Ephemeral Matters
: The Materials and Documents of Early Modern Performance in England

  • Anouska Lester

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

This thesis examines the materials of early modern performance in England: paper, glass, fruit, ice, and starch. It places those materials in their social and cultural contexts and uses them to consider the relationship between performance and its evidence. This research brings together different kinds of early modern performance, such as plays, masques, pageants, and entertainments, and examines how they are preserved in different kinds of documentation, such as dramatic texts, inventories, wills, and accounts. It incorporates “lost” plays and so embraces the potential and complexity of textual evidence beyond extant dramatic texts. This thesis combines book history, theatre history, and material culture to facilitate new ways of thinking through how stage materials are mediated through the page. A focus on materials necessitates foregrounding the phenomenology of performance as a live, embodied, multi- sensory event. This thesis interprets performance as ephemeral, subjective, and representational, and questions where these qualities are visible in performance materials. Each chapter identifies shared characteristics across materials, performance, and documentation, such as hybridity, monstrosity, fragmentation, multiplicity, impermanence, and absence. This thesis argues that the documentary evidence which mediates performance and its materials is as subjective, ephemeral, and representational as performance itself.
Date of Award12 Dec 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University of Roehampton
SponsorsUniversity of Roehampton (Before Shakespeare Studentship and Postgraduate Research Support Scheme),
SupervisorClare McManus (Director of Studies) & Andy Kesson (Co-Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Early modern
  • materiality
  • book history
  • Renaissance
  • costumes
  • performance
  • props
  • drama
  • material culture
  • theatre

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