Childhood In Contemporary Performance Of Shakespeare

Next I pick up the theme of the child as emblem of futurity and analyse how three productions of Titus Andronicus have attempted to account for the two children and their indeterminate futures, revealing a more general shift in attitudes towards childhood. In the final chapter I address the question of what childhood scholars call 'the disappearance of childhood' through an analysis of three productions of The Winter's Tale. I look in particular at Mamillius and the ways in which directors account for his absence in the final scene of reconciliation and redemption. The representation of Mamillius in these productions is, I argue, symptomatic of a wider societal problem and one which recurs throughout this thesis: the elision of the boundary between adulthood and childhood and the prospect of a childhood that is disappearing altogether.