Bastardy and inheritance in Early Modern Drama (research paper)

Jakob Ladegaard, Ross Deans Kristensen-McLachlan

Early Modern English drama often dealt with illegitimacy on stage. This project uses computational methods (keyword analysis and principal component analysis) to study bastardy in a large corpus of dramatic works from 1590 to 1642. It argues that there are marked differences between characterizations of bastards in different genres. Tragedies tend to embody the negative stereotypes of the period, while comedies vary more. We also find an increase in positive bastard characterization in Caroline drama compared to the earlier period. We illustrate these differences with a comparative reading of bastardy in Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear (1606) and Richard Brome’s comedy A jovial Crew (1641).

An article based on this project is currently under review.