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Foul Witches and Feminine Power: Gendered Representations of Witchcraft in the Works of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

Coleman, Alex
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=odu1562624942402741

Abstract Details

2019, M.A. (Master of Arts in English), Ohio Dominican University, English.
Representations of witchcraft and beings of magical power were popular forms of entertainment for William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, despite the less whimsical ramifications faced by actual persons accused of witchcraft at the time. King James I was well known to have an acute fascination with occult studies, as evidenced by his publication of Daemonologie in 1597. The vilification and fear mongering that arose from James's condemnation of witchcraft has had resounding consequences particularly affecting cultural ideology surrounding the autonomy of women for generations thereafter. In the world of the Elizabethan theater, representations of witches could be depicted as entertainment while also either endorsing or critiquing the cultural climate surrounding the subject of witchcraft in society. Shakespeare and his contemporaries portrayed these supernatural characters in a variety of ways: some comical and innocuous, others startling and sinister. But is there a distinction between the male representations of witchcraft as opposed to female (or perhaps gender-fluid) representations of witches? This paper believes there are marked distinctions and will seek to examine this question by exploring characters depicted in Shakespeare's Macbeth, The Tempest, and Henry VI. Attention will also be given to portrayals of witches by Shakespeare's contemporaries, notably Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford. Consideration will also be paid to the ways in which particularly Shakespeare's depictions of witchcraft and representations of supernatural women have evolved in more contemporary adaptations with the insurgence of feminist ideology over the last century, and a comparative examination of original and adaptive texts will mark the distinctions of how specific performances have transformed from what may have been their original portrayals on the Elizabethan stage.
Jeremy Glazier, M.F.A. (Advisor)
Martin Brick, Ph.D. (Other)
56 p.
Gender Studies; Literature
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Elizabethan, Early Modern, Drama, Witches, Witchcraft, Feminist Critique, Feminism, Womens Critique, Gender Critique, Gender Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Coleman, A. (2019). Foul Witches and Feminine Power: Gendered Representations of Witchcraft in the Works of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries [Master's thesis, Ohio Dominican University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=odu1562624942402741

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Coleman, Alex. Foul Witches and Feminine Power: Gendered Representations of Witchcraft in the Works of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. 2019. Ohio Dominican University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=odu1562624942402741.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Coleman, Alex. "Foul Witches and Feminine Power: Gendered Representations of Witchcraft in the Works of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries." Master's thesis, Ohio Dominican University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=odu1562624942402741

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

odu1562624942402741
822
© 2019, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio Dominican University and OhioLINK.