“Give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music”: The Female Voice in Early Stuart Tragedy.

Abstract

Early Stuart drama across the reigns of James I and Charles I (1603-1642) charts choppy waters. Historically, the plays reflect a unique period in early modern English history: issues of monarchic power and a subject’s agency had never been more pressing. The country’s rapid population expansion, the growth of social mobility, a wide spectrum of Protestant doctrinal views side by side with a recusant subculture, as well as the increase in printed news publications put the Crown, government, and church under pressure. Episcopal rule in the Church of England was subject to the shifting prominences of Calvinism, the rise of Arminianism, and Laudianism, and closed with Puritan dominance. Popular sentiment varied across the spectrum. Jacobean and Caroline drama responded to the way in which the authorities of state and church coped under the strain.
This dissertation looks for early Stuart tragedies with a strong female lead character from a representative set of Stuart dramatists from various backgrounds – courtly writers, commercial playwrights, and female authors of closet drama – covering the period 1604-41. Thomas Middleton, Elizabeth Cary, Philip Massinger, John Ford, John Suckling, William Davenant, and James Shirley all produced tragedies which chart political developments alongside an examination of the self through the staged female voice. Their tragic repertoire explores conditions of urgent crisis, echoing the socio-political and theological tensions of the time. Early Stuart tragedies present us with protagonists in extremis: their utterance is purified by urgency, pressure bringing out character to the full. Female leads may evolve to fearless stoics, raging avengers, or accomplished liars. Words hold greater weight when all is at stake, and this is why the present dissertation weighs the words of the tragic female voice in detail, through close literary readings and careful consideration of cultural and historical contexts.