2008/05/01 by Holly Dugan · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Arts and Humanities · #Culinary Culture and Tourism #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
paper · doi:10.1215/10829636-2007-025
openalex publication_date 2008/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Olfaction has not figured largely in scholarly or popular understanding of early English stages; as stage properties, scents have rarely impacted the critical work on late medieval or early modern material histories of the stage, no doubt due to the assumption that olfaction lacks both a history and an archive. Nonetheless, for late medieval and early modern men and women, olfaction was a key component of theatrical experience. Three examples of late medieval and early modern English drama underscore this point: the Digby Mary Magdalene, and Shakespeare's Antony & Cleopatra and Twelfth Night. Tracing the use of perfume as a theatrical trope in these plays, I argue that reading late medieval drama's saintly and sinful bodily odors alongside early modern drama's emphasis on gender as a sartorial practice enhances our understanding of how social differences materialized on England's sixteenth-century stages."