| Analyzing the relationship between subjectivity and legitimacy in English Renaissance drama, this study traces a crucial shift in early modern perceptions of language and selfhood. Rather than examining the blood lineage and social status of dramatic characters, however, it focuses on the connection to subjectivity forged by other forms of legitimacy and genealogy, notably those of language, ideas, history, and money. In fact, of the plays discussed in depth, none features a bastard character. The questions of legitimate descent and social acceptance that plague the bastards and kings of the early modern stage are thus shown to pertain equally to historical accounts and to words and ideas.; This dissertation contends that representations of figurative genealogy and legitimacy in English Renaissance drama reflect a model of subjectivity shifting from one dominated by the genealogy of bloodlines toward one deemed more malleable and negotiable, one based increasingly on such modes of exchange as language, theater, and money---one that, to a degree, abjures history. The legitimacy imaginary moves from a discourse of descent to a discourse of consent, from genealogy to negotiation, from predetermination to a constrained self-authorship. Because this inquiry focuses on paradigms of legitimacy located at the interface of language and corporeality, theater provides the works salient to the discussion. Similarly, as genealogy and legitimacy denote a discourse of derivation, history plays figure prominently in this investigation.; The first chapter provides a brief overview of the dissertation. Through a survey of works by Jonson, Marlowe, Kyd, Marston, and other early modern dramatists, chapter two establishes a relationship between language, legitimacy, and an emergent mind-body duality. Chapters three and four explore the adulteration and relative legitimacy of naming and history in the politicized world of Shakespeare's second tetralogy. The final chapter shows how John Ford's Perkin Warbeck, often called the last history play of the Renaissance, locates legitimacy outside the body entirely, thus signaling the advent of an incipient modern self. |
