DOCSLIB.ORG

Working on the Audience: Allegorical Strategies in Rhetoricians Plays

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Working on the Audience: Allegorical Strategies in Rhetoricians Plays 1 Working on the audience: Allegorical Strategies in Rhetoricians Plays. Elsa Strietman Most Rhetoricians plays were performed in public for audiences which consisted of fellow Rhetoricians but also of members of the general public. The Chambers of Rhetoric performed in their home towns on occasions of civic and religious feasts or events but were also frequently engaged in drama competitions which took them to other towns in the region or even to other provinces. Competition plays were written on a set theme and could therefore not refer too much to strictly local issues. Non-competition plays might be written for religious festivals or special occasions of local and wider interests: a Royal Entry, a ducal birth, a wedding, a funeral, or the end of a war or the conclusion of a peace treaty. It is safe to say that most of the drama of the Rhetoricians evolves round a disputatio, whether it is to discuss a religious issue, a civic concern, a political question or a moral stance. The Rhetoricians aimed to entertain and, in entertaining, to persuade their audience of the point of view advocated in the text, on the stage. They skilfully used verbal and visual means to that end, in particular verbal and visual allegory in a variety of strategies. One of these was to represent and evoke emotion and thus express a special point of view and persuade the audience of the validity of that view. Another strategy is that of an analysis of a particular question by means of detailed allegorical personifications. The representation of emotion cannot be seen only in terms of didactic convenience and moral efficacy; part of being entertained must surely have been the sharing of an emotional experience. The joys, pains, passions shown 'in action' on the stage were on the whole familiar emotions with which any audience could identify even if the analysis of individual emotions does not seem to have been part of medieval and late-medieval life. Whilst we cannot, for lack of evidence, evaluate the effectiveness of the methods of the Rhetoricians playwrights and actors, we can at least surmise that they must have been felt to be effective as many Rhetoricians plays show a remarkable consistency in the use of allegorical devices. The examples are chosen from a range of plays in Dutch which bear great resemblance to not only the themes but also the methods of the drama of Britain, France and Germany and no doubt to other European traditions.1 1 L.R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) proves this with a wealth of detail in respect of the biblical drama. However, drama that does not go back to biblical sources shows remarkable similarities in sources, in message and in medium. Muir's book has fortunately extended the notion of 'medieval Europe' into the sixteenth century and what is true for biblical drama is also applicable to non-biblical drama. The sixteenth-century drama of the Low Countries is distinct in the very great number of moralities which were written and produced. Their themes and methods however demonstrate that the Rhetoricians are part of a European tradition even though they may have been distinct in their organization and modes of performance. 2 1. An allegorical parable in a non-allegorical play: the tree, the blossom and the falcon in Lanseloet van Denemerken. In the drama of the Low Countries allegory is not confined to Rhetoricians plays and I would like to cite an example from an early play to use this to compare with some illustrative examples from Rhetoricians drama. This will show that the Rhetoricians developed the use of allegory in a remarkably varied and detailed manner for a variety of purposes, prominently so to express emotions and to evoke an emotional rapport with the audience. In all this it must be remembered that we cannot ascribe their efforts to a desire to achieve psychological verity but rather a pursuit of inescapable conviction: allegory as a weapon of mass persuasion. The following example is taken from Lanseloet van Denemerken, one of four, late fourteenth-century, serious plays, the Abele Spelen. In these a range of human emotions is presented in the context of secular plots resembling those of the medieval romances. Love relationships are central to these plays and they are used, broadly speaking, to show the unbalancing effects of misguided, mismatched love and, by contrast, the harmony resulting from well-matched relationships.2 In Lanseloet van Denemerken the lady Sanderijn becomes the victim of Lanseloet's passion and the venomous interference of his mother who deems her of far too lowly descent to become the wife of her high born son. When she finds herself in a situation which might hold the promise of a new life, she is far too ashamed and frightened to explain to her new would-be suitor that she has been raped and abandoned. The disclosure of her history is a matter of life and death. If her suitor is put off by her 'imperfect' state, he may not convert his sexual pursuit of her into an offer of marriage and for Sanderijn marriage is her only chance of moral as well as physical survival. She resorts to indirectness and paints a picture in words: if a tree were in full blossom but a noble falcon would come and rob it of some of its blossoms, would the tree therefore be worthless and damaged beyond redemption? Tree, blossom and falcon form the parts of an allegorical structure in which an event and its potential consequences are set out for consideration. It is not a moral allegory but an imagistic emotional appeal.The passage is a masterpiece of emotional delicacy structured as a continuous rhetorical question which does not invite debate but a re-assuring answer which, indeed, is given by the lover who sustains the metaphor. Thus this non-allegorical play creates an allegorical tactics to resolve something. Interestingly, the allegory does two things simultaneously. The spectators had been left in no doubt about Lanseloet's brutal physical and verbal attack on Sanderijn. They now hear that event elegantly allegorised in her parable whilst Sanderijn's new suitor hears the parable reveal the harsh reality of her experience. The parable conveys and evokes several emotions, disgust, compassion, tenderness, in a formulaic, though extremely poignant, manner. The characters themselves are not allegorical but presented as types: the nobly born but weak lover, the innocent girl, the venomous mother. Emotions are manifested and represented in a manner which the contemporaries clearly deemed suitable for the stage. In 2 See also Annelies van Gijsen, 'De dramatisering van begeerte en vrees', in R.E.V. Stuip and C. Vellekoop, Emoties in de Middeleeuwen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), pp. 157-182, who discusses the implications of the portrayal of emotions relating to love in several texts, amongst which the French and Dutch versions of the story of Narcissus and Echo and the late fifteenth-century Spiegel der Minnen, all belonging to a group of older rhetoricians plays known as the 'amourous plays'. 3 the case of this play ideas are conveyed about the importance of the suitability of partners in marriage. There is a strong, implicit, warning here that incompatibility of wealth, rank and status might result in disharmony: in a family, in a community and, if it affected royalty, in a realm. 2. The battle for the soul of mankind 2.i. Die Eerste Bliscap van Maria One of the central concerns in fifteenth-century drama was the battle for the soul of mankind, a battle which often involved the mediation of Our Lady. Mariolatry and affective piety had by then a long history in the Low Countries and had freed the way for a strongly emotional approach to mankind's relationship with the divine, which is testified in religious literature as well as in the visual arts. I will for the moment disregard the chronology of the plays and simply order them according to the length of the discussion. They provide examples of allegorical structures which either facilitate or allow a manipulation of emotion geared towards evoking in the audience the fear of God, pity for the plight of His mother and His Son, and ultimately instilling remorse and penitence. In the mystery play Die eerste bliscap van Maria allegory is not extensively employed. It does however contain a version of the well-known Debate between the Four Daughters of God. This is an episode which is central to what Lynette Muir has called 'the play of God' and variations of it can be found in abundance in medieval European drama as well as in many non-dramatic texts.3 The purpose of the debate as well as its participants and its outcome are of course broadly the same in many of the texts. It would be misleading to claim the rhetorical crafting and the structuring of emotional tension in the version in Die eerste bliscap as particularly belonging to or characteristic of the Low Countries. Nevertheless, this is an example in which a complex rhetorical, allegorical structure with allegorical personifications is employed most effectively to express and evoke emotion. The audience needs to be persuaded of the unimaginable sacrifice, for their benefit, demanded of the Son of God. All attempts at finding an angel prepared to suffer the passion for the sake of mankind are shown to have failed and the attention then switches to the only other obvious person, Christ. The overwhelming fear when he learns of his impending fate foreshadows the words on the Cross and demonstrates palpably the human side of the Son of God: Why is it that justice demands That I will have to suffer for this, That I will have to open that which Adam closed, With torments and with suffering More than he should? Mark my words, Holy Spirit, I ask you that, You who are as powerful as we are.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Dramaturgy of Participation and Unreliable Mirror Figures in Sixteenth-Century Drama
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2014 A Mirror for Spectators: The Dramaturgy of Participation and Unreliable Mirror Figures in Sixteenth-Century Drama Virginia Hanlon Murphy University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Murphy, Virginia Hanlon, "A Mirror for Spectators: The Dramaturgy of Participation and Unreliable Mirror Figures in Sixteenth-Century Drama. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2014. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2773 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Virginia Hanlon Murphy entitled "A Mirror for Spectators: The Dramaturgy of Participation and Unreliable Mirror Figures in Sixteenth-Century Drama." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Heather A. Hirschfeld, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Rob Stillman, Laura Howes, Kate Buckley Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) A Mirror for Spectators: The Dramaturgy of Participation and Unreliable Mirror Figures in Sixteenth-Century Drama A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Virginia Hanlon Murphy May 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Virginia H.
    [Show full text]
  • Everystudent Collection 2011
    Everystudent A Collection of Allegorical Plays In the Style of the Medieval Morality Play “The Summoning of Everyman” By Students of the 2011-12 MYP 10 Drama Class Gyeonggi Suwon International School - 1 - Table of Contents Introduction by Daren Blanck .................................................................. page 3 Seven by Nick Lee and Lyle Lee .................................................................. page 4 Slayers by Mike Lee, Daniel Choi and Eric Cho ......................................... page 9 True Friendship by Yealim Lee and Hannah Seo .................................... page 12 Graduation by Judy Oh and Jaimie Park .................................................. page 16 FC society by JH Hyun and Jacob Son ...................................................... page 19 It’s Just Too Late by Jeeho Oh, Ryan Choi and Jee Eun Kim ................. page 22 The Freedom of Will by Eric Han and Bryan Ahn ................................. page 26 Everystudent Justine Yun, Rick Eum, and Seong Soo Son ...................... page 32 Everystudent by Lilly Kim, Seungyeon Rho, Erin Yoon .......................... page 37 Appendix: The Summoning of Everyman abridged by Leslie Noelani Laurio .... page 39 - 2 - Introduction An allegory is a narrative having a second meaning beneath the surface one - a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. In an allegory objects, persons, and actions are metaphors or symbols for ideas that lie outside the text. Medieval drama was wrapped in the stories and doctrines of the medieval Christian church. Most plays could be classified as Mystery Plays - plays that told the stories of the Bible, Miracle Plays - plays that told the stories of saints and martyrs, and Morality plays - allegorical works that sought to convey a moral or some doctrine of the church. Everyman is perhaps the most famous of this last category.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Szeged Faculty of Arts Doctoral School of English and American Literatures and Cultures
    CB WSf University of Szeged Faculty of Arts Doctoral School of English and American Literatures and Cultures THE VICE-DEVICE: IAGO AND LEAR'S FOOL AS AGENTS OF REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS PhD THESIS Submitted by Agnes MATUSKA Supervisor Dr. Attila KISS Szeged 2005 THE VICE-DEVICE: IAGO AND LEAR'S FOOL AS AGENTS OF REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS INTRODUCTION 3 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND, METHODOLOGY 11 1. L THE QUESTION OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRISIS 12 1.2 DIALECTICAL TRAGEDY: EPISTEMIC CHANGE IN THEATRE 21 1.3 "IF ACODE IS CRUMBLING..." 25 1.4 REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS IN SHAKESPEARE 28 2. HAPHAZARDLY AMBIDEXTROUS: THE VICE-FAMILY 35 2. L PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION 35 "YOU WILL LEARN TO PLAYE THE VICE": PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION 37 2.2 VICES 48 Merry Report 49 Ambidexter 52 Haphazard 56 Punisher or punished? 60 The Fool in the Vice 66 2.3. VICE-SUCCESSORS AND FOOLS 72 Intriguer villains 73 Sir John Falstaff: The Vice-Fool 77 The "corrupter of-words": Feste 81 Deceiver among deceivers: Parolles 85 Afterlife of post-vices and the common life of lago and the Fool 87 2.4. THE VICE-CLOWN ON THE SHAKESPEAREAN STAGE 91 3. METADRAMA 97 3. L METADRAMA AND THE VICE, A DEFINITION OF THE TERM 97 3.1.1 The Vice as mediator 97 3.1.2 Metadrama in Shakespeare-criticism 102 3.2 MEANING AS AN EVENT - IAGO AND METADRAMA IN OTHELLO 107 3.2.1 Commenting on drama, involving the audience 109 3.2.2 Iago's book of identity and role-playing 110 3.2.3 Plays -within - Iago as director 117 3.2.4 Representation as fiction 121 3.2.5 Iago's metadramatic effect—summary 122 3.3 METADRAMATIC ASPECTS OF THE FOOL 124 3.3.1 The Fool and his audience 125 3.3.2 "All thy other titles " 127 3.3.3 Plays of the fool -within and without.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparison of the Two Plays
    Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Eliška Poláčková Everyman and Homulus: analysis of their genetic relation Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D. 2010 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Eliška Poláčková Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D. for his patient and kind help, Prof. PhDr. Eva Stehlíková for useful advice, and Mgr. Markéta Polochová for unprecedented helpfulness and support. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 1 Morality Play and Its Representatives ........................................................................... 3 1.1 Morality Play .......................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Everyman ................................................................................................................ 5 1.3 Homulus .................................................................................................................. 7 2 Concept of Translation in The Middle Ages ................................................................. 9 3 Comparison of Everyman and Homulus ...................................................................... 11 3.1 Composition .........................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Bodies of Knowledge: the Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Bodies of Knowledge: The Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600 Geoffrey Shamos University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Shamos, Geoffrey, "Bodies of Knowledge: The Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1128. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1128 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1128 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Bodies of Knowledge: The Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600 Abstract During the second half of the sixteenth century, engraved series of allegorical subjects featuring personified figures flourished for several decades in the Low Countries before falling into disfavor. Designed by the Netherlandsâ?? leading artists and cut by professional engravers, such series were collected primarily by the urban intelligentsia, who appreciated the use of personification for the representation of immaterial concepts and for the transmission of knowledge, both in prints and in public spectacles. The pairing of embodied forms and serial format was particularly well suited to the portrayal of abstract themes with multiple components, such as the Four Elements, Four Seasons, Seven Planets, Five Senses, or Seven Virtues and Seven Vices. While many of the themes had existed prior to their adoption in Netherlandish graphics, their pictorial rendering had rarely been so pervasive or systematic.
    [Show full text]
  • Literature of the Low Countries
    Literature of the Low Countries A Short History of Dutch Literature in the Netherlands and Belgium Reinder P. Meijer bron Reinder P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries. A short history of Dutch literature in the Netherlands and Belgium. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague / Boston 1978 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/meij019lite01_01/colofon.htm © 2006 dbnl / erven Reinder P. Meijer ii For Edith Reinder P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries vii Preface In any definition of terms, Dutch literature must be taken to mean all literature written in Dutch, thus excluding literature in Frisian, even though Friesland is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the same way as literature in Welsh would be excluded from a history of English literature. Similarly, literature in Afrikaans (South African Dutch) falls outside the scope of this book, as Afrikaans from the moment of its birth out of seventeenth-century Dutch grew up independently and must be regarded as a language in its own right. Dutch literature, then, is the literature written in Dutch as spoken in the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the so-called Flemish part of the Kingdom of Belgium, that is the area north of the linguistic frontier which runs east-west through Belgium passing slightly south of Brussels. For the modern period this definition is clear anough, but for former times it needs some explanation. What do we mean, for example, when we use the term ‘Dutch’ for the medieval period? In the Middle Ages there was no standard Dutch language, and when the term ‘Dutch’ is used in a medieval context it is a kind of collective word indicating a number of different but closely related Frankish dialects.
    [Show full text]
  • Theta VII Responsables Scientifiques Mentions Légales Date De Création
    Mike Pincombe, « A New Interlude of Vice : Generic Experimentation in Horestes », Theta VII, Théâtre Tudor, , pp. -, mismis en en ligne ligne le en février13 février 2007, <http://www.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Publications/Theta7>., <https://sceneeuropeenne.univ-tours.fr/theta/theta7> Theta VII est publié par le Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, dirigé par Marie-Luce Demonet, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CNRS/UMR Responsables scientifiques André Lascombes & Richard Hillman Mentions légales Copyright © 2007 – CESR. Tous droits réservés. Les utilisateurs peuvent télécharger et imprimer, pour un usage strictement privé, cette unité documentaire. Reproduction soumise à autorisation. Date de création février 2007 Thêta VII – Théâtre Tudor Mike PINCOMBE p. 161-176 CESR, Tours A New Interlude of Vice: Generic Experimentation in Horestes Mike Pincombe University of Newcastle n this essay, I want to look at the way John Pickering experiments with dramatic genre in his interesting play I Horestes, printed by William Griffi ths in and probably written and performed that same year.¹ I am going to argue that he introduces two main changes to the basic genre of vernacular dramaturgy in sixteenth-century England: the interlude. The fi rst of these is quite simple: he adds a death- scene—still quite a novelty in the late s. The other is more complex: he alters the Vice’s part so that his tradi- tional roles in the merry scenes of the interlude and in soliloquy are reframed as “turns”, rather than a sequence of episodes integrated into the fabric of the play. I am not sure that either of these experiments actually works, but they offer a very interesting insight into the generic complexity of Tudor drama.
    [Show full text]
  • The Singing 'Vice': Music and Mischief in Early English Drama1
    Early Theatre 12.2 (2009) Maura Giles-Watson The Singing ‘Vice’: Music and Mischief in Early English Drama1 ‘Debates about music are not about nothing.’ 2 Over the last half-century, scholars have extensively studied and debated the use and function of instrumental and vocal music in the English mystery plays,3 but music in the secular English interlude drama has yet to receive similar treatment.4 This is not without good reason: the subject of music in the interludes is fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty. Although the extant interludes contain many indications of song in the form of references, snatches, cues, stage directions, and even full song texts, very little scored music has been preserved in either manuscript or print.5 Richard Rastall’s observation with regard to music in early English religious drama might also be made of music in the interludes: ‘the surviving written music is only a fraction of that actually required in performance’.6 To be sure, absent musical scores and elided stage directions present special problems for the researcher. Thus, very sensibly, discussions of music in secular interlude drama have tended to limit themselves to those rare play texts that contain significant music in score, such as John Rastell’s The Four Elements and Ulpian Fulwell’s Like Will to Like.7 As Richard Rastall further notes, since documentation is quite scarce ‘informed guesswork is the only way forward’ in discussions of music in early English drama, ‘although the word “informed” is one that needs to be stressed’.8 Suzanne Westfall observes that ‘entertainments in great households were almost always occasional, ephemeral and frequently non- textual due to their multi-mediality.
    [Show full text]
  • ENGUSH MORAL INTERLUDE Douglas William Hayes A
    RHETORICAL SUBVERSION 1s THE ENGUSH MORAL INTERLUDE Douglas William Hayes A dissertation submitted in conformity with the requirernents for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto O Copyright by Douglas William Hayes 2000 National Library Bibliothèque natior\ale 1+1 ofhnacîa du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services senrices bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. tue WeWmgton OltawaON K1AW WONK1AW CanaQa CMada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive Licence ailowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seil reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in rnicrofonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic fonnats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be p~tedor otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Rhetorical Subversion in the English Moral Interlude Doctor of Phitosophy, 2000 Douglas William Hayes Department of Eaglish, University of Toronto My focus of study is the popular English moral interlude and later relateci plays, frorn The Castle of Perseverance (circa 1425) to the end of the Tudor period. 1 view these plays froma a perspective that centers on the use of rhetoric as a means of persuasion, and the ways in which that means of persuasion is placed in the service of good and evil ends--often simultaneously.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded from Brill.Com10/02/2021 06:39:03AM Via Free Access 92 Verena Demoed
    CHAPTER FOUR THE MORALITY OF HYPOCRISY: GNAPHEUS’S LATIN PLAY HYPOCRISIS AND THE LUTHERAN REFORMATION Verena Demoed Introduction In drama, moral judgment is not uttered through words alone; it can also be expressed through non-verbal and seemingly subsid- iary things such as props, costumes and stage action.1 This paper will attempt to clarify how Gnapheus used his Latin plays, especially his Hypocrisis (‘Hypocrisy’, published in 1544 and 1564), in debates on religious matters. Gulielmus Gnapheus Hagiensis, or Willem de Volder (Fuller), or Van de Voldersgraft, of The Hague (1493–1568) is an example of a committed writer. He held outspoken views on the Protestant reformations, which he expounded in pamphlets and plays. Because of his commitment, his oeuvre is pre-eminently suitable as material in an investigation of the role literature played within public debate, and the effect it may have had on public opinion. Hypocrisis is his most outspoken play. It was written and produced in East Prussia, where Lutheranism was proclaimed as a state religion. This enabled the author (he may even have felt obliged) to expound his reforma- tional ideas in a more direct, explicit and uncompromising manner than he would have done in the Low Countries and West Prussia, where he lived before the 1540s, and which at that time still remained officially Catholic. Though even here, in Lutheran East Prussia, Gnapheus came into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities: he was indicted for heresy by the Lutheran theologian Staphylus. 1 This paper was written within the scope of the Vidi-projectLatin and Vernacular Cultures: Theatre and Public Opinion in the Netherlands (ca.
    [Show full text]
  • Vice': Music and Mischief in Early English Drama Maura Giles-Watson University of San Diego, [email protected]
    University of San Diego Digital USD English Faculty Publications Department of English 2009 The inS ging 'Vice': Music and Mischief in Early English Drama Maura Giles-Watson University of San Diego, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digital.sandiego.edu/english_facpub Digital USD Citation Giles-Watson, Maura, "The inS ging 'Vice': Music and Mischief in Early English Drama" (2009). English Faculty Publications. 2. http://digital.sandiego.edu/english_facpub/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at Digital USD. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital USD. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Early Theatre 12.2 (2009) Maura Giles-Watson The Singing ‘Vice’: Music and Mischief in Early English Drama1 ‘Debates about music are not about nothing.’ 2 Over the last half-century, scholars have extensively studied and debated the use and function of instrumental and vocal music in the English mystery plays,3 but music in the secular English interlude drama has yet to receive similar treatment.4 This is not without good reason: the subject of music in the interludes is fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty. Although the extant interludes contain many indications of song in the form of references, snatches, cues, stage directions, and even full song texts, very little scored music has been preserved in either manuscript or print.5 Richard Rastall’s observation with regard to music in early English religious drama might also be made of music in the interludes: ‘the surviving written music is only a fraction of that actually required in performance’.6 To be sure, absent musical scores and elided stage directions present special problems for the researcher.
    [Show full text]
  • The Paradox of Elizabethan Revenge
    THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE FROM HORESTES TO HAMLET ANTON CHARLES ARULANANDAM MASTER OF ARTS - HONOURS 1995 THE UNVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES THE PARADOX OF ELIZABETHAN REVENGE FROM HORESTES TO HAMLET CONTENTS Acknowledgement Page 2 List ofIllustrations Page 3 Abstract Page 4 Introduction Page 5 Chapter One Page 33 Chapter Two Page 55 Chapter Three Page 75 Chapter Four · Page 93 Chapter Five Page 112 Conclusion Page 142 ACKNOWLEDGMENT I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to my Supervisor, Dr. Richard Medelaine, and Co-Supervisor, Professor Mary Chan, who not only awakened my serious interest in the drama of the English Renaissance, but tolerated and encouraged this graduate student in the preparation of this thesis. I also wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Bruce Johnson, Professor Michael Hollington, Associate Professor Roslyn Haynes and Associate Professor Peter Alexander, Head, School of English, the staff of the School of English and my colleagues, Pauline Byrnes and Brian Couch, and my wife, Edith, for their assistance and encouragement. A significant debt is owed to the numerous critics mentioned in the footnotes and Bibliography for their scholarly discourse on the revenge genre. Anton C. Arulanandam 2 December 1995. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Gratefully Acknowledged The Revenge of Orestes From Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris, Ulm, 1473, fol.xxxv verso, p. 32. The Murder of Horatio in The Spanish Tragedie From the edition of 1633, p. 54. The Revenge of Titus Andronicus From The Lamentable and Tragical History of Titus Andronicus, a ballad ( British Museum, Huth 50 - 69). p. 74. ( By kind courtesy of Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage ofElizabethan Tragedy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1963, ps.
    [Show full text]