Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 articles from March 2003

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 archives from March 2003

Jewish matriarchs and the staging of Elizabeth I in The History of Jacob and Esau.
March 22, 2003... I argue that in the anonymous academic interlude The History of Jacob and Esau (1558), the character Deborah, an allusion to both the militaristic prophetess of the Book of Judges 4-5 and Rebecca's nurse of the same name in Genesis 35,...

Urban misidentification in The Comedy of Errors and the cony-catching pamphlets.
March 22, 2003... This essay argues that the cony-catching pamphlets of the 1590s form a central context for Shakespeare's early comedy. The play and the pamphlets point to an early modern fascination with misidentification as a gauge of the social order. Social...

"Great is Diana" of Shakespeare's Ephesus.
March 22, 2003... This article examines historical and literary genealogies of the goddess Diana of Ephesus (a.k.a. Artemis of Ephesus), applying these genealogies to Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and Pericles. Diana of Ephesus is embedded within the Abbess...

Glimpsing a "lesbian" poetics in Twelfth Night.
March 22, 2003... This essay argues that the interview scene between Olivia and the disguised Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (I.v) offers an often overlooked opportunity to witness the dynamics by which a language of female-female desire emerges from the...

Bethlem and Bridewell in The Honest Whore plays.
March 22, 2003... Even though The History of Bethlem, an account of London's notorious psychiatric hospital ("Bedlam"), disavows any substantial connection between the hospital and Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton's The Honest Whore, Part One (1605), this...

The mother as bawd in The Revenger's Tragedy and A Mad World, My Masters.
March 22, 2003... The Revenger's Tragedy and A Mad World, My Masters reveal how the motif of the mother as bawd taps into early modern anxieties about maternal authority. In Gratiana's attempted prostitution of her virgin daughter, The Revenger's Tragedy plays...

The classical context of Ben Jonson's "other youth".
March 22, 2003... Epicoene's self-conscious comparison between Ben Jonson and an unnamed "other youth"--possibly Shakespeare--may best be read in the context of classical notions of the aging process, which conceive of "youth" ("iuventus") as a category...

"Ears prejudicate" in Mariam and Duchess of Malfi.
March 22, 2003... This essay examines the impact of gender on the speaker-listener relationship in Elizabeth Gary's Tragedy of Mariam and John Webster's Duchess of Malfi. Several characters demonstrate "ears prejudicate," preferring to hear views sympathetic...

Colonialism, Politics, and Romanization in John Fletcher's Bonduca.
March 22, 2003... The essay first explores the ways in which John Fletcher's Roman play Bonduca engages with early-seventeenth-century British colonial ambitions, particularly in relation to the Virginia colony. Secondly, the article focuses on the topical...

Recent studies in Tudor and Stuart drama.
March 22, 2003... An assessment of recent scholarly work treating Tudor and Stuart drama and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follows. ********** ...

Books received.
March 22, 2003... Anderson, Linda, and Janis Lull, eds. "A Certain Text": Close Readings and Textual Studies on Shakespeare and Others in Honor of Thomas Clayton. Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press; London: Associated Univ. Presses, 2002. Pp. 205. $41.90. ISBN...