The Dramaturgy of a Maritime Metaphor: Marcus Rediker's Influence on Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare

Abstract

Within the dramaturgy of <italic>One Flea Spare<italic> by playwright Naomi Wallace, one historical source illuminates the story more than the others: <italic>Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea<italic> by Marcus Rediker. By tracing the parallels between Wallace's drama and Rediker's history, a historical paradigm surfaces in Wallace's work just as a dramatic paradigm surfaces in the work of Rediker. Accordingly, this thesis asks: how does the exploration of Rediker's maritime history of the early eighteenth-century Anglo-Atlantic world from a seaman's perspective suggest a dramatic paradigm for Wallace's play? After considering how Rediker centralizes conflict between the seaman and the captain, this study then focuses on the parallel situation found within <italic>One Flea Spare<italic> in order to provide a productive analysis of analogous scenarios. This thesis also argues that the class-conscious work of Naomi Wallace and Marcus Rediker uses history and metaphor to contribute to a common dramaturgy.