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the chase and politics in Early Modern Drama
This dissertation proposes a new grouping of Renaissance dramas: deer hunting plays. Deer hunting created important political discourse, for it often replaced warfare as the primary activity of aristocrats as feudalism gave way to early forms of capitalism. Hunting and poaching permitted people aspiring to the aristocracy to demonstrate their fitness for membership. Deer hunting and poaching were the means by which members of all classes asserted violent control over a significant food source: venison. Conflict arose because deer possessed a legally hazy status as both færæ naturæ and, in royal forests, the "King's deer." Nobles regarded deer as their property, but peasants often disputed this claim. Furthermore, the aristocracy often raided each other's deer herds to discharge grievances. Poaching by poor people challenged the power of landowners and constituted an important form of resistance to authority. Thus this study argues that deer hunting and poaching metaphors and plots are fraught with political content. Hunting Shakespeare's Deer employs interdisciplinary methodologies from the New Historicism to analyze key Renaissance dramas as exemplars of deer hunting plays. These dramas include As You Like It, Love's Labour's Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Arden of Feversham, and The Lady of May. This dissertation relies on anecdotes and visual depictions (such as woodcuts and paintings) as artifacts of resistance to traditional "history." These materials lead to explorations of how hunting and poaching dramas negotiate political and socioeconomic tensions. The processes of population growth and enclosure dispossessed many people from the land. Dispossession increased both poaching and legal proceedings against poachers. Renaissance deer hunting dramas often show people negotiating the process of dispossession. Chapter topics include considerations of the drama and the following: Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth as poachers; the hunt and class; the supernatural and the hunt; clergy and the hunt; queens and huntresses; and cuckoldry and the hunt.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 339-354).