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Philip Massinger: the man and the playwright
Little apology is necessary by way of preface to a critical study
of Messinger. No full -length, detailed study of the playwright has eve
appeared in English. All that we have of what might be called 'book
length' is a very brief work by Professor Cruickshank that was published
over thirty years ago, and this can scarcely now be considered adequate.
Even critical essays on Messinger are rare, and comments and asides on
the playwright which have appeared in the more general studies of the
Jacobean- Caroline period have not usually been notable either for their
perspicacity or for the knowledge they reveal of his work. It is in
some measure as an attempt to fill this gap that this thesis has been
written.I have not, however, attempted to claim for Massinger a position
or an importance that does not accord with his worth. He is not, it
must be admitted, a great, or even always a very good, dramatist.
Nevertheless, his plays are of considerable interest as samples of the
romantic tragi- comedies that held the stage after the death of Shakespeare. In addition, it must be remembered that Messinger was the
principal writer for the public theatres from 1625 to 1640 -- a fact
that in itself argues for his claim to closer examination. Thus the
first object of this thesis has been an examination and appraisal of
certain aspects of Messinger's dramatic technique.Of additional, and perhaps in some respects even greater, interest,
however, is the character of Massinger himself; a character that emerges
with extraordinary clarity and precision of detail from a reading of
his plays. Therefore, my second object has been to reveal or deduce
something of the nature of i;iassinger's mind and character; to attempt,
if you like, to see Messinger plain. Both of these objects are
comprehended in the title of this thesis.Perhaps something of the eclipse which Massinger's work has
undergone amongst students can be explained by the fact that he is
deeply involved in the tangled undergrowth of collaboration which
surrounds the Beaumont- Fletcher corpus. The reader will find little
discussion of such matters in this thesis. Many scholars have
laboured on the problems of the Jacobean collaborators, and their work
forms an extensive literature in itself, embracing studies in ,eaumont,
Fletcher, Massinger, Field, Shirley, Heywood, and practically every
other writer of the period as well as the vast mass of documentary
material pertaining to the stage of the times. I have felt, then,
that to deal adequately with such material would have celled for a
preliminary volume quite away from my immediate purposes, and that the
consideration of such problems here would have confused the reader and
obscured the object of my study, Massinger himself. It has seemed to
iv
me preferable to approach the Jacobean situation from the other end,
and, by considering Massinger in the plays which are definitely his, to
make my work absolute as far as he is concerned, but at the same time
make it a ground -work to the wider study of the dramatic collaboration
of Fletcher and his group by establishing the Massingerian technique
and method of approach. It follows, therefore, that the plays with
which I am almost solely concerned in this thesis are the fifteen plays
which Massinger wrote on his own.Of course, in a general critical study of any playwright as
prolific as Messinger, it is essential, in order to contain the subject
within reasonable bounds, that a certain amount of material should be
allowed to 6o by the board. This is perhaps rather a negative way of
saying that I have consciously and deliberately dealt only briefly with
one or two topics which are sometimes considered important in a study
of a playwright. My deliberate intention in this respect will be better
understood when I say that I consider such topics as jetsam rather than
as flotsam. My dismissal of questions of collaboration and attribution has already been explained. Similarly, I have considered that
questions of the sources of Massinger's plays have already been
exhaustively covered by the industrious researches of German scholars at
the beginning of this century, and that the more technical aspects of
versification are, in Massinger's case, of interest chiefly in connexion
with problems of collaboration. I have chosen to concentrate chiefly
(though not by any means exclusively) on matters which have become
prominent largely within the last thirty or forty years -- such matters
as stagecraft, dramatic structure, the dramatist's view of the world,
and blank -verse style. I have endeavoured to deal with such matters
in ways that, while they have become commoner in studies of Shakespeare,
have not yet been applied at all extensively to other writers -- and
have certainly never been applied to Massinger before. I have also
endeavoured to suggest new methods of approach (in particular in
respect of matters of style) which might be applied with profit to
other Jacobean dramatists. Throughout the thesis I have constantly
compared and contrasted Massinger with Shakespeare; with Shakespeare,
that is to say, both as a yardstick of dramatic excellence whose work
is universally known and admired, and as the only other writer of the
period with whom Massinger can be fully and fairly contrasted. In
addition, in the general biographical introduction which comprises my
first chapter I have re- examined and re- assessed the many conjectures
and speculations which surround the facts of Massinger's life and have
added some new facts and deductions. of my own.It is perhaps not out of place here to make a plea for a full
and modern edition of the plays of Massinger. Gifford's edition,
which I have had perforce to use for this thesis, is a remarkable
piece of work for its period but is now quite out -of -date and hopelessly
inadequate. Several of the plays have been published in individual
and fairly modern editions (See Bibliography), but this is not
sufficient. What is required is a complete edition which will give
the reader (I am not so concerned for the student of textual or
bibliographical matters) a text which he can both study and enjoy and
from which the scholar can draw his line-references, similar to those
which we now possess for Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Of course, such
an edition would have to part of a wider plan which embodied an edition
of all the Beaumont and Fletcher plays. At the moment it is not
possible to obtain Beaumont and Fletcher in an edition which is either
convenient or reliable. Such an edition, the Variorum Edition, under
the general editorship of A.H.Bullen, was started in 1904, but for
some reason or other only four volumes of the projected twelve appeared..
Scholars will never be able to start properly on all the problems of
the Jacobean theatre until such editions become generally available.
Until then, there must remain much research into this interesting
period of the drama which it will be difficult, or even impossible, to
carry out
Microtubule and chromosome dynamics during mitosis in budding yeast
As a cell divides, DNA must be replicated and faithfully segregated between the mother
and daughter cells. This segregation is facilitated by the mitotic spindle, assembled to
pull sister chromatids apart as the cell divides. In budding yeast, spindle pole bodies
nucleate microtubules that make up the mitotic spindle, position it at the site of division,
and physically link chromosomes to opposing poles via the kinetochores. The
chromosomes are held together by cohesin, which is also involved in the architecture of
chromatin.
In this thesis, I have explored mechanisms controlling microtubule dynamics,
kinetochore positioning and chromosome dynamics during mitotic cell division in
budding yeast.
Bik1 is a microtubule-associated protein shown to play a role in the cytosol to position
the spindle before anaphase. In paper I, we have characterized the nuclear function of
Bik1 and identified a novel role in clustering kinetochores prior to spindle elongation.
Cells lacking nuclear Bik1 have a delayed cell cycle progression, with prolonged
metaphase, and fail to cluster kinetochores. We also connect this function to the nuclear
kinesin Cin8, which has previously been described to regulate kinetochore microtubule
dynamics in metaphase.
The spindle pole body anchors microtubule nucleating γ-tubulin complexes using two
different receptors, Spc72 in the cytosol and Spc110 in the nucleus. In paper II, we have
isolated ‘old’ Spc110, originating from the previous cell cycle, and mapped its
phosphorylation sites. These analyses revealed that old Spc110 is phosphorylated at
serine 36 and at a novel site, serine 11. Non-phosphorylatable mutant strains revealed
that these sites influence microtubule dynamics and cell cycle progression. The
Spc110S11A mutant strain frequently had brighter spindle microtubules with asymmetric
distribution of α-tubulin. Furthermore, Spc110S11A S36A cells had slightly delayed cell
cycle progression and spindle disassembly.
The cohesin complex has been shown to shape the chromosomes into loops in budding
yeast through a mechanism known as loop extrusion. This phenomenon has primarily
been studied using genome-wide sequencing techniques, which report detailed
population averages of contact frequencies throughout the genome. How chromosomes
of individual cells are affected, and whether this looping affects physical compaction
remains poorly understood. In paper III we have generated a microscopy-based system
to study chromosome dynamics in single yeast cells by fluorescently tagging specific
chromosomal loci. We then used this system to investigate how physical distances
between the fluorescently marked loci change after inhibiting loop extruding cohesin.
This study revealed that loop extrusion does not significantly affect physical distances
but may limit the dynamic movement of chromosomes.
In conclusion, these studies reveal novel mechanisms controlling spindle and
chromosome dynamics during mitotic cell division: 1) We have uncovered a new role of
Bik1 at the spindle. 2) We have mapped phosphorylation sites in old Spc110 and
characterized a novel site. 3) We have created a system to study chromosome
dynamics in single cells and found that loop extrusion does not significantly compact
mitotic yeast chromosomes
Fabrication and characterization of red-emitting electroluminescent devices based on thiol-stabilized semiconductor nanocrystals
Thiol-capped CdTe nanocrystals were used to fabricate light-emitting diodes,
consisting of an emissive nanocrystal multilayer deposited via layer-by-layer,
sandwiched between indium-tin-oxide and aluminum electrodes. The emissive and
electrical properties of devices with different numbers of nanocrystal layers
were studied. The improved structural homogeneity of the nanocrystal multilayer
allowed for stable and repeatable current- and electroluminescence-voltage
characteristics. These indicate that both current and electroluminescence are
electric-field dependent. Devices were operated under ambient conditions and a
clear red-light was detected. The best-performing device shows a peak external
efficiency of 0.51% and was measured at 0.35mA/cm2 and 3.3V
Cathodic and Anodic Material Diffusion in Polymer/Semiconductor-Nanocrystal Composite Devices
In the present day, the information technologies and telecommunications sector
continually increase their demand for low cost, low power consumption, high
performance electroluminescent devices for display applications. Furthermore,
general lighting applications, such as white light and large array colour
displays, would also benefit from an increase in the overall efficiency. Several
technologies are being investigated to fulfill these needs, such as organic
light emitting diodes (OLED), polymeric light emitting diodes (PLED) and field
effect emission devices. A new and promising technology is light emitting
devices (LEDs) based on nanostructured materials. With organic LEDs (OLEDs)
already making an impact on the market in an increasingly large number of
applications, hybrid technologies based on organic/inorganic nano-composites are
a potential the next step. The incorporation of highefficiency fluorescent
semiconductor nanoparticles has been shown to have a beneficial effect on device
performance, [1] modify the colour output from the device 2 and provide a
simplified route to generation of LED type devices. [3
Machine Learning Chemical Guidelines for Engineering Electronic Structures in Half-Heusler Thermoelectric Materials.
Half-Heusler materials are strong candidates for thermoelectric applications due to their high weighted mobilities and power factors, which is known to be correlated to valley degeneracy in the electronic band structure. However, there are over 50 known semiconducting half-Heusler phases, and it is not clear how the chemical composition affects the electronic structure. While all the n-type electronic structures have their conduction band minimum at either the Γ- or X-point, there is more diversity in the p-type electronic structures, and the valence band maximum can be at either the Γ-, L-, or W-point. Here, we use high throughput computation and machine learning to compare the valence bands of known half-Heusler compounds and discover new chemical guidelines for promoting the highly degenerate W-point to the valence band maximum. We do this by constructing an "orbital phase diagram" to cluster the variety of electronic structures expressed by these phases into groups, based on the atomic orbitals that contribute most to their valence bands. Then, with the aid of machine learning, we develop new chemical rules that predict the location of the valence band maximum in each of the phases. These rules can be used to engineer band structures with band convergence and high valley degeneracy
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