Performing Masculinity in English University Drama, 1598–1636. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama by Christopher Marlow (review)

Abstract

Christopher Marlow. Performing Masculinity in English University Drama, 1598-1636. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. ix + 186. 55.00 [pounds sterling]. As the title of this monograph promises, Christopher Marlow's study explores the definition of scholar's or manliness in performances of (172) by college students of Oxford and Cambridge through roughly the first four decades of the seventeenth century. The plays and playing are treated as attempts produce self-authorized form of male identity that Marlow refers as masculinity (7). While readings of the representation of this scholarly in seventeen college plays are the primary concern here, this brief exploration also takes up the performance of in broader context of extracurricular college shows, rituals, ceremonies, saltings, and riots in five wide-ranging chapters that address the identifications and contra-identifications that occur within the social contexts (11) and webs that shaped the student and his experience of the drama (chapter 1), the implications of such identifications for the glories and disappointments of the man (11) with the promises of scholarship in the world at large (chapter 2), scholarly testing of authority in enactments of unmannerly misrule and timid obedience (chapter 3), critiques of the imposed ideals of scholarly self-discipline and restraint within friendship bonds and the fit between philosophical and instrumental modes of (chapter 4), and the difficulty of managing assertions of manhood within the context of the micropolitics (139) of initiation into the local college community (chapter 5). This book thus provides solid, thoughtful introduction the plays' concerns with the distinctions between manliness associated with university and nonuniversity cultures (174) as depicted in English drama over the periods addresses. Those more expert in the field may wish had done more justify its timeline and scope as well as the foundational warrants for its approach. Yet, both builds intriguingly upon F. S. Boas's groundbreaking study University Drama in the Tudor Age, now approaching its centenary, and argues persuasively for the necessity of further investigation into this worthy subject. Marlow begins by considering what extent engaging in performance was perceived as manly by early modern scholars and concludes that, in spite of anti-theatricalist objections, was. Indeed, one of the arguments this book makes is that involvement in drama was seen by most as manly act (3). The plays, he suggests, made by men,...made men, onstage and off, in their image (6) by providing delimited space of negotiation (7) that allowed students to explore and critique authorized male roles in the world at large (6). Interestingly, Marlowe focuses primarily on those plays written by fellow students in English, since, he argues, the vernacular was a medium in which the fault lines between academic and popular understandings of ideologically fraught concepts such as [were] likely be exposed (4). Ultimately, what he finds is drama that accepts the model of predominant in its culture, and sometimes rejects it (174). The plays are thus said chart the scholars' varied responses expectations that they perform the behaviour that properly belonged them as men even as they assumed the learning and tastes that distinguished them from the unlearned (172). The author offers close readings of performed acts of recorded in select works or records written or performed between 1598 and 1636, all of which he treats as artefacts (6) that reflect actual understandings about the link between and performance in their respective communities of origin. What differentiates this drama in terms of its power shape understandings is that was, with the exception of six plays performed before royalty, primarily performed by youths before their similarly youthful, same-sex coterie audiences (67). …