Todd Butler’s research while affiliated with Washington State University and other places

In carefully distinguishing between the immediacy of emotive impulses and the deliberation that transforms intent into action, Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor details the limits of both theatrical efficacy and royal authority in Caroline England. Massinger pursues this argument initially through a juxtaposition of two key scenes - the private embassy of Parthenius to Domitia and the actor Paris' defence of the theatre - and then in a series of inset dramas. The result is a play that rejects the immediacy of tyrannical authority in favour of a conceptualization of both theatrical and political power whose emphasis on delay yields a dynamic that is fundamentally collaborative rather than imperial. In staking such a claim, Massinger also foreshadows modern arguments for the centrality of emotions to juridical and political judgment.