The book reads Tudor-Stuart comedies in order to illuminate the problems and promises of achieving manhood because comedies permit public scrutiny of what might seem inhibitingly painful or irresoluble and of nuances that might go unregistered by the data and contemporary documents employed in social and gender histories.".
Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance features essays questioning the extent to which education, an activity pursued in the home, classroom, and the church, led to, mirrored, and was perhaps even transformed by moments of instruction on stage. This volume argues that along with the popular press, the early modern stage is also a key pedagogical site and that education”performed and performative”plays a central role in gender construction. The wealth of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printed and manuscript documents devoted to education (parenting guides, conduct books, domestic manuals, catechisms, diaries, and autobiographical writings) encourages examination of how education contributed to the formation of gendered and hierarchical structures, as well as the production, reproduction, and performance of masculinity and femininity. In examining both dramatic and non-dramatic texts via aspects of performance theory, this collection explores the ways education instilled formal academic knowledge, but also elucidates how educational practices disciplined students as members of their social realm, citizens of a nation, and representatives of their gender.
In this essay collection, the contributors contend that academic drama represents an important, but heretofore understudied, site of cultural production in early modern England. Focusing on plays that were written and performed in academic environments such as Oxford University, Cambridge University, grammar schools, and the Inns of Court, the scholars investigate how those plays strive to give dramatic coherence to issues of religion, politics, gender, pedagogy, education, and economics. Of particular significance are the shifting political and religious contentions that so frequently shaped both the cultural questions addressed by the plays, and the sorts of dramatic stories that were most conducive to the exploration of such questions. The volume argues that the writing and performance of academic drama constitute important moments in the history of education and the theater because, in these plays, narrative is consciously put to work as both a representation of, and an exercise in, knowledge formation. The plays discussed speak to numerous segments of early modern culture, including the relationship between the academy and the state, the tensions between humanism and religious reform, the successes and failures of the humanist program, the social profits and economic liabilities of formal education, and the increasing involvement of universities in the commercial market, among other issues.
The deaths of husbands radically changed women’s lives in the early modern period. While losing male protection, widows acquired rare opportunities for social and economic independence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theatre, arousing both male desire and anxiety. Now how did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh and incisive examination of the theatrical representation of widows by discussing the material conditions of the early modern stage. It is also the only comprehensive study of this topic covering all three phases of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline drama.
This dictionary explores the language of domestic life found in Shakespeare's work and seeks to demonstrate the meanings he attaches to it through his uses of it in particular contexts. "Domestic life" covers a range of topics: the language of the household, clothing, food, family relationships and duties; household practices, the architecture of the home, and all that conditions and governs the life of the home. The dictionary draws on recent cultural materialist research to provide in-depth definitions of the domestic language and life in Shakespeare's works, creating a richly rewarding and informative reference tool for upper level students and scholars.
From the perennially young, precocious figure of 'little orphan Annie' to the physical and vocal ageing of the eighteenth-century castrato, interlinked cultural constructions of age and gender are central to the historical and contemporary depiction of creative activity and its audiences. Gender, Age and Musical Creativity takes an interdisciplinary approach to issues of identity and its representation, examining intersections of age and gender in relation to music and musicians across a wide range of periods, places, and genres, including female patronage in Renaissance Italy, the working-class brass band tradition of northern England, twentieth-century jazz and popular music cultures, and the contemporary 'New Music' scene. Drawing together the work of musicologists and practitioners, the collection offers new ways in which to conceptualise the complex links between age and gender in both individual and collective practice and their reception: essays explore juvenilia and 'late' style in composition and performance, the role of public and private institutions in fostering and sustaining creative activity throughout the course of musical careers, and the ways in which genres and scenes themselves age over time.
The Sick Child in Early Modern England is a powerful exploration of the treatment, perception, and experience of illness in childhood, from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. At this time, the sickness or death of a child was a common occurrence - over a quarter of young people died before the age of fifteen - and yet this subject has received little scholarly attention. Hannah Newton takes three perspectives: first, she investigates medical understandings and treatments of children. She argues that a concept of 'children's physic' existed amongst doctors and laypeople: the young were thought to be physiologically distinct, and in need of special medicines. Secondly, she examines the family's' experience, demonstrating that parents devoted considerable time and effort to the care of their sick offspring, and experienced feelings of devastating grief upon their illnesses and deaths. Thirdly, she takes the strikingly original viewpoint of sick children themselves, offering rare and intimate insights into the emotional, spiritual, physical, and social dimensions of sickness, pain, and death. Newton asserts that children's experiences were characterised by profound ambivalence: whilst young patients were often tormented by feelings of guilt, fears of hell, and physical pain, sickness could also be emotionally and spiritually uplifting, and invited much attention and love from parents. Drawing on a wide array of printed and archival sources, The Sick Child is of vital interest to scholars working in the interconnected fields of the history of medicine, childhood, parenthood, bodies, emotion, pain, death, religion, and gender.
Thomas Middleton is one of the major English Renaissance dramatists alongside Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. Middleton continues to fascinate audiences and readers with his black humour, his wry and witty treatment of sexuality, morality, and politics. He is a consummate professional dramatist, experimenting with stagecraft in a manner that combines the visual and the verbal to startling effect. This book brings together these aspects of Middleton's craft through a detailed study of his major plays. Middleton experimented with, and helped to shape, a range of dramatic genres: city comedy, tragicomedy, romance, and revenge tragedy. This new guide analyses in detail how the plays work in terms of the early modern theatre and dramatic genres, as well as elucidating the broader cultural issues shaping the plays. It provides an introduction to critical readings of Middleton's works as well as modern performances, demonstrating how modern critics, producers, dramatists and film makers see Middleton's dark, playful and challenging plays as speaking to our times.Key Features*Ideal student guide with its wide ranging introduction to Middleton's city comedies, tragedies, and collaborative plays and its readings of key texts such as The Roaring Girl, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Revenger's Tragedy, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling*Uses the most recent edition available, the Oxford Middleton (2007)*Provides background contexts guiding readers through criticism of the plays as well as recent work on early modern theatre and culture*Emphasis on Middleton's stagecraft and its assessment of modern adaptations and film versions of his plays
