Clossick, Rebecca Helen (2024) Staging the poor scholar in Elizabethan England. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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R Clossick - PhD Thesis - Final Version for Birkbeck Library - DEC 2024.pdf - Full Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 18 December 2026. Download (1MB) |
Abstract
Abstract This thesis focuses on the social category of the poor scholar in Elizabethan England, a little- researched figure that merits further investigation. It reads play texts together with official records in manuscript and popular literature, including pamphlets, poetry, and works in prose to uncover the complexity of social distinctions between early modern scholars. Theatrical explorations of the poor scholar considered include those within early commercial drama, university drama, and grammar school drama, and vary between examples where the phrase ‘poor scholar’ is specified and where it has been interpreted by various social descriptors offered by this historical period. Each of the chapters is structured around pivotal moments in the educational and professional lives of poor scholars: being a son within the family unit, attaining a grammar school education and the pressures of securing preferment to university, how they are perceived and treated by others, and how their university experience prepares them for professional lives and generates responses in written and dramatic form. The focus on these moments in drama reveals how further education was perceived by the lower social ranks, the psychological impact of educational contest with social superiors, the role poor scholars played in Elizabethan culture, and how poor scholars were able to survive their hostile society. While ultimately for the purposes of entertainment, plays also illuminate wider social criticism. This study unearths evidence of faltering social networks which were initially designed to support and sustain poor scholars. The thesis argues that the lens of drama reveals further detail about existence and resistance of the poor scholar; that the poor scholar’s means of potentially achieving social mobility or, at the very least, stable employment was variously usurped, threatening their social status and sense of purpose in a society that increasingly compelled them to abandon their studies and ambition.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Jan 2025 18:24 |
| Last Modified: | 03 May 2025 03:37 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/54771 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00054771 |
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