The rise of female testimony on the early modern stage
This thesis explores the rise of female testimony on the early modern stage. Focusing on plays dating from the 1580s to the early 1620s, my research considers how the phenomenon of women’s testimony contributed to broader developments in early modern theatrical culture – particularly through complex engagement with audience response. I focus especially on the emergence of domestic tragedy as a mode uniquely equipped to facilitate the expression of female confessional voices, and to challenge popular beliefs about what such voices should be and do. I begin with Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London (1584), a play that fuses morality drama with city comedy. Wilson offers the testimonies of three allegorised women – Conscience, Love, and Lucre – each of which reflects, in different ways, on how women experienced the workings of the law. I regard this play as a transitional work with an important place in the subsequent development of early modern domestic tragedy. My second chapter explores Alice Arden’s unconventional use of testimonial confession in the anonymous Arden of Faversham (1591) and considers how this responds to the testimonial styles found in popular printed literature. My third chapter, on A Warning for Fair Women (1599), demonstrates how its likely author, Thomas Heywood, requires his audience to respond emotionally to on-stage events – but also to take a more detached, forensic approach as ‘witnesses’. My final chapter discusses The Witch of Edmonton (1621), exploring how John Ford, Thomas Dekker and William Rowley challenge audiences to reflect upon the credibility of accounts offered in popular literature – and, in so doing, to reflect more generally on problems of narrative reliability. Throughout the thesis, I explore these plays’ source materials, some of which survive from records of contemporary trials. These materials reveal the popular cultural understanding of women’s testimony which, I argue, domestic tragedy was placing under particular scrutiny.
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