Henriëtte Rietveld

Theatrical texts and performances were prominent forms of entertainment that traversed the fairground, the city stage, as well as the aristocratic courts of early modern Europe. They expressed and also invented and iterated ideologies, concepts, relationships, and processes, and formed important vehicles for their circulation. My dissertation project explores how four of the most popular productions of the first decade of Amsterdam’s city theatre (1638–1648), the Schouwburg, transformed as they transferred from across Europe, and what implications that has on an understanding of Dutch imperial narratives and identity formation at the time. I argue that such Dutch imperial narratives are mercantile, maritime, and based on a sense of supremacy. In each of the plays and productions I consider, I will tend to how these tenets turn up in text and performance. I believe it is important to examine these narratives as part of a cultural archive that informs contemporary Dutch white culture and identity.