"This low built house will bring us to our ends": Plague quarantine and prophylactic boundaries in early modern drama and culture, 1593-1625.

I propose to examine the cultural significance of early modern plague quarantine and plague-time spatial measures through their contemporary dramatic representations. Spatially motivated plague orders, such as flight from infection, confinement, and applied physical and sensory boundaries divided early modern London. The body politic was not only threatened by loss of life from the disease itself, but also faced loss of liberty from its counter measures. As a result, these isolating practices became a flammable subject, one which was articulated in often metatheatrical and site-specific stage narratives. As theatre offers a locus for sharing the human experience, creative interactions with plague-time prevention offer crucial insights into how plague-related spatial orders were understood, assimilated and experienced, and how the threat of disease conditioned public and private domains in early modern London. My aim is to exhibit these dramatic articulations of plague-time space, and their interactions with the material performance space, as alert and critical models of extant prophylactic practice and cultural records of a largely unknown early modern experience.

The research skills cultivated during my Masters degree at the Shakespeare Institute, which culminated in a distinction, has prepared me well for further research. My thesis will be a development of the specific research undertaken during the Early Modern Playhouse Culture module that explored the site-specific spatial manifestations of plague within the second Blackfriars playhouse (resulting in a mid-distinction:75). This enquiry was later developed into a paper that I delivered at the British Graduate Shakespeare Conference in 2018: 'The Plague is i' th' house': Plague Quarantine in the Indoor Early Modern Playhouse.'

Alongside archival and textual approaches to stagecraft and playhouse culture, the project will also explore the dramaturgy of plague representation practically. This will be based on Shakespeare's Globe's 'Research in Action' workshop format for contemporary and practical exploration of historical staging practices and cultures. This applied research would be the first of its kind within plague studies. As an undergraduate, I received my actors' training at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, exploring a wide repertoire of early modern texts within diverse performance spaces. My expertise and experience in applied, performative Shakespeare studies places me in a unique, interdisciplinary position for undertaking the proposed public engagement and practice-as-research elements of my thesis. This aptitude is reflected in the Shakespeare Institute's decision in selecting me to lead a three-day
masterclass on Shakespeare's text for French undergraduates last Spring.