The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Spring 5-1-2015 Shakespeare and Boyhood: Early Modern Representations and Contemporary Appropriations Marvin Tyler Sasser University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, and the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Sasser, Marvin Tyler, "Shakespeare and Boyhood: Early Modern Representations and Contemporary Appropriations" (2015). Dissertations. 85. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/85 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi SHAKESPEARE AND BOYHOOD: EARLY MODERN REPRESENTATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY APPROPRIATIONS by Marvin Tyler Sasser Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2015 ABSTRACT SHAKESPEARE AND BOYHOOD: EARLY MODERN REPRESENTATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY APPROPRIATIONS by Marvin Tyler Sasser May 2015 This dissertation demonstrates that Shakespearean boyhood, both in early modern plays and contemporary reimaginings for young readers, critiques patriarchal and hegemonic ideals through the rhetoric and behavior of boy characters. Although critics have called Shakespeare’s boy characters indistinguishable , I find that they provide Shakespeare a unique resource to offer persuasive skepticism about heroic conventions, education, and political instability. This project begins by examining the lexical network of boy in order to chart its uses in early modern England. The subsequent three chapters establish how Shakespeare uses boys to comment on a range of ideal manhoods, such as the chivalrous knight, the Herculean hero, the humanist man of moderation, and several dramatic representations of the monarchy. Having established the diverse ways Shakespeare uses boy characters to negotiate masculine gender ideals, this project then investigates how Shakespearean boyhood is appropriated in contemporary children’s literature. I discover that the gender features regarding Shakespeare’s boys noted in previous chapters find expression in these later adaptations, and that the gender complexities that exist in Tudor-Stuart drama and culture appear in these boy books and point to a more fluid notion of gender identity than critics have hitherto considered. ii Methodologically, this project draws on masculinity studies, childhood studies, and social histories of the family, as well as gender and adaptation theories to account for the boy’s analogous function in early-modern plays and contemporary novels. The larger significance of the project is in how it enhances our understanding of how Shakespeare conceived of boyhood in his plays and how such plays have been reconceived in contemporary boy books. By analyzing both the early modern representations and contemporary appropriations of Shakespearean boyhood, I first demonstrate how the playwright’s complex use of boyhood critically engages with some of the most pressing issues regarding early modern masculinity and offers compelling skepticism about conventional ideals of early modern manhood. Then, I establish how Shakespearean boyhood resurfaces in these adaptations when children’s authors likewise depict varied and complicated boys equally in dialogue with contemporary gender debates about boyhood. iii COPYRIGHT BY MARVIN TYLER SASSER MAY 2015 The University of Southern Mississippi SHAKESPEARE AND BOYHOOD: EARLY MODERN REPRESENTATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY APPROPRIATIONS by Marvin Tyler Sasser A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: _Dr. Jameela Lares____________________ Committee Chair _Dr. Joseph Navitsky_________________ _Dr. Mark Dahlquist___________________ _Dr. Eric L. Tribunella_________________ _Dr. Elizabeth K. Harris________________ _Dr. Karen S. Coats___________________ Dean of the Graduate School May 2015 DEDICATION Thank you to the Warders, Sassers, Wiggins, Daltons, Lawrences, and entire Hardy clan for your support. I especially am grateful to the compassionate individuals in these families who stoically refrained from asking “How much longer?” Thank you for understanding. I am blessed to have parents who championed my educational goals since kindergarten, often at the expense of their own aspirations. I am grateful for their never saying “no” when I needed money for the book fair or demanded that we visit the Franklin Memorial Library. More specifically, I am grateful to my mother, Cheryl Warder, for her dedication to teaching and travel and for keeping an old copy of Don Quixote on her bookshelf. I am grateful to my father, Franklin Sasser, for teaching and encouraging me to question and to think, lessons that continue to guide my professional life. Finally, I am blessed to have been able to spend my graduate studies with my spouse and best friend, Jessica Sasser. We began our life together by studying and traveling, and your companionship has been a lot of fun. Thank you also for enduring my many digressions about Shakespeare and boyhood. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, for the root; to Jessica, for the sunshine; and to Jameela, for the blossom. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout the process of researching and writing this project, I have received support and contributions from several professors, colleagues, and teachers. Foremost, I am grateful for the privilege of having studied under Jameela Lares, who has challenged and supported me throughout this process. To her I owe much of the success of this dissertation; from Hattiesburg to London, she has been a benevolent mentor. I also am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with an exceptionally dedicated, diverse, and cooperative committee. The encouragement and expertise Eric L. Tribunella, E. Kay Harris, Mark Dahlquist, and Joseph Navitsky have given to me through comments and conversation is vast. The intellectual community they provided in the classroom and throughout this project has made the process a delight, and I am profoundly grateful for the enthusiasm they have shown for my work. I am moved especially by Joseph Navitsky’s continued commitment. At both the international and local levels, I have had the great fortune to be a part of a number of scholarly communities that have variously shaped and informed my research. I have benefited from and enjoyed lively discussions at the Shakespeare Association of America and the Children’s Literature Association, both of which have been pivotal to my graduate experience. I am pleased to have studied at the College of Arts and Letters at The University of Southern Mississippi, and I thank the past and present English Department heads and directors of graduate studies, Michael Mays, Eric L. Tribunella, Steve Moser, Ellen Weinauer, and Monika Gehlawat, for supporting the research, creative writing, and teaching of its graduate students. Further, I am thankful for my MA experiences in the Department of Language, Literature, and Philosophy at v Georgia Southern University, particularly David Dudley’s guidance and Richard Flynn’s selflessness. Librarians are a scholar’s best friends, and while I benefited from interacting with several of the librarians at the Cook and McCain libraries, Ellen Ruffin, Nadine Philips, Paul McCarver, Jennifer Brannock, and Durless Lumpkin have in various ways been exceptionally kind, gracious, and helpful in diligently responding to my many requests. I have heard that influential teachers are often the last people to slip from a person’s memory. If so, I am fortunate to have had a lifetime of strong teachers. I am indebted to Melba Todd, Francis Creech, Dana Durden, Ann Youmans, Martha Ward, and Judy McWhorter for teaching me how to read and do book reports; to David Lamb for teaching me how to conjugate verbs and diagram sentences; and to Sally Grover for teaching me how to debate. Most importantly, though, I am indebted to Sally Grover for introducing me to Shakespeare. Thank you. My experiences in Willingham Hall and Knight Hall at Mercer University are among the most significant of my life. In those halls, I learned from a number of brilliant faculty, and though some of the most influential experiences were with professors whom may no longer remember me, these individuals remain vital to my life. I am grateful to Charlotte Thomas and Tom Trimble for refining my abilities to question; to Andrew Silver and Mary Alice Morgan for introducing me to gender theory; and to John Stege and Diana Stege for fanning my desires to study early modern literature. I discovered that I was a teacher, however, because of Anya Krugovoy Silver and Stephen Bluestone, whose beautiful teaching suggests that all teachers should be poets. vi I also am grateful, despite however unconventional to say so, to William Shakespeare, whom I consider my most personal teacher and mentor. Thank you for writing texts that reward rereading and sustained my interests and interrogation throughout this work. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................