To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Shakespeare's plays.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Shakespeare's plays'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Shakespeare's plays.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Markidou, Vasiliki. "Shakespeare's Greek plays." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.533059.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis traces the development of Shakespeare's conceptualisation of ancient and early modem Greece through an analysis of his Greek plays. Contrary to the numerous studies of Shakespeare's Roman plays, very little interest has been paid to his Greek ones. The single extensive study conducted on the subject to the present, has focused exclusively on the structural interrelation between classical Greece and Renaissance Britain, failing to take into consideration early modern Greece. The specific thesis aims at filling this crucial gap. It sets about to demonstrate that Shakespeare's contemporary Greece was equally, if not in some ways more important, than classical Greece as a moving force in the creation of the Shakespearean reek plays. Reading these literary texts through a historicist approach and in conjunction with a wide variety of other discursive forms ranging from travelogues to ambassadorial reports to historiographies, this thesis demonstrates the deeply contradictory role of Greece in both sustaining and dislocating Renaissance English authority. It reveals that Elizabethan and Jacobean England struggled to achieve selfrepresentation and establish itself as an imperial authority through an emulation of classical Greek cultural, linguistic and imperial models, while simultaneously endeavouring to break free from the overdominant influence of these models and establish an independent identity. At the same time, Renaissance England's ambition to achieve self-representation was unsettled by its anxiety over the vulnerability of Europe's eastern borders, deepened by the subjection of early modem Greece to the Otttoman Empire. Shakespeare's Greek plays are informed by and engage with these particular tensions. The introduction outlines the parameters of this study and explains the choice of texts. The first chapter reads Shakespeare's first dramatic poem, Venus and Adonis, as the playwright's call to Elizabethan England to abandon its emulation of classical Greek language and devolop its own instead. The second chapter focuses on The Comedy of Errors as a Shakespeareane xploration of England's effort to forge itself as different to both the Ottoman Empire and early modern Greece and its inability to achieve such a goal due to its confrontation with an Eastern `other' who is both a reflection of the self and determinately alien. This blurring of boundaries is further highlighted in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play dramatises the dissolution of strict binary oppositions such as the Athenian city and the forest, the elevated classical Greece and the degraded early modem one, and the stereotypical differences between the two sexes by effeminating men and emasculating women. The fourth chapter analyzes Troilus and Cressida as a Shakespeareans atire of the breakdown of the classical world which disrupts the use of the Troy legend as a tool of political propaganda by both Elizabeth and James I. The last three plays of the thesis, written well into the Jacobean era, are analysed in relation to James's and Henry's courts. Timon of Athens satirizes the fall of the Athenian civilisation in order to critique Jacobean England and its decadent monarch. Pericles is read as a dramatisation of the dream of proto-capitalistic Jacobean England's redemption by its re-naissance of feudal values, its engagement in a war against the infidels and its solidification of a Christian Renaissance English identity. The seventh and last chapter examines The Two Noble Kinsmen as a call for Jacobean England to resuscitate its decayed chivalric ethos by abandoning its imitation of Greek antiquity and engaging in a more introspective process, a return to its Gothic origins.
2
Kingsley-Smith, Jane Elizabeth. "Banishment in Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1999. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4461/.
Full textAbstract:
'Banished' - the word resounds in many Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, particularly in those of Shakespeare. This thesis examines the drama of banishment, that is, the sentence, lamentation, displacement, and metamorphosis of the exile in Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Henry IV, As You Like It, King Lear, Coriolanus and The Tempest. To appreciate the rich and polysemous nature of 'banished' in Shakespeare's society I have considered a number of legal, historical and literary sources which reveal certain tropes of exile. The poet of Ovid's Tristia and Plato's Republic, the beast/god of Aristotle's Politics, the seventeenth-century colonialist, the Petrarchan lover, are all examples of the archetypes against which Shakespeare's banished characters fashion themselves. For banishment is a process of annihilation and of self-creation, and as such it raises various questions about identity in Shakespeare's plays. The possibility of its destruction and transformation reveals identity to be a fictional construct, based on ideology not inherent nature or right. This suggestion that the social distinctions between men are equally fictional gives a particular frisson to the juxtaposition of the exiled king and the naked beggar, to the transformation of greatness into barbarousness, that is so often staged on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage through banishment.
3
Cephus, Heidi Nicole. "Corporeal Judgment in Shakespeare's Plays." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1062843/.
Full textAbstract:
In this dissertation, I examine the complex role that the body played in early modern constructions of judgment. Moving away from an overreliance on anti-theatrical texts as the authority on the body in Shakespeare's plays, my project intervenes in the field Shakespearean studies by widening the lens through which scholars view the body's role in the early modern theater. Through readings of four plays—Richard II, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Winter's Tale—I demonstrate that Shakespeare uses a wide range of ideas about the human body from religious, philosophical, medical, and cultural spheres of thought to challenge Puritan accusations that the public theater audience is incapable of rational judgment. The first chapter outlines the parameters of the project. In Chapter 2, I argue that Richard II draws parallels between the theatrical community and the community created through the sacramental experiences of baptism and communion to show that bodies play a crucial role in establishing common experience and providing an avenue for judgment. In Chapter 3, I argue that Shakespeare establishes correspondences between bodily and social collaboration to show how both are needed for the memory-making project of the theater. In the next chapter, I show how Shakespeare appropriates what early moderns perceived of as the natural vulnerability in English bodies to suggest the passionate responses associated with impressionability can actually be sources of productive judgment and self-edification. I argue the storm models this passionate judgment, providing a guide for audience behavior. In Chapter 5, I argue that the memories created by and within the women in The Winter's Tale evoke the tradition of housewifery and emphasize the female role in preservation. Female characters stand in for hidden female contributors to the theater and expose societal blindness to women's work. Through each of these chapters, I argue that Shakespeare's plays emphasize the value of bodily experience and suggest that the audience take up what I have termed "corporeal judgment."
4
Mackenzie, Anna F. "Troubling women, troubling genre : Shakespeare's unruly characters." Thesis, University of Chester, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10034/613740.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis brings the performativity of William Shakespeare’s plays into focus; in presenting an alternative approach to his works, I show how literary criticism can be reinvigorated. Dramatic works demonstrate that, in their theatrical world, everything is mutable, and capable of evolving and changing, negating stability or reliability. Why, then, should what I term monogeneric approaches (forms of analysis that allocate one genre to plays, adopting a priori ideas as opposed to recognising processes of dramatic construction) to criticism remain prevalent in Shakespearean scholarship? Performativity, as defined by Judith Butler, is a concept that focuses on the dynamic constitution of a subject, rather than on the end result alone (whether ‘female’ for gender, or, for example, ‘comedy’ for plays). In establishing an analogical relationship between the performativity of gender and the performance of dramatic works, I offer new, interpretive possibilities for dramatic works, moving away from monogeneric methods. Constructing a method of analysis based on performativity allows an approach that recognises and privileges dramatic dynamism and characterisation. The role of female characters is vital in Shakespeare’s works: we see defiant, submissive, calculating, principled and overwhelmingly multifaceted performances from these characters who, I argue, influence the courses that plays take. This thesis joins a conversation that began in 335BCE with Aristotle’s Poetics. In acknowledging and interrogating previous scholarship on genre in Shakespeare’s works, I trace monogeneric themes in analysis from Aristotle, through A.C. Bradley, through to later twentieth- and twenty-first-century critics. I challenge the practice of allocating genre based on plot features, including weddings and deaths; such actions are not conclusively representative of one genre alone. To enable this interrogation, I establish relationships between theories such as Nicolas Bourriaud’s work on artistic exchange; Jacques Derrida’s hypothesis on participation and belonging; and feminist research by scholars including Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Performance analysis is a vital component of this thesis, alongside textual analysis. In a number of cases, multiple performances of a dramatic work are considered to illustrate the fascinating variety with which the text is translated from page to stage and the impact of different directorial decisions. I use the term ‘textual analysis’ to include the varying editions of Shakespeare’s plays, and to consider that every Complete Works publication is not, in fact, complete. The existence of quarto texts makes clear an important process of dramatic evolution, particularly when dramatic works and their allocated genres shift between quarto and Folio versions. Such textual instability highlights the difficulties inherent in applying singular identities to dynamic works. In locating performativity at the core of dramatic works and emphasising the key role of female characters, this thesis brings performance to the fore and presents an alternative ‘lens of interpretation’ for readers, watchers, teachers and scholars of Shakespeare.
5
Rist, Thomas Charles Kenelm. "Counter-Reformation politics in Shakespeare's 'romance ' plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.397133.
Full text
6
Bates, Lauren Catherine. "The role of prayer in Shakespeare's plays." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/25019.
Full textAbstract:
There has been a turn to religion in Shakespeare Studies by scholars like Kastan, Swift and Shugar in recent years, and this turn has uncovered a wealth of insight that had previously been obscured. I contribute to this recovery of the spiritual dimension of Shakespeare's work by tackling the question of what prayer does in his plays. I place these performed prayers in their historical and theological contexts, as well as analyse their roles dramatically and thematically within the plays. Prayer as a dramatic form is unique in that it falls between a dialogue and a monologue, pointing to something different in terms of rhetoric and content. Characters evoke an invisible being to whom they bare their souls, and the audience is privy to this conversation but not addressed by it. Awareness is created of something other, something beyond, filling the space of the stage with the suggestion of an alternate reality, another terrain beyond the earthly realm. Prayer is a conduit between characters and this alternate reality, a conduit through which multiple human impulses are conducted. I focus specifically on how filial attachment, erotic desire, violence, and visions of citizenship are conducted via prayer, and what happens when any of these impulses and visions is misdirected. Through the ability of prayer to conduct this array of human impulses, I demonstrate Shakespeare's complex engagement with the metaphysical realm, especially as his plays dramatize characters' move to embrace the divine.
7
Murphy, Sean Edward. "The language of self-talk in Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2014. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/89019/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis reports an original approach to the language of self-talk in Shakespeare’s plays. Having established that self-talk is a form of discourse worthy of study, and potentially distinguishable from dialogue in terms of language, I ask two questions: 1. What is the nature of self-talk? 2. What language forms are characteristic of self-talk? The second question is really a subsidiary of the first in that it focuses specifically on the linguistic nature of self-talk. In Chapter 2, I begin to answer these questions by drawing on theories in stylistics, (im)politeness, literary criticism and methods employed in corpus linguistics. In doing so, I show how this research breaks new ground by approaching the language of self-talk from innovative angles, for example, by building and studying a corpus of self-talk. Chapter 3 describes the construction of this corpus, together with a dialogue corpus against which to compare the former. Chapters 4 and 5 address the first question. In Chapter 4, qualitative analysis of the self-talk corpus provides insights into the nature of self-talk as discourse, showing, for example, how speakers may linguistically split themselves in two. The focus in Chapter 5 shifts to theories of (im)politeness, and the ways in which self-talkers use linguistic strategies to justify their own social value, or even attack it by being impolite to themselves. Chapter 6 addresses the second question by using automatic analysis of the self-talk corpus, in conjunction with the dialogue corpus, to reveal characteristic language forms. Among others, these include DREAM, EYES, NATURE, and COMES. Chapter 7 uncovers characteristic combinations such as AND YET, I AM and I WILL. Self-talk in comedy, history and tragedy is typified by words such as LOVE, KING and GODS respectively.
8
Chiang, Y. C. "Renaissance queenship in William Shakespeare's English history plays." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2012. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1344188/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores how queens in Shakespeare’s English history plays manipulate virtues, space, and memory to embody a specific demeanour in the contexts of early modern England. In the late 1990s, Jean E. Howard’s and Phyllis Rackin’s Engendering a Nation established a feminist study of Shakespeare’s English history plays, focusing on how women support or undermine patriarchal authorities. Yet analysing women’s words and actions in the light of nationalism, New Historicism, and women’s traditional roles as daughters, wives, and mothers within feminism restricts potential readings of women in early modern English literature. This thesis then studies the most powerful women, the queens, to see how they establish themselves as models or counterexamples for women. It first distinguishes between queens regnant, regent, and consort, and investigates the relationship between queenship and kingship. It then traces the three stages of the queens’ ‘career’: the pursuit, practice, and residue of queenship. The ‘pursuit’ analyses how queens-to-be implement their virtues in accepting and rejecting kings’ favours. The queenly virtues parallel and contrast to Machiavelli’s idea of ‘virtú’ and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of ‘cultural capital’. Entitled to exceptional royal status, queens transgress the boundaries of gender and space divisions, while their subversive behaviours are often endorsed by patriarchs. Finally, when queens are widowed, deposed, or divorced, they engage themselves in writing histories; they become monuments presenting alternative memories and insubordinate voices against patriarchal grand narratives. Shakespeare’s queens create iconographical paradigms, which are so recognisable and iconic that their queenship is reiteratively reproduced and appropriated in arts and real practices of later periods. Using early modern arguments and modern theories, this thesis provides a synthesised reading of queens in Shakespeare’s English histories, shedding new light on the position of women in early modern England.
9
Chen, Xing. "Reconsidering Shakespeare's 'Lateness' : studies in the last plays." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10579.
Full textAbstract:
Shakespeare’s last plays, because of their apparent similarity in thematic concern, dramatic arrangements and stylistic features, are often considered by modern scholarship to form a unique group in his canon. Their departure from the preceding great tragedies and their status as an artist’s last works have long aroused scholarly interest in Shakespeare’s lateness—the study, essentially, of the relationship between his advancing years and his last-period dramatic output, encompassing questions such as ‘Why did Shakespeare write the last plays?’, ‘What influenced his writing?’, and ‘What is the significance of these plays?’. Answers to the questions are varied and often contradictory, partly because the subject is the elusive Shakespeare, and partly because the concept of lateness as an artistic phenomenon is itself unstable and problematic. This dissertation reconsiders Shakespeare’s lateness by reading the last plays in the light of, but not bound by current theories of late style and writing. The analysis incorporates traditional literary, stylistic and biographic approach in various combinations. The exploration of the works (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen), while underlined by an interest in their shared concern with the effect, power and the possibilities of art and language, also places an emphasis on each play’s special, distinct features and contexts. A pattern of steady artistic development is revealed, bespeaking Shakespeare’s continued professional energy and ongoing self-challenge, which are, in fact, at the centre of his working methods throughout his career. The dissertation therefore proposes that Shakespeare’s ‘lateness’ is in fact a continuation of his sustained dramatic development instead of, in terms of working attitude and methods, a brand new, sharply different phase, and that his last plays are the result of his, as it were, ‘working as usual’. It also suggests that occasionally ‘ungrouping’ the plays, which frees the critic from perspectives preconditioned by classifying them under labels such as ‘romances’ and ‘tragicomedies’, might yield fruitful insight into late Shakespeare.
10
Pritchard, Katie. "Legitimacy, illegitimacy and sovereignty in Shakespeare's British plays." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2011. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/legitimacy-illegitimacy-and-sovereignty-in-shakespeares-british-plays(7e49cddc-804c-4ac3-807f-d3fadacf45f6).html.
Full textAbstract:
'Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Sovereignty in Shakespeare's British Plays' demonstrates how Shakespeare participates in an early modern 'discourse of legitimacy' as described by Robert Zaller. This thesis, however, proposes an interrelated discourse of illegitimacy that is of equal importance to the discourse of legitimacy. A continuum or spectrum of legitimacy values is hypothesised, and seventeenth century optical illusions known as the curious perspective are used as a visual model that defines the inseparable nature of illegitimacy and legitimacy. Illegitimacy was a state traditionally defined as restrictive, and stereotyped as stigmatised by historians. Examination of the situation of early modern illegitimates in England, however, suggests a more inclusive attitude to illegitimates than has been previously acknowledged.The plays under discussion are under studied as a group; the thesis examines the British-set history and romance plays, defining them as 'British plays'. This is because one of the central implications of the discourse of (il)legitimacy is that it forms an evaluation of nationhood in early modern England and Britain. Using recent reconsiderations of national identity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this thesis identifies a strong national sentiment in Shakespeare's drama. The change from an Elizabethan English monarchy to a Jacobean British one instigated a reconsideration of what national identity might entail, using the discourse of legitimacies and illegitimacies to evaluate this developing concept. 'Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Sovereignty in Shakespeare's British Plays' identifies how these discourses also link to other related themes in the British plays. The concept of sovereignty, as the thesis title suggests, is strongly linked to ideas of legitimacy and illegitimacy, with examples of the discourse used in this context drawn from Shakespeare's works and a wider range of texts. Identification of the sovereign with national allegiance, to a certain degree, links these themes, yet Shakespeare also dramatises an independent national sentiment in the British plays, revealing developing nationhood onstage. National sentiment also infuses another area in which the discourse of (il)legitimacy is used by Shakespeare; the legal debates of the era are reflected in the British plays; a contemporary conflict between common and civil law, and the aim of many lawyers to rediscover an ancient constitution of Britain, especially in the area of patrilinear inheritance, is acknowledged throughout in Shakespeare's use of legitimacy images and metaphors. As 'metaphors' suggests, illegitimacy is an increasingly conceptual issue in the thesis. Shakespeare uses ideas of illegitimacy to inform many areas; in particular a kind of validity or truth. A chapter on metaphorical illegitimacy demonstrates how illegitimacy and legitimacy language is suggestive of other issues. The invalidity of a usurped kingdom, a false kingship, is negotiated through illegitimacy discourses in Richard II, as the attempt to validate leadership in the second tetralogy is articulated with a discourse of totalising masculine legitimacy. 'Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Sovereignty in Shakespeare's British Plays' works within a contextual framework to locate the language and concepts Shakespeare dramatises in a wider environment, reflecting the issues of law, sovereignty and nation that existed in early modern English and British society.
11
Collington, Philip David. "O word of fear, imaginary cuckoldry in Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0007/NQ35129.pdf.
Full text
12
Edwardes, Lorelei Kaye. "New historicism and Shakespeare's first tetralogy of history plays /." Title page and introduction only, 1995. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09are2477.pdf.
Full text
13
Culpeper, Jonathan. "Language and characterisation with special reference to Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.238966.
Full text
14
Fenstermaker, Rosemary A. "From tragedy to romance forgiveness in Shakespeare's last plays /." Instructions for remote access. Click here to access this electronic resource. Access available to Kutztown University faculty, staff, and students only, 1994. http://www.kutztown.edu/library/services/remote_access.asp.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1994.<br>Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2843. Abstract precedes thesis as 2 preliminary leaves. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-115).
15
Orford, Peter Robert. "Rewriting history : exploring the individuality of Shakespeare's history plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2006. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1779/.
Full textAbstract:
‘Rewriting History’ is a reappraisal of Shakespeare’s history cycle, exploring its origins, its popularity and its effects before challenging its dominance on critical and theatrical perceptions of the history plays. A critical history of the cycle shows how external factors such as patriotism, bardolatory, character-focused criticism and the editorial decision of the First Folio are responsible for the cycle, more so than any inherent aspects of the plays. The performance history of the cycle charts the initial innovations made in the twentieth century which have affected our perception of characters and key scenes in the texts. I then argue how the cycle has become increasingly restrictive, lacking innovation and consequently undervaluing the potential of the histories. Having accounted for the history of the cycle to date, the second part of my thesis looks at the consequent effects upon each history play, and details how each play can be performed and analysed individually. I close my thesis with the suggestion that a compromise between individual and serial perceptions is warranted, where both ideas are acknowledged equally for their effects and defects. By broadening our ideas about these plays we can appreciate the dramatic potential locked within them.
16
Lee, John. "Shakespeare's Hamlet and the controversies of self." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.295030.
Full text
17
Suprenant, Susann E. "Shakespeare re-visions : representations of female characters in appropriations and radical performance adaptations of Shakespeare's plays /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9978601.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.<br>Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-197). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9978601.
18
Thomas, Alun Deian. "The making and remaking of history in Shakespeare's History Plays." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2012. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/42105/.
Full textAbstract:
History is a problem for the history plays. The weight of ‘true’ history, of fact, puts pressure on the dramatic presentation of history. Not fiction and not fact, the plays occupy the interstitial space between these opposites, the space of drama. Their position between the binary opposites of fact and fiction allows the history plays to play with history. They view history as a problem to be solved, and the different ways in which each play approaches the problem of history gives us a glimpse of how they attempt to engage and deal with the problem of creating dramatic history. Each history play rewrites the plays that preceded it; the plays present ‘history’ as fluid and shifting as competing narratives and interpretations of the past come into conflict with each other, requiring the audience to act as historians in order to construct their own narrative of events. In this way the plays dramatise the process of remaking history. This can be seen in the relationship between the two parts of Henry IV, which restage the same narrative in a different emotional key, and the way that Henry IV’s retelling of the events of Richard II from his own perspective at the conclusion of 1 Henry IV forces the audience to re-evaluate the events of the earlier play, reinterpreting the dramatic past and imaginatively rewriting the play in light of the new perspective gained on events. The history plays thus create a new, dramatic history, a history without need for historical precedent. The plays deliberately signal their departure from ‘fact’ through anachronism, deviation from chronicle history and wholesale dramatic invention. In this sense the plays deliberately frustrate audience expectations; knowledge of chronicle history does not provide foreknowledge of what will happen onstage. History in the theatre is new and unpredictable, perhaps closer in spirit to the uncertainty of the historical moment rather than the reassuring textual narrative of the chronicles.
19
Farrar, Ryan D. ""A Better Where to Find"| Utopian Politics in Shakespeare's Plays." Thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3687677.
Full textAbstract:
<p> Utopias often elicit visions of full-fledged societies that operate more successfully in contrast to a society of the present based on a principle of cognitive estrangement where the daily routines of a new civilization strike readers as strange and advantageous. While William Shakespeare's drama rarely portrays radical societies that speak directly to the fantastic nature of utopia, it does feature moments that draw attention to desires for social change, presenting glimmers of the utopian impulse throughout his work. In this dissertation, I use utopia as critical approach for analyzing Shakespeare's comedies, romances, and tragedies, specifically <i>As You Like It, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet,</i> and <i>Macbeth.</i> While critics have approached the <i>The Tempest</i> as a utopian play, other works by Shakespeare do not receive much attention from this perspective. This dissertation addresses the lack of attention paid to other plays, illustrating the degree to which the health of the state as a theme featured prominently in his works. I argue that the desires expressed by characters in these plays capture the wishes and despairs of entire social ranks during the Elizabethan and Jacobean, connecting their wishes and fantasies to utopian and dystopian analysis. <i>As You Like It</i> and <i>The Tempest</i> feature utopic settings and address themes of colonialism and egalitarianism. Yet, rather than present locations of harmony, these plays explore the problems and contradictions that spring from the attempts to actualize a utopian climate. Characters in <i> The Taming of the Shrew,</i> <i>Twelfth Night</i>, and <i> Romeo and Juliet</i> possess radical aspirations, and they discover opportunities to transform their identities as it relates to their respective societies. However, these characters ultimately fail to rupture the ideologies of their societies. In my final chapter, I argue how dystopian themes arise from the depictions of tyranny and treachery in <i>Hamlet</i> and <i> Macbeth.</i> The transgressions of the Kings in both plays plague their kingdoms. Tackling Shakespeare from a utopian lens illustrates that rather than forming alternative, ideal societies, the concept can be understood as an ambiguous, unfinished dialectical process that strives for social betterment. </p>
20
Keller, Stefan Daniel. "The development of Shakespeare's rhetoric a study of nine plays." Tübingen Francke, 2004. http://d-nb.info/994297769/04.
Full text
21
Suman, Sonia Davi. "Oral-visual contradiction : seeing and hearing in Shakespeare's history plays." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/28626.
Full textAbstract:
Scholarship in the latter half of the twentieth century did much to rehabilitate Shakespeare’s early histories into the canon. Discarded on the grounds of collaborative authorship or lack of unity, the Henry VI trilogy has perhaps suffered the most. This dissertation brings together sensory and historiographical theories in order to demonstrate that the first tetralogy exposes the limitations of historical narrative. Historical ‘truth’ is easily distorted: initially through the individual’s failure to interpret sensory information and then through the writer who records those events. These fundamental questions about the credibility of knowledge and truth remain a central concern throughout the second tetralogy, King John and Henry VIII. The questionable truth-telling powers of sight and sound independent from one another are a recurring motif in Shakespeare’s histories; skewed perception or selective hearing can have disastrous consequences. Motives are frequently ambiguous and the plays abound in trial scenes that are never satisfactorily resolved. Often the audience are invited to accept a ‘truth’ that contradicts the evidence of the play either in its text, its performance or in comparison to contemporary history plays. Henry VIII, with its titular claim that ‘All is True’ alongside glaring historical omissions, is an example of the early modern obsession with paradox. Cranmer’s highly selective presentation of a glorious untroubled future, though clearly not true, is a satisfying and restorative narrative. A similar contradiction reveals itself in my case study of preaching at St Mary Spital. At this event, preachers and City Fathers collude in a highly selective presentation of London as a charitable and exemplary city, though this may well have been contradicted by other visual evidence on the occasion. Both plays and sermons thus presented the paradox of a fictive narrative that could be openly contradicted, but that simultaneously provided consolation.
22
Seymour, Laura. "Actions that a (hu)man might play : a cognitive study of gesture in Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2016. http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/229/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis uses cognitive theory to examine gesture in William Shakespeare’s plays. Cognition involves both thoughts and emotions, and cognitive theory examines thought which is rooted both in the body and its gestures and in the gesturer’s environment. Based on recent neuroscientific findings and laboratory studies into gesture and speech, cognitive theory is a developing discipline that tends to focus on the relationship between gesture, speech, and thought. This was also a preoccupation of early modern writers: theologians, philosophers, and both opponents and defenders of the theatre attempted to understand how gestures could shape as well as be shaped by thought. This thesis examines the similarities and differences between the ways in which Shakespeare and cognitive theory approached these issues. It establishes the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays suggest new ideas for cognitive theorists to study, as well as the ways in which cognitive theory can generate new readings of Shakespeare’s plays. The research for this thesis is based on a database that I made of all the gestures mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, from the earliest quartos to the fourth folio. From this database, I selected the five most common types of gesture and devoted a chapter to each. The chapters examine handclasps, kneeling, kissing, refusals to gesture (or stillness) and striking. Examining these four gestures and the refusal to gesture shows that being performed on stage gives gesture a particularly complex and rich cognitive quality. Gestures acted out on stage are deliberately performed by an actor, but are often designed to be seen as involuntary or unconscious acts on the character’s part. Gestures performed on the Shakespearean stage are thus sites where the thoughts and feelings of the actor and those of the character are intriguingly blurred, making Shakespearean gestures a rich topic for cognitive analysis.
23
Miles, Geoffrey. "Untir'd spirits and formal constancy : Shakespeare's Roman plays and formal constancy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c5830cc5-e1a4-4efa-ae40-98dc4d7eb651.
Full textAbstract:
Critics who have noted the importance of Stoic constancy in Shakespeare 's Roman plays have failed to recognise the full complexity of the idea. It has two forms, both derived from the Stoic principle of homologia (consistency), and centred on the ideal of being always the same: Seneca's constantia sapientis, the rocklike or godlike virtue of the Stoic sage who is unmoved and unchanged by external circumstances; and Cicero's decorum (De officiis I), virtue as the consistent playing of an appropriate part. Seneca is more concerned with heroic self-sufficiency, Cicero with social virtue, but both forms of the ideal contain a tension between concern for inner truth and external appearances. In the late sixteenth century Stoic constancy becomes a subject of fierce debate as it is revived by the Neostoics, who stress the opposition of constancy and "opinion." Shakespeare's view of this debate may derive particularly from Montaigne, who moves from a Neostoic position to a sceptical critique of constancy as unattainable by inconstant man, and as less desirable than self-knowledge and flexibility. Reading North's Plutarch with these themes in mind, Shakespeare sees in the lives of Brutus, Antony, and Coriolanus an Aristotelian pattern of ideal, defective, and excessive constancy - a pattern which he modifies, in the light of his understanding of Seneca, Cicero, and Montaigne, in the three Roman plays. He explores the tension which exists between the Senecan and Ciceronian forms of constancy, and indeed within each of them: a tension between heroic Stoic virtue ("untir'd spirits") and public role-playing ("forrral constancy"). Julius Caesar shows Roman constancy as essentially "formal," resting on pretence and self-deception; in Rome, ironically, constancy depends on "opinion." Coriolanus, by taking constancy to an extreme, demonstrates the self-destructive contradictions within it. Antony and Cleopatra, by contrast, embrace a Montaigne-like ideal of "infinite variety" and inconsistent decorum; Antony fails, but Cleopatra achieves in death a paradoxical fusion of constancy and mutability.
24
Shields, Timothy Brian. "Seething brains : images of madness in the world of Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.390134.
Full text
25
Norton, John J. "Humiliation, redemption, and reformation theology in Shakespeare's tragedies and late plays." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2008. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20300/.
Full textAbstract:
Humiliation has a powerful presence in Shakespeare's tragedies and late plays. With an unusual ability to reform and redeem, humiliation is not employed in these plays as one might expect. Cast in a form much influenced by the Protestant theology of Shakespeare's England, the humiliation that falls upon some of Shakespeare's most prominent characters is one that offers great hope and clarity. Drawn from the theology of three prominent Protestant Reformers, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Richard Hooker, humiliation in Shakespeare's Hamlet serves to save the fragile queen and her sinister new husband from certain damnation. In The Tempest Prospero is humiliated in like fashion. This experience results in a more-than-magical reformation that turns the island into a place of reconciliation. King Lear's humiliation cures his faulty vision, allowing him to recognize a true love that pursues him with great passion and sacrifice. In Henry VIII the great Cardinal is averted from certain damnation, humiliation drawing him from a life of violence and manipulation. The jealous tyrants in The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and Othello are powerfully humiliated. This humiliation allows Leontes, Posthumus, and Othello to be released from their fearful bondage, at last made capable of seeing the true love of their wives. This thesis casts significant new light upon how much Shakespeare was influenced by the Protestant Reformation. Through a detailed examination of the use of theological language and concepts in the plays examined, this thesis argues that Reformation theology affords a powerful lens through which to read the journeys of the protagonists in Shakespearean tragedy and late plays. This powerful lens of Reformation theology brings to focus the way in which Shakespeare transforms, with great mastery, the humiliation of a man into the redemption of a soul.
26
Hjul, Lauren Martha. "The family in Shakespeare's plays: a study of South African revisions." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001832.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis provides a detailed consideration of the family in Shakespeare’s canon and the engagement therewith in three South African novels: Hill of Fools (1976) by R. L. Peteni, My Son’s Story (1990) by Nadine Gordimer, and Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee. The study is divided into an introduction, three chapters each addressing one of the South African novels and its relationship with a Shakespeare text or texts, and a conclusion. The introductory chapter provides an analysis of the two strands of criticism in which the thesis is situated – studies of the family in Shakespeare and studies of appropriations of Shakespeare – and discusses the ways in which these two strands may be combined through a detailed discussion of the presence of power dynamics in the relationship between parent and child in all of the texts considered. The three chapters each contextualise the South African text and provide detailed discussions of the family dynamics within the relevant texts, with particular reference to questions of authority and autonomy. The focus in each chapter is determined by the nature of the intertextual relationship between the South African novel and the Shakespearean text being discussed. Thus, the first chapter, “The Dissolution of Familial Structures in Hill of Fools” considers power dynamics in the family as an inherent part of the Romeo and Juliet genre, of which William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is but a part. Similarly, the impact of a socio-political identity, and the secrecy it necessitates, is the focus of the second chapter, “Fathers, Sons and Legacy in My Son’s Story” as is the role of Shakespeare and literature within South Africa. These concerns are connected to the novel’s use of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, King Lear, and Hamlet. In the third chapter, “Reclaiming Agency through the Daughter in Disgrace and The Tempest”, I expand on Laurence Wright’s argument that Disgrace is an engagement with The Tempest and consider ways in which the altered power dynamic between father and daughter results in the reconciliation of the father figure with society. The thesis thus addresses the tension between parental bonds and parental bondage
27
Demmen, Jane Elizabeth Judson. "A corpus stylistic investigation of the language style of Shakespeare's plays in the context of other contemporaneous plays." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.659203.
Full textAbstract:
Shakespeare's plays occupy a uniquely prominent position in English language and literature. Shakespeare was, however, one among a number of other successful and popular playwrights of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and, when examined on an empirical basis, his language style has much in common with that of his peers. In this corpus stylistic study, I investigate similarities and differences between the language in Shakespeare's plays and in a range of plays by a selection of other contemporaneous dramatists. My quantitative data is extracted from an existing corpus containing Shakespeare's First Folio, and a new, specialised parallel corpus of plays from similar dates and genres written by other contemporaneous dramatists. This new corpus was constructed during the study. The corpus linguistic methods I use are simple frequency, keyness (Scott e.g. 1999,2000) and Baker's (2011) new concept of "lockwords". Simple frequency and keyness (linguistic items occurring with comparatively low or high statistical frequency) are established corpus linguistic methods for investigating language styles in literary texts. However, as Baker (2004:349) argues, keywords highlight only the differences between texts. Similarities are also important, to contextualise differences and avoid overstating their stylistic implications. Moreover, as I show in this study, empirical evidence of similarities is of stylistic interest. It reveals preferences for language style features which Shakespeare and other contemporaneous dramatists shared, and which constitute features of the register of Early Modern English drama. I examine three types of language units in each corpus: single words, word clusters and semantic domains. I extract word and word cluster data using Scott's (1999) WordSmith Tools and semantic domain data using Rayson's (2009) Wmatrix software tools. My findings hav(} implications for (a) the distinctiveness of Shakespeare's style, (b) the register of EM odE drama and (c) methods for investigating language similarities using corpus linguistic methodology .
28
Lindsey, Robert. "I ha't from the play-bookes : historical authenticity and the Victorian reading of Shakespeare's English history plays." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270110.
Full text
29
Oberer, Karen. "The arc of character: medieval stock types in Shakespeare's English history plays." Thesis, McGill University, 2012. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=106396.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation focuses on practices of stock characterisation as they are represented in literature and drama of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in England, with particular emphasis on the transformations of social types from medieval literature to early modern drama, specifically Shakespeare's English history plays. Its wider focus is on the social context in which medieval authors created their characters, and on the conventional construction of medieval characters from what Elizabeth Fowler defines as "social persons." I argue that stock characters allow for permeability between past history and present performance. Attendant on their deployment in literature and drama is their recollection of past literary and cultural traditions. This is why Shakespeare employs them to such great effect in his English history plays: stock characters have an overt purchase on the past that makes history more socially immediate to early modern audiences. Shakespeare's stock characters recall medieval privileging of family and community, and thus are particularly suitable to the English histories' narratives of a country subsumed by family tragedy. The dissertation focuses on four social persons which Shakespeare uses to construct stock characters: the Garcio, the Alewife, the Corrupt Clergyman and the Romance Heroine. He employs these social persons in four characters: the Bastard Faulconbridge in King John, Mistress Quickly in the second "tetralogy," Cardinal Beaufort in the first "tetralogy" and Queen Isabel in Richard II. This dissertation is intended to provoke reconsideration of the stock characters as "flat" stereotypes, and to elaborate upon their complex roles in literary and dramatic history.<br>Cette thèse examine la représentation des personnages types dans la littérature et le drame en Angleterre du quatorzième au seizième siècle en mettant particulièrement l'accent sur les transformations des types sociaux entre la littérature médiévale et le drame de la Renaissance, surtout dans les pièces historiques britanniques de Shakespeare. Au plus large, la thèse porte sur le contexte social dans lequel les auteurs médiévaux ont façonné leurs personnages et sur la fabrication conventionnelle des personnages médiévaux à partir des « personnes sociales » telles que définies par Elizabeth Fowler. Les personnages types, je soutiens, créent un espace de perméabilité entre l'histoire du passé et la performance au moment présent. L'emploi de ces personnages dans la littérature et dans le drame est associé à leurs souvenirs des traditions littéraires et culturelles du passé. C'est pourquoi Shakespeare s'en sert si bien dans ses pièces historiques : les personnages types ont une prise sur le passé qui rend l'histoire plus immédiate sur le plan social pour les spectateurs de la Renaissance. Les personnages types de Shakespeare rapellent l'emphase sur la famille et la communauté pendant l'époque médiévale, ce qui les rend particulièrement appropriés aux récits des pièces historiques d'un pays subsumé par la tragédie familiale.Cette thèse porte sur quatre personnes sociales à partir desquelles Shakespeare fabrique des personnages types, soit le « garcio », la femme du tavernier, le curé corrompu, et l'héroïne des histoires romanesques. Il a recours à ces personnes sociales dans quatre personnages, soit le bâtard Faulconbridge dans La vie et la mort du roi Jean, Madame Quickly dans la deuxième tétralogie, Cardinal Beaufort dans la première tétralogie, et la Reine Isabel dans Richard II. Le but de cette thèse est de provoquer une reconsidération des personnages types comme des stéréotypes « plats » et d'élaborer sur leurs rôles complexes dans l'histoire littéraire et dramatique.
30
McQueen, Alexandria C. "Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Shakespeare's Use of Source Material in Three Plays." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/309.
Full textAbstract:
In my thesis, I discuss and analyze William Shakespeare’s utilization and adaptation of source texts within three of his dramas: Henry IV, Part I, a history; Twelfth Night, a comedy; and Julius Caesar, a tragedy. By comparing Shakespeare’s adaption of sources to the contemporary United Kingdom intellectual property policies, it becomes possible for me to determine whether Shakespeare’s extensive and popular dramas would violate modern copyright law.
The first chapter, “Printing and Writing in the Early Modern Period,” discusses the development of proprietary interests among the Elizabethan people. I break down the individual components of the printing process in the early modern period and further consider how its creation affected writers and impacted the world at large. Additionally mentioned within this chapter are the United Kingdom’s initial attempts at regulating printed materials among publishers. The availability, pricing, and evolution of printed material is all discussed, as well as the imitative and collaborative writing process among Elizabethan dramatists and poets.
The second chapter, “An Introduction and Brief History of Intellectual Property and Copyright,” addresses the United Kingdom’s current legislation on borrowing and infringing upon creative works. After an introduction to key terms within the intellectual property field, I provide a brief history on the evolution of copyright within the United Kingdom. After a discussion on property protection and rights for literary, dramatic, and artistic works, I cite the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as the key document from which I draw my conclusions on Shakespeare’s infringement of source texts within his plays.
Chapters three, four, and five, focus on the individual analyses of source texts used by Shakespeare within each of his selected plays. While Shakespeare did borrow from a multitude of source texts, I strive to analyze his utilization of content within only his most primary source texts. Each chapter begins with a brief synopsis of the play, characters, and major themes. After each introduction, I devote multiple pages of text to comparing and contrasting Shakespeare’s imitation and utilization of primary source texts within his own works. At the end of each chapter, I calculate the age of each source text as it relates to the public domain and intellectual property law.
Following chapter five, I use the combination of my analyses and personal understanding of copyright to render three separate verdicts on Shakespeare’s infringement of source materials within each of his plays. Alongside each verdict, I provide lawful reasoning for the individual outcome of each case. In the final pages, I draw a conclusion concerning Shakespeare’s infringement of source texts within his plays. It looks like one play clearly breaks the United Kingdom’s copyright laws, one play may or may not depending on further studies, and a third drama clearly does not constitute infringement. Furthermore, I offer a brief commentary on the reigning United Kingdom intellectual property laws based upon my analyses and verdicts.
31
Hartwell, Jonathan William. "'Skill in the construction' : dramaturgy, ideology, and interpretation in Shakespeare's late plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2004. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4484/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the way dramaturgical techniques in Shakespeare's late plays are used to create a complex and radical exploration of the relationship between ideology and interpretation. It links such concerns via the multiple meanings of "construction", illustrated using the scene of reading at the end of Cymbeline, centred upon the prophetic label. In Part I, major reservations are expressed about the standard interpretative paradigms applied to late Shakespearian drama, and their effect on critical understanding. The deficiencies of a "Romance" reading and the problems with traditional attitudes to chronology, authorship, and collaboration are stressed; elements often marginalized as aesthetically inferior are defended; and two related areas of dramaturgical technique, theatrical spectacle and reported action, are emphasized. Part II focuses on reading individual late plays, with special emphasis on Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. It adopts a reconstructed, politicized close reading, concentrating on issues relating to the problematics of interpretation within the plays. Individual chapters highlight different forms of "construction": art, history, truth, authority, display, narrative. Attention is drawn to how reading and interpretation are shown to be always inscribed within power relations and the performative dynamic of language.
32
Elton, Gillian Heather. "Gendered lives : patriarchy and the men and women in Shakespeare's early history plays /." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0007/MQ42373.pdf.
Full text
33
Jancsó, Daniella. "Excitements of reason the presentation of thought in Shakespeare's plays and Wittgenstein's philosophy." Heidelberg Winter, 2006. http://d-nb.info/98605559X/04.
Full text
34
Groves, Beatrice. "Religious language in secular drama : paschal motifs in Shakespeare's early plays (1592-1604)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.404199.
Full text
35
Clare, Robert. "The development of verse and prose in Shakespeare's plays : a theory of interpretation." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.284949.
Full text
36
Sheppard, Philippa. "Tongues of war : studies in the military rhetoric of Shakespeare's English history plays." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.240387.
Full text
37
Colette, Gordon. "Moving passions: theories of affect in Renaissance love discourse and Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/28268.
Full textAbstract:
The 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love, sets Will Shakespeare (and itself) the challenge to "show the nature and truth of love ... to make it [love] true" - with an ideal presentation of Romeo and Juliet. The film finally achieves this by ensuring that Will and Viola end on stage as Romeo and Juliet, playing the parts they respectively inspire. The film, and the play within the film, can achieve the satisfactory embodiment of true love only, it seems, through the replacement of stage lover/player with 'real' lovers. The film attempts to unite love and art, but finds stage representation naturally adverse to its idea of true (authentic) love. Persuasion is similarly suppressed as inimical to the film's notion of art as expressive (of authentic emotion). But, where love is conceived as spectacularly mobile, mimetic and transformative - as I show it was, in the early modem period - to effectively communicate and to affectively produce love are, of necessity, linked. Joseph Roach has pointed persuasively to rhetoric's strong connection with humoral theory. Using texts from Wilson, Wright and Bulwer, I pursue and extend his focus on the early modem passionate, rhetorical actor; the interface between body and mind; and the possibility of powerful rhetorical passions, generated in performance. The film assumes (true) love as an emotion that is rare, elusive and, crucially, authentic. But as a renaissance 'passion', love would have very different qualities. Such passions would be vital, dynamic forces, directly communicable and contagious, commonly available and commonly shared. I argue that love, more properly "affect" or "passion", was frequently valued in the Renaissance, not as a stable locus of inner truth and authenticity (the thinking that necessitates the suppression of the actor in Shakespeare in Love), but for its very ability to 'move' where, in Rosemond Tove's words, "the unity of the process moving: persuading is not disturbed." I look for this movement in a number of Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays, particularly The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labours Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night and examine the forms of passion in compelling topoi that attend love in the plays - Petrarchan tropes powerfully linked to early modem ideas of representation (especially dramatic) and the interaction, in imitation, between bodies and minds. Early modem passions threaten clear distinctions between desires and emotions, body and mind and, importantly, self and other. I argue that, when passions are communicable and shared, the passionating actor participates in ideal forms beyond realistic imitation or personal, interior emotional experience - a process to which the real, ideal love of Shakespeare in Love is superfluous.
38
Khalaf, Elias Mustafa. "Identity, fame and solace in Shakespeare's English history plays excluding the second tetralogy." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.316152.
Full text
39
Banks, Carol Ann. "'Mother-England' : this teeming wombe of royall kings' - finding the female in Shakespeare's histories." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.263026.
Full text
40
Roche, Senga Wallace. "Travesties and burlesques of Shakespeare's plays on the British stage during the nineteenth century." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.281737.
Full text
41
Weiss, David S. "Samuel Daniel's 'First Four Books of the Civil Wars' and Shakespeare's early history plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8165/.
Full textAbstract:
Literary scholars agree that William Shakespeare used Samuel Daniel's First Four Books of the Civil Wars as a source for his play Richard II, launching an interaction between the authors that lasted for many years. What has not been recognized, however, is that they may have influenced each other's works on English history before the publication of Daniel's epic poem. Textual, bibliographical and biographical evidence suggests that Daniel borrowed from some of Shakespeare's earliest works, the Henry VI plays, while writing The First Four Books, and that Shakespeare could have used a pre-publication manuscript of The Civil Wars to write Richard II. A review of extant versions of The Civil Wars, the Henry VI plays and Richard II reveals a complex relationship between the authors as they wrote and revised works on the Wars of the Roses while both had connections to the Countess of Pembroke and the Earl of Essex. This analysis illuminates the works while disclosing one of the first instances of Shakespeare's plays inspiring another artist, challenging images of Daniel as a poet who disdained theater and Shakespeare as a playwright who cared only about the popularity of his works on stage.
42
Garafalo, Sanner. "'Most wonderful!' : a contextual study of twinship in early modern drama and Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3937/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines twins as objects of wonder in early modern drama. In Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park divide the experience of wonder into three separate emotional reactions: horror, repugnance, and pleasure. The thesis builds on this model, arguing that, as objects of wonder, twins were capable of inspiring this range of emotional responses which could, consequently, be capitalized on in a dramatic work. The first three chapters consider non-Shakespearean drama and its depiction of twins as wonderful, tracing how twins emerge as either objects of horror, repugnance, or pleasure in these plays and how these depictions resonate with other circulating discussions of twinship. Chapter 1 examines the horrific depiction of twins in The Duchess of Malfi and The Cruel Brother and its relation to the monstrous and prodigious birth of the early modern broadside. Chapter 2 investigates the repugnant twins of The twins and The Love-sick Court in light of the early modern medical understanding of twins as errors in nature. And Chapter 3 begins to reveal how more pleasurable associations can override these horrific and repugnant connotations, as shown in Changes, Ignoramus, and Senile Odium. However, all of this builds toward a final analysis of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, demonstrating how Shakespeare fully transitions twinship into the realm of the pleasurable, combatting the negative cultural assumptions about twinship with an alternate and largely revolutionary depiction of twinship as a positive characteristic.
43
Venn, Andrea Faye. "Exactly What is That Worth to You: Gifting Ornamentation and Relationships in Shakespeare's Plays." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1541092559869203.
Full text
44
Scott, Lindsey A. "Caught between presence and absence : Shakespeare's tragic women on film." Thesis, University of Chester, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10034/100153.
Full textAbstract:
In offering readings of Shakespeare’s tragic women on film, this thesis explores bodies that are caught between signifiers of absence and presence: the woman’s body that is present with absent body parts; the woman’s body that is spoken about or alluded to when absent from view; the woman’s living body that appears as a corpse; the woman’s body that must be exposed and concealed from sight. These are bodies that appear on the borderline of meaning, that open up a marginal or liminal space of investigation. In concentrating on a state of ‘betweenness’, I am seeking to offer new interpretive possibilities for bodies that have become the site of much critical anxiety, and bodies that, due to their own peculiar liminality, have so far been critically ignored. In reading Shakespeare’s tragic women on film, I am interested specifically in screen representations of Gertrude’s sexualised body that is both absent and present in Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Desdemona’s (un)chaste body that is both exposed and concealed in film adaptations of Othello; Juliet’s ‘living corpse’ that represents life and death in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; the woman’s naked body in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) that is absent from Shakespeare’s play-text; and Lavinia’s violated, dismembered body in Julie Taymor’s (Titus, 1999) and Titus Andronicus, which, in signifying both life and death, wholeness and fragmentation, absence and presence, something and nothing, embodies many of the paradoxes explored within this thesis. Through readings that demonstrate a combined interest in Shakespeare’s plays, Shakespeare films, and Shakespeare criticism, this thesis brings these liminal bodies into focus, revealing how an understanding of their ‘absent presence’ can affect our responses as spectators of Shakespeare’s tragedies on film.
45
Jayawickrama, Sarojini. "Carnival, carnivalisation and the subversion of order, with reference to Shakespeare's Henry IV and Henry VI." Thesis, [Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong], 1991. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B13115601.
Full text
46
Chow, Po-fun Wendy, and 周寶芬. "Carnivalization and subversion of order in comic plays, with referenceto Shakespeare's Twelfth night and Herry IV." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1987. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31948996.
Full text
47
Chow, Po-fun Wendy. "Carnivalization and subversion of order in comic plays, with reference to Shakespeare's Twelfth night and Herry IV." [Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong], 1987. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B12363030.
Full text
48
Singh, Bandana. "“Your unthought of Harry”: Political Legitimacy and the Economy of Honor in Shakespeare's Henriad." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1140.
Full textAbstract:
Shakespeare’s Henriad delves into questions of divine authority, political process, and the role of class in society. Most importantly, however, the text tracks the shifts in leadership and kingly identity. Richard II paints the portrait of a king infatuated with his own divinity. Richard’s journey from anointed king to deposed mortal captures the dissolution of his fantasy of invincibility. Inciting Richard’s demise, Henry IV effectively disturbs the passive obedience which the king’s subjects maintain; in doing so, the kingship begins to shift away from divine authority, moving into a vacuum of rebellion and civil conflict. Meanwhile, the previously profligate Prince Hal turns towards his duties; in proving himself to his father, he begins to accumulate honor, redeeming himself as a capable heir. Hal’s ascension as Henry V and his subsequent success as a king provides a stark contrast to the discontent during Richard’s reign. As the presence of divinity recedes, the theme of honor appears more frequently throughout the Henriad. Prince Hal views honor as an external commodity which can be accumulated by an individual. Honor, as presented by Henry V, seemingly converts an intrinsic trait or virtue into a commodity with economic value, allowing for the establishment of his own political legitimacy. Using the plays in the Henriad as my primary texts, I intend to examine this political and ideological transition by connecting Richard's divine right to Hal's construction of an economy of honor.
49
Fagan, Dianne. ""The dark house and the detested wife" : sex, marriage and the dissolution of comedy in Shakespeare's problem plays." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ37204.pdf.
Full text
50
Williams, Robin P. "A return to 'the great variety of readers' : the history and future of reading Shakespeare." Thesis, Brunel University, 2015. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/10561.
Full textAbstract:
For almost a century Shakespeare’s work has been viewed primarily under a supremacy of performance with an insistence that Shakespeare wrote his work to be staged, not read. This prevailing view has ensured that most responses in Shakespearean research fit within this line of enquiry. The recent argument that Shakespeare was a literary dramatist who wrote for readers—as well as audiences—has met with resistance. This thesis first exposes the very literate world Shakespeare lived in and his own perception of that world, which embraces a writer who wrote for readers. The material evidence of readers begins in Shakespeare’s own lifetime and grows steadily, evidenced by the editorial methods used to facilitate reading, the profusion of books specifically for readers of general interest, and the thousands of lay reading circles formed to enjoy and study the plays. Readers of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries are shown to have spontaneously responded to the works as literature, as reading Shakespeare aloud within a family or social circle has a tenacious history. For three hundred years after Shakespeare’s death it was readers and Shakespeare reading groups who created and maintained Shakespeare’s legacy as a literary icon and national hero. The history of millions of lay readers reading aloud in community was engulfed by the transition of the texts into academia and performance criticism until by the 1940s Shakespeare reading groups were virtually non-existent. A new genre of editorial practice can support a re-emergence of community reading and point toward a greater acceptance of Shakespeare as a literary dramatist, enlarging the field of Shakespearean scholarship and criticism. A prototype of a Readers’ Edition of a Shakespearean play specifically edited and designed for reading aloud in groups is included with this thesis.