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Reconsidering Shakespeare’s ‘Lateness’: studies in the last plays
Full text linkShakespeare’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
Hereditary curse: inheritance and legacy in early modern revenge tragedy 1550-1610
Full text linkMy thesis examines how changing perceptions of the past, and escalating anxieties about
the future, brought about by a disputed succession and the religious upheavals of the
sixteenth century, impacted on the development of revenge tragedy. Through a close
analysis of the motifs of inheritance and legacy, I shall consider the ways in which
revenge plays reshape Senecan ideas on hereditary violence, redress, and retribution for
contemporary audiences. This thesis shows how the revenge tradition pulls some
enduring sixteenth and seventeenth-century political preoccupations with disordered
patrimonies into excessively violent narratives and reflects on the significance of these
tropes for the authors and audiences of this popular mode.
My project analyses how these key themes develop chronologically from the accession
of Elizabeth I, to the early Jacobean period. The thesis does not aim to provide a
comprehensive survey of the genre but examines the evolution of these themes in some
defining instances of the mode to broach a new reading. While most scholarship of
revenge tragedy begins with the drama of the 1590s, my study explores new insights into
the tradition by starting with the classical translations of the mid sixteenth-century. It then
follows the trajectory of the genre towards its sustained incorporation of parody and
tragicomedy in the early seventeenth century.
I begin my inquiry with some close analysis of the lexical choices in the Senecan
translations, looking at Heywood’s Thyestes in particular and its accentuation of maternity
and succession. I build upon these initial observations in my analysis of some of the more
frequently-discussed revenge plays in The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus,
looking specifically at how these works explore language, autonomy, and memory.
My
focus on inheritance and legacy leads me to investigate how the history of Richard III
deals with revenge tropes surrounding legacy, violence, and redress. The final chapter
looks at how The Revenger’s Tragedy self-consciously interrogates its position as a
successor to the traditions explored in this thesis, and ultimately how the text reappraises
understandings of memory, storytelling, and narrative conclusions.
Critics have noted how the speed of political and religious change in the period
contributed to an increasing sense of disjuncture with the past and exacerbated
apprehensions about impending instability. My analysis aims to shed new light on how
such responses affected the genre’s preoccupation with balancing the debts of the past
and ensuring the stability of the future. Although conventions of the revenge genre are
predominantly concerned with anxieties around the loss of heirs and of lines unnaturally
stopped, this project considers how the sixteenth-century revenge tradition also
introduces notions of legacy and continuity. I shall demonstrate how narrative and
language are explored as potential sources of reparation and renewal, in their ability to
forge a sense of meaning in an ever-changing world
Nature and the female supernatural in Shakespearean drama
Full text linkNature and the Female Supernatural in Shakespearean Drama: The aim of this thesis is to explore how Shakespeare constructed his supernatural characters, most specifically through the lens of gender, and to what extent these characters adhere to the binary between masculine order and feminine disorder to be found in early modern conceptions of the world, the sexes and the supernatural. An initial analysis shows that Shakespeare does not confine his characters to these rigid gender models and that his characterisation of them involves blurring the boundaries, dissolving differences and creating ambiguous figures who belong to neither of the stereotypical supernatural male or female roles. A male magus will be shown to share common ground with the female witch and a ‘hag’ will prove herself a master of the male arts, including Shakespeare’s own, the theatre.
Further to this, I find that, though Shakespeare blurs the boundary between the male and female supernatural characters, there is, ultimately, a limit to this boundary-crossing, and that the female characters are almost always aligned with disorder. This, I argue, is due to the importance and emphasis Shakespeare places on their supernatural powers as being rooted in their bodily self, whereas in contrast, his male supernatural characters are always aligned with (patriarchal) order and their abilities are often explicitly non-corporeal and figured as the result of a masculine-coded ‘art’ or other scholarly activity. To explore these distinctions, I examine the supernatural figures in each of the genres of Shakespearean drama, in particular focusing on Joan of Henry VI, Part One, the paired figures of Oberon and Titania and Prospero and Sycorax of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, the correlations between disorderly women, the natural and the supernatural in both Macbeth and King Lear, and, finally, the orderly ‘mankind witch’ Paulina of The Winter’s Tale
Theatrical experience in search of God; pessimism and promise: Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett
Full text link“Que Voulez-Vous?” : what do you expect? (Waiting for Godot 56)
“What is it I'm looking for? I know it's something I lost.”
(Long Day’s Journey into Night 107)
These similar questions are addressed by Samuel Beckett and Eugene O‟Neill in
their dramas. Interestingly, Beckett‟s “Que Voulez-Vous?” and O‟Neill‟s “What am I
looking for?” resonate with Christ‟s question to his two followers: “What do you
want?” (John1:38) This simple but crucial question strikes at the heart of humanity,
hankering for something that they have lost and not yet found; this something may be
God.
Modernist theatre relies on the Nietzschean concept of „the death of God‟.
This point is seen to relate to the work of Eugene O'Neill and Samuel Beckett. Both
O'Neill and Beckett were brought up in pious Irish families. Nonetheless, their
reaction to their Irish roots was mixed with blasphemy, and nostalgia for the loss of
their Christian heritage. My thesis in this respect addresses the following question:
how do O'Neill and Beckett represent on stage their spiritual frustration and longing
for God? To examine this question, I explore representative drama by O‟Neill and
Beckett, focusing upon tragedy, nihilistic philosophy, and Christianity. Drawing on
these sources, this thesis aims to analyse a theatrical aesthetic that, despite initial
appearances, exhibits a strong metaphysical and theological dimension.
This thesis is divided into two main parts. In the first part, I examine
O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon, The Fountain, Lazarus Laughed, The Hairy Ape, Dynamo, and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. In the second part, I focus on Beckett's
Waiting for Godot. The conclusion reads these two distinct playwrights in
conjunction by formulating comparative observation. In this regard, I try to connect
their work with different perspectives, taking account of literary, philosophical and
theological approaches. This interdisciplinary reading can neither completely
eliminate repetitions nor overcome the fragmentary nature of each approach.
Nevertheless, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which the works
of O'Neill and Beckett conceive of Christianity in both its positive and negative
characterization
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Legendary fathers, transient victories, and ambivalent histories: continuity and development in Shakespeare’s exploration of authority and resistance from Henry VI Part One to Hamlet
Full text linkThe thesis explores the development of Shakespeare’s political ideas, in particular his
exploration of authority, and the legitimacy of resistance towards it, in the two English
history tetralogies (as well as the self-contained history, King John), and examines the ways
in which this protracted engagement with the question of kingship – and governance more
generally – informs his turn to tragedy towards the end of the 1590s.
The thesis argues that criticism has tended to downplay the importance of the first tetralogy
in the Shakespeare canon (particularly the Henry VI plays), and as a corollary it has
overlooked the important continuities that can be traced from Shakespeare’s earliest
engagement with politics to his treatment of power in Julius Caesar and Hamlet.
The thesis sees the history plays as essentially paradoxical and ambivalent. Shakespeare
presents the past as both a shining example to which each succeeding generation must aspire,
but also as a legacy which they are powerless to fulfil, while he treats the dynastic conflicts of
the Houses of York and Lancaster as essentially intractable, with each new pretender to the
throne – however legitimate his claim – undermined by a host of legal, moral, and pragmatic
considerations. It is a central contention of the thesis that it was Shakespeare’s failure
satisfactorily to resolve the intractable political conflicts of the first tetralogy which prompted
him to confront a similar set of questions in King John, before returning to them yet again in
the more highly acclaimed second tetralogy.
The thesis concludes by arguing that far from representing a breach with his history plays, the
tragedies are continuous with them. So rather than identifying the ‘origins’ of Hamlet either
in Shakespeare’s reaction to the fall of Essex or the death of his son, Hammet, in 1596, it is
more persuasive to see the play as arising from the debates and problems which were initially
addressed in the first tetralogy
Nicolaus Mameranus: poetry and politics at the court of Mary Tudor
Full text linkThis thesis is the first full length study of the Luxembourgian poet Nicolaus
Mameranus (1500-c.1567) in the past century, and the first in the English language.
It contains select translation and analysis of previously unknown works, new
information about his life, and a modern, expanded bibliographical overview of his
extant writing. The thesis focuses primarily on the poet’s association with the culture
and politics of Marian England, particularly on the spring of 1557 when he
accompanied Philip II on the sovereign’s second voyage to see his wife, Mary I. In
London Mameranus published three collections of his Latin poetry, later presenting
to the Queen seven of his own books and a petition proffering his counsel. After her
death, Mameranus wrote a report on her funeral service in Brussels.
Taking these texts, situating them alongside other rarely heard voices, and
contextualising them within a substantial collection of historical evidence, I provide
a reassessment of the latter stages of Mary’s reign. Where most studies of the period,
including even the latest revisionist ones, see 1557 as the year in which the country
began its decline into warfare and famine, marked by the Queen’s second false
pregnancy, her problems with the papacy, and her eventual death in the subsequent
year, I argue instead that, for many in and around the court, this period was
characterised by an atmosphere of hope and progression, spurred on by the King’s
visit. I argue that the royal couple successfully re-forged their image at the apex of a
political union that many considered the foundation of a new Anglo-Habsburg
dynasty, and, equally successfully, represented their dual monarchy as a bastion in
the fight to reform Catholic Christianity in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.
Rather than being satisfied with the idea that Mary was able successfully to negotiate
and represent her own political role within the marriage to her supporters in England,
I also propose that foreign observers such as Mameranus widely understood and
endorsed her role as Queen regnant, even on an international stage.
Finally, this thesis is also a study in the culture of counsel in the early modern
period, examining the rhetoric and genre that a Catholic author deployed in his
efforts to effect political and religious change in the mid-century. Countering
traditional histories of political thought, which look predominantly at Protestant
reformers and the development of republicanism and civil government, this thesis
proposes that Mameranus’ writing is evidence of a vibrant Catholic tradition that
relied for its efficacy on a distinctly Erasmian strand of princely humanism, that
successfully adapted its predecessor’s call for the reform of Christianity to a post-
Reformation, confessionalised political sphere, and that held as its ideal a polity that
was Catholic and Imperial
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