Reading Between the Scenes: Spectacle as Action and Idea in Early Modern English Theater

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English Language and Literature

First Advisor

Mohamed, Feisal

Abstract

My dissertation, “Reading Between the Scenes: Spectacle as Action and Idea in Early Modern English Theater,” argues that the introduction of changeable scenery to the public stage in the Interregnum and Restoration transformed the structure of English drama, in text as well as in performance. Prior to the closing of the public theaters at the outbreak of the English Civil Wars, English dramatists had used characters to orient their plays: character groups defined the dramatic unit of the scene, both on the stage and on the page, orienting the viewer and reader with character entrances and exits. There was a fundamental formal shift, however, the moment changeable scenery was introduced to England’s public theaters and began to be used for spoken drama in the Restoration. The formal dramatic unit of the scene became explicitly tied to painted scenery, to an element of stagecraft, and changes in location became the force that propelled dramatic action. Changeable scenery altered the structure and conventions of English dramatic composition, such that shifts in setting, not the entry and exit of characters, defined the dramatic plot and established visual rhythm. Restoration and later eighteenth-century playwrighting was, in its very nature, scenographic playwrighting. Scenic integration—writing the movement of the scenes into the fabric of dramatic action—became the new standard for crafting English drama. Thus, the plays demand that we read scenographically, treating the poetry as implied stage directions and assessing it for its visual efficacy and theatrical practicality, as well as organizing our reading by the episodic change of locations rather than by the actions and interactions of the characters. I employ this practice of scenographic reading as a method in my dissertation, resurrecting an early modern tool for the critique of dramatic literature, while also unpacking how the legacy of scenographic reading persists in our current practices of reading and literary criticism.

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