Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 articles from March 1999

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 archives from March 1999

The birth of the history play: saint, sacrifice, and reformation.
March 22, 1999... If the origins of Greek tragedy are presided over by "the grotesque shadow of a goat," the traditions of modern European drama are historically under the shadow of the Christian sacrifice.(1) In what follows I will be exploring the impact of...

Dramatic images of kingship in Heywood and Bale.
March 22, 1999... This realm of England is an Empire... governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same. These words in the Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1553 underlie the dramatic treatment of...

Idolatry and commodity fetishism in the antitheatrical controversy.
March 22, 1999... I The controversy over the Elizabethan and Jacobean English theater turned on the distinction between the "use" and the "abuse" of plays. The antitheatrical pamphleteers generally claimed that they were not opposed to the theater per se,...

History, tragedy, and truth in Christopher Marlowe's 'Edward II.'.
March 22, 1999... Christopher Marlowe's Edward II is typically applauded as an aesthetic achievement, a history play that brings form and meaning to the incoherent material of its chronicle source by retelling the king's slightly dull, twenty-year reign as the...

Spectatorship in/of 'Much Ado About Nothing.'.
March 22, 1999... In the past twenty years, a great deal of criticism has focused on concerns about appearances in the early modern period, particularly in terms of "self-fashioning";(1) in this article, I want to look at the other side of this issue: the...

Charles Chester and Ben Jonson.
March 22, 1999... In his [Walter Raleigh's] youthful time was one Charles Chester, that often kept company with his acquaintance: he was a bold, impertenent fellowe, and they could never be at quiet for him; a perpetuall talker, and made a noyse like a drumme in...

Fertile visions: Jacobean revels and the erotics of occasion.
March 22, 1999... The past two decades have seen a remarkable renaissance of interest in the court masque, due largely to the pioneering mythographic studies of D. J. Gordon, Stephen Orgel, and Roy Strong,(1) and equally importantly, to the recent vitality of...

Fletcher's 'The Tragedie of Bonduca' and the anxieties of the masculine government of James I.
March 22, 1999... Bonduca. A woman beat 'em . . . a weak woman, A woman beat these Romanes. Caratach. So it seems. A man would shame to talk so. (I.i.16-8) In the above exchange from John Fletcher's The Tragedie of Bonduca (1610-14), Bonduca (Boadicea)...

Recent studies in Tudor and Stuart drama.
March 22, 1999... Only at this point do I fully understand why SEL asks a different scholar each year to summarize the publications in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. Further, my admiration for those who render this professional service has increased along...