Madeline Ruegg, MA

The 'Patient Griselda' Myth in Early Modern European Drama
The purpose of my dissertation project is to explore the uses in early modern drama of the Patient Griselda myth as floating cultural material from which European playwrights drew their inspiration. I devote particular attention to the English play, Patient and Meek Grissil (1603), by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle and William Haughton, and the Spanish comedy by Félix Lope de Vega Carpio, El ejemplo de casadas o prueba de la paciencia (1615). A major aspect of this project considers the ways in which these works make use of the monstrous and the grotesque in language (through metaphors, comparisons, analogies, etc.), in the plot and in the configuration of characters in order to address issues such as marriage, tyranny and, most of all, to question Griselda’s status as ideal wife.

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