DOCSLIB.ORG

ED034800.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
ED034800.Pdf :rT DOCUMENT RESUME ED 034 800 TE 500 483 AUTHOR Nardin, James T. TITLE Modern Criticism and the Closet Drama Approach. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Champaign, Ill. PUP DATE May 65 NOTE 7p.; Paper read at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, November, 1964 JOURNAL CIT College English; v26 n8 p591-597 May 1965 7DRS PRICE EDRS Price MF-50.25 HC-$0.45 DESCRIPTORS Acting, *College Students, Creative Dramatics, Creative Reading, Directed Reading Activity, Discussion Groups, *Drama, Dramatics, *Educational Objectives, *English Instruction, Group Reading, Imagination, *Literary Analysis, Literary Criticism, Literary Genres, Literature Appreciation, Reading Development, Teaching Methods, Teaching Techniques, Theoretical Criticism ABSTRACT Modern drama criticism is rebuked for taking the "closet drama approach" which reduces the theater to yet another type of philosophical and content-oriented literary genre. Group participation and discussion are suggested as means by which the student is encouraged to stage an imaginary performance leading to intelligibility and appreciation of the theatrical nature of drama. Special problems encountered by students in reading the drama are examined. (RL) fromCollege English, May,1965 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION 8 WELFARE OFFICE Of EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROMTHE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS Of VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OfEDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. Modern Criticism and theCloset Drama Approach JAMEST. NARDIN IN THE YEARS that I've been teachingas retreatment ofearlier material. When drama, the commonest and most disheart-I was an undergraduate, I had a course ening comment I've met with regularityin Shakespeare, and because I took Greek is "I can't read a play." This comes fromand Latin, I also read some classical dra- my students; it comesfrom my friends;ma. But Greek drama was anexercise in it comes from my colleagues on occasion.translation; it was not the study of a And a good bit of the reason for thisplay. The Shakespeare professor lectured failure can be attributed to the kind ofon sources and indicated inthe early criticism we have been faced with in theplays the characters to be developed dramaa criticism which in a sense apolo-more fully later and thenreminded us in gizes for and tries to explain away thethe later plays that we had seen earlier drama, or at least to treat it as if it wereViolas, Launcelots, and Iagos. So he something else more respectable. devoted five lectures to Two Gentlemen of Verona and a total of three to Hamlet, This is not strange. Drama has beenLear, Macbeth, Othello, and Antony and suspect in the classroom for a long time, largely, I fear, because it is popular. We Cleopatra. who teach tend to mistrust literature Then along came Brooks and Warren people like. Indeed, I doubt that dramawith their new approach to teaching po- would ever have made it into the class-etry and fiction, and this newapproach room and the learned journa!s if it hadwas extended to the drama.More plays not been for Shakespeare. His poeticwere introduced intothe classroom, and genius was so great that he could not bethat was all to the good. Also, the time ignored, and after all, the main body ofin class was devoted largely to the text tihis work was in dramatic form. So theof the play instead of merely to Holins- play had to be reckoned with. hed or Plutarch and theadaptation But it could be explained away asShakespeare made of these sources. something elseas a philosophical discus- But the orientation of that approach to 14.sion, as imaginative poetry, as imagery,the drama text was still fundamentally the approach to the poem, an approach Modern drama is the special field of Mr.to a piece of literature designed tobe Nardin, professor of English at Louisiana Stateread by one person alone, to be analyzed University. This paper was read at the NCTE Convention session on Teaching Drama, inclosely in terms of imagery and philo- November, 1964. sophical content. It simply ignores the J1 ..earuage 592 COLLEGE ENGLISH elements that make a play distinctive. It there, but he often talks as if this were turns all plays into closet drama. And to trueas if, because he wrote for the make Hamlet or Hedda Gabler or Oedi- theater, Shakespeare were restricted by .-apacities of the ordinary theater-goer pus Rex closet drama is disastrous both (as conjectured by a twentieth-century critically and pedagogically. scholar)....2 After all, most of us did not get in- terested in closet drama to begin with, These two passages seem to me to lay if, indeed, we ever got interested in it.bare the heart of the problem of trying We saw plays; we acted in them. Onlyto make use of modern criticism in teach- after considerable experience with whating drama. Though both imply that dra- plays looked like and sounded like werematic necessity and dramatic elements are we able to read them and approximate ainvolved, the idea of concentrating on theatrical experience in our imaginations.what comes over in a theater before one But most modern criticism would leadexplores any additionalpossibilityis us away from the theatrical phase ofpassed over by calling the "first-night" the drama and take it directly into theapproach a fallacy and referring to those of us who like to begin there as "victims" closet for careful scrutiny. of it. The emphasis on "reading" a play In This Great Stage (1947), his bookas it appears in these passages suggests on King Lear, Robert B. Heilman (and itthat a reading and a viewing are the same is his text Understanding Drama whichthing. They are not. has been perhaps as influential as any Let me turn back briefly to these pas- single work on the direction recentsages and to what seems to be fundamen- teaching of the drama has taken) indi-tally wrong in their approach. The ref- cates this prejudice against the theatrical: erence to the play as a philosophical es- But it seems safer to assume, as a work-say seems to me like the statement of ing hypothesis, that, when there is re-teachersand I have heard manywho peated speculation upon nature, the playstart to deal with a short story by saying is to that extent an essay upon nature"Now the story is not important." They an essay necessarily broken up into partscut off what gets the reader interested in which are apportioned according to, and finding out what more may be offered. probably modified by, dramatic neces-If the author chooses to write a story, he sity does so because he thinks he can embody A decade later, in Magic in the Web, hehis idea more forcefully in story form or is more strongly opposed to any but thebecause he thinks stories make more t closet study of the drama as poem: money than philosophical essays. In either The printed play is somewhat like theevent, itis important and a necessary symphonic score which the music critic,starting point. imagining the performance, may study Similarly, if we tell the student that rigorously to see how it is "composed."Oedipus and Lear are interesting because All this is hardly a new and bright idea,they both deal with a similar theme of but it seems necessary to say it to counterparadoxical blindness and sight and that an argument that keeps popping upthethe play as play is not important, we are Fallacy of the First Night or the Fallacydenying the very elements which make of the Single Reading. The victim of this fallacy can hardly believe that what thethem distinctive and exciting worksthat auditor would not get from the perform-they are plays which embody ideas in a ance, or the reader from such a readingform designed to reach an audience in as he would accord to a relativelya theater and move that audience, that straight-forward work of prose, is notmuch of what moves us depends on what s This Great Stage, p. 11. s Magic in the Web (1956), p. 13. ti MODERN CRITICISM AND THE CLOSET DRAMA APPROACH 593 we see and hear, and that the failure toprevious close study of the text are of consider these theatrical elements is tono great significance to the student learn- make these plays simply one more pair ofing to overcome his inability to "read long poems for private reading in thea play." closet. Professor Heilman's other statement So let us turn to what the student which I have quoted about the play'sfinds his greatest problems in reading a being a symphonic score for study andplay. The novel is designed to be read; analysis one finds echoed in many ofthe poem is designed to be read. Both the most recent texts of the drama. Butcan be taken in in solitude. The play the statement appears again to me tois designed to be seen and heard by a go at the play from the wrong end. Letgroup of people assembled in a the- me repeat his phrase again"the printedater (or more recently before a TV set). play is somewhat like a symphonic scoreWhen the student picks up a play with which the music critic, imagining thespeeches and character names and little performance, may study rigorously toelse, he finds himself far more on his own see how itis 'composed.' " True, butthat he is in the novel, where the author there is admittedly no purpose to anal-is in general more explicit in telling him ysis of a symphonic score if the readerwhat he is seeing and what he is hearing does not imagine the performance.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Women Playwrights and the Early Modern “Closet”
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 4-30-2018 LITERARY EQUIVOCATION: WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS AND THE EARLY MODERN “CLOSET” Nancy Paxton-Wilson Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Paxton-Wilson, Nancy, "LITERARY EQUIVOCATION: WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS AND THE EARLY MODERN “CLOSET”." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2018. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/193 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LITERARY EQUIVOCATION: WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS AND THE EARLY MODERN “CLOSET” by NANCY PAXTON-WILSON Under the Direction of Tanya Caldwell, PhD ABSTRACT In general, “closet dramas,” because they have been falsely considered failed stage plays, have received minimal scholarly attention. This dissertation situates itself as a re- evaluation of female authors’ manuscript and printed plays: Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam, Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth (Cavendish) Brackley’s The Concealed Fancies, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure and Anne Finches’ Aristomenes, Or The Royal Shepherd. These plays use the coded rhetorical tool of literary equivocation to conceal yet reveal subversive political information which
    [Show full text]
  • Regency Actors and the Inspiration Behind Romantic Drama
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2017 Fit for the Stage: Regency Actors and the Inspiration Behind Romantic Drama James Armstrong The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2317 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] FIT FOR THE STAGE: REGENCY ACTORS AND THE INSPIRATION BEHIND ROMANTIC DRAMA by JAMES ARMSTRONG A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 ii © 2017 JAMES ARMSTRONG All Rights Reserved iii Fit for the Stage: Regency Actors and the Inspiration Behind Romantic Drama by James Armstrong This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. May 12, 2017 ______________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Marvin Carlson Distinguished Professor May 12, 2017 ______________________________ Date Executive Officer Peter Eckersall Professor ______________________________ Jean Graham-Jones Professor ______________________________ Annette J. Saddik Professor Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract Fit for the Stage: Regency Actors and the Inspiration Behind Romantic Drama by James Armstrong Adviser: Distinguished Professor Marvin Carlson In this dissertation, I argue that British verse tragedies of the Romantic era must be looked at not as "closet dramas" divorced from the stage, but as performance texts written with specific actors in mind.
    [Show full text]
  • A Dark Ecology of Performance: Mapping the Field of Romantic Literary Celebrity Through Gothic Drama
    A Dark Ecology of Performance: Mapping the Field of Romantic Literary Celebrity through Gothic Drama Brian R. Gutiérrez A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Marshall Brown, Chair Juliet Shields Raimonda Modiano Program Authorized to Offer Degree Department of English 2 ©Copyright 2017 Brian R. Gutiérrez 3 University of Washington Abstract A Dark Ecology of Performance: Mapping the Field of Romantic Literary Celebrity through Gothic Drama Brian Robert Gutiérrez Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Emeritus Marshall Brown Comparative Literature Gothic drama reached a height of popularity in the 1790s, partly due to celebrity actors like Sarah Siddons. Yet we know very little about the relationship between the many writers of gothic dramas and the celebrity apparatus. Although critics such as Richard Schickel regard literary celebrity as strictly a twentieth century phenomenon, recently other scholars have been arguing for a broader historical view. Richard Salmon, for instance, has cited photography, investigative journalism, and the phenomenon of authors being interviewed at their homes as evidence of the machinery of celebrity culture operating in the 19th century; David Higgins and Frank Donoghue have argued for the importance of periodical writing in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Claire Brock and Judith Pascoe have pointed out the feminization of fame and public theatricality in the Romantic period. And Tom Mole, in addition to examining the career of Lord Byron in the context of celebrity culture, has recently edited a collection of essays on the material and discursive elements of celebrity culture from 1750 to 1850 to provide a “synoptic picture of celebrity.” 4 Yet the most popular and profitable literary genre of the Romantic era has remained a stepchild of criticism, the victim of a disjuncture between literary critical study of dramatic texts and historical study of performance culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Women, Nationalism and the Romantic Stage: Theatre
    her she recaptured much ofthe pleas- that revise the literary/dramatic invested in matters of public per- ure of her girlhood, exploring Eng- history of this field. Two new books formance." Marvin Carlson inter- lish Bay and Burrard Inlet. She made have joined the conversation: Women prets Inchbald's biographical-criti- many other friends in Vancouver in British Romantic Theatre, and cal prefaces, concluding that in the and her death from breast cancer in Women, Nationalism and the act of critical writing she "dared to 1913 occasioned the sincere and Romantic Stage. Each, in its own enter a domain traditionally reserved moving tribute of a public funeral. way, questions central precepts un- for men," though she buttressed her She was buried at her favourite spot derpinning romanticism, including authority by confining her critiques in Stanley Park where her memorial conventional periodization, genres, largely to moral concerns associated stands today. and definitions of drama, theatre, with women. Thomas Crochunis Charlotte Gray has given us this and performance. Each argues that explicates what he calls the "per- present memorial, one which will women's relationship to dramatic1 formanceofauthorship" in Inchbald stand for decades as a faithful por- theatrical activity, whether as actress, and Baillie and how this perform- trait of this complex, talented, and playwright, critic, or manager, ancewas conditioned by gender. Jane gallant woman. expresses ideological ambivalence: at Moody looks at how translations of once subversive and emancipatory
    [Show full text]
  • Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class, and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama" by Karen Raber Julie Campbell Eastern Illinois University, [email protected]
    Eastern Illinois University The Keep Faculty Research & Creative Activity English January 2002 A Review of "Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class, and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama" by Karen raber Julie Campbell Eastern Illinois University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://thekeep.eiu.edu/eng_fac Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Campbell, Julie, "A Review of "Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class, and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama" by Karen raber" (2002). Faculty Research & Creative Activity. 16. http://thekeep.eiu.edu/eng_fac/16 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Research & Creative Activity by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REVIEWS 61 versial–corrective to critics such as Catherine Gallagher who have emphasized Behn’s witty identifications between female playwright and prostitute. The Theatre of Aphra Behn thus makes a different kind of contribution to Behn studies from Behn’s Afterlife. If Spencer’s study contributes to our historical understanding of the reception of women’s writing in the eighteenth century, Hughes’s work chal- lenges our conceptions of the ideological underpinnings and over- tones of Behn’s comedy. For the record, I should note that I disagree with more than a few of the readings that Hughes offers. Willmore may have the attention span of a three-year old and the introspec- tion of a GQ model, but Behn dedicated the second part of The Rover to the future James II and explicitly identified her exiled Cavalier with the exiled heir apparent.
    [Show full text]
  • The Theatre of Shelley
    Jacqueline Mulhallen The Theatre of Shelley OpenBook Publishers To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/27 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Jacqueline Mulhallen has studied and worked as an actor and writer in both England and Australia and won a scholarship to study drama in Finland. She worked as performer and writer with Lynx Theatre and Poetry and her plays Sylvia and Rebels and Friends toured England and Ireland (1987-1997). Publications include ‘Focus on Finland’, Theatre Australia, 1979; (with David Wright) ‘Samuel Johnson: Amateur Physician’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1982; ‘Sylvia Pankhurst’s Northern Tour’, www.sylviapankhurst. com, 2008; ‘Sylvia Pankhurst’s Paintings: A Missing Link’, Women’s History Magazine, 2009 and she is a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Playhouse 1737-1832 (forthcoming). Jacqueline Mulhallen The Theatre of Shelley Cambridge 2010 Open Book Publishers CIC Ltd., 40 Devonshire Road, Cambridge, CB1 2BL, United Kingdom http://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2010 Jacqueline Mulhallen. Some rights are reserved. This book is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. This license allows for copying any part of the work for personal and non-commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Details of allowances and restrictions are available at: http://www.openbookpublishers.com As with all Open Book Publishers titles, digital material and resources associated with this volume are available from our website: http://www.openbookpublishers.com ISBN Hardback: 978-1-906924-31-7 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-906924-30-0 ISBN Digital (pdf): 978-1-906924-32-4 Acknowledgment is made to the The Jessica E.
    [Show full text]
  • English IV AP Drama - Unit 2 Review 2016 Test Block Day, October 5/6
    English IV AP Drama - Unit 2 Review 2016 Test Block Day, October 5/6 Bedford Introduction to Literature Irony (be able to identify in all texts): (You received introductory notes and instruction on the Irony: a contradiction between appearance and following terms, but for more information or reality. clarification, you can reference your textbook) Verbal irony: when a character says one thing, but suggests or intends the opposite. Reading Drama pp. 1365-67 Situational irony: A situation that results contrary to closet drama the reader’s expectations. Dramatic irony: when the audience knows more Elements of Drama pp. 1383-86 about a character’s situation than the character setting does exposition Structural irony: A naïve or deluded hero protagonist or unreliable narrator, whose view of the world antagonist differs widely from the true circumstances pyramidal pattern recognized by the author and/or the readers. rising action Cosmic irony: the idea that fate, destiny, or a god climax/crisis/turning point controls and toys with human hopes and falling action expectations resolution/conclusion/denouement foil A Sure Thing (annotation doc)—David Ives Comedic pairing Drama Terms (study of Sophocles) pp. 1418 - 25 Examples of irony orchestra chorus Oresteia: Agamemnon—Aeschylus skene Gender analysis (doc) deus ex machina Victimization cothurni: elevated shoes worn by actors Justice prologue Revenge parados Close reading: p. 21-22 (Chorus), p. 34-35 episodia (Agamemnon), p. 35-36 (Clytemnestra), p. 44 stasimon (Cassandra), p. 48-49 (Clytemnestra), p. 50 (chorus) exodus Examples of Irony (cosmic and dramatic primarily) tragedy hamartia/tragic flaw Oresteia: Eumenides—Aeschylus hubris Court system catharsis Gender reversal reversal/peripeteia Humans v Gods recognition/anagnorisis Blood Vengeance dramatic/tragic irony Close reading: p.
    [Show full text]
  • Closet Drama
    Note: Click on the Description to get the Link ​ ​ for VideoExplanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A06xA7 MySIs Closet Drama 1. Closet drama, a drama suited primarily for reading rather than ​ production. Closet dramas are plays that have been written to be read, but not ​ performed. 2. During the early 1800s, most plays that were performed were 'melodramas' or 'burlesque. 3. Serious writers such as Browning and Byron sought to elevate the art form by ​ removing it from the stage altogether by creating closet dramas. 4. This art form was popularized in the Romantic era by such writers as Robert Browning and Goethe. ​ ​ 5. In some ways, the Romantics were revolutionary writers and were radical in thought. ​ ​ So it is no surprise that historical events such as the American and French Revolutions influenced these writers. 6. Coleridge and Southey worked together in 1794 to write a play about the French Revolution called The Fall of Robespierre, while Wordsworth's only play, The ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Borderers, was about the French Revolution as well. The Romantic playwrights used ​ the plays to talk about their radical political and social views. Therefore, some theaters were reluctant to produce them. 7. Closet dramas were published in manuscript form, including dramatis personae and ​ ​ elaborate stage directions, allowing readers to imagine the text as if it was being performed. 8. The element of imagination is an important tenet of Romantic Movement. Writing a ​ successful closet drama was an endeavour to stimulate the theatrical imagination of the readers. If a play could be read and then imagined on the stage of the mind held ​ greater value to the Romantics than something interpreted by someone else on stage.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Evaluating the Relevance of Seventeenth-Century Scottish Drama
    eSharp Issue 25:2 Rise and Fall ‘A New Toot out of an Old Horn’: Re-evaluating the Relevance of Seventeenth-century Scottish Drama Heather Wells (The University of Glasgow) While the 1660s saw the rebirth of English theatre, in Scotland it was virtually non-existent, with only a few plays written for the London stage or private reading. Scholars of early drama often neglect detailed study of these plays due to a perceived lack of quality, and the absence of a Scottish theatre tradition with which to link them. Attention is rarely given to details of plot, characterization or themes. Through analysis of three plays, this paper will show the importance of these details as evidence of how Scottish drama engaged with, or broke from, English theatre traditions. Examining the comic plot and characters of William Clark’s Marciano; or the Discovery (1663), some of the features, such as farce and the restoration of order, will be highlighted to show how they are directly inspired by English Restoration theatre. Tarugo’s Wiles; or the coffee-house by Thomas St Serf (1668) also draws inspiration from English drama tradition, however, this paper focuses on the unusual style of the Prologue and the not entirely successful coffee-house scene as an attempt to provide something new for theatre — the prologue itself referring to the play as ‘A New Toot out of an Old Horn’. Finally, Archibald Pitcairne’s 1691 The Assembly is used as an example of a uniquely Scottish Restoration drama, borrowing features from the English tradition and combining them in a Scottish setting with Scots dialogue.
    [Show full text]
  • Producing Early Modern Space and the Mind in Public and Closet Drama
    University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Dissertations and Theses @ UNI Student Work 2012 Producing early modern space and the mind in public and closet drama Megan M. Gallagher University of Northern Iowa Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©2012 Megan M. Gallagher Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Gallagher, Megan M., "Producing early modern space and the mind in public and closet drama" (2012). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 549. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/549 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses @ UNI by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Copyrightby Megan M. Gallagher 2012 All Rights Reserved PRODUCING EARLY MODERN SPACE AND THE MIND IN PUBLIC AND CLOSET DRAMA An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Megan M. Gallagher University of Northern Iowa May2012 ABSTRACT The construction of space has become such a common process for modernity that its culture would argue spatial experiences as intrinsic in nature. However, it is through the consideration of the experience of space and spatial boundaries one notices the cooperative nature of space. This thesis explores the early modem constructions of space and the development of the modem idea of the mind through the closet dramas of John Milton (Samson Agonistes) and Elizabeth Cary (The Tragedy ofMariam the Fair Queen ofthe Jewry), and the public dramas of William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure and Julius Caesar).
    [Show full text]
  • Book Review: Marta Straznicky. Privacy, Playreading, and Women's
    168 Book Reviews and Cressida to be listed are Dawson’s Cambridge edition and (oddly, since it has nothing to say about the play’s stage history) The Norton Shakespeare. Omitted are scholarly editions by Kenneth Palmer (1982), Kenneth Muir (1982), R. A. Foakes (1987) and David Bevington (1998). The omission of Bevington’s edition is particularly unfortunate, since its introduction includes an excellent thirty-page section on productions of the play. If the reason for these omissions is that Cambridge does not want to advertise rival editions, it is a rather ungracious policy, and certainly raises questions about the scholarly authority of the volume. PETER HYLAND Marta Straznicky. Privacy, Playreading, and Women’s Closet Drama, 1550– 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp xii, 182. Marta Straznicky’s book—her first, surprisingly—is by one measure the cul- mination of her years of research into the cultural and literary conditions that produced women’s sixteenth- and seventeenth-century closet drama. In Pri- vacy, Playreading, and Women’s Closet Drama, Straznicky examines the plays of five female dramatists within the women’s educational and theatrical milieu, but only after she redefines two key concepts within that milieu. The first concept Straznicky redefines is ‘privacy’. Privacy in the early modern era, Straznicky reminds us, had less to do with solitude than with the exclusions of class. Hence, an early seventeenth-century private theatre like the Blackfriars was so-called not because it admitted few patrons, but because those it did admit were not subject to the ‘Rables, Applewives and Chimney-boyes, / Whose shrill confused Ecchoes loud doe cry, / Enlarge your Commons, We hate Privacie’ (9).
    [Show full text]
  • WOMEN in BRITISH ROMANTIC THEATRE Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790±1840
    WOMEN IN BRITISH ROMANTIC THEATRE Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790±1840 edited by CATHERINE BURROUGHS published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011±4211, USA www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oalkeigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de AlarcoÂn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain # Cambridge University Press 2000 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2000 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Baskerville 11/12.5 pt System 3b2 [ce] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Women in British Romantic Theatre: drama, performance, and society, 1790±1840 / edited by Catherine Burroughs. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. usbn 0 521 66224 9 1. English drama ± Women authors ± History and criticism. 2. Women in the theater ± Great Britain ± History ± 19th century. 3. Women in the theater ± Great Britain ± History ± 18th century. 4. Women and literature ± Great Britain ± History ± 19th century. 5. Women and literature ± Great Britain ± History ± 18th century. 6. English drama ± 19th century ± History and criticism. 7. English drama ± 18th century ± History and criticism. 8. Theater ± Great Britain ± History ± 19th century. 9. Theater ± Great Britain ± History ± 18th century. 10. Romanticism ± Great Britain.
    [Show full text]