ENL 4161 - Fall 2025 - Hand

In this course, we will read some of the greatest hits of early modern English drama (non-Shakespearean) in a range of modes. We will focus on how animals and animality were staged, and how such representations relate to early modern beliefs about and experiences of human and animal lives. We will consider animal paratheatrical spectacles that inform drama as well as the “animal networks” of early modern London. As Ian MacInnes writes, "London was the grisly heart of the animal economy. Live animals converged upon the city in a vast systolic movement and were either consumed on the spot or distributed back outward in another vast diastolic movement of objects made from animals" (“Cow-Cross Lane and Curriers Row: Animal Networks in Early Modern England,” 78). How is this animal economy reflected in early modern drama? What do plays suggest about how early modern people differentiated between human and other-than-human lives - about what it means to be human or animal? How is animality mapped onto human bodies and to what effect? How does animality converge with other categories of difference or disqualification? How do animal tropes shape early modern literature? To what extent is “the animal” a literary and dramatic invention?

Each of our plays will be approached, first, through careful close reading; second, through examination of primary texts and contexts; third, through exploration of secondary texts (scholarship and theory); and fourth, through performance. Assignments may include in-class writing, low-stakes quizzes, group discussions and performances, and a final research-based project.

This course meets the pre-1800 and genre requirements.