Renaissance
Drama
I enjoy working on performance history and performance theory, particularly
when the work is historically grounded. Beginning with Ben Jonson, I have
moved on to concentrate on William Shakespeare, though I do go back to
Jonson whenever I have the chance. Perhaps this interest originated with
my mother who was an actress or in my own history: I began performing as
a singing sunflower at the age of five. My mother always claimed
that my sister Chris and I were taken to a performance of A Midsummer
Night's Dream when we were toddlers and argued bitterly afterwards
about who would marry Bottom, whom we considered to be a giant stuffed
toy.
Fran with William Shakesbear |
Author
Shakespeare's Speaking Properties.
Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1991.
The Curious History of "Bartholomew
Fair." Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1985.
Editor
Acting Funny: Comic Theory and
Practice in Shakespeare's Plays. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1993.
with John W. Velz. One Touch of
Shakespeare: Letters of Joseph Crosby, 1875-1878. Washington, D.C.:
The Folger Press, 1986.
with John Velz. An Index to the
Letters of Joseph Crosby to Joseph Parker Norris in Folger MS Yc 1372.
Austin: privately printed, 1978. 108 pp.
Essays
"Jonson and the Gunpowder Plot,"
Ben
Jonson Journal, 5 (1999): 249-252.
"The Mythical Failures of Jonson." In
New
Perspectives on Ben Jonson, pp. 164-72. Ed. James Hirsh. Madison,
N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
"Jonson's Drunken Escapade." Medieval
and Renaissance Drama in England 6 (1993): 129- 37.
"Letters and Portents in Caesar
and Lear." Shakespeare Yearbook 3 (1992): 87-104.
"Stoning the Fool." Explicator
50 (1992): 69-70.
"Objects in Othello."
In Othello: New Perspectives, pp. 238-54. Eds. Virginia Vaughan
and Kent Cartwright. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1991.
"Sight and Perception in Lear:
An Approach through Imagery." In
Approaches to Teaching "King Lear,"
pp. 80-85. Ed. Robert Ray. New York: Modern Language Association, 1986.
"Othello and New Comedy."
Comparative
Drama 20 (1986): 53-64.
"Headgear in
Coriolanus."
Shakespeare
Bulletin 4 (1986): 5-7.
"Volpone at Theatre in
the Square." In Tony Howard's "Census of Renaissance Drama Productions
(1986)." RORD 29 (1986-87): 59-60.
"Hamlet in the Thirties."
Theatre
Survey 26 (1985): 63-79.
"The Alabama Shakespeare Festival."
Southern
Quarterly 19 (1981): 42-53.
"The Date of Ben Jonson's A Tale
of a Tub." Renaissance Papers 1979 (1980): 49-57.
"Spectacle in Faustus."
Cahiers
Elisabethains 17 (1980): 83-84.
"Literary Portraits: William Dobson's
Portrait of Ben Jonson." The Library Chronicle of the University
of Texas at Austin n.s. 10 (1978): 55-57.
"A Nineteenth-Century Shakespeare Reading
Club." Shakespeare Newsletter May 1977: 20.
"Odessa Shakespeare Festival."
Shakespeare
Quarterly 28 (1977): 226-28.
"Ben Jonson's Poverty."
Biography
2 (1979): 260-65.
"Ben Jonson's Stagecraft in
Epicoene."
Renaissance
Drama n.s. 9 (1978): 175-92.
with John Velz. "New Information
about Some Nineteenth-Century Shakespeare Editions from the Letters of
Joseph Crosby." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
71 (1977): 279-94.
Many other notes and reviews.
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Early Women
Writers
Katharina Wilson asked me to do an essay about Queen Elizabeth I
in the 1980s and ever since I've been fascinated by the remarkable women
who wrote before 1700. I'm reluctant to call this "recovery" work, because
the implicit metaphor of "recovery" works in odd ways. ("We used to be
sick, but now we've recovered"? That view seems naive. "We're recovering
lost treasures!" Sorry, but lots of what women wrote is not at all rich.)
Instead I prefer to call this work "feminist scholarship," and it has become
one part of my career that provides great satisfaction.
Three smart women
Bathsua Makin |
Katja Wilson |
Elizabeth Tudor |
Author
Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning.
Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998.
Editor
Educational and Vocational
Books.
In The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Library of Essential
Works, 1500-1750. Series 2, part 4. Gen. Eds. Betty Travitsky and
Patrick Cullen. Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 2001.
Essays
"Princess Elizabeth's Hand in The Glass
of the Sinful Soul." English Manuscript Studies. Eds. Peter
Beal and Margaret Ezell. 9 (September 2000): 33-48.
"A Voice for Hermaphroditical
Education." In This Double Voice: Gendered Writing in Early Modern
England 249-269. Eds. Elizabeth and Danielle Clarke. London:
Macmillan, 2000.
"On the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen,
or Why Do the Same Issues Keep Recurring?" Attending to Early Modern
Women: Crossing Boundaries. Adele Seeff and Betty Travitsky,
editors. University of Delaware Press, forthcoming in 2000.
Consultant and author, "Elizabeth Tudor,"
Brown University Women Writers Project On-line. URL http://www.wwp.brown.edu/rwo/scm.speeches.html
(1998).
"Lady Ann Bacon" 12; "Lady Anne Clifford"
107-108; "Elizabeth Colville [Melville]" 121-22; "Elizabeth Grymeston"
209; "Elizabeth Jocelin" 258; "Lady Grace Mildmay" 325. In British
Women Writers.
Eds. June and Paul Schleuter. New York: Garland
Press, 1988. Second edition forthcoming from Rutgers University Press,
2000.
"Judith Shakespeare Reading,"
Shakespeare
Quarterly, 47 (1996): 1-11.
"Early Modern Women and ‘The muses ffemall.'"
In "The Muses Females Are": Martha Moulsworth and Other Women Writers
of the English Renaissance, pp. 173-179. Eds., Robert C.
Evans and Anne C. Little. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1995.
"Provenance and Propaganda as Editorial
Stumbling Blocks." In New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of
the Renaissance English Text Society, 1985-91, pp. 119-23. Ed.
W. Speed Hill Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
1993.
"The Identity of Bathsua Makin."
Biography
16 (1993): 1-17.
"Queen Elizabeth in Her Speeches." In
Gloriana's
Face: Women, Public and Private in the English Renaissance, pp.
63-78. Eds. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies. London: Harvester,
1992.
"Frances Brooke's Imagined Epistles."
Studies
on Voltaire and the Eighteenth-Century 303 (1992, ptd. 1994): 711-712.
"William Caxton and Christine of Pisan."
In The Reception of Christine de Pizan from the Fifteenth through
the Nineteenth Centuries: Visitors to the City, pp. 25-42. Ed.
Glenda K. McLeod. Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, Medieval and Renaissance
Series # 9 (1991).
"Bathsua Makin: Woman of Learning."
In Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century, pp. 285-304.
Eds. Katharina Wilson and Frank J. Warnke. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia
Press, 1989.
"Elizabeth I: Queen of England." In
Women
Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, pp. 522-47. Ed. Katharina
Wilson. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
"New Light on Bathsua Makin."
Seventeenth-Century
News 45 (1986): 16.
Maid, Wife, or Widow: Renaissance
Women (reader's theater script, funded by Georgia Endowment for
the Humanities). Athens Regional Library Lecture Series, October
1984; videotaped for Georgia Libraries Association, May 1984; Augusta College,
October, 1985; Women's Studies Luncheon Series, November 1989.
Many other notes and reviews.
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Miscellaneous
These are odds and ends that I like for one reason or another. The
essay on Canadian drama pleases me because I was born in Canada. The various
bits on light verse recall the memory of a dear friend who commissioned
them, Frank Warnke. And I like the various items on translation for reasons
obvious to anyone who recognizes the picture below.
"Prisons and Imprisonment in Canadian
Drama." Journal of Canadian Fiction 19 (1977): 112-21. Reprinted
1980, 1988, 1996, 1999 as part of the instructional materials for
Literature and Composition II, Open Learning Institute (University Component),
British Columbia.
"Burlesque" 151-52; "Clerihew" 219-20;
"Comedy of Humors" 228-29; "Light Verse" 692- 93; with John Arthos, "Masque"
738-39; with Roger Fowler, "Parody" 881-83. In Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry and Poetics. Eds. Alex Preminger, T. V. F. Brogan, Frank
J. Warnke, O. B. Hardison, and Earl Miner. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993.
"The Price of Interpreting the Frontier."
Looking
Forward: Proceedings of the American Translators Association (1991):
248-57.
"Milton and the Pygmies."
Milton
Quarterly 20 (1986): 31-32.
with Ben Teague. "Technical Writing
and Translation." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
12
(1982): 93-102.
"Translating Computer Documents."
American
Translators Association Chronicle 9 (1982): 11-12. Reprinted
in American Translators Association Chronicle (1985).
"A Nineteenth-Century Free-Lance Translator."
Babel:
Revue Internationale de la Traduction 22 (1977): 167-68.
Ben Teague, my favorite translator
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