DOCSLIB.ORG

The Representation of Transgressive Love and Marriage in English

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Representation of Transgressive Love and Marriage in English The Representation of Transgressive Love and Marriage in English Renaissance Drama Manisha Mukherjee Department of English McGill University, Montreal November, 1996 A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial futfillment of the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington OttawaON K1AON.O OttawaON K1AON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une Licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. 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 ths thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author' s ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract This study explores the presentation of transgressive, affective and erotic relationships in a selected group of early modem plays as those relationships relate to the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality expressed in religious and sewlar tracts. The depictions of illicit love and sexuality in these plays reveal problematic social and moral issues inherent in the construction of the English Renaissance ideal of love and marriage. Not only do the dramatists reveal the tension between transgressive and normative love and sewality, but they do so through the use of aesthetic forms that transgress conventional dramatic structure. This dissertation contends that the unconventional dramatic representation of transgression functions as a cognitive mode for the audience in their understanding of the practical social reality associated with the abstract ideality of love and marriage. Focussing on a selected plays of English Renaissance dramatists William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont. John Fletcher. Thomas Heywood, John Ford, and hoanonymous playwrights. I suggest that the dramatists refuse to condemn or condone the transgression. Rather, they endow it with meaning. and Mile not rescinding the ideal love and sexuality, offer possible ways of accommodating it. Résumé Cette étude analyse la présentation des relations transgressives, affectives et érotiques dans un groupe choisi de pièces du début de l'époque moderne dans la mesure où elles ont un rapport avec l'idéal du mariage et de la sexualité qui s'exprime dans les traités religieux et laïques à la Renaissance anglaise. L'illustration de I'amour et de la sexualité illicites dans ces pièces révèle les problèmes d'ordre social et moral inhérents à la construction de l'idéal de I'amour et du mariage à la Renaissance anglaise. Non seulement les dramaturges révèlent la tension entre I'amour et la sexualité transgressifs et normatifs, mais ils le font par l'emploi de formes esthétiques qui transgressent la structure dramatique classique. L'auteur de cette thèse soutient que la représentation dramatique et non conventionnelle de la transgression fonctionne sur un mode cognitif pour que le public comprenne la réalité sociale pratique qui se rattache à l'idéal abstrait de I'amour et du mariage. En se concentrant sur certaines pièces de la Renaissance anglaise écrites par William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Thomas Heywood. John Ford et deux dramaturges anonymes, l'auteur est porté à croire que les dramaturges refusent de condamner ou de cautionner la transgression. En revanche, ils lui donnent un sens et même s'ils ne révoquent pas l'idéal de I'amour et de la sexualité, ils proposent divers moyens de l'accommoder. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowiedgements Introduction 1 Matrimony is Hie, Holy Order of Me: The Fissured ldeal of Love and Sexuality 2 Premarital Love and Courtship: The Issue of Choice 3 Sexual Love: Exculpation in Legal Marriage 4 Marriage: An Obstruction to Love 5 ldeal Wedded Love: The Problem of Divided Mind and Body Conclusion Bibliography Acknowledgements Iwould like to express my gratitude to my thesis director Professor Leonore Lieblein for agreeing to guide this project. She has been a mentor in the truest sense of the mrd. matever perspicuity my prose and my argument have achieved is due in large measure to her high academic standard. 1 am grateful for having the privilege of working under her kind and scholarly supervision. I would like to thank Professor Michael Bristol for reading this work before I was quite fit to be seen. and Mering helpful suggestions and encouragement I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Katherine Shaw for her constructive criticism and generous uffering of her knowiedge. I am grateful to Professor Abbott Conway for introducing me to Middle English devotional literature and helping me to understand the doctrinal aspect of Christian spiritualîty. The preparation of the manuscript owes rnuch to the computer skills. intelligence and patience of my young friend Cathy Eugene. and I thank her. My special thanks to my friends Martha Slowe, Mark Christmanson and Zarin Ahmed for their helpful and encouraging cornments at various stages of my work-in progress. I would like to express my gratefulness to rny friends and staff of the McLennan library who have offered me their sincere help on numerous occasions Uiroughout the period I have been working on this thesis. This endeavour could not have been accomplished without the unwavering support and encouragement d my husband Professor Barid Mukherjee, and my appreciation is more than I can Say. Finally I dedicate this work to the memory of my parents from whorn I have inherited my love for the boundless wonderland of words. Introduction This study explores the presentation of transgressive affective and erotic relationships in a selected group of early modem plays as those relationships relate to the English Renaissance ideal of marriage and sexuality expressed in religious and secular tracts. The depiction of illicit love and sexuality in these plays reveals problematic social and moral issues inherent in the construction of the English Renaissance ideal of love and marriage. Not only do the dramatists reveal the tension between transgressive and normative Iûve and sexuality. but they do so through the use of aesthetic forms that transgress conventional dramatic structure. This use of an unconventional form in turn forces the audience to internalize the tension between transgression and norm that is being represented. That is, the incongruity of the form in which the plays are presented requires the audience to play an active role in building an understanding of the play's content. By experiencing this tension, the readerlspectator is thus enabled to participate in the redefinition of the ideal of erotic and affective love. The English Protestant definition of marriage as a conjoint state that is both secular and sacred led to an internally fissured ideal of marriage and love. The moral theologians acknowledged sexuality as amoral and secular and validated erotic love within the lawfulness of permanent monogamous heterosexual union. As social reformers, the Protestant divines wrote against the custom of arranged 3 marriage and advocated individual freedom of choice and love in the selection of a marriage partner. Simultaneously, they recommended elaborate guidelines for making the right choice of partner and for proper behaviour in courtship and premarhl love. But amoral and secular sexuality only entered the scheme of holy matrimony and ideal wedded love. The uneasy compromise of secularlamoral and sacredmoral that underpinned the English Protestant definition of marriage created a gap between the abstract ideality of love and marriage and their experientially cornplex psychical and social context.' The plays analyzed in my thesis reveal the problematic social and moral issues inherent in the ideal. which were eschewed by the moral theologians in their writings on love and marriage. The diversity with which love and sexuality are presented in the English Renaissance drama has been an area of critical disquiet. Scholars and critics often point to an incongruity between the formal design and the thematic content of the plays representing love and marriage? The critical approach that attempts to classify the representational diversity of love and marriage within drarnatic genres often appears unsatisfactory. Those who take the view that conventional genres are adequate for the analysis of these incongruities approach the representation of love and marriage in terms of the literary conventions, genre and mood of the particular period3 Much of the traditional scholarship has expressed concem with the lack of moral clarity in thematic content and with the unconventionality of artistic form of these plays. Critical views that emphasize indeterminaacy of meaning and incongruous dramatic 4 fom arise from a failure to recognize the open-ended nature of the plays as part of the dialectical process of representation. Nonetheless. I have found many proponents of such views very helpful. The works
Load more

Recommended publications
  • From Sidney to Heywood: the Social Status of Commercial Theatre in Early Modern London
    From Sidney to Heywood: the social status of commercial theatre in early modern London Romola Nuttall (King’s College London, UK) The Literary London Journal, Volume 14 Number 1 (Spring 2017) Abstract Thomas Heywood’s Apology for Actors (written c. 1608, published 1612) is one of the only stand-alone, printed deFences of the proFessional theatre to emerge from the early modern period. Even more significantly, it is ‘the only contemporary complete text we have – by an early modern actor about early modern actors’ (Griffith 191). This is rather surprising considering how famous playwrights and drama of that period have become, but it is revealing of attitudes towards the profession and the stage at the turn of the sixteenth century. Religious concerns Formed a central part of the heated public debate which contested the social value oF proFessional drama during the early modern era. Claims against the literary status of work produced for the commercial stage were also frequently levelled against the theatre from within the establishment, a prominent example being Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesie (written c. 1579, published 1595). Considering Heywood’s Apology in relation to Sidney’s Defence, and thinking particularly about the ways these treatises appropriate the classical idea oF mimesis and the consequent social value of literature, gives fresh insight into the changing status of drama in Shakespeare’s lifetime and how attitudes towards commercial theatre developed between the 1570s and 1610s. The following article explores these ideas within the framework of the London in which Heywood and his acting company lived and worked.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dramaturgy of Thomas Heywood 1594-1613 Carson, R
    The dramaturgy of Thomas Heywood 1594-1613 Carson, R. Neil The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1390 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] THE DRAMATURGYOF THOMAS HEYWOOD 1594-1613 THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR JANUARY, 1974 OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE R. NEIL CARSON UNIVERSITY OF LONDON WESTFIELD COLLEGE I)IN 1 ABSTRACT This dissertation is an attempt to describe the characteristics of Thomas Heywood's dramatic style. The study is divided into three parts. The first deals with the playwright's theatrical career and discusses how his practical experience as actor and sharer might have affected his technique as a dramatic writer. The second part defines the scope of the investigation and contains the bulk of the analysis of Heywood's plays. My approach to the mechanics of playwriting is both practical and theoretical. I have attempted to come to an understanding of the technicalities of Heywood's craftsmanship by studying the changes he made in Sir Thomas Moore and in the sources he used for his plays. At the same time, I have tried to comprehend the aesthetic framework within which he worked by referring to the critical ideas of the period and especially to opinions expressed by Heywood him- self in An Apology for Actors and elsewhere.
    [Show full text]
  • English 9127B: Performance Conditions in Shakespeare’S Time Wednesdays 12:30-3:30 Weldon Library 257
    THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO Department of English http://www.uwo.ca/english English 9127B: Performance Conditions in Shakespeare’s Time Wednesdays 12:30-3:30 Weldon Library 257 Dr M.J. Kidnie AHB 0N05 x85830 [email protected] Description: This course focuses on the creation and staging of professional theatre in the age of Shakespeare. Students will study architectural evidence of performance spaces and consider how these spaces might have been put to use in practice, they will be introduced to practical theatrical concerns such as company organisation, payments for scripts, theatrical collaboration, rehearsal, and censorship, and they will examine and discuss surviving textual evidence of the revision and transmission of dramatic manuscripts through to performance. 6 January Introduction to the course Plus seminar assignments. 13 January Early modern stages Dramatists and actors had a shared understanding of the theatres in which their plays would be performed, and the opportunities these spaces provided. This week we’ll explore the stage space of the outdoor amphitheatres in terms of live performance. Tiffany Stern, “Text, Playhouse and London,” Making Shakespeare (Routledge, 2004): 6-33 *Peter Thomson, “Playhouses and Players,” Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Stanley Wells (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 67-83 *Andrew Gurr, ‘The Staging’, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 172-211 *Peter Stallybrass, “Properties in Clothes: The Materials of the Renaissance Theatre,” Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda (Cambridge UP, 2002): 177- 201 *Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment, ed. Christie Carson and Farah Karim-Cooper (Cambridge UP, 2008) – select essays 20 January Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness Heywood was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and one of the most prolific playwrights of the age – he claimed to have a “hand or main finger” in 220 plays.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mermaid Series Thomas Hey Wood
    THE MERMAID SERIES THOMAS HEY WOOD LONDON ERNEST BENN, LTD. THE MERMAID SERIES THOMAS HEYWOOD EDITED BY A. WILSON VERITY WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS •1 lie and dream of your full mermaid wine."—Beawnoni. LONDON ERNEST BENN LIMITED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS " What things have we seen Done at the Memtiaid ! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they c&me Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, i\nd had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his duU life." Master Francis Beaurmmt to Ben fonson. •* Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ?"' Kmts. Pritiied in Great Britain PAGE THOMAS HEYWOOD. ........ vii A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS i THE FAIR MAID OF THE WEST .75 THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER. .151 THE WISE WOMAN OF HOGSDON 249 THE RAPE OF LUCRECE 327 The world's a theatre, the earth a stage, * Which God and nature doth with actors fill: Kings have their entrance in due equipage, And some their parts play well, and others ill. The best no better are (in this thedtre), Where every humour's fitted in his kind ; This a true subject acts, and that a traitor, The first applauded, and the last confined ; This plays an honest man, and that a knave, A gentle person this, and he a clown, One man is ragged, and another brave : All men have parts, and each one acts his own.
    [Show full text]
  • Biography Cast in Irony: Caveats, Stylization, and Indeterminacy in the Biographical History Plays of Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, Written by Christopher M
    BIOGRAPHY CAST IN IRONY: CAVEATS, STYLIZATION, AND INDETERMINACY IN THE BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY PLAYS OF TOM STOPPARD AND MICHAEL FRAYN by CHRISTOPHER M. SHONKA B.A. Creighton University, 1997 M.F.A. Temple University, 2000 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Theatre 2010 This thesis entitled: Biography Cast in Irony: Caveats, Stylization, and Indeterminacy in the Biographical History Plays of Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, written by Christopher M. Shonka, has been approved for the Department of Theatre Dr. Merrill Lessley Dr. James Symons Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Shonka, Christopher M. (Ph.D. Theatre) Biography Cast in Irony: Caveats, Stylization, and Indeterminacy in the Biographical History Plays of Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn Thesis directed by Professor Merrill J. Lessley; Professor James Symons, second reader Abstract This study examines Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn‘s incorporation of epistemological themes related to the limits of historical knowledge within their recent biography-based plays. The primary works that are analyzed are Stoppard‘s The Invention of Love (1997) and The Coast of Utopia trilogy (2002), and Frayn‘s Copenhagen (1998), Democracy (2003), and Afterlife (2008). In these plays, caveats, or warnings, that illustrate sources of historical indeterminacy are combined with theatrical stylizations that overtly suggest the authors‘ processes of interpretation and revisionism through an ironic distancing.
    [Show full text]
  • THE DOMESTIC DRAMA of THOMAS DEKKER, 1599-1621 By
    CHALLENGING THE HOMILETIC TRADITION: THE DOMESTIC DRAMA OF THOMAS DEKKER, 1599-1621 By VIVIANA COMENSOLI B.A.(Hons.), Simon Fraser University, 1975 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 1979 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept, this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA December 1984 (js) Viviana Comensoli, 1984 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3 DE-6 (3/81) ABSTRACT The dissertation reappraises Thomas Dekker's dramatic achievement through an examination of his contribution to the development of Elizabethan-Jacobean domestic drama. Dekker's alterations and modifications of two essential features of early English domestic drama—the homiletic pattern of sin, punishment, and repentance, which the genre inherited from the morality tradition, and the glorification of the cult of domesticity—attest to a complex moral and dramatic vision which critics have generally ignored. In Patient Grissil, his earliest extant domestic play, which portrays ambivalently the vicissitudes of marital and family life, Dekker combines an allegorical superstructure with a realistic setting.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Heywood Was One of Shakespeare's Most Successful and Prolific Contemporaries. Charles Lamb Describes Him As a “Prose Sh
    ENGLISH 9114A: THE STAGECRAFT OF THOMAS HEYWOOD DR MARGARET JANE KIDNIE COURSE DESCRIPTION Thomas Heywood was one of Shakespeare's most successful and prolific contemporaries. Charles Lamb describes him as a “prose Shakespeare” and Heywood claims, probably truthfully, to have had “a hand or at least the main finger” in 220 plays of the period. His plays, some of them collaborative, show a sustained intertextual engagement with the drama and poetry of his contemporaries, and with Shakespeare, in particular. This course will study Heywood’s writings for the stage with close attention to his dramaturgy, his professional association with the popularist Red Bull Theatre, and to his recurrent interest in the politics of marriage and authority. The class meets on Thursdays 9:30-12:30 in ????. INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION My office is in the Old Ivey building, 3G01. Phone: 519-661-2111, ext. 85830. Office hours: Tuesdays 1:30-2:30; Wednesdays 12:30-1:30. TEACHING PROGRAMME SEPTEMBER 4 Introduction Heywood’s career on the professional English stage and the various theatrical companies with which he was associated; surviving manuscript and print drama; critical resources; available editions (with close discussion of EEBO and early modern print conventions). Assignment of seminars. 11 The Four Prentices of London The play is available online through the Weldon catalogue, either through EEBO or Tudor facsimiles. 18 Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle The New Mermaids edition is available at the Bookstore. Ten-minute seminar presentations. 25 How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad The play is available online through EEBO (Weldon catalogue).
    [Show full text]
  • Realism in Euripides
    chapter 27 Realism in Euripides Michael Lloyd Realism as a literary mode is relevant to Euripides in both a broader and a nar- rower sense. His plays are realistic in the broader sense of representing actions which in general observe the laws of nature. They contrast in this with the plays of Aristophanes, in which it is possible to fly to heaven on a dung bee- tle (Peace), build a city in the air (Birds), or interact with dead poets in the underworld (Frogs). Place, time, and character in Euripides are relatively con- sistent and coherent. People and things follow continuous paths through time and space. This contrasts with Aristophanes’ more flexible treatment (e.g. in Acharnians or Clouds), and with his frequent indifference to consistency of character.1 Any attempt to distinguish realistic from non-realistic literature or art clearly depends on the belief that ‘representation’ and ‘reality’ are usable concepts, if not necessarily easy to define or the same in all cultural contexts.2 Euripides resembles Sophocles in being a realist in this broader sense, but also invites interpretation in terms of realism as it developed as a literary and artistic movement in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, most self- consciously in France in the 1850s. This is a particular manifestation of what J.P. Stern calls ‘a perennial mode of representing the world’, and does not imply limiting ‘realism’ to what he calls a ‘period term’.3 George Eliot’s classic state- ment of a realist aesthetic in Adam Bede (1859) associates truthfulness with the representation of commonplace things.
    [Show full text]
  • This Dissertation Has Been 61—5100 M Icrofilm Ed Exactly As Received
    This dissertation has been 61—5100 microfilmed exactly as received LOGAN, Winford Bailey, 1919- AN INVESTIGATION OF THE THEME OF THE NEGATION OF LIFE IN AMERICAN DRAMA FROM WORLD WAR H TO 1958. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1961 Speech — Theater University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan AN INVESTIGATION OF THE THSiE OF THE NEGATION OF LIFE IN AMERICAN DRAMA FROM WORLD WAR II TO 1958 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Winford Bailey Logan* B.A.* M.A. The Ohio State University 1961 Approved by Adviser Department of Speech CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. A BACKGROUND OF PHILOSOPHICAL NEGATION 5 III. A BASIS OF JUDGMENT: THE CHARACTERISTICS AND 22 SYMPTOMS OF LIFE NEGATION IV. SERIOUS DRAMA IN AMERICA PRECEDING WORLD WAR II i+2 V. THE PESSIMISM OF EUGENE O'NEILL AND AN ANALYSIS 66 OF HIS LATER PLAYS VI. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: ANALYSES OF THE GLASS MENAGERIE. 125 A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE AND CAMINO REAL VII. ARTHUR MILLER: ANALYSES OF DEATH OF A SALESMAN 179 AND A VIEW FRCM THE BRIDGE VIII. THE PLAYS OF WILLIAM INGE 210 IX. THE USE OF THE THEME OF LIFE NEGATION BY OTHER 233 AMERICAN WRITERS OF THE PERIOD X. CONCLUSIONS 271 BIBLIOGRAPHY 289 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 302 ii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Critical comment pertaining to present-day American theatre frequently has included allegations that thematic emphasis seems to lie in the areas of negation. Such attacks are supported by references to our over-use of sordidity, to the infatuation with the psychological theme and the use of characters who are emotionally and mentally disturbed, and to the absence of any element of the heroic which is normally acknowledged to be an integral portion of meaningful drama.
    [Show full text]
  • Fatal Desire. Women, Sexuality, and the English Stage, 1660-1720
    Jean I. Marsden 2006: Fatal Desire. Women, Sexuality, and the English Stage, 1660- 1720. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. viii + 216 pp. ISBN 9780801444470 Paula de Pando Mena Universidad de Sevilla [email protected] Jean Marsden’s Fatal Desire is a thorough analysis of Restoration drama which comes to fill a conspicuous gap in literary studies. It is probably one of the most ambitious books in scope since Derek Hughes’s influential English Drama (1996), and it certainly supplements the canonical view of Rothstein (1967) and Brown (1981), as well as the more recent works by specialists such as Owen (1996) or Canfield (2000), who primarily centred on the political dimension of the plays. This minute analysis goes from the appearance of the first English actresses after the accession of Charles II to the first decades of the eighteenth century, and focuses on the representation of female characters in both comedy and tragedy. Its aim is to complement other monographs on the lives and social consideration of actresses on the English stage (Howe’s The First English Actresses [1992] remains an unbeatable reference) or the listing of productions, performances and their reception. Marsden does this by centering her research on the resemblances between the apparently dissimilar fields of Restoration practice and contemporary film theory. The reification of women in cinema and the importance of the image as object of the desiring gaze prompt a series of parallelisms with the reaction of seventeenth and early eighteenth-century audiences to the spectacle of women on stage. According to this theory, Restoration plays were based on the concept of scopic pleasure, which is the inherently masculine visual enjoyment of a passive object.
    [Show full text]
  • Quince's Questions and the Mystery of the Play Experience J. L. Styan*
    Fall 1986 3 Quince's Questions and the Mystery of the Play Experience J. L. Styan* Dramatic semioticians are aware of the ripples they are causing in the classrooms and workshops across the country. Some kind of analytic tool has long been needed to enable us to talk about what an audience perceives on the stage, how it perceives it, and how the perception is translated into a conception. Though he would hate to be called a semiotician, John Russell Brown was right to emphasize years ago that a play-reader is a different animal from a playgoer and that his perceptions will therefore very likely be different. More recently, Patrice Pavis was right to remind us that the relationship between text and performance is not one of simple implication, but rather what he calls 'dialectical,' whereby the actor comments on and argues with the text (146); and some years ago I found myself suggesting that Shakespeare's text prompted a 'controlled freedom' of improvisation for his actor (Styan 199). In other fields, Keir Elam and others are right to find our ways of regarding the use of scene and costume, space and light, as too impressionistic: we need to know more of how these features are defined by conventional patterns, social behavior, or aesthetic rules. Above all, it needs to be said how important it is to understand the theatre as a process of communication, one which insists that the audience makes its contribution to the creation of the play by its interpretation of the signs and signals from the stage, where everything seen and heard must acquire the strength of convention.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare and Heywood, 1603–4 an Actor, Poet, Playwright, And
    Issues in Review 175 27 Ibid, 257. 28 Throughout his career, Kemp defined his clown as a ‘plain man’. See Wiles, Shake- speare’s Clown, 100. 29 Orgel, The Authentic Shakespeare, 22. 30 John Lyly, Euphues, the Anatomie of Wit (1578), The Complete Works of John Lyly, R.W. Bond (ed.), 3 vols (Oxford, 1902), 1.180. 31 Robert Weimann, Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Cambridge, 2000), 23. 32 John Lyly, Midas (1589), The Complete Works, Bond (ed.), 3.115. 33 Arthur Brooke, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, 1562 (ll.161–2), repro- duced in William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, ed. Brian Gibbons (London, 1980), 244. 34 Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (London, 2001), 34. Actor, Poet, Playwright, Sharer … Rival? Shakespeare and Heywood, 1603–4 A person … competing with another for the same objective, or for superiority in the same field of activity. A person who … is arguably equal in quality or distinction to another. A person having the same objective as another, an associate. (OED: ‘Rival’, n.2 1–3: Range of definitions valid in 1603–4)1 An actor, poet, playwright, and sharer. A country boy, whose family acquired a grant of arms around the turn of the century giving him the right to be addressed as ‘gentleman’, he came to London in the early 1590s and gained work as an actor and a reputation as a playwright. In 1598 Francis Meres lauded him as among ‘the best for comedy’. He was among those who con- tributed additions and alterations to Munday’s Book of Sir Thomas More after Tilney censored it.
    [Show full text]