"""For craft recoils in the end"": The oppositional stagecraft of Thomas Middleton"

"This study examines the wittily ironic ""oppositional"" stagecraft of Thomas Middleton in the following plays: The Changeling; A Chaste Maid in Cheapside; A Mad World, My Masters; Michaelmas Term; More Dissemblers Besides Women; The Revenger's Tragedy; The Second Maiden's Tragedy; A Trick to Catch the Old One; The Witch; and Women Beware Women. Although traditional criticism of the plays is taken into account, the approach throughout is stage-oriented; this study shows how the theatrical dimension modifies the verbal discourse of each text. Through a manipulation of aural, kinetic, and visual media, Middleton generates vibrant contrasts, contrarieties, and contradictions; develops a complex theatre event which involves an equivocal interplay of interpenetrating layers of meanings; and ""compromises"" the presumptive moral signification of dramatic metaphor and action. Setting theatrical element against itself or other elements, Middleton creates a double perspective of the staged event and, ultimately, evokes a double, ambivalent response from his audience."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Theatre

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Date dc:date

10000-01-01

Author dc:creator

• Glynn, F. Martin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Graves, Robert B.

• Fine Arts
• Theater
• Literature, English

Identifier

(UMI)AAI9411635

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/72508