Masters Thesis

Performing sound in Shakespearean drama

I will read Shakespearean drama with a close attention to the language and performance of sound. I draw from the growing field of sound studies and phenomenological studies in order to show how sound functions as a material entity within the plays and how early modern religious and philosophical understandings of sound interact with representations of sound in drama. In my readings of early modern prose from natural philosophers, preachers, and playwrights, I show how knowledge of vocal production and of listening proposes the autonomy of sound once it leaves its source allowing it to influence its environment and to attain moral or other sensory characteristics. While the first chapter shows how this physicality of sound interacts with theories of history in Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1 & 2, the second chapter focuses on the intersection of voice and smell in the early modern understanding of "breath" in Coriolanus to show how this material functions within the play as well as the theater. Through these readings, I will argue that reading various experiences of the acoustic realm within early modern drama and prose reveal how marginal characters such as Falstaff in Henry IV and the plebeians in Coriolanus are able to occupy a physical space within the play, as well as be ostracized because of the noisome sounds and smells that exude from their bodies. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

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