Rhetorical Subversion In Early English Drama

This book centers on the uses and abuses of language in early English drama. It examines a number of plays alongside classical and sixteenth-century rhetorical treatises and focuses on the appearances of one stock character, the Vice figure, to determine how he uses language to dupe, implicate, and control others in the plays. The Vice figure is usually very skilled in the use of rhetoric and, in many cases, seems to be so persuasive and entertaining that the moral aims of the drama appear to be jeopardized. Douglas W. Hayes investigates the moral and rhetorical ambivalence of the Vice figure not only in Medieval morality plays and Tudor interludes, but also in the language of later characters related to the Vice such as Marlowe's Mephastophilis and Shakespeare's Falstaff and Iago.

My focus of study is the popular English moral interlude and later related plays, from 'The Castle of Perseverance' (circa 1425) to the end of the Tudor period. I view these plays from, a perspective that centers on the use of rhetoric as a means of persuasion, and the ways in which that means of persuasion is placed in the service of good and evil ends--often simultaneously. The ambivalent and often hilarious words of a Vice figure are supposed to lure the audience into complicity with sin, and they do their job well in many moral plays and their later counterparts. The attraction of these characters goes beyond the entrapment of other characters and the audience. They often deliberately use rhetorical tropes and figures to further their own ends, and thereby undermine any notions of the inherent stability of language as a truth-bearing medium. The good characters, on the other hand, generally do not have enough of a dramatic presence to counteract the effects of the Vice figures upon the audience even though the static nature of the good characters is precisely what this moral drama tries to emphasize. The moral interlude communicates 'good' moral doctrine, but its dramatic structure would seem to make it a theatre of subversion. Although the relationship between the Vice and the audience has been a mainstay of studies of medieval and Tudor drama for a generation, the subversive nature and methodology of the Vice have not been examined in any detail. I make such an examination the basis of my study by tracking this figure from his appearance as Backbiter in 'The Castle of Perseverance' and the N-Town plays, through some of his manifestations in the Vices of 'Mankind', Nichol Newfangle from Fulwell's 'Like Will to Like', and Ambidexter from Preston's 'Cambises', to his role as Mephastophilis in Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus', and culminating with an investigation of Shakespeare's Falstaff in' I Henry IV' and Iago in ' Othello'. I attempt to recover those aspects of performance that support rhetorical subversion in tandem with an examination of the plays as sites of eloquence.

The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Drama is the authoritative secondary text on Tudor drama. It both integrates recent important research across different disciplines and periods and sets a new agenda for the future study of Tudor drama, questioning a number of the central assumptions of previous studies. Balancing the interests and concerns of scholars in theatre history, drama, and literary studies, its scope reflects the broad reach of Tudor drama as a subject, inviting readers to see the Tudor century as a whole, rather than made up of artificial and misleading divisions between 'medieval' and 'renaissance', religious and secular, pre- and post-Shakespeare. The contributors, both the established leaders in their fields and the brightest young scholars, attend to the contexts, intellectual, theatrical and historical within which drama was written, produced and staged in this period, and ask us to consider afresh this most vital and complex of periods in theatre history. The book is divided into four sections: Religious Drama; Interludes and Comedies, Entertainments, Masques, and Royal Entries; and Histories and political dramas.

The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama is the first new collection of the drama of Shakespeare’s contemporaries in over a century. This volume comprises seventeen accessible, thoroughly glossed, modernized play-texts, intermingling a wide range of unfamiliar works—including the anonymous Look About You, Massinger’s The Picture, Heminge’s The Fatal Contract, Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London, and Greene’s James IV—with more familiar works such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Middleton’s Women Beware Women. Each play is edited by a different leading scholar in the field of early modern studies, bringing specific expertise and context to the chosen play-text. With an unprecedented variety of plays, and critical introductions that focus on the diversity and strangeness of different early modern approaches to the artistic and commercial enterprise of play-making, The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama will offer vital new perspectives on early modern drama for scholars, students, and performers alike.

Winner of the Roma Gill Prize 2015, Marlowe's Literary Scepticism re-evaluates the representation of religion in Christopher Marlowe's plays and poems, demonstrating the extent to which his literary engagement with questions of belief was shaped by the virulent polemical debates that raged in post-Reformation Europe. Offering new readings of under-studied works such as the poetic translations and a fresh perspective on well-known plays such as Doctor Faustus, this book focuses on Marlowe's depiction of the religious frauds denounced by his contemporaries. It identifies Marlowe as one of the earliest writers to acknowledge the practical value of religious hypocrisy, and a pivotal figure in the history of scepticism.

Davenport offers a reassessment of The Pride of Lifeand the Macro Plays and argues for a new grouping of plays.

This collection brings together extended versions of papers delivered at the 2015 meeting of the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE). The timeframe the papers deal with, starting with 15th century devotional texts, including Tudor interludes, Shakespearean plays and their adaptations, and ending in Milton, embraces three centuries of the history of English literature. As such, the contributions offer not only a variety of methodological approaches and disciplinary perspectives, but also highlight converging problems within this broad field, crystallized around three main topics of scholarship and constituting the three thematic parts of the volume, each containing three to four chapters. The first part, entitled “Medieval and Early Modern Experiments with Genre”, offers a set of readings that interpret texts in the light of their generic and thematic innovativeness. Attesting to the multiple ways in which Shakespeare is made our contemporary, the second part, “Shakespearean Texts and Adaptations—Our Contemporaries”, is comprised of essays on contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare and Renaissance theatre, taking the term “adaptation” in a broad sense. The contributions in the third part of the volume, “Perspectives on Milton”, all focus on John Milton, highlighting debates or underrepresented discourses in Milton studies. What connects the papers of the volume as a whole is the reinterpretation of traditional critical assumptions through innovative methods, including viewpoints integrated from other disciplines and discourses, such as theatre studies, digital humanities and social sciences, addressing the relevance of both traditional and innovative topics within English studies in a contemporary academic context.

An introduction to Shakespeare's I Henry IV - introducing its critical and performance history, current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play.