DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/EQ90-PH31
Defense Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Joshua Eckhardt
Abstract
This paper explores the depiction and function of madness on the Renaissance stage, specifically its development as trope of the English revenge tragedy from its Elizabethan conception to its Jacobean advent through a representative engagement of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Madness in these plays selectively departs from popular conceptions and archetypal formulas to create an uncertain dramatic space which allows its sufferers to walk moral lines and liminal paths unavailable to the sane. “Madness” is responsible for and a response to vision; where the revenger is driven to the edge of madness by a lapse in morality only visible to him, madness provides a lens to correct the injustice. It is the tool that allows them to escape convention, decorum and even the law to rout a moral cancer, and, in this capacity, is enabling rather than disabling.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
October 2013