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    "Female" stage props: Visualizing the disappearing woman on the early modern stage

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    Author
    Pollard, Amy Rachael
    Date
    2007
    Advisor
    Skura, Meredith A.
    Degree
    Doctor of Philosophy
    Abstract
    This study investigates stage props as alternate stage representations of female characters. Since the 1970s, a great deal has been written independently about both stage props and about women on the early modern stage, but the two are seldom discussed together. Recent theater criticism has sought to establish a link between stage props and their broader social utility outside the theater, while gender criticism has investigated the paradoxical position of early modern women as both subject and object, particularly in regard to women as consumers and commodities. This work draws together these two lines of investigation in order to highlight the substitution that often occurs between female characters and "female" stage props. The traditional relationship between character and prop, in which the prop is firmly situated as an extension of character, exists as a specifically masculine relationship seldom available to female characters. I focus on the way in which the frequent disappearance of female characters within plays allows women to be represented by one or another of a small group of "female" props like rings, necklaces and other trinkets. The readings of the plays of Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton and Cyril Tourneur suggest that in order to witness female identity in its fullness, attention must be paid not only to interpersonal relationships between gendered subjects, but to the relationships visualized between female subject and object as well. "Female" stage props function as a means of furthering the understanding of how female subjectivity differs from that of male subjectivity on the early modern stage.
    Keyword
    Theater; English literature
    Citation
    Pollard, Amy Rachael. ""Female" stage props: Visualizing the disappearing woman on the early modern stage." (2007) Diss., Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/20691.
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    Home | FAQ | Contact Us | Privacy Notice | Accessibility Statement
    Managed by the Digital Scholarship Services at Fondren Library, Rice University
    Physical Address: 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005
    Mailing Address: MS-44, P.O.BOX 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892
    Site Map