Facial hair and the performance of masculinity on the early modern English stage
This thesis explores the role of beards in constructions of masculine type on the early modem stage. According to medical, cultural and literary discourses of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, facial hair marked adult manliness while beardlessness indicated boyhood. The presence or abse...
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University of Sussex
2008
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| Online Access: | http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.496813 |
| Summary: | This thesis explores the role of beards in constructions of masculine type on the early modem stage. According to medical, cultural and literary discourses of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, facial hair marked adult manliness while beardlessness indicated boyhood. The presence or absence of facial hair was therefore a primary visual signifier denoting which males had access to patriarchal prerogatives. I am concerned with how the writers for the English stage played with this notion; endorsing or undermining this crucial aspect of gender in order to construct masculine types whom the audience responded to partly on the basis of the beard they wore and so the form of manliness they represented on-stage. |
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