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A ‘bosom burnt up with desires’: The Trials of Patient Griselda on the Elizabethan Stage

A ‘bosom burnt up with desires’: The Trials of Patient Griselda on the Elizabethan Stage This essay considers the representation and reception of the mother figure upon the Elizabethan stage, in particular the way in which an illusion of the maternal body was constructed in a theatre where boys conventionally played women's roles; and the implications of the representation of that body for the narrative dynamic of the drama. My interest was aroused initially by the exasperation expressed by many critics writing about motherhood in Renaissance plays, who discovered a kind of inadequacy in the representation of mothers in the drama of the period. Such inadequacy was usually identified as a lack of interest in motherhood; for example, Maynard Mack, who expressed frustration that 'there is amazingly little interest in either mothers or mothering in most of Shakespeare', a concern reiterated more recently by, among many others, Mary Beth Rose.1 There is also a repeated recognition that in Elizabethan plays where mothers do appear, maternity tends be asserted as problematic, as threatening, or at least as an aspect of the feminine which needs be (and is) brought under control.2 Both the problem of the mother's disturbing absence and of her destabilizing presence have been usefully addressed by criticism which brings psychoanalytic theory such http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

A ‘bosom burnt up with desires’: The Trials of Patient Griselda on the Elizabethan Stage

DUNWORTH, FELICITY
Paragraph , Volume 21 (3): 330 – Nov 1, 1998
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.1998.21.3.330
Publisher site
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Abstract

This essay considers the representation and reception of the mother figure upon the Elizabethan stage, in particular the way in which an illusion of the maternal body was constructed in a theatre where boys conventionally played women's roles; and the implications of the representation of that body for the narrative dynamic of the drama. My interest was aroused initially by the exasperation expressed by many critics writing about motherhood in Renaissance plays, who discovered a kind of inadequacy in the representation of mothers in the drama of the period. Such inadequacy was usually identified as a lack of interest in motherhood; for example, Maynard Mack, who expressed frustration that 'there is amazingly little interest in either mothers or mothering in most of Shakespeare', a concern reiterated more recently by, among many others, Mary Beth Rose.1 There is also a repeated recognition that in Elizabethan plays where mothers do appear, maternity tends be asserted as problematic, as threatening, or at least as an aspect of the feminine which needs be (and is) brought under control.2 Both the problem of the mother's disturbing absence and of her destabilizing presence have been usefully addressed by criticism which brings psychoanalytic theory such

Journal

Paragraph – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Nov 1, 1998

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