"Distracted into parts" : constructing and performing melancholy on the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean stage
"Distracted into parts" : constructing and performing melancholy on the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean stage
This thesis examines the role of melancholy as a representational strategy in late 16th and early 17th century English drama. What has yet to be fully addressed is the extent to which these links between melancholy and performance helped shape the development of theatrical practice itself in this period.
The first chapter (ch.1) examines a number of specialist texts (including Ficino’s De vita libri tres and Bright’s Treatise of Melancholie) and identifies a specific trope - that of ‘soul-loss’ - as integral to the formation of a medical problematic about melancholy in this period. A subsequent chapter (ch.2) describes how this trope intersected with non-specialist discourses about melancholy in both a social and a theatrical context, establishing a link between melancholy and ‘performance’ which would find articulation in a later period of Elizabethan drama. Chapter 3 presents a theoretical discussion of the performing body, and suggests how a twentieth-century semiotics of performance can be historicized to describe the body’s production of meaning on the early modern stage. A conclusion argues that slippage between constructions of the body-soul and body-speech relationships could implicate the trope of melancholic ‘soul-loss’ within an ideology of performance.
The final two chapters (chs.4 and 5) describe the emergence of a ‘melancholic performativity’ in the phase of theatrical production following the revival of the boy companies in 1599. Through the satiric comedies of John Marston, and via a second wave of revenge tragedies, tropes deriving from the specialist texts about melancholy were appropriated to a style of playing which was directly opposed to orthodox assumptions about the relationship between speech and action prevailing at the public theatres. This new development ultimately came to attain more narrative than performative influence in the drama. Nevertheless, it is suggested that the prominence of melancholy in the plays of this period can be conceptualised as part of an attempt to fashion a new mode of performance to suit a rapidly-changing theatrical environment.
University of Southampton
Mackay, Hugh
f80be66c-6f9b-416b-95f3-58a8da6c10fa
2003
Mackay, Hugh
f80be66c-6f9b-416b-95f3-58a8da6c10fa
Mackay, Hugh
(2003)
"Distracted into parts" : constructing and performing melancholy on the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean stage.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
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Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
This thesis examines the role of melancholy as a representational strategy in late 16th and early 17th century English drama. What has yet to be fully addressed is the extent to which these links between melancholy and performance helped shape the development of theatrical practice itself in this period.
The first chapter (ch.1) examines a number of specialist texts (including Ficino’s De vita libri tres and Bright’s Treatise of Melancholie) and identifies a specific trope - that of ‘soul-loss’ - as integral to the formation of a medical problematic about melancholy in this period. A subsequent chapter (ch.2) describes how this trope intersected with non-specialist discourses about melancholy in both a social and a theatrical context, establishing a link between melancholy and ‘performance’ which would find articulation in a later period of Elizabethan drama. Chapter 3 presents a theoretical discussion of the performing body, and suggests how a twentieth-century semiotics of performance can be historicized to describe the body’s production of meaning on the early modern stage. A conclusion argues that slippage between constructions of the body-soul and body-speech relationships could implicate the trope of melancholic ‘soul-loss’ within an ideology of performance.
The final two chapters (chs.4 and 5) describe the emergence of a ‘melancholic performativity’ in the phase of theatrical production following the revival of the boy companies in 1599. Through the satiric comedies of John Marston, and via a second wave of revenge tragedies, tropes deriving from the specialist texts about melancholy were appropriated to a style of playing which was directly opposed to orthodox assumptions about the relationship between speech and action prevailing at the public theatres. This new development ultimately came to attain more narrative than performative influence in the drama. Nevertheless, it is suggested that the prominence of melancholy in the plays of this period can be conceptualised as part of an attempt to fashion a new mode of performance to suit a rapidly-changing theatrical environment.
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Published date: 2003
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Local EPrints ID: 465228
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/465228
PURE UUID: 110895bc-2ed1-49a2-93cb-ec134a6d3e90
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 00:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 20:02
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Author:
Hugh Mackay
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