Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society: Fall 2006 Newsletter

2006 Fall Newsletter MLA Sessions Fall 2006

MLA 2006—Philadelphia • Session 220 (MRDS) Bridging the Divide: Medieval and Renaissance Performance and Periodization Thursday, 28 December 1:45-3:00 p.m.

203-A, Convention Center "Periods and Mileposts: Traveling Players and the Reformation," Peter Greenfield, Univ. of Puget Sound "Professionalism, Periodization, and Performance: Shakespeare's Richard III," Brian Walsh, Yale Univ. "'Sweet Poetry and Tully's Orator': Lavinia as Debased Rhetorician and Emergent Player in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus," Susan Harlan, New York Univ.

• Session 695 (MRDS) Pax Christi: Christ as Peacemaker in Early Theater Saturday, 30 December 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.

Congress A, Loews "Christ and Human Conscience: Self-Knowledge as the Door to Wisdom in Het Spel van de V Vroede ende van de V Dwaeze Maegden," Mary Maxine Browne, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette "Jesus as Mary in the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages," Susan Stakel, Univ. of Denver "Terrors of Wholeness: The Politics of Overextension in the York Play of the Crucifixion," Susan M. Nakley, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick

Other Sessions of Interest • Session 53 The Short Theatrical Genres

Wednesday, 27 December 7:00-8:15 p.m.

Congress A, Loews "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gallows: Humor, Criminality, and Spectacle in the 'Jácara entremesada,'" Ted Lars Lennart Bergman, California State Univ., Fresno "Dislodging the Paratext: Understanding the 'Minor' Genres of the Golden Age," Leo F. Cabranes-Grant, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara "How America is Presented in Short Theatrical Genres of the Spanish Golden Age," Ingrid Simson, Oxford Brookes Univ.

• Session 56 Perilous Playgoing in Early Modern England Wednesday, 27 December 7:00-8:15 p.m.

308, Philadelphia Marriott "The Theatre as an Assassin's Bullet," Ellen MacKay, Indiana Univ., Bloomington "Anxious Ingestions and Intemperate Appetites," Allison Hobgood, Emory Univ.

"Aping Rape," Holly E. Dugan, George Washington Univ.

Respondent: Jean Elizabeth Howard, Columbia Univ.

• Session 182 Teaching Early Modern Spanish Drama Thursday, 28 December 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.

Congress B, Loews Speakers: Laura R. Bass, Tulane Univ.

Edward H. Friedman, Vanderbilt Univ.

Mary Malcolm Gaylord, Harvard Univ.

Frederick Luciani, Colgate Univ.

Cory A. Reed, Univ. of Texas, Austin • Session 210 Medieval Theatricality Thursday, 28 December 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.

Commonwealth Hall A2, Loews "John Beleth, Eudes de Sully, and Ritual Corporeality: A Case for the Spirit of Movement," Donnalee Dox, Texas A&M Univ., College Station "Mystical and Grotesque Aspects of the Medieval Body in a Morality Play by Jean Gerson," Yelena Matusevich, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks "Parody in Late Medieval Drama: The Ethics and Politics of Performance," Noah David Guynn, Univ. Of California, Davis

• Session 282 Digital Shakespeares Thursday, 28 December 3:30-4:45 p.m.

Liberty Ballroom Salon C, Philadelphia Marriott "Shakespeare Film in the Age of Digital Incunabula (1984-2000)," Peter S. Donaldson, Massachusetts Inst. of Tech.

"Cyber Shakespeare: The Impact of Non-English Sites and Archives," Alexander C. Y. Huang, Penn State Univ., University Park "The Panopticon in the Playground: Shakespeare and Appropriation Online," Christy Desmet, Univ. Of Georgia; Sujata Iyengar, Univ. of Georgia • Session 435 Christopher Marlowe: Text and Context Friday, 29 December 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.

Grand Ballroom Salon L, Philadelphia Marriott "The Sexual Politics of Editing Hero and Leander," Graham Lawrence Hammill, Univ. of Notre Dame "Staging the Contradictions of Marlowe's Faustus," Lars Engle, Univ. of Tulsa "The Rich Jew of London: Christopher Marlowe and Roderigo Lopez," Alan G. Stewart, Columbia Univ.

• Session 505 Shakespeare's Intentions Friday, 29 December 3:30-4:45 p.m.

Liberty Ballroom Salon C, Philadelphia Marriott "Shakespeare and the Sources of Intent," Luke Andrew Wilson, Ohio State Univ., Columbus "A Dangerous Thing: Women, Will, and Shakespeare's Sonnets," Kathryn Schwarz, Vanderbilt Univ.

"Shakespeare without Blots," Juliet Fleming, Univ. of Cambridge • Session 616 Re-sounding the Renaissance Friday, 29 December 9:00-10:45 p.m.

309, Philadelphia Marriott "Re-Creating the Sounds of Conflict: Thoughts on Performance of William Byrd's Compositional Styles," Christopher White, Queen's Coll., City Univ. of New York "'Sing the Enchantment for Sleepe': Music and Bewitched Sleep in Early Modern English Drama," Sarah Williams, Northwestern Univ.

"Victorian Shakespeare Productions and Arthur Sullivan," Jeff Dailey, Five Towns Coll., NY

• Session 714 Christopher Marlowe: Myth and Biography Saturday, 30 December 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.

Liberty Ballroom Salon B, Philadelphia Marriott "Marlowe, May 1593, and the 'Must Have' Theory of Biography," Alan Downie, Univ. of London, Goldsmiths Coll.

"Connecting the Dots: Inference and Conjecture in Marlowe Biography," Constance Kuriyama, Texas Tech Univ.

"Christopher Marlowe in the Shadow of Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford," Alan H. Nelson, Univ. of California, Berkeley

Recent Publications Fall 2006

Recent Publications Anderson, Thomas Page, Performing Early Modern Trauma from Shakespeare to Milton, Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Asquith, Clare, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, New York; London: Perseus, PublicAffairs, 2005.

Bergeron, David Moore, Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640, Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Bel, Catherine, Dumont, Pascale, and Willaert, Frank, eds. Contez Me Tout: Mélanges De Langue et Littérature Médiévales Offerts à Herman Braet, Louvain ; Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2006.

Britland, Karen, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria, Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Cooper, Helen, Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Inaugural Lecture Delivered 29 April 2005, Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Douglas, Audrey and Sally-Beth MacLean, eds., REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First TwentyFive Years, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Davidson, Clifford, Selected Studies in Drama and Renaissance Literature, New York: AMS Press, 2006.

Dailey, Jeff, "Christian Underscoring in Tamburlaine the Great, Part II," <>Journal of Religion and Theatre, 4 (2005): 146-155.

Dillon, Janette, The Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre, Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

DiPietro, Cary, Shakespeare and Modernism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Floyd-Wilson, Mary and Garrett A. Sullivan, eds., Embodiment and Environment in Early Modern Drama and Performance, Renaissance Drama, new series 35, Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Fontanel, Béatrice, Daily Life in Art, New York: Abrams, 2006.

Freund, Philip, Dramatis Personae: The Rise of Medieval and Renaissance Theatre, London ; Chester Springs, PA: Peter Owen, 2006.

Gieskes, Edward, Representing the Professions: Administration, Law, and Theater in Early Modern England, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006.

González Fernández de Sevilla,José Manuel, Spanish Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006.

Goodland, Katharine, Female Mourning in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama: From the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear, Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Hokenson, Jan, The Idea of Comedy: History, Theory, Critique, Madison N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006.

Holland, Peter, ed., Editing Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production. 59, Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Holland, Peter,Shakespeare, Memory and Performance, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Holton, David, Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Ioppolo, Grace, Dramatists and their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood: Authorship, Authority and the Playhouse, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Karim-Cooper, Farah, Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Katritzky, M. A., The Art of Commedia: A Study in the Commedia Dell'Arte 1560-1620 with Special Reference to the Visual Records, Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2006.

Kaufman, Herbert L., Collected Plays for Stage and Radio, United States:, 2006.

Kezar, Dennis, Solon and Thespis: Law and Theater in the English Renaissance, South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.

King, Pamela M., The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006.

Kozuka, Takashi Mulryne,J.R., Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in Biography, Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Lin, Erika T., "Performance Practice and Theatrical Privilege: Rethinking Weimann's Concepts of Locus and Platea," New Theatre Quarterly 22.3 (August 2006): 283-298.

Locati, Silvia, La Rinascita del Genere Tragico nel Medioevo: L'Ecerinis di Albertino Mussato, Firenze: F. Cesati, 2006.

Long, Zackariah Christopher, The Uncollected Self: Memory, Subjectivity, and Cultural Crisis in English Renaissance Drama, 2006.

Matei-Chesnoiu, Monica, Shakespeare in the Romanian Cultural Memory, Madison, N.J: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006.

McDonald, Russ, Shakespeare's Late Style, Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Murphy, Diane, Medieval Mystery Plays as Popular Culture: Performing the Lives of Saints, Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006.

Nelsen, Paul, and Schlueter, June. Lusardi,James P., Acts of Criticism: Performance Matters in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Essays in Honor of James P. Lusardi, Madison N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University

Press, 2006.

Sharon-Zisser, Shirley, Critical Essays on Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint: Suffering Ecstasy, Aldershot, Hants, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub, 2006.

Stillman, Robert E., ed., Spectacle and Public Performance in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions: History, Culture, Religion, Ideas, 113, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006.

Includes: RICHARD K. EMMERSON "Antichrist on Page and Stage in the Later Middle Ages" PETER COCKET "Staging Antichrist and the Performance of Miracles" ROBERT E. STILLMAN "'Nothing more nedeful': Politics and the Rhetoric of Accommodation in Elizabeth I's Coronation Procession TIFFANY J. ALKAN "Britomart's Backward Glance in Spenser's Faerie Queene: Liminal Triumphs/Dark Erotics in Busirane's Mask of Cupid" NORA JOHNSON "Spectacle and the Fantasy of Immateriality: Authorship and Magic in John a Kent and John a Cumber" SARAH BECKWITH "The Play of Voice: Acknowledgment, Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge in Measure for Measure" RICHARD C. McCOY "Spectacle and Equivocation in Macbeth" PETER HOLLAND "Mapping Shakespeare's Britain" ROBERT W. BARRETT, JR. "The Absent Triumphator in the 1610 Chester's Triumph in Honor of Her Prince" TOM BISHOP "Have his 'carkasse': The Aftermaths of English Court Masques" LAUREN SHOHET "Reading/Genres: On 1630s Masques" Straznicky, Marta, The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

Taylor, Jefferey H., Four Levels of Meaning in the York Cycle of Mystery Plays: A Study in Medieval Allegory, Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006.

Turner, Henry S., The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580-1630, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

West, William N., Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

West-Pavlov, Russell, Bodies and their Spaces: System, Crisis and Transformation in Early Modern Theatre, Amsterdam; New York, NY: Rodopi, 2006.

Whitney, Charles, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama, Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Womack, Peter, English Renaissance Drama, Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2006.

Wong, Mitali P., Politics and Tropes in Renaissance History Plays: Understanding a Neglected Genre, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006.

Comparative Drama www.wmich.edu/compdr Volume 39, No. 1 (Spring 2005) CHRISTOPHER BAKER AND RICHARD HARP "Jonson's Volpone and Dante."

KEVIN LINDBERG "Thomas Heywood's The Royall King, and the Loyall Subject and the Fall of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex."

JENNIFER LOW "'Bodied Forth': Spectator, Stage, and Actor in the Early Modern Theater."

Volume 39, No. 2 (Summer 2005) FRANCES BABBAGE "The Play of the Surface: Theater and The Turn of the Screw."

Volume 39, No. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2005-2006) MIKIKO ISHII "The Weeping Mother in Sumidagawa, Curlew River, and Medieval European Religious Plays."

DONGCHOON LEE "Medieval Korean Drama: The Pongsan Mask Dance."

CECILIA PANG "(Re)cycling Culture: The Development of Chinese Opera in the United States."

ZVIKA SERPER Japanese Noh and Kyôgen Plays: Staging Dichotomy."

MIN TIAN "The Performance of Yuan Drama: A Study of Stage Directions."

Early Modern Literary Studies (EMLS) Online publication available at: purl.org/emls EMLS 11.3 (January, 2006) JASON GLECKMAN "Shakespeare as Poet or Playwright?: The Player's Speech in Hamlet."

REINA GREEN "Poisoned Ears and Parental Advice in Hamlet."

L. MONIQUE PITTMAN "A Son Less Than Kind: Iconography, Interpolation,and Masculinity in Branagh's Hamlet."

DOSIA REICHARDT "Another Look at 'Amyntor's Grove': Pastoral and Patronage in Lovelace's Poem."

EMILY SMITH "Genre's "Phantastical Garb": The Fashion of Form in Margaret Cavendish's Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life."

EMLS 12.1 (May, 2006) KEVINE CURRAN "Virtual Scholarship: Navigating Early Modern Studies on the World Wide Web." SARAH CARTER "From the ridiculous to the sublime: Ovidian and Neoplatonic registers in A Midsummer Night's Dream."

MARGU&EACUTE;RITE CORPORAAL "Love, Death and Resurrection in Tragicomedies by Seventeenth-Century English Women Dramatists."

CANDY B. K. SCHILLE "'With Honour Quit the Fort": Ambivalent Colonialism in Dryden's Amboyna."

EMLS 12.2 (September, 2006) LISA DICKSON "The Prince of Rays: Spectacular Invisibility in Spenser's The Faerie Queene."

HELGA DUNCAN "'Headdie Ryots' as Reformations: Marlowe's Libertine Poetics."

PATRICK J. COOK "Beggary/Buggery and Oedipal Conï¬&#x201A;ict in Thomas Middleton's The Phoenix."

ANDREW GRIFFIN "The Banality of History in Troilus and Cressida."

ALISON SCOTT "Marketing Luxury at the New Exchange: Jonson's Entertainment at Britain's Burse and the Rhetoric of Wonder."

GRAY SCOTT "Signifying Nothing? A Secondary Analysis of the Claremont Authorship Debates."

ALISON SEARLE "'My Souls Anatomiste': Richard Baxter, Katherine Gell and Letters of the Heart."

Early Theatre Vol. 9.1 (May 2006) Online publication available at: http://www.earlytheatre.ca/volumes.htm BRANDON ALAKAS "Seniority and Mastery: The Politics of Ageism in the Coventry Cycle" MATT KOZUSKO "Taking Liberties" KRISTEN McDERMOTT "Jonson's Gossips and the Stuart Family Drama"

BRANDON CENTERWALL "A Greatly Exaggerated Demise: The Remaking of the Children of Paul's as the Duke of York's Men (1608)" MEGAN LYNN ISAAC "Structure, Legitimacy, and Magic in The Birth of Merlin" Megan Lynn Isaac MONIKA KARPINSKA "Bawdily Manipulations: Spheres of Female Power in The Birth of Merlin" Early Theatre Vol. 9.2 (December 2006) CLIFFORD DAVIDSON "York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays: Unwilling Participants?"

JOANNE FINDON "Napping in the Arbour in the Digby Mary Magdalene Play" DAVID NICOL "The Repertory of Prince Charles's (I) Company, 1608-1625" MICHELLE M. BUTLER "The Borrowed Expositor" ANDREW GRIFFEN "Ram Alley and Female Spectatorship" Dissertations Fall 2006 Harbin, Andrea R., "Space and movement on the medieval English religious stage."

The Catholic University of America, 2006.

Director: Stephen K. Wright Lim, Hyunyang Kim "'Take writing': News, information, and documentary culture in late medieval England."

University of Maryland, College Park, 2006.

Director: Theresa Coletti Owens, Sarah M., "Leechcraft Performing Bodies in Late Medieval English Medicine and Drama."

University of Denver, 2006.

Director: Alexandra H. Olsen Phillips, Kristina Rutledge, "Civil and spiritual disobedience in the early drama of East Anglia."

The Catholic University of America, 2006.

Director: Stephen K. Wright Stevenson, Jill, "Sensual Bodies and Devotional Encounters: The Influence of Performance on Lay Visual Piety in Late Medieval York."

City University of New York, 2006.

Director: Pamela Sheingorn Theile, Verena, "Staging the Occult: Continental European Influences on the Literature of the English Renaissance Stage."

Washington State University, 2006.

Director: William M. Hamlin White, Andrew Walker, " The artifice of eternity: A study of liturgical and theatrical practices in Byzantium."

University of Maryland, College Park, 2006.

Director: Franklin J. Hildy MRDS Annual Awards Fall 2006

MRDS Annual Awards The 2006 David Bevington Award for the Best New Book in Early Drama Studies • Philip Butterworth. Magic on the Early English Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Philip Butterworth's Magic on the Early English Stage will be as indispensible for scholars in the field as his earlier book Theatre of Fire. No one else in the field has Butterworth's wealth of specialized knowledge about stage tricks of all kinds. The book might better have been called Illusion of the Early English Stage because it goes beyond what a modern reader might think of as 'magic' to include juggling, sleight of hand, acrobatic activities such as tumbling, dancing on ropes and vaulting, mechanical illusions such as automata and puppets, sound effects and how disappearances were contrived. In his final chapter he takes on the tricky task of attempting to sort out the terminology to distinguish performative magic from alchemy and witchcraft. Fully documented with charming contemporary illustrations, this fascinating book presents truly new and exciting material that helps explain references in both texts and external documentation that many of us have found opaque in the past. It will be useful to students and scholars alike illuminating arcane practices that round out our understanding of early stage practice.

It is a book we will all be referring to in the future.

The 2006 Martin Stevens Award for the Best New Essay in Early Drama Studies • Barbara D. Palmer, "Early Modern Mobility: Players, Payments, and Patrons," Shakespeare Quarterly 56 (2005), pp. 259-305.

In "Early Modern Mobility," Barbara Palmer challenges the theatrical hegemony of London and demonstrates the vibrancy, professionalism, and high visibility of itinerant acting companies that toured northern towns and great households in the age of Shakespeare (ca. 1570-1642). Touring players, traveling gentry, and the transport of goods and services provided constant interchange between the London metropole and provincial towns (York, Doncaster) and households (Clifford, Cavendish). Drawing on the Records of Early English Drama she and John Wasson gathered for the West Riding and Derbyshire volume, Barbara Palmer demolishes conventional distinctions drawn between London high and rural low theater culture and between medieval and modern playing-styles. Contrary to the traditional view, traveling players almost never performed in inn-yards and taverns, but rather in town and guild halls, churches, and manorial great halls. Barbara Palmer expands our understanding of the ways in which geographical and social mobility complemented one another. She summons the records to show how quickly and efficiently players traveled, how well they were received, how generously they were compensated, and how significantly they, as well as musicians, waits, and fools contributed to the dissemination of news and ideas. Her lively and provocative prose disarms reproof, while her rigorous analysis of civic and household accounts sets high standards for future scholarship.

The 2006 Alexandra Johnston Award for Best New Conference Paper in Early Drama Studies by a Graduate Student • Christopher Lee, "Jews as Didactic Instruments" delivered at the New Medievalism II conference, University of Western Ontario, March 2005.

Christopher Lee's paper, "Jews as Didactic Instruments," argues that medieval playmakers employed Jewish characters to instruct their audiences about proper semiotic interpretation, particularly on how spectators ought to arrive at Christian truth. In the process, the dramatists also explored the pedagogical effectiveness of their own dramatic signs. His analyses of the Jeu d'Adam and the Benediktbeuern play offer real interpretive power, as he argues for the connection of belief to learning in the Anglo-Norman play, and he extends this insight in his reading of the Benediktbeuern Christmas Play, seeing the debate between Archisynagogus and the Prophets as "a parody of the interreligious debate format and the scholastic methods of instruction." All the judges were impressed by the way his paper covered a broad swathe of medieval drama and seemed to add something genuinely new to the often narrow discussion of anti-Semitism in medieval drama. While all the nominees were excellent in their distinct

ways, Mr. Lee's piece was notable in the way it managed to be theoretically sophisticated without being jargon bound, and also in the manner it applied its analytic perspective to a diverse group of plays.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - MRDS ANNUAL AWARDS 2007 The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society seeks nominations for its annual awards; 1. The David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies ($150 and two years membership in MRDS) 2. The Martin Stevens Award for Best New Essay in Early Drama Studies ($100 and one year membership in MRDS) 3. The Alexandra Johnston Award for Best New Conference Paper in Early Drama Studies by a Graduate Student ($100 and one year membership in MRDS) Entry Information: Deadline: January 15, 2007.

Eligibility: Works by any MRDS member in good standing. Members may nominate their own works.

The Judges: For each category, two MRDS Executive Council members and one non-council member of MRDS. Submissions: For the Bevington and Stevens Awards: Any book or essay published within 18 months of the deadline. For the Johnston Award: Any conference paper delivered by a graduate student within 12 months of the deadline. Entries for the Johnston Award should not exceed 5,000 words, excluding notes, and should include the name and date of the conference at which the paper was delivered and, where appropriate, the title and sponsor of the panel.

Send one copy of each book or three copies of each essay or paper to: Max Harris 14 N. Harwood Circle Madison, WI, USA 53717 Awards announcement and presentation will take place during the annual MRDS business meeting in May 2007, at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI Questions about the awards: Contact Max Harris at mrharri1@wisc.edu MRDS Business Fall 2006

MRDS Business NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT Dear Colleagues and Friends, As many of you may know, Pam Sheingorn has had to step down from the presidency of MRDS for health reasons.

Since I would, in the normal course of events, be stepping into her shoes next May, I have agreed to do so a bit early in order to preserve our administrative continuity. In consultation with the MRDS Executive, we have decided to proceed with the election of a new vice-president at the normal time, and to invite an interim vicepresident to stand in for the rest of my normal term; I'm very happy to say that Max Harris has graciously agreed to ďŹ ll that position until next May, so he will take charge of the prize committees (the vice-president's major job). I know we all understand Pam's decision to concentrate on her health, and wish her the very best.

Sincerely, David Klausner ELECTION OF OFFICERS Nominations have been made for the following positions. Please return your ballot with your dues by March 1, 2007. (Ballots will be sent by postal mail) Vice President Richard K. Emmerson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art History at Florida State University. He has taught at Georgetown, Harvard, Tufts, Walla Walla, and Western Washington; has served as Deputy Director of Fellowships at the National Endowment for the Humanities and Executive Director of the Medieval Academy; and has edited or co-edited Speculum, Studies in Iconography, and Traditio. He has published six books, including Approaches to Teaching Medieval English Drama (Modern Language Association, 1990) and Antichrist and Judgment Day: The Middle French Jour du Jugement, Early European Drama in Translation (Pegasus Press, 1998), ed. with David Hult. His articles on medieval drama include "Antichrist on Page and Stage in the Later Middle Ages," in Spectacle and Public Performance in the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Brill, 2006), 1-29; "Dramatic History: On the Diachronic and Synchronic in the Study of Early English Drama," JMEMS 35 (2005): 39-66; "Visualizing Performance: The Miniatures of Besanรงon MS 579," Exemplaria 11 (1999): 245-72; "Contextualizing Performance: The Reception of the Chester 'Antichrist,'" JMEMS 29 (1999): 89-119; "'Englysch Laten' and 'Franch': Demonic Language in Medieval Drama," in The Devil, Heresy, and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Brill, 1998), 305-26; "Eliding the 'Medieval': New Historicism and Sixteenth-Century Drama," in The Performance of Middle English Culture (Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 25-41; "Divine Judgment and Local Ideology in the Beauvais Ludus Danielis," in The Play of Daniel: Critical Essays (MIP, 1996), 33-61; and "The Morality Character as Sign: A Semiotic Approach to The Castle of Perseverance," Mediaevalia 18 (1995): 191-220.

Garrett PJ Epp is Professor and Chair of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His chief area of scholarly interest is late medieval and early modern English drama, especially in relation to queer theory and gender studies. He has been known to stage the plays that he studies, merrily offending theatre, classroom, and conference audiences alike. A former member of MRDS Council, the Executive Board of SITM, the Editorial Board of Ludus and the Medieval and Early Modern Institute, he has also served as treasurer of torquere (Journal of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association) and as a member of the Production and Programming Committees for the Poculi Ludique Societas, Toronto. His articles and book chapters include, among others,"'Corected & not playd': an Unproductive History of the Towneley Plays," Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 43 (2004), 38-53; "Chastity in the Stocks: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis," Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing, ed. Dunnigan, Harker, and Newlyn (Palgrave, 2004), 61-73; "Noah's Wife: The Shaming of the 'Trew'," Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts, ed. Salisbury, Donavin, and Price (U of Florida P, 2002), 223-241; "Ecce Homo," Queering the Middle Ages / Historicizing Postmodernity, ed. Kruger and Burger (U of Minnesota P, 2001), 346-366; "Back to the Garden: Directing the York Temptation," Early Theatre 3 (2000), 205-209; "The York Plays, Toronto 1998: Playing in all directions," Early Theatre 1 (1998) 149-52; "'Cloathes worth all the rest': Costumes and properties in English theatre to 1642," The New History of Early English Drama (Columbia UP, 1997), 269-285; "John Foxe and the Circumcised Stage," Exemplaria 9.2 (1997), 281-313; and "The Towneley Plays, or, The Hazards of Cycling," Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 32 (1993), 121-150. He is currently working on a new edition of the Towneley Plays for TEAMS, and even teaches an occasional course, but is otherwise just an administrator these days.

Secretary/Treasurer Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Humanities at Centenary College in New Jersey, where her teaching responsibilities include courses in Medieval Drama, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Medieval Literature, and Theatre History. She holds a B.A. in Theatre from Santa Clara University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, where she wrote her dissertation on Herod the Great in medieval drama. She also studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Active in the production of early drama, she has directed productions of Mankind and the Towneley Herodes Magnus, and is currently directing A Midsummer

Night's Dream at Centenary. Her publications include "Enacting Herod the Great's Diseased Spirit," EDAM Review 23 (2001); "Meditation, Mysticism, and Identification in The Book of Margery Kempe," Essays in Medieval Studies 12 (1996); and "Medieval Drama: Myths of Evolution, Pageant Wagons, and (lack of) Entertainment Value" in Misconceptions of the Middle Ages, Eds. Stephen J. Harris and Bryon Grigsby (forthcoming from Routledge Press). She has been a member of MRDS since 1997 and has presented many conference papers on medieval drama at Kalamazoo and Leeds.

Gerard NeCastro, Associate Professor of English at University of Maine at Machias, has served as organizer and presenter in many sessions for MRDS over the past fifteen years, as an MRDS council member, and acting MRDS newsletter editor. He is editor of The Renaissance Griselda and co-editor of Mankind, both forthcoming from TEAMS. Council Representative Glenn Ehrstine received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and has been teaching since 1994 at the University of Iowa, where he currently serves as Associate Professor of German and academic coordinator of the Medieval Studies program. His research engages literature in the public sphere between 1200 and 1600, with a strong focus on early theater. His first book, Theater, Culture, and Community in Reformation Bern, 1523-1555 (Brill, 2002), was the recipient of the 2003 David Bevington Award and examined the role of carnival and biblical plays in creating cultural community among Swiss Protestants. Currently, he is engaged in a study of medieval staging practices in the context of contemporary visual piety, tentatively titled "Staging Salvation: Devotional Spectatorship and Spatial Practices in Early German Theater." He has served as an officer or board member for several professional organizations, including most recently the MLA Division on German Literature to 1700 (2002-06) and the advisory board of H-German (2005-07), an online forum for German Studies.

Jill Stevenson received her Ph.D. in Theatre from the CUNY Graduate Center this past May and is currently an assistant professor of Theatre Arts at Marymount Manhattan College in New York . Jill's interdisciplinary research examines how performance influenced the visual and material cultures of medieval England. Her work also considers the relationships between medieval and modern religious performances. Her dissertation is entitled "Sensual Bodies and Devotional Encounters: The Influence of Performance on Lay Visual Piety in Late Medieval York," which she is currently revising for publication consideration. An article related to her dissertation was published this summer in Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief. She has also published performance reviews in Theatre Journal, The Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance, and is currently writing a review of the 2006 York Mystery Cycle that will appear in ROMARD. Jill has organized MRDS-sponsored sessions for the medieval congresses in Leeds and Kalamazoo , and for the MLA convention. She is also an active member of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. She teaches theatre history and interdisciplinary writing seminars, and this spring will teach both an Advanced Studies course on Medieval Performance and a freshman writing seminar structured around the theme "Medievalisms": Past and Present.

Jon Terry Wade is an independent scholar and researcher living in Toronto. She received her MA in 1986 in English literature from McMaster University, Hamilton, where her thesis dealt with rhetorical figures from Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In 1988 she enroled in the Department of English, University of Toronto, where her focus became Tudor drama and literature. From 1988 to 1996 she designed, directed, and produced too many projects for Poculi Ludique Societas (PLS) of which Green and Lodge's A Looking Glass for London, and the NTown Assumption of the Virgin stand out. She also sat on the PLS board from 1989 to 1995. Since 1990, Terry has organized conference sessions on some of her interests---on performance, on suicide and despair in early Modern England/ Europe and more recently, on iconoclasm and iconography. The impetus for her one published paper, "The Economics/ Economies of the Medieval Palette: Paint, Painters, and the Dramatic Records," [EDAMR 23 (2001)] was an EDAM session at Kalamazoo. She continues to work on an edition of Thomas Garter's The Virtuous and Godly Susanna, (c 1560) a Tudor retelling of the story of Susanna and the Elders, which she hopes to finish soon, providing her time is unfettered. To make ends meet, she works in the film industry in Toronto: to keep her mind sharp, however, Terry plays party politics in her riding of Parkdale-HighPark where she sits on the riding's executive board.

Jonathan Walker is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Portland State University, where he teaches courses in medieval and Renaissance English drama, performance theory, textual studies and the history of the book, and early modern theater history. He is an active member of the board for Shakespeare at Kalamazoo,

having served as its president in 2004-2005, and he has organized multiple conference sessions on early drama for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meetings, and the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies. In addition to having published articles on medieval transvestite saints and on lesbianism in Ovid, Jonathan has an article forthcoming in Theatre Survey that examines the problem of offstage dramatic action in Aristotle and Horace. His current research interests include a co-edited collection of essays titled Early Modern Academic Drama and a book project on offstage action in English Renaissance drama.

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMMENDMENT Since the MRDS awards now include a graduate research award, the Council suggests the following amendment to the Society's constitution. The proposed change to the MRDS Constitution appears below underlined, italicized, and in bold. A vote on this amendment will take place at the annual business meeting in May 2007.

11. The President or a duly elected representative shall preside at all meetings of the Council and of the Society.

The President shall appoint the Nominating Committee and other pertinent committees, and shall supervise the affairs of the Society during the year.

The Vice-President shall serve as presiding officer in the absence of the President, shall manage the Society's annual Research and Publication Awards, and shall assist in the affairs of the Society.

The Secretary-Treasurer shall keep records of actions taken by the Council and by the Society, including all voting matters, and shall present minutes for approval at the next annual meeting of the Council. The Secretary-Treasurer shall also serve as Treasurer, receiving and depositing in appropriate bank accounts all monies of the Society, keeping proper books of account, and presenting annually to the Council an annual statement of income and expenditures. The Secretary-Treasurer shall keep an up-to-date membership list of the Society, with addresses, and shall conduct mail ballots when necessary, and shall give notice when dues are payable and overdue.

MRDS Officers Fall 2006

MRDS Officers (2005-2006) President: David Klausner, University of Toronto klausner@chass.utoronto.ca Acting Vice President: Max Harris, Wisconsin Humanities Council mrharri1@wisc.edu Secretary/Treasurer: Gloria Betcher, Iowa State Univ. gbetcher@iastate.edu Council Members Vicki Hamblin (2009), Western Washington University Vicki.Hamblin@wwu.edu Gordon Kipling (2009), Univ. of California Los Angeles kipling@humnet.ucla.edu Jody Enders (2008), Univ. of California Santa Barbara jenders@french-ital.ucsb.edu Martin Walsh (2008), Univ. of Michigan narenlob@umich.edu

Peter Greenfield (2007), Univ. of Puget Sound greenfield@ups.edu Carol Symes (2007), Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign symes@uiuc.edu Colophon Fall 2006

MRDS Newsletter © 2006 Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society Editor: Jesse D. Hurlbut Department of French and Italian 3134 JFSB Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 © 2005 Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society