Queens, Tyrants, Traitors: Power Play on the Early Modern Stage

The reign of Elizabeth I fostered a new social technology – the public theatre – and with it an explosion of playwriting that has influenced how we think about power and public identity to this day. The Queen staged her authority in elaborate rituals, called herself a ‘prince’, declined to marry, and produced no direct heir. Tragedies and histories of the era dramatise crises of royal succession and related political instability through complex explorations of tyranny and treachery. This cultural work took place in a new and radically public space and was governed by an aesthetics of self-reflexivity. What can we learn from these plays and this epoch about the relationship between gender, sex, performance, and political power? In this course you will learn to read early modern plays informed by an understanding of their theatrical and socio-political origins and to reflect on their legacies in modern entertainment and public life. Playwrights to be studied include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, and Elizabeth Cary.