Shakesperean and Marlovian Epyllion: dramatic ekphrasis of Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander

This thesis is a practice-as-research project ‘articulating and evidencing’ (Nelson, 2013, p. 11) research and practical explorations of Christopher Marlowe’s \(Hero\) \(and\) \(Leander\) and William Shakespeare’s \(Venus\) \(and\) \(Adonis\), using a method defined in the thesis as ‘dramatic ekphrasis’. A theatrical adaptation of the works — staged using the language of both poems as an amalgamated visual and acoustic theatre piece — exposes (through practice) the authors’ transgressive sexual and amorous themes. The narrative poems of Shakespeare and Marlowe are interpreted as having cultural purpose, and the exegesis explores how the poems expose and challenge biased Elizabethan gender paradigms, homosocial hegemony and moral stability in Elizabethan England. Through ekphrasis and contemporary performance methodology, the adaptation transposes the narrative verse to dramatic action in order to challenge our twenty-first century audience by destabilising gender and sexuality. By transposing the narratives into performance practice, the thesis strives to link the poems’ challenge to homosocial bias in the late sixteenth-century to our modern culture — to challenge present-day audience perspectives of gender-normative and heterocentric biases. Also, the thesis describes ways in which the practice illuminates and reinforces unique differences in the authors’ dramatic style. The thesis concludes by reflecting on and assessing the efficacy of both research and practice findings