English 603 Topic 11/English 501 Topic 13 - Drama on the Edge
Fall 2009
Instructor: Dr. Mary Polito
polito [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Wednesday 9:30 am - 12:00 pm
Course description:
In his recent England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640-1642, historian David Cressy reengages the question of whether the social and religious upheaval, military conflicts and regime change in mid seventeenth-century England can be called revolutionary. After several decades of debate on this topic, Cressy notes, much work in the 1980s viewed the adjective as excessive. Nevertheless, "the historiographical undead the English Revolution keeps getting up and pulling the stake from its heart" (8). To those scholars who conjure its resurrection, Cressy argues that "[m]uch of England's world turned upside before the outbreak of the war" (09). Among the many, many material manifestations of public voice from the period 1640-1642 that Cressy explores to make his case, however, we do not find theatrical performance or dramatic works. Yet the revisionary work of literary scholars and theatre historians over the last several years points to a late Caroline theatre that also reflects, not a foreknowledge of war and regicide, but certainly an England "on edge" and a public determined to engage with politics, uncertainty and authority in a myriad of novel ways.
This course will begin by considering the nature of change in human history as articulated by theory, historiography and cultural geography. Cressy himself belongs to the genealogical line of historical thinking on this topic generated by the Marxist historian Christopher Hill in the mid-twentieth century. Hill, we now appreciate, influenced Foucault's important lectures at the College de France in the 1970s. These lectures will contribute to our thinking about local micro-narratives that reveal the subject's response to acts and arts of government as well as the freedom of the subject in this period of history. Feminist work on gender, politics, performance, place, patronage and literary production during the late Caroline period will also inform our approach. The principle object of our studies will be the many forms of dramatic writing and performance that seemed to respond to social and political turmoil from the late 1630s to the closing of the theatres by Parliament in September 1642.
The University of Calgary Library is, in fact, in possession of a newly discovered, anonymous, untitled dramatic manuscript from this period. Research has recently demonstrated that it was revised from an earlier draft after May 1640. (The draft is extant in an early miscellany at Arbury Hall, Warwickshire, and was named The Humorous Magistrate by a scholar in the 1980s). The play, set in a rural county shire, engages with King Charles' attempts to micromanage the state during the eleven years between 1629 and 1641 when Parliament was never called. In its satire of a country Justice of the Peace during "the Personal Rule" and in its presentation of a pastoral counter-commonwealth where vagabonds thrive, the play shares much with the very last play presented on the public stage in 1642: Richard Brome's The Jovial Crew. We will study these and a cluster of similar plays from the early 1640s which figure rural utopias as against the sometimes dystopian spaces of the city and court. A figure who allowed for criticism of Charles by indirection in serious political tracts, libelous ballads and drama was that of the ill-chosen favourite\counselor. George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, a favourite who was assassinated in 1627 continued to give this figure a "local habitation and a name" in texts and performances into the 1640s. A second focus of the course will be the function of the representation of Buckingham in such works, including as we find him in the figure of Crispinus, the favourite of Nero in another play from the Arbury miscellany, named The Emperor's Favourite. The debate about government is particularly vibrant in the elaborate, "high tech" form, the masque, the favourite of the royalty and wealthy aristocrats such as William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. The powerful role of Queen Henrietta in the writing, production and performance of the royal masques has only recently been the subject of research and inquiries are only beginning about aristocratic and gentry women's roles as patrons, sometimes performers and perhaps writers of late Caroline drama. Throughout the course, we will attend to evidence about women and men of all classes in political engagement with authority and to the role and representation of gender in the dramas and performances we study. We will keep in mind Cressy's contention that a study of this period will yield an understanding of the nature of change in human history.
Course Texts:
David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640-1642
Tim Cresswell, Place: a short introduction
Essays, articles and chapters available electronically or provided in a Course Pack
Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria.
Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," "Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of `Political Reason,'" and "The Subject and Power."
Curtis Perry, Curtis. Literature and Favoritism in Early Modern England.
Julie Sanders, Julie. "Beggars' Commonwealths and the Pre-Civil War Stage: Suckling's ‘The Goblins,' Brome's ‘A Jovial Crew,' and Shirley's ‘The Sisters.'
---. "Caroline Salon Culture and Female Agency: The Countess of Carlisle, Henrietta Maria, and Public Theatre."
---. "Ecocritical Readings and the Seventeenth-Century Woodland: Milton's Comus and the Forest of Dean."
Rasmussen, Eric. "The Revision of Scripts."
Matthew Steggle, "Redating A Jovial Crew."
Werstine, Paul. "Plays in Manuscript".
Suzanne Westfall, "‘The useless dearness of the diamond': patronage theatre and households."
Osborne Manuscript Play and Plays from the Arbury Miscellany
Anonymous. Osborne team's side by side edition of the Arbury and Osborne versions of The Humorous Magistrate
---. The Emperor's Favourite
---. The Twice Chang'd Friar (this play, unlike the others, is named in the manuscript)
Plays played on the London stages:
Richard Brome, The Jovial Crew
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, The Country Captain
Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd
James Shirley, The Sisters
John Suckling, The Goblins
John Tatham, Love Crowns the End
Masques:
Ben Jonson, Chloridia
---. Love's Welcome to Bolsover
---. The Gypsies Metamorphosed
----. The King's Entertainment at Welbeck
William Davenant, Salmacida Spolia
John Milton, Arcades
---. Masque at Ludlow Castle
Online Databases:
Early English Books Online (University of Calgary)
Early Stuart Libels: an Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources
Oxford English Dictionary of National Biography, (University of Calgary)
