ENG246

This course explores the tensions, intersections, and overarching relationship between early modern politics and notions of theatricality from the opening of the first public playhouse (1576) until just after re-opening of the playhouses following Cromwell’s Interregnum (1660). Students read drama concerning governmentality’s relationship to gender, race, coloniality, divine right, representation, and revolution alongside early modern political speeches, edicts, and treatises. They contend with the way politics informed the period's dramatic theater and, indeed, the way the period's dramatic theater came to inform politics. Prerequisite(s): one 100-level English course. Recommended background: ENG 213 and 214.