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1
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.
2
Siu, Wai-ching, and 蕭惠貞. "Women characters in Shakespeare comedies: a feminist perspective." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1990. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3195005X.
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Patrick, Tegan Rae. "Legitimising Misogyny: Representations of Women in Three Shakespeare Films." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Humanities, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/10015.
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The plays of William Shakespeare have long been considered a source of cultural and educational interest by both academics and filmmakers, and the practice of adapting Shakespeare’s works to film has existed for almost as long as film itself. The name “Shakespeare” evokes ideals of cultural legitimacy and importance, and Shakespeare film as a genre is always caught up in questions of fidelity and legitimacy. In adapting Shakespeare to the screen, filmmakers also adapt, whether deliberately or not, the various cultural beliefs that his work is steeped in. Early modern ideas about gender, race and class are reproduced in modern film through the adaptation of Shakespeare, often excused or unexamined in the name of fidelity. This thesis discusses Shakespeare’s three plays Hamlet, Richard III and The Taming of the Shrew, all of which deal in some way with gender roles and the place and power of women, whether that power is sexual, political or verbal. I also examine three film adaptations of the plays: Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine’s Richard III, and Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You. All three films serve as examples of the way the misogyny present in Shakespeare’s works is reproduced and sometimes magnified through adaptation to the screen. The reproduction of early modern gender hierarchies is naturalised in a number of ways across the three films, including the use of star power, the invocation of Shakespeare as a cultural authority, and specific filmic techniques such as flashback and the cutting and editing of film and screenplay. I argue that in all three films, the faithful adaptation of Shakespearean ideas of gender comes at the expense of both the women characters and those women who make up the films’ audience.
4
Kitamura, Sae. "The role of women in the canonisation of Shakespeare : from Elizabethan theatre to the Shakespeare Jubilee." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2013. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-role-of-women-in-the-canonisation-of-shakespeare(7af8035a-91ae-4b30-9b84-6208340c7448).html.
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The aim of this thesis is to clarify the role that female interpreters in Britain played at an early stage in the canonisation of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, one of the popular playwrights in English Renaissance theatre, became increasingly famous during the first half of the eighteenth century, and the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769 marked the climax of the popularisation of his works. It is said that since then, he has maintained his position as the ‘national poet’ of England (or Britain). Although women had supported Shakespeare even before his works had established their canonical status, the extent to which female interpreters contributed to the canonisation of Shakespeare, how they participated in the process, and why they played the roles that they did have not yet been sufficiently visible. In this thesis, I illustrate women’s engagement in the process of the popularisation of Shakespeare by examining the early reception of his works, and to document how individual women’s pleasure of reading and playgoing relates to their intellectual activities. I adopt three approaches to provide answers to my research questions in this thesis: reading critical and fictional works by women; analysing the descriptions of female readers and playgoers by male writers; and conducting a large-scale survey of the ownership history of pre-mid-eighteenth-century printed books of Shakespeare’s plays. This thesis is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, I analyse women’s engagement with theatre in Renaissance England, and consider Shakespeare’s popularity amongst them based on records about female audiences. The second chapter discusses female readers and writers in Renaissance England and their responses to Shakespeare’s works. Chapter 3 focuses on Restoration Shakespeare and female interpreters from 1642 to 1714. The fourth chapter discusses women’s playgoing, play-reading, writings, and their participation from the early eighteenth century to the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769.
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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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Tallon, Laura. "Silencing sirens : love, sexuality, marriage and women's voices in Shakespeare /." Connect to online version, 2009. http://ada.mtholyoke.edu/setr/websrc/pdfs/www/2009/374.pdf.
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Duncan, Sophie. "Shakespeare's women and the fin de siècle." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8ddfbaf6-b11a-4438-b635-c0af5704361f.
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Scholarship on Victorian productions of Shakespeare typically isolates Shakespeare from the rest of the repertory. My thesis illuminates how late-Victorian performances of Shakespeare and contemporary Victorian drama conditioned each other. I re-interrogate iconoclastic performances of Shakespeare’s heroines to reveal actresses’ performance networks, showing how actresses’ movements between fin-de-siècle roles created consonances between ostensibly antithetical areas of the repertoire. The performances and receptions of British actresses with high cultural capital reveal Shakespeare’s interventions into fin-de-siècle debates on gender and sexuality. Highlighting female performance genealogies, I offer the first narrative of women’s acting traditions in Shakespeare. I explore actresses’ commercial strategising, celebrity personae, theatrical innovations and contributions to Shakespearean hermeneutics. The thesis draws on significant unpublished archival material, including from private collections. Chapter One examines how the ostensibly puritanical Madge Kendal and Royal mistress Lillie Langtry used the role of Rosalind (As You Like It) within a portfolio of self-promotional strategies, inscribing their professional legitimacy and dramatising different sexual identities. Chapter Two explores how Terry’s Lady Macbeth (1888–9), interpreted as a loving wife, challenged theatrical semiotics, contemporary ideals of marriage, and perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. Chapter Three, on Mrs Patrick Campbell, demonstrates the success of her movements between the ‘sex-problem play’ and Shakespeare, revealing how her Shakespeare reception reflected fin-de-siècle concerns as the unwell body and mind, the figure of Salome, and the child – as both a sexual object and potentially suicidal. Chapter Four, on Terry’s Imogen (Cymbeline) discusses Shakespearean actresses’ contribution to ideas of national character and queenship, as Queen Victoria’s reign neared its end, including specific milestones such as the 1897 Diamond Jubilee. Chapter Five examines Shakespeare’s intersections with the ‘New Woman’, commodity culture and politics, as suffragists co-opted Shakespeare as a ‘suffrage’ playwright, with The Winter’s Tale’s Paulina as their icon.
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Sakamoto, Kumiko. "Queen Elizabeth's doubles? : women and power in the late plays of Shakespeare." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.393783.
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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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Samuelsson, Mathilda. "Shakespeare’s Representation of Women : A Feminist Reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-32509.
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Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a nuanced play that illustrates revenge, madness, and complex relationships. The paper proposes a feminist reading of Hamlet and analyses the play’s central characters, Gertrude, Ophelia, Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes, and their behaviour under the influence of a patriarchal society. Furthermore, the study will focus on the ways in which Shakespeare represents Ophelia and Gertrude in the play. The study does a feminist reading of the play to investigate how Ophelia’s and Gertrude’s actions and behaviour are affected by the contemporary patriarchal society, and how it affects the male characters’ choices. This research allows readers to interpret female characters in several ways, and to see how women are forced to act and make choices in a contemporary patriarchy to be able to influence societal structures.
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Oxendine, Jessica Grace. "Warrior Women in Early Modern Literature." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2013. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271872/.
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Fantasies about warrior women circulated in many forms of writing in early modern England: travel narratives such as Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of Guiana (1595) portray Amazon encounters in the New World; poems like Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) depict women's skill with a spear; and the plays of Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and others stage the adventurous feats of women on the battlefield. In this dissertation, I analyze the social anxieties that emerge when warrior women threaten gender hierarchies in the patriarchal society of early modern England. The battlefield has traditionally been a site for men to prove their masculinity against other men, so when male characters find themselves submitting to a sword-wielding woman, they are forced to reimagine their own masculine identities as they become the objects acted upon by women. In their experience of subjectivity, these literary warrior women often allude to the historical Queen Elizabeth I, whose reign destabilized ideas about gender and power in the period. Negative evaluations of warrior women often indicate anxiety about Elizabeth as an Amazon-like queen. Thus, portrayals of warrior women often end with a celebration of patriarchal dominance once the male characters have successfully contained the threat of the warrior woman through marriage or death. I argue that these depictions of containment indicate a common desire to maintain patriarchal superiority during and after Elizabeth's reign.
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Kallfelz, Cox Mary Lea. "'Unsex me here' : the political roles of women; Shakespeare and the modern world." Thesis, University of Essex, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328920.
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Anthony, Courtney Elizabeth. "Eve's Legacy: The Fates of Young Women in Shakespeare's Tragedies." Xavier University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=xavier1472821662.
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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.
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Bazzell, Jennifer Diane. "The Role of Women in The Merchant of Venice: Wives and Daughters Ahead of Their Time." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193464.
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This thesis explores the role of the female characters in Williams Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice. Through contextualizing the characters of Portia, Nerissa and Jessica within the world of early modern England, this study explores the ways in which these characters do not conform to traditional Renaissance values regarding the role of women as daughters and wives. By using historical documents such as behavioral manuals, sermons, and "defenses" of women from the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, this thesis explores the ways in which Shakespeare's female characters challenge traditional social norms. Through the comparison of the female characters with Queen Elizabeth and Patient Griselda, this study discusses the implications of the rebellious behavior of the women in The Merchant of Venice. This thesis concludes that Shakespeare purposely challenges strict social views put forward on women by creating female characters who challenge male authority and are celebrated for their behavior.
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Wiley, Jennifer L. "Shakespeare's Influence on the English Gothic, 1791-1834: The Conflicts of Ideologies." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/594386.
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Shakespeare's Influence on the English Gothic, 1791-1834: The Conflicts of Ideologies examines why some of the most influential Gothic novels and playwrights of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries frequently alluded to Shakespeare. During a time of great conflict between changing views of religion, class systems, and gender roles, writers of the Gothic addressed these important issues by looking back to Shakespeare's treatment of the conflicted ideologies of his own time. This project begins by examining the links established between the horrors exposed in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother and Shakespeare. Walpole's incorporation of unsettling scenes from Shakespeare sets the stage for other Gothic writers to allude to similar Shakespearean quandaries in their own works. The first chapter establishes what is "pre-Gothic" about some of the conflicted ideologies hinted at in Shakespeare's darkest plays. The second chapter explores how Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis incorporate Shakespearean epigraphs, quotations, and allusions into their own works to confront terrors of the 1790s. The third chapter reveals how P. B. Shelley, in his Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, and The Cenci responds to worrying questions originally raised Shakespeare. Chapter four focuses on the Romantic era's most renowned female playwright, Joanna Baillie, and her use of Shakespeare to hint at the treatment to which women are still subject in England during her own time. Finally, this study concludes with a brief look at how the threatening implications of the Gothic continue to revisit the dramas of Shakespeare through major works of Gothic fiction from the past 200 years including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Though the threats of the past might have changed, Shakespeare still plays an important role in speaking to the unresolved ideological conflicts that still haunt the consciousness of Western civilization.
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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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Rumbold, Kate Louise. "All the men and women merely players : quoting Shakespeare in the mid-eighteenth-century novel." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670136.
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Waters, Claire. "Act your age : reading and performing Shakespeare's ageing women." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c649607e-96f3-4476-a4eb-13e7ecd2db02.
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This thesis provides the first study of the representation, performance, and reception of Shakespeare’s ageing women in early modern and present-day England. It contributes an exposition of the physiology and theory of early modern ageing, drawing on this original material to make an argument for the ageing woman as a source of anxiety within the plays as they were originally staged, and as they are performed and received today. It finds the old and ageing woman in Shakespeare’s drama to be represented as physically and verbally excessive; the thesis also identifies a corresponding urge in the plays and in their reception towards the ageing woman’s containment and control. This containment is exercised in the text, the rehearsal room, the theatre, and the public space of performance reviews. My introduction determines my methodology and establishes the terms of reference for the project. The first chapter defines early modern old age and delivers a study of the early modern literature and theory of the ageing body. Each of the four subsequent chapters explores an ageing female character or characters through the lens of a theme: magic, motherhood, sexuality, and memory. The characters studied are drawn from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, King John, All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and Richard III. Some brief concluding remarks complete the thesis. The larger project of the thesis is a cultural study. Throughout, I am keen to learn how characters are talked about as well as written and performed. My effort to understand the work which Shakespeare’s older women are asked to carry out in the present day defines my methodology: I draw on prompt books, production recordings, reviews, costume, photographs, programmes, and interviews with actors and directors to aid my investigation, juxtaposing these with close study of the written plays and the early modern culture and knowledge which underpins them. The word count, exclusive of bibliography but inclusive of all footnotes and an appendix, is approximately 92,000.
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Tuerk, Cynthia M. ""Harmless delight but useful and instructive" : the woman's voice in Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14895.
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The changes and upheaval in English society and in English ideas which took place during the seventeenth century had a profound effect upon public and private perceptions of women and of women's various roles in society. A study of the drama of this period provides the means to examine the development of these new views through the popular medium of the stage. In particular, the study of adaptations of early drama offer the opportunity to compare the stage perceptions of women which were prevalent during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with attitudes towards women which emerged during the Restoration and early eighteenth century; such an examination of these differing perceptions of women has not yet been undertaken. The adaptation of Shakespearean plays provide the most profitable study in this area; Shakespeare was not only a highly influential playwright, but was also one of the most adapted of all the early dramatists during the years of the Restoration. In order to facilitate this survey, I have selected plays which span the entire Restoration era, beginning with William Davenant's The Law Against Lovers and Macbeth as well as John Lacy's Sauny the Scot from the 1660's, through the late 1670's and early 1680's with Edward Ravenscroft's Titus Andronicus and Nahum Tate's The Ingratitude of a Common-Wealth, and finally into the reign of Anne Stuart with William Burnaby's Love Betray'd. The study of these plays offers the best opportunity for the examination, through the medium of the theatre, of the changes which occurred in the perception of women and their changing identity with the rapidly evolving society of Renaissance and Restoration English society.
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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.
Full textAbstract:
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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Ritchie, Fiona Jane. "'The merciful construction of good women' : women's responses to Shakespeare in the theatre in the long eighteenth century." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.434905.
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Harris, Bernice. "Sexual engendering constructions of chastity and power in Marlowe and Shakespeare /." Access abstract and link to full text, 1993. http://0-wwwlib.umi.com.library.utulsa.edu/dissertations/fullcit/9318173.
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Parlin, Melissa J. "“Great Resolve Comes Flashing Thro’ the Gloom”: Julia Margaret Cameron’s Writings and Photographic Legacy Illuminate a Resilient Vision of Victorian Women." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1273154377.
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Olchowy, Rozeboom Gloria. "Bearing men : a cultural history of motherhood from the cycle plays to Shakespeare." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/NQ56598.pdf.
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Drouin, Jennifer. ""To be or not to be free" : nation and gender in Québécois adaptations of Shakespeare." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=85904.
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At first glance, the long tradition of Quebecois adaptations of Shakespeare might seem paradoxical, since Quebec is a francophone nation seeking political independence and has little direct connection to the British literary canon. However, it is precisely this cultural distance that allows Quebecois playwrights to play irreverently with Shakespeare and use his texts to explore issues of nation and gender which are closely connected to each other. Soon after the Quiet Revolution, adaptations such as Robert Gurik's Hamlet, prince du Quebec and Jean-Claude Germain's Rodeo et Juliette raised the question "To be or not to be free" in order to interrogate how Quebec could take action to achieve independence. In Macbeth and La tempete, Michel Garneau "tradapts" Shakespeare and situates his texts in the context of the Conquest. Jean-Pierre Ronfard's Lear and Vie et mort du Roi Boiteux carnivalize the nation and permit women to rise to power. Adaptations since 1990 reveal awareness of the need for cultural and gender diversity so that women, queers, and immigrants may contribute more to the nation's development. Since Quebec is simultaneously colonial, neo-colonial, and postcolonial, Quebecois playwrights negotiate differently than English Canadians the fine line between the enrichment of their local culture and its possible contamination, assimilation, or effacement by Shakespeare's overwhelming influence, which thus allows them to appropriate his texts in service of gender issues and the decolonization of the Quebec nation.
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McElfresh, Darlene S. "Machiavellianism and Motherhood: Shakespeare's Inversion of Traditional Cultural Roles." Xavier University / OhioLINK, 1995. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=xavier1352478936.
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Birge, Amy Anastasia. ""Mislike Me not for My Complexion": Shakespearean Intertextuality in the Works of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278175/.
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Caliban, the ultimate figure of linguistic and racial indeterminacy in The Tempest, became for African-American writers a symbol of colonial fears of rebellion against oppression and southern fears of black male sexual aggression. My dissertation thus explores what I call the "Calibanic Quadrangle" in essays and novels by Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. The figure of Caliban allows these authors to inflect the sentimental structure of the novel, to elevate Calibanic utterance to what Cooper calls "crude grandeur and exalted poesy," and to reveal the undercurrent of anxiety in nineteenth-century American attempts to draw rigid racial boundaries. The Calibanic Quadrangle enables this thorough critique because it allows the black woman writer to depict the oppression of the "Other," southern fears of black sexuality, the division between early black and white women's issues, and the enduring innocence of the progressive, educated, black female hero ~ all within the legitimized boundaries of the Shakespearean text, which provides literary authority to the minority writer. I call the resulting Shakespearean intertextuality a Quadrangle because in each of these African-American works a Caliban figure, a black man or "tragic mulatto" who was once "petted" and educated, struggles within a hostile environment of slavery and racism ruled by the Prospero figure, the wielder of "white magic," who controls reproduction, fears miscegenation, and enforces racial hierarchy. The Miranda figure, associated with the womb and threatened by the specter of miscegenation, advocates slavery and perpetuates the hostile structure. The Ariel figure, graceful and ephemeral, usually the "tragic mulatta" and a slave, desires her freedom and complements the Caliban figure. Each novel signals the presence of the paradigm by naming at least one character from The Tempest (Caliban in Cooper's A Voice from the South; "Mirandy" in Harper's Iola Leroy; Prospero in Hopkins's Contending Forces; and Ariel in Hopkins's Hagar's Daughter).
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Williams, Christian Brant. "WOMEN’S MARITAL PROPERTY IN SHAKESPEARE’S ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL AND MEASURE FOR MEASURE." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1503584564034864.
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Ross, Aimee Elizabeth. "From ghosts to skulls : selfhood, bodies and gender in Renaissance revenge tragedy /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9998045.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.<br>Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-228). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Drake, Susan Wiebe. "María Félix the last great Mexican film diva : the representation of women in Mexican film, 1940-1970 /." Connect to resource, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1118953316.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio State University, 2005.<br>Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 177 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-177). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center
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Montgomery, Kaylor Layne. "A Woman Trapped: Representations of Female Sexual Agency in Early Modern Literature." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1523228037122741.
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Benson, Fiona. "The Ophelia versions : representations of a dramatic type, 1600-1633." Thesis, St Andrews, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/478.
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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.
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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.
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Zawadzinski, Jennifer. "Raising their Voices: Women, Articulation and Power in Shakespeare's Henriad." W&M ScholarWorks, 2001. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626313.
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Park, Yoon-hee. "Rewriting Woman Evil?: Antifeminism and its Hermeneutic Problems in Four Criseida Stories." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278387/.
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Since Benoit de Sainte-Maure's creation of the Briseida story, Criseida has evolved as one of the most infamous heroines in European literature, an inconstant femme fatale. This study analyzes four different receptions of the Criseida story with a special emphasis on the antifeminist tradition. An interesting pattern arises from the ways in which four British writers render Criseida: Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Crisevde is a response to the antifeminist tradition of the story (particularly to Giovanni Boccaccio's II Filostrato); Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is a direct response to Chaucer's poem; William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida aligns itself with the antifeminist tradition, but in a different way; and John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida or Truth Found Too Late is a straight rewriting of Shakespeare's play. These works themselves form an interesting canon within the whole tradition. All four writers are not only readers of the continually evolving story of Criseida but also critics, writers, and literary historians in the Jaussian sense. They critique their predecessors' works, write what they have conceived from the tradition of the story, and reinterpret the old works in that historical context.
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Mattsson, Lisa. "Women and Film Adaptations : Feminism in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-10816.
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This paper will focus on feminism over time as well as film adaptations. By comparing the play The Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, with the movie from 1967 with the same name and also the movie 10 Things I Hate about You from 1999, the aim is to see if, and how, the specific wave of feminism, and the woman, is portrayed in the different film adaptations. The different waves of feminism and the movie of that wave are presented together, one by one. Lastly, an analysis of the movies follows.
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Brinkman, Eric M. "Inclusive Shakespeare: An Intersectional Analysis of Contemporary Production." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595003420023716.
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O'Driscoll, Eva. "Arrows of desire : representations of women, love and sexuality in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream /." Title page, contents and introduction only, 1999. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09aro268.pdf.
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Cole, Heather. "The Woman Behind the Witch's Mask: The Evolution of the Female Villain in Western Literature From Shakespeare to the Present." Miami University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=muhonors1111688376.
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Baldwin, Lind Paula. "Looking for privacy in Shakespeare : woman's place and space in a selection of plays and early modern texts." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5848/.
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Grounded in a multi-faceted theoretical framework that examines the dynamic interaction between the public and the private spheres of Elizabethan everyday life, this thesis aims to trace how the concept of privacy and its associated terms were developed, constructed, evoked, and configured both in Shakespearean drama and in other illustrative early modern texts. The author suggests that Shakespeare's configuration of space results from a combination of the conditions of representation - empty stages - metaphorical language, technical dramatic devices, and textual markers that create a sense of space in the texts and onstage. The research also explores the place and space of early modern women and of Shakespeare's female characters in terms of their relation to the private space; that is to say, their construction of 'self-in-relation-to-space', as well as their movements and activities within and outside the private's real or imagined boundaries, thus their ability to fashion the public sphere from within the private. Rather than analysing the role of women in the plays exclusively from the point of view of opposition between spheres - public man versus private woman - the study wants to question and pose, at the same time, the relevance of approaching Shakespearean texts from a spatial perspective, a choice that may have an impact on the very interpretation of them.
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Coleman, Alex. "Foul Witches and Feminine Power: Gendered Representations of Witchcraft in the Works of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries." Ohio Dominican University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=odu1562624942402741.
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Andrade, Mislainy Patricia de. "PROCEDIMENTOS TRADUTÓRIOS E DIMENSÕES DA FIGURA FEMININA EM SONHO DE UMA NOITE DE VERÃO, DE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2013. http://localhost:8080/tede/handle/tede/3186.
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Previous issue date: 2013-06-07<br>This study is about translation procedures in A Midsummer Night´s Dream by William
Shakespeare on its five translations published in Brazil by Carlos Alberto Nunes
(1955), F. C. Medeiros Mendes and Oscar (1969); Beatriz Viégas-Faria (2001);
Heliodora Barbara (2004) and Erick Ramalho (2006). Our intention here is also
verifying in these translations, comparing to the source text, speeches that report the
development of the women‟s profile in Shakespearean work in analysis. From the
assumption that each translator has his own characteristics and style, we have
checked in this study the translation strategies which had been chosen and used by
each author in their translation process. We know that each translation was produced
in different social and historical contexts, however, for a greater comprehension of its
specificities, this study had as a theoretical basis, the methodological model of
Lambert and van Gorp (1985), thereby, justifying with greater accuracy and efficiency
the choices of each author‟s translation procedures. This analysis had been
developed in three stages: (i) identifying fragments that address the woman‟s profile
in Shakespeare work, (ii) checking fragments (in the target texts) of each possible
statement or word, previously highlighted, about woman‟s profile, (iii) analyze the
translation procedures observed before, and the general effects they may cause in
different translations, in order to analyze how the translations may maintain,
attenuate, intensify or omit, among other things, discursive aspects about the
construction of the female profile once verified on the source text. Therefore, this
study followed the scheme of strategies developed by MárciaParedesNunes (2007),
it consists of translation strategies relevant for this research. Our theoretical
referential is based on the Descriptive Translation Studies, about theories and
approaches from authors such as Even-Zohar (1990), Toury (1980, 1995, 1998),
Lefevere (1990) and Venuti (2002). We have noticed that all translators have tried to
be as faithful as possible and keep in their translations the original proposal, always
looking for equivalent terms between the source text and the target text, and worrying
about the lexicon, the semantic and with the linguistic varieties present in the
Shakespearean text, they also (re)create the play‟s scenic aspects. Whereas, the
translation studies are still recent in Brazil, this research does not stop here. New
studies will come contributing to the increase and diffusion of this new field of
scientific and academic research.<br>Esta pesquisa versa sobre procedimentos tradutórios em Sonho de Uma Noite de
Verão de William Shakespeare em cinco traduções publicadas no Brasil, por Carlos
Alberto Nunes (1955); F. C. Medeiros e Oscar Mendes (1969); Beatriz Viégas-Faria
(2001); Barbara Heliodora (2004) e Erick Ramalho (2006). Pretende-se aqui,
também, verificar nessas traduções, comparando-se ao texto original as implicações
de discursos que marcam a construção do perfil da mulher na obra shakespeariana
em análise. Partindo do pressuposto de que cada tradutor possui suas
particularidades e estilo próprio, ocupamo-nos das estratégias de tradução
escolhidas por cada um deles. Como cada trabalho se deu em contexto históricosocial
distinto, adotamos, para melhor compreensão das especificidades, como base
teórica neste estudo, o modelo metodológico de Lambert e van Gorp (1985) para,
desse modo, acessarmos, com maior rigor e eficácia, a escolha dos procedimentos
tradutórios de cada autor. Este estudo apresenta-se em três etapas: (i) identificação
de fragmentos que retratam o perfil da mulher na obra de Shakespeare; (ii)
localização das traduções (nos textos-alvo), de cada possível afirmação ou palavra
sobre a mulher, previamente destacadas nos fragmentos e, (iii) análise dos
procedimentos tradutórios observados e os efeitos gerais que estes provocam nas
diferentes traduções, a fim de verificar em que medida as versões mantêm,
atenuam, intensificam ou omitem os aspectos discursivos relacionados à construção
do perfil feminino antes percebido no original. Para tanto, nos apoiamos no esquema
de estratégias elaborado por Márcia Paredes Nunes (2007), constituído por
estratégias tradutórias relevantes para esta pesquisa. Nosso referencial teórico
funda-se nos Estudos Descritivos da Tradução, com base nas teorias e abordagens
de autores como Even-Zohar (1990), Toury (1980, 1995, 1998), Lefevere (1990) e
Venuti (2002). Observamos que ambos os tradutores buscaram da maneira mais
precisa possível serem fiéis e conservar em suas traduções a proposta do original,
buscando sempre termos equivalentes entre o texto-fonte e o texto-meta,
preocupando-se com o léxico, com o semântico e com as variedades linguísticas
presentes no texto shakespeariano, além de (re)criarem os aspectos cênicos da
peça.Considerando que os estudos da tradução ainda são recentes, no Brasil, esta
pesquisa não para por aqui. Novos estudos virão no intuito de contribuir com a
ampliação e difusão deste novo campo de investigação cientifica-acadêmico.
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Ackerman, Heather. "Where babies come from in Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's Measure for measure." Laramie, Wyo. : University of Wyoming, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1417810021&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=18949&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Barker, Helen Margaret. "Writing about rape : law, criticism, and drama, from Shakespeare's Titus to The Lawes Resolutions." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6337/.
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1970s and 1980s feminist writing about rape in relation to early modern legal practice and to its representation in literary works established a paradigm of misogyny and female victimhood that has remained largely unchallenged. Two works in particular have become almost ubiquitous in modern criticism: a 1983 paper by Nazife Bashar, and the 1632 treatise, \(The\) \(Lawes\) \(Resolutions\) \(of\) \(Womens\) \(Rights\). But a scrutiny of source material revealed factual error and misreading of early modern law and commentary in Bashar’s piece. Additionally, \(The\) \(Lawes\) \(Resolutions\) is unreliable in its account of statute law, while its legal credentials are unclear. Mistaken assumptions arising from both sources have been perpetuated and compounded in modern criticism, and established as commonplace. The resulting critical paradigm constrains the scope for further investigation. The thesis attempts to set the undeniably subordinate status of women in a fuller context than that of oppositional gender politics. It reviews early modern statute law, the background to \(The\) \(Lawes\) \(Resolutions\), Bashar’s essay and its influence on subsequent criticism, the cultural context that established women’s secondary status and reinforced their vulnerability to rape, and the part of neoclassicism in the dynamic. Later chapters turn to early modern – particularly Jacobean – drama. The thesis suggests that in a fuller context of complexity and contradiction there is potential for wider and more interesting approaches to rape in literature than ideological assumptions prevalent in criticism over the past thirty years have allowed.
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Van, Pelt Deborah. "“I Stand for Sovereignty”: Reading Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice." Scholar Commons, 2009. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/65.
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Portia serves as a complex and often underestimated character in William Shakespeare's controversial comedy The Merchant of Venice. Using the critical methodologies of New Historicism and feminism, this thesis explores Portia's representation of Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. Striking similarities exist between character and Queen, including physical description, suitors, marriage issues, and rhetoric. In addition, the tripartite marriage at the play's conclusion among Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio represents the relationship Elizabeth Tudor formed between her merchant class and her aristocracy. Shylock serves as a representation of a generic or perhaps Catholic threat to England during the early modern era. Moreover, by examining Portia's language in the trial scene, the play invites audiences to read her as a representative of the learned Renaissance woman, placing special emphasis on the dialectical and rhetorical elements of the language trivium in classical studies. Finally, through a close reading of the mercantile language in the text, Portia can be interpreted as the merchant of the play's title.
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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.
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Callaghan, D. C. "The construction of the category of 'woman' in Shakespeare's King Lear and Othello and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.373909.
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This thesis addresses fissures in language, ideology and subjectivity as they are manifested in the dramatic construction of the category of 'Woman' in four major Jacobean texts. The first section of my project deals with the way 1n which the opposition of male and female underlies the perception and construction of order at every level. In a scheme of thought characterized by the use of antithesis and analogy, the opposition of gender proves to be one of the most richly extensible. All analogies are connected by the great chain of thought which consti tutes the Great Chain of Being. Once any element 1n this scheme is undermined there is the danger (or for my purposes, the analytic advantage) that there will be something like a domino ef:ect. That is to say, relations of power become more visible at the problematic i~tersec~ion of gender. In section two, I propose a construction of tragedy rela~2d to female transgression as an alternative to the '.va'! in which feminist critics tend to equate gender with genre, dubbing comedy 'feminine' and tragedy 'masculine.' My construc~ion also counters the ~raditional notion of tragedy as a ~ixed, pr i vi leged genre category. I f',lrther examine the construc~ion of woman in tragedy through absence, silence and utterance. The final sect.ion explores the nature of the cont':'nuous process of gender di£ £erentiation which serves to produce and maintain gender categories. Gender differentiation occurs most manifestly in misogynistic discourse which I address using Lacan I s theory of the construction of the human subject. The production of misogyny in its various forms constructs the feminine as 'Other,' and 1n this its function can be seen as one of policing the boundaries 'of gender ideologies. Here I also treat the construction of masculinity against femininity since the production of the former is dependent upon the latter. The preceding analyses serve to break down unities of gender by recognizlng that discourse simultaneously constructs and disperses concepts of gender. Gender is thus crucial '=.0 the cuI tural dynamic of Renaissance drama, and in this we find authority for new direc~ions in feminis~ literary studies.
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Templeman, Sally Jane. "Cooks, cooking, and food on the early modern stage." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/9824.
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This project aims to take the investigation of food in early modern drama, in itself a relatively new field, in a new direction. It does this by shifting the critical focus from food-based metaphors to food-based properties and food-producing cook characters. This shift reveals exciting, unexpected, and hitherto unnoticed contexts. In The Taming of the Shrew and Titus Andronicus, which were written during William Shakespeare’s inn-yard playhouse period, the playwright exploits these exceptionally aromatic venues in order to trigger site-specific responses to food-based scenes in these plays. Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair brings fair-appropriate gingerbread properties onstage. When we look beneath the surface of this food effect to its bread and wine ingredients, however, it reveals a subtext that satirizes the theory of transubstantiation. Jonson expands on this theme by using Ursula’s cooking fire (a property staged in Jonson’s representation of Smithfield’s Bartholomew Fair) to engage with the prison narrative of Anne Askew, who was burned to death in front of Bartholomew Priory on the historic Smithfield for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. This thesis also investigates water, which, for early moderns, was a complex and quasi-mystical liquid: it was a primary element, it washed sin from the world during the Great Flood, it was a marker of status, it was a medicine, and it was a cookery ingredient. Christopher Marlowe not only uses dirty water to humiliate his doomed monarch in Edward II, but he also uses it to apportion blame to the king for his own downfall. In Timon of Athens, Shakespeare draws on the theory of the elements to cast Timon as a man of water, who, Jesus-like, breaks up and divides (or splashes around) his body at his “last” supper. Fully-fledged cook characters were a relative rarity on the early modern stage. This project looks at two exceptions: Furnace in Philip Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts and the unnamed master cook in John Fletcher’s The Tragedy of Rollo, Duke of Normandy. Both playwrights use their respective gastronomic geniuses to demonstrate the danger that lower-order expertise poses to the upper classes when society is in flux. Finally, this project demonstrates that a link existed between ornate domestic food effects and alchemy. It shows how Philip Massinger’s The Great Duke of Florence and Thomas Middleton’s Women, Beware Women use food properties associated with alchemy to satirize notions of perfection in their play-worlds.
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Winifred, Cheang Wai Fong, and 鄭惠芳. "Interfering Voices: Women and History in Shakespeare''s History Plays." Thesis, 2000. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22052024304138188882.
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博士<br>國立臺灣大學<br>外國語文學系研究所<br>88<br>Abstract
This dissertation explores the relationship between women
and history in William Shakespeare''s ten history plays. The
purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that "her
stories," which have been ignored by critics, are not absent
from these plays. "Her stories" interact and interfere in
various ways with "his stories" to constitute the history
Shakespeare presents. Two basic ideas are crucial to my re-
examination of these plays: Raymond Williams''s concept of the
drama as "inherently multivocal" and Steven Mullaney''s notion
that Renaissance plays harbor "ambiguities."
The analysis of the plays accentuates women''s political
and dramatic power. It argues that the dominating mothers in
King John and the woman warriors in the three parts of Henry
VI influence the course of historical events. Various
politically powerless women are dramatically empowered: some
force alternative comic spaces out of history; some constitute
appealing emotional subtexts; some command disturbing voices.
Their stories inform us that there are alternative versions of
history.
Even though this dissertation owes much to the insightful
assumptions of New Historicism, it argues that the often used
subversion/containment interpretation should be
reconceptualized when applied to these plays. The male history
and ideology are always interfered with by the female voices
which are inherently present. Containment, as our analysis
will eventually prove, often fails. It would be more fruitful
to conceive mainstream and marginal forces as coexisting
-within Shakespeare''s history plays.