Graduate Studies

 

First Advisor

Kelly Stage

Department

English

Date of this Version

Spring 2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Comments

Copyright 2024, Benjamin Sidney Reed. Used by permission

Abstract

“Sacrificial Lambs: The Perils of Childhood in Shakespeare” utilizes childhood studies to read five Shakespearean plays and how they portray child characters in perilous situations such as kidnapping, banishment, and murder. It argues these dangers emulate real circumstances young people faced in the early modern period, including the boy actors playing these roles. The dissertation’s key research questions include how children in these plays exhibit agency in the face of danger, how they resist adult systems of power, and how audiences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have responded to these portrayals of imperiled and rebellious youths. The Introduction traces the intersectionality between childhood and early modern studies and identifies disturbing and ongoing sociocultural trends that treat systemic violence against children as a necessary sacrifice when protecting other national rights. Chapter 1 explores how the four noble children in Richard III create peer communities in response to loss and the ways Richard’s pageboy servant undermines them, arguing this mirrors practices of self-policing within the early modern grammar school. Chapter 2 examines how Oberon feels threatened by Titania’s attention to the Indian boy extending beyond maternal affection, arguing the use of the love potion between the fairy queen and the transformed weaver Bottom reflects early modern racist anxieties surrounding sexual relations with its colonial subjects and the threat of degeneration. Chapter 3 examines the early modern concept of regression into second childhood through King Lear and The Winter’s Tale and how these plays show ways that the conceptualization of age was fluid and socially constructed rather than biologically determined. Specifically, these plays recodify those not conforming to “normal” adulthood, such as the elder father, back into children as justification for further abuse. Chapter 4 is a pedagogical reflection on how I taught Romeo and Juliet under the new context of developing notions of children’s privacy in a Renaissance Literature course and how it challenges preexisting notions young readers have towards the text. Lastly, the Conclusion is a call to action for better attributing voice and agency to children rather than serving as moralistic gatekeepers and suggests that using Shakespeare’s portrayal of young characters played by young actors helps work towards these goals.

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