BA Art History and English Literature

Early modern drama (c. 1575-1642) is full of supernatural figures: ghosts, witches, portentous visions, conjurers, and characters who seemingly revive from death. Alongside being popular subjects for public entertainments, these phenomena were undergoing re-negotiations of their status and cultural meanings. Ghost appearances were technically considered impossible under a relatively new Protestant doctrine, and scientific enquiry increasingly sought to explain hallucinations and apparent conjurations. On this unit, we will explore how the supernatural figures of early modern plays respond and contribute to their historical social contexts, and how their enduring stage presences tapped into contemporary issues such as gender, justice, and cultural memory. The unit will also introduce students to more modern critical frameworks for considering why the ghostly and the supernatural seem to find a natural home in the theatre – a medium in which people, costumes, and objects keep coming back, often in uncannily altered forms.

Students will read a selection of plays ranging from the more canonical (Macbeth, Doctor Faustus) to the less widely studied (Antonio’s Revenge, Summer’s Last Will and Testament). These will be read alongside other sources such as pamphlets, illustrations, folk ballads, theological writings, and theatrical records, to expand students’ contextual knowledge and examine how these texts interrelate with and influence each other. This will involve developing skills in using archival and digitised resources, such as Early English Books Online. We will also be thinking across disciplinary boundaries, combining literary analysis with theatrical and cultural history, and with theological contexts. This reflects the blurred categories of the period we will be studying, in which religion, science, and magic were not always distinct. 
 

equip students with a knowledge of how supernatural elements are included and represented in early modern theatre, and their relevance to themes such as justice, gender, and cultural memory;

introduce students to a variety of sources in addition to early modern play texts (such as pamphlets, illustrations, folk ballads, theological writings, theatrical records), and equip them to analyse these sources in conjunction with each other;

develop Digital Humanities skills using a variety of resources / platforms relevant to early modern studies (such as Early English Books Online and the English Broadside Ballad Archive);

introduce students to theoretical frameworks for considering the connection between theatre and the supernatural;  

develop skills in critical thinking and expression, in relation to considering course texts in their historical and social contexts;

encourage students to think across disciplinary boundaries (history, drama, literature, theology) and to gain an understanding of the interrelations between early modern science, religion, magic, and folk belief.  
 

Lectures: 11 hours

Seminars: 22 hours 

Acquire knowledge and understanding of key contexts in early modern drama and attitudes towards the supernatural.

Acquire knowledge and understanding of the different historical and critical sources that inform early modern drama studies.

Acquire knowledge and understanding of literary analysis as a discipline which intersects with fields such as historical enquiry, theatre history, material culture, and theology. 

Analyse literary and non-literary texts in conjunction with each other.

Identify and investigate the interrelations between literature and historical context, making innovative yet evidence-based links.

Develop and articulate a reasoned argument for particular interpretations of early modern plays and related texts. 

Plan and execute independent research on early modern plays and other sources with the support of academic and library staff.

Make effective use of the library resources and online archives pertaining to the course.

Write clearly expressed academic essays on early modern material. 
 

Undertake independent research and collect evidence to support a reasoned argument.  

Communicate an interpretation of the evidence and associated concepts and approaches clearly and convincingly in writing.

Develop teamwork skills by working constructively with others in groups. 

[Note: several of the historical and critical texts will be in extract form]

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason (Arden Shakespeare Third Series, Bloomsbury, 2015)

Thomas Middleton, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, ed. by Anne Lancashire (Manchester University Press, The Revels Plays, 1978)

Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge eds, Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays (Manchester University Press, The Revels Plays Companion Library, 1986)

John Marston, Antonio’s Revenge, ed. By W. Reavley Gair (Manchester University Press, The Revels Plays, 1978)

Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. by Roma Gill and Ros King (Bloomsbury, 2008)

Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay  

Thomas Nashe, Summer's Last Will and Testament

Ludwig Lavater, Of Ghosts and Spirits Walking by Night, trans. ‘R.H.’ (Richard Watkins,1572)

James VI and I, Daemonologie (Robert Waldgrave, 1597)

Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (William Brome, 1584)

W.W. Greg, ed., Henslowe’s Diary (A.H. Bullen, 1904)

Marvin Carlson, ‘The Haunted Stage: Recycling and Reception in the Theatre’, Theatre Survey, 35.1 (1994), pp. 5-18

Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (University of Michigan Press, 2001)

Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (Columbia University Press,1996)

Lauren Robertson, Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater: Stage Spectacle and Audience Response (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Gillian Bennett, ‘Ghost and Witch in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Folklore, 97.1(1986), pp. 3-14

Lesel Dawson, ‘“In Every Wound There Is a Bloody Tongue”: Cruentation in Early Modern Literature and Psychology’, in Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700, ed. by Bonnie Lander Johnson and Eleanor Decamp (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 151-66

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (Penguin, 1991)