“Youth is Drunke with Pleasure, and therefore Dead to all Goodnesse”: Regulating the Excess of the Erotic Early Modern Body

• Authors: Steve Orman
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article investigates the erotic and youthful body in John Fletcher’s play The Faithful Shepherdess, written for The Children of the Queen’s Revels c.1607. For many early modern scholastic, medical, and conduct manual writers, the life stage of Youth was a particularly dangerous moment in an individuals’ life, a time where the body was in a constant state of flux and ruled by unhealthy bodily excess. Fletcher’s play presents an assortment of characters who are all ruled by or obsessed with their own youthful passions. This article engages with Galenic humoral theory, an area that has been neglected in scholarship on Fletcher’s play, to provide a close analysis of Youth and erotic excess on the early modern stage.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Pages: 71-87

Dates

published

2013-11-01

online

2013-11-01

Contributors

author

Steve Orman

• Canterbury Christ Church University

References

• Ben-Amos, Ilana Krausman. Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England. London: Yale UP, 1994. Print.
• Bliss, Lee. “Defending Fletcher’s Shepherds.” Studies in English Literature,1500-1900 23:2 (1983): 295-310. Print.
• Callaghan, Dympna. Shakespeare Without Women. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
• Finkelpearl, Philip J. “John Fletcher as Spenserian Playwright: The FaithfulShepherdess and The Island Princess.” Studies in English Literature,1500-1900 27:2 (1987): 285-302. Print.
• Fletcher, John. The Faithful Shepherdess. Ed. Cyrus Hoy. The DramaticWorks in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon. Vol. 3. Ed. Fredson Bowers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976. 483-585. Print.
• Gosson, Stephen. The S[c]hoole of Abuse. London, 1579. Print.
• Griffiths, Paul. Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England1560-1640. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
• Lamb, Edel. Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre: The Children’sPlaying Companies (1599-1613). Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009. Print.
• Lenton, Francis. The Young Gallants Whirligigg: Or Youths Reakes. London, 1629. Print.
• Mendelson, Sara, and Patricia Crawford. Women in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.
• Middleton, Thomas. “Father Hubburd’s Tales (1604).” Thomas Middleton:The Collected Works. Ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. 149-82. Print.
• Munro, Lucy. Children of the Queen’s Revels: a Jacobean Theatre Repertory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.
• Paster, Gail Kern. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the ShakespeareanStage. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. Print.
• Shepard, Alexandra. Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.
• Turner, Robert Y. “Heroic Passion in the Early Tragicomedies of Beaumont and Fletcher.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 1 (1984): 109-30. Print.
• ---. “Slander in Cymbeline and other Jacobean Tragicomedies.” English LiteraryRenaissance 13.2 (1983): 182-202. Print.
• A Two-fold Treatise, the One Decyphering the Worth of Speculation, and ofa Retired Life The Other Containing a Discoverie of Youth and Old Age. Oxford, 1612. Print.
• Williams, William Proctor. “Not Hornpipes and Funerals: Fletcherian Tragicomedy.” Renaissance Tragicomedy: Explorations in Genre andPolitics. Ed. Nancy Klein Maguire. New York: AMS P, 1987. 139-54. Print.
• Yoch, James J. “The Renaissance Dramatization of Temperance: The Italian Revival of Tragicomedy and The Faithful Shepherdess.” RenaissanceTragicomedy: Explorations in Genre and Politics. Ed. Nancy Klein Maguire. New York: AMS P, 1987. 115-38. Print.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/texmat-2013-0027