Addison 7/2/2008 |
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English
The starting point of this essay is William W. Appleton's statement: "Evidence of the disintegration of Tudor society into the highly competitive, individualistic Stuart society can be found in Jacobean...domestic architecture, as well as in the drama" (Appleton 27). This question arises, then: To what extent is the evolution of English Renaissance architecture reflected in the drama of the period The answer to this question lies in a selected survey of representative works following the timeline of Elizabeth's rule, ending in 1603, to that of her Stuart cousin, James I. The survey begins with Gammer Gurton's Needle (1553), in which "a great deal depends on the merely physical, and we are very close to Mother Earth" (Brett-Smith ix). What follows is Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607), a play with pervasive domestic themes (Van Fossen xxix, xxx). The concluding work is that of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, A King and No King (1611), a world in which "the home, the hearth and the double bed no longer comprise the norm as they do in most earlier drama" (Appleton 26). Neither the study of the architecture nor the study of the drama is an end in itself. Rather, this essay explores the ways in which domestic architecture, as explored through the drama, is reflective of a society's rapidly-changing mores. ... more>>