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Spectacular Imaginings (Q3202) 2017
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Spectacular Imaginings: Renaissance Drama and the Stage 1580-1640
Spectacular Imaginings explores English Renaissance drama and its staging between the advent of
the commercial theatres in London (circa 1580) and their closure during the early 1640s as a
consequence of the English Civil War. This new module has been developed with, and will be
co-taught by, scholars and theatre practitioners at Globe Education, Shakespeare’s Globe. The
Globe’s programme at both its new indoor Jacobean theatre (the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), as
well as its main outdoor theatre, will form an important part of this module with students
attending performances at both venues. The module will focus on a selection of plays from this
period, exploring them in their original social, cultural and aesthetic contexts. It will also reflect
upon why plays from this era are so frequently and successfully re-produced for the modern
stage and screen. What roles did theatre play in London during the Renaissance and why was
England virtually unique in Europe (Spain is the only counterpart) in creating a large-scale
commercial theatre that generated a vast corpus of new plays? The module examines many of
the most significant themes with which this theatre engages; among them, unruly sexualities
(incest, adultery, rape); violence and eloquence; London and city commerce; domestic tragedy;
marriage and divorce; the place of the court; the foreign and the exotic; and the supernatural. It
considers the roles of genre, acting styles, theatre companies, star actors, boy players, audiences
and the varying physical spaces of the theatres in mediating these themes. Students will have
access to the unique Globe archives when researching their dissertation projects. A variety of
genres will be studied (tragedies, comedies, tragi-comedies and histories) and some of the plays
have been determined by the Globe’s season.
Module convenor: Prof Margaret Healy (Office, Arts B233) Office Hours: to be announced
Learning outcomes and Assessment
One 6000 word dissertation (the word count does not include footnotes and bibliography) due
in the Summer term (exact date on Sussex Direct) should demonstrate:
1) the ability to research widely and acquire expertise in an area of particular interest; 2) an
accurate understanding on the interplay of drama and performance with the social and political
contexts of early modern England; 3) an ability to analyse the ways in which drama responds to
commercial demands and shifts in aesthetic ‘taste’; 4) the skills requisite to organising complex
material into an extended piece of written work.
Your chosen dissertation topic and title must be discussed and agreed with your tutor.
Please come and talk about your ideas and eventually your dissertation plan in my office hours. I
should like to invite all students to submit several small passages of writing (handed to me
throughout the period of the module) or one passage of 600 words that you would like some
feedback on. I can read and comment on up to 600 words of the actual dissertation draft. This
written work will not be given a grade but it can serve as a focus for feedback about your
dissertation project.
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Essential purchases: English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology eds., Engle, Maus,
Rasmussen (W.W.Norton@Company, 2002); William Shakespeare: The Complete Works
(1986; Oxford: Clarendon Press, second edition, 2005) eds. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor and
John Jowett (alternatively, the more expensive Norton anthology of Shakespeare which is based
on this Oxford edition).
Highly Recommended essay collections for purchase:
David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass, Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and
Jacobean Drama (Routledge, 1991).
Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, eds, Sullivan, Cheney, Hadfield (OUP, 2006).
Useful aids: Many of these books specifically refer to Shakespearean drama but they provide
helpful contexts for studying Renaissance theatre more generally.
Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, eds., Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Orlin (OUP, 2003). A New
History of Early English Drama, eds. Cox and Kastan (Columbia, 1997); Richard Dutton, Mastering
the Revels: the regulation and censorship of English renaissance drama (Macmillan, 1991).Simon Palfrey,
Doing Shakespeare (Arden, Thomson Learning, 2005): very cogent chapters on Shakespeare’s
language and characters; Shakespeare in Parts (OUP, 2007). Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: from
stage to page (Routledge, 2005). Douglas Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing house (CUP, 2000);
Jeremy Lopez, Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama (CUP, 2007);
Martin White, Renaissance drama in action: an introduction to aspects of theatre practice and performance
(Routledge, 1998). A. Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (1987). Reading Shakespeare’s Dramatic
Language: A Guide (Arden Shakespeare; Thomson Learning, 2001). Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s
Language (Penguin). Shakespeare: an Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, ed., Russ McDonald
(Blackwell, 2004). On changes in critical approaches to Shakespeare and Renaissance drama since
the 1980s see T. Hawkes, Introduction, Alternative Shakespeares 2.
Module Delivery: Weekly Monday lectures (by Prof Margaret Healy, Prof Thomas Healy, and
Dr Ben Fowler) plus four 2hr seminars on Thursday afternoons at the Globe Theatre in
London, two of them followed by an evening performance of the play studied, in the Sam
Wanamaker Theatre. These will be interspersed with 2 hour seminars on Thursdays in the
remaining weeks at the University of Sussex.
Students will make their own travel arrangements to and from London but theatre tickets will be
block-booked by the School of English.
Week 1 (Mon 30 January to Friday 3 Feb):
(Monday introductory lecture by Prof Margaret Healy and Thursday seminar both at Sussex)
Kings on Display: the spectacle of kingship
Essential Reading:
John Fletcher, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610)
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Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (1592)
Ben Jonson, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618) (a copy of this short court masque will be
provided)
Further reading:
Also, think about, Shakespeare, Richard II (1595)
Alan Stewart, ‘Edward II and Male Same-Sex Desire’, in EMED.
Jonathan Goldberg, ‘Sodomy and Society: The Case of Christopher Marlowe’, in Staging the
Renaissance
P.J.Finkelpearl, ‘The Maid’s Tragedy: Honorable Tyrannicide’ in Court and Country Politics in the
Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (Princeton University Press, 1990).
Stephen Orgel, ‘Making Greatness Familiar’ in Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theatre, ed.,
D.Bergeron (University of Georgia, 1981).
Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘Playing and Power’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Dollimore and Sinfield, History and Ideology: the Instance of Henry V’ in Alternative Shakespeares,
ed., John Drakakis (Methuen, 1985).
Jean Howard, ‘Kings and Pretenders: monarchical theatricality in the Shakespearean history play’
in, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (Routledge, 1994).
David Lindley, Introduction, Court Masques (OUP, 1995).
On the masque: Martin Butler, ‘The Masque of Blackness and Stuart Court Culture’in EMED.
Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Marlowe and the will to Absolute play’ in Renaissance Self-Fashioning (The
University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Week 2 (Mon 6 Feb to Fri 10 Feb):
(Monday lecture at Sussex and Thursday afternoon seminar at Sussex)
Lechery, Corruption and Spectacular Revenge
Essential Reading:
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (late 1580s)
William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (1592)
Further Reading:
Thomas Middleton, The Revengers Tragedy (1607)
Marston, The Malcontent (1604)
Peter Stallybrass, ‘Reading the Body and the Jacobean Theatre of Consumption’ in Staging the
Renaissance.
James Shapiro, ‘”Tragedies Naturally Performed”: Kyd's Representation of Violence’, Staging the
Renaissance, eds., Kastan and Stallybrass.
Gregory Semenza, ‘The Spanish Tragedy and Revenge’ in Early Modern English Drama.
Jocelyn Catty, Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England: unbridled speech
(1999; Palgrave, 2011)
Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘Playing and Power’ in Staging the Renaissance.
Carol Chillington Rutter, ‘Looking Like a Child; or Titus: the comedy’, in Shakespeare
Survey 56 (2003).
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Catherine Belling, ‘Infectious Rape, Therapeutic revenge: Bloodletting and the Health of
Rome’s Body’ in S.Moss and K.Peterson, Disease, Diagnosis and Cure on the Early Modern
Stage (Ashgate 2004).
Tina Mohler, ‘What is thy Body but a swallowing Grave? Desire underground in Titus
Andronicus’, Shakespeare Quarterly 57 no 1 (Spring, 2006) pp.23-42.
Deborah Willis, ‘The Gnawing vulture’: revenge, trauma theory, and ‘Titus Andronicus’,
Shakespeare Quarterly 53, no 1 (Spring, 2002) 21-52
View Julie Taymor’s brilliant film, Titus.
Week 3 (Mon 13 Feb to Friday 17 Feb)
(Monday lecture at Sussex and Thursday afternoon at the Globe)
Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling: Sex, Gesture and Dumbshow.
First Globe seminar, Thursday 16 February, 15.45-17.45.
Essential Reading
Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling
Moving Shakespeare Indoors: Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse, ed. Andrew
Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper (Cambridge: 2014) [Chapters 8 and 10]
Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance, ed. Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern
(Arden: 2012) [Ch. 11]
Frances E. Dolan, ‘Re-reading Rape in The Changeling’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2011), pp. 4-29.
Kim Solga, Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible Acts (Palgrave: 2009)
[Chapter 5]
Week 4 (Mon 20 Feb to Fri 24 Feb)
(Monday lecture at Sussex and Thursday seminar plus evening performance at the Globe)
Othello: Sensation and the Spectacle of Race and Gender
Globe seminar and production of Othello, Thursday 23 February
Essential Reading
Shakespeare, Othello
Farah Karim-Cooper, The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of
Dismemberment (Arden Shakespeare, 2016) [Chapter 5]
Leah Marcus, ‘Constructions of Race and Gender in the Two Texts of Othello’, in Rethinking
Feminism in Early Modern Studies: Gender, Race, and Sexuality, ed. Ana Loomba and Melissa E.
Sanchez (Routledge, 2016).
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Ian Smith, ‘Othello’s Black Handkerchief’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 64.1 (Spring 2013), pp.
Ayanna Thompson, ’Introduction’ to the revised edition of Othello, ed. E.A.J Honigmann (Arden
Shakespeare, 2016).
Week 5 (Mon 27 Feb to Fri 3 March)
(Monday lecture and Thursday seminar both at Sussex)
Incest, Violence and Spectacular Murder
Essential Reading:
John Ford, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629-1633)
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, (1613-14)
Further Reading:
If you're writing on this topic do look at some Senecan tragedy--Thyestes is a good start.
Terry Eagleton, Introduction, Sweet Violence: the idea of the tragic (Blackwell, 2003).
D. Callaghan, ‘The Duchess of Malfi and Early Modern widows’ in Early Modern English Drama,
eds, Sullivan, Cheney, Hadfield.
Susan Wiseman, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore: representing the incestuous body, Renaissance Bodies,
Gent and Llewellyn (Reaktion, 1990).
Frank Whigham, ‘Incest and Ideology’ in Staging the Renaissance, eds., Stallybrass and Kastan.
A.A.Bromham and Zara Bruzzi, The Changeling and the Years of Crisis, 1619-1624 (Pinter, 1990)
Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford, 1997).,
esp., 'The Endings of the Duchess of Malfi'.
Dympna Callaghan, ‘Women, tragedy and Transgression’, Women and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy
(Harvester, 1989).
Dympna Callaghan, ‘The Duchess of Malfi and Early Modern Widows’ in Early Modern English
Drama.
Carol Rutter, Chapter 1, in Enter the Body: women and representation on Shakespeare’s stage (2001)
Richard McCabe, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Incest’ in Early Modern English Drama.
Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 1996).
Week 6: (Mon 6 March to 3 Fri 10 March)
(Monday lecture and Thursday seminar both at Sussex)
Staging London and its Tensions
Essential reading:
Ben Jonson, Epicoene (1609)
Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613)
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Further reading:
Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599)
David Scott Kastan, ‘Workshop and/as Playhouse’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Karen Newman, ‘City Talk: Women and Commodification’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Peggy Knapp, ‘Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot, in Staging the Renaissance.
Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition drama (CUP, 1980).
Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: drama and the disciplines of shame in early modern England
(Cornell University Press, 1993) especially, Ch. 1, ‘Leaky vessels: the incontinent women of city
comedy’. pp. 23-63.
Swapan Chakravo, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York,
1985).
Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘Family Rites: city comedy and the strategies of patriarchalism’ in Wilson
and Dutton, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama (Longman, 1992).
Marjorie Garber, ‘The Logic of the Transvestite’ in Kastan and Stallybrass eds., Staging the
Renaissance. (1991)
L. Levine, ‘Men in Women’s Clothing’ in Men in Women’s Clothing: antitheatricality and effeminization
(1994).
Darryll Grantley, London in Early Modern English Drama (Palgrave, 2008).
Stephen Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: Licence, Play and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago,
1998).
L. Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (1995) esp. Part III
P.Griffiths and M. Jenner, ed., Londinopolis: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Early Modern
London (2000)
Julie Sanders (ed) Ben Jonson in Context (CUP, 2010)
Natasha Korda and Michelle David, Working Subjects in Early Modern Drama (Ashgate 2011)
A. Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (revised 2004) esp. chs. 2-3.
Mark Thornton Burnett, Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture (Macmillan,
1997).
D.Miehl, A.Stock and A-J Zwierlein, Plotting Early Modern London: New Essays in Jacobean City
Comedy (2004) chs., 3, 4, 6.
Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: the Market and Theatre in Anglo-American thought, 1550-1750
(CUP, 1986).j
Week 7 (Mon 13 March to Fri 17 March):
(Monday lecture and Thursday seminar both at Sussex)
Unruly Women, Family and State
Essential reading:
Anon, Arden of Faversham (c.1588-92)
Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606)
Further reading:
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Also relevant to this topic: The Taming of the Shrew; Women Beware Women; The Tragedy
of Mariam.
Catherine Belsey, ‘Alice Arden’s Crime’, in Staging the Renaissance.
See Danielle Clarke’s essay on the politics of marriage , above (EMED).
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft
Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil (Routledge, 1994)
Stuart Clark, Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford, 1998).
Brian Easlea, Witch Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy (Harvester, 1980).
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Weidenfeld, 1971).
Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History (Routledge, 1996).
M.E. Wiesner, Ch. 7, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (C.U.P., 1993)
Janet Adelman, ‘Born of Woman: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth’, Cannibals,
Witches and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, ed., M. Garber, 1987. Also in Adelman,
Suffocating Mothers.
Kathleen McLuskie, ‘Women and Cultural Production: The Case of Witchcraft’, Renaissance
Dramatists (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).
Peter Stallybrass, ‘Macbeth and Witchcraft’, Focus on Macbeth, ed., John Russell Brown.
Week 8 (Mon 20 March to Fri 24 March)
(Monday lecture at Sussex and Thursday seminar plus evening performance at the Globe)
The White Devil: Sex, Death and Grossly Gaping On
Essential Reading:
Webster, The White Devil
Roberta Barker, ‘“Another voyage”: Death as Social Performance in the Major Tragedies of Jon
Webster’, Early Theatre 8 (2005), 35-66
Paul Frazer and Adam Hansen (eds), The White Devil: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury
Arden Shakespeare, 2016), in particular:
-Eva Griffith, ‘The White Devil in performance’, 55-82
-Brett D. Hirsch, ‘The White Devil: the State of the Art’,83-105
Marcus Nordland, The Dark Lantern [excerpt will be provided by the Globe tutor]
Week 9 (Mon 27 March to Fri 31 March
(Monday lecture at Sussex and Thursday seminar at the Globe)
The Tempest: Staging a Spectacle
Essential reading:
Shakespeare, The Tempest
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Gwilym Jones, ‘Storm Effects in Shakespeare’, in Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern (eds),
Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance (Bloomsbury, 2013), 33-50
Hannah Crawforth, Sarah Dustagheer and Jennifer Young, Shakespeare in London (Bloomsbury,
2014),
‘Experimentation in Shakespeare’s London: The Tempest and Lime Street’, 195-220
David Lindley, ‘Music, Masque and Meaning in The Tempest’, The Court Masque, ed. David Lindley
(1984)
Week 10 (Mon 3 April to Friday 7 April)
Spectacular Imaginings: Round table with presentation of dissertation ideas and
discussion.
one-to-one tutorials this week in ArtsB233 with plan for dissertation
EASTER VACATION Saturday 8 April to Sunday 23 April. No teaching.
Week 11 (Mon 24 April to Fri 28 April)
No lecture or seminar but dissertation supervision office hours at those times.
Week 12 (Mon 1 May to end of semester on Fri 5 May when semester ends):
No lecture or seminar but dissertation supervision office hours at these times
[8-10 May Private study time for all Sussex students prior to University Assessment Period
which commences on Thursday 11 May].
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