Aims

This module explores performances of gender and power on the early modern stage and page. On this drama-centred module, we will explore how gender and power are represented and negotiated across a range of performance spaces, from theatres to country houses, and across a range of genres, from comedy and tragedy to closet drama and voyage drama. In so doing, we will trace how gender and power intersect with race, class, and sexuality in early modern culture, and seek to recover perspectives and voices from those in marginalised positions. Our approach will be informed by the lively critical conversations about these issues being conducted in current research.

Outline Of Syllabus

Possible module plays include: a comedy exploring gender and sexuality (such as Lyly’s Galatea), a ‘true crime’ domestic tragedy (such as Arden of Faversham), and a ‘voyage drama’ (such as Fletcher’s The Island Princess), as well as Shakespearean comedy and tragedy (e.g. Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello). This module will also focus on at least two plays by women, such as Lady Jane Cavendish and Lady Elizabeth Brackley’s The Concealed Fancies, and Lady Jane Lumley’s Iphigenia.

Concepts to be explored in relation to power in early modern England will include:
- gender
- class
- race
- sexuality
- nationality

Students will be encouraged to bring additional concepts into discussion.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures present the module concepts and contexts and clarify and explain unfamiliar material. Students respond to these ideas and draw on their own reading in small-group seminar work and in peer-led study groups. The film screenings offer examples of how other directors and companies have staged and performed these texts.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The portfolio will offer students the opportunity to set goals, track progress, reflect on their participation in the module, and to submit examples of their formative work.

The essay requires students to engage in detail with the texts and concepts studied, demonstrating their ability to relate critical and historical debates to textual analysis, as well as assessing key discipline-specific skills in research and writing. It offers students an opportunity to conceptualise a wider argument which addresses the themes of the module.