Early Modern Literary Studies

‘You shall heare me speake’: The Architecture of Feigned Soliloquy in Hamlet’s Gallery

2023-08-25T12:31:13+00:00

In the first quarto of Hamlet (Q1)—popularly deemed the 'bad quarto'—we are told that Hamlet frequents a room at Elsinore Castle called the gallery. In fact, he meets Ofelia in the gallery twice: in the unstaged “ungartered” scene and again in the 'To be, or not to be' scene. Both times their intimacy is betrayed. The first time, Ofelia tells all, and the second time, Claudius and Corambis (Q1’s Polonius) eavesdrop. In the second quarto (Q2) and the first folio (F), however, all references to the gallery are absent. It follows that Hamlet’s gallery has not garnered much critical attention. After all, it can easily be taken for a throwaway reference, swallowed up by the ever-looming dramaturgical convention of the 'unlocalized stage'. But what would happen if we were to take this gallery setting seriously? Attending to the architectural specificity found in playscripts like Hamlet Q1 can help illuminate the social resonances of the spaces these characters inhabit, revealing otherwise unspoken motivations and understandings. In turn, I contend that gallery settings, following their real-life correlatives in early modern great homes, inspired a new dramaturgical technique—the feigned soliloquy. Recovering the social resonances of the gallery can help us better understand a tension central to Hamlet, which is also a tension central to early modernity: the struggle to outwardly represent one’s inner self—'that within which passeth show'—and the limits of accessing another person’s mind.

Into the Green Suit: A Caricature of Gentrification in Munday and Chettle’s Huntington Plays

2023-08-24T08:22:08+00:00

Anthony Munday’s Robin Hood plays – co-authored by Henry Chettle – are almost univocally reduced to the ‘gentrification’ of Robin Hood and, consequently, accused of conservative complicity in stripping the legend of its radical potential. However, close readings of The Downfall of Robert, the Earl of Huntington and its sequel The Death of the aforementioned reveal that there is much more to the plays than its detractors allow for. While neither The Downfall nor The Death can be counted unmitigated triumphs in terms of dramatic structure, they are notable for high levels of theatrical self-awareness: far from naturalizing an aristocratic Robin, they make the point that one can play Robin Hood but never be him; they also deliberately create moments of farce which subvert the ostensible moral of the plays and in general reflect negatively on the potential for political and personal betterment, presenting characters bogged down by selfishness, lust, and lethargy. In the following, I hope to demonstrate that, contrary to expectation, Munday and Chettle’s plays neither historicize, nor naturalize, nor yet aggrandize the character. Instead, they employ meta-theatrical devices, humor, farce, and unsuspected cynicism to undermine these very tendencies.

Authority and the Problem of Other Minds in Shakespeare’s ‘Henriad’

2023-08-25T10:00:53+00:00

The critical tradition surrounding Shakespeare’s Henriad plays has long been divided along the fault line of Hal’s supposed princely virtues. Is Prince Hal a hero, resolving a crisis of authority at the upper reaches of government? Or is he something less than that, a Machiavellian scoundrel or a mouthpiece for nationalist rhetoric? Perhaps one reason critical consensus on these plays has been so elusive is that the plays’ action itself centers around an interpretive problem – the problem of other minds. This paper will discuss several ways that these plays signal a shift in political theory within sixteenth-century England, a shift in which the interpretation of other minds becomes an important tool of institutional policy. The advent of sovereignty informs this shift, and defines a broad culture of personal rule. New theories on the sovereignty of the king-in-parliament set the tone for an angst-ridden turn from a metaphysical model of authority to one more epistemically oriented. My paper discusses the ways this angst inscribes within the Henriad plays, particularly surrounding the person of Prince Hal.

Hero and Leander and Shakespeare’s Rival Poet Sonnets

2023-08-25T11:47:48+00:00

In sonnet 86 Shakespeare claims to have been dumbstruck when his muse was appropriated by a rival poet: ‘But when your countenance filled up his line,/ Then lacked I matter. That enfeebled mine.’ Had his own ardent response to the beautiful youth of the sonnets been eclipsed? Was he no longer the worthiest recipient of his friend and patron’s favour? Biographically minded interpreters often cite sonnet 86 in attempts to name Shakespeare’s formidable rival, but no-one has convincingly identified the lines of verse to which he refers in its closing couplet. In this essay I argue that Shakespeare has specific passages in mind, hymns to male beauty from George Chapman’s continuation of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander. Building on advances in dating and contextualising the sonnets, I show how the Chapman passages may be linked to Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southampton – Henry Petowe’s all-but-ignored alternative continuation of Hero and Leander is of consequence here – and suggest why they might have shaken Shakespeare so badly. As well as being of biographical consequence, my analysis sheds new light on politics and patronage in the 1590s, the cultural significance of the Elizabethan minor epic, and the wellsprings of poetic inspiration and insecurity.

‘How many would the peaceful city quit, / To welcome him’?: The Earl of Essex on Parade

2023-08-24T07:58:04+00:00

To date, there has been no in-depth investigation of the many contemporary depictions of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, on parade. This is an unfortunate omission because parades were an important part of Essex’s identity, especially his public self-presentation. The elements and implications of his parades provide insight as to how he presented himself and was understood by others, which in turn provides a more complete understanding of his impact on the collective Elizabethan imagination. Essex’s parades consistently and overtly highlighted deeply popular aspects of his public image. This public image could easily be seen as offering a comparison, often a contrast, to the queen’s progresses, the most famous Elizabethan parades. The fact that Essex offered a contrast to the queen underlines the potential problems of his presenting himself publicly in a manner that might suggest an alternative to the monarch. This aspect of his parades came into stark relief during the 1601 Essex uprising, which is instructively seen as a failed version of his previous parades.

Darren Freebury-Jones, Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival (New York: Routledge, 2022).

2023-09-05T12:59:11+00:00

The False One: John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, ed. by Domenico Lovascio (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022)

2023-09-05T12:19:21+00:00

Ayanna Thompson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (Cambridge: CUP, 2021); and David Loewenstein and Paul Stevens, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and War (Cambridge: CUP, 2021)

2023-09-05T12:22:46+00:00

Una McIlvenna. Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)

2023-09-05T12:27:28+00:00

Michael M. Wagoner, Interruptions in Early Modern English Drama (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2022)

2023-09-05T12:33:23+00:00

Lisa Hopkins and Tom Rutter, eds, A Companion to the Cavendishes (Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2020)

2023-09-05T12:36:20+00:00

Greg Doran, My Shakespeare: A Director's Journey through the First Folio (London: Methuen, 2023)

2023-09-05T12:38:41+00:00

Romeo and Juliet, A Lyric Theatre Production at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, February to March 2023 (Sunday 26 February)

2023-08-24T08:09:05+00:00

Macbeth, presented at the Longacre Theatre, New York, March 29 to July 10, 2022

2023-11-13T18:55:49+00:00

Books Received

2023-08-25T13:19:00+00:00