College
Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences
Date of Last Revision
2025-04-29 12:40:12
Major
English
Honors Course
ENGL 482
Number of Credits
3
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Date of Expected Graduation
Spring 2025
Abstract
Throughout the 1800s, superintendents of insane asylums incorporated the works of Shakespeare into their medical practices. Shakespearean plays became a conduit of power for the asylum superintendents, providing them with a literary model of sanity that they imposed on patients while simultaneously becoming a mode of communication for asylum patients to perform as ‘sane’ in accordance to the superintendents’ definitions. While the superintendents imposed a Shakespearean model of social normalcy onto the patients, the asylum patients used Shakespeare’s plays as a conduit for verbal expression. Essentially, asylums became Shakespearean plays as both the medical staff and the asylum patients employed the poet in their daily lives, so much so that each cast assimilated their respective performances to fit Shakespeare’s literary societies. This project will use publications such as The Opal, Harper’s Weekly, and Gleason’s Pictorial, all of which detail the usage of Shakespearean literature in asylums, as support for its findings.
Research Sponsor
Hillary Nunn
First Reader
Elizabeth Rhoades
Second Reader
Jennifer Bazar
Honors Faculty Advisor
Elizabeth Rhoades
Proprietary and/or Confidential Information
No
Recommended Citation
Kurylo, Olivia, "To Be or Not To Be Controlled: The Making of Thespians in Nineteenth-Century Asylums" (2025). Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects. 1999.
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/honors_research_projects/1999
Comments
On the cover sheet, the title of this project is "Shakespearean Therapy: The Incorporation of Jacobean Literature in Psychological Medical Practices." However, the title has since been changed to "To Be or Not To Be Controlled: The Making of Thespians in Nineteenth-Century Asylums." I tried to change the title within the document, but it would not let me.