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

Abstract

Within the dramaturgy of One Flea Spare by playwright Naomi Wallace, one historical source illuminates the story more than the others: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 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 One Flea Spare 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.