London Renaissance Seminar: The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
No booking required
In early modern England, domestic conduct literature, legal treatises, and state-sanctioned homilies propagated the ideal of the home as a self-contained system of government; the loyalty of domestic servants was therefore of political significance. Performances of domestic service onstage explored early modern anxieties and fantasies concerning the interference, surveillance, and potential insubordination of the early modern servant, and the conflicts of loyalty and illicit knowledge that domestic service entailed. This half-day symposium brings together historians, literary scholars, and actors to explore the relationship between the experience of servants in early modern England, and the representation of servants onstage. Talks will be illustrated by performances of depositions from church court records and scenes from plays.
You can watch a series of videos relating to the event:
The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service: Introduction
The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service: Laura Gowing
The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service: Catherine Richardson
The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service: Domestic tragedies
The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service: Roundtable discussion
2pm Welcome
2.05pm Laura Gowing (King’s College London), ‘Performing Service: Stories from the London Church Courts’ (with performances of depositions)
3.05pm Coffee break
3.15pm Catherine Richardson (Kent), ‘Work and Leisure: Domestic Behaviour and the Quotidian Spaces of Service’ (with performances of depositions)
4.15pm Coffee break
4.40pm Iman Sheeha (Warwick), ‘Staging the Servant: The Case of Michael in The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham’ (with a scene from Arden of Faversham)
5.40pm Drinks
5.45pm Roundtable discussion, with all speakers and actors
Contact name:
Sue Wiseman