Abstract
[...]in the conclusion I argue that as historians of literary and theatrical culture we might best record influence and imitation by examining the work that various plays do in their culture. [...]the point which I pursue more fully in this essay, both plays provide a discourse on madness. Through performance we can see how, like Hamlet, Jane Shore became a canvass onto which each age could paint its ideas about (female) madness.41 A brief overview of major eighteenth-century performances demonstrates this. [...]while Betterton over the years in Davenant's cleaned-up Restoration Hamlet, which he played until his death in 1710, interpreted Hamlet as a "refined and decorous prince,"42 Anne Oldfield as Jane Shore in the 1714 premiere focused on the moral aspects of Jane's madness, construing it as religious melancholy, Jane Shore the pious penitent too good for the cruel world in which she must walk. In order to understand why certain plays cause audiences to show up at the theatre night after night, decade after decade, we can probe into the anxieties and longings that seem to be expressed from reading the play, the performances, and the audiences' responses. [...]I compare Jane Shore with Hamlet to demonstrate its important role in the repertory: both plays performed die same kind of work in the eighteenth century culture in that both plays exercised and contained anxieties about identity and, notably, about madness.