All you shall see of her is perfect man’: Performing Masculinities in John Dryden and William Davenant’s The Tempest

My research project will explore how playwrights John Dryden and William Davenant used their 1667 adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to establish a normative model for socially acceptable masculinity in response to the rapidly changing gender dynamics of the Restoration stage. My project hypothesizes that Dryden and Davenant used the supernatural island setting of Shakespeare’s Tempest as a space for processing both the growing agency of women in English drama and the new forms of gendered performance that were taking place during the Restoration. I will be working at King’s College London, where I will be able to carry out archival research at the nearby British Library. By completing this project, I will be able to demonstrate how Dryden and Davenant used their adaptation of The Tempest as an attempt to establish a normative model for socially acceptable masculinity and authentic “maleness”.

Faculty Supervisor:

Fiona Ritchie

Student:

Partner:

King's College London

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

McGill University

Program: