Impersonations: Theatre, Performance, and Identity in Early Modern England

3 credits · Undergraduate

In his celebrated "Oration on the Dignity of Man," Pico della Mirandola glorified man’s ability to “transform himself into what he most wills, taking like a chameleon the colour of all those things to which he is most nigh.” For Pico as for many early modern thinkers, human subjects were distinguished less by preordained identities than by an actor-like ability to fashion and perform new selves. In early modern England, the burgeoning commercial theatre became a focal point for cultural debates about the social and ethical ramifications of this performative construction of the self. This course will explore these debates both as they relate to the growth of the professional theatre and in terms of their wider implications for early modern English society. We will begin by looking at the roles traditionally played by performance in the affirmation of identities both aristocratic and plebian. We will then go on to examine a number of plays from the main genres performed in English public theatres between 1590 and 1640. By reading these plays alongside primary sources from conduct manuals to statutes for theatre governance, and from playwrights’ celebrations of their art to Puritans’ attacks on the theatre’s degeneracy, we will consider the huge range of cultural responses to the relationship between performance and identity in a rapidly shifting social order. Special attention will be paid to the interrogations of class, gender, sexuality, and morality implied in these works, and to their far-reaching effect on English society before and after the closure of the public theatres in 1642. FORMATS: Seminar