Performing at the Block: Scripting Early Modern Executions

This thesis explores the executions of noble men and women in Tudor and early Jacobean England and the theatrical representations of executions that mirrored real life spectacles of deadly punishment. Historical scaffold confessions followed a formulaic pattern and condemned traitors performed their final moments before a crowd of witnesses with the power to judge the quality of the actor’s deportment, costuming and words. As a public stage, the scaffold allowed the traitor a chance to assert and define his or her own individuality in the face of death and formulaic requirements, which I outline in the first chapter. Dramatic representations of executions both reflected and subverted the depictions of real life performances at the block. Playwrights employed the scaffold confession in a variety of ways. Execution spectacles within plays could—depending on the intention of the author—uphold the power of a just monarch, defy conventions and reveal societal ills, or show the agency of the individual characters facing execution.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2013

Author dc:creator

• Lodine-Chaffey, Jennifer Lillian

• beheading
• Chapman
• Dekker
• early modern
• execution
• Marlowe
• Shakespeare
• Tudor England

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/743

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-1762