'Developing Your Research Project' Week Five

After completing week five of the MOOC, I have found a greater depth and understanding of skim-reading, note-taking, and the importance of executing these correctly. Therefore, I feel that it has been especially relevant as of late, as my primary text has arrived, although my secondary texts are unfortunately still in limbo.

'Characters' Section: Spider Diagram

I decided to complete a spider diagram regarding my structure, and decided to consider my potential areas of investigation for the section on 'Characters'. However, I have found doing spider diagrams rather unwieldy when planning essays, so may resort to a different type once I'm more settled on developing my idea.

Of course, these ideas are subject to change once I have a great breadth of critical texts to draw from, so therefore will be more closely informed.

Potential Primary Research

Being that my essay relies predominately on secondary research and analyses, it seems redundant to ask the opinions of my peers on a piece that is, admittedly, very obscure. However, having some measure of contemporary, public perception of the play could be useful to refer to, or to inform my own comments. However, there are difficulties.

Would it be worthwhile asking my peers what they perceive as the 'conventional Shakespeare play', or even the conventions at all. Would it work best to instead have them read excerpts from the text with a small measure of context, and ask for a few paragraphs interpretation of it? Would it work best to instead have them watch a version of the play (if I can find one that is readily accessible; YouTube could be helpful for this) and give me a brief commentary on their thoughts?

These are things I will have to discuss with my supervisor in regards to its relevance and the most successful manner to conduct primary research. For now, I feel it most relevant to read and collect texts useful to my essay.

The Arrival of the Book

Recently, my copy of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' arrived from my order, and I am anticipating a quick skim and then detailed analyses of key quotes, after I have affirmed my plans with my supervisor, and then developed a solid idea of what I intend to analyse. The copy I have is as follows:

'The Two Noble Kinsmen'

The Oxford Shakespeare

Oxford World's Classics

Oxford University Press

General Editor: Stanley Wells

Edited by Eugene M. Waith

Reissued 2008

I intend to read the lengthy and informative introduction that forces the actual play text to start on page 75, therefore (hopefully) giving me a complete and detailed concept of all manners relating to the play.

Alongside this, I hope to make a visit to the local university library and attempt to find some of the physical sources for the JSTOR/Google Books, or to find the textbooks I've found particularly relevant, or to discover more useful texts.

Assembling the Texts

Being that I need a somewhat-solid idea of which texts to use for my EPQ, I feel that, given my prior research documented in these places, that I should consolidate the knowledge I've found so that I have one uniform location for  which I can refer to when finding texts. I've divided them into 'Necessary' (Should give me a critical perspective most relevant to my essay), 'Useful' (Texts that provide useful information), and 'Additional Context' (in which the title describes itself). I hope to acquire all of the 'Necessary' texts, and hopefully many of the 'Useful' ones to aid my essay.

Necessary

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

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

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

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

(JSTOR)

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

(JSTOR)

'Palamon and Arcite'
John Dryden

(Google Books)

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

(Google Books)

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

(British Library)


Responses to Tyranny in John Fletcher's Plays
ROBERT Y. TURNER
Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 4 (1989), pp. 123-141

(JSTOR)

Review
Othello by William Shakespeare, E. A. J. Honigmann; The Two Noble Kinsmen by John Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Lois Potter
Review by: Brian Vickers
The Review of English Studies, Vol. 50, No. 197 (Feb., 1999), pp. 79-84

(JSTOR)

Sex Averted or Converted: Sexuality and Tragicomic Genre in the Plays of Fletcher
Verna A. Foster
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 32, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1992), pp. 311-322
(JSTOR)


Useful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(JSTOR)

Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies
Karl F. Thompson
pp. 1079-1093

(JSTOR)

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

(Google Books)

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

(Google Books)

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

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

(British Library)

Review: Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare Only
Shakespeare Only by Jeffrey Knapp
Review by: Joseph Campana
Modern Philology, Vol. 110, No. 4 (May 2013), pp. E248-E251

(JSTOR)

"“Chaucer (of all admired) the story gives”:Shakespeare, Medieval Narrative, and Generic Innovation" (pp. 85-110)
From:Renaissance Papers 2009
Edward Gieskes
Edition: NED - New edition
Boydell & Brewer, Camden House (2010)

(JSTOR)

Review
The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare by Ashley H. Thorndike
Review by: Martin W. Sampson
The Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1902), pp. 239-247

(JSTOR)

"Something Rich and Strange:Shakespeare’s Approach to Romance 11 July 1982" (pp. 425-439)
From:Northrop Frye's Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance
Editors: Troni Y. Grande, Garry Sherbert
Volume: 28

University of Toronto Press (2010)(JSTOR)

"Gentleman-like Tears": Affective Response in Italian Tragicomedy and Shakespeare's Late Plays
Robert Henke
Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1996), pp. 327-349(JSTOR)

The Absolved Riddle: Sovereign Pleasure and the Baroque Subject in the Tragicomedies of John Fletcher
Herbert Blau
New Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 3, Interpretations (Spring, 1986), pp. 539-554

(JSTOR)


Additional Context

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

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

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

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

(JSTOR)

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

(JSTOR)

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

(JSTOR)

'The Staging of Romance in Late Shakespeare: Text and Theatrical Technique'
Thomas J. Cobb

(Google Books)

Moorish Dancing in "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
SUJATA IYENGAR
Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 20 (2007), pp. 85-107

(JSTOR)

Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance
Lorraine Helms
Theatre Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2, Power Plays (May, 1989), pp. 190-200

(JSTOR)

"Comic Myth in Shakespeare" June 1952" (pp. 20-32)
From:Northrop Frye's Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance
Editors: Troni Y. Grande, Garry Sherbert
Volume: 28
University of Toronto Press (2010)

(JSTOR)

Tides of Titles

After speaking with my supervisor, he offered the suggestion that I narrow my title to something less broad and vague. Therefore, here is the (brief) evolution of my titles, and to my current working one.

• Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a Conventional Shakespeare Play?

Which then branched off into:

• Is 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' a conventional Shakespeare Tragicomedy?

and:

• ‘Is ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ a conventional Shakespeare play in regards to its narrative, characters, settings, and nature as a Tragicomedy?’

The latter of which is my working title, as it offers a greater versatility and clarity as to what I have to investigate in both the text and the extraneous resources for my essay.

A Detour to the Irrelevant

Looking through my EPQ folder, I discovered that I had three poems that related to my initial artefact that I hadn't divulged here, composed over the summer. Although they have no bearing on my current project, I do feel that they have some semblance to my progress.

Written sometime in early August, here is a Rispetto, Sonnet, and a Nonet from what I probably would've titled 'View From the Window Seat'

'Sunset Over the Farms'

Mottled brown, dappled tawny, finely-spun gold
Stretch unbound on tumbling hills, greedily fed
To the ruddy, roaring beast. Specks dip and fold,
Wafting; the machine's maw devours nature's threads.
The thresher's wake leaves a flourish, rising plume
That with some seeds aloft set the sky abloom.
Those old fallowed fields that do wind and wander,
Leave the passing observer thoughts to ponder.

'Sunset Over the Farms'

There stands the solitary sentinel,
Whose lofty frame is slight and tightly bound
By the wires unhindered by mangonels
Whose battle-bellows no longer resound.
No, no such guardian stood watching then,
But the flighty figure does stand there now,
Louring on towering lands far from fens
Where elderly evergreens slump and bow.
Oh, though their long shadows flicker, falter,
They are but fleeting to the fiery sky!
Tones of marigold and lavender
Mingle, the eye's prismatic lullaby.
The ever-shifting heavens never tell
The vivid colours of their citadel.

'Rural Moon'

Here, she sits upon her midnight throne
To watch her subjects to and fro
Beneath the brilliant beacon;
No mortal light outshines,
Till the dawn rises
And she flees, the
Fearful
Moon.