Well, the introductory chapter is finished. And it was a bitch and a half, let me tell you. Like pulling teeth from a very irritable and unusually voluble sphinx.
Have you ever attempted dentistry on such a beastie? Not an easy thing, believe me. They drool, they talk when you've got your hands in their mouthes, and then there's the tail...
But the draft is done. I fully expect to have to return to it again and again and it will most likely look very little like the creature it currently resembles, but that's why dissertation writing is much like genetic engineering. You never know what it will look like in a couple million years. Which is about how long dissertations take to write.
I do feel like I have much more of a solid grasp of what my theoretical ideas are at this point, though. A definite improvement over when I started the chapter. And I can actually explain what I mean to another human being in under an hour - also an improvement.
I have noticed - with great joy and excitement - that the more questions I find myself asking and the more plays I consider with relation to my thesis (and the more extra-period books K. comes up with), the more solid I find my argument. In other words, there seems to be a kind of universal application to my ideas - both within and beyond early modern drama, which I personally find rather exciting. I've also noticed that my thesis gets more easily proven in the later plays - which points to the idea that this is an evolving idea that becomes increasingly prevalent as the period goes on... all leading to a logical conclusion that (coincidentally or not) actually happened. (Forgive the vagueness, but when your ideas will eventually combine to be a book in a highly competitive academic atmosphere, you have to safeguard them with not only your life, but a highly trained attack dog named "Bruno.")
Next, I turn my attention to my first actual chapter - Chapter One - which will be the third one to get written. This one's on Edward II and the idea that having a red-hot poker inserted through one's rectum and into one's intestines somehow renders the body less sacred... A shocking thought, I know, but there you go.
And for inspiration I have a lovely fire-poker with a very nice wicked hook on the end mounted on my wall, just beside my desk (between the engraving of Elizabeth I and the puzzle of Shakespeare characters).
I should probably make some attempt to eat something... but I just was so excited about the prospect of finishing this stupid chapter tonight that I decided to put off cooking. But now the veggies and beans and cheese are calling to me...