Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English dramatist'
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Chakraborty, Subhas Chandra. "The Art of Arnold Wesker the English dramatist." Thesis, University of North Bengal, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/1180.
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Gregory, Rosalyn. "Thomas Hardy as dramatist." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:db08b42f-bd9b-4886-9e4e-e84293114c9b.
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This thesis traces Hardy's involvement in the theatre from the 1880s to the 1920s. The narrative of Hardy's relationship with the theatre is set against an analysis of the changing nature of the stage during this period, though I acknowledge throughout the thesis the fact that Hardy's awareness of the theatre did not perfectly keep pace with its evolution. The aim of the thesis is to examine the motivations determining Hardy's work in the theatre in light of the fact that he seemed so dismissive of its efficacy. I trace the history of Hardy's adaptations of his work for the stage, before setting the scripts against the novels in order to weigh the extent to which the novels resist translation into a different medium – whether there is something integral to Hardy's plots that cannot be conveyed on stage. I have chosen to focus predominantly on material that made it beyond a rough sketch on a scrap of paper, on projects that reached the stage of rewritings and commercial negotiations - often years before they were produced. My selection has been determined by the belief that the material is indicative of the development of Hardy's understanding of the relationship between his work and the possibilities adaptation offered. My first chapter, on the history of an adaptation of 'Far From the Madding Crowd' in 1882, argues that Hardy's collaboration with J. Comyns Carr on the script was driven by his desire to assert his copyright over the novel's afterlife. The adaptation may never have been performed, but simply have been registered with the Lord Chamberlain as a deterrent against unauthorised adapters. It was the plagiarism row over Arthur Wing Pinero's possible theft of Hardy's plot in his popular pastoral play, 'The Squire', that pushed Hardy and Carr to stage their version. My second chapter looks at the history of Hardy's adaptations of 'Tess'. I am interested primarily in his writing of two scripts in the mid-1890s, and his negotiations with leading actresses in response to their interest in creating the part of Tess. The chapter then looks at the circumstances leading to the eventual staging of the play in the 1920s, focusing on the difficulties posed by producing a script which was by then thirty years old, and showing its age. In the third chapter I concentrate on plans to stage two novels, 'The Woodlanders' and 'Jude'. Neither was produced, but both are evidence of Hardy's increasing interest in the possibility of selecting from his material, rather than compressing it into the time available. The two adaptations allied Hardy much more closely with the avant garde than his earlier work had done – 'The Woodlanders' was begun in 1889 at the suggestion of J. T. Grein and C. W. Jarvis, two men who would later found the Independent Theatre, a private subscription society which pioneered the staging of Ibsen in England. Hardy's own sketches for adapting 'Jude' (1895, 1897, 1910, 1926) concentrated on Sue's position. I set Hardy’s realignment of 'Jude' against a focus on the place of women in unhappy marriages, drawing principally on Hardy's contribution to a debate about the role of wives in the 'New Review' for June 1894 and a 'Westminster Review' article by the feminist Mona Caird (August 1888), which provoked three months of debate (and 27,000 letters) in 'The Daily Telegraph' on the question 'Is Marriage a Failure?' Caird’s ideal dovetails with Sue's views on marriage as 'legalized prostitution' and her revulsion from 'the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness!' The final chapter of the thesis looks at two adaptations of 'The Dynasts'. The first is a wartime entertainment staged by Harley Granville Barker in 1914, the second is Hardy's own adaptation for Dorset amateur actors (the Hardy Players) to perform in 1916, which concentrated on the impact of the war on the local populace. I then turn to the premiere of Hardy's only full-length drama written specifically for the stage – the one-act Arthurian play 'The Queen of Cornwall' (1923). I argue in this final chapter that Hardy was beginning to move from the role of reluctant adapter to that of director, conscious of the boundaries imposed by the stage and experimenting with how to craft his work to fit within them, rather than abridging his material indiscriminately.
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Joanna Baillie and the Poetry of Intellectual and Historical Romanticism." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/459.
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Book Summary: The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature is an authoritative three-volume reference work that covers British artistic, literary, and intellectual movements between 1780 and 1830, within the context of European, transatlantic and colonial historical and cultural interaction. Comprises over 275 entries ranging from 1,000 to 6,500 words arranged in A-Z format across three fully cross-referenced volumes Written by an international cast of leading and emerging scholars Entries explore genre development in prose, poetry, and drama of the Romantic period, key authors and their works, and key themes Also available online as part of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature, providing 24/7 access and powerful searching, browsing and cross-referencing capabilities
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Joanna Baillie." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2014. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/458.
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Book Summary: Poetry Criticism assembles critical responses to the writings of the world's most renowned poets and provides supplementary biographical context and bibliographic material to guide the reader to a greater understanding of the genre and its creators. Each entry includes a set of previously published reviews, essays and other critical responses from sources that include scholarly books and journals, literary magazines, interviews, letters and diaries, carefully selected to create a representative history and cross-section of critical responses.
Although poets and poetry are also covered in other titles from the Gale Literature Criticism series, Poetry Criticism offers a greater focus on understanding poetry than is possible in the broader, survey-oriented entries in those series. Clear, accessible introductory essays followed by carefully selected critical responses allow end-users to engage with a variety of scholarly views and conversations about poets and their works. Student's writing papers or class presentations, instructors preparing their syllabi, or anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the genre will find this a highly useful resource.
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Joanna Baillie." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/457.
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Book Summary: Provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the poetry, drama, fiction, and literary and cultural criticism produced from the Restoration of the English monarchy to the onset of the French Revolution Comprises over 340 entries arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Written by an international team of leading and emerging scholars Features an impressive scope and range of subjects: from courtship and circulating libraries, to the works of Samuel Johnson and Sarah Scott Includes coverage of both canonical and lesser-known authors, as well as entries addressing gender, sexuality, and other topics that have previously been underrepresented in traditional scholarship Represents the most comprehensive resource available on this period, and an indispensable guide to the rich diversity of British writing that ushered in the modern literary era
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Joanna Baillie and the Anxiety of Shakespeare's Influence." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2013. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/719.
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Joanna Baillie, a drama critic as well as a dramatist, began during the last decade of the eighteenth century to develop her own theory of tragedy and comedy, based on human emotions, the elemental instincts that prompted Shakespeare's characters to action over two hundred years before. Baillie could not escape Shakespeare's early influence; even if she had tried, critics and colleagues regularly reminded her of her debt. While Baillie admitted her poetical debt to Ossian and to Robert Burns, her Romantic "naturalness" was indeed fresh and original. Her dramatic writing, however, followed many of the themes of Shakespeare — love, hate, revenge, jealousy, ambition — and she defended and defined her focus on such passions in her "Introductory Discourse" to A Series of Plays, whereas Shakespeare was tacit about his scheme if, in fact, he had one.
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Chapman, Patricia Ann. "Two Laureates and a Whore Debate Decorum and Delight: Dryden, Shadwell, and Behn in a Decade of Comedy A-la-Mode." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11202006-050335/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.Title from title screen. Malinda Snow, committee chair; Tanya Caldwell, Paul Schmidt, committee members. Electronic text (81 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May 8, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-81).
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Halbert, Steven Joseph Keirstead Christopher M. ""And yet God has not said a word" the dramatic monologue as inverted and secularized prayer /." Auburn, Ala, 2008. http://repo.lib.auburn.edu/EtdRoot/2008/SPRING/English/Thesis/Halbert_Steven_51.pdf.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Auburn University, 2008.Abstract. Vita. Includes pictures of the Institut Catholique de Paris, a seminary which was formerly the monastery where Brother Lawrence lived and wrote. Includes bibliographical references.
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Marquez, Loren Loving. "Dramatic consequences integrating performance into the writing classroom /." Fort Worth, Tex. : Texas Christian University, 2007. http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-04232007-094655/unrestricted/marquez.pdf.
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Capp, Laura. "Dramatic audition: listeners, readers, and women's dramatic monologues, 1844-1916." Diss., University of Iowa, 2010. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3438.
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The "dramatic monologue" is curiously named, given that poems of this genre often feature characters not only listening to the speakers but responding to them. While "silent auditors," as such inscribed characters are imperfectly called, are not a universal feature of the genre, their appearance is crucial when it occurs, as it turns monologue into dialogue. The scholarly attention given to such figures has focused almost exclusively upon dramatic monologues by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and other male poets and has consequently never illustrated how gender influences the attitudes toward and outcomes of communication as they play out in dramatic monologues. My dissertation thus explores how Victorian and modernist female poets of the dramatic monologue like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Webster, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew stage the relationships between the female speakers they animate and the silent auditors who listen to their desperate utterances. Given the historical tensions that surrounded any woman's speech, let alone marginalized women, the poets perform a remarkably empathetic act in embodying primarily female characters on the fringes of their social worlds--a runaway slave, a prostitute, and a modern-day Mary Magdalene, to name a few--but the dramatic monologues themselves end, overwhelmingly, in failures of communication that question the ability of dialogue to generate empathetic connections between individuals with radically different backgrounds. Silent auditors often bear the scholarly blame for such breakdowns, but I argue that the speakers reject their auditors at pivotal moments, ultimately participating in their own marginalization. The distrust these poems exhibit toward the efficacy of speaking to others, however, need not extend to the reader. Rather, the genre of the dramatic monologue offers the poets a way to sidestep dialogue altogether: by inducing the reader to inhabit the female speaker's first-person voice--the "mobile I," in Èmile Benveniste's terms--these dramatic monologues convey experience through role-play rather than speech, as speaker and reader momentarily collapse into one body and one voice. Such a move foregrounds sympathetic identification as a more powerful means of conveying experience than empathetic identification and the distance between bodies and voices it necessitates.
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Pruitt, John. "British drama museums : history, heritage, and nation in collections of dramatic literature, 1647-1814 /." View abstract, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3203336.
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Sarzin, Anne. "Athol Fugard : his dramatic work with special reference to his later plays." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22466.
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Bibliography: pages 366-380.In the introduction, the writer highlights Fugard's regional artistry, his authentic reflection and recreation of a nation's tormented soul. The first chapter deals with Fugard's early plays, revealing the embryonic playwright and those characteristics of imagery, construction, language and content to be developed and refined in later plays. Briefly examined within this context are No-Good Friday, Nongogo and Tsotsi, the playwright's only novel. A chapter on the Port Elizabeth plays written in Fugard's apprenticeship years, The Blood Knot, Hello and Goodbye and Boesman and Lena, focuses on his growing skill as a dramatist, his involvement in his milieu both geographically and emotionally, as well as providing detailed analysis of the plays in terms of major features such as national politics, universal values, existentialism and Calvinism. The period of collaboration in which Fugard responded to the suggestions, imaginative projections and creative stimulus of his actors, forms the content of a chapter devoted to detailed study of the improvised plays: The Coat, Orestes, Sizwe Bansi is Dead, and The Island. The later Port Elizabeth plays, A Lesson from Aloes and "Master Harold ' ... and the boys, are explored from political and personal perspectives respectively, with attention paid to the intensely human dramas that dominate even the overtly ideological considerations. A chapter on the television and film scripts - The Occupation, Mille Miglia, The Guest, Marigolds in August - traces Fugard's involvement in these media, his economy of verbal descriptions and his taut control of his material generally. A chapter is devoted to Fugard' s women, the characters who present affirmative points of view, whose courage, compassion and determination infuse a hostile world with a range of possibilities beyond survival and existence. Milly in People are Living There, Frieda in Statements After An Arrest Under The Immorality Act and Miss Helen in The Road to Mecca form a Fugardian sorority of survivors. The final chapter of the thesis is devoted to Dimetos, regarded as an intensely personal artistic statement, an examination of the dramatist's alterego, the playwright's persona.
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Yang, Hsueh-Ju. "The collaborative dramatic process in elementary English as a foreign language." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1998. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1455.
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Zehelein, Eva-Sabine. "Science: dramatic : science plays in America and Great Britain, 1990-2007 /." Heidelberg : Universitätsverl. Winter, 2009. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9783825356552.
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Doh, In-Hwan. "Dramatic representation of the poor in the age of Shakespeare." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3996/.
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This thesis is for ‘literature from below’. I select three groups of poor people –petty criminals, prostitutes, and apprentices –and investigate their dramatic representation in three early modern plays –The Roaring Girl, The Honest Whore, and Sir Thomas More. To overcome their representational distortion, I carry out a tripartite dialogue between documentational evidence, dramatic allusion and poetic imagination. This thesis adopts its methodology from poststructuralist historicism, but my theoretical position on Renaissance studies diverges from it in several respects, which I elucidate in the introduction. The first chapter ascertains, by scrutinizing the hermaphroditic protagonist Moll, that her cross-dressing and protean identities represent the characteristics of early modern London. The second chapter argues that early modern capitalism combined with patriarchy plays a crucial role in giving rise to prostitution by examining the courtesan protagonist, Bellafront. The third chapter, which analyzes the 1517 Ill May Day apprentice riots in the context of the 1590s London crisis, traces there presentational history of the popular insurgency and retrieves ideological implication from the early modern censorial regime. In the conclusion, I estimate ‘use value’ of Renaissance drama in our time, and from the Marxist perspective, I appraise the aesthetic appeal of the three plays.
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Haines, Dorothy Ina. "Rhetorical strategies in Old English prose, a study of three dramatic monologues." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0007/NQ35171.pdf.
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Okada, Moeko. "Linguistic approaches to the analysis of humour in modern English dramatic comedy." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.391983.
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Kirwan, Peter. "Shakespeare and the idea of apocrypha : negotiating the boundaries of the dramatic canon." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2011. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/45389/.
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Shakespeare and the Idea of Apocrypha offers the most comprehensive study to date of an intriguing but understudied body of plays. It undertakes a major reconsideration of the processes that determine the constitution of the Shakespeare canon through study of that canon’s exclusions. This thesis combines historical analysis of the emergence and development of the "Shakespeare Apocrypha" with current theorisations of dramatic collaboration. Several new theoretical and historical approaches to early modern authorship have emerged in the last decade. This thesis breaks new ground by bringing them together to demonstrate the untenability of the dichotomy between Canon and Apocrypha. Both within and without the text, the author is only one of several factors that shape the plays, and canonical boundaries are contingent rather than absolute. Chapter One draws on the New Textualism and studies of material print attributions, viewing the construction of the apocryphal canon alongside the growth of Shakespeare’s cultural prestige over three centuries. Chapter Two applies recent repertory studies to authorship questions, treating five anonymous King’s Men’s plays as part of a shared company practice that transcends authorial divisions. Chapter Three seeks dialogue between post-structuralist theory and "disintegrationist" work, revealing a shared concern with the plurality of agents within disputed plays. Within all three models of authorship, the divisions between "Shakespeare" and "not Shakespeare" are shown to be ambiguous and subjective. The associations of many disputed plays with the Shakespeare canon are factual, not fanciful. The ambiguity of canonical boundaries ultimately demonstrates the insufficiency of the "CompleteWorks" model for study of Shakespeare’s drama. Chapter Four confronts the commercial considerations that impose practical limitations on the organisation of plays. In so doing, this thesis establishes the theoretical principles by which the neglected plays of the Apocrypha can be readmitted into discourse, dispersing the fixed authority of the authorial canon.
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Clifford, Catherine Rebecca. "Performance spaces in English royal palaces, 1509-1642." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4658/.
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This thesis investigates the relationship between dramatic performance and space at English royal palaces between 1509 and 1642. I argue that palatial performance spaces, including, but not limited to, great halls, great chambers, banqueting houses, and tiltyards, created meaning in relation to one another. Underlying the history and evolution of the performance spaces I examine is the pressing notion that spaces represented different sites of meaning for spectators already accustomed to the spatial languages of palaces and great households. The venues/rooms/chambers themselves performed for inhabitants, and as court drama developed throughout this period, so did their spaces. Part one examines performance spaces in palaces understood to be the “greater” palaces of the realm and in those maintained primarily by consorts and royal children. Part two focuses primarily on how banqueting houses evolved into essential royal buildings in England. As these buildings became performance sites, court presentations of drama shifted from household-based indicators of hospitality to representations of prestige by the monarch. The final section, chapters five and six, examines how all of the architectural and dramatic frameworks discussed in the first four chapters were exemplified at Whitehall, the most important palatial venue of the period.
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Pilz, Anna. "'The return to the people' : empire, class, and religion in Lady Gregory's dramatic works." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2013. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/14315/.
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This thesis examines a selection of Lady Gregory’s original dramatic works. Between the opening of the Abbey Theatre in 1904 and the playwright’s death in 1932, Gregory’s plays accounted for the highest number of stage productions in comparison to her co-directors William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge. As such, this thesis analyses examples ranging from her most well-known and successful pieces, including The Rising of the Moon and The Gaol Gate, to lesser known plays such as The Wrens, The White Cockade, Shanwalla and Dave. With a focus on the historical, bibliographical, and political contexts, the plays are analysed not only with regard to the printed texts, but also in the context of theatrical performances. In order to re-evaluate Gregory’s contribution to the Abbey, this thesis is divided into three chapters dealing with dominant themes throughout her career as a playwright: Empire, class, and religion.
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Kerr, Suzanne Mary. "The flower that would not fade : representations of the Virgin Mary in Middle English vernacular religious dramatic and non-dramatic verse." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.405596.
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Bishop, Bruce W. "Story of Jephtah: An Oragorio by Giacomo Carissimi English Translation and Dramatic Staging." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194703.
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Although the Latin oratorio Jephtah by Giacomo Carissimi (1605-74) is well known to the scholarly and musicological communities, the work has remained relatively inaccessible to general audiences in the United States for a variety of reasons. The lengthy Latin text poses problems for inexperienced church and school singers in the United States, most of whom neither read nor understand Latin. Moreover, many American church congregations and school concert audiences lack the musical sophistication required to follow an English translation in a concert program while simultaneously assimilating a complex work such as Jephtah, leaving them with an incomplete sense of the drama and religious themes of the libretto. This is true even of a relatively sophisticated group such as the Eastern Arizona College A Cappella Choir who I conducted for my lecture-recital performance of Jephtah. In short, the challenge of language provides an obstacle that distances general audiences and many singers from the emotional impact of the story.The research undertaken for my lecture-recital and the accompanying document has suggested the following solutions to these problems. The scope and drama of Jephtah can be rendered more accessible to performers and audiences if the oratorio is performed in a fluent English translation that respects the word placement and the meaning of the original text while capturing the energy and drama of Carissimi's musical setting. The power and expression of Carissimi's music can be realized through historically-informed vocal production in the choir. The instrumentalists can be trained to accurately perform seventeenth-century continuo realization. To strengthen the understandability and impact of the drama and the religious themes of the story, I staged the oratorio with blocking, gestures, costumes, and properties. Although no systematic attempt was made to assess in impact of this manner of performance upon the ensemble or the audience, this approach to performance appeared to be well received by both. This success suggests that this is an effective way to introduce general audiences to this work.
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Cornford, Thomas. "The English theatre studios of Michael Chekhov and Michel Saint-Denis, 1935-1965." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2012. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57044/.
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This thesis charts the brief history of the theatre studios run in England between 1935 and 1965 by Michel Saint-Denis (1897-1971) and Michael Chekhov (1891- 1955). They were the London Theatre Studio (1936-1939), run by Saint-Denis; The Chekhov Theatre Studio at Dartington Hall (1936-1938); The Old Vic Theatre School (1947-1952), initially part of the proposed Old Vic Theatre Centre, whose directors were Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine and Glen Byam Shaw; and the RSC Studio (1962- 1965), run by Saint-Denis. All of these studios were dedicated to combining training and experimentation in the development of ensemble companies and were therefore liminal spaces combining elements of a theatre and a theatre school. An introductory section briefly situates the practice of theatre studios in the context of wider narratives of work, craftsmanship and artistry in the period and traces their development from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio of 1905, as well as sketching some significant parallels between Saint-Denis and Chekhov. The first two sections of the thesis then explore the period from 1936 until 1952, looking first at Chekhov’s and then at Saint-Denis’ studios, placing them in the context of the traditions of training and exploration from which they emerged, and examining their practice and their legacies. The final section of the thesis explores the direct impact of their practice on the Post War British Theatre, focusing particularly on the Royal Shakespeare Company whose Studio was run by Saint-Denis, and where Paul Rogers (one of Chekhov’s students) was a leading actor. A short concluding section applies the principles of Chekhov’s and Saint- Denis’ work to the practice of training and experimentation in 2012 and looks to the future, to ask whether the studios whose work is explored in the main body of the thesis have a role to play in the future development of the art of the theatre.
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Nagase, Mariko. "Literary editing of seventeenth-century English drama." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3628/.
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This thesis explores how literary editing for the dramatic publication was developed in seventeenth-century England. Chapter 1 discusses how the humanist scholars embraced the concept of textual editing and put it into practice about a half century after the invention of the press. Chapter 2 addresses the development of the concept of literary editing in seventeenth-century England by investigating the editorial arguments preserved in the paratextual matter. Chapter 3 explores Jonsonian convention of textual editing which was established in imitation of classical textual editing of the humanist scholars and which eventually furnished a model for dramatic editing to the later editors who were to be commissioned to reproduce play texts for a reading public. Chapter 4 looks at Thomas Middleton’s The Mayor of Quinborough published by Herringman in 1661 which signals the restoration of the Jonsonian editorial convention. Chapter 5 will attempt to identify the printer of the play and considers the division of the editorial work between the editor and the printer. Chapter 6 addresses the reflection of the Jonsonian textual editing in the 1664 Killigrew folio and assesses its establishment of literary editing of seventeenth-century English drama as a herald of the 1709 Shakespeare edition by Nicholas Rowe.
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Zehelein, Eva-Sabine. "Science dramatic ; science plays in America and Great Britain, 1990 - 2007." Heidelberg Winter, 2008. http://d-nb.info/995767068/04.
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Calvo, Clara. "Power relations and fool-master discourse in Shakespeare : a discourse stylistics approach to dramatic dialogue." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1990. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11387/.
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This study undertakes an examination of fool-master discourse in Shakespeare with the help of discourse stylistics, an approach to the study of literary texts which combines findings from the fields of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and pragmatics. The analysis aims to show how the relations of power which exist between dramatic characters are manifested by the linguistic organization of the dialogue as interactive process. Fool-master discourse in Shakespeare is analysed from three different perspectives: the use of the pronouns of address (you/thou); the organization of the discourse as a whole; and the politeness strategies used by fools and their employers in face-to-face interaction. With regard to the pronouns of address, it is shown that neither a structural model nor a sociolinguistic one are sufficient per se to satisfactorily explain the constant shift of pronoun which occurs in Early Modern English dramatic texts. It is suggested that a model of analysis rooted in discourse analysis and pragmatics ought to be developed. Burton's framework is used to study the conversational structure of fool-master discourse, and to show how the power relations obtaining between dramatic characters are manifested by the internal organization of dramatic dialogue. Politeness phenomena in fool-master discourse are studied following Brown and Levinson's model and it is shown that both the fools and their employers orient to face in interaction. Finally, this study of power relations in fool-master discourse shows that, contrary to much current critical opinion, the fools in Shakespeare are not licensed jesters who enjoy unlimited freedom of speech. Feste, Lavatch and Lear's Fool need to resort to complex linguistic strategies if they want to make their criticisms and, at the same time, avoid being punished.
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Richardson, C. "The medieval English and French Shepherds plays : A comparative study of the dramatic tradition." Thesis, University of York, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.381317.
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van, Pelt Nadia. "Play-making on the edge of reality : managing spectator risk in early English drama." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2013. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/366616/.
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This thesis places the notion of risk and the diversity of treatment that the management of risk involves, at the centre of the discourse about Early English drama. It locates the spectator’s experience on the edge of reality and fiction. Offering an alternative to current theories of metatheatricality and cognitive theory, this research attempts to contribute to knowledge by arguing that the most important element of the dramatic experience exists between the two poles of an awareness of artifice and absorption, and that the dramatic experience is managed by playwright, actor and spectator with respect to these two poles. This thesis focuses on the spectator, not just on the absorbed spectator who ‘lives’ in the drama, such as one finds in cognitive studies, or on the reflective spectator who is conscious of the artifice of drama, such as in metatheatrical studies, but rather on participatory spectators, and on spectators moving between the two positions of absorption and reflection. The case studies in this thesis are reflective of the contexts of early English dramatic performance: they show how similar issues were controlled differently in different contexts; that there might be no clear boundary between Catholic and Protestant drama in terms of spectator management; that some playwrights had political reasons to believe it best if they did not manage their spectators’ experience, while other playwrights displayed a deep commitment to controlling not only spectators’ experiences and responses during the performance but also afterwards, suggesting that risk management is not an act but rather a process; that dramatic performance could cause disaster if not sufficiently managed, or if the performance context in which the drama was performed, was misjudged, but that the use of the dramatic medium could also be recuperated by later events of a similar nature. Examining drama in its specific literary and historical context, this thesis reconstructs the play-experience not only through the plays, but also through a study of how plays were described in Star Chamber records, ambassadorial records, eye-witness accounts, and other records. It clarifies early drama’s most fundamental characteristic to be an intervention in society, and as such always relating to non-dramatic issues, and inevitably carrying risk with it.
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Price, Eoin. "The politics of privacy and the English public stage, 1575-1642." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4998/.
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This thesis examines the politics of privacy and the public drama of the English Renaissance commercial stage. It intervenes in the study of publics and the early modern public sphere, contending that a wider examination of the corpus of public drama in the English Renaissance can illuminate the politics of privacy as well as the nature of dramatic practice. The thesis is split into two parts. The first examines external evidence – the ways in which the language of privacy is applied to the commercial theatre – and contains a single chapter on the emergence of the so-called ‘private’, indoor playhouses. It is divided into three main sections that explore the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline periods and a short epilogue which considers the period of theatre closure. The second part examines internal evidence: how the plays of the period configure political privacy. It falls into two chapters, each of which contemplates four different forms of movement across public/private boundaries. The second chapter addresses depictions of private people participating in public affairs; analysing representations of private passivity, active resistance, promotion, and favouritism. The third chapter investigates the reverse phenomenon – public people becoming private – and discusses portrayals of corruption, privation, surveillance, and withdrawal.
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Sharrett, Elizabeth. "Beds as stage properties in English Renaissance drama : materializing the lifecycle." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5153/.
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This thesis examines beds as stage properties in English Renaissance drama. It argues that their indissoluble associations with the major rites of passage in the early modern lifecycle – birth, marriage, and death – created particular dramatic effects in performance not immediately obvious to audiences today. Chapter one identifies the theoretical and methodological frameworks informing the thesis, and addresses assumptions about the physical structure of beds from the period and their appearance as props. The succeeding chapters each explore different rites of passage. Chapter two considers childbirth rituals in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and other plays depicting the lying-in ritual, and the bed’s function in these plays as a mockery of the religious and cultural ideals it was intended to represent. Chapter three focuses on marriage, exploring how the bed becomes a subversive emblem of female marital control through a comparison of the manuscript and Folio editions of The Woman’s Prize. Chapter four analyzes the death ritual in relation to Humphrey’s murder in Henry VI Part II, comparing the uses of the bed in the Quarto and Folio versions in order to consider the extent to which Humphrey ‘dies well’. Chapter five explores the inherent interconnectedness of all three rites in A Woman Killed With Kindness, and establishes the ways in which they converge upon the bed. As these case studies demonstrate, the use of the bed by playwrights as a prop in performance on the Renaissance stage was a not an incidental inclusion, but a considered choice intended to exploit the dramatic potential of the object’s multivalency to affect the scene in which it appeared, due to its rich symbolic association with the three major rites of passage.
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Gourlay, Jennifer Eowyn. "Negotiating spaces : women and agency in English Renaissance society, plays and masques." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2003. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3465/.
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This thesis provides new and alternative readings of women’s opportunities for agency in sixteenth and early seventeenth century society, and of the ways in which this was represented in plays and masques of the time. The relationship between history and theatre is a two-way process. In light of this, the depiction of proactive female characters in public plays is examined alongside the appearance of proactive women in society and on stage in Jacobean court masques, through the different but complementary lenses of marriage and female alliances. After the Introduction (Chapter One), Part One (Chapters Two and Three) looks at female agency in marriage and the ways in which this was depicted in drama, from the perspective of two neglected social practices, spousals and wife sales. The spousal law offered women as well as men an opportunity to regulate their marriage without recourse to the church or parents and is a common, but under-studied, plot in Renaissance drama. Three of the most interesting and complex uses appear in George Chapman’s The Gentlemen Usher (1602-4), John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612-14) and Thomas Middleton’s The Widow (c. 1616). The spousal plot provides an alternative angle for the playwrights to explore and endorse female characters’ decision to rebel against male family members and marry men of their choice. Part Two (Chapters Four, Five and Six) analyses the opportunities for female agency at the Jacobean court from the perspective of female homosocial bonding, looking at Anna of Denmark (Queen consort of James I), her court women, and the masques in which they danced. Anna’s women were, like the Queen, trying to control their lives. Chapter Four shows that the Queen’s retinue provided a separate space for these women to gather, interact and create alliances and further, that this mutual support facilitated their agency at the Jacobean court, agency which often involved opposing the king.
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Stewart, Alison. "The development of the pre-show in English Shakespearean performance, 1932-2014." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6114/.
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The development of the pre-show in English Shakespearean performance, 1932-2014 Productions of Shakespeare’s plays often feature an interpolated opening scene or ‘pre-show’. My thesis examines this phenomenon. Proposing threshold theory as a framework, I consider the interfaces between the classic text, the enacted play and the audience. Previous studies of modern pre-shows suggest three key purposes for the pre-show: narrative, concept, and theatricality, which I adopt as the structure of the second half of my thesis. Studies of early prologues and inductions trace cultural and artistic developments that pre-figure developments I trace in modern production. I consider in some detail Shakespeare’s own pre-show and introductory strategies and the problems they present to modern directors, before examining the earliest pre-shows of modern productions, in the 1930s to 1950s, the cultural and artistic circumstances that gave rise to them, and their reception among reviewers and scholars. Thereafter I trace the development of narrative pre-shows and the staging of embedded narratives, the rise of conceptual pre-shows and their origin in design and the New Criticism, and changing pre-show relationships with, and impact upon, audiences, ranging from the political to the commercial. I conclude that the pre-show is a significant innovation that has both accompanied and led a remarkable renaissance in Shakespearean performance.
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Aston, Elaine. "Outside the doll's house : a study in images of women in English and French theatre, 1848-1914." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1987. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/36607/.
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The aim of the thesis is to document images of women in English and French theatre, between 1848 and 1914, which challenged the stereotypical image of women as passive wives and mothers in the'doll's house! The methodologies employed are not restricted to dramatic criticism, but draw upon a udder net of feminism, semiotics, and social history, in order to place the plays, roles and actresses in the theatre of their time. As a comparative study, it documents interchange, interaction and difference, between the theatre of England and France. The images are divided into three groups, viz., the 'female outcast', the 'third sex' and 'revolting women'. Section one documents a range of femme fatale images, including the courtisane; the Magdalen; Cleopatra, the royal seducer: Medea, the outcast queen, and the dangerous women of melodrama. The second section begins with studies of the male impersonators of music hall, notably Vesta Tilley, and the principal boys of Victorian and Edwardian pantomime. Male impersonation on the 'serious' stage is then considered, in a study of actresses in the cross-dressing role of Shakespeare's Rosalind, and Bernhardt's travesti roles, in particular her Hamlet. The third section considers the révolt6e of the social drama, and debate surrounding the rationale of motherhood, and the hostile reactions to the issues of abortion and infanticide. A chapter on Manchester's Gaiety theatre indicates the importance of the 'new theatres' in providing a udder and more realistic, representation of women, while the final study examines drama which portrayed the difficulties for women trying to survive independently of men, indicating the economic disadvantages and prejudices which drove many women into prostitution. Overall, the three groups of images represent three strategies for power and their success and failure is indicated and assessed. The capacity of theatre for social debate is highlighted, and the contribution of women in the creation of radical images is re-evaluated, thereby making a significant contribution to women's studies and to nineteenth century theatre studies.
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Stickley, Matilda K. "Exploring children's experience of socio-dramatic play through an ethnography of an English Reception class." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49129/.
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The Early Years in England has seen heavy investment since New Labour came into power in 1997. This distinct educational stage has been highlighted in the media as having the potential to alleviate socio-economic inequalities. The first year of compulsory schooling in England, the Reception year, is the period in which children are inducted into becoming both learners and pupils in a formalised system. It is also the period during which children are considered to be in the high season of imaginative play. Play forms a fundamental part of the Early Years Foundation Stage guidelines, though the nature of what constitutes play is contested by critics and practitioners. With the EYFS framework document stating that all areas of learning must be implemented through planned, purposeful play, tensions arise between freely-chosen, child-led play and adult-led activity. Critics of government interventions have decried the ‘schoolification’ of the Early Years and claim a ‘squeezing out’ of opportunities for freely-chosen play, which they warn has the potential to damage children’s learning dispositions. This ethnographic case study focuses on the freely-chosen socio-dramatic play of seven children, in the context of their Reception classroom culture. This is based on a socio-cultural theoretical framework and the premise that such play is where rich experience resides; play which is socially, emotionally, and cognitively challenging. Socio-dramatic play comprises children involved in imitative role-play, which lasts longer than ten minutes, uses objects in a make believe context, is between two or more players, and centres on verbal communication (Smilansky, 1968). Data generation took place over 8 months, employing fieldnotes generated through participant observation, loosely-structured interviews, and researcher reflections. This is set alongside discourse analysis exploring how play and role-play are conceptualised in policy documentation. Microethnographic analyses are made of video data gathered during socio-dramatic play. To put the child’s experience at the centre of the study, artefacts created by children, images, and children’s dialogue are incorporated in the analysis. Findings are presented through a combination of evocative ethnographic prose and a multi-modal analysis of video data. Through an inductive analytical process, themes emerged from the data highlighting the complex nature of the socially situated play activity. The negotiation of social relationships through play is explored, identifying play as a liminal activity in an identity transition stage through which children are learning how to do school and how to be pupils. Socio-dramatic play is proposed as offering a unique conceptual space in which players can explore expressions of bodily freedom alongside the requirements of the bodily comportment and control which are demanded by school routines. I argue that practitioners should pay attention to the materiality of play: spaces and artefacts which are provided for, and used by, children. Drawing on the analysis, implications for practice are suggested, with reference to techniques by which adults can interact in play in ways which prioritise the child’s emerging needs and interests.
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Cunliffe, Rozanne Mary. "Magical words & iceberg territory : an exploration of the multifunctionality of language in dramatic dialogue, with specific reference to selected Fugard plays." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/51823.
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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2000.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Most critics and academics have concentrated on the referential function of Fugard's dramatic dialogue. In this thesis I' argue that to notice just one way in which the language functions tends to limit the text. My aim, therefore, is to look at the other ways in which language functions in selected Fugard plays. I explore the way in which Fugard uses dialect and sociolect to establish a stage world that looks and sounds recognisably South African to South Africans. I investigate how .certain assumptions (on the part of the audience) accompany the acceptance of the stage world as 'real' and how Fugard uses subtextual inferences to force the audience to critically re-evaluate these assumptions. I argue that the way to consciously understand and evaluate the sub text is through a detailed investigation of the different ways in which language functions in dramatic dialogue. Therefore, by applying Pfister's theories on the multi functionality of dramatic dialogue to selected Fugard plays, I look at how characters reveal themselves to the audience through the choice of specific words, subject matter and language variant. I also investigate, by applying Quigley's observations regarding Pinter's plays to Fugard's characters, the way in which language reveals characters striving to negotiate their status within relationships. My argument is that as far as characterisation and relationships are concerned the actual referential function of the words reveals only the tip of the iceberg - the rest lies beneath this and is to be uncovered by looking at the other ways in which the language functions. Finally I look at the way in which language as the medium of communication per se is foregrounded in Fugard's plays and how this accentuates the role that language plays in communication, as well as the failure of communication, in the South African context. Related to this metalingual function of dramatic dialogue I investigate the idea, put forward by Ibitokun, that language can be used as a 'mask' behind which a person can hide his true identity. I agree with Ibitokun that this is not only a strategy for survival but that, when consciously adopted, it is also a means for challenging the status quo. The Fugard plays I have selected are Master Harold ... and the boys, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die meerderheid kritici en academici het in die verlede gekonsentreer op die referensiële funksie van dramatiese dialoog in die werke van Fugard. In hierdie tesis argumenteer ek dat so 'n enkele gesigspunt op die rol wat taal speel neig om die teks te beperk. Derhalwe kyk ek in die studie na die ander wyses waarop taal in geselekteerde Fugard dramas funksioneer. . Ek begin met 'n ondersoek na Fugard se gebruik van dialek en sosiolek om 'n wêreld op die verhoog te skep wat herkenbaar Suid-Afrikaans klink vir Suid-Afrikaners. Hierna bekyk ek die wyse waarop sekere aannames (deur die gehoor) saamgaan met die aanvaarding van die "realiteit" van die verhoogwêreld en hoe Fugard subtekstuele verwysings benut om die gehoor te dwing tot kritiese herevaluering van daardie aannames. Die argument is voorts dat 'n gedetailleerde ontleding van die wyse waarop taal in dramatiese dialoog fuksioneer onontbeerlik is indien mens die subteks wil verstaan en ontleed. Deur Pfister se teorieë oor die multifunksionaliteit van dramatiese dialoog toe te pas op geselekteerde Fugard toneeltekste, kyk ek dus hoe die onderskeie karakters hulle aan gehore openbaar deur hul gebruik van spesifieke woorde, inhoude en taalvariante. Ek gebruik ook Quigley se observasies oor Pinter se stukke om te bepaal tot watter mate die taal van Fugard se karakters dui op mense wat poog om hulle status in verhoudings te vestig. My argument is dat die referensiële funksie van taal slegs die oppervlak van karakterisering en verhoudings verteenwoordig - die res lê dieper verberg en moet geopenbaar word deur te kyk na die ander wyses waarop taal funksioneer. Laastens bespreek ek die mate waartoe taal per se in Fugard se stukke na vore kom en hoe dit die rol van taal in kommunikasie benadruk, asook die tekort daaraan in die Suid- Afrikaanse konteks. Verwant aan hierdie metalinguistiese funksie van taal, toets ek Ibitokun se idee dat taal 'n masker kan wees waaragter die persoon sy ware identiteit versteek. Ek stem met Ibitokun saam dat hierdie nie slegs 'n strategie vir oorlewing is nie, maar dat dit, doelbewus aangewend, ook gebruik kan word om die status quo te bevraagteken. Die Fugard tekste wat bekyk word is Master Harold ...and the boys, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Bansi is Dead en The Island.
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Adachi, Mami. "Nuns and nunneries in the cultural memory of early modern English drama." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6745/.
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The Reformation had exposed ideas of female religiosity, ridiculing the contested site of the gendered bodies of nuns. Nevertheless, memories of pre-Reformation religion could not be easily destroyed. Nuns and nunneries are memorialised in a range of early modern English texts, among which this thesis identifies a number of tropes featuring nuns in historiography and drama. The first two chapters examine works by authors with differing agendas, John Foxe and Raphael Holinshed (Chapter 1), and John Stow and William Dugdale (Chapter 2), which can be regarded as memory banks of nun tropes. The next three chapters focus on tropes featuring nuns in drama from the mid 1580s to circa 1640. Chapter 3 examines references or allusions to dramatic nuns, which are generally stereotypical, suggesting the onset of cultural forgetting. Chapter 4 explores plays featuring nuns as characters, where nuns assume various roles, sometimes demonstrating a mix of tropical and innovative in a single play. Shakespeare’s utilisation of nun tropes while accommodating the symbolic value of female religious life to artistic needs is treated separately in Chapter 5. These dramatic tropes are seen to draw from and in turn feed into the tropes circulating in the culture of early modern England.
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Whims, Joette Ilene. "Applying Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad for revision strategies for inexperienced writers." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2240.
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Kitano, Yuuko. "Dramatic Functions of Ballad Performances in Shakespeare’s Tragedies." Kyoto University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2433/232368.
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Kyoto University (京都大学)0048
新制・課程博士
博士(人間・環境学)
甲第21167号
人博第839号
新制||人||202(附属図書館)
29||人博||839(吉田南総合図書館)
京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生文明学専攻
(主査)教授 水野 眞理, 教授 髙谷 修, 准教授 桒山 智成, 教授 丸橋 良雄
学位規則第4条第1項該当
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Lucas, Georgina Mary. "The meaning of massacre in English Renaissance drama, 1572-1642." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6993/.
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The PhD examines the web of meanings elicited by and constructed around the act and concept of massacre in English Renaissance drama. The study is underpinned by two contentions. The first is that the enactment of massacre, both on and off-stage, is often predicated upon the same kinds of fictive and imaginative processes inherent to dramatic practice. The second is that the 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris was instrumental to conceptualisations of Renaissance massacre. Bartholomew, along with its most flagrant dramatic depiction, Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris (1593), anchors every part of the study. The thesis is split thematically into three sections, each of which contains two chapters. The first part explores the language of massacre. Chapter 1 examines the denotations and connotations of the word massacre in French and English. Chapter 2 looks at the means through which the rhetoric of massacre reports prompt emotional responses in readers and spectators. Part two investigates the relationship between massacre and the state. Chapter 3 explores massacres committed from ‘above’ by ruling or de facto powers. Chapter 4 considers inverse phenomena – massacres committed from ‘below’ – by usurpers, lesser magistrates, and private individuals. The final part examines the relationship between massacre and warfare. Chapter 5 explores massacres committed by external forces – from ‘without’ – and explores the contribution of massacre to wars of conquest, sieges, and sacks. Chapter 6 addresses massacres committed ‘within’, examining inter-state conflicts and the internal logic of battle. The thesis concludes by gesturing to the continuation of key theorisations of massacres after the closure of the theatres in 1642.
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Drahos, Jonathan Wade. "Shakesperean and Marlovian Epyllion : dramatic ekphrasis of Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5911/.
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This thesis is a practice-as-research project ‘articulating and evidencing’ (Nelson, 2013, p. 11) research and practical explorations of Christopher Marlowe’s \(Hero\) \(and\) \(Leander\) and William Shakespeare’s \(Venus\) \(and\) \(Adonis\), using a method defined in the thesis as ‘dramatic ekphrasis’. A theatrical adaptation of the works — staged using the language of both poems as an amalgamated visual and acoustic theatre piece — exposes (through practice) the authors’ transgressive sexual and amorous themes. The narrative poems of Shakespeare and Marlowe are interpreted as having cultural purpose, and the exegesis explores how the poems expose and challenge biased Elizabethan gender paradigms, homosocial hegemony and moral stability in Elizabethan England. Through ekphrasis and contemporary performance methodology, the adaptation transposes the narrative verse to dramatic action in order to challenge our twenty-first century audience by destabilising gender and sexuality. By transposing the narratives into performance practice, the thesis strives to link the poems’ challenge to homosocial bias in the late sixteenth-century to our modern culture — to challenge present-day audience perspectives of gender-normative and heterocentric biases. Also, the thesis describes ways in which the practice illuminates and reinforces unique differences in the authors’ dramatic style. The thesis concludes by reflecting on and assessing the efficacy of both research and practice findings.
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Grochala, Sarah Louise. "Seriousness, structure and the dramaturgy of social life : the politics of dramatic structure in contemporary British playwriting 1997-2011." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2011. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/8620.
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Contemporary British plays are commonly thought of as political if they address an issue that is already seen as political (Kritzer, 2008). This thesis explores the idea that the political stance of a play is articulated at the level of its structure, as well as in its content. Contemporary playwriting practices in British theatre are dominated by ‘serious drama’. Serious drama yokes together politics, dialectical structure and a realist dramaturgy and the resultant form is held up as an ideal against which the political efficacy of a play can be judged. Through an application of the concept of the ideology of form (Jameson, 1981), this thesis re-reads the structures of serious drama in terms of how they reflect the social and economic structures of post- Fordism in their representation of spatio-temporal structures, causation in the dramatic narrative and their imagining of the social subject. Through this reading, this thesis problematises serious drama’s claim to a progressive socialist politics. In contrast, the experimental dramaturgies of a range of contemporary British plays (1997-2011) are read as mediating, negotiating and critiquing the social and economic structures of post-Fordism through their dramatic structure, and so articulating a potentially radical politics. Caryl Churchill’s Heart’s Desire (1997), David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness (2005) and David Greig’s San Diego (2003) are read as negotiating the effects of spatio-temporal compression (Harvey, 1990). Mike Bartlett’s Contractions (2008), debbie tucker green’s Generations (2007) and Rupert Goold and Ben Power’s adaptation of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author are analysed in terms of their causal structures (Althusser, 1970). Finally Anthony Neilson’s Realism (2006), Simon Stephens’s Pornography (2007) and Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (2008) are investigated for the ways in which they re-imagine the social subject through subjective, narrative, unassigned and collective modes of characterisation.
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Matchett, Grace. "The relationship of parents and children in the English domestic plays of George Bernard Shaw." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1990. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1851/.
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The aim of this thesis is to bring a new critical perspective to the English domestic plays of George Bernard Shaw by analysing them in the light of Shaw's treatment of parent-child relationships. A domestic play is one in which the plot or problem centres around a family and in which the setting is that family's permanent or temporary home. The period 1890 and 1914 has been chosen for three reasons: first, it was during this time that Shaw began and succeeded in his career as a dramatist; secondly, this period saw the growth of the `new drama' movement, which considered a discussion of sociological issues a prerequisite for responsible dramatic literature, and thirdly, changes within the theatre itself, most noticeably Granville Barker's seasons at the Court Theatre (1904-1907) gave Shaw the opportunity to have his work intelligently and artistically presented to a growing audience of literary discrimination and social awareness. Heartbreak House is included in this analysis because although not finished until 1917 it was begun in 1913. The thesis begins with an examination of the influences on Shaw which made the treatment of the parent-child relationship a central theme of his earliest plays. These are (a) Biographical (b) Sociological (c) Theatrical - (i) Nineteenth century Popular Theatre including Melodrama (ii) Ibsenism Section Two describes Shaw's treatment of parents and children in his novels. The aim of this section is to demonstrate that the family relationships that assume major significance in the plays are prefigured in the novels not simply thematically but formally. In Section Three the English domestic plays are placed in four categories under the schematic headings which sometimes overlap: (a) Single Parents, Widowers' Houses, The Philanderer, Man and Superman, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House (b) The Return of the Absent Parent, Mrs Warren's Profession, You Never Can Tell, Major Barbara (c) Substitute Parents, You Never Can Tell, Candida, Man and Superman, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House (d) Happy Families, Getting Married, Misalliance, Fanny's First Play, The conclusion is that Shaw, in expressing his opinions on the relationships of children and their parents in the English domestic plays as well as in his other writings, was challenging the conventions of conventional middle-class society while at the same time expressing, perhaps compulsively, his personal quest for his own `true' parents.
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Billing, Christian M. "Fashioning anatomies : figurations of the sexed and gendered body on the early modern English stage." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4384/.
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This dissertation is an investigation into the representation of the sexed and gendered body on the English stage between the years 1570 and 1635. The parameters of the study are fully set out in the introduction, however, a summary that might prove useful to the general reader is as follows: The thesis commences with an account of the 'one-sex' anatomical model - as recently set out by Thomas Laqueur in Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). It then proceeds to question the dominance of such an anatomical paradigm throughout the entire Renaissance - and, in its first chapter, sets out evidence from various medical treatises in order to outline the emergence of a contrasting 'two-sex' model of human reproductive biology. Chapter two then uses evidence from a 'two-sex' model in order to re-examine the homo-erotic implications of theatrical narratives that present (or imply) spontaneous sex changes (by means of an analysis of John Lyly's Gallathea and Shakespeare's Falstaff plays). In chapter three, attention turns to the female body in early modern English society and attempts to assess the implications of an emergent 'two-sex' model on female cultural and social agency in the period (by means of an analysis of actual female-to-male cross-dressers and the anatomical representations of the female body that were undertaken in elite cultural forms such as the Court Masque). Chapter four then turns back to the professional English transvestite stage in order to examine the strategies of recuperation of the female body that were employed in a production environment that was exclusively controlled by men (and this is undertaken by means of an analysis of Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl and Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tradedy). Chapter five turns its attention to an analysis of theatre and anatomy hall architecture in order to examine the ways in which one exclusive private theatre (Christopher Beeston's Phoenix, in Drury Lane) sought to exploit an architectural accident in order to provide elite audiences with a staged representation of the processes of anatomical dissection. Finally, chapter six examines four plays by John Ford: The Witch of Edmonton, The Broken Heart, Love's Sacrifice and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore in order to examine the anatomical emblazonment of the female body in two specific Private theatres. The dissertation also contains four appendices: I) Selections from the Published Debate Between Jean Riolan and Jacques Duval Concerning the Case of Marie Le Marcis, the Hermaphrodite of Rouen II) The List of Sex Changes from Johann Schenck von Graffenberg's Observationum Medicarum Rarum (Frankfurt, 1600) III) Selections From Thomas Artus' L'Isle des Hermaphrodites IV) Selections From The Boke of Duke Huon ofBurdeux, translated by Sir John Bourchier (Lord Berners] (Wynkyn de Worde, 1534) V) Anthony Wood, Athena Oxonienses. An Exact history of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the most Ancient and Famous University ofOxford(a Biography of William Petty)
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Mullender, Jacqueline E. "Shakespeare’s late syntax : a comparative analysis of which relativisation in the dramatic works." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1450/.
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This thesis combines corpus stylistic, literary and historical linguistic approaches to test critical observations about the language of Shakespeare’s late plays. It finds substantial evidence of increased syntactic complexity, and identifies significant linguistic differences between members of the wider group of later plays. Chapter One outlines the critical history of the late works, including consideration of stylometric approaches to Shakespeare’s language. Chapter Two describes the stylistic methodology and corpus techniques employed. Chapter Three reports the finding of salient which frequency in the late plays, and details the analytical categories to be used in the examination of which usage, the results of which are discussed in Chapter Four. Chapter Five describes two further analyses, where a broader group of ten late plays is considered on the basis of their high which frequency. The relativisation syntax of the five post-1608 plays (Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen) is found to distinguish them unequivocally as a group, while Pericles stands out as an anomaly. Finally, in Chapter Six it is argued that Shakespeare’s syntax reflects a stylistic phenomenon unrelated to individual dramatic characterisation, motivated by his re-association with the Elizabethan romance writers of the sixteenth century.
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Weiss, David S. "Samuel Daniel's 'First Four Books of the Civil Wars' and Shakespeare's early history plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8165/.
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Literary scholars agree that William Shakespeare used Samuel Daniel's First Four Books of the Civil Wars as a source for his play Richard II, launching an interaction between the authors that lasted for many years. What has not been recognized, however, is that they may have influenced each other's works on English history before the publication of Daniel's epic poem. Textual, bibliographical and biographical evidence suggests that Daniel borrowed from some of Shakespeare's earliest works, the Henry VI plays, while writing The First Four Books, and that Shakespeare could have used a pre-publication manuscript of The Civil Wars to write Richard II. A review of extant versions of The Civil Wars, the Henry VI plays and Richard II reveals a complex relationship between the authors as they wrote and revised works on the Wars of the Roses while both had connections to the Countess of Pembroke and the Earl of Essex. This analysis illuminates the works while disclosing one of the first instances of Shakespeare's plays inspiring another artist, challenging images of Daniel as a poet who disdained theater and Shakespeare as a playwright who cared only about the popularity of his works on stage.
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O'Brien, Richard Thomas. "Shakespeare and the development of verse drama, 1660-2017." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7962/.
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This thesis offers an account of how verse drama, despite the entrenched cultural significance of Shakespeare, came over time to occupy a marginal, often maligned position within English theatre. The introduction establishes its critical-creative methodology: I approach the question not only as a critic, but as a practitioner exploring what T. S. Eliot called ‘the possibility of a poetic drama’ in the modern world. The first chapter demonstrates how verse dramatists over the last thirty years have been inhibited by continuous comparison to Shakespeare. The remainder of the thesis argues more broadly that verse drama between the Restoration and the present day has articulated itself directly in response to an evolving understanding of Shakespearean drama. Chapter Two examines Shakespeare’s own dramatic verse as a model which skilfully exploits the dialectic between norm and variation made possible by a shared metrical framework to stage conflicts between individuals and communities. Chapters Three to Five explore in turn how verse dramatists between 1660 and 1956 engaged with the same dialectic, both politically and prosodically. The thesis closes with an extended reflection on my own practice as a contemporary poet-playwright, discussing three scripts where I experimented with counterpointing individuals and communities through dramatic verse.
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Gilmore, Nicola Anne. "The whole play of parts : a study of cued parts in English Renaissance drama, 1590-1620." Thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2012. http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/1249/.
Full textAbstract:
The chief objective of this doctoral thesis is to identify the feasibility of interpreting non-Shakespearean plays written during the English Renaissance period in terms of their integral actors’ cued parts. The cued part is defined herein as the prevalent type of theatrical script received by an early modern professional actor. Unlike the familiarly linear, holistic guide to a play typically received by a twenty-first century actor, such a unique text consisted solely of the lines to be spoken by the player on behalf of the individual character he was to represent. Each moment of speech was prefaced by a short cue to facilitate effective timing on the stage. An actor’s cues, visually indicated on the part by ‘cue-tails’, the long horizontal lines which preceded them, would themselves be crucially distinguished from the speaking part, thus forming a detached peripheral ‘cue-text’ of their own (Palfrey and Stern, 2005). This thesis is situated in the context of seminal work by Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern (2005, 2007). Although the authors’ ground-breaking publications currently saturate the newly-emerging discipline, their content is almost exclusively confined to the plays of Shakespeare despite the non-Shakespearean provenance of extant early modern cued parts. Originality is demonstrated herein through extension of the field’s existing sphere of influence. The current study thus seeks to resolve whether the practice of performing from cued parts was unique to Shakespeare or common to a cross-section of Renaissance playwrights, united for analysis within the following chapters by one of two factors: the theatrical association of the dramatists’ plays with the Lord Admiral’s Men, the playing company for whom the known part-conversant actor Edward Alleyn performed and/or the existence of their plays in bibliographically inferior yet dramatically enlightening ‘bad’ quarto (Pollard, 1909) or ‘minimal text’ (Gurr, 1999) form. Whilst it has been largely critically overlooked, the cued part is hypothesised within this study to be an all-encompassing complete unit of text, performance and meta-performance. Although the original rationale for its production was firmly rooted in the practical, the revised agenda set by this thesis is predominantly interpretative. Adopting an actor-centred methodology, the present investigation represents an active contribution to understanding within the field, its most innovative inputs centring upon selected key areas. In terms of the dramatic, the study proposes an archetypal technical composition for the early modern professional actor’s customised text, venturing to assert a series of original classifications of cue type with far-reaching semantic repercussions, reinforced by supporting literary and cultural analysis. Establishing new terminology for the analysis of cued parts, the vast editorial potential inherent in the form begins to emerge. The comparative relationship between cued parts and ‘minimal text’ editions of plays written and performed during the period 1590 to 1620 is elucidated, the latter bibliographic grouping critically neglected on account of its compromised literary value. The surprising influence of the actor in shaping the composition, performance and direction of Renaissance plays is subsequently promoted. Finally, in the realm of the meta-dramatic, the thesis recommends the multi-dimensional self-reflexive potential of the cued part form. New evidence is provided for the existence of alternative texts within both play and part, tendering shifting perspectives on the whole play and simultaneously boasting immeasurable creative potential to contemporary directors, actors and scholars alike. Orienteering far beyond the accepted segmentation of the whole play into parts, the cued part itself is dissolved into interior and exterior meta-parts. The reader is ultimately presented with a selection of avant-garde reflections upon the broad interpretative facility of the small and quirky Renaissance theatrical text.
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Lander, Johnson Bonnie. "Chastity on the early modern English stage, 1611-1649." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7a3235c9-13dd-44dd-9489-60ae42711203.
Full textAbstract:
‘Chastity on the Early Modern English Stage’ seeks to explain the relationship between tragicomedy’s brief and short-lived English popularity and the royal cult of chastity which spanned exactly the same historical time-frame. This study attempts to define a cultural movement which influenced the political, religious, social, intellectual, aesthetic, and medical fields in the first half of the seventeenth-century and argues that the narrative tropes which structured, and assisted the spread of, the post-Elizabethan cult of chastity were the same tropes governing the tragicomedies so popular in the period. The arguments made for tragicomedy are speculatively extended to all generic forms, with the intention of expanding an area of scholarship still dominated by formalist analysis. By focussing on narrative tropes and locating them within both fictional and non-fictional texts and in the presentation and discussion of significant events (from medical discoveries to liturgical arrangements and royal birthing rituals) this thesis aims to illustrate that the human and cosmic visions articulated by different dramatic genres were as relevant to early modern lives outside the theatre as they were to those within it. Genre is thus less a description of a text’s formal characteristics and more a set of truths governing certain human experiences both in texts and in life. Focussing on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, two plays by John Ford, Caroline court masques and birthing rituals, Milton’s A Maske and a number of non-professional performances (from the Earl of Castlehaven’s trial to William Harvey’s demonstration of the circulation of the blood), ‘Chastity on the Early Modern English Stage’ describes the four tropes of chastity and their place in tragicomic experience from the death of Elizabeth I to the beheading of Charles I. While Charles’s death and the closure of the theatres are crucial reasons for the abrupt end of the cult of chastity and tragicomedy, this thesis argues that cause must also be attributed to the efforts of pro-Parliamentary and Puritan writers who, throughout the 1630s and 1640s, sought to claim the tropes of chastity for their own rhetoric and cause. Their success resulted in a redefinition of chastity as masculine, individuated, Parliamentarian, Protestant, intellectual, civic and prosaic instead of Catholic, royal, spectacular, feminised, Marian, pietised, and theatrical.
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Kur, Hasret. "The Dislocation Of Power And Alienation Through The Use Of Dramatic Violence In Edward Albee." Master's thesis, METU, 2012. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614869/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
The main objective of this study is to analyze the dislocation of power and alienation through the use of dramatic violence in Edward Albee&rsquos The Zoo Story, Eugene Ionesco&rsquo
s The Lesson and Sarah Kane&rsquo
s Blasted. To illustrate the idea of dislocation in the plays mentioned, this dissertation primarily concentrates on the theoretical backgound of two distinctive themes
power and alienation. After this, the idea of violence and language are examined in relation to the development of power and alienation. The thesis then provides brief information about the absurdist tradition to which the plays The Zoo Story and The Lesson belong. After the analysis of the dislocation of power and alienation with the use of dramatic violence in these two plays, it presents brief information about &ldquo
in-yer-face&rdquo
theatre and the paralellism between this theatre and the absurd tradition. Finally, the idea of dislocation of power and alienation in Blasted, which belongs to a later period, is illustrated to show the actuality of the theme violence and its effects in Western drama.
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Williams, Margaret Ellen. "'A play is not so ydle a thing' : the dramatic output and theatre-craft of Nathan Field." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1992. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3150/.
Full textAbstract:
Nathan Field, an actor contemporary with Burbage, is virtually unknown as a playwright. His work reflects the fact that he was an all-round man of the theatre, so Part One is largely biographical, tracing Field's involvement as actor, manager and writer with the Children of the Revels, the Lady Elizabeth's Men and the King's Men. In Part Two, which lays the foundations for Part Three, I investigate Field's authorship, or part-authorship, of six collaborative plays: The Fatal Dowry, with Massinger, The Honest Man's Fortune, Four Plays in One, The Queen of Corinth and the Knight of Malta from the 'Beaumont and Fletcher' folio of 1647, and the anonymous manuscript play The Faithful Friends. Part Three deals with Field's dramatic output as pieces for the theatre, examining them in terms of theatre resources, their relationships with their spectators and their verbal and non-verbal communication. The conclusion supplies a perspective from which to view and to evaluate Field's work, by considering it in relation to popular theatre tradition, and by reviewing its limited performance history.