‘My dream was lengthened after life’: sleep, hallucinations and the supernatural in early modern drama

Abstract

This thesis considers the ways in which the supernatural in early modern drama is connected to sleep paralysis and hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations. Using modern psychological studies alongside early modern medical treatises, dietaries, and supernatural pamphlets, I consider the impact that sleep paralysis and sleep-related hallucinations have had on early modern drama. Despite lacking modern science with which to explain the phenomena, early modern playwrights were able to draw on contemporary culture in order to represent this innate part of the human condition on the stage. Regardless of the differences between early modern and modern beliefs, this thesis argues that we may recognise sleep paralysis in this drama because playwrights were astute observers of the human condition, allowing them to depict the parasomnias without knowing the science behind them. Chapter One looks at plays from the 1590s: Shakespeare’s Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Julius Caesar. Chapter Two examines plays by the children’s companies in the indoor playhouses from the early 1600s: Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge and Sophonisba, and Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois. Chapter Three considers plays by the adult companies after their acquisition of an indoor playhouse: Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy, and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Pericles, Cymbeline, and Henry VIII. Finally, Chapter Four looks at plays written after Shakespeare’s death in 1616: Middleton’s The Witch and his revisions of Macbeth, Rowley, Dekker, and Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton, Sampson’s The Vow Breaker, and Newdigate’s The Twice-Chang’d Friar.