So I got a hold of my friend who is in the production of The Winter's Tale that's going to be tomorrow. It will be in the Nelke theater in the HFAC (where we saw Henry V). The showtimes are 1pm, 2pm, and 4pm and admission is free.
Also, this Saturday the Quill and Sword Medieval (and Renaissance?we're actually debating that part) Reenactment club will be hosting its annual Corpus Christi festival. It will be at 6:30 PM in the step-down lounge of the Clyde Building. There will be games, food, and entertainment, including a medieval play that I am directing, The Creation and Fall of Man. We are celebrating culture in the times before and during Shakespeare's life, and so you might find it a good way to discover the setting of the plays we're reading or simply a weekend getaway.
Anyway, that's all the announcements I wanted to share. In the meantime, after much deliberation, I have boiled down my ideas about the Tudors into...
MY NEW THESIS AND PAPER OUTLINE!!!!!!!!!
Shakespeare recreates the trauma of the
Tudor dynasty in his plays to demonstrate that it is not illegitimacy
that corrupts a person's character but ambition, and that legitimacy
does not make a person good but virtue.
- Shakespeare's plays contain echoes of the traumatic events and chaotic personalities of the Tudor dynasty that suggest that Shakespeare is recreating the tragic events of the dynasty in his plays to address how the issue of legitimacy has affected his patrons.
- In both Shakespeare's plays and the Tudor dynasty, legitimacy is not merely a label associated with birth but a stigma assigned by others.
- Shakespeare characters who reject their illegitimacy and seek to overcome it are driven by their ambition to betray family ties in order to steal their legitimacy in much the same way members of the Tudor family did the same.
- The ambition shown by Shakespeare's characters is self-destructive because it was often the case in real life.
- It is not literal legitimacy that is the foundation of a person's character but moral legitimacy or virtue.
- Conclusion: not only a message to the monarchs and their power-hungry courtiers but also a message to the audience that illegitimacy is just a label and that virtue is more rewarding than revenge
- So what: The monarchy's battle for legitimacy was also the battle for the soul and the stability of a nation, the battle for individual legitimacy is a microcosm, but it can be seen the other way aroundThe plays I will be using are The Winter's Tale, Henry VIII, Richard III, King Lear, and King John.
Lizy, I really like the way your thesis is coming along. I love the idea of comparing birth legitimacy with moral legitimacy. From your previous posts, I know you have a lot of ways to connect these characters with certain members of the Tudor dynasty, but I would be careful in your paper to focus on why this specific connection to the Tudors matters. How does that connection affect the reading of the two different legitimacies, an issue present in the text even for readers without Tudor knowledge?
ReplyDeleteHey Lizy, it seems like you've got a pretty solid outline here and you're about ready to start writing your paper. A caution - the topic of your paper simultaneously narrows and broadens your audience. it broadens it in that when you're looking for conferences and publication venues to submit this to you could probably adjust the paper to apply for both Renaissance/Medieval history and literature. However, it narrows it in that there's only a select audience that knows anything about the Tudor dynasty and would want to read your paper because of that. It's your choice whether you want to simply accept this limitation, or whether you want to write it in such a way that even those not inherently interesting in the Tudor dynasty would want to read your paper.
ReplyDeleteOh and I forgot to say this earlier - "and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue" - I like that part of your thesis but you might want to reword it a little bit, I had to read it a couple times before I understood what you were trying to say (maybe that's just me?)
ReplyDeleteLiz, nice job in outlining your paper! I agree with Nyssa that the idea of moral legitimacy v. legitimacy by birth is this cool paradox. I also agree with Mikaela that you might want to reword the last part of your thesis, maybe explaining a little bit about virtue.
ReplyDelete