Cecilia Lindskog Whiteley: London Drama in the 1580s: Materiality and Metatheatre

  • Date: 16 November 2024, 10:15
  • Location: Ihresalen, Uppsala
  • Type: Thesis defence
  • Thesis author: Cecilia Lindskog Whiteley
  • External reviewer: Julie Sanders
  • Supervisors: Emma Clery, Anna Swärdh
  • Research subject: English
  • DiVA

Abstract

Early modern English drama from the 1580s has traditionally been read through a Shakespearean lens, to its detriment. This study instead approaches the extant plays from this decade not as a precursor to a main event yet to come, but as a self-aware iteration of literary form that was in the process of confidently and creatively shaping itself. All twenty-nine plays surviving from the 1580s are read against the development of commercial theatre as an institution, in order to investigate the impact of the establishment of London’s permanent playhouses. I argue that a localised inter- and metatheatrical dramatic culture emerged in and from these playhouses in London in the 1580s.

Chapter 1 focuses on theatre history, while chapter 2 considers playgoers from demographic and historical perspectives, with a particular focus on the ways in which playwrights conceptualised playgoers and invited them to exercise their ‘judgement’. Chapter 3 features a quantitative analysis of the use of props in 1580s drama, which points to significant differences between the London-based companies and the Queen’s Men, who were charged with touring. It also offers a corrective to narratives in earlier scholarship about particularly heavy prop use in the 1580s. Chapter 4 reads stage trees as a cipher for discussions of royalty through the mobilisation of associations with performance traditions located in London. Chapter 5 considers the ways in which 1580s drama capitalised on disguise plots by examining the close links between the cloth trade and theatrical performance in plays as well as wider discourse, in an analysis which also highlights ‘glitchiness’ as a key characteristic of theatrical performance in the 1580s. Chapter 6 considers the dramaturgical opportunities offered by the new playhouses through a focus on scenes set in the gallery. It looks in particular at how three influential playwrights—Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and John Lyly—used this space for scenes characterised by metatheatre, in plays intensely interested in creation. A Coda looks forward to the early 1590s, and considers the influence of this body of plays on later drama, including Shakespeare. 

By liberating these twenty-nine plays from Shakespeare’s shadow and reading across interpolated boundaries—between canonical and mostly-forgotten plays, and between indoor and outdoor drama—this study offers a picture of a theatrical culture that should be considered to be more complex and aesthetically accomplished than has hitherto been recognised.

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