Making 'fritters with English:' Functions of Early Modern Welsh Dialect on the English Stage

The Welsh had a unique status as paradoxically familiar ‘foreigners’ throughout early modern London; Henry VIII actively suppressed the use of the Welsh language, even though many in the Tudor line selectively boasted of Welsh ancestry. Still, in the late-sixteenth century, there was a surge in London’s Welsh population which coincided with the establishment of the city’s commercial theatres. This timely development created a stage for English playwrights to dramatically enact the complicated relationship between the nominally unified nations. Welsh difference was often made theatrically manifest through specific dialect conventions or codified and inscrutable approximate Welsh language. This dissertation expands upon critical readings of Welsh characters written for the English stage by scholars such as Philip Schwyzer, Willy Maley, and Marissa Cull, to concentrate on the vocal and physical embodiments of performed Welshness and their functions in contemporary drama. This work begins with a historicist reading of literary and political Anglo-Welsh relations to build a clear picture of the socio-historical context from which Welsh characters of the period were constructed. The plays which form the focus of this work range from popular plays like Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599) to lesser-known works from Thomas Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1592) to Thomas Dekker’s The Welsh Embassador (1623) which illuminate the range of Welsh presentations in early modern England. From the characterizations of the foolish ‘foreigner’ to the mystical Welsh woman, these characters shed light on sixteenth and seventeenth-century performance conventions. Through close readings of extant dramatic texts, editors’ emendations of dialects, and archival materials from modern productions, this dissertation exposes where the sounds of stage Welsh fit within the social and theatrical continuum of early modern England.

Department dc:contributor.department

Drama

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Thompson, Caitlin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Astington, John

• Dialect
• Early modern London
• Language play
• Shakespeare
• Welsh

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/95977

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/95977