Cecilia Lindskog Whiteley

PhD student in early modern literature. My research interests include the use of space in early modern drama, theatrical culture, and playhouse conditions in the early modern period (particularly in the 1580s).

My thesis work investigates the ways in which the emergence of permanent playhouses shaped the plays written for and performed in these spaces.

My PhD project investigates spatiality and drama in the 1580s, focusing both on how physical, architectural, and social spaces influenced playwrights, and on how spatial conventions were developed and invoked in the period to create inter- and intratextual meaning.

The project takes as its starting point the two different kinds of spaces in which plays were performed, indoor and outdoor playhouses, and considers differences between these in terms of performance conditions, and in terms of dramatic output. My research seeks to find spatial traces in the plays, and also attempts to conceptualise playhouse conditions on the basis of textual readings.

The thesis considers all the extant plays of the 1580s, which — I argue — was a foundational decade for later early modern drama. Well-known texts by authors such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and John Lyly are included, as well as a number of anonymous and lesser-known texts.

I have also done work on nineteenth-century reception of early modern drama, presenting a paper on John Lyly in Sir Walter Scott and writing on Ophelia in nineteenth-century Swedish translations of Hamlet.

Doctoral representative in Uppsala University's Konsistorium 2022/23. Recipient of Tengstrand scholarship.

Background

I hold an MA from the University of Manchester in English Literature, and a BA in English Language and Literature, also from Manchester.