Debating Drama in the Early Modern University: John Case, Aristotle's Politics, and a Previously Unknown Oxford Disputation.

Abstract

This article presents evidence of a previously unknown seventeenth-century disputation at the University of Oxford on the controversial subject of theatrical performance. The evidence appears in the student notebook of Edmund Leigh, who received his BA from Brasenose College in 1604, and who was a protégé of the renowned scholar and theologian John Rainolds. Leigh's notes, which are drawn mainly from Aristotle's Politics and John Case's commentary on that text, provide valuable insight into academic debates over drama. They also suggest that Aristotle, and the Politics in particular, played a larger role in these discussions than scholars have acknowledged.