (and passions) into an intimate discourse to understand what ‘substantial insights’ (Nelson, 2013, p. 27, emphasis in original) can be discovered about each. Specifically, I want to know what the two disciplines might reveal if I conflate them as a cohesive project. The Elizabethan epyllion, a genre initiated by Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) with his Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589), is a truncated narrative epic poem based on classical myth 1 and erotic in nature, with a dependency on Ovidian mythical sources. Lodge hit upon Ovid as a source for his deeply moving and erotic short epic Scillaes Metamorphosis, borrowed from book XIV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Elizabeth Story Donno describes the importance of Lodge’s innovation: ‘he inaugurated not only a new Elizabethan genre but also a new standard of poetic achievement’ (Donno, 1963, p. 6). Lodge’s achievement gave rise to writers who were interested in ‘embroidering and ornamenting their poems with all the power of rhetorical devices and ingenious invention (Ut nectar, ingenium)’ (Donno, 1963, p. 9). Most poems of the genre focus on the ecstasy of love, often in the form of a lament, and contain mystical transformations, as in Lodge’s Scillaes Metamorphosis, John Marston’s Metamorphosis in Pygmalion’s Image (1598) and Francis Beaumont’s Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1602). Many epyllia share the trope of the aggressive or romantic female pursuer, as do Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Thomas Heywood’s Oenone and Paris (1594) and Michael Drayton’s Endimion and Phoebe: Ideas Latmus (1595) (all except Venus and Adonis are found in Donno, 1963). All writers of early modern epyllia explore eroticism and seem to move away from the medieval tradition of ‘Ovide moralisé’ (Ellis, 2003, pp. 5-6) towards a real sense of sexual discovery, which seemed significant to Arthur Golding, the most popular Christian translator of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Nims, 2000). Amorous love poetry, erotic liberation, and Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s illumination of these themes, are at the heart of the main research inquiry. ARTICULATING THE RESEARCH INQUIRY The main research inquiry focuses on how the exposure, through practice and research, of Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s progressive depiction of sexuality and gender in Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander, can affect a contemporary intellectual understanding of (as 2 well as a live audience’s emotional response to) the amorous and erotic themes and characters within these minor epics.
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