Writ in the Margins

In our final episode of Season 4, hosts Emily Bassett and Cole Graham zoom in on the figure of Jupiter inside of Lyly's Woman in the Moon specifically and in the context of early modern drama more generally. What does it mean when a major god like Jupiter shows up in your play? What kind of (mostly bad) behavior should the audience expect? And how do productions of these plays handle divine specta...

In this episode, hosts Joan Raube-Wilson and Jake Raiter get astrological as they lead us on a far out journey through the stars to investigate the astronomical underpinnings of Lyly's Women in the Moon . They explore Lyly's use of sources in creating the universe of this astrological sex comedy, particularly Robert Greene's Planetomachia and the curious "Astronomer's Game" once used as a training...

In this episode, host Nora Frankovich explores the wild and zany world of the servant characters in Caro's play thinking through the influence of Italian commedia dell'Arte on Spanish comedia. Frankovich is joined by special guest expert Anastasia Wilson. Wilson is a professor at Georgia State University and an educator, actor and devising artist with an advanced foundation in Physical Theatre.&nb...

In this episode, hosts Brooke Crittenden and Louis Altman collide gender theory with Caro's play to think through the ways honor and space are gendered onstage and off. They introduce the notion of the mujer varonil and consider Caro's use of this trope in her creation of Leonor in comparison to the kinds of "manly women" created by her (male) contemporaries. How does honor look for women and men...

In this episode, intrepid host Trent Stephens is joined by guest expert Dr. Barbara Fuchs. Dr. Fuchs is Distinguished Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA and director of the Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance and the Diversifying the Classics project. Dr. Fuchs shares details on the process of collaborative translation used to create the first English translation of C...

In this episode, we explore Spanish Golden Age gem, The Courage to Right a Woman's Wrongs by Ana Caro. Our expert hosts Becca Westbrook and Megan Parlett hone in on the history and context of the Don Juan trope in literature and drama and then apply this understanding to an investigation into gender, honor, and disguise in Caro's extraordinary play. How can queer theory help illuminate the resonan...

In this episode, our hosts Aubree Gray and Grayson Fulp ford the murky streams of The Changeling 's B-plot, through a deep dive into the context of mental illness, madness, and asylums in the early modern period. Through historical research, their deployment of disability studies, and a very depressing game of true or false, they ask critical and insightful questions about how to responsibly work...

In this episode, our hosts Gray Casterline and Scarlet Frishman Darling excavate the main plot of Thomas Middleton's The Changeling through the lens of both onstage violence and intimacy, using gender studies and queer theory as their guides. They close read key staging moments in the play across several productions to think about the staging required by the text and that which is implied by the s...

In the final episode of Season 3, hosts Jovita Roselene and John Williams apply feminist theory to Molière's Tartuffe, using Taylor Swift as their guide! They unpack what Taylor's struggle to gain control of her own musical catalog might have in common with the censorship Molière experienced in his lifetime. Then, they turn to thinking about feminist theory and how applying it to Tartuffe allows u...

In this episode, our hosts Rose Herold, Ella Pellegrino, and Julia Sommer explore the wild world of Molière's farce Tartuffe through the lens of censorship and (self) adaptation. How did the tension between Moliére, King Louis XIV, and the French Roman Catholic Church impact reception of Tartuffe? What revisions did the playwright make to appease Church and state? And why the introduction of a kin...

In this episode, hosts Kyle Showalter and Katie Mestres dig into the depths of early modern misogyny and its impact on the world of The Phantom Lady. In both England and on the Continent, widows caused massive anxiety for the patriarchy in the Renaissance. Showalter and Mestres explore the history and context of the widow in both real-life and dramatic contexts, with a tight focus on the character...

In this episode, hosts Austen Bell and Cory Drozdowski illuminate the literary tradition of the invisible mistress trope in Spanish Golden Age drama and apply gender theory to explode an understanding of how gender works within Pedro Calderon de la Barca's La dama duende , also known as The Phantom Lady . Meet the curious figure of the duende, explore how thinking expansively about gender presenta...

In this episode, hosts Anna Bigham and Cece Richardson hone in on the episodic plot of Pericles through an ecofeminist lens. They take us on a voyage to understand the links between Marina and the ocean across the play by investigating the liminality of location and character. They introduce us to Marina as a monstrous in-between figure and -- plot twist! -- reveal why that is a very, very go...

In this episode, our hosts Godfred Ogoe and Jim Drake take a deep dive into the plot of Pericles, using an ecocritical lens to think about the play's shifts from verse to prose. They then explore the ways in which the atmospheric and weather shifts that impact the play's environments reveal emotional storms within the characters. This episode features dramatized excerpts from the play. A note on c...

In this episode, hosts Ethan Goodmansen, Margaret Levin, and Molly Minter dig into the complicated history and context of Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam . They first unpack key events from Cary's own life and think through the implications her biography might carry inside of her dramatic work. Then, they examine Cary's play by thinking through the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic language Cary us...

In this episode, hosts Abigail Olshin and Ashley Wright take us deeper into the terrain of Lady Jane Lumley's Iphigenia at Aulis through a close look at the historical contexts of human sacrifice in Greek drama and the application of an ecocritical lens. Olshin and Wright ask us to consider the function of including performances of sacrificial moments in contemporary productions of these classical...

In the first episode of Season 3, hosts Katy Shinas and Anna Taylor take us into the world of Lady Jane Lumley's translation of Iphigenia at Aulis . Their dramaturgical work focuses on the interconnectedness of translation and adaptation, which they wake up in their analysis of Lumley's version of the play in conversation with Euripides's original and Racine's French language translation. Shinas a...

In this episode, hosts Jess Snellings and RIley Tate apply their analytical muscle to unpacking key themes of gender and honor at work in Life is a Dream . They set the stage with close reading and key historical context of the Spanish Golden Age. Then, they put the play in conversation with an example from contemporary media, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s animated television serie...

In this episode, hosts Chris Johnston and Allison Lyne cover an extraordinary amount of ground. They begin by offering a tour of the play's narrative highlights. Then, they apply two analytical lenses to the play: ecocriticism and Darwin's stages of evolution. Finally, they dive into the play's use of names and the ways in which characters consider their own names and name objects and creatures in...

In this episode, hosts Mikaela Hanrahan and Cait Redman explore all things folkloric, looking at the Spanish and Polish mythos that undergirds Life is Dream . They close-read two folktales ( The Princess of the Brazen Mountain and The Enchanted Castle in the Sea) and wake up connections with Segismundo's story. They also apply an ecocritical lens to the play to consider how de la Barca's classic r...

In this episode, hosts J. Paige Hilton and Caroline Lyons dig deeply into the ethical dimensions of staging a play like Loa to the Divine Narcissus today, particularly with regard to identity-conscious casting. They examine Aztec history and also think through the implications of not teaching this history fully in American classrooms. They also work with resources that foreground the use of multip...

In this episode, hosts Adam Hobbs, Molly Martinez-Collins, and Johnny Williams III explore the postcolonial dimensions of Loa to the Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. They deconstruct the power dynamics at work in our understanding of New Spain and also dig into the history of Aztec culture. The also ponder the collision between the monotheism of colonial Christianity in contrast to t...

In this episode, hosts Nic Holtman and Fallon Smyl hone in on Act II of Fletcher's problematic play and close read the ways in which the play's action stages both the consequences of environmental peril through an ecocritical lens as well as the specter of religious pageantry as Christian propaganda. They end the episode with a rich analysis of the play's musical elements and the ways in which mel...

In this episode, hosts Genevieve Henderson, Fawzia Istrabadi, and Christopher Niesner explore the pervasive Orientalism and pernicious Islamophobic tropes at work inside of Fletcher's late Jacobean play, The Island Princess . They pinpoint the play's significance as both colonialist and Christian propaganda while also considering the significance of the play's central strong female character in a...

In this episode, hosts Brie Roche and Alaina Smith activate their research on material culture, feminist theory, and madness to explore the ways that gender inflects attitudes towards madness inside of Brome's play. Featuring thorough close readings, scene performances, and a guessing game starring a special guest who has *no idea* what The Antipodes is all about. Content note: Discussions of madn...