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Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama Nathaniel C University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 5-2013 The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama Nathaniel C. Leonard University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Leonard, Nathaniel C., "The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama" (2013). Open Access Dissertations. 752. https://doi.org/10.7275/2k8x-0x71 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/752 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama A Dissertation Presented by NATHANIEL C. LEONARD Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2013 English © Copyright by Nathaniel C. Leonard 2013 All Rights Reserved The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama A Dissertation Presented by NATHANIEL C. LEONARD Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________________ Arthur F. Kinney, Co-Chair ____________________________________________ Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Co-Chair ____________________________________________ Harley Erdman, Member __________________________________________ Joseph Bartolomeo, Department Chair English DEDICATION To Sara there are not words enough ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’d like to begin by thanking the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst’s English Department. I feel extremely lucky to have been able to study with such a collegial and brilliant group of people. In particular, I would like to thank Joe Black, Suzanne Daly, Asha Nadkarni, Jenny Spencer, and Adam Zucker for their pedagogy, assistance, and advice. Next I would like to acknowledge the immense gratitude I owe to my fellow graduate students in the English Department. No one could ever ask for a more generous, supportive, and talented group of peers. I would like to single out the following people for extraordinary thanks: Amy Brady, Julie Burrell, Meghan Conine, Cathy Esterman, Liz Fox, Ann Garner, Valerie Gramling, April Genung, Thomas Hopper, David Katz, Ruth Lahti, Jess Landis, Darren Lone Fight, Matteo Pangallo, Phil Palmer, Katey Roden, Greg Sargent, Tim Watt, and, last but certainly not least, Tim Zajac. While it may be conventional to thank one’s dissertation committee, there is nothing standard about the deep appreciation I have for the time, energy, and support Arthur F. Kinney, Jane Hwang Degenhardt, and Harley Erdman have given me. I’d like to thank Harley for his enthusiasm, perspective, and willingness to assist a student outside his department. The gratitude I have for all that Jane has done to help me both with this dissertation and as a professional mentor is enormous. I would not be nearly the scholar that I am without her help. Arthur deserves unique appreciation. Without his generosity, his mentoring, and his investment in my work, neither this dissertation nor my degree could have been possible. Arthur’s insights have shaped this project from its infancy and I owe him a debt that I can never repay. I would be remiss not to thank my family for all of their love and support. My Mom, Dad, and sister, Amanda, have all encouraged me from the very beginning of this process and deserve thanks beyond measure. But, above all, I must thank my wife, Sara. This was as much her journey as mine and I could never have realized this project without her. v ABSTRACT THE REFLEXIVE SCAFFOLD: METATHEATRICALITY, GENRE, AND CULTURAL PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA MAY 2013 NATHANIEL C. LEONARD, B.A., KENYON COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF YORK (UK) Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Co-Directed by: Professor Arthur F. Kinney and Professor Jane Hwang Degenhardt The critical discussion of metatheatre has historically connected a series of reflexive dramatic strategies – like soliloquy, chorus, dumb show, the-play-within-the-play, prologue, and epilogue – and assumed that because these tropes all involve the play’s apparent awareness of its own theatrical nature they all have similar dramaturgical functions. This dissertation, by contrast, shows that the efficacy derived from metatheatrical moments that overtly reference theatrical production is better understood in the context of restaged non-theatrical cultural performances. Restaged moments of both theatrical and non-theatrical social ritual produce layers of performance that allow the play to create representational space capable of circumventing traditional power structures. The Reflexive Scaffold argues that this relationship between metatheatricality and restaged moments of culture is central to interrogating the complexities of dramatic genre on the English Renaissance stage. This project asserts that a great deal of early modern English drama begins to experiment with staged moments of cultural performance: social, cultural, and religious events, which have distinct ramifications and efficacy both for the audience and in the world of the play. However, while these restaged social rituals become focal points within a given narrative, their function is determined by the genre of the play in which they appear. A play or a feast inserted into a comic narrative creates a very different sort of efficacy within the world of the play from that which is created when the same moment appears in a tragic narrative. These various types of performance give us a glimpse into the ways that early modern English dramatists understood the relationship between their works and the audiences who viewed them. I argue that the presentation and reinterpretation of early modern social ritual is utilized by many of the major playwrights of the English Renaissance, including Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and Philip Massinger to redefine genre. These moments of reflexivity construct efficacy that, depending on the genre in which they appear, runs the gambit from reinforcing social order to directly critiquing the dominant cultural discourse. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………….. v ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….. vi LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………. viii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….. 1 1. LIMINAL VENGEANCE: DRAMATIC LAYERING AND THE MITIGATION OF REVENGE…………………………………………….. 20 2. EMBRACING THE “MONGREL:” JOHN MARSTON’S THE MALCONTENT , ANTONIO AND MELLIDA , AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH EARLY MODERN TRAGICOMEDY…………….. 65 3. CIRCLING THE NUPTIAL: THE PRESENTATION AND ABSENCE OF MARRIAGE IN THE TAMING OF THE SHREW , A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM , AS YOU LIKE IT , AND MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING ……… 112 4. CONJURING EFFICACY: READING THE PERFORMATIVE RESTAGING OF RELIGION, THEATRE, AND MAGIC IN THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS ………………………………... 159 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………... 206 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Spectrum of Dramatic Layering……………………………………………………… 11 viii INTRODUCTION Citizen . and now you call your play The London Merchant . Down with your title, boy, down with your title! -Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle Induction, Lines 8-9 Quince Marry, our play is The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe . Bottom A very good piece of work, I assure you and a merry. -Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act I, Scene ii, Lines 9-11 Both Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream use the comic presentation of a play as a central element in their overall dramatic plots. Beaumont’s play stages an intruding audience that frames and shapes the play’s narrative and places one of its own members in a starring role, while Shakespeare’s ‘Rude Mechanicals’ serve as a low comic subplot through the preparation of their own play that they in turn present to the protagonists of the central romantic plot and which acts as a coda for the play as a whole. But what are the formal functions that these seemingly similar, but also clearly distinct, dramatic techniques fulfill? And, perhaps more importantly, how are we, as readers of early modern English drama, meant to understand and discuss those techniques? The standard answer to such questions in the current critical conversation has been to begin by labeling such techniques as ‘metatheatrical.’ The problem with this easy label is that, since the term’s coining by Lionel Abel in 1960, it has become a catch-all for reflexive dramaturgy with regard to both genre and technique. The term has become so ubiquitous that it can be applied to almost any play, early modern or otherwise. The existing critical discussion of ‘metatheatre’ connects a series of reflexive dramatic strategies – like soliloquy, chorus, dumb show, the play-within-the-play, prologue, and epilogue – and assumes that because 1 ! these tropes all involve the play’s apparent awareness of its own theatrical nature they all have similar dramaturgical
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