Conversational Practice in Early Modern Drama

My thesis argues that early modern grammar school training in rhetoric, itself a performance art, affected how conversation was conceived of and represented in early modern drama. I will explore how Renaissance Rhetoric influenced the structure and content of Shakespeare's plays, also examining those of Nashe, Marlowe, Webster, Shirley and Marston, by examining the writings of Cicero, Quintilian and Erasmus, identifying the rhetorical techniques taught in the Elizabethan grammar schools and examining where we can see these techniques in these plays. I will be exploring the ways in which conversation works in Shakespeare and other early modern dramatists, what this tells us about the characters and what this tells us about the plays. I will analyse how dialogue on stage creates character. Reversing this, I will test the idea that conversational cues used in historical theatre training and practice can inform historical
understandings of early modern conversation.