Spectacular Imaginings: Renaissance Drama and the Stage 1580-1640
Spectacular Imaginings explores English Renaissance drama and its staging between the advent of the commercial theatres in London (circa 1580) and their closure during the early 1640s as a consequence of the English Civil War. This new module has been developed with, and will be co-taught by, scholars and theatre practitioners at London’s Globe Theatre. The Globe’s programme at both its new indoor Jacobean theatre (the Sam Wanamaker theatre), as well as its main outdoor theatre, will form an important part of this module with students attending performances at both venues. The module will focus on a selection of plays from this period, exploring them in their original social, cultural and aesthetic contexts. It will also reflect upon why plays from this era are so frequently and successfully re-produced for the modern stage and screen. What roles did theatre play in London during the Renaissance and why was England virtually unique in Europe (Spain is the only counterpart) in creating a large-scale commercial theatre that generated a vast corpus of new plays? The module examines many of the most significant themes with which this theatre engages; among them, unruly sexualities (incest, adultery, rape); violence and eloquence; London and city commerce; domestic tragedy; marriage and divorce; the place of the court; the foreign and the exotic; and the supernatural. It considers the roles of genre, acting styles, theatre companies, star actors, boy players, audiences and the varying physical spaces of the theatres in mediating these themes. Students will have access to the unique Globe archives when researching their dissertation projects. A variety of genres will be studied (tragedies, comedies, tragi-comedies and histories) and four of the plays have been determined by the Globe’s season.
Learning outcomes and Assessment
I would like to invite all students to submit a practise essay of 1500 words to me just prior to, or just after, the mid semester reading week or, alternatively, several smaller passages of writing
(submitted to me throughout the period of the module) that you would like some feedback on.
This written work will not be given a grade but it can serve as a focus for feedback about your dissertation project.
One 6000 word dissertation (the word count does not include footnotes and bibliography) due in the Summer term (exact date on Sussex Direct) should demonstrate:
1) the ability to research widely and acquire expertise in an area of particular interest; 2) an accurate understanding on the interplay of drama and performance with the social and political contexts of early modern England; 3) an ability to analyse the ways in which drama responds to commercial demands and shifts in aesthetic ‘taste’; 4) the skills requisite to organising complex material into an extended piece of written work.
Essential purchases: English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology eds., Engle, Maus,
Rasmussen (W.W.Norton@Company, 2002); Oxford Compact Shakespeare, or Arden or Norton
Shakespeare; plus editions (unspecified—you are likely to find good second-hand copies on
Amazon, but both these plays are available in Penguin Classics) of Marlowe, Dido Queen of
Carthage and John Ford, The Broken Heart.

Highly Recommended essay collections for purchase:
David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass, Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and
Jacobean Drama (Routledge, 1991).
Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, eds, Sullivan, Cheney, Hadfield (OUP, 2006).
Useful aids: Many of these books specifically refer to Shakespearean drama but they provide helpful contexts for studying Renaissance theatre more generally.
Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, eds., Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Orlin (OUP, 2003). A New
History of Early English Drama, eds. Cox and Kastan (Columbia, 1997); Richard Dutton, Mastering
the Revels: the regulation and censorship of English renaissance drama (Macmillan, 1991).Simon Palfrey,
Doing Shakespeare (Arden, Thomson Learning, 2005): very cogent chapters on Shakespeare’s language and characters; Shakespeare in Parts (OUP, 2007). Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: from
stage to page (Routledge, 2005). Douglas Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing house (CUP, 2000);
Jeremy Lopez, Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama (CUP, 2007);
Martin White, Renaissance drama in action: an introduction to aspects of theatre practice and performance
(Routledge, 1998). A. Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (1987). Reading Shakespeare’s Dramatic
Language: A Guide (Arden Shakespeare; Thomson Learning, 2001). Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s
Language (Penguin). Shakespeare: an Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, ed., Russ McDonald
(Blackwell, 2004). On changes in critical approaches to Shakespeare and Renaissance drama since the 1980s see T. Hawkes, Introduction, Alternative Shakespeares 2.
Course Delivery: Weekly Monday afternoon lectures plus four 2hr seminars on Thursday afternoons at the Globe Theatre in London, three of them followed by an evening performance of the play studied, in the Sam Wanamaker Theatre. These will be interspersed with 2 hour seminars on Thursdays in the remaining weeks at the University of Sussex.
Students will make their own travel arrangements to and from London but theatre tickets will be block-booked by the School of English. The cost to students for the 3 performances will be approximately £30 in total.
Week 1 (Mon 19 Jan to Sun 25 Jan):
(Monday introductory lecture and Thursday seminar both at Sussex)
Kings on Display: the spectacle of kingship
Essential Reading:
John Fletcher, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610)
Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (1592)
Ben Jonson, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618) (a copy of this short court masque will be provided)
Further reading:
Also, think about, Shakespeare, Richard II (1595)

Alan Stewart, ‘Edward II and Male Same-Sex Desire’, in EMED.
Jonathan Goldberg, ‘Sodomy and Society: The Case of Christopher Marlowe’, in Staging the
Renaissance
P.J.Finkelpearl, ‘The Maid’s Tragedy: Honorable Tyrannicide’ in Court and Country Politics in the
Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (Princeton University Press, 1990).
Stephen Orgel, ‘Making Greatness Familiar’ in Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theatre, ed.,
D.Bergeron (University of Georgia, 1981).
Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘Playing and Power’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Dollimore and Sinfield, History and Ideology: the Instance of Henry V’ in Alternative Shakespeares, ed., John Drakakis (Methuen, 1985).
Jean Howard, ‘Kings and Pretenders: monarchical theatricality in the Shakespearean history play’ in, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (Routledge, 1994).
David Lindley, Introduction, Court Masques (OUP, 1995).
On the masque: Martin Butler, ‘The Masque of Blackness and Stuart Court Culture’in EMED.
Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Marlowe and the will to Absolute play’ in Renaissance Self-Fashioning (The
University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Week 2 (Mon 26 Jan to Sun 1 Feb):
(Monday lecture on Antony and Cleopatra at Sussex and Thursday afternoon at the Globe)
Moving Indoors: from the Globe (outdoor amphitheatre) to Blackfriars (indoor theatre)
Globe, Thursday 29 January, Introductory session, Globe exploration and seminar with
Dr Farah Karim-Cooper and Dr Will Tosh (15.45-17.45)
Essential Reading
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Farah Karim-Cooper and Christie Carson (eds), Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment
(Cambridge, 2008) [Chapter 15, ‘Discoveries from the Globe Stage’] For these core texts consult the Study Direct Library Aspire reading list.
Andrew Gurr, ‘The new fashion for indoor plays’, in Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper (eds),
Moving Shakespeare Indoors: performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse
(Cambridge, 2014), pp.203-16
John Astington, Actors and Acting in Shakespeare’s Time: The Art of Stage Playing (Cambridge,
2010) [Chapter 1: ‘Shadows, jests and counterfeits’]
Further Reading
Paul Menzer (ed.), Inside Shakespeare: Essays on the Blackfriars Stage (Selinsgrove, 2006)
Keith Sturgess, Jacobean Private Theatres (Routledge, 1987)
Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern (eds), Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance
(Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013)

Week 3 (Mon 2 Feb to Sun 8 Feb)
Performing sexuality on and in the early modern playhouse
Globe, Thursday 5 February, 15.45-17-45 seminar with Dr Will Tosh and evening performance of The Changeling at 19.30.
Essential Reading
Middleton, The Changeling
Kim Solga, Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible Acts (Palgrave, 2009)
[Chapter 5, ‘The Architecture of the Act: Removing Beatrice’s Joanna’s Closet’]
Further Reading
Celia R. Daileader, Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage: Transcendence, Desire, and the Limits of the Visible
(Cambridge, 1998)
Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition drama (CUP, 1980).
Swapan Chakravo, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)
Week 4 (Mon 9 Feb to Sun 15 Feb)
Revenge tragedy, malcontents, incest and murder
Essential Reading:
John Ford, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629-1633)
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, (1613-14)
Further Reading:
If you're writing on this topic do look at some Senecan tragedy--Thyestes is a good start.
Terry Eagleton, Introduction, Sweet Violence: the idea of the tragic (Blackwell, 2003).
D. Callaghan, ‘The Duchess of Malfi and Early Modern widows’ in Early Modern English Drama, eds, Sullivan, Cheney, Hadfield.
Susan Wiseman, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore: representing the incestuous body, Renaissance Bodies,
Gent and Llewellyn (Reaktion, 1990).
Frank Whigham, ‘Incest and Ideology’ in Staging the Renaissance, eds., Stallybrass and Kastan.
A.A.Bromham and Zara Bruzzi, The Changeling and the Years of Crisis, 1619-1624 (Pinter, 1990)
Michael Neill, Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford, 1997)., esp., 'The Endings of the Duchess of Malfi'.
Dympna Callaghan, ‘Women, tragedy and Transgression’, Women and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy
(Harvester, 1989).
Dympna Callaghan, ‘The Duchess of Malfi and Early Modern Widows’ in Early Modern English
Drama.
Carol Rutter, Chapter 1, in Enter the Body: women and representation on Shakespeare’s stage (2001)
Richard McCabe, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Incest’ in Early Modern English Drama.
Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 1996).

Week 5 (Mon 16 Feb to Sun 22 Feb)
Staging London and its Tensions
Essential reading:
Ben Jonson, Epicoene (1609)
Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613)
Further reading:
Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599)
David Scott Kastan, ‘Workshop and/as Playhouse’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Karen Newman, ‘City Talk: Women and Commodification’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Peggy Knapp, ‘Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot, in Staging the Renaissance.
Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition drama (CUP, 1980).
Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: drama and the disciplines of shame in early modern England
(Cornell University Press, 1993) especially, Ch. 1, ‘Leaky vessels: the incontinent women of city comedy’. pp. 23-63.
Swapan Chakravo, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York,
1985).
Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘Family Rites: city comedy and the strategies of patriarchalism’ in Wilson and Dutton, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama (Longman, 1992).
Marjorie Garber, ‘The Logic of the Transvestite’ in Kastan and Stallybrass eds., Staging the
Renaissance. (1991)
L. Levine, ‘Men in Women’s Clothing’ in Men in Women’s Clothing: antitheatricality and effeminization
(1994).
Darryll Grantley, London in Early Modern English Drama (Palgrave, 2008).
Stephen Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: Licence, Play and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago,
1998).
L. Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (1995) esp. Part III
P.Griffiths and M. Jenner, ed., Londinopolis: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Early Modern
London (2000)
Julie Sanders (ed) Ben Jonson in Context (CUP, 2010)
Natasha Korda and Michelle David, Working Subjects in Early Modern Drama (Ashgate 2011)
A. Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (revised 2004) esp. chs. 2-3.
Mark Thornton Burnett, Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture (Macmillan,
1997).
D.Miehl, A.Stock and A-J Zwierlein, Plotting Early Modern London: New Essays in Jacobean City
Comedy (2004) chs., 3, 4, 6.
Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: the Market and Theatre in Anglo-American thought, 1550-1750
(CUP, 1986).

Week 6: (Mon 23 Feb to Sun 1 March)
Lechery and Corruption at Ducal Courts
Essential Reading:
John Webster, The White Devil (1612)
Marston, The Malcontent (1604)
Further Reading:
Thomas Middleton, The Revengers Tragedy (1607)
J.W. Lever, Introduction and Chapter 5, The Tragedy of State (Methuen, 1971).
Ann Rosalind Jones, ‘Italians and Others’ in Staging the Renaissance.
Peter Stallybrass, ‘Reading the Body and the Jacobean Theatre of Consumption’ in Staging the
Renaissance.
Luke Wilson, ‘The White Devil and the Law’, in EMED.
Jonathan Dollimore, ‘The White Devil: Transgression Without Virtue’, in Wilson and Dutton, New
Historicism and Renaissance Drama.
Week 7 (Mon 2 March to Sun 8 March)
Reading week: no lecture or seminar
Week 8 (Mon 9 March to Sun 15 March)
Unruly Women, Family and State
Essential reading:
Anon, Arden of Faversham (c.1588-92)
Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam (c. 1603-8)
Further reading:
Danielle Clarke, ‘The Tragedy of Mariam and the Politics of Marriage’ in EMED.
Margaret W. Ferguson, ‘The Spectre of Resistance’, in Staging the Renaissance.
Catherine Belsey, ‘Alice Arden’s Crime’, in Staging the Renaissance.
See Danielle Clarke’s essay on the politics of marriage , above (EMED).
Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP,1996).

Week 9 (Mon 16 March to Sun 22 March)
Performing violence on the early modern indoor stage
Globe, Thursday 19 March, 15.45-1745 seminar with Dr Farah Karim-Cooper and evening performance of The Broken Heart at 19.30.
Essential Reading
John Ford, The Broken Heart
Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern (eds), Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance
(Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013) [Chapter 4, ‘“They eat each other’s arms”: Stage Blood and Body Parts’, by Lucy Munro]
Kim Solga, Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible Acts (Palgrave, 2009)
[Chapter 1, ‘Encounters with the Missing’]
Week 10 (Mon 23 March to Sun 29 March)
Shakespearean Politics in Strange Guises.
Essential Reading:
William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606)
Cymbeline (1609-10)
Further reading:
The introduction to Martin Butler’s edition of Cymbeline, (New Cambridge Shakespeare, 2005).
Kiernan Ryan, ‘Shakespearean Comedy and Romance: the Utopian Imagination’, New Casebooks:
Shakespeare’s Romances, ed., Alison Thorne (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2003).
A. Thorne, ‘To write and read/ Be henceforth treacherous’: Cymbeline and the problem of interpretation’, Shakespeare’s Late Plays.
Ruth Nevo, ‘Cymbeline: the rescue of the king’, New Casebooks: Shakespeare’s Romances.
Jodi Mikalachki, ‘The Masculine Romance of Roman Britain’ in New Casebooks: Shakespeare’s
Romances.
Leah Marcus, ch.3 ‘James’, Puzzling Shakespeare (1988).
D. Hamilton, ‘Cymbeline: the oath of allegiance and the English Catholic’ in Shakespeare and the
Politics of Protestant England (1992).
Ronald J. Boling, ‘Anglo-Welsh relations in Cymbeline’ , Shakespeare Quarterly 51 (2000) 33-66.
Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘Playing and Power’ in Staging the Renaissance.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft
Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil (Routledge, 1994)
Stuart Clark, Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1998).
Brian Easlea, Witch Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy (Harvester, 1980).
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Weidenfeld, 1971).
Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History (Routledge, 1996).
M.E. Wiesner, Ch. 7, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (C.U.P., 1993)
Janet Adelman, ‘Born of Woman: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth’, Cannibals, Witches
and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, ed., M. Garber, 1987. Also in Adelman, Suffocating Mothers.

Kathleen McLuskie, ‘Women and Cultural Production: The Case of Witchcraft’, Renaissance
Dramatists (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).
Peter Stallybrass, ‘Macbeth and Witchcraft’, Focus on Macbeth, ed., John Russell Brown.
Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern
England (CUP, 1998).
Week 11 (Mon 30 March to Sunday 5 April) Easter Break Thurs 2 to Wed 8 April
Lecture on Dido on Monday 30 March but no Thursday seminar on 2 April
Week 12 (Mon 6 April to Sun 12 April)
Imagining adulthood on the early modern stage
No Monday lecture. Globe, Thursday 9 April seminar with Dr Will Tosh 15.45-1745 and evening performance of Dido Queen of Carthage at 19.30.
Essential Reading
Marlowe, Dido Queen of Carthage
Lucy Munro, Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (Cambridge, 2005)
[Introduction and Chapter 1]
Mary-Kay Gamel, ‘The Triumph of Cupid: Marlowe’s Dido Queen of Carthage’, The American
Journal of Philology, 126:4 (2005), pp. 613-622
Further Reading
Irwin Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Design (1966) [pp.130-154]
Mary Bly, Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford, 2000)
Mario DiGangi, The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 1997)
Week 13 (Mon 13 April to Sun 19 April) term ends Friday 17 th .Consolidation week:
Dissertation tutorials. No Thursday seminar