DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/VWEY-M910

Defense Date

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Theatre

First Advisor

Aaron Anderson

Second Advisor

Keith Kirk

Third Advisor

Jesse Njus

Abstract

Buckets in a Deep Well is a set of essays that examines various characters portrayed in Shakespeare’s history plays, as well as parallel figures in 20th and 21st century works. Each essay primarily focuses on a single character’s response to a power structure: Richard Gloucester to the Tudor England of his audience in Richard III; Richard Nixon’s campaign-produced version of himself to 20th century American democracy in “Checkers;” Falstaff to organized society in Henry IV, Part 1; Marlo Stanfield to the drug economy of early 2000’s Baltimore in The Wire; the Duke of York to the disrupted monarchy of The Plantagenet era in Richard II; and Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s Humphrey Appleby to the world of competing interests that makes up the fictionalized English government of Yes, Minister.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

12-10-2023

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