English 434
Dr. Desmet
Spring 1997

The short paper was intended to get you to begin analyzing dramatic texts, to practice skills in close reading and in constructing an argument. The longer paper should be more involved: around 7-10 pages in length and involving a broader topic and perhaps some outside reading.

You are welcome to develop your own topic for the long paper in consultation with me. You may work out from one of your (or other people's!) postings, from the subject of your web project (although you'll want to narrow and direct the topic in a specific critical direction), or from/against the argument of one of the works on reserve. You may also pick one of the topics below. I'll be happy to suggest readings from the Reserve List to help you with your argument and I will eventually post the topics on our web site and add to them as issues come up in class discussion. Please do not write the long paper on the same play as you did for the short paper.

1. Analyze the symbolic inversions of gender in Mariam and suggest their significance in a play that is at once political and domestic drama.

2. Argue against the position that Mariam is a biographical play reflecting the conditions of Elizabeth Cary's life. What is the argument of this play? What is it about?

3. In both parts of his play, Tamburlaine constructs startling spectacles to act as "mirrors" of his power. What can we learn about Tamburlaine from those mirrors? What do they tell us about him? Are his efforts to control the meaning of his life and reign successful or are they undermined and how?

4. You know we needed to ask this: what is the significance, in terms of his character and his role as ruler, of the fact that Tamburlaine preserves (and perhaps venerates) Zenocrates's corpse throughout the second half of Tamburlaine? How is Tamburlaine changed and not changed by her death?

5. The Spanish Tragedy, like the morality play Everyman, includes the figure of an Old Man. What is his symbolic role in this revenge tragedy?

6. Beginning with but moving out from the Virgilian description of the underworld that dominates the beginning and ending of The Spanish Tragedy, what is the relationship between life and death in that play?

7. There are three related ethnicities in The Fair Maid of the West: English, Spanish, and the Moors. From an ethnographic standpoint, which culture--Spain or Barbary--is more like the English? In what ways? How does this comparison help Heywood to define England as a nation?

8. One critic writes that The Duchess of Malfi defines "good and evil by antithesis." Throughout the play, however, evil manages to reduce "good to a semblance of itself." Is this an accurate assessment of the relationship between good and evil in this play?

9. One critic writes that "Alice Arden's crime" (in Arden of Feversham) is not representative of life in England at the time. That is, there was no outbreak of husband-murder to justify the immense popularity of this story and play. Rather, the events of Arden suggest ways in which the prevailing definition of the family is being challenged and defined. How does this play redefine the family through its representation of a murderous wife?

10. Argue that Salome, not Mariam, is the hero of the play Mariam? Why would Cary make Salome her heroine?

11. Compare the representation of Arden and Alice Arden in Holinshed's Chronicle and in the anonymous play. How does the play differ from the chronicle and why?

12. An article on The Duchess of Malfi suggests that Bosola and the Duchess mirror one another in their efforts at sexual and social mobility. Keeping in mind the relationship between sexuality and class, how do these characters function as mirrors of one another? Or do they?

13. It seems to me that The Fair Maid of the West might occur without having Bess Bridges be cross-dressed. For instance, although she does not altogether trust Mullisheg, she also does not try to maintain her disguise in his court. What effect does her crossdressing have on your understanding of Bess's perfect constancy and chastity?