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Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark – talk series
2nd June 2020: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm BST
The Institute, in collaboration with Georgetown University, is holding a series of talks on ‘Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark’ as part of The Future of the Humanities Project and The Humanities Initiative.
Shakespeare and the Morality Plays: A Formal Heritage
– Molly Clark
In the mid-sixteenth-century genre of the morality play the interludes featured personified abstract nouns as their characters, divided into good and evil. These productions would have toured the country, teaching Protestant morality to the general population. These plays use verse form in a striking way: frequently in these dramas, good characters speak in one rhyme scheme, and bad in another. Verse form was therefore a way of signalling to the audience which characters were the elect and which the damned.
Poet and doctoral student Molly Clark will examine these conventions and the ways in which they are manipulated before turning to Shakespeare, who grew up with morality plays and imbibed their dramaturgy. The discussion, moderated by Professor Michael Scott, will end by considering the ways in which Shakespeare himself plays with the idea of verse form as moral indicator.
Molly Clark is in the second year of a doctor of philosophy degree at Merton College, Oxford, researching rhyme in Shakespeare’s theatre. Her article on this subject appears in Oxford Research in English (Issue 7, Autumn 2018), and she has an article on rhyme in mid-sixteenth-century drama forthcoming in Studies in Philology. She also publishes poetry under her full name, Mary Anne Clark, and she won the Newdigate Prize in 2016.
Professor Michael Scott is Senior Dean, Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, college adviser for postgraduate students, and a Member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior adviser to the president at Georgetown University.
This event is free and hosted on Zoom by Georgetown University. Please register here.
Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk