Discussion on Friday, 11/11

Discussion on 11/11

Prof. MacKay:

Binocularity: there is a commoner denotation of perspective, concerning the denuded woman. See Mulvey as framework (scopophilia).

Maus and Ocularity

You have to be able to conjure up the science of the eye in Early Modern Drama because in the Renaissance they believed that the eye beamed images of ourselves onto others which led to fears of spectatorship

Think about Galileo and the camera obscura that was invented around this time suggesting that eyes don’t shoot beams.

(Intra-/extra-missive) materiality of seeing and the notion of making an impression and conspicuously so.

The gaze is a literally present and affectively understood phenomenon

Webster is very into these ideas.

The White Devil and Virginius/Virginia story provides an interesting link with Titus and the Lavinia story.

Maus. Jealousy is like a perspective, distorting the gaze.

Work on defrocking witchcraft trials and exposing the falsity of the trials, which was an assumed monolithic discourse, but not so.

Inigo Jones-Invented the notion of theater design. Put on extravagant masque performances, venues for extreme display. He infuriated Jonson.

For ideas perspective, it is important to look to Schneider.

The notion of sex worker as theater artist and that sex is always a type of theater work. There is a long tradition of thinking anti-structurally about the theater and the presentation of sexuality, and also about the connections between theater and theology.

History of sex work: there is a sort of innocence or blindness that has been read back on it.

All the terms in the Schneider’s work are historically specific and are connected to the 1980s.

Mandy’s Presentation

Maus is very pertinent to The Duchess of Malfi, and she is going to read Ferdinand as cuckold.

Ferdinand says “I have a suit to you” and there are many definitions of suit, which she goes over from the OED, and it seems as though he is asking for his sister’s hand in marriage.

Significance of Bosola’s pernetration into the Duchess’s household

“be-be speak a husband”-A Freudian slip by Ferdinand

There is an obsessive preoccupation with her body. He thinks of himself as her husband.

He wants ocular proof like a jealous husband.

The employment of the pregnancy test is used very much like the virginity test in The Changeling.

Through Bosola’s spying eyes, he acts like the jealous husband. He is the hidden space where Ferdinand and the Duchess overhear each other and work out their connection.

Ferdinand plays an actual role in punishing his wife like the jealous male punishes the beloved.

Images of self-fragmentation (or fragmenting the Duchess): “hewed her into pieces.”

The Duchess and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. Both of these women are supposed to be visibly pregnant. Are there illegible bodies in this play? Pregnant body? Wax Body?

The Duchess is a boy actor playing a duchess playing a pregnant woman pretending not to be pregnant.

Speaks of the Voyeuristic gaze.

Mara: questions whether voyeuristic gaze means that the spectator also desires to watch the violence.

Is Bosola an extension or a personification of the gaze?

Mandy:

Ferdinand has everyone do things for him. There is a doubling of male characters.

Tracy:

Suggests that there is a triple pun in Ferdinand’s not: “I want his head in the business, pointing to homoeroticism.

Prof. MacKay:

There is an erotic canabalistic moment of eating and renewing and imagining Antonio’s body and the Duchess. Through the figures’ friction/frission we are made aware of the tension between sexuality and violence.

The Duchess has superior knowledge of someone’s performance at all times and is in control of the feminine space within the patriarchal order.

There is a sense that anything productive has to be invisible.

There is a disconnect in the way that the Duchess is viewed and the way she views herself.

She is very much a fighting woman—referring to herself as a prince.

Natalie:

In life the Duchess claims control, saying even if you kill me, you are not going to win.

Antonio won’t meet her gaze, and Ferdinand knows enough not to look at her.

Prof. MacKay:

What she looks like is unclear, except what she is like.

She is portrayed as a mother, wife, dowager, and is a very unstable protagonist. Everytime someone addresses her, she rebuffs their perception. They suggest a symbol of what she is, but not her actual self.

Duchess is aware that she cannot be a stable thing. Consider I.ii.

People only enter into the visible field retroactively. The language of recognition lags substantially behind.

What we can see and what can be know are very different and overt.

This play is very grounded in the body and the abstract simultaneously. Ferdonand—the erotic power that is wielded over him by the Duchess sounds like Macbeth and the witches.

What does the Duchess’s body mean? What does it mean to look at her and not look at her?

John:

Thinking about “odious comparisons” The ridiculous comparisons at the end of Act III are hard to work with, because there is a surfeit of examples.

The pilgrimage scene is very difficult to stage. The pilgrims are all in dumbshow and all come to the conclusion that the Cardinal is too hard on his sister.

Prof. MacKay:

This is linked to defrocked faith and anti-idolatrous ideology.

The truth values of this play are more shadowed than any other play that one can think of in this period.

Bosola is the court gaul and the most emblematic of dishonesty. We seek truth from him, but we can’t really trust anything he says.

Bosola is much like Iago. Compare him to “honest Iago.” Consider the involvement of Bosola who is not the villain, but in fact a victim.

Natalie:

This play is unlike Richard II and King Lear in the way that these two figures make central, fatal mistakes. The Duchess does not do this. In fact, she doesn’t make any decisions, and is recognized as a slut. It is all about reputation.

Prof. MacKay

The last act:

The salmon and the dogfish. Very strange parable. Orthodox moral has extraordinary reach. What are we worth? What do we mean until we are consumed?

Thinking about her pregnancy/fate: Primary definition of “fat” in the period was actually “fattened”—It is like she is fattened for slaughter.

Natalie:

The audience feels an individual identification with her.

This is not sententious tragedy. It refuses to be.

Forces theater into co-creation existence because of its relative subjectivity and is equally undefined and complex. She soliloquizes to us directly.

Prof. Mackay:

You tend to lose students to this play. Lost two students already, one got into it and was lost for two years.