"The Shakespeare studied in this book is Shakespeare the playmaker, engaged in every step of the process from the first draft of the text to the performance before a live audience. This, the author contends, is the Shakespeare that is most essential, the Shakespeare who should be known as the foundation underlying any other treatment of the plays, and the Shakespeare most exciting and rewarding to pursue."--Jacket.
Ranging over all the dramatic genres in the Shakespearean canon, this book focuses on plays where medieval drama most clearly illuminates Shakespeare's treatment of political power and social privilege. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Vocal music was at the heart of English Renaissance poetry and drama. Virtuosic actor-singers redefined the theatrical culture of William Shakespeare and his peers. Composers including William Byrd and Henry Lawes shaped the transmission of Renaissance lyric verse. Poets from Philip Sidney to John Milton were fascinated by the disorienting influx of musical performance into their works. Musical performance was a driving force behind the period's theatrical and poetic movements, yet its importance to literary history has long been ignored or effaced. This book reveals the impact of vocalists and composers upon the poetic culture of early modern England by studying the media through which—and by whom—its songs were made. In a literary field that was never confined to writing, media were not limited to material texts. Scott Trudell argues that the media of Renaissance poetry can be conceived as any node of transmission from singer's larynx to actor's body. Through his study of song, Trudell outlines a new approach to Renaissance poetry and drama that is grounded not simply in performance history or book history but in a more synthetic media history.
In Shakespeare in Three Dimensions, Robert Blacker asks us to set aside what we think we know about Shakespeare and rediscover his plays on the page, and as Shakespeare intended, in the rehearsal room and in performance. That process includes stripping away false traditions that have obscured his observations about people and social institutions that are still vital to our lives today. This book explores the verities of power and love in Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, as an example of how to mine the extraordinary detail in all of Shakespeare's plays, using the knowledge of both theatre practitioners and scholars to excavate and restore them.
Based on a recent touring project, the book explores a series of playtexts and essays that contextualise the themes and approaches of the work, serve as provocations for the Acts of Dramaturgy the work entailed, juxtapose new writing and performance writing, and problematise the notion of playtexts. This particular playtext title investigates the role of the dramaturg in contemporary performance, by analysing three performances inspired by the work of William Shakespeare. Taking as their starting point a stage direction or a moment in the narrative that is not the main focus, the playtexts recontextualises, deconstructs and disorientates the classic text within a landscape that is more polarised, free from the text and inherently and explicitly aware of its own theatricality. The work negotiates the ever-shifting relationship between the text and its performance, the performer(s) and their audience, whilst acknowledging that Shakespeare often employed a play-within-a-play as a device, what we now call a meta-theatrical mode of representation.
'Social Shakespeare is a thoughtful and frequently incisive book wabout an important and complex topic.' - Terence Hawkes, Cahiers Elisabethains Shakespeare studies have become increasingly politicised and clashes of opinion amongst scholars are not uncommon. Social Shakespeare, in its enthusiasm for the plays themselves, attempts to bridge the gap between rival approaches, aiming as a distinct refocusing of political criticism upon the Shakespearean text as realised in performance. Modern Shakespeare productions have the potential to make far more political impact than academic studies and yet, until now, critics have been reluctant to recognise this potential. With reference to particular productions, backed up by illustrations, Peter J. Smith integrates critical understanding of the plays with evidence of their political impact on stage.
