Discuss how Ben Jonson's masques provided a space where women were given an opportunity to perform in front of a small audience of both men and women. Queen Anne and other women of the nobility performed the in The Masque of Blackness as black nymphs, as Edward Carr has explored.
How might a Puritan object to the staging of masques?
In the Renaissance, dance was mentioned as an art that the nobility should master. Even Thomas Elyot thought that dance could aid in the development of young gentlemen (Boke Named the Governour 1531). To what extent might the court masque be seen as more than pure elaborate entertainment?
Explore the relationship between the author and the king, or prince, in Jonson's masques.
To what extent can the masques be said to promote monarchical absolutism?
How do the masques approach the topics of gender, power, race and pleasure?
Ben Jonson’s masques showcase female bodies
and racial outsiders; effectively giving power to traditionally subdued
subjects. The space of the masque therefore can be seen as a space where
empowered others are represented as fiction in order to disrupt the hegemony of
male power in the Jacobean court: “The space between the masque and its royal
observers becomes a place of alternatives in which the queen’s representations
do not obviously defer – or refer – to the king.” (Kathryn Schwarz, 1995).
Discuss.
How do you respond to Lynda Boose’s comment
that that The Masque of Blackness and The
Masque of Beauty “constitute a metanarrative of
race and gender representation in English literature.” (1994)
Dramas
How does Jonson’s Voplone represent different gendered roles?
Dramas
Discuss one
of the following in reference to at least two 17th century plays:
the figure of the hypocrite; the theme of dishonour; the theme of betrayal (one
must be from the syllabus for this course but the other may be one that you
have read on your own – e.g you may want to look at Every Man in His Humour;
Bartholomew Fair, The Merchant of Venice).
Neil Rhodes has stated that the role of the
grotesque in satirical comedy creates “conflicts in which abuse and
vilification are raised to extravagant levels of artistry” (Elizabethan
Grotesque, 68). How Jonson’s comedies express this
sentiment of the artistry of abuse?
How does Jonson’s Voplone represent different gendered roles?
Seventeenth century dramatic works often
stage events in a variety of contrasting settings; real and imaginary. Examine the use of plot,
particularly the exploitation
of the story rather than the story itself, as a key feature and shaping device in The Alchemist.
of the story rather than the story itself, as a key feature and shaping device in The Alchemist.
Write a response to the nature of endings in Jonson’s
comedies.
What is the relation
between Jonson’s plays and the classical tradition?
Are the
audience persuaded to condemn Jonson’s characters who attempt to rise above
their station? What about Webster?
How does
Jonson shape the comedies so that they cohere and seem like unified stories?
Are there various targets to Jonson’s satire (such as lust, corruption, hypocrisy et cetera) or would you say that greed is the ‘single theme’ of Jonson’s comedies?
Are there various targets to Jonson’s satire (such as lust, corruption, hypocrisy et cetera) or would you say that greed is the ‘single theme’ of Jonson’s comedies?
Examine the
representation of female protagonists in Middleton’s plays.
Is there a
link between death and fantasy in Webster’s dramas that we read on this module?
You are invited to examine plays by Webster that we did not cover.
Discuss the
use of language in Webster’s plays. To what extent does he employ language that
attempts to terrify the audience or the other characters?
Discuss the
coherence (or lack of coherence) in the subplots of at least two seventeenth
century plays discussed on this module.
"Early modern tragic subjectivity is created out of the collision between the individual and the social order" (Garret A. Sullivan Jr., 2010). To what extent do the plays you read this semester stage characters conscientious of their selfhood?
"Early modern tragic subjectivity is created out of the collision between the individual and the social order" (Garret A. Sullivan Jr., 2010). To what extent do the plays you read this semester stage characters conscientious of their selfhood?
