Selfhood on the Early Modern English Stage
Editor: Pauline Blanc
Date Of Publication: Feb 2008
Isbn13: 9781847184511
Isbn: 1-84718-451-0
The twelve essays in Selfhood on the Early Modern English Stage analyse the influences that shaped the fictional constructs that inhabited the drama of the early modern period. The contributors, all specialists in the field working in France and England, offer a wide spectrum of views and discuss a variety of dramatic texts ranging from late medieval cycle plays and interludes of the Tudor period, to plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Tourneur and Jonson. The early modern stage self emerges out of this collection as the site of a rich confluence of discursive and historical forces existing beyond the theatre itself.

Three essays in the first section reveal how abstract figures like Mundus and Mankind gradually became endowed with personal motives and personalizing traits which brought into existence stage beings with a capacity for emotion. In the second section, three essays deal with specific cultural factors that influenced the representation of selfhood in John Lyly’s Alexander, in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, and in a selection of Stuart court masques presented at Whitehall. The third section offers new insights into the composition of Hamlet as a dramatized personality; the fourth investigates the way in which the poet-playwright’s autobiographical impulses may have helped in the construction of early modern stage selves; the final, fifth section explores the kaleidoscopic sources of the royal protagonists in Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me, and Shakespeare’s Richard III.

This collection of essays seeks to add a further contribution to the growing body of criticism that investigates the multi-facetted, multi-layered construction of early modern subjectivity.

Pauline Blanc is Senior Lecturer at the University Jean Moulin-Lyon 3 where she specialises in the English drama of the XVth-XVIIth centuries.

“This volume will repay study, both by those interested in one of the key concepts of the early modern period and by those interested in drama and theatre. Significantly these essays eschew monolithic concepts of the self, especially those derived from social constructions. Instead we encounter a kaleidoscopic mixture of considerations of the relationships between sources of the self and grammar, theatricalisation, intertextuality, sources and analogues (including Arabic texts), the visual arts and psychology, signatures, and myth.. The range of plays matches the range of approaches.”

Michael Hattaway, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Sheffield

“Where there are representations of dramatic characters in action and conflict, there are representations of persons shaped by the intimations of selfhood that constitute individuality, identity, beliefs, desires, tastes, and volition in their public and private manifestations. In this collection of twelve complementary essays covering the English Renaissance theatre from its late medieval inception to the first half of the seventeenth century, the representation of selfhood is examined from the allegorical representations of the generic human soul in a spiritualized universe to the secular psyche caught in the throes of overwhelming emotion. Challenging critical questions arise with each contributor, whether selfhood is mimetic or constructed, whether the dramatized personality is best understood by the actor or the critic, whether the strong masculine style of rulership of the Henrican period can be replicated in the new bureaucratic age of the Stuarts, whether selfhood is socially and contextually generated or arises from autonomous interiority, or whether playwrights model their plays upon autobiographical impulses, to mention but a few. Many plays from the period receive detailed attention, and the collection is full of novel insights. These are probing, well-written essays with a remarkable breadth of approaches and innovative perspectives—as good an investigation into the perplexing matter of selfhood on the early modern stage as can be found.”

Donald Beecher, Professor of English, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

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