'Developing Your Research Project' Week Four

I've completed week 4 of the EPQ MOOC, although I feel that the different methodologies are not the best suit for a solitary, critical analysis of a text. However, it gives me enough pause to consider how my peers can contribute to the success of my project. Qualitative data might be helpful in seeing how people perceive my first draft, for instance, or what they feel makes a 'conventional' Shakespeare play - the latter in particular strikes me as useful. In this vein of thought, I could have a sample group watch an edition of the play and gather their thoughts on it (having them as my focus group) to see how a modern audience perceives it.

'Developing Your Research Project' Week Three

Completing the third week of the MOOC in the context of my new title, I feel that I have more confidence in regards to research. Furthermore, it offers a few exercises (narrowing down a broad title, 'exploding' terms for searching and suchlike) that I feel will be useful, as well as offering a few possible online sources for my research beyond JSTOR. It has informed me of having critical eye for my sources, and reinforced my note-making on sources. Overall, I would argue it has been the most useful week thus far for my research.

Possible Aspects to Investigate

As my essay has to cover a wide range of sub-topics within the range of Shakespeare's conventions (and how the contemporary society gives reason to these) I feel I should begin drafting ideas for the sections, so I have a (vague) frame of context to begin research and gathering quotes.

• Chivalry, and the relationship between Palamon and Arcite
• The role and consequences of the Jailer's Daughter and her madness
• Which protagonist is the audience supposed to root for?
• Fletcher's influence on the text (and comparing some of his works)
• Noting similarities to other Shakespearean texts
• Its origins as Geoffrey Chaucer's 'A Knight's Tale'
• The effect of it being a late play
• Conventions of Tragicomedy, and how this applies
• The balance of comedy and tragedy in the play
• The relationships between and within genders
• Is Emilia the sole, sane voice of reason?
• The possible influence of race/nationality on character perceptions with the contemporary audience (Palamon and Arcite are from Thebes, and described as 'His completion,/Nearer brown than black' (IV.ii.78-9) and 'Is, as a ripe grape, ruddy' (IV.ii.96) while the other characters are from Caucasian Athens) and whether this influences the comedic or tragic backgrounds
• Connections between the characters, overtly and covertly
• How the play was received by audiences at the time

I could note other possible areas to investigate (and remove some of the more superfluous ones that don't apply) and will try to form a skeleton plan.

Looking at Some British Library Articles

While I was searching for sources to define what exactly was 'conventional' of Shakespeare's work, I found several useful articles listed on the British Library, and have decided to note down the sources for later reference. These are given in no particular order.


https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/an-introduction-to-shakespeares-comedy
'An Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedy'
John Mullan

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/daughters-in-shakespeare-dreams-duty-and-defiance
'Daughters in Shakespeare: Dreams, Duty, and Defiance'
Kim Ballard

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-friendship
'Shakespeare and Friendship'
Will Tosh

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-gender-the-womans-part
'Shakespeare and Gender: 'The Woman's Part''
Clare McManus

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-madness
'Shakespeare and Madness'
Will Tosh

A Gander on Google Books

'Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine: Staging Female Characters in the Late Plays and Early Adaptations

Lori Leigh

'A Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship: A Drama Ascribed to John Fletcher'

William Spalding

'Palamon and Arcite'

John Dryden

'A Concordance to 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' by Shakespeare and Fletcher'

Clarice Crawford

'Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays'

Brian Vickers

'Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture'

Carol Thomas Neely

'The Staging of Romance in Late Shakespeare: Text and Theatrical Technique'

Thomas J. Cobb

'Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613'

Andrew J. Power, Rory Loughnane

A Peruse of JSTOR

I decided to look through JSTOR for possible articles to shape my dissertation, and have found that many of them offer me inspiration, while others may simply give me a broader idea of the time period itself, or critic's interpretation of the issues raised.

"For What We Lack,/We Laugh"; Incompletion and "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Paula S. Berggren
pp. 3-17

Review
Sources of Four Plays Ascribed to Shakespeare:"The Reign of King Edward III", "Sir Thomas Moore", "The History of Cardenio", "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
by G. Harold Metz, reviewed by Donald W. Foster
pp. 237-240

"Shakespeare's Flop: John Waterson and The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Zachary Lesser
pp. 177-196

"Is this winning?": Prince Henry's Death and the Problem of Chivalry in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Peter C. Hermen
pp. 1-31

Shakespeare's Imperiled and Chastening Daughters of Romance
Charles Frey
pp. 125-140

The Jailer's Daughter and the Politics of Madwomen's Language
Douglas Bruster
pp. 227-300

Emilia's Argument: Friendship and 'Human Title' in "The Two Novle Kinsmen"
Laurie J. Shannon
pp. 657-682

"Same-Sax Erotic Friendship in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Richard Mallette
pp. 29-52

"Like a shadow,/ I'll ever dwell": The Jailer's Daughter as Ariandne in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Nichole Dewall
pp. 15-26

"Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion"
Annotated Chaucer Bibliography
pp. 135-172

Recent Studies in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
Charles Frey
pp. 345-402

"Seeking the Medieval in Shakespeare: The Order of the Garter and the Topos of Derisive Chivalry"
James N. Ortego II
pp. 80-104

Rewritting Perfect Friendship in Chaucer's "A Knight's Tale" and Lydgate's "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum"
Robert Stretter
pp. 234-252

Review
Jeffery Knapp, Shakespeare Only
Review by Joseph Caimpara
pp. E248-E251

Colloquial Contractions in Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, and Shakespeare as a Test of Authorship"
Willard Edward Farnham
pp. 326-358

Influence of Court-Masques on the Drama 1608-15
Ashley H. Thorndike

The Language of Madwomen in Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists
Maurice Charney, Hanna Charney
pp. 451-460

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship
John D. Cox
pp. 1-29

Appearance and Reality in Shakespeare's Last Plays
Theodore Spencer
pp. 265-274

Review
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare by Clare Asquith, Shakespeare and Republicanism by Andrew Hadfield
Review by Catherine M. S. Alexander
pp.282-283

"'The Neutral Term'?: Shakespearean Tragicomedy and the Idea of the 'Late Play'
Gordon McMullan
pp. 115-132

Early Modern Tragicomedy
Subha Mukherji, Raphael Lyne
'Studies in Renaissance Literature'
Volume 22
DS Brwer, Boydell and Brewer (publishers) 2007

Review
The Authorship of Shakespeare's
Johnathan Hope
Reviewed by Eric Rasmussen
pp. 109-113

Review
'Shakespeare's Use of Dance'
Alan Brissenden
Review by Paul Betram

Review
Shakespeare &co: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story"
Stanley Wells
Review by Kate Pogue
pp. 522-524

Review
Shakespeare Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays
Brian Vickers
Review by Warren Chernaik
pp. 1030-1031

How Happy Was Shakespeare with the Printed Versions of His Plays?
E. A. J. Honnigmann
pp. 937-951

The Chronology of Shakespeare's Play: A Statistical Study
B. Brainerd
pp. 2212-230

Theatre Music in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
John Manifold
pp. 366-397

Ben Jonson on Shakespeare's Chaucer
Kathryn Jacobs, D'andra White
pp. 198-215

"Discrepant Emotional Awareness in Shakespeare"
RS White, Ciara Rawnsley
pp. 241-263

Review
The Weyward Sister: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics
Dympna Callaghan, Lorraine Helms, Jystna Singh
Review by Mark Thornton Burnett
pp. 1046-1047

Review
Poor Women in Shakespeare
Fiona McNeill
Review by Rebecca Laroche
pp. 94-95

Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies

Karl F. Thompson

pp. 1079-1093

"Shakespeare’s Greek Romances [1]"

(Shakespeare and the Greek Romance)

Carol Gesner

pp. 80-115

Shakespeare’s Greek Romances [1

Pitching

I pitched my two hypotheses (How was Percy Bysshe-Shelley's poetry affected by his Atheism in the time he was writing and Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a conventional Shakespeare Play) to smaller groups of friends who are familiar with the EPQ - or are completing it themselves - in the hopes that they would help me finalize which one I would choose to adopt as my new EPQ, providing that my supervisor is approving of it.

So, these are the bullet-points of what was discussed with them.

How was Percy Bysshe-Shelley's poetry affected by his Atheism in the time he was writing?:

• The idea is rather out of the blue, and doesn't have much relevance to anything I've previously studied, bar the literature?
• I've read only a few pieces of his work.
• It may be difficult finding reliable sources on exactly how his religion influenced him.

Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a conventional Shakespeare Play?:

• The play is rather obscure; everyone I spoke to hadn't heard of it before, and thought it sounded interesting.
• I've already read and watched the play once through and am quite familiar with a few of Shakespeare's works (but not Fletcher's)
• Due to previous education experiences, I'm far more familiar with the conventions and the contexts of the time period, but still offer me historical context to research.
• I discussed very animatedly about things I could discuss in the essay.
• I can expand my knowledge on Shakespeare.
• It's an unconventional area to study (the play is rather obscure) but it does has some academic journal discussion.