- Early modern English literature, Early Modern England, Early Modern English Language, Early Modern English History, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Early modern English literature and culture, and 17 moreEnglish Renaissance Literature, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Shakespearean Drama, Shakespeare in Performance, Shakespeare, Shakespeare adaptation, Historical sociolinguistics, English historical linguistics, History of Translation, Early Modern Literature, William Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, Early Modern Women Writers, and Early Modern Translation Studiesedit
Emotions underlie world politics and are essential to state actors’ strategies and exchanges. Considering the complexities of the early modern Anglo-Iberian relations and the diplomatic sources, it is possible to pursue a line of enquiry... more
Emotions underlie world politics and are essential to state actors’ strategies and exchanges. Considering the complexities of the early modern Anglo-Iberian relations and the diplomatic sources, it is possible to pursue a line of enquiry which analyzes emotions in foreign affairs policies. This paper explores the Iberian diplomatic missions to the Elizabethan court, applying the current research on emotions in diplomacy to the sixteenth century diplomatic practice and its conventions regarding emotional display. Early modern Iberian diplomatic correspondence reveals a collective dimension, conveying an official—rather than personal—emotional strategy on foreign affairs. Spain’s dominant geopolitical and economic circumstances favored a more aggressive diplomatic approach. At the same time, Portugal’s more delicate strategic position and the maintenance of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance determined a diplomacy of appeasement. Sovereigns selected their envoys based on how their diplomatic skills and emotional behavior would suit the kingdom’s agenda. This diplomatic strategy allowed a collaborative and synchronized emotional behavior amongst state actors to emerge.
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Aragonese poet Francisco de la Torre y Sevil (1625–1681) dedicated his Agudezas de Juan Oven (1674) to William Godolphin (1635–1696), English ambassador to Madrid (1671–1678). Examination of the rich paratextual matter suggests that the... more
Aragonese poet Francisco de la Torre y Sevil (1625–1681) dedicated his Agudezas de Juan Oven (1674) to William Godolphin (1635–1696), English ambassador to Madrid (1671–1678). Examination of the rich paratextual matter suggests that the bond of patronage between Spanish poet and English diplomat was forged at the convergence of two factors: the problematic nature of Owen’s text, a collection of epigrams expurgated by the Holy Office whose publication in Spanish, although permitted, required avoiding inquisitorial censorship; and Godolphin’s profile as a foreign ambassador converted to Catholicism and owner of an extensive library.
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This essay approaches Shakespeare’s As You Like It through the ancient wisdom traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Focusing on a number of influential classic Indian texts, this study considers how distinctive features of Eastern... more
This essay approaches Shakespeare’s As You Like It through the ancient wisdom traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Focusing on a number of influential classic Indian texts, this study considers how distinctive features of Eastern spirituality resonate with Shakespeare’s depiction of the Forest of Arden as a refuge where contentment can be fostered and liberation pursued as life’s ultimate goal. Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy dramatizes how virtues that lead to liberation are facilitated within the eco-religious space of Arden where the threefold Hindu concept of world forest is embodied. Such an ecumenical approach invites readers to contemplate what wisdom traditions beyond the Abrahamic religions can contribute to Shakespeare’s religious afterlives.
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Gerónimo de Medinilla translated Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) into Spanish in 1637, more than a century after the text was printed in Leuven. The paratexts of the translation imply that Medinilla might have published his translation with a... more
Gerónimo de Medinilla translated Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) into Spanish in 1637, more than a century after the text was printed in Leuven. The paratexts of the translation imply that Medinilla might have published his translation with a practical and political intention, which is reminiscent of the first interpretations of the humanist’s work by sixteenth-century Spanish readers. This paper analyzes two textual references from the translation to discuss the hypothesis that it was offered as a manual for governors. It also proposes an original biography of Gerónimo de Medinilla. This will serve to contextualize the translator and the potential final purpose of the edition.
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The Gentleman's Journal (1692-1694), generally acknowledged as the first literary English magazine, included in each issue short narratives presented as "novels." Published by using a fictive letter written from London to a gentleman in... more
The Gentleman's Journal (1692-1694), generally acknowledged as the first literary English magazine, included in each issue short narratives presented as "novels." Published by using a fictive letter written from London to a gentleman in the country to keep him both informed and entertained, the use of this letter format brings together a number of elements that will result in the confrontation of fictionality and reality. This paper will discuss the way in which format and content constantly subvert each other throughout the thirty-two issues of the journal, especially in relation to the nature, titles, and content of the "novels."
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Robert Ashley's Of Honour, edited in 1947 by Virgil B. Heltzel, has become a reference work in studies on honor in English literature, but we have known since 2016 that it is a translation plagiarism of Sebastián Fox Morcillo's De honore... more
Robert Ashley's Of Honour, edited in 1947 by Virgil B. Heltzel, has become a reference work in studies on honor in English literature, but we have known since 2016 that it is a translation plagiarism of Sebastián Fox Morcillo's De honore (1556). In this paper the authors analyze and compare the three existing manuscripts of Of Honour (two of them recently identified), discuss Ashley's possible intentions in producing it, and make a complete comparative study of De honore with Robert Ashley's translation.
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The Spanish resident ambassadors at the Court of Elizabeth I are pivotal within the scope of Renaissance diplomacy to understanding the Anglo-Spanish relationships during the second half of the sixteenth century. Out of all of Philip II's... more
The Spanish resident ambassadors at the Court of Elizabeth I are pivotal within the scope of Renaissance diplomacy to understanding the Anglo-Spanish relationships during the second half of the sixteenth century. Out of all of Philip II's ambassadors, Don Diego Guzmán de Silva stands out for his particular connection to the queen. This association is arguably a consequence of a mixture of emotions and diplomatic skill, known as diplomatic emotionology. This innovative approach to the study of diplomacy opens up an array of opportunities for Renaissance studies by focusing on the subject and their agency.
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This essay discusses Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor (1626) as an example of the profoundly composite nature of early modern dramatic texts. Massinger placed borrowings and echoes from several classical and early modern texts in a new... more
This essay discusses Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor (1626) as an example of the profoundly composite nature of early modern dramatic texts. Massinger placed borrowings and echoes from several classical and early modern texts in a new context, arguably counting on audiences' pleasure of recognition. Focusing on sources which have not received enough critical attention, this essay investigates the influence of classical authors like Tacitus and Statius, and the impact of other Massingerian plays to shed light on the way the playwright appropriated and refashioned some sources to suit his tragedy's political agenda.
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edited by David Ruiter, is a valuable and necessary introduction to a variety of ongoing convergences between Shakespeare studies and the discussion and practices of social justice. It is a fascinating and groundbreaking collection of... more
edited by David Ruiter, is a valuable and necessary introduction to a variety of ongoing convergences between Shakespeare studies and the discussion and practices of social justice. It is a fascinating and groundbreaking collection of interviews and essays by noted scholars, writers and practitioners of the arts that explores the significance of Shakespeare's oeuvre in the contexts of specific social issues. Two basic questions are posed in the Introduction to the book. The first one is "what can Shakespeare (considered in its multiplicity: in pedagogy, performance, scholarship, etc.) say or do that could truly impact social justice in its contextual specificity, either in his time, ours, the time in between or the time to come?" The second one is: "How could the plays and poetry be used-by teachers, actors, directors, scholars, etc.-to support social justice?" (Ruiter 2022, 2).
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This article compares the books about the Lifes of Thomas More written by Roper and Harpsfield and the work Tomás Moro by Fernando de Herrera. The comparison is taken as a case in point of the divergent early development of the... more
This article compares the books about the Lifes of Thomas More written by Roper and Harpsfield and the work Tomás Moro by Fernando de Herrera. The comparison is taken as a case in point of the divergent early development of the biographical genre in England and in Spain. The three texts were written by Catholic humanists, but under different contexts, which produced different kinds of text. Roper’s and Harpsfield’s Catholicism, marked by a close contact with the Morean tradition, the English form of Counter-Reformation under Mary, and the Elizabethan reversion to Protestantism, makes them drift towards an early form of modern biography. Fernando de Herrera, however, sets out to write his text from the background of the Spanish Counter-Reformation and a different discursive and textual conception of life writing.
his article examines the editorial choices made in Edinburgh printer Andro Hart’s 1616 edition of John Barbour’s Brus. Comparison of the 1616 Hart edition with Thomas Speght’s 1602 Chaucer edition displays similar concerns with preserving... more
his article examines the editorial choices made in Edinburgh printer Andro Hart’s 1616 edition of John Barbour’s Brus. Comparison of the 1616 Hart edition with Thomas Speght’s 1602 Chaucer edition displays similar concerns with preserving accessibility to historical texts despite significant language changes in both Older Scots and English, noting shared employment of assistive paratextual apparati. Linguistic assessment comparing Hart and Speght’s editions to their parent texts demonstrates how both editors modernize language to improve reader accessibility while preserving archaic qualities and metricality. Contextualization of the declining prestige of Older Scots during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries further clarifies this assessment. Hart’s edition portrays both a genesis of mutual intelligibility between Scots and English, and a coda for Older Scots as a literary prestige tongue.
This essay examines the representation of Volscians in two texts, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and a letter of Lady Arbella Stuart’s referring to Virgil’s Camilla. It argues that for both authors, it matters that the relationship between the... more
This essay examines the representation of Volscians in two texts, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and a letter of Lady Arbella Stuart’s referring to Virgil’s Camilla. It argues that for both authors, it matters that the relationship between the Volscians and the Romans could trope that between the Scots and the English. In the month in which Queen Elizabeth died, Arbella Stuart reached for a Volscian as a way to connect herself to Scotland; five years later, in the wake of James’s failed attempt to achieve political and constitutional union between England and Scotland, Coriolanus uses the Volscians to question that project.
In 1969, Teatro Estúdio de Lisboa performed Anatomy of a Love Story, an interrogation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for a generation politicized by their struggles against the dictatorship. This article delineates a narrative of what... more
In 1969, Teatro Estúdio de Lisboa performed Anatomy of a Love Story, an interrogation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for a generation politicized by their struggles against the dictatorship. This article delineates a narrative of what might have been if this incipient attempt to stage a more inclusive political theatre had prevailed, illustrating how attributions of success and failure to performances during this period need to be contextualized within the limitations imposed by censorship on the one hand, and, on the other, an evocation of a class-based popular theatre that excluded questions of gender and sexuality.
English travelers in Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus saw the island as the last obligatory stop on their maritime pilgrimage route to the Holy Land. After the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus (1571) the island was visited almost exclusively by... more
English travelers in Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus saw the island as the last obligatory stop on their maritime pilgrimage route to the Holy Land. After the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus (1571) the island was visited almost exclusively by English merchants on the lookout for the construction of factories on Eastern Mediterranean shores. They were attracted by Cyprus’s famed fertility and by the abundance of much-valued products to trade with. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English traders were nevertheless issued with warnings by English travel accounts. These dealt with the danger of over-trusting the paradise-like prospects of the island and remaining there for good, with the subsequent risk of “turning Turk.” In order to discourage English travelers and residents from becoming renegades in Cyprus, travel accounts included abundant morbid information on the brutal repression applied by the Great Turk upon Cypriot cities in the Wars of Cyprus and upon other anti-Ottoman Christian insurrections.
This article examines the literary career of the secular priest William Drury, with an emphasis on his drama. The Latin plays which he wrote for performance at the English College in Douai are among the best-known English Catholic college... more
This article examines the literary career of the secular priest William Drury, with an emphasis on his drama. The Latin plays which he wrote for performance at the English College in Douai are among the best-known English Catholic college dramas of the Stuart era; markedly different from the Jesuit drama which dominates the corpus of British Catholic college plays, they suggest conscious dissociation from that imaginative tradition. Hierarchomachia: or the Anti-Bishop, a satirical closet drama which intervenes in the controversy surrounding the legitimacy and extent of England’s Catholic episcopacy, can also be attributed to Drury. In both his Latin and English drama, Drury draws imaginative stimulus from his ideological opposition to Jesuits and other regulars. Yet his characteristic blend of didacticism and comedy, and his sympathy for the plight of all English Catholics—surely fomented by the death of his Jesuit brother in the notorious “Fatal Vesper”—point to broader priestly concerns.
A ninuectyue agaynst Treason is a ballad that was printed upon Queen Mary I’s accession. It is comprised of fourteen stanzas; the first ten each have seven lines, and the last four are only four lines each. The ballad is not so much... more
A ninuectyue agaynst Treason is a ballad that was printed upon Queen Mary I’s accession. It is comprised of fourteen stanzas; the first ten each have seven lines, and the last four are only four lines each. The ballad is not so much celebratory of the new Queen Mary, but a lesson or warning about the dangers of acting against a Tudor monarch.
Although there appears to be no direct evidence that Shakespeare had access to the relectiones taught in the School of Salamanca during the sixteenth century, this study demonstrates that, forty years after their dissemination, the... more
Although there appears to be no direct evidence that Shakespeare had access to the relectiones taught in the School of Salamanca during the sixteenth century, this study demonstrates that, forty years after their dissemination, the theories of Francisco Vitoria and his disciples were probably in circulation throughout England. The methodology in this article juxtaposes Shakespeare’s Richard II with one of Vitoria’s relectiones. This relectio modified the medieval idea of the divine origin of kingship, and generated a discussion about the origin of royal power which is central to the plot of Shakespeare’s play.
Research Interests: Comparative Literature, Reception Studies, Shakespeare, Kingship and systems of rule, Early Modern Political Thought, and 10 moreFrancisco de Vitoria, William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's History Plays, Anglo-Spanish cultural history, Richard III, Early medieval kingship, Representation of Royal Power, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Cultural Transfers, and School of Salamanca
This article deals with a handwritten, hitherto unexplored copy of a printed text, The Secrets of Reverend Alexis of Piedmont, held in Glasgow University Library, MS Ferguson 7, which dates to 1565. The manuscript includes a collection of... more
This article deals with a handwritten, hitherto unexplored copy of a printed text, The Secrets of Reverend Alexis of Piedmont, held in Glasgow University Library, MS Ferguson 7, which dates to 1565. The manuscript includes a collection of secrets by an anonymous compiler from the English translation of De’ Secreti del reverendo donno Alessio de Piemontese, a highly popular book of secrets published in Venice in 1555 and immediately rendered into other languages, including English. The handwritten compilation proves to be a dynamic artifact which is personalized to suit the compiler’s needs and ultimately becomes an independent new product.
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Most often, Ovidian allusions are woven into Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Books I–III, 1590) without developing into an open re-telling of myths. One significant exception occurs in Book III, Canto 1: there the action comes to a... more
Most often, Ovidian allusions are woven into Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Books I–III, 1590) without developing into an open re-telling of myths. One significant exception occurs in Book III, Canto 1: there the action comes to a temporary stop in order to make space for a detailed description of the tapestry in the hall of Castle Joyous, which depicts the story of Venus and Adonis. This article intends to offer a reading of that episode that focuses on the importance of materiality and self-reflexivity as keys to its significance at the opening of Book III, and in the larger structure of The Faerie Queene.
Here, the descriptive powers of the poet are both foregrounded and questioned, in a double movement of ekphrasis which gestures towards a serious interrogation of the value of representation, both in poetry and the visual arts. Implicitly, it is the poet (and through him, the reader him/herself) that must question his/her role and participation in the gradual and often painful awareness of the body that is foregrounded throughout Book III.
Here, the descriptive powers of the poet are both foregrounded and questioned, in a double movement of ekphrasis which gestures towards a serious interrogation of the value of representation, both in poetry and the visual arts. Implicitly, it is the poet (and through him, the reader him/herself) that must question his/her role and participation in the gradual and often painful awareness of the body that is foregrounded throughout Book III.
Research Interests: Literature and Visual Arts, Ekphrasis, Edmund Spenser, Textuality, Representation, and 9 moreTapestries, Faerie Queene, Reception of Ovid, Arras, Ekphrastic Poetry, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, The Faerie Queene, Early modern English poetry, and Representations of the Body in Renaissance Europe
This essay aims to demonstrate how Tasso and Milton were conscious of the Longinian tradition and aware of fashioning a poetry of the sublime when rewriting the story of creation. The author of Il mondo creato incorporates the Longinian... more
This essay aims to demonstrate how Tasso and Milton were conscious of the Longinian tradition and aware of fashioning a poetry of the sublime when rewriting the story of creation. The author of Il mondo creato incorporates the Longinian model of sublime ekstasis into his concept of meraviglia to construct his own poetics of artistic creation. Despite Milton’s indebtedness to Tasso, in Paradise Lost the English poet distances himself from a full commitment to Longinian ekstasis and locates the sublime in a more dialogical, if not dialectical, compositional model of poetic creation. From a broader perspective, this paper aims to illustrate the centrality of the sublime in fashioning early modern literary poetics.
Research Interests: John Milton, The Sublime, Renaissance Poetics, Torquato Tasso, Anglo-Italian relations, and 11 moreLonginus, Paradise Lost, Artistic Creation, English and Italian literature, Renaissance Poetry, Wonder, Ekstasis and Poesis, Meraviglia, Anglo-Italian Literary Relations, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and Processes of Poetical Creation
Nahum Tate’s History of King Lear (1681) refigures Shakespeare’s natural man on a Hobbesian model in order to make the play legible to Restoration audiences. As a way to mitigate Hobbes’s ethically hollow conception of human nature as... more
Nahum Tate’s History of King Lear (1681) refigures Shakespeare’s natural man on a Hobbesian model in order to make the play legible to Restoration audiences. As a way to mitigate Hobbes’s ethically hollow conception of human nature as acquisitive and self-interested, Tate provides his viewers with a compensatory romance. Tate’s “unaccommodated Man” is governed by self-interest yet capable of transcendent love (3.3.81). The liberties Tate took with Shakespeare catered to his audience’s uneasy assimilation of secular and empirical ideas about what it meant to be human that made Shakespeare’s original feel both alien and disturbing. The romanticized human nature offered up in Tate’s Lear accounts for the success the play enjoyed well into the nineteenth century. As much as we might give the adaptation the side-eye, we are, in fact, affectively and ethically closer to Tate than we are to Shakespeare.
Research Interests: Christianity, Ethics, Shakespeare, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Shakespeare adaptation, and 10 moreHuman nature, King Lear, Nahum Tate, William Shakespeare, Cultural Assimilation, Romance, Restoration drama, Shakespeare reception, Shakespeare's rewritings; mise en scene, and Restoration Shakespeare
In line with the method prescribed by members of the Royal Society for natural history and travel writing, Richard Head explored the limits of verisimilitude associated with geographical discourse in his three fictions The Floating Island... more
In line with the method prescribed by members of the Royal Society for natural history and travel writing, Richard Head explored the limits of verisimilitude associated with geographical discourse in his three fictions The Floating Island (1673), The Western Wonder (1674) and O-Brazile (1675). In them he argues in favor of the existence of the mysterious Brazile island and uses the factual discourse of the travel diarist to present a semi-mythical place whose very notion stretches the limits of believability. In line with recent critical interpretations of late seventeenth-century fiction as deceptive, and setting the reading of Head’s narrations in connection with other types of travel writing, I argue that Head’s fictions are a means of testing the readers’ gullibility at a time when the status of prose, both fictional and non-fictional, is subject to debate.
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This article tries to provide a thorough analysis of Nikolai Leskov’s rewriting of Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean character, in the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, from the perspective of Translation and Adaptation Studies.... more
This article tries to provide a thorough analysis of Nikolai Leskov’s rewriting of Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean character, in the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, from the perspective of Translation and Adaptation Studies. The focus will be placed on the ideology of the author who, with full knowledge, rewrites a previous work to adapt it to a specific context. Apart from Leskov’s work, attention will be also paid to two of its subsequent adaptations: Dmitri Shostakovich’s homonymous opera and William Oldroyd’s filmic version, Lady Macbeth.
Finally, the importance of these processes for the development of target literary systems will be discussed and emphasized.
Finally, the importance of these processes for the development of target literary systems will be discussed and emphasized.
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The Blazing World was the first utopia in English written by a woman, and likely, the first science fiction text in English. Yet it was not Margaret Cavendish’s only utopic text. The separatist spaces of her plays, and the virtual... more
The Blazing World was the first utopia in English written by a woman, and likely, the first science fiction text in English. Yet it was not Margaret Cavendish’s only utopic text. The separatist spaces of her plays, and the virtual communities of her epistolary collections, were earlier utopias that contributed to her construction of Blazing World. Cavendish established the characteristics of utopian literature through the transgression of categories and hybridity. I consider her blurring of genus, genre and gender in two of her utopic texts, Sociable Letters and Blazing World, and her strategic development of the blurring of these categories.
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Macbeth is a graphic work whose visual rhetoric mirrors the outside atmosphere of the Scottish heath and the inner psyche of the titular characters. This article explores the early modern visual praxis in Macbeth in connection with the... more
Macbeth is a graphic work whose visual rhetoric mirrors the outside atmosphere of the Scottish heath and the inner psyche of the titular characters. This article explores the early modern visual praxis in Macbeth in connection with the art of limning to show that, against a dark background symbolizing evil, the playwright uses golden and gaudy hues as a mirror reflecting Macbeth’s perturbed mind. Eventually, the colour spots in the play are “diapered over” by the white fog of the Scottish heath. Shakespeare thus resorts to specific colour codes in order to create a visual symphony where “foul” becomes “fair.”
Research Interests: Shakespeare, Visual Rhetoric, Visual And Material Rhetoric, Early Modern English drama, Visual Arts, and 8 moreMacbeth, Art, Miniature Painting, William Shakespeare, Early Modern Art and Visual Culture, Early modern English drama and theatre practice, Limning, Nicholas Hilliard, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
In Book XV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pythagoras meditates on the rise and fall of cities and foresees that the survival of Rome requires turning from war to the “arts of peace.” Once ancient Rome has fallen, its urban imagery hybridizes... more
In Book XV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pythagoras meditates on the rise and fall of cities and foresees that the survival of Rome requires turning from war to the “arts of peace.” Once ancient Rome has fallen, its urban imagery hybridizes with a Biblical counter-imagery in which God wills the ruination of Rome and other centers of wickedness. Through this Ovidian/Pythagorean lens, this essay then examines how Spenser confronts the fall and rise and possible fall again of early modern London, with glances also at Shakespeare and Dryden. This Ovidian model creates challenges of identity, belief, and ethical obligation that result in an “outward turn” of the theme of metamorphosis toward its social boundary.
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Women who choose death on Shakespeare’s stage often overturn ideas about tragedy as well as challenge the politics which establish which lives are worth sacrificing and which ones are not. Radically altering the relation between bios and... more
Women who choose death on Shakespeare’s stage often overturn ideas about tragedy as well as challenge the politics which establish which lives are worth sacrificing and which ones are not. Radically altering the relation between bios and zoe, female suicides collapse the divisions between things that grow, breathe, and love, and those things that block such living. In this essay, I draw on thinking about biopolitics along with feminist readings of Shakespeare in order to explore how characters like Goneril, Gertrude, and Juliet refuse the rules which determine how women’s blood must flow or be shed.
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This article analyses James Gray's We Own the Night (2007) as a cinematic retelling of Shakespeare's Henriad that presents Hal's story not as the chivalric redemption of a national hero but as a tragic fall from happiness. Through close... more
This article analyses James Gray's We Own the Night (2007) as a cinematic retelling of Shakespeare's Henriad that presents Hal's story not as the chivalric redemption of a national hero but as a tragic fall from happiness. Through close comparative reading of these texts, I explore how We Own the Night rewrites Hal's story as a (post)modern tragedy which addresses the concerns of the so-called Generation X. Hal's liminal position-caught between opposing social worlds of crime and law-presents the narrative's major conflict, which itself echoes Jan Kott's tragic vision of Shakespeare's play.
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This article examines the poetic and scribal activities of the sixteenth-century poet and scribe William Forrest. Forrest's works survive in a number of manuscripts that he prepared himself, some for presentation to specific individuals,... more
This article examines the poetic and scribal activities of the sixteenth-century poet and scribe William Forrest. Forrest's works survive in a number of manuscripts that he prepared himself, some for presentation to specific individuals, some for less definable purposes. The article assesses his achievements as a scribe and manuscript producer over several decades.
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This paper examines one aspect of the two-way cultural traffic between London and Padua: how the city of Padua figured in debates about the nature of masculinity in early modern London, especially its theatres. Invariably known primarily... more
This paper examines one aspect of the two-way cultural traffic between London and Padua: how the city of Padua figured in debates about the nature of masculinity in early modern London, especially its theatres. Invariably known primarily for its university—noted by Coryat and Moryson, a tourist attraction for Chaucer, Sidney, and Milton—the name " Padua " became synonymous with " erudition. " While learnedness was in theory a positive quality, the place of learnedness in a declining honor culture and its complex role in constituting masculinity remained a contentious subject. English writers by turns envied or scorned the learning acquired in Italy, and invocations of Padua and its link to rapier fencing resulted in a series of contradictory figures in the drama of Shakespeare and Webster: doctors, pedants, enlightened philosophers, lovers, murderers for hire.
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Lodge claimed A Margarite of America (1596) was based on a—still unidentified—“historie in the Spanish tong.” Although the romance’s dramatic structure has been suggested, the source ‘historie’ has never been sought in the Spanish... more
Lodge claimed A Margarite of America (1596) was based on a—still unidentified—“historie in the Spanish tong.” Although the romance’s dramatic structure has been suggested, the source ‘historie’ has never been sought in the Spanish theatre. This essay proposes Juan de la Cueva’s El príncipe tirano (1583) as the possible Spanish source text of Lodge’s Margarite. After an introduction, the plot is outlined to show, firstly, the romance’s intertextual elements already detected by scholarly criticism and, secondly, others Lodge might have borrowed from El príncipe tirano. This article will supplement current studies on Margarite by shedding new light on the plot and characters.
Research Interests: Early Modern Literature, Early Modern English drama, Revenge Tragedy, Comparative Study, Early Modern Spanish literature, and 10 moreEarly Modern Drama, Early modern English literature, Early Modern Prose Fiction, Thomas Lodge, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Literary History, Juan de la Cueva, Jesuit book history, a margarite of america, and el principe tirano
In Behn's works the house affords no security for women, as men may force their way in, or relatives collude in the sexual violation of women. However, men, too, are threatened and cuckolded in their own houses. Not even convents are safe... more
In Behn's works the house affords no security for women, as men may force their way in, or relatives collude in the sexual violation of women. However, men, too, are threatened and cuckolded in their own houses. Not even convents are safe spaces for either sex. Outdoor spaces promise freedom from supervision but harbor threats to both women's and men's honor. The Whig inhabitants of the City of London are ridiculed, but female characters dabbling in politics are no more likeable, though Behn sympathizes with women claiming a right to public visibility. The racialized colonial space offers upward social mobility to Englishmen and –women, and to the latter also the freedom to partake in pastimes and occupations traditionally connoted as male.
Research Interests: Women's Studies, Renaissance Studies, Space and Place, Colonialism, Early Modern Literature, and 7 moreEarly Modern Women Writers, Aphra Behn, Early Modern Women´s and Gender History, Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature, Early Modern Social History, Restoration London, and Women in Public Sphere
Although the elements have been exploited for human ends in early modern discursive practices, they have so saturated social and cultural life that writers of the period could not avoid mentioning elemental formations. Marlowe's... more
Although the elements have been exploited for human ends in early modern discursive practices, they have so saturated social and cultural life that writers of the period could not avoid mentioning elemental formations. Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part I and Part II (1587) and Doctor Faustus (1592) are significant representatives of early modern English drama that highlight the interrelationships between the human body and the elements. This study examines elemental agency, to show how the agential capacity of the four classical elements unveils ecophobic treatment; and how the ecophobic strain in the human psyche is reflected in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus.
Research Interests: Renaissance Studies, Early Modern Literature, Ecocriticism, Early Modern English drama, English early modern Theatre, and 8 moreChristopher Marlowe, Elemental analysis, Doctor Faustus Christopher Marlowe, Body studies, Ecophobia, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and the Early Modern Drama, and Tamburlaine (play)
This essay places seventeenth-century literary renditions of cant, the language spoken by rogues and criminals in Early Modern England, into the context of " enregisterment " so as to examine its role in the process of recognition,... more
This essay places seventeenth-century literary renditions of cant, the language spoken by rogues and criminals in Early Modern England, into the context of " enregisterment " so as to examine its role in the process of recognition, categorization and legitimation of the canting tongue and the values it entailed. Literary representations of this variety became common in the period under analysis as a result of the criminal element that threatened the English population. Drama emerged as one of the main vehicles for the representation of cant, leading to the appearance of numerous plays that dealt with the life and adventures of English rogues. In the pages that follow, it will be argued that the study of these textual artefacts can provide valuable historical insight into the use of cant and the social connotations associated with it. In fact, the corpus-based analysis of the plays selected for this study has made it possible to identify both a common lexical repertoire and a set of sociocultural features that were associated with this underworld variety and its wicked speakers by the London non-canting audience. At the same time, it has shed light on the processes whereby this encoded speech came to index derogatory cultural values, which were spread and consumed thanks, in part, to dramatic performance, leading to the enregisterment of cant language and its recognition as a stable and unique linguistic variety.
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A curious episode of the first encounter with Native Americans out of Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave (1688) is reconsidered, using various types of interpretation, such as the structural, philosophical and... more
A curious episode of the first encounter with Native Americans out of Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave (1688) is reconsidered, using various types of interpretation, such as the structural, philosophical and historical. Special attention is paid to the position and configuration of the episode: all the participants are others to each other. This episode may be interpreted as a model of the first contact between different folks, as well as a story of the origins of religion. In the context of seventeenth-century colonial policy it may be seen as a non-violent way of colonizing America.
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Research Interests: Media Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespeare and film, Early Modern English drama, Rhizomes, and 12 moreDigital Shakespeare, Book Review, Shakespeare adaptation, William Shakespeare, Shakespeare and New Media, Shakespeare & modern popular culture, Shakespeare on Screen, Shakespeare and Popular Culture, Shakespeare on Film, Shakespeare in New Media, Shakespeare popular culture, and Shakespeare and Social Media
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This article explores how certain dramatists in early modern England and in Spain, specifically Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervantes (with much more emphasis on the former), pursued authority over texts by claiming as their own a new realm... more
This article explores how certain dramatists in early modern England and in Spain, specifically Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervantes (with much more emphasis on the former), pursued authority over texts by claiming as their own a new realm which had not been available—or, more accurately, as prominently available—to playwrights before: the stage directions in printed plays. The way both these playwrights and/or their publishers dealt with the transcription of stage directions provides perhaps the clearest example of a theatrical convention translated into the realm of readership.
Research Interests: Performance Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean performance history, Early Modern English drama, Miguel de Cervantes, and 8 moreBen Jonson, Lope de Vega, Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare in Performance, William Shakespeare, Early modern English drama and theatre practice, Stage Directions, and Acotaciones y didascalias
Shakespeare is one of the most often performed playwrights at the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro [The Almagro Festival of Classical Theater], an event initially created to celebrate Golden Age drama in which, nowadays,... more
Shakespeare is one of the most often performed playwrights at the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro [The Almagro Festival of Classical Theater], an event initially created to celebrate Golden Age drama in which, nowadays, Shakespearean productions often outnumber those by individual national authors. Throughout the history of the festival, several Shakespearean productions have been staged in the Corral de Comedias, an original seventeenth-century venue that reactivates the use of space encoded in the playtext due to its similarities with Renaissance playhouses. This article has a double purpose: first, to examine the abundance of Shakespeare in Almagro as a phenomenon that finds its explanation in factors ranging from Shakespeare's popularity to the role of modern translation and, second, to focus on how Shakespearean productions at the Corral de Comedias have negotiated new meanings of Shakespeare in performance, generating an interplay between Renaissance and Golden Age venues in contemporary performance.
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This paper intends to provide a thorough analysis of some linguistic features of Early Modern English present in three Shakespeare movies and how they have been transferred in the Spanish translation for dubbing. To achieve it, a close... more
This paper intends to provide a thorough analysis of some linguistic features of Early Modern English present in three Shakespeare movies and how they have been transferred in the Spanish translation for dubbing. To achieve it, a close observation of forms of address, greetings and other archaic formulae regulated by the norms of decorum of the age has been carried out. The corpus used for the analysis: Hamlet (Olivier 1948) and Much Ado about Nothing (Branagh 1993), highly acclaimed and rated by the audience as two of the greatest Shakespeare movies. A more recent version of Hamlet (Branagh 1996)—the first unabridged theatrical film version of the play— will be analyzed too in the light of the translation choices, and the results will be compared with those of the other two films.
Research Interests: Translation Studies, Dialectology, Shakespeare, Corpus Linguistics, Early Modern English Language, and 8 moreHistory of English Language, Studies in intermediality; contemporary theatre; films about Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh, Laurence Olivier, adaptation theory, film studies, Shakespeare on Film, Shakespeare on Film, Shakespeare reception, and Contemporary Reception of Shakespeare
This article deals with Rupert Goold’s film version of Macbeth (2010). Based on a stage production, this film is set in an unspecified Soviet country. I will analyze Goold’s creation of a stage-to-screen hybrid recording framed as a... more
This article deals with Rupert Goold’s film version of Macbeth (2010). Based on a stage production, this film is set in an unspecified Soviet country. I will analyze Goold’s creation of a stage-to-screen hybrid recording framed as a surveillance film. Relying on Michel Foucault’s and Gilles Deleuze’s works as well as various contributions made by Cultural Materialist and New Historicist critics, I intend to explore the power relations in this surveillance film. I will also examine how the surveillance film conventions deployed by Goold turn the narrative into a meta-filmic event. This allows the viewer to perceive surveillance as part of the subject matter of the story and as inseparable from its narrative structure. Eventually, this will serve to explore how surveillance entirely transforms the filmscape. What begins as a film set in a surveillance society ends up as an environment dominated by a society of control.
Research Interests: Shakespeare, Surveillance Studies, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Shakespeare and film, and 10 moreSurveillance and Control, Studies in intermediality; contemporary theatre; films about Shakespeare, Power relations, Macbeth, William Shakespeare, Metafilm, Shakespeare on Screen, Shakespeare on Film, Shakespeare Film Adaptation, and Shakespeare and political thought
Margaret Atwood's novel Hag-Seed (2016) is a retelling of The Tempest that transfers the actions from the magic island of the original play to present-day Canada: the avant-garde artistic director of a Shakespearean Festival is ousted... more
Margaret Atwood's novel Hag-Seed (2016) is a retelling of The Tempest that transfers the actions from the magic island of the original play to present-day Canada: the avant-garde artistic director of a Shakespearean Festival is ousted from his job by his more world-savvy deputy, lives in isolation for twelve years and plots his revenge, which will involve a staging of The Tempest at the local prison where he has been teaching for some time as Mr Duke. Hag-Seed is part of a larger project of fictional retellings of the Bard's plays conceived by Hogarth Press for the commemoration of the 400 th anniversary of his death, a moment when Shakespeare's cultural capital seems to be circulating more energetically than ever. The present article analyses Hag-Seed as a neo-Shakespearean novel that is original in the double sense of the term that Atwood's teacher Northrop Frye so frequently remarked: imaginative, innovative, and inventive but also true to its fountain and origins.
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Shakespeare was introduced into the Romanian Principalities between 1830 and 1855, beginning with a production of The Merchant of Venice, translated from a French adaptation of the play. This essay considers the dearth of critical... more
Shakespeare was introduced into the Romanian Principalities between 1830 and 1855, beginning with a production of The Merchant of Venice, translated from a French adaptation of the play. This essay considers the dearth of critical attention paid to the influence of French melodrama in Southeastern Europe, and in Romania in particular; examines the circulation of Shakespearean productions in this area; and investigates the various processes of de-and re-contextualization involved in the melodramatic adaptation of The Merchant of Venice in France in the 1830s and in its translation/performance in the Romanian Principalities in the 1850s.
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Comparisons of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, sister queens of England, have become popular in the last decade as scholars have realized the impact of Mary on Elizabeth's queenship. To further that comparison, this essay likens printed book... more
Comparisons of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, sister queens of England, have become popular in the last decade as scholars have realized the impact of Mary on Elizabeth's queenship. To further that comparison, this essay likens printed book dedications to Mary and Elizabeth before each woman became queen and during their first five (or only five) years as queens. This essay argues that dedications to the Tudor sister queens show that these two women were perceived more commonly than has previously been recognized. By exploring these book dedications, it becomes evident that dedications were central to contemporary perceptions of what authors and translators thought Mary and Elizabeth would be interested in reading and passing along to their subjects along with what dedications thought the sister queens should be reading so as to be persuaded in different directions.
Research Interests: Book History, Tudor England, Tudor History, John Foxe, Renaissance Book Culture, and 10 moreBook Culture, Queen Elizabeth I, Print Culture, Book History and the History of Reading, Dedication Practices, Queen Mary Tudor, Queen Mary I, John Proctor, Book dedication, library, Book Culture, laurence humphrey, and early modern book
This essay w ill focus on the tw o sisters of The Dumb Virgin; or, The Force of Imagination, addressing the crossover betw een disability studies, feminism and aesthetic theory. It w ill examine how art has the capacity to manipulate... more
This essay w ill focus on the tw o sisters of The Dumb Virgin; or, The Force of Imagination, addressing the crossover betw een disability studies, feminism and aesthetic theory. It w ill examine how art has the capacity to manipulate nature and how nature may be improved by the intervention of human industry. With this aesthetic duality, it w ill suggest that the w riter reframes the concept of the normal body, establishing a rhetoric of deformity and disability through the characters of Belvideera and M aria, both of w hom overcome their natural disabilities by means of personal effort. Lastly, it w ill investigate the misfortunes of several characters, paying particular attention to the educated nature of the tw o protagonists and how this poses a threat to the established order of society. The conclusion to be draw n from this is that their challenge to the social construct is directly responsible for the tragic climax of the narrative.
Research Interests: Rhetoric, Disability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Feminist Disability Studies, Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, and 10 moreRestoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Aphra Behn, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Restoration and 18th-C English Literature, Restoration drama, Female Agency, English Restoration, Restoration English Studies, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English LiteratureEnglish literature, and The Dumb Virgin
The Irish Mission was created in 1610, under the sponsorship of the Spanish monarchy, to preserve Catholicism in the British Isles. The training of priest and friars was heavily reliant on the use of bibliographic material. Short... more
The Irish Mission was created in 1610, under the sponsorship of the Spanish monarchy, to preserve Catholicism in the British Isles. The training of priest and friars was heavily reliant on the use of bibliographic material. Short manuscripts, books and printed writings were supplementary tools for the missionaries' confessional work. Their pastoral duty could not be completed without access to readings and sermons. All these resources had to be smuggled as part of other merchandise to avoid the English control. The supply of doctrinal and theological works, chiefly from the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Low Countries and their commercial channels, was, however, beset by constant problems. It was the case of father Juan de Santo Domingo and his shipment of books seized in Bilbao in 1636. This study presents one of the few examples of circulation of texts between the Spanish monarchy and Ireland in the framework of the Irish Mission during the seventeenth century.
Research Interests: Book History, Early Modern Ireland, Book trade History, Early Modern Catholicism, Ireland, and 11 moreSpain, Early modern Spain, Recusant Studies, Flanders, Early Modern Publication and the Book Trade, Spanish early modern History, Habsburg dynasty, Recusants, Recusant History 1600-1800, British Recusant History, Irish and Spanish Early Modern relations, and Irish Mission
The first British actresses have been the focus of extensive scholarly study, transposing the boundaries of academic life and irrupting in popular culture and becoming a part of the public imagination and folklore. This paper studies the... more
The first British actresses have been the focus of extensive scholarly study, transposing the boundaries of academic life and irrupting in popular culture and becoming a part of the public imagination and folklore. This paper studies the perception we have inherited of " Pretty, Witty Nell, " probably the best-known actress of the Restoration, through the analysis of two novels—Priya Parmar's Exit the Actress and Gillian Bagwell's The Darling Strumpet—that reconstruct Gwyn's life turning the " Protestant Whore " into a learned lady and a devoted mother. This revamping of her figure not only entails the erasure of the subversive potential of actresses' break with the public-masculine/private-feminine dichotomy, but it also works as an attempt at neutralizing the threat that these " public " women pose to the gender roles that became normative in the seventeenth century and that are still seen as such nowadays.
Research Interests: Popular Culture, Gender and Sexuality, Identity (Culture), Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Michel Foucault, and 9 moreFiction, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Drama, Restoration and 18th-C English Literature, Restoration drama, Restoration Actresses, Drama and Film, Nell Gwyn, Priya Parmar, and Gillian Bagwell
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In early modern England money was of central importance to areas of social life that are in the modern world separate from the study of economics. The demand for liquid capital and the practical problems associated with the devising of a... more
In early modern England money was of central importance to areas of social life that are in the modern world separate from the study of economics. The demand for liquid capital and the practical problems associated with the devising of a monetary system that was reliable exercised the minds of philosophers, social commentators, and dramatists. The template for discussion was laid down by Aristotle, who perceived financial activity as part of the larger community and its various modes of social interaction. Copernicus wrote a treatise on money, as had Nicholas of Oresme before him. But in the sixteenth century dramatists turned their attention to what we would call “economics” and its impact on social life. Writers such as Thomas Lupton, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare all dealt with related issues of material greed, usury, hospitality and friendship and the ways in which they transformed, and were transformed by particular kinds of social and economic practice. These concerns fed into the investigation of different kinds of society, particularly turning their attention to their strengths and weaknesses, and in the case of dramatists providing imaginative accounts of the kinds of life that these innovations produced.
Research Interests: Economics, Aristotle, Politics, Early Modern England, Early Modern Literature, and 21 moreJacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Early Modern English drama, Friendship, Hospitality, Christopher Marlowe, Montaigne, Derrida, Ben Jonson, Karl Marx, Copernicus, Usury, William Shakespeare, Jean-Joseph Goux, Peter Laslett, Shakespeare and Marlowe, Nicole Oresme, Early Modern English Political Philosophy, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Shakespearean literature, and Thomas Lupton
Reviews of modern productions of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine often note a three-hundred-year hiatus between a recorded performance in 1641, just before the closing of the theatres, and Tyrone Guthrie’s revival at the Old Vic in 1951. While the... more
Reviews of modern productions of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine often note a three-hundred-year hiatus between a recorded performance in 1641, just before the closing of the theatres, and Tyrone Guthrie’s revival at the Old Vic in 1951. While the statement is mostly true with respect to Marlowe’s play, Tamerlane or Timūr Lenk and the Ottoman emperor Bayazid I (Marlowe’s Bajazeth) had important theatrical incarnations in the 1700s before they declined into parody in the 1800s. When Marlowe’s play was revived in the modern era, the main characters reclaimed their dignity, but they also acquired markers of racial, ethnic, or religious otherness that had not been prominent earlier. Timūr’s (and Bayazid’s) varied theatrical representations illustrate the malleability of iconic cultural figures, the sometimes problematic emphasis on ethnic difference in modern theatrical practice, and the challenges and opportunities of cross-racial casting.
Research Interests: Performance Studies, Race and Racism, Performance Art, Timurids (Islamic History), Early Modern English drama, and 13 moreG F Handel, Christopher Marlowe, Marlowe, Nicholas Rowe, Handel, Colour blindness, Color blindness, Drama, Performance, History of Theatre, Color Blindness, Stage History, Early modern stage, Color Blind Casting, and Tamburlaine (play)
This article explores how Anthony Munday’s Palmerin d’Oliva (1588), Part II, portrays the threat of Muslims in the Near East. Munday’s source is the French L’Histoire de Palmerin d’Olive (1546), which Jean Maugin had translated from the... more
This article explores how Anthony Munday’s Palmerin d’Oliva (1588), Part II, portrays the threat of Muslims in the Near East. Munday’s source is the French L’Histoire de Palmerin d’Olive (1546), which Jean Maugin had translated from the anonymous Spanish chivalric romance Palmerín de Olivia (1511). I focus on the way that the description of the Muslim menace changes in the course of translation. I argue that both the French and English translators manipulate medieval and early modern sexual stereotypes used to describe Muslim culture in order to heighten the sense of Islamic aggression and the holiness of Christianity as a counter to its threat. Munday’s translation, in particular, represents the ambivalent views that his contemporary England held about Islam and the Near East, and also highlights the sanctity of Christian chastity and marriage, which are issues that he also develops in Part I of the Palmerin d’Oliva.
Research Interests: Sociology of Religion, Near Eastern Studies, Early Modern England, Translation History, Early modern English literature, and 15 moreEarly Modern Translation Studies, Chivalric literature, Anglo-Spanish cultural history, Cultural perception, Chastity, Anthony Munday, Libros/novelas De Caballerías, Literatura caballeresca, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Cultural Transfers, Cultural Stereotypes, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Early Modern Anglo-Spanish Cross-cultural Studies, Religious stereotypes, and sexual threats
This essay explores a Bollywood movie entitled Isi Life Mein (dir. Vidhi Kasliwal, 2010), which exploits The Taming of the Shrew as a play-within-the-film for the first time in Bollywood, and even as an intertext on some occasions.... more
This essay explores a Bollywood movie entitled Isi Life Mein (dir. Vidhi Kasliwal, 2010), which exploits The Taming of the Shrew as a play-within-the-film for the first time in Bollywood, and even as an intertext on some occasions. Although apparently a mere teen movie, this article sheds light on the importance of the Indian location, which invites postcolonial readings of the text. From a postcolonial perspective, it is the aim of this essay to rethink how The Taming of the Shrew is caught up and shaped in another culture. The film experiments with, and offers a parody of Shakespeare and his text, to the extent that they are both “reborn.” The movie also reflects on Indian modernity characterized by endless migration and diaspora. This essay equally explores the significance of using The Taming of the Shrew, since cultural debates concerning gender relations are involved. The movie adds to the multiple cultural products that rewrite the play’s ending. One of Isi Life Mein’s main attractions lies in its ability to challenge patriarchy explicitly. Interestingly, postcolonialism and feminism are intertwined in Isi Life Mein, providing new understandings of the Shrew and, ultimately, the Bard.
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In this article I analyse subjectivity in Coriolanus taking as a starting point the traditional antagonism between essentialist humanism and cultural materialism. While mainstream humanism has approached Shakespeare’s plays stressing the... more
In this article I analyse subjectivity in Coriolanus taking as a starting point the traditional antagonism between essentialist humanism and cultural materialism. While mainstream humanism has approached Shakespeare’s plays stressing the transcendental nature and autonomy of the subject, cultural materialism has challenged that assumption by underscoring the actual lack of freedom of the individual whose actual choices are determined not by the inherent nature of the hero but by social and political forces.
My aim is to try to bridge the gap between two seemingly divergent ways of understanding subjectivity by adopting a more sceptical form of humanism, which is based on both the acceptance of the limits and the vulnerability of human beings (Mousley 2007) and recent developments in communitarian theory and biopolitics (Nancy 1991, Agambem 1995, Butler 2006, Esposito 2012). I contend that Coriolanus is an embodiment of humanity, a singular being capable of making an ethical choice at the risk of his own death.
My aim is to try to bridge the gap between two seemingly divergent ways of understanding subjectivity by adopting a more sceptical form of humanism, which is based on both the acceptance of the limits and the vulnerability of human beings (Mousley 2007) and recent developments in communitarian theory and biopolitics (Nancy 1991, Agambem 1995, Butler 2006, Esposito 2012). I contend that Coriolanus is an embodiment of humanity, a singular being capable of making an ethical choice at the risk of his own death.
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This essay proposes that the electronic texts of plays constituting a database-collection (in this case early modern drama) should be “annotated” by marking up not only its structural components but also the editorial annotations about a... more
This essay proposes that the electronic texts of plays constituting a database-collection (in this case early modern drama) should be “annotated” by marking up not only its structural components but also the editorial annotations about a given feature or aspect of the play (usually included in the commentary notes of print editions), and that these annotations should be conceived having in mind the functionalities of a database. By marking up both the text's structural components and editor's information they constitute related data to be processed by the computer for searches and statistical analysis. This implies that texts should not be annotated individually and independently from the other anthologized works, but rather as part of an organized collection of data that, adequately encoded, will allow users to make queries into the whole database. A second section of the essay discusses three encoding mechanisms, based on the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative, necessary to mark up these “annotations,” and possible ad hoc extensions of the TEI schema in order to represent the annotated features. Finally, a third section comments on practical examples showing how to encode a set of features: scene location, image, theme, allusion, proverb, wordplay, grammar, swearing expression, address form, as well as features covered by the TEI Guidelines such as roles, stage directions, names and place-names, verse form and textual issues.
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Within the scope of foreign affairs between Portugal and England during Elizabeth’s rule, numerous events indicate the challenges faced by the Portuguese ambassadors on their missions. Regrettably, little is known about these envoys and... more
Within the scope of foreign affairs between Portugal and England during Elizabeth’s rule, numerous events indicate the challenges faced by the Portuguese ambassadors on their missions. Regrettably, little is known about these envoys and one rarely finds any reference to their names or their diplomatic accomplishments in Early Modern studies. This paper focuses on a diplomatic incident which involved Francisco Giraldes, a Portuguese resident ambassador in England, aiming to shed some light on “the intolerable business” that led to a confrontation with the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys.
Attending a Catholic Mass in the context of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement involved certain challenges that should be considered. Diplomats, however, enjoyed certain immunities, including the droit de chappelle, and were allowed to hold Catholic services in their ambassadorial residences. But in March 1573, while Mass was being held, Francisco Giraldes’s residence was raided by the Sheriff of London’s men, working under the Bishop of London’s instructions. The ongoing tension between the religious and the political areas of power was, thus, exposed. Two letters, written by the Bishop of London, included in the Lansdowne Manuscripts Collection of the British Library, registered the event. As Sandy’s correspondence appears to be the single piece of surviving evidence regarding this diplomatic incident, it stands to reason that its analysis will provide significant insight into the coexistence, as well as the clash, of oppositional forces, while further contributing to an interpretation of Anglo-Portuguese affairs in Early Modern times.
Attending a Catholic Mass in the context of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement involved certain challenges that should be considered. Diplomats, however, enjoyed certain immunities, including the droit de chappelle, and were allowed to hold Catholic services in their ambassadorial residences. But in March 1573, while Mass was being held, Francisco Giraldes’s residence was raided by the Sheriff of London’s men, working under the Bishop of London’s instructions. The ongoing tension between the religious and the political areas of power was, thus, exposed. Two letters, written by the Bishop of London, included in the Lansdowne Manuscripts Collection of the British Library, registered the event. As Sandy’s correspondence appears to be the single piece of surviving evidence regarding this diplomatic incident, it stands to reason that its analysis will provide significant insight into the coexistence, as well as the clash, of oppositional forces, while further contributing to an interpretation of Anglo-Portuguese affairs in Early Modern times.
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The dramatic increase in criminality in sixteenth-century England was behind the emergence of a new type of literary work known as “rogue literature,” which dealt with the life and activities of beggars and lawbreakers. These rogues’... more
The dramatic increase in criminality in sixteenth-century England was behind the emergence of a new type of literary work known as “rogue literature,” which dealt with the life and activities of beggars and lawbreakers. These rogues’ language, cant, became a major concern for many authors, who attached glossaries to their works for the benefit of those who were not familiar with it, marking the beginning of canting lexicography. It is within this framework that Thomas Shadwell (1640–1692) wrote his famous The Squire of Alsatia (1688), which is the focus of this study. This paper explores the use of cant language in this celebrated play from a linguistic and lexicographic point of view, arguing that its profuse employment of canting terminology, much of which is first documented in the play, made a significant contribution to studies in canting lexicography and proved its reliability as a historical portrait of seventeenth-century English cant.
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Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient (1961) is about a literature student, Anne Goupil, who becomes involved with a group of bohemians centering around the absent figure of Spanish musician, Juan. The film incorporates the attempt by... more
Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient (1961) is about a literature student, Anne Goupil, who becomes involved with a group of bohemians centering around the absent figure of Spanish musician, Juan. The film incorporates the attempt by theatre director Gérard Lenz – in many ways a simulacrum of Rivette himself – to stage Pericles, even though this is a play that he himself defines as “incoherent” and “unplayable.” This essay explores the significance of this incorporation, and shows how the reiterated, fragmentary rehearsals of this “unplayable” play are essential to an understanding of the (disjointed) logic of the film as well as the atmosphere of conspiracy it continually evokes. It also argues that the “Shakespeare” included in the film is an “exilic Shakespeare” that does not properly belong, a kind of spectre haunting the film characters. This construct uneasily coexists with a version of “Shakespeare” that the film simultaneously emphasizes – a “Shakespeare” that takes place “on another level” (in Anne’s words), an idyllic and idealistic entity.
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The aim of this study is to analyse the way Shakespeare’s work reveals the failure – in both private and public lives – of a system of thought in which the body is construed as a mere receptacle of immaterial and “superior” entities,... more
The aim of this study is to analyse the way Shakespeare’s work reveals the failure – in both private and public lives – of a system of thought in which the body is construed as a mere receptacle of immaterial and “superior” entities, supposedly governed by rational kinds of political and social power. After a brief consideration of Measure for Measure as a play focused on the political danger of denying the material aspect of the individual, The Winter’s Tale will be seen as presenting a similar problem. Here, the aspiration to an ideal of absolute purity and the consequent demonization of the sexualized flesh, deriving from both Puritan theology and neo-Platonic philosophy, merges with the anxiety towards the “rebellious” body fostered by sixteenth century medical science, constituting the disruptive force that initiates the plot. This attitude of denial of the body, linked to political power, leads to both a psychological breakdown and, in the public sphere, to a regime of tyranny.
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This essay examines the representation of Ireland and Celtic culture within the British Isles in Shakespeare’s works. It argues that Shakespeare was interested in ideas of colonisation and savagery and based his perceptions on... more
This essay examines the representation of Ireland and Celtic culture within the British Isles in Shakespeare’s works. It argues that Shakespeare was interested in ideas of colonisation and savagery and based his perceptions on contemporary events, the history of the British Isles and important literary works such as William Baldwin’s prose fiction, Beware the Cat. His plays, notably The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth, represent Protestant England as an isolated culture surrounded by hostile Celtic forces which form a threatening shadowy state. The second part of the essay explores Shakespeare’s influence on Irish culture after his death, arguing that he was absorbed into Anglo-Irish culture and played a major role in establishing Ireland’s Anglophone literary identity. Shakespeare imported the culture of the British Isles into his works – and then, as his fame spread, his plays exported what he had understood back again, an important feature of Anglo-Irish literary identity, as many subsequent writers have understood.
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English Catholics, both at home and abroad, were faced with difficult choices as the question of the succession became increasingly acute in the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign. In an attempt to analyse the complexity of Catholic... more
English Catholics, both at home and abroad, were faced with difficult choices as the question of the succession became increasingly acute in the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign. In an attempt to analyse the complexity of Catholic expectations and manoeuvres, this article examines the actions and writings of three prominent figures: the courtier-poet and recent convert Henry Constable, the Jesuit leader Robert Persons, and the layman Sir Thomas Tresham. Their relations with King James VI of Scotland illustrate the precariousness of his position, and their interactions during this period of shifting allegiances call into question some received assumptions about the divisions within the English Catholic community. Close attention to their writing also reveals the significance of an appeal to a chivalric code of honour in these politico-religious negotiations.
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George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752) is of special relevance to the study of early-modern women writers and their subsequent reception, since it contains details of the lives and writings of a considerable... more
George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752) is of special relevance to the study of early-modern women writers and their subsequent reception, since it contains details of the lives and writings of a considerable number of these women. This type of publication responded to the demand for educative works in general, and particularly to a growing female audience. Thus its chief goal was to provide readers with exemplary models of behaviour. Within the theoretical framework of women’s studies and literary biography, the biographies of these women writers are analysed in order to determine whether their lives and careers as writers were in keeping with the didactic purpose of such texts, and the extent to which the fact of being women shaped their biographical portraits.
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This article analyses the intercultural performance of The Prayers of Mansata, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the West African context of Guinea-Bissau. After a critical exploration of contemporary intercultural theory, it... more
This article analyses the intercultural performance of The Prayers of Mansata, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the West African context of Guinea-Bissau. After a critical exploration of contemporary intercultural theory, it charts the relationship between the Shakespearean text and this adaptation, before exploring particular questions raised by the circulation of the performance within different Portuguese-speaking contexts. It argues that such performances can represent a potent social and political intervention in contemporary configurations of power within a Portuguese-speaking community of nations by combining concerns with local specificity and wider concerns with a post-colonial present.
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Thomas Durfey’s The Comical History of Don Quixote, Part I and Part II were produced by the United Company in May/June, 1694. As was customary practice, the central characters were taken by the same actors in both plays. The signal... more
Thomas Durfey’s The Comical History of Don Quixote, Part I and Part II were produced by the United Company in May/June, 1694. As was customary practice, the central characters were taken by the same actors in both plays. The signal exception was the character of Sancho, which in Part I was given to Thomas Doggett, a junior but already popular comedian, and in Part II to old Cave Underhill, who had been acting since the reopening of the theatres in 1660. The reasons for this change seem to be related to the disputes between the managers and actors on the matter of salaries. Textual evidence suggests that, as he was writing the second part, Durfey may not have been certain who would finally play Sancho. Meta-theatrical allusions show that at one point he had Doggett in mind, but eventually revised the dialogue to introduce jokes that were specifically targeted for the older comedian.
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This paper discusses the depiction of madwomen in a range of early modern English plays including some by Shakespeare in order to show how their madness operates at the intersection of gender, genre, and social class. Its particular focus... more
This paper discusses the depiction of madwomen in a range of early modern English plays including some by Shakespeare in order to show how their madness operates at the intersection of gender, genre, and social class. Its particular focus is on language, and it argues that the speech styles of madwomen are essentially similar whatever their social class. For women, madness is a linguistically liberating condition, bringing together high and low cultural discourses. While stage madwomen’s language has similarities with that of madmen, it is more licentious and transgressive because the violation of social and behavioural norms is more extreme.
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Shakespeare’s most searching anatomy of risk, The Merchant of Venice depicts the wagering not only of money but of love and life itself. This paper places Merchant in a long history that traces the concept of risk from classical theatre... more
Shakespeare’s most searching anatomy of risk, The Merchant of Venice depicts the wagering not only of money but of love and life itself. This paper places Merchant in a long history that traces the concept of risk from classical theatre to medieval scholasticism to modern sociology. Over the course of this history, the moral and economic dimensions of risk become increasingly fugitive and unmappable. Shakespeare’s play illustrates this process in miniature, and in so doing casts light on our contemporary “risk society,” including the financial meltdown of 2008.
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This article examines the textual framing of a cluster of items in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600) relating to the area on the Pacific coast of North... more
This article examines the textual framing of a cluster of items in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600) relating to the area on the Pacific coast of North America that Francis Drake named “Nova Albion.” Contextualised in relation to the colonial programmes of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Ralegh, it explores how a variety of editorial techniques combine to encourage a particular understanding of the history of exploration in this region that privileges English territorial claims over those of Spain. What is revealed is a delicate negotiation of the tensions raised by Hakluyt’s use of pre-existing, mainly non-English materials to attempt to legitimise Drake’s actions by aligning them with the Spanish conquistadorial tradition, while at the same time down-playing the extent and significance of previous Spanish activity in that region.
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In A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634), John Milton depicts Comus “ripe and frolic of his full grown age, Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields.” While Milton’s complex engagement with Portugal and Spain has been the subject of some... more
In A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634), John Milton depicts Comus “ripe and frolic of his full grown age, Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields.” While Milton’s complex engagement with Portugal and Spain has been the subject of some discussion by critics, few attempts have been made to place his writings on the Iberian Peninsula within the wider context of his theories of climatic influence and colonialism, beyond the “western design” against Spanish colonial possessions. Anti-Catholicism and anti-imperialism may be the key to Milton’s Cromwellian correspond-ence with Spain and Portugal on behalf of the English republic in the 1650s but his Iberian interests can be viewed too as part of a deeper excavation of British and Irish histories. The purpose of this article – its “roving commission” – is to explore the presence of the Peninsula in Milton’s work from “Lycidas” (1637) through to The History of Britain (1670) in relation to recent archipelagic readings of Milton, examining the ways in which Celtic and Iberian concerns are intertwined in Milton (as indeed they were for his predecessor, Edmund Spenser).
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This paper finds some evidence of an atomist aesthetic in certain passages of John Lyly’s Euphues. The Anatomy of Wit. It then addresses the issue of how Lyly might have become acquainted with atomist philosophy and, in particular, the... more
This paper finds some evidence of an atomist aesthetic in certain passages of John Lyly’s Euphues. The Anatomy of Wit. It then addresses the issue of how Lyly might have become acquainted with atomist philosophy and, in particular, the thought of Empedocles, whether through his reading or his membership of the Oxford circle. Finally, by showing how Lyly’s early play Campaspe combines his aesthetic views and atomist controversy, the paper confirms the reasonableness of its initial proposition and opens the way not only for a reassessment of Lyly and his works but also for a reappraisal of the baroque in early modern English literature and for a revision of standard accounts of the origins of English atomism.
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Taking into account the complex authorship of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, this paper surveys the intertextual influence of the Latin verse narrative of the Apollonius saga by Jacob Falckenburgk (London, 1578) and Thomas Twayne’s translation... more
Taking into account the complex authorship of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, this paper surveys the intertextual influence of the Latin verse narrative of the Apollonius saga by Jacob Falckenburgk (London, 1578) and Thomas Twayne’s translation of Orbis terrae descriptio (The Surveye of the world) by Dionysius Periegetes (London, 1572) on the erratic geography of Pericles. Drawing on the Pericles/Apollonius tales (the play and its Latin verse and English prose intertexts), as well as the ancient geographic narrative describing the Eastern Mediterranean spaces of the settings, the play decentres the authority of ancient geography maintained via the well-travelled Apollonius tale or through the weight of classical texts. Pericles destabilizes the authority of both classical language and geography through a process of defamiliarization of and distancing from the legitimization of ancient texts and geographic tradition. Through the suggestion of alterity during the dramatic interaction, the play incorporates the recognition of difference and the support of tolerance within early modern transnational communities.
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The Changeling (1622) fits neatly into a familiar anti-Spanish narrative, one so well established in criticism as to obscure the wider international picture. Early in the play a reference to England’s erstwhile ally against Spain is... more
The Changeling (1622) fits neatly into a familiar anti-Spanish narrative, one so well established in criticism as to obscure the wider international picture. Early in the play a reference to England’s erstwhile ally against Spain is mentioned in passing, and no more is made of the Dutch naval victory over the Spanish in 1607. But this may have resonated in ways that complicated the play’s anti-Spanish sentiment. The enduring resonance of the contemporaneous Amboyna Massacre of 1623 suggests a more complicated reception of The Changeling than critics have allowed for. Even in 1622, when the play was most likely first performed, tensions with the Dutch were on the rise, and the apparent nostalgia for the Protestant alliance which the Treaty of London of 1604 had brought to an end was complicated by the emergence of an empire that would outstrip Spain’s and gradually replace it as England’s chief rival.
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This note focuses on the troubled relation between Richard Brome’s The Antipodes (1638) and its theatrical realisations, as mentioned in the author’s address to the reader in the Quarto of 1640 as well as has been the case in more recent... more
This note focuses on the troubled relation between Richard Brome’s The Antipodes (1638) and its theatrical realisations, as mentioned in the author’s address to the reader in the Quarto of 1640 as well as has been the case in more recent revivals of the play. Criticism of early modern drama has tended to consider such plays as determined by their being written for performance, an emphasis which has sometimes entailed a dismissal of more textual approaches. However, in The Antipodes there seems to have existed (and continues to exist) some disconnectedness between the text of the play and its life in the theatre. I therefore propose looking at specific aspects of The Antipodes in relation to the challenges it poses in performance and to performance criticism, by continuously shifting between the Caroline theatrical context and the contemporary critical and theatrical context.
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This paper presents a detailed bibliographical description of the copy held at the British Library of the first edition of The Honour of Chivalrie (London, 1598; STC 1804). The aim of this paper is to provide useful bibliographical... more
This paper presents a detailed bibliographical description of the copy held at the British Library of the first edition of The Honour of Chivalrie (London, 1598; STC 1804). The aim of this paper is to provide useful bibliographical information for researchers interested in the first English translation of the Spanish romance Don Belianís de Grecia (Burgos, 1547; IB 8699). A concise description of the translations and editions of this romance is included.
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In the years 1622-1623, at the climax of the negotiations for the Spanish-Match, King James enforced censorship on any works critical of his diplomatic policy and promoted the publication of texts that sided with his views on... more
In the years 1622-1623, at the climax of the negotiations for the Spanish-Match, King James enforced censorship on any works critical of his diplomatic policy and promoted the publication of texts that sided with his views on international relations, even though such writings may have sometimes gone beyond the propagandistic aims expected by the monarch. This is the case of Michael Du Val’s The Spanish-English Rose (1622), a political tract elaborated within court circles to promote the Anglo-Spanish alliance. This article analyzes its role in producing an alternative to the religious and imperial discourse inherited from the Elizabethan age. It also considers the intertextual relations between Du Val’s tract and other contemporary works in order to determine its part within the discursive network of the Anglican faith and political absolutism. The reasons why it may have exerted a negative influence on both the English and Spanish royal households are explored as well.
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It is a recurring critical topos that John Milton’s Paradise Regain’d (1671) is a revisionist poem, one that works towards reframing and redefining the epic tradition; what has certainly been less noticed is the central function played by... more
It is a recurring critical topos that John Milton’s Paradise Regain’d (1671) is a revisionist poem, one that works towards reframing and redefining the epic tradition; what has certainly been less noticed is the central function played by the character of Mary, the mother of Christ, in this revisionist process. This article will try to prove that Mary’s appearances in the poem are, though limited, essential to its content and to its perspective on the interrelated subjects of the revelation of God in history and the individual confrontation with historical forces; and it will try to do so by bringing together theological discussion and a gender-oriented approach.
There have certainly been approaches to Paradise Regain’d that have explored some of the gender issues brought about by the poem’s modification of the heroic function: almost unanimously, these approaches have concentrated on the character of the Son. My intention here, however, is another: I will try to show how the function and voice of Mary in the poem set in motion a complex, rich network of implications (both ethical and theological) which are at the core of the poem’s discourse and ideology. This focus on the maternal in Paradise Regain’d will not be carried out from a psychoanalytical perspective (though it is by no means incompatible with such an approach), but rather through reading the text via literary and theological categories that are recurrent throughout Milton’s work. It should thus be possible to start working seriously towards establishing the presence of a serious and original Mariology (clearly not a Mariolatry) in Milton’s last epic poem.
Overall, this will lead us to a reconsideration of Paradise Regain’d as an essentially innovative text, and one which is strongly heterodox in terms of its theology and gender discourse.
There have certainly been approaches to Paradise Regain’d that have explored some of the gender issues brought about by the poem’s modification of the heroic function: almost unanimously, these approaches have concentrated on the character of the Son. My intention here, however, is another: I will try to show how the function and voice of Mary in the poem set in motion a complex, rich network of implications (both ethical and theological) which are at the core of the poem’s discourse and ideology. This focus on the maternal in Paradise Regain’d will not be carried out from a psychoanalytical perspective (though it is by no means incompatible with such an approach), but rather through reading the text via literary and theological categories that are recurrent throughout Milton’s work. It should thus be possible to start working seriously towards establishing the presence of a serious and original Mariology (clearly not a Mariolatry) in Milton’s last epic poem.
Overall, this will lead us to a reconsideration of Paradise Regain’d as an essentially innovative text, and one which is strongly heterodox in terms of its theology and gender discourse.
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While the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death (1916) was hardly celebrated in India and marked the beginning of a period in which Shakespeare was hidden, the Quartercentenary of his birth (1964) spawned a large number of collections,... more
While the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death (1916) was hardly celebrated in India and marked the beginning of a period in which Shakespeare was hidden, the Quartercentenary of his birth (1964) spawned a large number of collections, theatre performances and even exhibitions to pay homage to the Bard. Although a special issue of the journal Indian Literature published in 1964 contributed to the re-emergence of Shakespeare, the most revolutionary projects in the making of a vernacular Shakespeare occurred on the Indian stage via Utpal Dutt’s Shakespearean productions in Bengali. Following Arjun Appadurai, this paper argues that Utpal Dutt’s Bengali theatre productions in 1964 participate in a “decolonization” of Shakespeare, consisting in liberating Shakespeare “the text” and Shakespeare “the author” from the bonds of the empire, from restrictive colonial associations. Two out of his three theatre performances produced in 1964 – Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar – are symptomatic of the effects of “glocalizing” the Shakespearean texts since the original place names and names of the characters are combined with the Bengali language and some unavoidable localization. Thus, Shakespeare’s Quartercentenary in India not only saw the re-emergence of the Bard, but also took its first steps in his indigenization.
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The dramatic tradition that featured female characters dressed in men’s costume was revived after the theatres reopened in the Restoration, with the difference that this time these roles were played by actresses. It has been argued that... more
The dramatic tradition that featured female characters dressed in men’s costume was revived after the theatres reopened in the Restoration, with the difference that this time these roles were played by actresses. It has been argued that the contemplation of the female body reinforced the erotization of the actresses for the sake of predominantly male audiences. Their performances in “breeches roles” have also been interpreted as evidence of a progressive acknowledgement of the social possibilities of female agency. My own contention is that these roles did not only raise female agency to a level equal – if not superior, occasionally – to male agency, they also served to disrupt certain fashionable notions on the nature of masculinity, and therefore illustrate a trend that promoted new gender modes. To argue this thesis, I will focus on three comedies that represent as many stages in the development of this trend: the anonymous The Woman Turned Bully (1675), Thomas Shadwell’s The Woman Captain (1680), and Thomas Southerne’s Sir Anthony Love (1691), all of them featuring women wearing breeches and upsetting male order, with both comic and serious consequences.
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This article investigates the connection between the all-important concept of invention within the literary terminology of sixteenth-century England and the perception of translation during this period. Invention is discussed as a concept... more
This article investigates the connection between the all-important concept of invention within the literary terminology of sixteenth-century England and the perception of translation during this period. Invention is discussed as a concept in transition during the sixteenth century, as it was then still associated with the rhetorical notion of “finding” within a topical system, while new shades of meaning closer to imagination, fantasy, fancy and wit started to become dominant even in rhetorical contexts. Invention was deemed in the sixteenth century a necessary ingredient for outstanding poetry, and yet it was assumed to be absent from the work of the translator, whose role was solely to copy the invention of the source text. This article claims that the lack of invention in translations (or rather, the mere following of the invention of the translated text) was the main reason why translations were invariably regarded as minor achievements as compared to their source texts.
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This paper considers John Florio’s famous translation of Montaigne’s Essays as a source of invaluable insight into the Elizabethan practice and theory of translation. In the letter addressed to the reader, Florio strongly advocates the... more
This paper considers John Florio’s famous translation of Montaigne’s Essays as a source of invaluable insight into the Elizabethan practice and theory of translation. In the letter addressed to the reader, Florio strongly advocates the use of translation as a means of advancing knowledge and developing the language and culture of a nation. Echoing the Elizabethan debate between the defenders and detractors of translation, his preface provides precious information on the various Elizabethan understandings of the role of translation. Casting himself in the role of a “foster-father”, Florio foregrounds the idea of translation as rewriting of the original text into a new creation. While most scholars have emphasised solely Florio’s augmentation of Montaigne’s text and his fondness for addition, paraphrase and alliteration, the present paper intends to demonstrate that this dimension of his translation is frequently complemented by Florio’s tendency to render the text closely, even word for word at times.
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The early modern binary of the virtuous City of London versus the sinful suburbs clashes with an older binary pitting the countryside against the city. At the same time, the forces of urbanization along with early capitalism were... more
The early modern binary of the virtuous City of London versus the sinful suburbs clashes with an older binary pitting the countryside against the city. At the same time, the forces of urbanization along with early capitalism were undermining both binaries. This article traces how this is reflected in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday. The play not only represents the City of London under Simon Eyre’s rule as, potentially, possessing all the virtues of the pastoral, but also suggests that the surrounding countryside, in particular the village of Old Ford, was being corrupted by city values. Dekker’s play, therefore, deconstructs simple dichotomies between country and city, showing how the two inevitably influence each other.
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The paper explores the philosophical debates raging in Spain following naval defeat by the US in 1898 and the subsequent loss of the country’s last remaining colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Facing what the national press... more
The paper explores the philosophical debates raging in Spain following naval defeat by the US in 1898 and the subsequent loss of the country’s last remaining colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Facing what the national press presented as a debilitating pessimism and paralysis – a result of humiliation by a vastly superior and technologically advanced power – a group of intellectuals known as the “Generation of ‘98” launched a strident campaign aimed at rebooting the nation’s social, economic and cultural identity, in which the Spanish nation was imaginatively recast as a kind of Hamlet awaiting the arrival of Fortinbras. The various implications of the Spain-as-Hamlet trope are considered, especially in the light of the play’s minimal impact on cultural production at the turn of the century. Not the least of the paradoxes surrounding the trope is the conflicting uses to which it was put: now a metaphor for the decadence of Spanish social and political life, now a source of inspiration for the call for regeneration; now a mode of emplotting the break-up of the nation-state, now a way of framing the question of national unity.
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Whilst the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is itself filled with problems of representation, I will argue in this paper that the greatest misrepresentation of all did not occur in fiction but rather in the English court. During... more
Whilst the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is itself filled with problems of representation, I will argue in this paper that the greatest misrepresentation of all did not occur in fiction but rather in the English court. During Elizabeth’s reign Lord Burghley, working with his secretary Sir Francis Walsingham, systematically misrepresented Spanish culture, deliberately obscuring the English perception of Spanish Golden Age and casting over it a veil of fear. The Earl of Leicester, by contrast, working only to improve his own reputation as a literary patron and man of letters, inadvertently increased English access to Spanish literature as he patronized a coterie of Spanish-speaking scholars at the University of Oxford. These Spanish secretaries translated Spanish literature and created Spanish dictionaries. By analysing the propaganda created under Burghley and the dictionaries created under Leicester, I will show how the English perception of the Spanish Golden Age developed. How, one might ask, was Antonio del Corro’s arrival at the university tied to the printing of the first Spanish books in England at the university press? Why did both Leicester and Burghley eventually sponsor Spanish-English dictionaries? How did these different media and dictionaries mediate the English perception of Spain? These are some of the questions my paper will address through examination of the Atye-Cotton manuscripts (now housed at the British Library), a series of pamphlets sponsored by Lord Burghley, and several English-Spanish dictionaries created in the late 16th century.
Research Interests: Early Modern English Language, Early Modern Translation Studies, Elizabethan history; English reformation, Francis Walsingham, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and 8 moreAnglo-Spanish cultural history, Elizabethan England, Anglo-Spanish Relations in XVI Century, Anti-Catholic Literature in Elizabethan England, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Cultural Transfers, Lord Burghley, and Antonio del Corro
For the last three centuries, Shakespeare’s plays have been continuously glossed, commented on and annotated. However, there still remain quite a few obscure passages and complex words which continue to puzzle and cause debate as to their... more
For the last three centuries, Shakespeare’s plays have been continuously glossed, commented on and annotated. However, there still remain quite a few obscure passages and complex words which continue to puzzle and cause debate as to their precise meanings. One such word is pawn, glossed as a pun in some editions of King Lear, and passed over in silence in other plays where it appears in similar contexts.
This essay proposes an alternative reading of the word in King Lear, King John and The Winter’s Tale. The hypothesis put forward is that Shakespeare was indeed hinting at the various senses of this word and exploiting its punning potential in these three plays. This suggestion is supported by a series of examples of similar rhetorical exploitation of this polysemic word as found in several contemporary authors. These examples will demonstrate that the various senses of the word were indeed very much alive in Elizabethan England – and quite probably in Shakespeare’s mind.
This essay proposes an alternative reading of the word in King Lear, King John and The Winter’s Tale. The hypothesis put forward is that Shakespeare was indeed hinting at the various senses of this word and exploiting its punning potential in these three plays. This suggestion is supported by a series of examples of similar rhetorical exploitation of this polysemic word as found in several contemporary authors. These examples will demonstrate that the various senses of the word were indeed very much alive in Elizabethan England – and quite probably in Shakespeare’s mind.
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This essay supports the view that present day cinema as an art form in its own right – rather than film always as adaptation of a literary text – provides an additional pedagogic and comparative opportunity for the analysis of aspects of... more
This essay supports the view that present day cinema as an art form in its own right – rather than film always as adaptation of a literary text – provides an additional pedagogic and comparative opportunity for the analysis of aspects of Shakespeare’s early modern texts. The essay takes as point of departure aspects of the uncanny as evoked in the cinematic experience. It then focuses upon aspects of experience and growth, as well as upon problems attached to language and narrativity as these are explored both in film-texts by Pedro Almodóvar and by Eytan Fox, and also in plays by William Shakespeare.
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My paper examines The City Wit (1629-1632), a city comedy by Richard Brome revolving around the unscrupulous trade world, where all the characters aim at social recognition, even trampling on feelings and moral values. My objective is to... more
My paper examines The City Wit (1629-1632), a city comedy by Richard Brome revolving around the unscrupulous trade world, where all the characters aim at social recognition, even trampling on feelings and moral values. My objective is to investigate the play as one of the earlier examples of strategic use of space in Brome’s dramatic production. Firstly, I will consider the function of space in relation to the identity of the single characters. Secondly, I will show how space can be manipulated for the re-fashioning of a new identity, as in the case of Jeremy, a male servant disguised as a widow, who builds up a fictitious Cornish identity. Finally, I will analyze the geography of the play focusing in particular on the scene set in the Presence Chamber of Whitehall.
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Much has been written on the semiotic obsessions of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, less on their relationship with matters of theme. This paper argues first that the play’s engagement with the mutual relationships between language,... more
Much has been written on the semiotic obsessions of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, less on their relationship with matters of theme. This paper argues first that the play’s engagement with the mutual relationships between language, labour and society draws on classical and early modern accounts of the symbiotic evolution of language and civilised society. It then suggests that the play’s particular rhetorical and kinesiological focus on hand and tongue anticipates the metonymies deployed in Darwinian accounts of human evolution. Key to this reading is the well-known scrawl/scrowl crux: far from opting for a definitive, exclusive meaning, the paper proposes that the semantic uncertainty unleashed at the crux mimics the play’s representation of Rome’s and, in the last resort, humanity’s hesitation between literate civilization and creeping barbarism. No longer a merely lexical quibble over the competing, variously obsolescent and emergent, notions of crawling, gesticulating and scribbling, the crux becomes the touchstone of an evolutionary reading of the play. Just as scrawl/scrowl debates endlessly between different stages on the human evolutionary scale, so Titus Andronicus leaves its readers and audience in uneasy contemplation of Rome’s¬ – and their own – perpetual teetering on the brink of degradation.
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The present article reviews the stage history of Othello in Spain and, in particular, it focuses on two performances of the play staged at the Español theatre during Franco’s dictatorship, in 1944 and 1971 respectively. Othello was one of... more
The present article reviews the stage history of Othello in Spain and, in particular, it focuses on two performances of the play staged at the Español theatre during Franco’s dictatorship, in 1944 and 1971 respectively. Othello was one of the Shakespearean plays programmed by the regime to give cultural prestige to the “national” theatre. By comparing both productions, this paper explores how the performance of Othello evolved during the dictatorship. Furthermore, it shows how the repressive force of state censorship was exerted to promote certain theatrical conventions and to prevent theatre directors and translators from offering new readings and updatings of the plays, in the case of Othello, for almost thirty years.
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Brabantio’s words “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:| She has deceived her father, and may thee” (Othello, 1.3.292–293) warn Othello about the changing nature of female loyalty and women’s potential for deviancy. Closely... more
Brabantio’s words “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:| She has deceived her father, and may thee” (Othello, 1.3.292–293) warn Othello about the changing nature of female loyalty and women’s potential for deviancy. Closely examining daughters caught in the conflict between anxious fathers and husbands-to-be, this article departs from such paranoid male fantasy and instead sets out to explore female deviancy in its legal and dramatic implications with reference to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. I will argue that Portia’s and Jessica’s struggle to evade male subsidiarity results in their conscious positioning themselves on the verge of illegality. Besides occasioning productive exploration of marriage, law and justice within what Morss (2007:183) terms “the dynamics of human desire and of social institutions,” I argue that female agency, seen as temporary deviancy and/or self-exclusion, reconfigures the male domain by affording the inclusion of previous outsiders (Antonio, Bassanio and Lorenzo).
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Students of the sonnets are no doubt aware that they abound in wordplay that rewards multiple readings. They may be less aware, especially if they are unfamiliar with the original 1609 Quarto edition, that the poems may have been arranged... more
Students of the sonnets are no doubt aware that they abound in wordplay that rewards multiple readings. They may be less aware, especially if they are unfamiliar with the original 1609 Quarto edition, that the poems may have been arranged to have a visual impact as well.
The sonnet form itself is emblematic of a number of familiar referents, including an escutcheon, a “glass” (mirror), a leaf, and a seal. One might even see in the poems, as did Lady Mary Worth and John Donne in their “crowns” of sonnets, the links in a chain, or necklace. The sonnet form is roughly the poetic equivalent to the portrait miniature (a fad of the day) in art. I shall be pursuing these analogies in my paper.
The most striking visual effect occurs in Sonnet 126, the last of the “fair youth” sonnets, which consists of six rhymed couplets followed by two empty sets of brackets. Katherine Duncan-Jones and others have, in recent years, argued authorial intent for this alleged “printer’s error.” Duncan-Jones suggests that the open parentheses may signify the poet and the fair youth’s “failure to couple,” while John Lennard sees in them “the silence of the grave.”
I hope to demonstrate that, by thinking in visual terms, we might one day be able to unlock the story behind the most enigmatic verse sequence in English poetry.
The sonnet form itself is emblematic of a number of familiar referents, including an escutcheon, a “glass” (mirror), a leaf, and a seal. One might even see in the poems, as did Lady Mary Worth and John Donne in their “crowns” of sonnets, the links in a chain, or necklace. The sonnet form is roughly the poetic equivalent to the portrait miniature (a fad of the day) in art. I shall be pursuing these analogies in my paper.
The most striking visual effect occurs in Sonnet 126, the last of the “fair youth” sonnets, which consists of six rhymed couplets followed by two empty sets of brackets. Katherine Duncan-Jones and others have, in recent years, argued authorial intent for this alleged “printer’s error.” Duncan-Jones suggests that the open parentheses may signify the poet and the fair youth’s “failure to couple,” while John Lennard sees in them “the silence of the grave.”
I hope to demonstrate that, by thinking in visual terms, we might one day be able to unlock the story behind the most enigmatic verse sequence in English poetry.
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This paper considers the persistence of the Renaissance pageant in modern and post-modern culture, both as a recurrent metaphor for history in general and as a feature of stage, cinematic and communal representations of early modern... more
This paper considers the persistence of the Renaissance pageant in modern and post-modern culture, both as a recurrent metaphor for history in general and as a feature of stage, cinematic and communal representations of early modern history in particular. After examining the status of public processions in Renaissance London as conscious revivals of the Roman triumph, indebted at the same time to aspects of the medieval mystery plays, the essay examines the English historical pageants of the Edwardian and inter-war years as themselves revivals of both Renaissance pageantry and aspects of the Shakespearean history play. It looks in particular at their emphasis on the Tudor monarchs and on the ethnic origins of Englishness, identifying the fading of the pageant as a genre in the post-war years with the collapse of certain ideas about English exceptionalism and historical continuity.
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This article analyses the representation of selfhood in a major Quaker autobiography, A Short Relation (1662), written by Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers; the analysis will try to assess, through a detailed discussion of the voices... more
This article analyses the representation of selfhood in a major
Quaker autobiography, A Short Relation (1662), written by
Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers; the analysis will try to
assess, through a detailed discussion of the voices in the text, the dynamic female selfhood that emerges from it and its main constitutive elements. Secondly, and with the help
of Evans’ and Cheevers’ private correspondence, the article contextualises this notion of selfhood in the social space of early Quakerism in order to assess the extent to which it was informed by the Quaker emphasis on gender equality before God and women’s relationship to the divine. At the same time, this analysis invites us to regard A Short Relation
as a major early modern autobiography that may be particularly challenging to present-day Gender Studies.
Quaker autobiography, A Short Relation (1662), written by
Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers; the analysis will try to
assess, through a detailed discussion of the voices in the text, the dynamic female selfhood that emerges from it and its main constitutive elements. Secondly, and with the help
of Evans’ and Cheevers’ private correspondence, the article contextualises this notion of selfhood in the social space of early Quakerism in order to assess the extent to which it was informed by the Quaker emphasis on gender equality before God and women’s relationship to the divine. At the same time, this analysis invites us to regard A Short Relation
as a major early modern autobiography that may be particularly challenging to present-day Gender Studies.
Research Interests:
The technical features of travel by water, on sea and up rivers, are not registered as strongly as it should be in studies of the Shakespearean period. In his great edition of The Spanish Tragedy Philip Edwards mocked the author’s... more
The technical features of travel by water, on sea and up rivers, are not registered as strongly as it should be in studies of the Shakespearean period. In his great edition of
The Spanish Tragedy Philip Edwards mocked the author’s assumption that the Portuguese Viceroy would have travelled to Spain by sea rather than overland, since the play also notes that the two countries have contiguous boundaries. He did not know how tortuous travel overland from Badajoz to Lisbon could be. A similar ignorance of the routine use of travel by boat around the coast of England and up its main rivers is evident in the studies of playing company travels in the many Records of Early English Drama. Its editors take too little notice of the likelihood that the professional playing companies used London’s shipping to carry their personnel and properties on their journeys round the country.
The official records of the Privy Council and other state papers show how important access by river was for all bulk
transport through England’s rivers. Shakespeare could well have travelled from London home to Stratford upon Avon by water. John Taylor the Water Poet wrote several verses about his own travels from London by water that amply demonstrate the ease and the familiarity to travellers of going anywhere by sea and river. But it was never an easy business. Shakespeare himself twice used the word “bauble” or “bubble” in different plays to describe the fragile nature of the vessels used for sea travel.
The Spanish Tragedy Philip Edwards mocked the author’s assumption that the Portuguese Viceroy would have travelled to Spain by sea rather than overland, since the play also notes that the two countries have contiguous boundaries. He did not know how tortuous travel overland from Badajoz to Lisbon could be. A similar ignorance of the routine use of travel by boat around the coast of England and up its main rivers is evident in the studies of playing company travels in the many Records of Early English Drama. Its editors take too little notice of the likelihood that the professional playing companies used London’s shipping to carry their personnel and properties on their journeys round the country.
The official records of the Privy Council and other state papers show how important access by river was for all bulk
transport through England’s rivers. Shakespeare could well have travelled from London home to Stratford upon Avon by water. John Taylor the Water Poet wrote several verses about his own travels from London by water that amply demonstrate the ease and the familiarity to travellers of going anywhere by sea and river. But it was never an easy business. Shakespeare himself twice used the word “bauble” or “bubble” in different plays to describe the fragile nature of the vessels used for sea travel.
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This essay examines early modern conceptions and representations of the passions in relation to issues of self-knowledge in texts ranging from Renaissance psychol ogy to Shakespearean tragedy –with a particular focus on Macbeth.... more
This essay examines early modern conceptions and representations of the passions in relation to issues of self-knowledge in texts ranging from Renaissance psychol
ogy to Shakespearean tragedy –with a particular focus on
Macbeth.
Considered in essence processes of the mind, the passions were believed to manifest themselves through material symptoms such as bodily effects, facial gestures and discourse. Accordingly, the early modern philosophy of man saw in the study of these material manifestations a vehicle to access the soul. By tracing the methodologies for translating the material side of human experience –words, gestures, bodily sensations and signals– into less material truths, early modern philosophy and theatre explored the certainties about inwardness as a necessary dimension of the self, as well as the uncertainties about the ultimate essence of such interiority. In this, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for its constant focus on outward appearance and rhetoric, stresses the need to focus on matter as a vehicle to explore interiority. And yet –and in keeping with the principles of earlier Renaissance humanists– the play acknowledges the utter impossibility to know the ultimate essence of the inward self.
ogy to Shakespearean tragedy –with a particular focus on
Macbeth.
Considered in essence processes of the mind, the passions were believed to manifest themselves through material symptoms such as bodily effects, facial gestures and discourse. Accordingly, the early modern philosophy of man saw in the study of these material manifestations a vehicle to access the soul. By tracing the methodologies for translating the material side of human experience –words, gestures, bodily sensations and signals– into less material truths, early modern philosophy and theatre explored the certainties about inwardness as a necessary dimension of the self, as well as the uncertainties about the ultimate essence of such interiority. In this, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for its constant focus on outward appearance and rhetoric, stresses the need to focus on matter as a vehicle to explore interiority. And yet –and in keeping with the principles of earlier Renaissance humanists– the play acknowledges the utter impossibility to know the ultimate essence of the inward self.
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Shakespeare criticism in Spain began in 1764 and has been on the increase ever since. The main source of information on the subject has long been the tremendous work done by Alfonso Par from the beginning of the 20th century until his... more
Shakespeare criticism in Spain began in 1764 and has been on the increase ever since. The main source of information
on the subject has long been the tremendous work done by Alfonso Par from the beginning of the 20th century until his death in 1936: without his Shakespeare en la literatura española (1935) none of the later studies could have been written, or at least they would have taken a good deal longer to write. On the other hand, Par’s book includes gaps and errors which need to be corrected. Among these are three
cases of supposedly original texts which have turned out to be appropriations of foreign originals whose sources were not acknowledged. This article sets out to analyze these cases, examine their critical implications and thus contribute to a better knowledge and understanding of the Spanish reception of Shakespeare.
on the subject has long been the tremendous work done by Alfonso Par from the beginning of the 20th century until his death in 1936: without his Shakespeare en la literatura española (1935) none of the later studies could have been written, or at least they would have taken a good deal longer to write. On the other hand, Par’s book includes gaps and errors which need to be corrected. Among these are three
cases of supposedly original texts which have turned out to be appropriations of foreign originals whose sources were not acknowledged. This article sets out to analyze these cases, examine their critical implications and thus contribute to a better knowledge and understanding of the Spanish reception of Shakespeare.
Research Interests:
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Even with the multitude of religious, political, social and gendered readings of the character, critics have invariably (and understandably) tended to focus most often on the events leading up to and including the rejection scene in 2... more
Even with the multitude of religious, political, social and gendered readings of the character, critics have invariably (and understandably) tended to focus most often on the events leading up to and including the rejection scene in
2 Henry IV , and have given far less attention to the report of his death in Henry V. In light of criticism concerning the relationship between Falstaff and the actor Will Kemp, as well as the roles of the stage Vice and clown, this essay will focus on the report in an attempt to reinterpret it and its importance for the play as a whole. As will be seen, in performance it actually formed an integral part of an
iterative process that would have served to problematize the
presentation of kingship in Henry V on the early modern stage.
2 Henry IV , and have given far less attention to the report of his death in Henry V. In light of criticism concerning the relationship between Falstaff and the actor Will Kemp, as well as the roles of the stage Vice and clown, this essay will focus on the report in an attempt to reinterpret it and its importance for the play as a whole. As will be seen, in performance it actually formed an integral part of an
iterative process that would have served to problematize the
presentation of kingship in Henry V on the early modern stage.
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Research Interests: Ben Jonson and Volpone
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Many important Elizabethan dramatists, from George Peele and Christopher Marlowe to William Shakespeare, addressed the controversial topic of magic in some of their plays. Due to its political and religious implications, the literary... more
Many important Elizabethan dramatists, from George Peele and Christopher Marlowe to William Shakespeare, addressed the controversial topic of magic in some of their plays. Due to its political and religious implications, the literary treatment of magic bore on the figure of the Renaissance prince at
a time when a ruler’s education and use of power was an important concern. Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589, published in 1594) is perhaps one of the
most significant examples of the treatment of magic in Elizabethan drama. This is a romantic comedy posing as a historical play, in which Greene sought to draw on parallels between the contentious political turmoil of Elizabethan England from a critical point of view.
For this reason, in the play, black magic practitioner Friar Bacon serves the purpose of mirroring, albeit in a covert manner, the uncertain political reality of the reign of Elizabeth. The English dramatist’s tendency in the late
sixteenth century to bring magic onto the stage took advantage of the Queen’s own keenness for the so called Occult Philosophy. In fact, one of Elizabeth’s achievements as a monarch was to promote this cultural and philosophical movement from which she took her ability to build her own public image in a society in which magic meant more than a sheer petty concept and revealed a set of beliefs based on reliability, infallibility and fear. The topic is analysed from a hemeneutic-comparative approach.
a time when a ruler’s education and use of power was an important concern. Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589, published in 1594) is perhaps one of the
most significant examples of the treatment of magic in Elizabethan drama. This is a romantic comedy posing as a historical play, in which Greene sought to draw on parallels between the contentious political turmoil of Elizabethan England from a critical point of view.
For this reason, in the play, black magic practitioner Friar Bacon serves the purpose of mirroring, albeit in a covert manner, the uncertain political reality of the reign of Elizabeth. The English dramatist’s tendency in the late
sixteenth century to bring magic onto the stage took advantage of the Queen’s own keenness for the so called Occult Philosophy. In fact, one of Elizabeth’s achievements as a monarch was to promote this cultural and philosophical movement from which she took her ability to build her own public image in a society in which magic meant more than a sheer petty concept and revealed a set of beliefs based on reliability, infallibility and fear. The topic is analysed from a hemeneutic-comparative approach.
Research Interests:
Critical assumptions on William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure usually centre on the relationship between sex and moral issues. However, the play also questions political control and the supervision of human behaviour. This paper... more
Critical assumptions on William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure usually centre on the relationship between sex and moral issues. However, the play also questions political control and the supervision of human behaviour. This paper offers an alternative, personal, feminist reading of Measure for Measure by focusing on the differences between male and female moral values in the play. After exposing a brief summary of the problems that traditional and feminist critics face concerning Measure for Measure, I will pay special attention to the articulation of social subversion and to the connection between sexual and political frailty in Shakespeare’s work by referring to some characters and specific scenes. It is my aim to explore the complex ways in which male and female spheres reflect and influence each other in Measure for Measure, a dark play which questions the limits of patriarchy and the workings of unethical behaviour.
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The paper scrutinizes anti-theatrical texts from the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century England. It focuses on a specific critique of theatre, the type of corruption that is connected to the plays’ ambiguous ontological... more
The paper scrutinizes anti-theatrical texts from the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century England. It focuses on a specific critique of theatre, the type of corruption that is connected to the plays’ ambiguous ontological status, their mixing the reality of the audience with the fiction of the play. It points out that plays were
seen as having a transformative power, corrupting the reality both of actors and of audiences. This can be explained by the actions of traditional figures of audience involvement, frequently belonging to the family of the Vice, which includes stage fools as well. The two figures are shown to be mentioned frequently together in contemporary texts, as synonyms of each other and as examples of the corruptness of theatre. The paper argues that fools and Vices are
singled out in the examined texts because they epitomise not only the possibility of improvising within theatre, but also a specific double representational logic of theatre, where figures are parts both of the play’s fictional world and the festive occasion of a play, i.e. the audience’s reality. In a coda to the paper an example is put forward in order to illustrate that Shakespeare critics with structuralist and post-structuralist background are condemned for a similar reason as the theatre featuring Vices and fools: for mixing reality and fiction.
seen as having a transformative power, corrupting the reality both of actors and of audiences. This can be explained by the actions of traditional figures of audience involvement, frequently belonging to the family of the Vice, which includes stage fools as well. The two figures are shown to be mentioned frequently together in contemporary texts, as synonyms of each other and as examples of the corruptness of theatre. The paper argues that fools and Vices are
singled out in the examined texts because they epitomise not only the possibility of improvising within theatre, but also a specific double representational logic of theatre, where figures are parts both of the play’s fictional world and the festive occasion of a play, i.e. the audience’s reality. In a coda to the paper an example is put forward in order to illustrate that Shakespeare critics with structuralist and post-structuralist background are condemned for a similar reason as the theatre featuring Vices and fools: for mixing reality and fiction.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Ben Jonson and Volpone
This paper deals with the expansions in David Rowland’s translation of Lazarillo de Tormes (1586). Given the fact that Elizabethan translators especially loved to embellish their texts, the target text expansions are analysed and... more
This paper deals with the expansions in David Rowland’s translation of Lazarillo de Tormes (1586). Given the fact that Elizabethan translators especially loved to embellish their texts, the target text expansions are analysed and discussed. 93.3% of these expansions are proved to follow the common practice of the time: to Anglicize the target text by providing the translator’s own viewpoint. Protestant propaganda notions are commonly provided; European historical and social background prompted English translators to adapt texts to their own target language and culture. Certain expansions resemble those in a previous French translation. Indeed, foreign works were promptly translated using the French language as an intermediary.
Elizabethan preference for detail and witticisms which can be identified in Rowland’s translation will also be discussed.
Elizabethan preference for detail and witticisms which can be identified in Rowland’s translation will also be discussed.
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For years, it has been traditionally contended that George Meriton’s A Yorkshire Dialogue (1683) represents the first dialectally valuable historical document for the linguistic evaluation of Yorkshire speech. Not only has it been... more
For years, it has been traditionally contended that George Meriton’s A Yorkshire Dialogue (1683) represents the first dialectally valuable historical document for the linguistic evaluation of Yorkshire speech.
Not only has it been commonly regarded as the forerunner of Yorkshire dialect poetry, but also as the foremost written record where Yorkshire regionalisms may be attested in the Early Modern period. Nevertheless, in 1673 Stephen Bulkby issued at York an anonymous dialect broadside entitled “A Yorkshire Dialogue Between an Awd Wife, a Lass, and a Butcher.” Linguistically ignored as it has been, this specimen is of particular interest for the domain of historical dialectology: on the one hand, it illuminates the linguistic
history of the county at the time and supports the linguistic data yielded by Meriton’s piece; on the other, it marks the beginnings of Yorkshire dialect literature. This paper seeks to examine selected features of north-east Yorkshire phonology as evidenced by non-standard spellings in this late seventeenth-century broadsheet. Furthermore, it endeavours to offer a diachronic framework so as to bridge the gap between Rolle’s speech and Marshall’s eighteenth-century provincialisms.
Not only has it been commonly regarded as the forerunner of Yorkshire dialect poetry, but also as the foremost written record where Yorkshire regionalisms may be attested in the Early Modern period. Nevertheless, in 1673 Stephen Bulkby issued at York an anonymous dialect broadside entitled “A Yorkshire Dialogue Between an Awd Wife, a Lass, and a Butcher.” Linguistically ignored as it has been, this specimen is of particular interest for the domain of historical dialectology: on the one hand, it illuminates the linguistic
history of the county at the time and supports the linguistic data yielded by Meriton’s piece; on the other, it marks the beginnings of Yorkshire dialect literature. This paper seeks to examine selected features of north-east Yorkshire phonology as evidenced by non-standard spellings in this late seventeenth-century broadsheet. Furthermore, it endeavours to offer a diachronic framework so as to bridge the gap between Rolle’s speech and Marshall’s eighteenth-century provincialisms.
Research Interests:
This article suggests that the twin principles of The Tempest, music and storm, bring together issues of class and race in an inventive topography whose connotational synergies enable a conceptual transfer to be made from Caliban, the... more
This article suggests that the twin principles of The Tempest, music and storm, bring together issues of class and race in an inventive topography whose connotational synergies enable a conceptual transfer to be made from Caliban, the figure of a disorderly colonial subject in Prospero’s play, to the mariners and, beyond them, the potentially disorderly English subjects located outside the frame of Prospero’s illusion. Read in the light, on the one hand, of contemporary ideas about music and order and the relationship between music, class and race and, on the other hand, of accounts of
storm and mutiny in contemporary voyage reports, the play leaves considerably less securely contained the pressing threat of social disorder, masquerading as it does beneath and beside the colonial issue of race, than is often supposed.
storm and mutiny in contemporary voyage reports, the play leaves considerably less securely contained the pressing threat of social disorder, masquerading as it does beneath and beside the colonial issue of race, than is often supposed.
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Middleton’s last two surviving plays, The Spanish Gypsy (1623) and A Game at Chess (1624), seem to belong to different universes, aesthetically and politically, discouraging any notion of Middleton’s “late style” or “late period.” One... more
Middleton’s last two surviving plays, The Spanish Gypsy (1623) and A Game at Chess (1624), seem to belong to different universes, aesthetically and politically, discouraging any notion of Middleton’s “late style” or “late period.” One was written before, one after, the failure of negotiations for a dynastic marriage that would have united Habsburg and Stuart interests. Analysis and comparison of the two plays
challenges the theoretical assumptions about “the temporal constant” in the work both of New Historicist and of Presentist critics.
challenges the theoretical assumptions about “the temporal constant” in the work both of New Historicist and of Presentist critics.
Research Interests:
The question of Senecan influence on Elizabethan tragedy has been fiercely debated since J.W. Cunliffe published his seminal study in 1893. In the last half-century massive critical attention to this problem has been renewed. Recent... more
The question of Senecan influence on Elizabethan tragedy has been fiercely debated since J.W. Cunliffe published his seminal study in 1893. In the last half-century massive
critical attention to this problem has been renewed. Recent interpretations of Senecan influence vary enormously, but there continues to be a tacit convergence on the view established by Cunliffe, namely that influence must be
understood as a matter of local motif borrowing. This view is
underpinned by the assumption that Senecan drama is made up of loosely related rhetorical exercises and that it thus lacks any coherent tragic vision. Building on recent wo
rk that challenges this bias against the plays as plays, this article re-examines the function of the Chorus in Seneca in order to transcend its interpretation as a static appendage of Stoic commonplaces. Rather than interrupting the flow of the action, the Senecan Chorus is carefully designed to evolve with the former so that it generates an overwhelming tragic climax. This climax is that of the avenger’s furor, understood as tragic solipsism. It is this evolving Chorus and its vengeful madness that Kyd assimilated into his pioneering play of the 1580s.
critical attention to this problem has been renewed. Recent interpretations of Senecan influence vary enormously, but there continues to be a tacit convergence on the view established by Cunliffe, namely that influence must be
understood as a matter of local motif borrowing. This view is
underpinned by the assumption that Senecan drama is made up of loosely related rhetorical exercises and that it thus lacks any coherent tragic vision. Building on recent wo
rk that challenges this bias against the plays as plays, this article re-examines the function of the Chorus in Seneca in order to transcend its interpretation as a static appendage of Stoic commonplaces. Rather than interrupting the flow of the action, the Senecan Chorus is carefully designed to evolve with the former so that it generates an overwhelming tragic climax. This climax is that of the avenger’s furor, understood as tragic solipsism. It is this evolving Chorus and its vengeful madness that Kyd assimilated into his pioneering play of the 1580s.
Research Interests:
The development of women’s writing in English throughout the seventeenth century is quite extraordinary. In the field of drama, women participated not only as spectators or readers, but more and more as patronesses, as playwrights, and... more
The development of women’s writing in English throughout the seventeenth century is quite extraordinary. In the field
of drama, women participated not only as spectators or readers, but more and more as patronesses, as playwrights, and later on as actresses and even as managers.
Yet some dramatic forms proved more resilient than others to
women’s coming to voice. Comedies were more flexible, as their conventions allowed for female characters – heroines
– as mates and nearly equals to the young male hero. But tragedies required high-born, authoritative and powerful characters, and such defining traits seemed to be the prerogative of the male. The question, then, for these women playwrights, was to what extent one could bend dramatic conventions to accommodate women’s heroic behaviour. How can one construct a female hero and yet not masculinize her in the attempt? Is it possible to rethink the traits of the heroic to include, rather than exclude, women? This paper engages with the ensuing problems and conflicts by looking into the
work of two women dramatists of the period: Margaret
Cavendish and Aphra Behn.
of drama, women participated not only as spectators or readers, but more and more as patronesses, as playwrights, and later on as actresses and even as managers.
Yet some dramatic forms proved more resilient than others to
women’s coming to voice. Comedies were more flexible, as their conventions allowed for female characters – heroines
– as mates and nearly equals to the young male hero. But tragedies required high-born, authoritative and powerful characters, and such defining traits seemed to be the prerogative of the male. The question, then, for these women playwrights, was to what extent one could bend dramatic conventions to accommodate women’s heroic behaviour. How can one construct a female hero and yet not masculinize her in the attempt? Is it possible to rethink the traits of the heroic to include, rather than exclude, women? This paper engages with the ensuing problems and conflicts by looking into the
work of two women dramatists of the period: Margaret
Cavendish and Aphra Behn.
Research Interests:
The language of Shakespeare’s plays has received substantial treatment in various ‘dictionaries', ‘glossaries’, ‘lexica’ and ‘concordances’. However, the classic works are written in the philological tradition that characterised the... more
The language of Shakespeare’s plays has received substantial treatment in various ‘dictionaries', ‘glossaries’, ‘lexica’ and ‘concordances’. However, the classic works are written in the philological tradition that characterised the Oxford English Dictionary.This paper explores how modern principles and techniques developed in Corpus Linguistics can be deployed in the creation of a radically new kind of dictionary. In particular, this involves a focus on usage and frequency. A further innovation is that the proposed dictionary will be comparative, making both internal comparisons (e.g. female characters compared with male) and external comparisons (e.g. Shakespeare’s usage compared with that of contemporary plays and other genres). The bulk of this paper is made up of case studies,
involving discussion of the words ‘horrid’, ‘good’, ‘ah’ and ‘and’, multiword units, and linguistic profiles for characters and plays. Through these, the aim is to demonstrate the characteristics of the dictionary and raise pertinent issues, including, for example, how many and what kind of words to include in the dictionary, whether the dictionary should include only words (and how they should be defined), how word-senses should be distinguished, how stylistic and social meanings should be captured, and what approach to grammar should be taken.
involving discussion of the words ‘horrid’, ‘good’, ‘ah’ and ‘and’, multiword units, and linguistic profiles for characters and plays. Through these, the aim is to demonstrate the characteristics of the dictionary and raise pertinent issues, including, for example, how many and what kind of words to include in the dictionary, whether the dictionary should include only words (and how they should be defined), how word-senses should be distinguished, how stylistic and social meanings should be captured, and what approach to grammar should be taken.
Research Interests:
In his 1577 English translation of Eusebius's History of the Church, Meredith Hanmer makes reference to “an honorable Ladie of the lande,” whose identity still remains unknown. My design here is to gather the scarce and scattered... more
In his 1577 English translation of Eusebius's History of the
Church, Meredith Hanmer makes reference to “an honorable Ladie of the lande,” whose identity still remains unknown.
My design here is to gather the scarce and scattered available evidence, so as to propose a name that is rather reasonable. In order to contextualize the conclusions, reference will also be made to such issues as women’s literacy and religious controversies in Elizabethan England.
Church, Meredith Hanmer makes reference to “an honorable Ladie of the lande,” whose identity still remains unknown.
My design here is to gather the scarce and scattered available evidence, so as to propose a name that is rather reasonable. In order to contextualize the conclusions, reference will also be made to such issues as women’s literacy and religious controversies in Elizabethan England.
Research Interests:
This paper presents a study on spelling standardisation in Shakespeare’s first editions. Though certainly not central in literature, in which the orthography of Shakespeare’s texts has been considered mainly as an authorial and... more
This paper presents a study on spelling standardisation in Shakespeare’s first editions. Though certainly not central in literature, in which the orthography of Shakespeare’s texts has been considered mainly as an authorial and chronological test or as a tool for textual or phonological reconstruction, this issue deserves attention. An appraisal of
the degree of spelling standardisation in Shakespeare’s
first editions, which we know incomplete, may (i) contribute to a description of the standardisation of the English spelling system, generally allocated to the Early Modern period but still presenting important lacunae; (ii) provide a better knowledge of the spelling habits and variation patterns in Shakespeare's first editions, thereby lessening the difficulties involved in the use of digital versions of those texts; (iii) supply a background against which to appraise the
alleged manipulation of spelling for stylistic purposes in the
Renaissance period, namely the use of visual rhymes and of spelling variants. Assuming standardisation as a trend towards uniformity, this analysis concentrates on two different Renaissance editions of Romeo and Juliet and identifies a significant degree of orthographic regularity in the corpus considered, thus contradicting expectations raised by most references so far.
the degree of spelling standardisation in Shakespeare’s
first editions, which we know incomplete, may (i) contribute to a description of the standardisation of the English spelling system, generally allocated to the Early Modern period but still presenting important lacunae; (ii) provide a better knowledge of the spelling habits and variation patterns in Shakespeare's first editions, thereby lessening the difficulties involved in the use of digital versions of those texts; (iii) supply a background against which to appraise the
alleged manipulation of spelling for stylistic purposes in the
Renaissance period, namely the use of visual rhymes and of spelling variants. Assuming standardisation as a trend towards uniformity, this analysis concentrates on two different Renaissance editions of Romeo and Juliet and identifies a significant degree of orthographic regularity in the corpus considered, thus contradicting expectations raised by most references so far.
Research Interests:
In this paper, I discuss and illustrate a possible source for word-final [i] in seventeenth-century Lancashire fillee – PdE fellow – drawing from the orthographical representation of dialectal speech made by Thomas Shadwell in The... more
In this paper, I discuss and illustrate a possible source for
word-final [i] in seventeenth-century Lancashire fillee – PdE
fellow – drawing from the orthographical representation of
dialectal speech made by Thomas Shadwell in The Lancashire Witches and Tegue O Divelly the Irish Priest: a Comedy (1682). Although this sample of study does not exactly fit into Wells’ (1982) ‘y-tensing’ categories, it seems to
evidence a tense pronunciation of unstressed /I/. I will examine, therefore, the phonological reasons that attest [i] in this particular example, as well as the deviant spelling that apparently points at such a regionalism. Also, a general survey of the use of dialect in Early Modern English literature and its potential for linguistic research is made.
word-final [i] in seventeenth-century Lancashire fillee – PdE
fellow – drawing from the orthographical representation of
dialectal speech made by Thomas Shadwell in The Lancashire Witches and Tegue O Divelly the Irish Priest: a Comedy (1682). Although this sample of study does not exactly fit into Wells’ (1982) ‘y-tensing’ categories, it seems to
evidence a tense pronunciation of unstressed /I/. I will examine, therefore, the phonological reasons that attest [i] in this particular example, as well as the deviant spelling that apparently points at such a regionalism. Also, a general survey of the use of dialect in Early Modern English literature and its potential for linguistic research is made.
Research Interests:
This paper attempts to examine different hypotheses about the sea-voyage of Thomas Lodge to the Canaries and Azores, during which he wrote Rosalynde, the main source text of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. In order to date the voyage,... more
This paper attempts to examine different hypotheses about the sea-voyage of Thomas Lodge to the Canaries and Azores, during which he wrote Rosalynde, the main source text of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. In order to date the voyage, biographers of Lodge have always traced the activities of Captain Clarke, whose name is mentioned in the dedicatory epistle; whereas they have completely ignored its destination, as well as a dubious farming practice of the inhabitants of Tenerife. This paper will revise the three main theories proposed on this matter by taking into account the studies in the history of the Canary Islands, such as the pirate
attacks and the proceedings of the Court of the Inquisition. It will also be suggested that the Forest of Arden was largely inspired by the vegetation of woods and fields of the Atlantic archipelagos. The landscape, and arguably the myth, of
the Fortunate Islands offered Lodge an incomparable Arcadia to construct his Arden, which Shakespeare kept intact when he translated Arden to the English soil for the comedy that culminates with the representation of the ideal order of the world by means of the four weddings at the end of the play.
attacks and the proceedings of the Court of the Inquisition. It will also be suggested that the Forest of Arden was largely inspired by the vegetation of woods and fields of the Atlantic archipelagos. The landscape, and arguably the myth, of
the Fortunate Islands offered Lodge an incomparable Arcadia to construct his Arden, which Shakespeare kept intact when he translated Arden to the English soil for the comedy that culminates with the representation of the ideal order of the world by means of the four weddings at the end of the play.
Research Interests:
This paper is offered as a contribution to our understanding of both the history of literary style and the psychology of reading. I begin with a comparison with art history, where the development of the technique of linear perspective... more
This paper is offered as a contribution to our understanding of both the history of literary style and the psychology of reading. I begin with a comparison with art history, where the development of the technique of linear perspective provides a stylistic boundary-marker between medieval and renaissance styles.
Identifying the ‘printed voice effect’ as an analogous demarcator in literary history, I explore the technical means by which the effect was created, in a set of case-studies representing the emergent genres of essay and dramatic lyric. My analytical model is adapted from Gombrich’s account of ‘guided projection,’ which explains pictorial illusion as the cooperative creation of the artist (who provides the visual cues) and the spectator (who interprets
them). I argue that the literary equivalent to the geometric cues of perspective is to be found in the linguistic system of deixis and claim that renaissance texts show an innovative and experimental awareness of the deictic resources of the English language.
Identifying the ‘printed voice effect’ as an analogous demarcator in literary history, I explore the technical means by which the effect was created, in a set of case-studies representing the emergent genres of essay and dramatic lyric. My analytical model is adapted from Gombrich’s account of ‘guided projection,’ which explains pictorial illusion as the cooperative creation of the artist (who provides the visual cues) and the spectator (who interprets
them). I argue that the literary equivalent to the geometric cues of perspective is to be found in the linguistic system of deixis and claim that renaissance texts show an innovative and experimental awareness of the deictic resources of the English language.
Research Interests:
Helen of Troy is famous for two things: her abduction from Sparta to Troy by the Trojan prince, Paris, and her beauty. In this article I consider the interest taken in these two topics by Renaissance writers. 1) ‘Rape’ was a term which... more
Helen of Troy is famous for two things: her abduction from
Sparta to Troy by the Trojan prince, Paris, and her beauty. In this article I consider the interest taken in these two topics by Renaissance writers. 1) ‘Rape’ was a term which was being
redefined in the 1590s when Helen’s story received several
innovative retellings and reinterpretations; I argue that changes in rape law gave this old mythological story of abduction a newly urgent topicality. 2) As the most beautiful woman in the world Helen of Troy is an absolute – the paradigm, the standard of beauty. Representing her in language is therefore difficult, if not impossible, since language is, by definition, plural and relative. The Renaissance were aware of this conflict. I consider the
responses of narrative and dramatic representation to the
challenge which Helen’s beauty presented.
Sparta to Troy by the Trojan prince, Paris, and her beauty. In this article I consider the interest taken in these two topics by Renaissance writers. 1) ‘Rape’ was a term which was being
redefined in the 1590s when Helen’s story received several
innovative retellings and reinterpretations; I argue that changes in rape law gave this old mythological story of abduction a newly urgent topicality. 2) As the most beautiful woman in the world Helen of Troy is an absolute – the paradigm, the standard of beauty. Representing her in language is therefore difficult, if not impossible, since language is, by definition, plural and relative. The Renaissance were aware of this conflict. I consider the
responses of narrative and dramatic representation to the
challenge which Helen’s beauty presented.
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The presence of an artificial language in All’s Well that Ends Well 4.1 and 4.3, being an extraordinary instance in William Shakespeare’s literary production, is a key device both for the humor of the play and for the depiction of one... more
The presence of an artificial language in All’s Well that Ends Well 4.1 and 4.3, being an extraordinary instance in William
Shakespeare’s literary production, is a key device both for the humor of the play and for the depiction of one of its most memorable characters, Parolles. The purpose of this paper,
therefore, is to present a translation that aims to transmit the linguistic interaction established between the characters of the drum-plot and the audience to a modern Spanish-speaking context. In order to do so, first, I will examine the approaches of Luis Astrana and José María Valverde in their translations. Then, I will analyse the most representative examples of rhetorical iteration in this language that are relevant for the orallity of the play, so as to describe the adaptations considered in the final copy of the forthcoming translation by the Instituto Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s literary production, is a key device both for the humor of the play and for the depiction of one of its most memorable characters, Parolles. The purpose of this paper,
therefore, is to present a translation that aims to transmit the linguistic interaction established between the characters of the drum-plot and the audience to a modern Spanish-speaking context. In order to do so, first, I will examine the approaches of Luis Astrana and José María Valverde in their translations. Then, I will analyse the most representative examples of rhetorical iteration in this language that are relevant for the orallity of the play, so as to describe the adaptations considered in the final copy of the forthcoming translation by the Instituto Shakespeare.
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Renaissance England was a time when “voices” of most varied kinds intermingled, creating diffuse perceptions of ideologies. “High” and “low” cultures merged and/or changed place, as the advent of capitalism brought with it mobility that... more
Renaissance England was a time when “voices” of most varied kinds intermingled, creating diffuse perceptions of ideologies. “High” and “low” cultures merged and/or changed place, as the advent of capitalism brought with it mobility that blurred socially hierarchical boundaries. As seen by Peter Burke, culture moved both ways, migrating either from the country, with its traditional culture, to the city, with its courtly and/or urban pastimes, or vice-versa. Thus court entertainments such as plays and masques, and political
spectacles such as pageants and royal progresses – which both reinforced the splendour and power of the monarch and his/her court, and permitted some sort of participation of the crowd, offering the common people opportunity to enjoy more sophisticated cultural expressions – were nurtured by and simultaneously nurtured folklore and rural festivities. In the same way, popular pastimes that resulted from urban assimilations of both court and country entertainments, due to the rise of capital and the new
middle class, appropriated and re-enacted such entertainments as part of their ideology. This article deals with such exchange between “high” and “low” cultural
expressions, exploring them and discussing how and wher
e they are exchanged as transformations take place, enhancing forms of carnivalized art such as theatre, élite and popular literature, dances and games.
spectacles such as pageants and royal progresses – which both reinforced the splendour and power of the monarch and his/her court, and permitted some sort of participation of the crowd, offering the common people opportunity to enjoy more sophisticated cultural expressions – were nurtured by and simultaneously nurtured folklore and rural festivities. In the same way, popular pastimes that resulted from urban assimilations of both court and country entertainments, due to the rise of capital and the new
middle class, appropriated and re-enacted such entertainments as part of their ideology. This article deals with such exchange between “high” and “low” cultural
expressions, exploring them and discussing how and wher
e they are exchanged as transformations take place, enhancing forms of carnivalized art such as theatre, élite and popular literature, dances and games.
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This paper covers a span of fifty years in the reception of Wycherley’s masterpiece, his Country Wife. This play has been chosen for study because its linguistic and thematic features made it scarcely elligible as a stage piece for the... more
This paper covers a span of fifty years in the reception of
Wycherley’s masterpiece, his Country Wife. This play has been chosen for study because its linguistic and thematic features made it scarcely elligible as a stage piece for the increasingly prudish and good-hearted audiences that attended the playhouse during the second half of the eighteenth century. The challenge that its rewriting posed on playwrights was not small, taking into account that the piece’s most outstanding features are its employment of witty language and its cynic approach to the relationship be
tween the sexes. This paper focusses on the different processes of theatrical appropriation undergone by The Country Wife in response to the changing demands of audiences. A number of editions attributed to John Lee (1765, 1786) and David Garrick (1766, 1777, 1808, 1819) have been closely read bearing in mind their theatrical nature. Finally, the analysis of metatextual items has proved a valuable tool to check the mutual relationship between text and performance that was characteristic of the period.
Wycherley’s masterpiece, his Country Wife. This play has been chosen for study because its linguistic and thematic features made it scarcely elligible as a stage piece for the increasingly prudish and good-hearted audiences that attended the playhouse during the second half of the eighteenth century. The challenge that its rewriting posed on playwrights was not small, taking into account that the piece’s most outstanding features are its employment of witty language and its cynic approach to the relationship be
tween the sexes. This paper focusses on the different processes of theatrical appropriation undergone by The Country Wife in response to the changing demands of audiences. A number of editions attributed to John Lee (1765, 1786) and David Garrick (1766, 1777, 1808, 1819) have been closely read bearing in mind their theatrical nature. Finally, the analysis of metatextual items has proved a valuable tool to check the mutual relationship between text and performance that was characteristic of the period.
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The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be considered the great period of translations into English. During these centuries the Classics and works of different subjects were translated from Italian, French and Spanish. But Portuguese... more
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be considered the great period of translations into English. During these centuries the Classics and works of different subjects were translated from Italian, French and Spanish. But Portuguese was a different matter. There are translations from Portuguese but some Portuguese writers used Spanish instead of their own language. No grammars or dictionaries had been written in English for the teaching of Portuguese. It was not until 1662 that James Howell’s first rules for the pronunciation of Portuguese were published, and the French Monsieur De la Molliere’s A Portuguez Grammar emerged. They were the only examples of books written on the teaching of Portuguese in English we have in the seventeenth century. Only the former will be considered in this article.
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Translating poetry has always been a difficult, hard and complex task. If a translator decides to use prose when rendering a poetic text, he is opting for a completely justifiable approach to translation, although it seems perhaps an... more
Translating poetry has always been a difficult, hard and complex task. If a translator decides to use prose when rendering a poetic text, he is opting for a completely justifiable approach to translation, although it seems
perhaps an option too frequently adopted nowadays. An attempt to translate poetry into poetry should always be made when rendering a poetic text. The aim of this note is to discuss the question of poetic translation through a brief comparative analysis of the only two published Spanish
translations of Philip Sidney’s Astrophil & Stella (1591), made by Fernando Galván (1991) and Sonia Hernández (2002). I will focus on a sample case, the translation of the “First Song” from Astrophil & Stella, to revise the translator’s techniques, to discuss problems and solutions and to offer my own proposal: a verse translation that keeps a rhyme pattern similar to that of Sidney’s text.
perhaps an option too frequently adopted nowadays. An attempt to translate poetry into poetry should always be made when rendering a poetic text. The aim of this note is to discuss the question of poetic translation through a brief comparative analysis of the only two published Spanish
translations of Philip Sidney’s Astrophil & Stella (1591), made by Fernando Galván (1991) and Sonia Hernández (2002). I will focus on a sample case, the translation of the “First Song” from Astrophil & Stella, to revise the translator’s techniques, to discuss problems and solutions and to offer my own proposal: a verse translation that keeps a rhyme pattern similar to that of Sidney’s text.
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King João IV became King of Portugal in 1640 through the political will of others. His own true passion in life was music. He built up what in his day may well have been the richest music library in Europe. His ambassadors, besides... more
King João IV became King of Portugal in 1640 through the
political will of others. His own true passion in life was music.
He built up what in his day may well have been the richest music library in Europe. His ambassadors, besides their political duties, were constantly called upon to obtain new musical editions for the library. English music – Catholic sacred music, madrigals, instrumental music – formed a significant part of this collection.
This article seeks to describe the extent and comprehensiveness of the English works and to lament the loss of so unparallelled a library in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
political will of others. His own true passion in life was music.
He built up what in his day may well have been the richest music library in Europe. His ambassadors, besides their political duties, were constantly called upon to obtain new musical editions for the library. English music – Catholic sacred music, madrigals, instrumental music – formed a significant part of this collection.
This article seeks to describe the extent and comprehensiveness of the English works and to lament the loss of so unparallelled a library in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
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After a modest career as a playwright, John Banks acquired notoriety with his ‘she-tragedies’, plays dealing with English queens as tragic heroes, which proved controversial despite their favourable reception by the public. The Prologue... more
After a modest career as a playwright, John Banks acquired
notoriety with his ‘she-tragedies’, plays dealing with English queens as tragic heroes, which proved controversial despite their favourable reception by the public. The Prologue and Epilogue to Vertue Betray’d or Anna Bullen (1682) defend the poet against possible attacks asserting his detachment both from the Tory and the Whig cause. However, critics such as Canfield and Owen have analyzed the links between sentimental tragedy and the Whig faction: the representation of feeble or tyrannic kings on stage was part of the Whig
propagandistic strategy to create an anti-monarchic consciousness during and after the Exclusion Crisis (1678-81).
Vertue Betray’d is a paradigmatic example of this political use of Restoration drama: Banks’s anti-Catholic portrait of Cardinal Wolsey, his compassion for Protestant Anna, his vindication of Queen Elizabeth and, above all, the denunciation of the king’s tyranny, evidence his sympathies
clearly. However, the relationship between Banks’s pro-Whig
play and its success with the female public in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries has been systematically neglected by critics. My aim is to show that the
discourses of domination which served to create the appropriate frame of mind against popery and arbitrary government also operated on an unexpected field: women’s empathy towards Banks’s female heroes who pioneered a new kind of drama.
notoriety with his ‘she-tragedies’, plays dealing with English queens as tragic heroes, which proved controversial despite their favourable reception by the public. The Prologue and Epilogue to Vertue Betray’d or Anna Bullen (1682) defend the poet against possible attacks asserting his detachment both from the Tory and the Whig cause. However, critics such as Canfield and Owen have analyzed the links between sentimental tragedy and the Whig faction: the representation of feeble or tyrannic kings on stage was part of the Whig
propagandistic strategy to create an anti-monarchic consciousness during and after the Exclusion Crisis (1678-81).
Vertue Betray’d is a paradigmatic example of this political use of Restoration drama: Banks’s anti-Catholic portrait of Cardinal Wolsey, his compassion for Protestant Anna, his vindication of Queen Elizabeth and, above all, the denunciation of the king’s tyranny, evidence his sympathies
clearly. However, the relationship between Banks’s pro-Whig
play and its success with the female public in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries has been systematically neglected by critics. My aim is to show that the
discourses of domination which served to create the appropriate frame of mind against popery and arbitrary government also operated on an unexpected field: women’s empathy towards Banks’s female heroes who pioneered a new kind of drama.
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William Shakespeare has been present as a character in works of fiction since the eighteenth century and his life as a Renaissance playwright has been re-imagined in fictional biographies since the nineteenth century. The present article... more
William Shakespeare has been present as a character in works of fiction since the eighteenth century and his life as a Renaissance playwright has been re-imagined
in fictional biographies since the nineteenth century. The present article analyses the recreation
of the Bard in Robert Nye’s Mrs Shakespeare: The Complete Works (1993) and The Late Mr Shakespeare (1998), two novels that articulate in fiction the renewed fascination with Shakespeare’s life at the turn of the millennium that has roduced several new scholarly biographies. Both novels were published in the nineties, the decade of the Shakespeare film boom that popularised his work in the mass media and produced the most widely popular recreation of his life to date, the Hollywood success Shakespeare in Love
(1998). These two novels participate in the demystification of
Shakespeare the man generally found in contemporary fictional recreations of his life that react against the reverential idealisation of the Bard in nineteenth-century fictional biographies. They provide a humorous and irreverent portrait of Shakespeare as a man of failings and rotten teeth, while their vibrant celebration of his language and the evocation of the sights and sounds of his time contribute to the circulation and visibility of his words in contemporary culture. While professional biographers strive to create a portrait of the author that readers may accept as the true one and their effort is guided by plausibility, Robert Nye’s kaleidoscopic portraits of the playwright through the gaze of his wife and a former boy actor of his company in these two novels celebrate the impossibility of ever writing a definite biography of William Shakespeare, since no hard fact can ever bring us closer to the playwright than the works themselves, which are inevitably mediated by the present and by the cultural construct that has been erected around him through the ages.
in fictional biographies since the nineteenth century. The present article analyses the recreation
of the Bard in Robert Nye’s Mrs Shakespeare: The Complete Works (1993) and The Late Mr Shakespeare (1998), two novels that articulate in fiction the renewed fascination with Shakespeare’s life at the turn of the millennium that has roduced several new scholarly biographies. Both novels were published in the nineties, the decade of the Shakespeare film boom that popularised his work in the mass media and produced the most widely popular recreation of his life to date, the Hollywood success Shakespeare in Love
(1998). These two novels participate in the demystification of
Shakespeare the man generally found in contemporary fictional recreations of his life that react against the reverential idealisation of the Bard in nineteenth-century fictional biographies. They provide a humorous and irreverent portrait of Shakespeare as a man of failings and rotten teeth, while their vibrant celebration of his language and the evocation of the sights and sounds of his time contribute to the circulation and visibility of his words in contemporary culture. While professional biographers strive to create a portrait of the author that readers may accept as the true one and their effort is guided by plausibility, Robert Nye’s kaleidoscopic portraits of the playwright through the gaze of his wife and a former boy actor of his company in these two novels celebrate the impossibility of ever writing a definite biography of William Shakespeare, since no hard fact can ever bring us closer to the playwright than the works themselves, which are inevitably mediated by the present and by the cultural construct that has been erected around him through the ages.
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During the second half of the nineteenth century, Ophelia became a supranational art icon being dealt with by many European artists. From among the various visual renderings of Shakespeare’s madwoman, Millais’ has been critically... more
During the second half of the nineteenth century, Ophelia became a
supranational art icon being dealt with by many European artists. From among
the various visual renderings of Shakespeare’s madwoman, Millais’
has been
critically acclaimed as the most accomplished one. But to which
extent is it
close to the textual Ophelia?: There is a time gap in between both
representations and they also bear a different nature. Besides,
the Pre-Raphaelite canvas also shows the influence of some particular Victorian
discourses and views on female nature transforming the lady’s portrait.
supranational art icon being dealt with by many European artists. From among
the various visual renderings of Shakespeare’s madwoman, Millais’
has been
critically acclaimed as the most accomplished one. But to which
extent is it
close to the textual Ophelia?: There is a time gap in between both
representations and they also bear a different nature. Besides,
the Pre-Raphaelite canvas also shows the influence of some particular Victorian
discourses and views on female nature transforming the lady’s portrait.
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Este artículo analiza la representación de las obras de William Shakespeare en el Festival de Aviñón a través del análisis de los espectáculos y su recepción por parte del público y de la crítica con el objetivo de examinar cómo el... more
Este artículo analiza la representación de las obras de William Shakespeare en el Festival de Aviñón a través del análisis de los espectáculos y su recepción por parte del público y de la crítica con el objetivo de examinar cómo el contexto del festival da lugar a un tipo de recepción con características propias. Partimos de la idea de que la recepción del público en un festival de teatro es eminentemente distinta a la que tiene lugar en otros acontecimientos teatrales debido a las características particulares de este contexto. Para ello, exploramos tres aspectos fundamentales: la selección de montajes, la activación de la memoria del festival y la influencia del festival en los montajes que produce y coproduce. : This article explores Shakespeare in performance at the Avignon Festival through theatre reviews and performance analysis in order to examine how festival contexts give rise to distinct types of audience reception. It takes as its starting point that audience reception at ...
The CFP for the next issue of SEDERI (to be published 2019) is out (see attached).
Don't miss the deadline: 31Oct2018!
Send your submissions online: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/SEDY/about/submissions
Don't miss the deadline: 31Oct2018!
Send your submissions online: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/SEDY/about/submissions
Research Interests: English Literature, Shakespeare, Tudor England, Early Modern England, Anglo-Portuguese Studies, and 24 moreRestoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, English early modern Theatre, Tudor Literature, 17th century England, English language and literature, Early modern English literature, English Renaissance, William Shakespeare, Anglo-Spanish cultural history, English Renaissance Drama, Anglo-Spanish Relations in XVI Century, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Cultural Transfers, Anglo-Portuguese Relations, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Renaissance English Literature, Shakespearean literature, Anglo-Spanish Literary History, Early Modern Anglo-Spanish Cross-cultural Studies, and Early Modern Anglo-Portuguese Cross-cultural Studies
The CFP for the next issue of SEDERI is out.
Deadline for submissions: 30Dec2017.
Now you can use our online platform for submissions: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/SEDY/about/submissions
See details in file.
Deadline for submissions: 30Dec2017.
Now you can use our online platform for submissions: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/SEDY/about/submissions
See details in file.
Research Interests: Shakespeare, Early Modern England, Anglo-Portuguese Studies, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Shakespeare and film, and 28 moreShakespearean performance history, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, English early modern Theatre, Early Modern English Language, Shakespeare in Performance, Early modern English literature, Shakespeare adaptation, Early modern English literature and culture, William Shakespeare, Anglo-Spanish cultural history, England and Spain relations, Shakespeare Studies, Early Modern English History, English Renaissance Drama, Anglo-Spanish Relations in XVI Century, Early modern English drama and theatre practice, Early Modern English, Early modern English intellectual & religious history, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Cultural Transfers, Early Modern Englissh Literature and Culture, Early Modern English Catholicism, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, Anglo-Spanish Literary History, Anglo-Iberian Studies, and Cultural and artistic exchanges between England and Spain
CFP SEDERI #27
Submit your paper by Nov. 15 2016
See file for detail
Submit your paper by Nov. 15 2016
See file for detail
Research Interests: Renaissance Studies, Shakespeare, Early Modern England, 17th-Century Studies, Anglo-Portuguese Studies, and 15 moreRestoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, Early Modern English Language, Seventeenth Century English Literature, England in the sixteenth century, Early modern English literature, Early modern English literature and culture, Anglo-Spanish cultural history, Early Modern English History, English Renaissance Drama, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Anglo-Spanish Cultural Transfers, Anglo-Portuguese Relations, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
In his Defence of Poesie, Sidney insists on poetry as a means of attaining "fruitful knowledge" and thus he underlines its profitable nature. This seems quite coherent with the spirit of his narrative production, but reading... more
In his Defence of Poesie, Sidney insists on poetry as a means of attaining "fruitful knowledge" and thus he underlines its profitable nature. This seems quite coherent with the spirit of his narrative production, but reading closely his sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, the same conclusion is not so obvious. The poems are quite controversial as regards their moral benefit, and moreover the story-line that can be traced is one of loss and frustration To what extent can these sonnets be read as a profitable composition? The dialogue that can be established between the Defence and Astrophil and Stella will lead the argumentation put forward in this paper. On the SEDERI Conference at Huelva, we delivered a paper in which we analysed how Sidney's Defence of Poesie is pervaded by a vocabulary that makes of poetry a puritan value based on the ideas of profit, usefulness and action. Inspired by the suggestion of an attendant at that lecture, we have decided to pursue thi...
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Call for Papers for the new issue of SEDERI, #32, to be published in the Fall of 2022.
The deadline for submissions is 31 October 2021.
https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/SEDY/about/submissions
http://www.sederi.org/yearbook/call-for-papers/
The deadline for submissions is 31 October 2021.
https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/SEDY/about/submissions
http://www.sederi.org/yearbook/call-for-papers/
Research Interests: Shakespeare, Anglo-Portuguese Studies, Shakespearean Drama, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, and 11 moreTudor Literature, Early Modern print culture, Early modern English literature, Shakespeare adaptation, William Shakespeare, Anglo-Spanish cultural history, English Renaissance Drama, Early Modern Manuscript and Printed Books, Anglo-Spanish Relations, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and English Restoration comedy
Research Interests: Shakespeare, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, and 5 moreEarly Modern print culture, Early modern English literature, William Shakespeare, Anglo-Spanish Relations, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
Sederi
Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS SEDERI 30 (2020)
Deadline 31 October 2019
Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS SEDERI 30 (2020)
Deadline 31 October 2019