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1
Hecker, Pierre Alexandre. "The Shakespearean stage : language and silence." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313156.
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Zhang, Zhiyan. "Fluid and loci : death and memory in Shakespearean plays." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/4054.
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This study combines formal analysis of Shakespeare’s texts with an investigation of early modern English culture in order to explore the social energy circulating between. It argues that the conceptual categories of fluidity and loci are two features prevalent not only in Shakespeare’s plays specifically, but also in early modern English culture generally. Chapter One maps out the scholarship on death and memory in early modern English culture; Chapter Two investigates fluidity and loci in numerous forms, including humoral bodies, identities, money, commodity and texts, as regards physiology, economics, cosmology and politics. Chapter Three on Hamlet investigates corruption and fragmentation regarding both death and memory, and it also argues that Hamlet is troubled by memory’s excessiveness and fickleness. Chapter Four explores time, memory, emotion and death in Macbeth, followed by a study of Henry V, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale in Chapter Five. There are two points underlying the argument of the whole thesis. The first point is that, whereas the brain-centred understanding of memory was predominant in early modern England as in other European countries, there was also a heart-centred tradition. Although the brain and reason still occupied pivotal positions in early modern England, the heart and emotion were given substantial attention by Shakespeare among others. As regards the relationship between the heart and the emotions, there were also two divergent attitudes to emotion: praise of emotion and denigration of emotion. As the connotations and history of the term “emotion” are complex, this study distinguishes between it and its synonyms such as passion, affection, feeling and the Chinese concept of qing. Other Chinese philosophies such as Daoism and theories including Yin-Yang theory and “Three Immortality” are also explored to shed light on the foci of this study. Secondly, this thesis argues that there are two categories of memory, namely, locative memory and fluid memory, and Shakespeare was influenced by both. It also contends that the eradication and displacement of memory provoked anxiety about memory, just as the displacement and annihilation of corpses, mainly caused by plagues and the Reformation as well as other factors, lead to heightened anxiety about death in early modern English culture.
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Khan, Amir. "Counterfactual Thinking and Shakespearean Tragedy: Imagining Alternatives in the Plays." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/24310.
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This dissertation is the application of counterfactual criticism to Shakespearean tragedy—supposing we are to ask, for example, “what if” Hamlet had done the deed, or, “what if” we could somehow disinherit our knowledge of Lear’s madness before reading King Lear. Such readings, mirroring critical practices in history, will loosely be called “counterfactual” readings. The key question to ask is not why tragedies are no longer being written (by writers), but why tragedies are no longer being felt (by readers). Tragedy entails a certain urgency in wanting to imagine an outcome different from the one we are given. Since we cannot change events as they stand, we feel a critical helplessness in dealing with feelings of tragic loss; the critical imperative that follows usually accounts for how the tragedy unfolded. Fleshing out a cause is one way to deal with the trauma of tragedy. But such explanation, in a sense, merely explains tragedy away. The fact that everything turns out so poorly in tragedy suggests that the tragic protagonist was somehow doomed, that he (in the case of Shakespearean tragedy) was the victim of some “tragic flaw,” as though tragedy and necessity go hand in hand. Only by allowing ourselves to imagine other possibilities can we regain the tragic effect, which is to remind ourselves that other outcomes are indeed possible. Tragedy, then, is more readily understood, or felt, as the playing out of contingency. It takes some effort to convince others, even ourselves, that the tragic effect resonates best when accompanied by an understanding that the characters on the page are free individuals. No amount of foreknowledge, on our part or theirs, can save us (or them) from tragedy’s horror.
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Alfred, Ruth Ann. "The effect of censorship on American film adaptations of Shakespearean plays." [College Station, Tex. : Texas A&M University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2733.
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Intezar, H. "Shakespearean polyphony : an exploration of female voices in seven selected plays using a dialogical framework." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/6300.
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This thesis employs the concept of 'voice' in order to explore the variety of dialogic relationships between men and women in seven Shakespeare plays. Here, 'voice' is defined as an ideological position held by a character and voices within a dialogical relationship test dominant social ideas. In doing so, the aim is to explore how employing a linguistic approach allows us to develop a more nuanced perspective towards women and female voices in Shakespeare. Taking the early modern tradition of an all-male-cast into consideration, this project acknowledges the tension between the idea of embodiment and voice; however, it argues that even though there is no biological female body of the Shakespearean stage, there is a female voice. Dialogism, of course, derives from the work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. These 'voices' are analysed in the context of a theoretical framework informed by his writings on the novel, which are also increasingly being used to make sense of drama in line with Bakhtin's own awareness of a nascent dialogism in Shakespearean drama. 'Polyphony', in particular, assumes a separation between the author's and the characters' points of view. Thus, this project considers Shakespeare's texts as dialogic and his plays as a dialogue of voices, in which the characters have the capacity to hold dialogical relationships where no voice holds more importance than any other. This is significant because these conflicting voices are what make the Shakespearean text different from those in which a single voice is heard - that of the author, for example. As this study talks about an oppressive authoritative/patriarchal language, a dialogic approach unlocks the languages of the others which it tries to marginalise and silence. The research reveals a complex relationship between space, time and voice. More precisely, the carnivalesque becomes visible in Shakespeare's use of innovative discursive devices, such as 'active parody', 'Menippean dialogue' and 'Socratic dialogue', which suggests a multi-toned and ambiguous female voice; a voice that has the capacity to covertly and overtly oppose and challenge social ideologies surrounding gender. The thesis offers new perspectives on the presentation of women and speech. Importantly, it offers a more sophisticated and complex Bakhtinian framework for looking at carnival in Shakespeare. Additionally, a linguistic model of analysis also develops current scholarly use of Bakhtin's concept of carnival. Rather than viewing carnival as simply a time-space of betwixt and between, this project looks at carnival in the context of language (the carnivalesque). More specifically, it reveals how Shakespeare's female figures find pockets of carnivalesque space in everyday existence through dialogue. Thus, suggesting that emancipation is not limited to an allocated time or space, rather, it can also be achieved through language.
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Intezar, Hannah. "Shakespearean Polyphony. An exploration of female voices in seven selected plays using a dialogical framework." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/6300.
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This thesis employs the concept of 'voice' in order to explore the variety of dialogic relationships between men and women in seven Shakespeare plays. Here, 'voice' is defined as an ideological position held by a character and voices within a dialogical relationship test dominant social ideas. In doing so, the aim is to explore how employing a linguistic approach allows us to develop a more nuanced perspective towards women and female voices in Shakespeare. Taking the early modern tradition of an all-male-cast into consideration, this project acknowledges the tension between the idea of embodiment and voice; however, it argues that even though there is no biological female body of the Shakespearean stage, there is a female voice.
Dialogism, of course, derives from the work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. These 'voices' are analysed in the context of a theoretical framework informed by his writings on the novel, which are also increasingly being used to make sense of drama in line with Bakhtin's own awareness of a nascent dialogism in Shakespearean drama. 'Polyphony', in particular, assumes a separation between the author's and the characters' points of view. Thus, this project considers Shakespeare's texts as dialogic and his plays as a dialogue of voices, in which the characters have the capacity to hold dialogical relationships where no voice holds more importance than any other. This is significant because these conflicting voices are what make the Shakespearean text different from those in which a single voice is heard - that of the author, for example. As this study talks about an oppressive authoritative/patriarchal language, a dialogic approach unlocks the languages of the others which it tries to marginalise and silence.
The research reveals a complex relationship between space, time and voice. More precisely, the carnivalesque becomes visible in Shakespeare's use of innovative discursive devices, such as 'active parody', 'Menippean dialogue' and 'Socratic dialogue', which suggests a multi-toned and ambiguous female voice; a voice that has the capacity to covertly and overtly oppose and challenge social ideologies surrounding gender.
The thesis offers new perspectives on the presentation of women and speech. Importantly, it offers a more sophisticated and complex Bakhtinian framework for looking at carnival in Shakespeare. Additionally, a linguistic model of analysis also develops current scholarly use of Bakhtin's concept of carnival. Rather than viewing carnival as simply a time-space of betwixt and between, this project looks at carnival in the context of language (the carnivalesque). More specifically, it reveals how Shakespeare¿s female figures find pockets of carnivalesque space in everyday existence through dialogue. Thus, suggesting that emancipation is not limited to an allocated time or space, rather, it can also be achieved through language.
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O'Neill, Fionnuala Ruth Clara. "Beyond tragedy : genre and the idea of the tragic in Shakespearean tragedy, history and tragicomedy." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7841.
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This thesis explores the intersection between the study of Shakespearean drama and the theory and practice of early modern dramatic genres. It reassesses the significance of tragedy and the idea of the tragic within three separate yet related generic frames: tragedy, history, and tragicomedy. Behind this research lies the fundamental question of how newly emerging dramatic genres allow Shakespeare to explore tragedy within different aesthetic and dramatic contexts, and of how they allow his writing to move beyond tragedy. The thesis begins by looking at Shakespeare’s deployment of the complex trope of “nothing”. “Nothing” as a rhetorical trope and metaphysical idea appears across many of the tragedies, often becoming a focal point for the dramatic representation of scepticism, loss and nihilism. The trope is often associated with the space of the theatre, and sometimes with the dramaturgy of tragedy itself. However, it is also deployed within the histories and tragicomedies at certain moments which might equally be called tragic. “Nothing” therefore provides a starting-point for thinking about how the genres of history and tragicomedy engage with tragedy. Part I focuses on tragedy, including extended readings of Timon of Athens and King Lear. It explores Shakespearean drama as a response to the pressures of the early modern cultural preoccupation with, and anxiety about, scepticism. Stanley Cavell and other critics of early modern dramatic scepticism have tended to locate this engagement with scepticism within tragedy. However, this section shows that the same sceptical problematic is addressed across Shakespearean dramatic genres, with very different results. It then explores why scepticism should display a particular affinity for tragedy as a dramatic genre. Part II focuses on history, with particular reference to Richard II and Henry V. The trope of “nothing” is used as a starting-point to explore the intersection between Shakespearean history and tragedy. Engaging with Walter Benjamin’s theory of baroque tragedy as Trauerspiel (mourning-plays) rooted in history, it argues that Trauerspiel provides a useful generic framework against which to consider the mournful aesthetic of Shakespeare’s histories. Part III focuses on early modern tragicomedy and The Winter’s Tale, asking how Shakespeare achieves the transition from tragedy to tragicomedy in his later writing. It explores tragicomedy’s background on the early modern stage in theory and practice, paying particular attention to Guarini’s theory that pastoral tragicomedy frees its hearers from melancholy, and to the legacy of medieval religious drama and its engagement with faith and belief. Returning to the trope of “nothing”, this section shows that The Winter’s Tale addresses the same sceptical problematic as the earlier tragedies. Arguing that scepticism opens up a space for tragedy and nihilism in the first half of The Winter’s Tale, it demonstrates that Shakespeare finds in the genre of tragicomedy an aesthetic and dramatic form which allows him to move through, and beyond, the claims of tragedy.
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Kim, Hwa-Seon. "The politics of body images in Shakespearean drama : sexuality and nation-building in the history plays and The Tempest." Thesis, University of Essex, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.361041.
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Robidoux, Raphaëlle. "Dreams’ Impact in Life and Fiction: An Analysis of Dreams in a Normative Canadian Sample and in Shakespearean Plays." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/37896.
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Dreams have been widely shared, analyzed, and explored for centuries. Throughout cultures and contexts, some dreams seem to leave a lasting trace on waking life, whereas other dreams are forgotten as quickly as they appear. This thesis focuses its efforts on the former category, known as impactful dreams. Impactful dreams are rare and distinguished by their effect on the dreamer’s thoughts, feelings, and/or behavior. Some dreams, including impactful dreams, also contain threatening oneiric material, which may be seen as mirroring threatening content the dreamer will have to face, or has already faced, in waking life.
This thesis contributes to the study of dream content by using modern dream analysis methods to investigate impactful dreams and threats in dreams, drawing from a large normative sample of Canadians’ dreams, but also from the oneiric content found in works written by William Shakespeare. It was expected that both samples would share certain oneiric traits, but that Shakespeare’s in-play dreams would contain more oneiric threats, would have an impact on the dreamer by default, and would most notably affect the narrative of the play. In contrast, normative Canadian dreams were expected to show a lesser tendency towards both impact and threatening content.
The first article explores all impactful dreams found within a normative sample of Canadian dreams, investigating their impactful dream type and their link to waking and dreaming mood. The second article does the same within the scope of Shakespeare’s fictional works, and compares the two samples in terms of dream impact, threats, and overall oneiric content.
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Mackenzie, Anna F. "Troubling women, troubling genre : Shakespeare's unruly characters." Thesis, University of Chester, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10034/613740.
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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.
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Markidou, Vasiliki. "Shakespeare's Greek plays." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.533059.
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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.
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Kingsley-Smith, Jane Elizabeth. "Banishment in Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1999. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4461/.
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'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.
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Davall, Nicole Elizabeth. "Shakespeare and concepts of history : the English history play and Shakespeare's first tetralogy." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2014. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/65797/.
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Divided into three large chapters, this thesis explores sixteenth-century concepts of history, considers how those concepts appear in Elizabethan history plays on English history, and finally looks at Shakespeare’s first tetralogy of history plays. The aim of the thesis is to consider in some detail the wider context of historical and dramatic traditions in Tudor England to gain a better appreciation of how they influenced possible readings of Shakespeare’s early history plays. Chapter One looks at how medieval approaches were modified in the fifteenth century. St. Augustine’s allegorical method of biblical exegesis made it possible to interpret history from inside the historical moment by allowing historically specific incidents to stand for trans-historical truths. However, the sixteenth-century chronicle tradition shows an increasing awareness of the difficulties of interpreting history. Chapter Two looks at early English history plays outside of the Shakespearean canon. History plays borrowed the conventions of comedy, tragedy and the morality play to provide frameworks for interpretation. Nevertheless, early histories such as Kynge Johan, Edmund Ironside, Famous Victories, Edward III, The True Tragedy, and The Troublesome Reign did not fit comfortably within established dramatic modes, leading to history’s gradual recognition as a separate genre. Chapter Three looks at the contribution Shakespeare’s plays made to the developing genre. The un-unified dramatic structure of the Henry VI plays denies the audience a stable framework within which to interpret events. In Richard III, a clear tragic framework appears, but is undermined by a strong thread of irony that runs through the play. History appears in the tetralogy as a repetitive cycle of violence perpetuated by characters’ attempts to memorialise the past while failing to learn from it. The crisis presented by history is the necessity of acting on partial information, while the promise of fuller understanding is projected into an unknowable future.
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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.
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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.
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Cephus, Heidi Nicole. "Corporeal Judgment in Shakespeare's Plays." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1062843/.
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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."
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Neema, Parvini. "Rethinking historicism: Shakespeares history plays." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.529454.
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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/.
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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.
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Vadnais, Matthew W. "According to the Scrippe: Speeches, Speech Order, and Performance in Shakespeare's Early Printed Play Texts." The Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1342978643.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Rim, Dohyun. "Shakespeare and Yeats's plays : impact, influence, intertextuality." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.491355.
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This is a study of the multi-faceted relationship between the plays of Shakespeare and W.B. Yeats. While existing studies have tended to focus on the question of poetic influence, this thesis argues that specifically theatrical questions were also at the heart of Yeats's interest in Shakespeare, and shows that these dramatic concerns were closely bound up with the system of thought Yeats developed in A Vision. Moreover, this thesis resists the limitations of an emphasis on the problematic question of influence by taking an intertextual approach that sets the plays of the two dramatists alongside one another, and examines them in terms of the wider framework of Yeats's theoretical writings. In doing so the thesis reflects the cyclical structure ofA Vision. Chapters One and Two assess the respective uses given to thresholds and masks by the two playwrights. It examines their development by Yeats as a means to representing the struggle between subjectivity and objectivity, and looks at how Yeats finds a critical stimulus for his concern with these devices in Shakespeare. The threshold is seen to originate in physical lines of demarcation on the stage which later become more sophisticated and less literal representations of liminality. Masks are considered as the functional successors to thresholds in Yeats's plays, and again both their physical and symbolic contributions are examined. Both devices are shown especially to reflect the symbolic tendencies of Shakespeare and Yeats. While masks offer one way in which a character's anti-self can be suggested, Chapter Three analyses the comparable achievement of the play-within-a-play. This self-consciously theatrical set-piece is shown to be employed by Shakespeare and Yeats as a way of confronting on-stage audiences with parallel and alternate versions of their selves. Chapter Four surveys two interlocking dramatic devices: the subplot, which is used to mirror and comment upon the main plot, and 'Shakespeare's Myth', which pairs contrasting characters in order to mutually enhance the audience's understanding of them. These devices posit subjective and objective qualities against each other. The Fool is considered as representative of subjectivity in Chapter Five, which looks at how both Shakespeare and Yeats conceive of the Fool as subversive of conventional wisdom. The analysis of self and anti-self of preceding chapters is extended. Chapter Six explores tragic joy, which is experienced by the hero in his acceptance of death. It is shown how the themes of liminality, destiny and subjectivity are conjoined in the act ofputting on a mask to confront death. In recapitulating the material of the preceding chapters the Conclusion argues that what Shakespeare and Yeats share is an interest in the subjective conflict of the soul as opposed to a concern for practical objective appearance. Shakespeare's ability to represent the soul is a great inheritance for Yeats as a symbolist dramatist because the soul is, to him, a constant subject of drama and the only subject of symbolism. The continuation of the anti-naturalistic dramatic tradition in twentieth century absurdist plays is regarded as a legacy of Shakespeare and Yeats. Supplied by The British Library - 'The world's knowledge'
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Gordon, Colette. "The play of credit in Shakespearean comedy." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.515509.
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Murphy, Sean Edward. "The language of self-talk in Shakespeare's plays." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2014. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/89019/.
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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.
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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/.
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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.
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Chen, Xing. "Reconsidering Shakespeare's 'Lateness' : studies in the last plays." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10579.
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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De, Waal Marguerite Florence. "Revelatory deceptions in selected plays by William Shakespeare." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/62673.
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This dissertation is concerned with the paradox of revelatory deception a form of 'lying' which reveals truth instead of concealing it in four Shakespearean plays: Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Hamlet, and King Lear. Through close analysis, I show that revelatory deceptions in these plays are metatheatrical, and read them as responding to contemporary writers who attacked the theatre for being inherently deceitful. This reading leads to the identification of parallels in the description of theatre in antitheatrical texts and the descriptions of revelatory deceptions in the plays. I suggest that correlations in phrasing and imagery might undermine antitheatrical rhetoric: for example, the plays portray certain theatrical, revelatory deceptions as traps which free their victims instead of killing them. Such 'lies' are differentiated from actual deceits by their potentially relational characteristics: deceptions which reveal the truth require audiences to put aside their self-interest and certainty to consider alternative realities which might reflect, reconfigure, and expand their understanding of the world and of themselves. The resulting truths lead either to the creation or renewal of relationships, as in Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, or offer glimpses at the possibility of renewal, which is ultimately denied, as in Hamlet and King Lear. In both cases the imperatives for truth and right action are underscored not obscured, as antitheatricalists would have argued through the audience's vicarious experience of either the gains or losses of characters within the plays.<br>Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017.<br>English<br>MA<br>Unrestricted
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Folkerth, Wes. "Then play on: listening to the Shakespearean soundscape." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=18252.
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Shakespeare’s plays articulate their author’s understanding of sound at various registers of theatrical and linguistic representation. I have tried to make listening my own critical practice by attending to the ways Shakespeare is attuned to, and rebroadcasts throughout his work, the many interrelated valences sound has in the early modern period. “Shakespearience” is the term I use for a re-invigorated phenomenological approach to the study of Shakespeare’s works, one which considers them the products of an embodied consciousness that is itself informed by cultural beliefs and attitudes. Shakespearience allows us to inquire not only into what Shakespeare thought about sound, but what he may have thought through it as well. Religious, philosophical, and anatomical discourses on sound and hearing in the early modern period all associate this perceptual domain with notions of obedience, receptivity, transformation, reproduction, and cognitive nourishment. In Coriolanus and other plays, he investigates the subjective and political consequences, as well as the ultimate impossibility, of refusing to hear. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream he associates sound and hearing with notions of metamorphosis and grotesque continuity. Throughout his works, he represents sound as a privileged mode of access to the deep subjectivity of others. These ideas resonate strongly in our own culture, where references to sound and hearing increasingly figure in our estimations of his genius.<br>Les pièces de Shakespeare articulent sa compréhension du son à registres divers de représentation théâtrale et linguistique. J’ai essayé moi-même d’employer l’écoute comme méthode critique en prêtant attention à la façon dont Shakespeare se met à l’écoute des maintes sens corrélatifs qu’avait le son à l’époque moderne, et les (re)transmet partout dans son œuvre. J’utilise le terme «Shakespearience» pour signaler une méthode phénoménologique revigorée à l’étude de l’œuvre de Shakespeare, une méthode qui considère ces textes comme produits d’une conscience incarnée qui est elle-même informée par les croyances et attitudes culturelles. La Shakespearience nous permet d’examiner non seulement ce que pensait Shakespeare au sujet du son, mais aussi ce qu’il aurait pu penser par le son. Les discours religieux, philosophique, et anatomique sur le son et l’ouïe à l’époque moderne associent ce domaine de perception aux idées d’obéissance, réceptivité, transformation, reproduction, et nourriture cognitif. Dans Coriolan et autres pièces Shakespeare examine les conséquences subjectives et politiques de refuser d’entendre…aussi bien que l’impossibilité fondamentale d’un tel refus. Dans La Nuit d’une songe d’été il associe le son et l’ouïe à la métamorphose et la continuité grotesque. Souvent dans ses pièces il représente le son comme un mode d’accès à la subjectivité insondable d’autrui. Ces idées résonnent profondément dans notre culture, où des reférences au son et à l’ouïe figurent de plus en plus dans nos estimations du génie de Shakespeare. fr
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Folkerth, Theodore Wesley. "Then play on, listening to the Shakespearean soundscape." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0017/NQ55331.pdf.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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/.
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‘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.
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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.
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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.
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Mngomezulu, Thulisile Fortunate. "Central women characters and their influence in Shakespeare, with particular reference to the Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra." Thesis, University of Zululand, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10530/1114.
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A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2009.<br>Shakespeare portrayed women in his plays as people who should be valued. This is an opinion I held in the past, and one I still hold after intense reading of his works and that of authors such as Marlowe, Webster, Thomas Kyd and others. Shakespeare created his female characters out of a mixture of good and evil. When they interact with others, either the best or the worst in them is brought out: extreme evil in some cases and perfect goodness in others.
I hope the reader will enjoy this study as much as I did, and that it will enhance their reading of Shakespeare‟s works and cultivate their interest in him. This study is intended to motivate other people to change their view that Shakespeare‟s works are inaccessible. Those who hold this view will come to know that anyone anywhere can read, understand and appreciate the works of this the greatest writer of all times.
In his study Shakespeare’s World, Johanyak says, “I wrote [it] to help students appreciate the depth and breadth of Shakespeare‟s global awareness. Shakespeare was not only a London playwright, but a man of the world who dramatized his perceptions to create a lasting legacy of his times” (2004: ix).
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Eward-Mangione, Angela. "Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in Three Adaptations of Three Plays by William Shakespeare." Scholar Commons, 2014. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5628.
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What role did identification play in the motives, processes, and products of select post-colonial authors who "wrote back" to William Shakespeare and colonialism? How did post-colonial counter-discursive metatheatre function to make select post-colonial adaptations creative and critical texts? In answer to these questions, this dissertation proposes that counter-discursive metatheatre resituates post-colonial plays as criticism of Shakespeare's plays. As particular post-colonial authors identify with marginalized Shakespearean characters and aim to amplify their conflicts from the perspective of a dominated culture, they interpret themes of race, gender, and colonialism in Othello (1604), Antony and Cleopatra (1608), and The Tempest (1611) as explicit problems. This dissertation combines post-colonial theory and other literary theory, particularly by Kenneth Burke, to propose a rhetoric of motives for post-colonial authors who "write back" to Shakespeare through the use of counter-discursive metatheatre. This dissertation, therefore, describes and analyzes how and why the plays of Murray Carlin, Aimé Césaire, and Derek Walcott function both creatively and critically, adapting Shakespeare's plays, and foregrounding post-colonial criticism of his plays.
Chapter One analyzes Murray Carlin's motivations for adapting Othello and using the framing narrative of Not Now, Sweet Desdemona (1967) to explicitly critique the conflicts of race, gender, and colonialism in Othello. Chapter Two treats why and how Aimé Césaire adapts The Tempest in 1969, illustrating his explicit critique of Prospero and Caliban as the colonizer and the colonized, exposing Prospero's insistence on controlling the sexuality of his subjects, and, therefore, arguing that race, gender, and colonialism operate concomitantly in the play. Chapter Three analyzes A Branch of the Blue Nile (1983) as both a critique and an adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra, demonstrating how Walcott's framing narrative critiques the notion of a universal "Cleopatra," even one of an "infinite variety," and also evaluates Antony as a character who is marginalized by his Roman culture. The conclusion of this dissertation avers that in "writing back" to Shakespeare, these authors foreground and reframe post-colonial criticism, successfully dismantling the colonial structures that have kept their interpretations, and the subjects of their interpretations, marginalized.
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Thomas, Alun Deian. "The making and remaking of history in Shakespeare's History Plays." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2012. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/42105/.
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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.
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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.
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<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>
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Keller, Stefan Daniel. "The development of Shakespeare's rhetoric a study of nine plays." Tübingen Francke, 2004. http://d-nb.info/994297769/04.
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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.
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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.
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McGarry, Theresa, and Kelsey Kiser. "Adverbial Clauses and Speaker and Interlocutor Gender in Shakespeare’s Plays." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/6141.
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This study draws on previous findings regarding adverbial clauses in relation to speaker and interlocutor gender in a corpus of current actual speaker data. Our aim is to examine those same relations in a corpus of Shakespeare’s comedies and histories. Mondorf (2004) investigated four types of adverbial clauses in a corpus of modern speech and found that the women used more causal, conditional and purpose clauses than the men, while the men used more concessive clauses. Mondorf’s explanation for this difference is that women use the three clause types that mitigate the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition, while men tend to use more concessives, which strengthen the commitment. She also found that in mixed-gender conversations these trends were generally intensified. However, other analyses have indicated that these patterns do not hold across contexts. Much more research is called for to understand the localized relations among adverbial clause usage, speaker gender and context in particular settings. One question to pursue is whether we can see gendered patterns of adverbial usage in historical varieties of English. Accordingly, in this study we analyse dialogue in Shakespeare’s plays to ascertain whether Mondorf’s findings can be extrapolated to the language of these fictional speakers. The results indicate that Shakespeare generally does not use the adverbial clauses to portray the gender of the characters in ways similar to those of actual, modern speakers. Only small differences are found, regarding purpose clauses in the histories and conditional clauses in the comedies. The analysis indicates that female and male characters speak very similarly with regard to syntax, and adverbial clauses contribute to the construction of characters in very localized contexts.
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Dawood, Azmeh. "Civil monsters : classifying the human body in Shakespeare." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.365435.
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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.
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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.
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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/.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 .