Performing symptom and stigma in early modern drama

In this thesis, I examine Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth in addition to John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi to show how the performance of madness in these plays reinscribes and reinvents cultural notions of causes and symptoms of madness, and through this process relates those notions to food items, practices, and anxieties. To articulate this argument, I utilize prominent medical texts from this period to discuss era specific treatments for mental illness, diagnostic practices, and behaviors that were labeled as symptoms. Additionally, in order to depict social anxieties related to insane actors and consumptive acts, I use excerpts from Foucault's History o f Madness and additional scholarship from the field of food studies. Foucault's work reveals the stigma surrounding madness during the early modem period, while my chosen food studies scholars focus on contemporary anxieties about feasting and eating. Through the use of the aforementioned critical perspectives, my examination of Macbeth and The Duchess o f Malfi shows how Shakespeare and Webster mirrored the emerging medical theories and social anxieties about madness and food in the early modem era.