Jacobean tragedy on the British stage, 1960-1988: A semiotic approach to characterization and theatricality in "The Revenger's Tragedy", "The White Devil", "The Duchess of Malfi", "The Changeling" and "Women Beware Women".

Abstract

Recent work on the relationship between textual criticism and theater history has proposed a semiotic approach based upon detailed records of individual productions. This dissertation takes this as a starting point and attempts to apply such an approach to five major Jacobean tragedies. For each play all of the major British productions of the last twenty five years have been examined. Particular attention has been paid to certain shared elements, of overt theatricality and discontinuous characterization, that distinguish the Jacobean tragedians' dramatic technique. The relative success of recent productions in meeting the dem and s placed by this technique is discussed. I place particular stress upon the dem and s made by the women's roles in each play. Some attempt is made to evaluate the approach of a number of key figures, particularly such directors and actors as Philip Prowse, Ian McKellen, Ian Richardson, Adrian Noble and Richard Eyre, who have worked with Jacobean tragedy in recent years. Emphasis is placed upon the actors' attempts to develop an acting style that combines extremes of emotion with ironic detachment and the directors' efforts to discover visual and aural counterparts for unfamiliar elements in the Jacobean plays. I conclude that there are a number of shared elements in most successful productions of these plays and that it is possible to make use of this information to complement more traditional text-bound critical approaches.