Early Modern English drama

Este capítulo revisa críticamente las teorías tradicionales sobre el origen de las primeras actrices profesionales de la Commedia dell’Arte, cuestionando la hipótesis, formulada por Ferdinando Taviani, que vinculaba su procedencia al mundo de las meretrices honestae. A partir de documentación inédita y correspondencia conservada en los archivos de Mantua, se demuestra que Barbara Flaminia ya trabajaba como actriz en 1562, dos años antes de la firma del contrato de Madonna Lucrezia da Siena —considerada hasta ahora la primera actriz documentada—, y que coincidía entonces con Vincenza Armani, también actriz profesional. Este hallazgo adelanta la cronología de la presencia femenina en el teatro y desvincula su origen del ámbito de la prostitución.

El estudio destaca además la capacidad interpretativa, la formación cultural y la iniciativa empresarial de estas mujeres, muchas de las cuales alcanzaron el rango de capocomiche (directoras de compañía), transformando la escena europea del siglo XVI. La Commedia dell’Arte se revela así como un espacio de emancipación artística donde las actrices fueron creadoras, gestoras y pioneras en la profesionalización del arte escénico.

“Casting Tragedy: Actors, Gender, and Transnational Tragic Roles,” in Tragedy as a Travelling Form: From Thespis to Today, ed. Philipp Lammers, Juliane Vogel, and Christina Wald (London: Bloomsbury, 2025), 103-121.

Why are Shakespeare’s tragedies almost exclusively named for male protagonists, when the period’s most popular representatives of classical tragedy featured central female roles? Recent directions in theater history offer suggestive contexts for probing these discrepancies by moving beyond playwrights to considering playing companies as authorial forces. As the tragic genre re-emerged from classical Greek and Roman models into theaters across early modern Europe, new company structures led to new casting systems, which in turn shaped the form of plays. This paper will explore the effects of playing company structures on tragic templates, plots, and characters. In particular, the emerging phenomenon of celebrity actors in London’s commercial theater led to specific kinds of lead roles. In contrast not only with ancient models but also with contemporary Italy, France, and Spain, where the advent of professional actresses ushered in new plays showcasing female roles, London’s adult male playing companies fostered tragic structures designed in part to reflect the strengths of their share-holding members.

T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion, a modern verse play, immersed in spiritual symbolism and psychological drama, stands among his most complex explorations of the human condition. Written in 1939, the drama is a meditation on guilt, redemption, religious alienation, and the struggle for spiritual meaning in a world increasingly fragmented by social, technological, and material change. The return of Harry to Wishwood, his ancestral home, sets the stage for the unravelling of personal and familial traumas that are symptomatic of deeper societal maladies. Through sophisticated dialogues, symbolic figures, and the unravelling of hidden motives, Eliot presents a world haunted by sin and yearning for expiation. The Family Reunion, addresses complex modern themes, especially the transmission of guilt across generations. The drama presents guilt as a haunting legacy—one that is passed from parent to child within the Monchensey family. According to Eliot, true redemption is only possible when the reality of guilt and the need for expiation are fully acknowledged; denial or suppression merely allows the burden to persist. The protagonist, Harry, inherits not only the family estate but also the accumulated sense of sin that comes with it. As Eliot’s narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that the psychological weight of inherited guilt remains unresolved until confronted and worked through, turning the play into a meditation on the necessity of recognizing and atoning for one’s inherited and personal failings in order to break free from their hold.

In mid-eighteenth-century Europe, anonymous authors produced parodic satires masquerading as earnest exemplars of the chronicle form. Couched in an antiquated, quasi-biblical register, these mock chronicles drew flimsily fictional portraits of modern life. Their debt to the historical chronicle lent them an authority which legitimized their subversion of the political systems under which they appeared, yet the ambiguity of their existence as 'parodies' enabled their use, in the hands of others, for the purposes of panegyric. The very existence of this ephemeral genre, long overlooked, testifies to the chronicle's enduring cultural valence and highlights the exchange of literary forms across borders, languages, and cultures that took place in the eighteenth century.

The utilization of trigger warnings in teaching Western literary texts within English classes is a subject of debate, with some advocating for their importance and others questioning their usefulness. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the significance of employing trigger warnings within Iraqi English departments. This will be achieved through the administration of a questionnaire to students regarding their experiences with the literary texts they study. The results of the questionnaire will shed light on whether the use of trigger warnings, whether in oral or written form or integrated into the teacher's approach to introducing the subject, holds significance. Ultimately, the findings of this study aim to enhance the teaching of literature and foster more academically respectful environments for Eastern, predominantly Muslim students. By understanding the impact of trigger warnings, educators can better tailor their teaching methods to accommodate the diverse backgrounds and sensitivities of their students.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) is one of America's foremost novelists and short story writers of the twentieth century and Shakespeare (1564-1616) is the greatest dramatist of the world that England produced in the sixteenth century. The two artists are separated from each other by thousands of miles and three hundred years. Their métiers were also different: Shakespeare's was in drama and poetry; Hemingway's was in novel and short story. How then can Shakespeare be present in the works of Hemingway? And then how much Hemingway could be influenced by Shakespeare?

Friday, September 10, 2021
Professor Richmond:: I had the pleasure this weekend of reading your paper "King Lear as Tragicomedy". It is without exaggeration one of the most illuminating discussions of Lear I've seen.  I was struck by the insight that Lear's division of his kingdom is not a sign of flagging powers but rather a misguided yet carefully considered tactical move to pre-empt Goneril's unpredictable inheritance and ensureCordelia's sovereignty over the richest portion of the kingdom, and that "this reading of the opening scene restores the play to true tragic tension, with a monarch unwisely sacrificing himself to his excessive devotion to virtue, and a heroine whose excellence carries with it the penalties of intransigence" -- not to mention your observations on the play's comic elements, its echoes of Pauline wisdom, and the consolations it offers via Edgar's succession (Edgar who has always seemed to me somehow transplanted from the redemptive realms of the late romances into the chaotic world of Lear).
          I am so grateful for discovering your work and look forward to its guidance in deepening my understanding of Shakespeare. Best regards, Steve Mitchell

Building on Fredson Bowers' 1956 observation that compositor X consistently used "then" for "than" when setting from manuscript, this study systematically examines this orthographic pattern across nineteen early Shakespearean quartos using online texts, such as the Internet Shakespeare Editions digital facsimiles. The findings reveal a clear progression from zero instances of "than" in early plays through mixed usage to forty-five correct instances in Hamlet Q2. Crucially, this pattern appears consistently across multiple printers and printing houses (Valentine Simmes, Peter Short, John Danter, James Roberts, Nicholas Okes, and others), suggesting it represents Shakespeare's evolving orthographic practice rather than compositorial habit.

Tragikomedya türünün özelliklerinin belirgin bir şekilde ortaya konulması bilinmesi gerekli olan Tragedya ve Komedya türlerinin genel özellikleri incelenecek ve bu özelliklere dayanarak Tragikomedyanın özellikleri ortaya konacaktır. Tragikomedyanın özelliklerinin belirtilmesinden sonra ise, Dryden'ın önemli eserlerinden Marriage à la Mod'u (1671) bir tragikomedi örneği olarak ele alacak ve bu özelliklerin belirtilen eserde bulunup bulunmadığını örneklerle açıklayacağız.

This paper focuses on Shakespeare's treatment of the mob in his plays. The idea for the paper arose from certain obvious circumstances prevailing in Bangladesh. The mob suddenly sparks in rage and tries to take the law into their own hands, thus creating a mobocracy, though for a very short time. This study will demonstrate that Shakespeare has approached the mob from multiple perspectives. As only a few plays have mob scenes worth noting, I have studied them and see that while the mob in Henry VI, Part II is depicted more for fun than for erratic violence, in Julius Caesar, the mob psychology is shown to be transformable if not their reason but their emotion is appealed to. One disturbing syndrome of mob psychology is mistakenly victimizing innocent people, which is shown in this play, too. The next play where the mob scenes occur is Hamlet, in which Laertes is slated to be the King, though it is at once corrected. In Antony and Cleopatra, not a mob but a full range of loyal supporters have been shown as withdrawing their loyalty from a losing leader and entrusting it to the winning leader. The last play, in my discussion list, is Coriolanus, in which, though the protagonist, Coriolanus, assumes tragic status, the rebellious plebeians seem to have a position of their own, which I have corroborated by citing a passage from Greenblatt's book, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.

This article reinterprets Shakespeare's Othello as a prophetic allegory of the Jacobean succession crisis. Drawing on contemporary astrological anxieties surrounding the 1605 eclipses and Mars retrograde, it argues that Othello's eclipse imagery encoded cultural fears of cosmic and political upheaval. By mapping the play's characters onto key Stuart figures James I, Anne of Denmark, Robert Cecil, and Arabella Stuart the drama emerges as both a reflection and critique of early Stuart rule. Shakespeare's tragedy thus anticipates the Gunpowder Plot and foreshadows Britain's later civil wars, transforming private jealousy into a national prophecy of disorder.

William Shakespeare's Hamlet transcends its roots as a revenge tragedy, emerging as a multifaceted cultural artifact that reflects the turbulent intersection of late Renaissance Denmark's political upheavals, dynastic anxieties, and the astronomical revolution of the late 16th century. Grounded in the medieval legend of Amleth from Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum, the play integrates Tycho Brahe's 1572 supernova and Copernican cosmology as chronological and thematic anchors, revealing a narrative steeped in existential crisis and scientific upheaval. This study employs an astro-chronological methodology to argue that Hamlet simultaneously functions as a conventional revenge tale, a political satire of Christian IV's court, and an allegory for humanity's confrontation with an infinite cosmos. Shakespeare's genius lies in synthesizing these strands, offering a panoramic vision of a world grappling with the collapse of old orders and the birth of the new.

This study explores the connection between environmental degradation and gender oppression through an ecofeminist perspective, focusing on Lynn Nottage's Ruined. It examines how capitalist and patriarchal systems exploit both women and nature, particularly in the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. Drawing on materialist ecofeminism as defined by Mary Mellor, the study demonstrates how gender-based power dynamics reflect the extraction and commodification of natural resources for profit. Nottage's Ruined highlights the intertwining crises of environmental and gender injustices, with its portrayal of violence against women serving as a metaphor for broader ecological devastation driven by capitalist interests. The paper argues that addressing ecological crises requires confronting the systemic power structures that perpetuate both gender-based violence and environmental degradation.

This essay examines a 1620s play attributed to Thomas Randolph, "The Drinking Academy, or the Cheater’s Holiday". The play, it is argued, shows signs of an intertextual relationship and an ideological syntony with Aristophanes’ "Clouds", particularly with regard to the father-son relationship and new forms of education. These similarities with "Clouds" also align "The Drinking Academy" with another roughly contemporary text, Ben Jonson’s "Staple of News". A comparative reading of these two early modern plays along the lines of Aristophanes’ "Clouds" adds a new, different voice to the multifaceted reception of "Clouds" in early modern Europe.

William Shakespeare is the world's pre-eminent dramatist and renowned poet in English literature. His plays are like perennial rivers, which keep on flowing forever. The plays of William Shakespeare are ever green and they closely reflect the human emotions. They usually move from particular to general i.e. the story of an individual becomes the story of humanity. His works acquired universal acceptance and they appeal to the noble and the groundlings alike.

Among the plays of William Shakespeare King Lear is an exquisite example of the nature of the human emotion and how we connect to emotion. The word 'heart' in terms of emotion plays a key role in the play King Lear. In this play we find warm-hearted, hard hearted and plain heartless characters struggling with each other. King Lear closely reflects the human emotions and feelings. It mirrors love, hatred, deceit, affection, affectation, loyalty, lust, infidelity, treachery, patriotism, realization, compromise, immorality, sacrifice etc.

This paper examines how the play King Lear reflects human emotions and discusses the details regarding this.

Today, with major archaeological discoveries in Southwark, Marvin Carlson’s study on the semiotics of theater architecture, and insights from the reconstructed (New) Globe, it is increasingly clear that Shakespeare’s “plays were written for the space in which they were to be performed: and that therefore to understand Shakespeare, one should understand his playhouses” (Stern 21). Sándor Hevesi, one of the most important yet still somewhat overlooked figures in early-twentieth-century Hungarian theater, was among the first to recognize that Shakespeare’s plays did not naturally suit the proscenium stage. A critic-turned-director and dramaturg, he recognized that it was the architecture of nineteenth-century European theaters that necessitated the radical editorial and dramaturgical interventions, often infamously substantial textual cuts, characteristic of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Shakespearean productions. This recognition fueled his devoted explorations into the workings of the Shakespeare stage. In Hevesi’s time, little was known about the original dimensions and staging conditions of Elizabethan playhouses. In a 2023 paper, I argued that by 1923, through his staging of The Taming of the Shrew, Hevesi believed he had discovered the real Shakespeare. This paper explores the starting point of that journey to assess the significance of Hevesi’s anticipatory ideas.

Filistin edebiyatında şehir, sadece bir arka plan olmanın ötesinde, toplumsal hafızanın taşıyıcısı ve direnişin sahnesi olup adeta yaşayan bir mekândır. Özellikle kadim ve ihtilaflı bir kent olan Kudüs, bu bağlamda hem somut bir mekân hem de geçmişin ve mücadelenin sembolik yükünü taşıyan bir hafıza mekânı olarak belirmektedir. Mahmoud Shukair’in2 Yalnız Kudüs3 (4)القَدسِ وَحدهَّا هَّنْاكُ adlı eseri, Kudüs’ü mekânsal hafıza ve direniş ekseninde kurgulayarak bu geleneğe özgün bir katkı sunar. 2010 yılında yayımlanan ve 155 bağlantılı kısa anlatı parçalarından oluşan Yalnız Kudüs, yüzeyde birbirinden bağımsız görünen kesitler aracılığıyla işgal altındaki günlük yaşamın ayrıntılarını işler. Ancak bu kısa anlatıların bütünü, geçmiş ile şimdi, bireysel ile kolektif, trajedi ile mizah arasında bağlar kurarak Kudüs’ün çok katmanlı portresini oluşturur. Shukair, eserinde Kudüs’te İsrail işgali altında yaşayan Filistinlilerin durumunu işlerken, şehri bir karakter gibi ele alır. Böylece kent sokakları, evleri ve hatıralarıyla hem acının hem umudun taşıyıcısı bir anlatı mekânına dönüştürülür. Tüm bunlar göz önünde bulundurulduğunda Yalnız Kudüs başlıklı yapıtın mekân, hafıza ve direniş üçlüsünün metaforik bir kurgusu olarak okunması mümkündür.

Compagnoni, Michela, I mostri di Shakespeare. Figure del deforme e dell'informe, Roma, Carocci (Serie AIA Book Prize / 8), 2022, 171 pp. The "monstrous" is a trope that runs through the most diverse fields of knowledge -aesthetics, philosophy, law, psychoanalysis, medicine -and has always been an integral part of literature and the figurative arts. The "monster", etymologically a supernatural manifestation that disrupts a pre-established order, but also something that performs the function of divine warning and revelation of the afterlife (Cicero, De divinatione, 1, 93), has been identified since ancient times with lawless, irregular, anomalous, subversive bodies, often a hybrid with anthropozoomorphic traits (as in the Sphinx), increasingly manifested in visual and, hence, physical but also moral terms. Oedipus himself, who appears in the famous painting by the French symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), is a monster because, albeit unknowingly, he kills his own father and procreates children with his own mother: a parricide and an incest, two of the capital taboos that human civilisation has established for the sake of progress (Williams 1999, 249-51). One of the greatest scholars of monstrosity, Jeffrey Cohen, in his "Seven Theses" in Monster Theory. Reading Culture (1996) states that monsters are a complex phenomenon, "a cultural construct", a material that originates as horror and yet attracts like a magnet, an entity that we yearn to normalise and confine in reassuring scientific terms but that never ceases to escape our inquisitorial eye and especially our control.

This paper charts the history of the English word Tempest from its origins in Proto-Indo European to its modern usage as a term for storms, both literal and metaphorical. It does so by way of considering the word's morphology, semiotics, and phonetics. It references numerous language studies and dictionaries to chronicle the word's many steps along that path, from demarcation of measurement to assessment of time, all the way to an observation about the weather or the human psyche. The conclusive findings show that tempest has undergone numerous changes throughout its history, and these changes interestingly parallel its connotations as a symbol for both chaotic weather and the chaos of the human spirit.

Shakespeare offers a rich and nuanced depiction of life, portraying characters from all levels of society. His works form a unique gallery of stock figures, representing a wide range of male and female archetypes. Several female characters stand out for their lasting impact on audiences. Some are depicted as strong and dynamic, engaging in manipulation or corruption and ultimately meeting death as a consequence. Others are shown as vulnerable and defenseless, silenced by madness, despair, or a resigned acceptance of death. Notable examples include Ophelia, Cordelia, Viola, Titania, and Imogen. This tradition of portraying women caught in the tension between resilience and vulnerability continued in the Jacobean and Caroline periods, where playwrights like Beaumont and

This study dives into the complex role of AI in literary education, using Shakespeare's Macbeth as a lens to explore how ChatGPT influences critical analysis. By employing a mixed-methods approach with 120 undergraduates-divided into groups that either used AI assistance or relied on traditional close reading-we uncovered significant tensions between efficiency and cognitive growth. On the quantitative side, students who used AI referenced the text 23% more often (averaging 8.2 references compared to 6.7; p = 0.03), but they also produced 15% fewer original interpretations (averaging 6.1 versus 7.4; p = 0.01). The qualitative data revealed three main factors influencing these results: (1) cognitive offloading, with 42% of AI users noting a decline in their independent analysis; (2) epistemic overreliance, where students accepted AI-generated outputs without question; and (3) discursive mimicry, as linguistic analysis indicated a tendency to adopt AI's syntactic styles (p < 0.05). Interestingly, ESL students saw a technical boost (+1.8 more references) but faced the most significant drop in originality (-2.3 points), highlighting a paradox between accessibility and originality. This research contributes to ongoing discussions in digital humanities by empirically addressing the "scaffolding-or-crutch" dilemma: while AI can assist with surface-level tasks, it may impede deeper interpretive thinking. It also sheds light on algorithmic reductionism in humanities education and how students interact with AI's perceived authority. To mitigate originality deficits, practical suggestions include iterative prompting and annotated AI outputs, which helped reduce these deficits from 23% to 5%. Ultimately, the study champions a balanced approach-neither fully embracing nor outright rejecting AI-but rather advocating for evidence-based integration that upholds humanistic values like critical autonomy. 2 As AI becomes more prevalent in education, these nuanced strategies are essential to ensure that technology enhances, rather than detracts from, the transformative power of literary study.

The clashing era of the nineteenth century witnessed various drastic events and changes on the whole Globe. The new scientific theories and inventions alongside with the industrial revolution placed their on hand impact on the life of people at that time. The Victorian Age covers the period from 1837-1901; as it is linked with the reign of Queen Victoria for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. However, its influence can be seen within the classes of modern communities in Europe and United States of America. The newly cultural trends that were spreading at that time had a great echo and acceptance on the literary arena. Thus, Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) tried hard to reflect a genuine image for modern women in European life during the modern era. Henrik Ibsen was a famous Norwegian playwright and theatre director. He was one of the founders of modernism in theatre. Ibsen was usually referred to as "the father of realism" and the most influential playwright of the 19th century period on modern literature, His characters are alive persons of everyday life with true ups and downs. That is why; he portrayed his characters without modulation. Readers could find in his dramas people they knew earlier and seen before. A Doll's House was written by Ibsen in 1879 to show modern women image in Europe in general more than in Norway in particular. This research paper and based on the Feminism Criticism Theory addresses the image of women in the play. The paper also sheds light on the role of women in the play with critical analysis for the characters of the play alongside their human reactions.

Though Edward Albee has occupied a prominent position within the American theatre for nearly four decades, his career has been quite controversial. But whether one is an «Albeephile)) or an «Albeephobe» -terms coined by Roudané to encapsulate the different attitudes to Albee ( Understanding Edward Albee 7)-, it would be unfair to deny bis artistic integrity. The easiest thing after the overnight success of Who 's A/raid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) would have been to go on writing plays with a similar appeal to audiences. There were, however, other concems and forros that he wanted to explore, and, conscious as Albee was of the difficulty and unpopularity of their pursuit, he did not flinch from the task; as a result, bis plays after 1966 have been among the most obscure and experimental of the American drama. But with Three Tall Women (1991), one of bis latest works, he has been welcomed back to the Olympus of successful Broadway celebrities. 1 A close examination of this play reveals, however, strong connections with previous work by the dramatist. Among them are its Existentialist overtones, which this article will seek to unveil and which have been, as will also be shown, a permanent feature of Albee's dramatic production, in different degrees and forms, ever since its start. In Roudané's words, «Three Tall Women embodies major philosophical issues that have long been synonymous with Albee's worh (American Drama 25). If the subject matter of plays such as The Zoo Story (1958), Who's A/raid of Virginia Wooif? (1962) or A Delicate , was the inauthentic kind of existence favoured by so many human beings in contemporary society, and that of Seascape ( 1975) was growing older and its implications, Three Tal! Women takes us back to 1 Though Three Tall Wlnnen is undoubtedly an outslanding play, Gradet probably exaggerates in calling it «lhe best American play of the last 65 years» (np). Banham ironically remarks that «[a]lmost every non-realistic modern dramatist has had this label affixedn (989). ' Thc play was !irst produccd at the English Thcatrc of Vienna on 14 June 199 1. It was thcn performcu on 30 July 1992 at the River Arts Repertory of Woodstock. Ncw York. and finally prcmiered in a regular production on 27 January 1994 at the Vineyard Theatrc in Ncw York City. lt was awardcd the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Will Stackman contcnds ironically that Albee •s play «is one or thosc pieces of serious writing the Pulitzcr jury sccms to prder. fu ll of implication, but not neccssarily a play» (np).

Lectures by Peter Saccio, Dartmouth College. Professor Saccio goes well beyond merely introducing the plays of Shakespeare in 36 lectures.

First, he locates them in the context of their time and world, suggesting not only what their author might be doing in them but also why.

Second, he gives us a solid grasp of each of the major plays in the three genres with a careful look at the critical issues surrounding each.

Finally, he shares with us his intimate feel for the characters, their motivations, and the deep-seated passions which drive the play. Sparkling with excitement, writer and award-winning teacher Peter Saccio converts his vast scholarship to breathing life.

Though passion and love of the study never replace careful planning and organization, they permeate each lecture from start to finish, offering the listener an exciting challenge.

This essay explicates the position of Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment on the problem of drugs. At the focus of my analysis are the passages in "Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment" which interpret the Homeric myth of the Lotus-eaters in terms of the modern phenomenon of substance abuse. Since the Dialectic reads the Odyssey as the fundamental history of subjectivity, the indictment of drugs the authors recognize in the myth acquires, as it were, a transhistorical status. Building upon the work of Jacques Derrida and applying his notion of the pharmakon as a metaphysical concept of the drug, I show that the Dialectic reveals a much more ambivalent picture. The backbone of my argument is a structural comparison between the book's treatment of the Lotus and its interpretations of the myths of the Sirens and Circe, standing, on this account, for art and sex respectively.

Rome! Work in Progress...'' ''That Shakespearian Rome! Work in Progress... A twelve minute video, an experiment in intermedial Shakespeare criticism, was viewed at the international conference, Shakespeare and Rome: Identity, Otherness, Empire held at the Università di Roma Tre, in the Eternal City, in May 2005. The authors of the video, Maddalena Pennacchia and myself manipulated a variety of mediatic materials and genres to bring into focus the key words of the conference -identity, otherness and empire. 1 Exploiting such montage techniques as alternation, superimposition and synchrony to combine materials, we projected those terms through time and geographic space. We thus explored shifts in their meaning since the Elizabethans appropriated Roman history and culture to use them as a mirror of their own epoch. The video aimed to interrogate the Bard's Rome, four hundred years later, in our own postmodern, postcolonial, multicultural times so profoundly marked by their own forms of expansionism and by great cultural and political crises around the globe. The first frames of the video present the Coliseum as it stands today -a traffic island, a tourist destination and ''stage ,, for fake centurions and gladiators. In a voice-over, one of Italy's great pop idols, Antonella Ruggiero, sings in a voice which is both aggressive and nostalgic: 1 As ''authors ,, we scripted and directed the video. The conference convener, Maria Del Sapio, is responsible for the original idea of producing a video for the conference. Claudio Mosticone, Head of the Multimedial Laboratory for the Dipartimento di Letterature Comparate, which hosted the conference, joined us with his wide ranging experience and expertise, from local filming to montage to projection.

The Churchill Play (1974) adlı eseri, Durumcu Enternasyonal'in radikal estetik ve politik stratejilerini tiyatro sahnesine taşıyarak İngiliz ulusal kimliğinin mitlerini, kapitalist gösteri toplumunun mekanizmalarını ve tarihin ideolojik manipülasyonunu sorgular. Bu çalışma, oyunu Durumcu teorinin temel kavramları-Détournement (saptırma), psikocoğrafya ve gösteri toplumu eleştirisi-üzerinden analiz ederek sanatın politik bir praksis olarak nasıl işlev kazandığını ortaya koymayı amaçlar. Brenton, Winston Churchill'i bir "antikahraman"a dönüştürerek emperyalizm, sınıf çatışması ve devlet şiddetini teşhir ederken, mahkûmların sahnelediği meta-tiyatro aracılığıyla tarihin resmî anlatılarını parçalar. Oyundaki gözaltı kampı, modern tahakkümün psikocoğrafik bir tezahürü olarak okunur: Tel örgüler ve beton duvarlar, bireyi nesneleştirirken, mahkûmların direnişi bu mekânı iktidarın sembollerini altüst eden bir devrimci alana çevirir. Durumcuların dérive (sürüklenme) ve "durum yaratma" taktikleri, oyunun yapısında belirleyicidir. Mahkûmların gardiyan rollerine bürünmesi, otoritenin performatif doğasını çürütür; Union Jack'in kâğıttan bir prop olarak yırtılması, ulusal birliğin yapaylığını vurgular. Brenton, Guy Debord'un "gerçekliğin imajlarla ikamesi" eleştirisini sahneye taşıyarak, seyirciyi pasif bir tüketiciden eleştirel bir özneye dönüştürür. Finaldeki kanlı bastırma sahnesi, sanatın iktidar karşısındaki kırılganlığını ve direnme potansiyelini aynı anda ortaya koyar. Bu inceleme, Brenton'ın tiyatrosunun 1968 kuşağının radikal mirasını nasıl yeniden ürettiğini gösterme amaçlıdır. The Churchill Play, sanatı elitizmden kurtaran "anti-art" stratejisiyle, tarihin yeniden yazımını kolektif bir eyleme dönüştürür. Sonuç olarak oyun, Durumcu Enternasyonal'in "dünyayı değiştirmek için önce altüst etmek" ilkesini somutlayarak, politik tiyatronun sınırlarını genişletir ve seyirciyi tarihin aktif bir faili olmaya davet eder.

The title page of the 1594 Dido, Queen of Carthage states that it was &quot;Written by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nash. Gent,&quot; and several centuries of speculation on authorship have followed. In 2008, Martin Wiggins claimed that the &quot;available evidence&quot; proved joint authorship to be beyond doubt, a position reiterated in the second volume of British Drama (2012), edited by Wiggins and Catherine Richardson. The authors of this essay disagree, finding instead that Marlowe wrote the play text and Nashe did not contribute. Our focus is upon the evidence, and we approach the problem of authorship in two, complementary ways. The first approach evaluates the verbal evidence (words, phrases, spellings) that has been proposed as indicating Nashe’s presence; this approach employs analysis of words in context, comparing Dido with the works of Marlowe and Nashe. The second approach is quantitative; it assesses previous quantitative work on the authorship problem before offer...

In this essay, I turn to Shakespeare for advice about how to alleviate the crisis in the humanities. University faculty and PhD students develop what I've called a dispositional immobility, a disposition to do what they do only in an academic setting. I think humanities faculty and doctoral students can learn from Shakespeare a good deal about how to mobilize themselves and what they do as well as a lot about how to change the institution of the humanities, especially by following his practice of institution blending. Shakespeare, I will argue, can teach us how to move.

Analyzing the Concept of Time Comparatively Between Shakespeare's Macbeth's soliloquy (5.3.19-28) and Shakespearean Sonnet 19 William Shakespeare reflects on historical events and tragedies in his literary works which is timelessly demonstrated though his remarkable play Macbeth. The play demonstrates Macbeth's hamartia after his encounter with the three witches' prophecies that overpower him with conflicting feelings and decisions. Towards the epilogue, Macbeth soliloquizes (5.3.19-28) his pathos by expressing an epiphany after receiving the news of his lady's demise leading to catharsis where Macbeth conceptualizes time. Likewise, William Shakespeare's sonnets revolve around divergent themes such as the passage of time in addition to love, beauty, mortality, and jealousy. The sonnet structure is originated in Italy, and it is obtained from the Italian word "sonetto". Shakespearean sonnets are made up of 14 lines, and they are divided into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Moreover, Shakespearean sonnets comprise 154 sonnets dissecting two target personas: the first 126 sonnets address The Fair Youth, and the remaining 28 sonnets address The Dark Lady.

L’essai autobiographique de Margaret Cavendish, intitulé A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life, et publié dans la première édition de Natures Pictures (1656), peut être lu comme une « relazione autobiographique ». Par la publication de cette brève autobiographie, dans les premières années seulement d’une carrière soutenue et prolifique de vingt ans, Cavendish répond à des rumeurs qui ont commencé à circuler à son sujet parmi ses contemporains. En tant que récit polémique circulant oralement et sous forme écrite, et parfois avec des significations contradictoires, la relazione s’avère utile comme grille d’analyse permettant d’examiner les réponses autobiographiques de Cavendish à ces rumeurs. Cet article montre la finesse avec laquelle elle choisit la relation comme modèle générique de son récit, dans lequelle elle insiste sur la vérité comme moyen de dépasser ses contemporains et de rejoindre un lectorat « d’autres âges » plus réceptif à l’image publique qu’elle construit ...

Discussions of the transformation of tragedy have to date been dominated by an emphasis on the temporal dimension, focusing on the evolution of the genre (for the most comprehensive history, see Bushnell 2020). Largely neglected so far has been the question of how the spatial dimension has factored in these transformations, of how tragedy’s displacements, its travels from one place to another place, have contributed to its formation. This book turns to the multiple spatial journeys of tragic forms.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia’s death is often interpreted by readers as a tragic love story. According to this prevailing view, the young woman, unable to find reciprocation for her love and feeling betrayed, is driven to her death by the emptiness that follows the killing of her father by the man she loves. However, through a closer reading and a shift in perspective, it is possible to argue that Ophelia’s death is not inherently linked to her romantic relationship with Hamlet. Rather, such interpretations stem from an over-dramatization of the character and the play itself. Cathy Caruth’s engagement with Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) in her work Unclaimed Experience supports the notion that trauma disrupts the integrity of an individual’s identity. Considering her father’s death as a traumatic event, Ophelia’s identity—already shaped externally by her father and brother, rather than by her own self—collapses entirely upon this loss. According to Caruth, one of the most profound consequences of such a disruption is its manifestation in language. This is most clearly observed in Ophelia’s descent into madness during her struggle for survival, reflected in her fragmented speech, altered expressions, and erratic actions. I argue that analyzing Ophelia solely as the victim of an unfulfilled love story results in an incomplete reading. Moving beyond the romanticized narrative of a woman who dies for love, it is possible to reach a more grounded understanding by examining her psychological state, family dynamics, and individual identity.
Keywords: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Ophelia, Cathy Caruth, Trauma Theory

passes show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe.&quot;1 In the play, Hamlet needs to justify his dull behavior before an unsympathetic audience. In critical commentaries, scholars have accepted this fact and gone on to search for what was &quot;within,&quot; even as others have protested that the search was hollow.2 In the essay that follows, I propose that we would be better served by focusing on the way Hamlet&#39;s rhetoric of justification evolves over the course of the play. As early modern observers would have done, I am inclined to ground this inquiry in regional and lineal terms. I will suggest that, as Hamlet unfolds, the prince aligns himself with the active voyagers of the frozen north by engaging with his environment and redefining himself in exoteric, or outward terms. How, I want to ask, do Hamlet&#39;s northern predecessors real and fictional inform the play&#39;s innovative apologia for early modern man? Of course the context for such questioning is both humoral and geographical. To an extent rarely remarked, we have tended to nationalize gender in this period even though early modern observers paid more attention to what Mary Floyd-Wilson has termed &quot;geohumoralism,&quot;3 the classical notion that habitat shapes human being. Writers such as Jean Bodin and Levinus Lemnius drew on Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen in order to elaborate this zonal vision.4 In the hands of these commentators,

Nel 2016 l’editrice Carocci pubblica La letteratura inglese dall’Umanesimo al Rinascimento, un volume corposo, più di 400 pagine, affidato alla cura sapiente di Michele Stanco; un riferimento erudito e agile che vanta la collaborazione di alcune tra le voci più autorevoli dell’anglistica italiana oltre che di docenti di Storia moderna e di Storia della filosofia del Rinascimento.
Composto di due sezioni, la prima dedicata all’Umanesimo e al primo periodo Tudor, la seconda riservata allo studio della fase storico-letteraria che va dal regno di Elisabetta I al regno di Giacomo I, il volume si propone di “raccordare i testi ai relativi contesti”, presentando al suo interno riflessioni e analisi su questioni connesse ai generi letterari o ancora alle intersecazioni e contaminazioni tra testo poetico e arte scenica, tra fonte e prodotto drammatico, interrogandosi sulle transazioni intertestuali o sul percorso di divulgazione dei testi. Più di un manuale, insomma, che rivolge uno sguardo attento alle spinte filosofico-culturali di una nazione che in quegli anni si schiude a profonde trasformazioni nella vita sociale e nel pensiero. Le questioni fondanti la moderna realtà inglese, i nuovi metodi di indagine scientifica, la standardizzazione della lingua, l’esplorazione del Nuovo Mondo vengono esaminati in un quadro che dà ampiamente conto delle modifiche delle teorie epistemiche e dei nuovi contesti ambientali e sociali. E non senza ragione il volume prende l’avvio dalle dottrine e dal pensiero umanistici: il progetto è opportunamente inteso a fornire la misura con cui l’eredità di un secolo ha originato e determinato le nozioni legate ai concetti di potere politico, di rappresentazione drammatica o di metodo scientifico di acquisizione del dato di conoscenza che apparterranno al secolo successivo. Non la semplice progressione cronologica o il divenire nel tempo degli aspetti della cultura inglese si dispiegano nelle pagine, ma l’analisi dei processi attraverso i quali il passato umanistico ha reso possibile il farsi della modernità inglese.

OR john Webster, death was not merely an artistic preoccupation; it was a fundamental part of the family business. Webster's father ran a successful coach transport firm and was a prominent member of the Guild of Merchant Taylors. Coach makers had no guild of their own but were admitted to the Taylor's Guild on the grounds that there was "a close and obvious connection between tailors, who made trappings for funerals, plays and pageants, and the men who provided hearses for coffins."1 While Webster's father did not participate directly in the royal funerals that his more celebrated son occasionally commemorated poetically, he likely provided hearses to transport plague victims to burial pits. Webster inherited this enterprise, and his contemporaries in the theatrical community were clearly well aware of this and even amused by the overlaps between the two professions. Henry Fitzgeffrey's nickname for Webster-"Crabbed (Websterio) / The Play-wright, Cart-wright"-alludes directly to the family business and strongly suggests that Webster himself took more than a passing interest in running it.2 In a mock elegy lamenting the loss of the poet Thomas Randolph's finger in a tavern brawl, moreover, William Hemminge goes so far as to conflate Webster's role as a saddler with his status as playwright, as he remarks that initial attempts to mourn the lost digit in grand fashion were unsuccessful:

The paper titled, "Beyond the Jester: Pocket's Multi-dimensional Trickster Identity in Christopher Moore's The Serpent of Venice" tries to dissect the trickster traits embodied in the character named Pocket, a fool in the novel. The paper defines as well as briefs out the major characteristic features attributed to the trickster figure in general. Pocket, the fool portrayed by Christopher Moore is different from that of Shakespeare's fool. Shakespeare depicted Pocket only as a supporting character; whereas Moore's Pocket is the main

This research article explores the literature and drama of the Elizabethan period, spanning from the works of Geoff rey Chaucer to the Restoration drama with comparative analysis till 2023. The Elizabethan period was a time of great artistic and cultural fl ourishing in England, and produced some of the most infl uential and enduring works of literature and drama in the English language. The article examines the major literary and dramatic trends of the period, including the development of the English sonnet, the rise of the theatre, and the emergence of new genres such as the revenge tragedy and the pastoral. It also examines the works of some of the most important authors and playwrights of the period, including William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, with diff erent bibliographical entries from all around the world, from Chaucer to the Artifi cial Intelligence era.

This article addresses the role of space in re-imagining a case of essentialist society as collective gender paranoia of biological reconciliation, as presented in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure (1668). Using the institution of the Roman Catholic convent, Cavendish’s play interrogates biological polarity and disavows establishing reversed gender hierarchies of empowerment and subservience. To this effect, the play suggests a communal psychosis, being delusively constructed by antagonistic biological differences that generate both sexes’ denial of cyborg or hybridized dualism in their gender identification. In this concern, the presented argument addresses several critical lacunae in the scholarship of The Convent of Pleasure. The identified research gaps are related to the limited visualization of spatial contribution to the rethinking of gender and to the cyborg challenge that generates psychosis and redirect gender relations in both the historical and spatial contexts of Cavendish’s play. Our essay follows an interdisciplinary approach to explore both the pathology of gender psychosis and the epistemology of the cyborg. In particular, the postmodern configuration of the cyborg and the cross-cultural readings of gendered spaces are integrated to underscore Cavendish’s contribution to the scholarship of space, gender, and psychology.