English 630.001: Renaissance Drama


Spring 2001 
M 4:30-7:10
Krug Hall 5
Robert Matz
Office Hours: 1:00-2:30 and by appointment
Office: Robinson A422
Email: rmatz@gmu.edu
Office Ph. #: 993-1169
home page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmatz

 

For Renaissance moralists, applying make-up ("painting") was a sin against God's natural order; for many of these same moralists so were plays, since in playing a part one altered one's very being. No wonder anti-cosmetic rants so often appear in Renaissance drama, as in this quotation from Hamlet. In this course, we will consider how the remarkably brilliant and self-conscious Renaissance theater was energized by and played out anxieties about changes in a supposedly "natural" order, not only in the content of the plays (frequently satiric, dark and/or spectacularly violent) but also in their very form as "made-up" works of human art. We'll consider the plays' treatment of gender relations (note in the woodcut that there is no husband here; the woman being made-up by the devil looks instead to her own face in the mirror, while the woman in the foreground bears a rod, symbol of male social and sexual authority). We'll consider too how anxieties about gender relate to new forms of social mobility and political authority during the period, which might also seem to upset a "natural" order. And finally, we'll consider the theater itself as a place apart from the everyday, a place of fun, holiday, riot or license, of "play" rather than rule.
 

Along with the plays, we'll read a number of essays from a recent anthology of criticism that reinterprets Elizabethan and Jacobean drama under the rubric "staging the Renaissance." We'll explore some of the common (or divergent) qualities and assumptions of these reinterpretations, and the ways in which "staging" in this anthology is seen as integral to "the Renaissance." In doing so we'll become familiar with some of the historicist, feminist and poststructuralist impulses that have shaped the reinterpretation of the Renaissance stage and Renaissance culture over the past two decades. Additionally we'll work throughout the semester on the process of writing your final research paper.
 
 
 

Required Texts:

Staging the Renaissance (SR), ed. D.S. Kastan and P. Stallybrass
Ben Jonson, Five Plays, ed. G.A. Wilkes
Thomas Dekker, Shoemaker's Holiday, ed. Anthony Parr
William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor (New Mermaids edition)
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, ed. Bevington and Rasmussen
John Webster, Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays, ed. Rene Weis
Thomas Middleton, Five Plays, ed. Bryan Loughrey and Neil Taylor
Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Miriam, ed. Ferguson and Waller
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster (photocopy from copy shop)
On-line readings available on the web version of this syllabus at my home page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rmatz (please print out)

Course requirements: Class participation, weekly reading responses, a presentation, a close reading (5-7 pp.), a prospectus (1-2 pp.) an annotated biliography and a final paper (15-20 pp.)
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Note: Schedule subject to change (I will give warning, however).
 
Jan. 22 Course introduction Events and due dates
Jan. 29 Jonson, Volpone; Steven Mullaney, "Civic Rites, City Sites: The Place of the Stage" (SR, 17-26); Peggy Knapp, "Ben Jonson and the Publicke Riot: Ben Jonson's Comedies" (SR, 164-80)
Feb. 5 Dekker, Shoemaker's Holiday; David Scott Kastan, "Workhouse and/as Playhouse: The Shoemaker's Holiday" (SR, 151-63)
Feb. 12 Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor; Jean E. Howard, "Women as Spectators Spectacles and Paying Customers" (SR, 68-74); and from Stephen Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse (online) and from Thomas Nashe, "Defense of Plays" (from his Pierce Penniless) (online) Five-page close reading assigned
Feb. 19 Jonson, Bartholomew Fair

Reading TBA

Feb. 26 Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Jonathan Dollimore, "Subversion Through Transgression: Doctor Faustus" (SR, 122-32) Five-close reading due

Annotated bibliography assigned

Spring Break
March 12 Marlowe, Edward II; Jonathan Goldberg, "Sodomy and Society: The Case of Christopher Marlowe" (SR, 75-82);
March 19 Webster, Duchess of Malfi; Peter Stallybrass, "Reading the Body and the Jacobean Theater of Consumption: The Revenger's Tragedy" (SR, 210-20); Frank Whigham, "Incest and Ideology: The Duchess of Malfi" (SR, 263-74) 1 -2 page prospectus due
March 26 No Class: conferences
April 2 Middleton, Women Beware Women; Jonathan V. Crewe, "The Theater of the Idols: Theatrical and Anti-Theatrical Discourse" (SR, 49-56) Annotated bibliography due
April 9 Cary, Tragedy of Miriam; Margaret W. Ferguson, "The Spectre of Resistance: The Tragedy of Miriam"(SR, 235-50)
April 16 Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster; Lisa Jardine, "Boy Actors, Female Roles, and Elizabethan Eroticism" (SR, 57-67)
April 23 Paper Exchange Fifteen-page first version of paper due
April 30 Overflow, recapitulation and wrap-up Final paper due

 

Some notes on course requirements (further details about paper assignments will be forthcoming):

--Reading notes should be about a page of informal ideas about the day's reading, either the texts or the criticism (or both). They should address thoughts you've had or questions you'd like raise about the reading. Your notes might be a listing of different ideas, or an extended treatment of one. These notes may be developed out of the marginalia you produced as you read (I suggest this approach). I will collect them but they need not be typed. I hope that, in addition to helping you prepare for class, these notes will become a mine for you while you're working on your papers.

--The presentation should provide the class with an account of a critical essay that discusses the day's play. The essay should be recent, dated at least later than the assigned critical essays for the day. You should pick the essay based on its interest and apparent importance (important for example because it provides a significantly different and compelling way of seeing the play than the one(s) in the assigned critical reading, or because it significantly develops that reading). In your presentation give both a synopsis of the argument, an account of why you picked this essay to present, and, if relevant, an account of the essay's relationship to the critical essays that were assigned for the day's class. The presentation should be no more than 10 minutes long.

--The first paper should be about five to seven pages and provide a close reading of some moment or a set of related moments in one of the plays. It is due on February 26.

--The 1-2 page prospectus should give a synopsis of the idea you want to explore in your final paper, as well as questions that remained to be answered, and/or speculation about further directions to develop the topic. The prospectus should be based on your close reading and the on-going work you are doing on the annotated bibliography. The 1-2 page prospectus is due March 19. The following week there will be no class. Instead, we will discuss your prospectus in scheduled conferences.

--The annotated bibliography will be a list of about 15 critical, historical, literary or theoretical sources relevant to the play that you are working on. They should also particularly focus on helping you develop ideas discussed in your close reading. Work on the prospectus and the annotated biliography overlap and, ideally, will mutually inform one another. The annotated bibliography is due on April 2.

--A 15-page first version of your term paper will be due in class on April 23. This class will be devoted to sharing work with other students. You are also invited to see me at my office with your first version of the paper.

--Following the paper workshop, you will have time further to develop and revise your work, based on the suggestions you have received from your peer reviewer, on your own interests or discussion with me. Final papers due in class on April 30.

--Students are expected to attend each session of class.

--Grades will be derived as follows:
 
First paper: 15 %
Participation = attendance, reading notes, class discussion, presentation, and prospectus, all weighted about equally 25% 
Annotated Bibliography: 20%
Final paper: 40%