Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of English, 2020.
This project identifies and examines an early modern dramatic activity that I call “unframed playing”—a strategy of secret performance in which characters influence other characters by playacting while concealing the histrionic and ludic nature of their activity. My analysis complicates scholarly claims that onstage portrayals of roleplaying serve as a direct reflection of or commentary on the theater, because unframed playing points to a crucial divergence between the activities of actors and roleplaying characters, as well as between the perspectives of playgoers and observing characters. Actors perform before a knowing audience in the theater, while characters often perform before an unknowing audience in the playworld. Unframed playing thus reflects Renaissance drama’s interest in the consequences of covertly employing playerlike behavior in everyday life, as well as the abilities required to do so successfully. I call this skillset “ludic competence.” Unframed playing is inextricably linked to issues of judgment and interpretation: high ludic competence means that skilled players are skilled interpreters who can assess correctly the impact of the playful activity they employ, as well as the motives and desires of those before whom they perform. Unframed playing most often manifests as “inset spectacles,” i.e. discrete dramatic events that serve to call playgoers’ attention to characters’ histrionic activities. I explore four types of inset spectacle: onstage observers watching a play-within-a-play in The Spanish Tragedy and The Taming of the Shrew, playacting-within-the-play in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Much Ado About Nothing, disguise in Volpone and Measure for Measure, and crossdressing in As You Like It, Philaster, and Epicene. At its heart, unframed playing makes an implicit claim for the efficacy of play and performance: characters who use unframed playing are able to work change in those around them. Building on recent scholarship about the play-audience relationship, this project suggests that we should view early modern drama as a potential means of disbursing a sense of personal efficacy and agency to theater audiences. Plays containing unframed playing and displays of ludic competence offer an exciting indication of the small-scale, personal power to be gained from playing in everyday life.
