"Men like stage-players act variety of parts": Performing melancholic parts on the early modern stage

This thesis articulates the importance and influence of medical understandings of humoural theory, particularly melancholy, on English drama of the late 1580s to the 1620s. Using a case study approach of early modern dramatic texts by playwrights such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Chapman, and Middleton, amongst others, alongside an examination of key pieces of medical and religious writing, this thesis investigates the interrelationship between medicine and the theatre which occurred throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to question why dramatists were so concerned with the medicalisation of drama, and the dramatization of medicine.

This thesis applies Judith Butler’s concept of anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance to the experience of emotion. Building on research by Gowland, Lund, and Langley, the study identifies melancholy as a performative emotion, both in that it is often performed and that its symptoms lend themselves to spectacle. This leads us to discuss both the performances of “anatomical” emotion, and the idea that emotion is something which can be performed, convincingly or otherwise.

Taking its cue from Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), this thesis identifies three types of melancholy which were most regularly being presented on the early modern stage: scholarly melancholy, revenger’s melancholy, and love melancholy. This thesis looks at the ways the representations of these melancholic types often overlap, how one melancholy could lead to or be influenced by another kind, and the connotations and significance of these interrelationships. Chapter One begins by looking at the portrayal of scholarly melancholy, and how it can be used alongside love melancholy and religious melancholy, focusing on Doctor Faustus (1589-1592), Love’s Labour’s Lost (1595), and Hamlet (1599). Chapter Two’s focus on the revenge tragedies of the late 1500s – early 1600s also sees an interest in Hamlet, alongside works by Kyd and Middleton to highlight the way melancholy began to be portrayed specifically as a performative emotion, with links to excessive theatricality. Chapter Three’s focus shifts towards comedy and the different ways in which melancholy could be used in comedy – both as something to laugh at, and as something which could derail the traditional comic ending in texts such as The Merchant of Venice, Monsieur D’Olive, and Every Man in His Humour. Chapter Four moves forward to the work of John Ford in the 1620s and highlights the relationship between Ford and Burton which we see in The Lover’s Melancholy, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and The Broken Heart. Returning to the tragedies, Chapter Four suggests that the work of Ford represents a culmination of the melancholic discourses which have come before, as scholarly melancholy, vengeful melancholy, love melancholy, and even comic melancholy combine in what could be considered medical drama.