Ranging from the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson and Milton to those of Robert Southwell an... more Ranging from the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson and Milton to those of Robert Southwell and Anna Trapnel, this study explores the conscious use of archaic style by poets and dramatists between 1590 and 1674. It focuses on the wide-ranging, complex and self-conscious uses of archaic linguistic and poetic style, analysing the uses to which writers put literary style in order to re-embody and reshape the past. It brings together scholarly conversations on temporality, memory and historiography, on the relationships between medieval and early modern literary cultures, on the workings of dramatic and poetic style, and on national history and identity. Neither pure anachronism nor pure nostalgia, the attempts of writers to reconstruct outmoded styles within their own works reveal a largely untold story about the workings of literary influence and tradition, the interactions between past and present, and the uncertain contours of English nationhood
Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal
ISSUE 1 • AGE CULTURE HUMANITIES 257 the chapter frequently mentions the ongoing difficulty in un... more ISSUE 1 • AGE CULTURE HUMANITIES 257 the chapter frequently mentions the ongoing difficulty in uniting the disability movement with late life advocacy groups, this recognition of "corporeal limitations" as a reflection of difference might provide the basis for some common ground. Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment views the body in late life as productively destabilizing, a "site for the expression of identities and lifestyles that are other than aged, other than old" (31). It signals an important shift in thinking about the body in aging: not as its "limiting condition," but instead as a platform for staging a renewed battle for recognizing difference, even perhaps considering the body's more radical materialism. NOTES 1 See Carr and Komp for a recent analysis of the Third Age.
The senses in early modern England, 1558–1660, 2020
Thomas Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, first performed by the Children of the Revels around ... more Thomas Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, first performed by the Children of the Revels around 1630, features a character called Acolastus, a semiallegorical caricature of a 'voluptuous Epicure, that out of an immoderate, and untam'd desire seekes after all pleasures promiscuously, without respect of honest or lawfull'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Acolastus is obsessed with taste, and he delivers a paean to his favourite sensory experience: Foole was he that wish'd but a cranes short neck. Give me one, nature, long as is a Cable, Or sounding line, and all the way a palate To tast my meate the longer. I would have My senses feast together; Nature envied us In giving single pleasures; let me have My eares, eyes, palate, nose, and touch, at once Injoy their happinesse[.] 1
This study aims to determine and analyze the application of hawear customary law in preventing po... more This study aims to determine and analyze the application of hawear customary law in preventing pollution and environmental damage on the sea coast in Southeast Maluku Regency. This research is normative juridical research, that is research conducted on legal principles, in the sense of concrete legal values (norms) and legal systems. The approach used in research is the statute approach and conceptual approach. This study found the answer that the Hawear Customary Law in Southeast Maluku Regency according to the results of the study could be applied in preventing pollution and environmental damage on the sea coast in Southeast Maluku Regency by conducting customary deliberations (which were followed by Adat leaders (adat elders). The customary (adat elders) held a meeting and formulated the legal norms of Sasi (Hawear) Meti and Sasi Dusun Plant to apply to environmental protection, especially the prevention of pollution and environmental destruction on the coast of the sea, so that the coast along with its marine biota is usually enjoyed by the Indigenous Hawear people in Southeast Maluku Kabupaen from present and future generations by expanding the legal norms of Sasi.
This chapter explores the “queerness” of children’s performance, focusing on the capacity of play... more This chapter explores the “queerness” of children’s performance, focusing on the capacity of plays originally performed by early modern boys’ playing companies to render social and behavioral conventions malleable and ambiguous. Exploring three plays dealing with sexual transformation, The Maid’s Metamorphosis, George Chapman’s May Day and Thomas Randolph’s Amyntas, it argues that children’s drama presents both femininity and masculinity as contingent and subject to malfunction or glitch. Moreover, the unstable gender identities of individual characters spill out into broader aspects of social life, such as age and class. These plays may indulge in fantasies of bodily integrity, but the ubiquitous presence of the boy actor means that they also demonstrate the arbitrary relationship between gendered and sexed bodies, subverting and complicating normative hierarchies and structures.
Early modern England had a heavy social and psychological investment in hierarchies of age, which... more Early modern England had a heavy social and psychological investment in hierarchies of age, which interacted with other hierarchies—notably those of gender, nationality and class—to structure the politics of both family and state. Age was both a source of authority—parents govern their children in part because they are older and more experienced—and a process that might undermine that authority through the physical or mental weakness caused by an individual’s increasing age. This chapter explores the interaction between the politics of the family and what Paul Griffiths has termed a ‘politics of age’, focusing on three plays in which the family’s hierarchies of age are transformed, exploited or disrupted: Nathan Field, John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The Queen of Corinth (c. 1617), Fletcher’s The Humorous Lieutenant (King’s Men, c. 1619) and Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood’s The Late Lancashire Witches (1634). In depicting relationships in which children take on the authority ...
This essay explores intersections between early modern plays and contemporary creative practice i... more This essay explores intersections between early modern plays and contemporary creative practice in approaching Dekker, Ford, Rowley and Webster’s “Keep the Widow Waking,” a domestic tragedy that draws on the legal proceedings surrounding the disturbing mistreatment of a rich widow, Anne Elsdon. The play was performed at the Red Bull playhouse, and is now lost, but legal records survive. Drawing on an workshop on “verbatim theater” at the London Shakespeare Centre, this essay examines the texts and performances that created the play and its archival traces, and introduces new material to the documentary record. We interrogate how the practices of verbatim theater might enable us to create a new approach to lost plays, using performance to illuminate a canon where the playtexts no longer survive.
Ranging from the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson and Milton to those of Robert Southwell an... more Ranging from the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson and Milton to those of Robert Southwell and Anna Trapnel, this study explores the conscious use of archaic style by poets and dramatists between 1590 and 1674. It focuses on the wide-ranging, complex and self-conscious uses of archaic linguistic and poetic style, analysing the uses to which writers put literary style in order to re-embody and reshape the past. It brings together scholarly conversations on temporality, memory and historiography, on the relationships between medieval and early modern literary cultures, on the workings of dramatic and poetic style, and on national history and identity. Neither pure anachronism nor pure nostalgia, the attempts of writers to reconstruct outmoded styles within their own works reveal a largely untold story about the workings of literary influence and tradition, the interactions between past and present, and the uncertain contours of English nationhood
Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal
ISSUE 1 • AGE CULTURE HUMANITIES 257 the chapter frequently mentions the ongoing difficulty in un... more ISSUE 1 • AGE CULTURE HUMANITIES 257 the chapter frequently mentions the ongoing difficulty in uniting the disability movement with late life advocacy groups, this recognition of "corporeal limitations" as a reflection of difference might provide the basis for some common ground. Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment views the body in late life as productively destabilizing, a "site for the expression of identities and lifestyles that are other than aged, other than old" (31). It signals an important shift in thinking about the body in aging: not as its "limiting condition," but instead as a platform for staging a renewed battle for recognizing difference, even perhaps considering the body's more radical materialism. NOTES 1 See Carr and Komp for a recent analysis of the Third Age.
The senses in early modern England, 1558–1660, 2020
Thomas Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, first performed by the Children of the Revels around ... more Thomas Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, first performed by the Children of the Revels around 1630, features a character called Acolastus, a semiallegorical caricature of a 'voluptuous Epicure, that out of an immoderate, and untam'd desire seekes after all pleasures promiscuously, without respect of honest or lawfull'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Acolastus is obsessed with taste, and he delivers a paean to his favourite sensory experience: Foole was he that wish'd but a cranes short neck. Give me one, nature, long as is a Cable, Or sounding line, and all the way a palate To tast my meate the longer. I would have My senses feast together; Nature envied us In giving single pleasures; let me have My eares, eyes, palate, nose, and touch, at once Injoy their happinesse[.] 1
This study aims to determine and analyze the application of hawear customary law in preventing po... more This study aims to determine and analyze the application of hawear customary law in preventing pollution and environmental damage on the sea coast in Southeast Maluku Regency. This research is normative juridical research, that is research conducted on legal principles, in the sense of concrete legal values (norms) and legal systems. The approach used in research is the statute approach and conceptual approach. This study found the answer that the Hawear Customary Law in Southeast Maluku Regency according to the results of the study could be applied in preventing pollution and environmental damage on the sea coast in Southeast Maluku Regency by conducting customary deliberations (which were followed by Adat leaders (adat elders). The customary (adat elders) held a meeting and formulated the legal norms of Sasi (Hawear) Meti and Sasi Dusun Plant to apply to environmental protection, especially the prevention of pollution and environmental destruction on the coast of the sea, so that the coast along with its marine biota is usually enjoyed by the Indigenous Hawear people in Southeast Maluku Kabupaen from present and future generations by expanding the legal norms of Sasi.
This chapter explores the “queerness” of children’s performance, focusing on the capacity of play... more This chapter explores the “queerness” of children’s performance, focusing on the capacity of plays originally performed by early modern boys’ playing companies to render social and behavioral conventions malleable and ambiguous. Exploring three plays dealing with sexual transformation, The Maid’s Metamorphosis, George Chapman’s May Day and Thomas Randolph’s Amyntas, it argues that children’s drama presents both femininity and masculinity as contingent and subject to malfunction or glitch. Moreover, the unstable gender identities of individual characters spill out into broader aspects of social life, such as age and class. These plays may indulge in fantasies of bodily integrity, but the ubiquitous presence of the boy actor means that they also demonstrate the arbitrary relationship between gendered and sexed bodies, subverting and complicating normative hierarchies and structures.
Early modern England had a heavy social and psychological investment in hierarchies of age, which... more Early modern England had a heavy social and psychological investment in hierarchies of age, which interacted with other hierarchies—notably those of gender, nationality and class—to structure the politics of both family and state. Age was both a source of authority—parents govern their children in part because they are older and more experienced—and a process that might undermine that authority through the physical or mental weakness caused by an individual’s increasing age. This chapter explores the interaction between the politics of the family and what Paul Griffiths has termed a ‘politics of age’, focusing on three plays in which the family’s hierarchies of age are transformed, exploited or disrupted: Nathan Field, John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The Queen of Corinth (c. 1617), Fletcher’s The Humorous Lieutenant (King’s Men, c. 1619) and Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood’s The Late Lancashire Witches (1634). In depicting relationships in which children take on the authority ...
This essay explores intersections between early modern plays and contemporary creative practice i... more This essay explores intersections between early modern plays and contemporary creative practice in approaching Dekker, Ford, Rowley and Webster’s “Keep the Widow Waking,” a domestic tragedy that draws on the legal proceedings surrounding the disturbing mistreatment of a rich widow, Anne Elsdon. The play was performed at the Red Bull playhouse, and is now lost, but legal records survive. Drawing on an workshop on “verbatim theater” at the London Shakespeare Centre, this essay examines the texts and performances that created the play and its archival traces, and introduces new material to the documentary record. We interrogate how the practices of verbatim theater might enable us to create a new approach to lost plays, using performance to illuminate a canon where the playtexts no longer survive.
We have known for over a century that John Marston held a share in Children of the Queen’s Revels... more We have known for over a century that John Marston held a share in Children of the Queen’s Revels, the all-boy playing company that first performed The Dutch Courtesan in 1604, but how this knowledge affects our understanding of his plays requires further exploration. Drawing on neglected documentary sources, this essay reappraises the company’s links with the Chapel Royal choir to argue that Dutch Courtesan capitalizes on the skills that most clearly connected its performers with the royal choir, even while scrutinizing the ways in which the company turned pleasurable recreation into profit.
Despite increasing evidence that continued engagement in creative activities is beneficial as we ... more Despite increasing evidence that continued engagement in creative activities is beneficial as we navigate later life, we still know comparatively little about what participation in theatre, and specifically in theatre-making, means to participants. This chapter presents selected findings from a detailed interdisciplinary case study of one particular theatre - the Victoria/New Victoria Theatre in North Staffordshire - in the lives of older people. The chapter describes how the project took shape; how each of its three strands (archival, interview and performative) developed; and how its rich and complex data set has been used: with a focus on articulating the place of the theatre in people’s lives, and on their understandings of its role in relation to ageing and later life.
This introduction outlines the essays in the Early Theatre Issues in Review forum ‘Beaumont400’, ... more This introduction outlines the essays in the Early Theatre Issues in Review forum ‘Beaumont400’, placing them in the context of the four hundredth anniversary of Francis Beaumont’s death, the performance of his plays in the early twenty-first century, and current developments in scholarship on Beaumont and Fletcher’s works.
This essay explores the ‘lives’ of Francis Beaumont at the point of the four hundredth anniversar... more This essay explores the ‘lives’ of Francis Beaumont at the point of the four hundredth anniversary of his death, through elegies by John Earle and Thomas Pestell and hitherto unknown and newly interpreted biographical information that sheds fresh light on the relationship between his life and works. Focusing in particular on his plays The Scornful Lady and The Woman Hater, it argues that Beaumont and his regular collaborator, John Fletcher, mix (auto)biographical allusions with satire and fantasy. This analysis offers new perspectives on the ways in which their imaginations were sparked by their lived experience.
Early modern drama was a product of the new theatrical spaces that began to open from the 1560s o... more Early modern drama was a product of the new theatrical spaces that began to open from the 1560s onward, multiple venues in and just outside London that played to a significant proportion of Londoners on most afternoons. Revisiting the evidence for this historical moment offers the opportunity to look afresh at the playhouses, plays, and playmakers that drove this new theatrical culture. These three terms include the inns and indoor spaces that regularly hosted plays, alongside the now more familiar outdoor, amphitheatrical venues the Theatre and the Rose; plays onstage, plays in print, and plays that are now lost; and the writers, actors, company managers, and male and female playhouse builders and investors who made the creation and performance of those plays possible. Conventional histories of this period’s theaters have tended to concentrate on the opening of the Theatre in 1576 as the first such playhouse. Scholarship of the late 20th and early 21st centuries shows that this event was not the initiating formative act it has come to seem, and emphasizes instead the multiple decades and kinds of playing space that need to be attended to in understanding the earliest years of the playhouses. Multiple kinds of playing company, too, operated in this period, in particular companies made up of predominantly adult male performers, with boys playing female roles, and companies composed entirely of boy performers.
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