(Major Field) Tudor-Stuart Drama

RATIONALE For this major field on Tudor-Stuart drama, I have several goals. First, not only will I situate these plays within the institutional conditions of their early performances and publication, but I also want to examine how they helped constitute their respective genres. I find it useful to begin with some traditional generic distinctions, namely comedies, histories, tragedies, and tragicomedies. Within these, I specifically focus on city comedies; English chronicle histories; and several types of tragedy, including domestic tragedies, tragedies of state, and Italian revenge tragedies-the various interests of which are usually explored in tragicomedies as well. By reading plays "generically," I will attempt to trace important features in the formation of these genres in addition to later developments within them. Ultimately, I would like to be able then to connect these features and developments to the political and social concerns that the plays also explore. Second, I have tried to include plays that might have participated more directly than others in some of the issues I explore in my British history field: religion, state formation and government, early modern political theory, the homology between the political and domestic realms, and the problems of multiple kingdoms and mixed government. Besides these issues, however, the plays also engaged in social concerns like the regulation of gender and sexuality, the institution of marriage, the mobility of social rank, conflicts between members of different social ranks, etc. Although the distinction between political history and social history is obviously an artificial one, early modern drama highlights just how interrelated these two areas are, for plays frequently resolve political and social conflicts through one another. Political conflicts were often represented as social or domestic in nature, and likewise social and domestic conflicts were often portrayed as political in nature. In non-Shakespeare histories, for example, a king's illicit desire for a particular woman is commonly figured as threat to the kingdom, to his masculinity, and to his lawful marriage, hence as problems within the political, social, and domestic realms. Though writers for the commercial stage explored such issues differently from theorists of politics, religion, and society, the plays do show how the same issues explored in learned circles were similarly dealt with in a form of popular entertainment designed for the heterogeneous audience in a public theater. And since the public theater functioned as important site for the dissemination of this type of "news," as Ben Jonson's The Staple of News demonstrates so vividly, it is vital that we attend to the ways the public theater handled important political and social concerns. Third, I have organized my list of Tudor-Stuart plays so that I cover many of the canonical plays of the period, but I have also chosen "popular plays"—that is, plays that were frequently reprinted—a category that clearly relates to my interest in the early modern book trade. Very often those plays that were popular in print coincide with the canonical plays of the period (The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus, 1 Henry IV, Richard II, and Richard III), but sometimes they do not (Mucedorus, Wily Beguiled, 1 and 2 Edward IV, How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, and The Scornful Lady). These discrepancies raise some potentially interesting questions. How might these (now unpopular) popular plays of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century affect our notions of "the canon"? If we are to treat plays as a certain kind of historical evidence, how should we interpret the potential cultural impact of an anonymous play like How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, which may have been written by Thomas Heywood and which went through seven editions from 1602 to 1634, compared to a play like Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, which was only published in a single edition in 1611? Both plays explore the institution of marriage and were written within a decade of each other, but the popularity of How a Man May Choose should force us to speculate about why the book-buying audience of early modern England preferred this play to Middleton's. Obviously the popularity in print of certain plays was contingent on their having been printed in the first place (would Macbeth have been a popular play if Shakespeare had taken an interest in its publication and prepared a copy for the press prior to its appearance in the 1623 Folio?), but when popular plays from the early modern period have received scant critical attention, we should at least begin to inquire about reasons for their popularity and how they might affect our interpretations of early modern social and political culture.

PRIMARY READINGS (All plays include a conjectural date of composition from Alfred Harbage, Annals of English Drama (2nd. ed., 1964), as well as the date of their first publication.) Anon. Edward III (1590). London, 1596. ____. The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1602). London, 1608. ____. Mucedorus (1590). London, 1598. ____. The Puritan (1606). London, 1607. ____. Wily Beguiled (1602). London, 1606. Beaumont, Francis. The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607). London, 1613. Beaumont, Francis, and John Fletcher. A King and No King (1611). London, 1619. ____. The Maid's Tragedy (1610). London, 1619. ____. Philaster (1609). London, 1620. ____. The Scornful Lady (1611). London, 1616. Dekker, Thomas. The Honest Whore, Part 2 (1605). London, 1630. ____. The Noble Spanish Soldier (1626). London, 1634. ____. The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599). London, 1599. Dekker, Thomas, John Ford, and William Rowley. The Witch of Edmonton (1621). London, 1658. Dekker, Thomas, and Thomas Middleton. The Honest Whore, Part 1 (1604). London, 1604. ____. The Roaring Girl (1608). London, 1611. Fletcher, John. Rollo, Duke of Normandy (1619). London, 1639. Ford, John. The Broken Heart (1629). London, 1633. ____. Perkin Warbeck (1634). London, 1634. ____. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1632). London, 1633. Greene, Robert. James IV (1590). London, 1598. Heywood, Thomas. Edward IV, Part 1 (1599). London, 1599. ____. Edward IV, Part 2 (1599). London, 1599. ____(?). How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1602). London, 1602. ____. If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 1 (1604). London, 1605. ____. If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 (1605). London, 1606. ____. The Rape of Lucrece (1607). London, 1608. Jonson, Ben. Bartholomew Fair (1614). London, 1631. ____. Epicoene (1609). London, 1616. ____. Every Man in His Humour (1616 text). London, 1616. ____. The Staple of News (1625). London, 1631. Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy (1587). London, c.1592. Lyly, John. Gallathea (1585). London, 1592. Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus (A text; 1592). London, 1604. ____. Edward II (1592). London, 1594. ____. Tamburlaine, Part I (1587). London, 1590. ____. Tamburlaine, Part 2 (1588). London, 1590. Marston, John. The Dutch Courtesan (1604). London, 1605. ____. The Malcontent (1604). London, 1604. Middleton, Thomas. The Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611). London, 1630. ____. A Game at Chess (1624). London, 1625. Middleton, Thomas, and William Rowley. The Changeling (1622). London, 1653. Norton, Thomas, and Edward Sackville. Gorboduc (1562). London, 1565. Peele, George. Edward I (1591). London, 1593. Preston, Thomas. Cambises (1561). London, c.1569. Shakespeare, William. Henry IV, Part I (1597). London, c.1598. ____. Henry IV, Part 2 (1597). London, 1600. ____. Henry V (1599). London, 1600. ____. Macbeth (1606). London, 1623. ____. Measure for Measure (1604). London, 1623. ____. The Merchant of Venice (1596). London, 1600. ____. A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595). London, 1600. ____. Othello (1604). London, 1622. ____. Pericles (1607). London, 1609. ____. Richard II (1595). London, 1597. ____. Richard III (1593). London, 1597. ____. Twelfth Night (1601). London, 1623. Shirley, James. The Cardinal (1641). London, 1653. ____. The Court Secret (1642). London, 1653. Hyde Park (1632). London, 1637. ____. The Traitor (1631). London, 1635. Tourner, Cyril. The Revenger's Tragedy (1606). London, 1607. W., J. The Valiant Scot (1637). London, 1637. Webster, John. The Duchess of Malfi (1614). London, 1623. ____. The White Devil (1612). London, 1612.