Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

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Daggers of the Mind: Performing Madness and Mental Disorder on the Early English Stage
(2023) Rio, Melanie; Passannante, Gerard; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Madness is such a popular device in early modern English drama that extant playscripts are littered with stage directions indicating that a character should enter “like a madman” or simply, “mad.” Because the public playhouse required the psychosomatic participation of actors and observers from every social class and category, it served as a unique cultural laboratory in which to explore questions of cognition, embodiment, identity, and interiority. Madness as a theatrical device also offers unique insight into the challenge of “performing” an invisible disability. This dissertation examines representations of madness in the early English playhouse—primarily in the works of works Shakespeare, but also considering works by Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, Armin, and others—as well as extradramatic primary sources such as court cases and physicians’ notebooks in order to demonstrate how intersecting indices of identity influence the construction and interpretation of early modern cognitive disorder.
"I Shall Tell A Double Tale": Empedoclean Materialism and Idealism in the English Renaissance
(2022) Libhart, Garth; Passannante, Gerard; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The Pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (ca. 484–ca. 424 BCE) is remembered both as an enraged fool who leapt into a volcano to prove he was a god, and as a philosopher who radically suggested everything is made of matter (DK107). In the fragments of his poetry, he admits to telling a “double tale,” potentially nodding to the indistinct ontological vision embedded in his work and underscoring the way his poetry shifts between materialist and idealist frames of reference (DK17.1). I argue that Empedocles’ perspectival relativism is an alternative entry point into the problem of materialism for early modern thinkers, freeing them from the burden of strict philosophical commitment and enabling them to think in materialist terms with less anxiety about succumbing to physical determinism. For scholars of early modern literature, the Empedoclean double tale helps root the period’s tendency for perspectival indeterminacy within a specific humanistic tradition. This dissertation is organized as three long chapters, each offering a unique moment in the reception of Empedocles’ blurry ontology. In Chapter One, I argue that Philemon Holland’s 1603 translation of Plutarch’s Moralia represents a watershed moment for Empedoclean influence in English literary history. My analysis demonstrates that, while the discredited story of Empedocles jumping into a volcano to prove he was a god continues to be an attention-grabbing part of the philosopher’s legacy in the Renaissance, the seventeenth century witnesses an increasing interest in his actual philosophy. Specifically, early modern writers draw inspiration from Empedocles’ theory of effluence—the idea that the four elements emanate tiny particles of a similar composition—as they contemplate monist possibility (DK89). Illustrating this, in Chapter Two, I read Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1607) as an exploration of the world in flux, showing how one of Shakespeare’s likely sources for the play, Plutarch’s treatise on Isis and Osiris in the Moralia, uses the idea of effluence to negotiate between the myth’s dualistic and monistic aspects. This enables me to propose that, in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare undergirds moments like Cleopatra’s elementally framed suicide with the dynamic “double tale” of Empedoclean ontology, portraying her immortal aspiration in simultaneously materialist and transcendent terms. Finally, in Chapter Three, I turn to John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which directly alludes to Empedocles’ volcanic suicide when Satan encounters the ghost of Empedocles, floating in Limbo, during his journey from hell to earth. Showing how Milton draws on key ideas from Empedocles’ philosophy in the process of critiquing his immortal longing, I argue that the episode is underwritten by the philosopher’s perspectival relativism. The chapter then reconsiders the monist materialism of Paradise Lost through an Empedoclean lens, suggesting that the Pre-Socratic philosopher’s unusual blend of dualistic and monistic ideation can help negotiate between divergent critical responses to Milton’s idiosyncratic materialism. Ultimately, the dissertation reveals how early modern writers take inspiration from Empedocles’ fluid movement between materialism and idealism, freed from the limitations of rigid philosophical commitment and binary choice.
Staging the Middle Ages: History and Form in Early Modern English Drama
(2022) Daley, Liam Thomas; Robertson, Kellie; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Early modern conceptions of what it meant to be “medieval” continue to shape our own conception of what it means to be “modern.” Writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries claimed to separate historical fact from literary fiction more effectively than their medieval forebears. And yet, many widespread ideas about the Middle Ages that persist to this day—including the idea of a “Middle Ages” at all—are the fictional inventions of early modern writers, from chroniclers and antiquarians, to poets and playwrights. Focusing on the affordances and limitations of dramatic form, this dissertation examines how enduringly popular visions of the Middle Ages crafted by Shakespeare and other early modern playwrights (including John Bale, Thomas Hughes, and Elizabeth Cary) still inform our historical understanding. These writers shaped their revisionist historiographical narratives for the Renaissance stage in a host of generic guises, not only in Elizabethan chronicle history plays, but also in secularized morality plays, Senecan tragedies, and closet drama. These early modern depictions of the medieval past gave new life to older dramatic forms characteristic of both classical and medieval theatre, such as the chorus and various forms of theatrical spectacle, while also employing new formal strategies such as the soliloquy, the dumbshow, and the play-within-a-play. All the plays examined here—including John Bale’s Kynge Johan, Shakespeare’s King John and Richard II, Thomas Hughes’s The Misfortunes of Arthur, and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam—engage in self-conscious medievalism. Remediating earlier chronicle accounts as well as contemporary historiographical controversies (or “battles-of-the-books”), these plays fashion new fictions of when the Middle Ages ended and when modernity began. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of modern dramatic medievalism in Tony Kushner’s twentieth-century stage epic, Angels in America, a play that witnesses the continuing power of premodern dramatic and historical models as tools for re imagining ideas of national and cultural identity. Examining the formal strategies employed by all these playwrights provides insight into the ways that readers and writers have understood the medieval past, the modern present, and the shape of history itself.
MAKING SHAKESPEARE ACCESSIBLE: CASE STUDIES OF THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE CENTER AND ATLANTA SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
(2020) Abdullah, Nur Qasdina Jeeta; Frederik, Laurie A.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Since the nineteenth century, theatre practitioners have sought to recreate the conventions of William Shakespeare’s original staging. This phenomenon was initially known as the Elizabethan Revival. Today, theatre practitioners in the United States continue this exploration and its now known as “original practices.” Shakespeare companies like the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia and the Atlanta Shakespeare Company (at the New Shakespeare Tavern) in Atlanta, Georgia are examples of companies that are committed to the exploration of original practices, not only in the design of their theatre space and performance style but also in relation to how they develop and market their educational and outreach programs for elementary and secondary school students and for teacher training. In this dissertation, I trace the growth of Shakespeare’s popularity in the United States through the public’s access to printed plays, public performances, and school programs. I use two case studies to examine how these very different playhouse spaces adapt their performances and programs to the original practice approach. Both of my case studies highlight certain key elements. The two companies were trying to develop heightened levels of audience intimacy, interaction, and inclusion. In their exploration of original practices, they emphasized intimacy of the performance experience and of the space itself. They promoted interaction between the actors and audience, and also between the professional company and amateur students, nurturing them as future adult audience members. And they tried to include a diverse community, those that surrounded the theatre playhouses but may not have had access to the texts or the shows in the permanent spaces due to geography or economic situation. Finally, I look at marketing and analyze how components are connected through their websites, mission statements, social media, and statements of community commitment.
‘THE LIFE YET OF HIS LINES SHALL NEVER OUT’: LINEATION AND POETIC AUTHORITY IN THE SHAKESPEAREAN CORPUS
(2019) Lind, Sarah; Trudell, Scott A.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The “line” in early modern poetics was a confusing concept due to competing definitions of line length. “Length” could refer to classical, vernacular, or visual measurement. “Length” could figuratively refer to a poet’s “line of life” where a lasting reputation was a measure of a poet’s authority, conflated with the length and measure of his or her lines. Despite the cultural importance of the line, studies of lineation are rare, and few account for the line’s assembly of definitions and vital relationship to poetic authority. This thesis therefore offers an account of lineation and the poetic authority surrounding lineation in editorial and performance traditions. It examines changes to lines in playtexts, songs, and actors’ parts through the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Shakespearean tradition. It argues that changes in ideas about lineation are both signs and consequences of the continual struggle to adapt Shakespeare’s plays to different performative and textual purposes.
Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare: A Study of the Postmodern Hipster, the New York Shakespeare Exchange, and the Creation of Cultural Capital in the Twenty-First Century
(2018) Thompson, Sara; Kim Lee, Esther; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The twentieth century saw the development of numerous subcultures which shaped the mainstream culture around them through the diffusion of subcultural fashions, music, and literature into the establishment. In the twenty-first century, the postmodern hipster has emerged as a new subculture with distinctive tastes that have shaped dominant Western consumption choices. This dissertation takes a look at some of the twentieth century subcultures that created the foundations for this most recent group before exploring the position of the postmodern hipster in 2018. Building on the work of both scholarly social scientists and popular culture writers who have studied the hipster, I point out some of their key characteristics, such as cultural omnivorism, irony, and bricolage, as elements that make them prime audience members for what I call Alternative Shakespeare companies. The second half of the dissertation offers a case study of one such Alternative Shakespeare company, the New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX), who have built a donor base largely made up of individuals between the ages of 25 and 50. By examining NYSX’s mainstage production history, I establish their approach to Shakespeare and mixture of reverence for the text with irreverence for traditional performance methods. Then, their auxiliary performances—the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and the Intersections program—are analyzed as further examples of how Shakespeare’s works can be produced in ways that are attractive to the postmodern hipster. By transforming the established, high cultural position of Shakespeare’s works and transgressing against traditional methods of their production, NYSX creates a new kind of cultural capital for the plays that aligns with the kind of entertainments that the postmodern hipster seeks out. Such a model of subversion, while still respecting the integrity of the language, could be employed by other Shakespeare companies to appeal to the hipster, creating future donors and supporters by keeping Shakespeare hip.
Play Studies: Integrating Drama, Games, and Ludi from the Medieval to the Digital Age
(2017) Kelber, Nathan; Kirschenbaum, Matthew; Leinwand, Theodore; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
At first glance, the fact that the English word for drama is “play” must strike the modern reader as odd. Playing is usually an activity we associate with games (or musical instruments), yet this odd linguistic trace is a forgotten marker of how far the modern sense of drama has strayed from its antecedents. This dissertation recovers the historical relationship of drama, play, and games, developing a shared discourse under the rubric of “play studies.” Play is defined in two complementary phenomenological frameworks, methexis and mimesis, to enable scholarship that transcends historical, cultural, and material boundaries. The first chapter engages the linguistic confusion surrounding late medieval drama (with examples from Mankind, cycle plays, and Fulgens and Lucres) and medieval games (The Game and Playe of the Chesse, The Book of Games), arguing that the medieval English view of play can help correct and complicate modern game scholarship. The second chapter takes up this medieval perspective of play-as-methexis and demonstrates its applicability to digital media of the late 20th century with examples from video games like Tetris and Dragon’s Lair. Along the way, this chapter also makes ontological arguments in relation to early computer history, software studies, and media archaeology, advocating that a fuller understanding of games depends on the willingness of humanities scholars to build, hack, and play with media using methods normally reserved for artists and scientists. The final chapter considers the lasting legacy of the medieval play-as-game, particularly how the development of English drama is indebted to the theater buildings that created a space for the sustained collaboration of players with a variety of skills. The final section considers the current state of Shakespeare-as-play, including 21st-century productions, digital video games, and board games.
Feigning a Commonwealth: The Roman Play and Public Discourse in England, 1594-1660
(2017) Marks, Jodean Miriam; Leinwand, Theodore B; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Of some eighty Roman history plays written or performed in English between 1550 and 1635, forty-three are extant. The task of studying the political resonances of the whole corpus (rather than focusing solely on Shakespeare and Jonson’s Roman plays) remains to be undertaken. This dissertation begins that task with a selection from the fourteen to sixteen extant plays about the Roman Republic, focusing on three key moments: the founding of the Republic, its death throes, and the reign of Tiberius, when Romans looked back nostalgically to the Republic. The five plays examined here presented a model of republican political culture that contrasted with the monarchical ideology of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England. The spirit, principles, and actions of the republican heroes who inhabited the stage may well have inspired audience members, both those whose reading of classical texts had familiarized them with the historical events presented on stage and those encountering that history for the first time. Three of these plays—Heywood’s The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall—were composed for performance at public theaters and remained popular well into the seventeenth century. Kyd’s Cornelia and Chapman’s Caesar and Pompey were published but never performed. All five plays share a sense that a republican form of government, more than any other, promotes nobility of character and enables human beings to live fulfilling lives. They also share a complex vocabulary that centers on the association of tyranny with slavery: the tyrant is a ruler who treats his subjects as a master treats his slaves. While only one play, Cornelia, appears to condemn monarchy outright (as a violation of the Roman constitution), all appear to suggest that monarchy can easily slide into tyranny. In the early seventeenth century, these plays, and the history they presented, would have called to mind contemporary concerns about the corrosive effects of royal favoritism and the growth of the royal prerogative. More radical perspectives, closer to the Roman republican model, would emerge as differences between the king and Parliament escalated into open conflict in mid-century.
Troilus and Cressida - A Scenic Design
(2016) Vester, April Joy; Conway, Daniel L; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, production photographs, and other materials that document the scenic design process for the production of William Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida by the University of Maryland – College Park, School of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. This thesis contains the following: scenic research images collected to express period, location, and emotional/intellectual landscapes to the production team; preliminary sketches; photographs of the ¼” scale model; a full set of drafting plates and paint elevations used to communicate the design to the technical director and paint charge; a unit list naming each scenic element; a props list and research book to detail each hand prop, furniture piece and consumable to the prop master; and, lastly, archival production photographs to document the completed design.
Lear
(2015) Oberhauser, Michael James; Wilson, Mark E.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This opera, Lear, draws its libretto directly from William Shakespeare's King Lear. Some supporting characters and subplots have been removed, and some characters have been fused to reduce the time and forces needed to produce this piece. Parent/child relationships, eyesight, and deception/disguises are important themes in this adapted libretto. The last point, deception and disguises, receives special attention in the opera. Each time a character dons a disguise a "transformation" motive is heard. Simultaneously, at least one of the woodwind players will switch to a traditional doubling instrument to add a timbral change to the visual change on the stage. Two characters in the opera never sing, but only speak: Lear and Gloucester. This separates them from the rest of the cast to highlight their paternal nature. The music for spoken sections includes liberal use of fermatas, vamps, and other forms of repetition to underscore the speech. Most characters have musical motives and/or signature styles to aid in their characterization. Goneril and Edmund are intelligent, eloquent, and manipulative. heir music can be triadic and diatonic when they need it to be, and their lines are often winding and chromatic. Regan and Oswald, on the other hand, are more characters of action than thought. Their music is more blunt and to the point. The harmony of the opera moves among diatonic, quartal, whole-tone, octatonic, hexatonic, and more complicated harmonies, depending on the character singing or speaking and what his motives are at that moment. At several points in the opera, a rhythmic pattern will continue over a bar that obscures the meter. Sometimes multiple patterns will be present at once. The harmony is at its most complicated when these patterns overlap, or when two characters' personal motives are presented simultaneously. The opera's duration is approximately two hours. The cast calls for two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, two baritones, a bass-baritone, and two male actors. The opera is scored for Flute (doubling Piccolo and Alto Flute), Oboe (doubling English Horn), Bb Clarinet (doubling Bass Clarinet), Bassoon, Horn in F, Percussion (one player), Piano, String Quartet, and Double Bass.

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