The Shakespearean Stage
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Front Matter
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00489-4 - The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Updated Edition Edited by Kurt Schlueter Frontmatter More information THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE general editor Brian Gibbons associate general editor A. R. Braunmuller, University of California, Los Angeles From the publication of the first volumes in 1984 the General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare was Philip Brockbank and the Associate General Editors were Brian Gibbons and Robin Hood. From 1990 to 1994 the General Editor was Brian Gibbons and the Associate General Editors were A. R. Braunmuller and Robin Hood. THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA Professor Schlueter approaches this early comedy as a parody of two types of Renaissance educational fiction: the love-quest story and the test-of-friendship story, which by their combination show high-flown human ideals as incompatible with each other, and with human nature. A thoroughly researched, illustrated stage history reveals changing conceptions of the play, which nevertheless often fail to come to terms with its subversive impetus. Since the first known production at David Garrick’s Drury Lane Theatre, it has tempted major directors and actors, including John Philip Kemble, William Charles Macready and Charles Kean, who established a tradition of understanding which cast its shadow even on such modern productions as Denis Carey’s famous staging for the Bristol Old Vic and Robin Phillips’s for the Royal Shakespeare Company. This updated edition includes a new introductory section by Lucy Munro on recent stage -
Michael West
Theater of Enigma in Shakespeare’s England Michael West Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2017 Michael West All rights reserved ABSTRACT Theater of Enigma in Shakespeare’s England Michael West Theater of Enigma in Shakespeare’s England demonstrates the cognitive, affective, and social import of enigmatic theatrical moments. While the presence of other playgoers obviously shapes the experience of attending a play, I argue that deliberately induced moments of audience ignorance are occasions for audience members to be especially aware of their relations to others who may or may not share their bafflement. I explore the character of states of knowing and not-knowing among audience members and the relations that obtain among playgoers who inhabit these states. Further, I trace the range of performance techniques whereby playgoers are positioned in a cognitive no-man's land, lying somewhere between full understanding and utter ignorance—techniques that I collectively term “enigmatic theater.” I argue that moments of enigmatic theater were a dynamic agent in the formation of collectives in early modern playhouses. I use here the term “collective” to denote the temporary, occasional, and fleeting quality of these groupings, which occur during performance but are dissipated afterwards. Sometimes, this collective resembles what Victor Turner terms communitas, in which the normal societal divisions are suspended and the playgoers become a unified collectivity. At other times, however, plays solicit the formation of multiple collectives defined by their differing degrees of knowledge about a seeming enigma. -
The Moral Basis of Family Relationships in the Plays of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: a Study in Renaissance Ideas
The Moral Basis of Family Relationships in the plays of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: a Study in Renaissance Ideas. A submission for the degree of doctor of philosophy by Stephen David Collins. The Department of History of The University of York. June, 2016. ABSTRACT. Families transact their relationships in a number of ways. Alongside and in tension with the emotional and practical dealings of family life are factors of an essentially moral nature such as loyalty, gratitude, obedience, and altruism. Morality depends on ideas about how one should behave, so that, for example, deciding whether or not to save a brother's life by going to bed with his judge involves an ethical accountancy drawing on ideas of right and wrong. It is such ideas that are the focus of this study. It seeks to recover some of ethical assumptions which were in circulation in early modern England and which inform the plays of the period. A number of plays which dramatise family relationships are analysed from the imagined perspectives of original audiences whose intellectual and moral worlds are explored through specific dramatic situations. Plays are discussed as far as possible in terms of their language and plots, rather than of character, and the study is eclectic in its use of sources, though drawing largely on the extensive didactic and polemical writing on the family surviving from the period. Three aspects of family relationships are discussed: first, the shifting one between parents and children, second, that between siblings, and, third, one version of marriage, that of the remarriage of the bereaved. -
The Shakespeare Association of America I » 1982 Meeting ((
THE SHAKESPEARE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA I » 1982 MEETING (( APRIL 8TH , 10TH MARQUETTE HoTEL MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA THE SHAKESPEARE ASSOCIATION TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICA OF President, BERNARD BECKERMAN (Columbia Unitersic:v) THE SHAKESPEARE AssociATION oF AMERICA Executit•e Secretary, ANN ) ENNALIE CooK (Vanderbilt University) Adminismuit·e Assistant, RoSEMARY ALLEN (Vanderbilt Unit•ersity) INCORPORATED 1972 TRUSTEES )OHN ANDREWS S. SCHOENBAUM (Folger Shakespeare Library) (Unit·ersity of Maryland) ANNUAL MEETINGS )ONAS BARISH CHARLES SHATTUCK (Unit•ersity of California, Berkeley) (University of Illinois) MARCH 29-31, 1973 STATLER HILTON HoTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C. ANNUAL LECTURER, HARRY LEVIN (Harvard University) STEPHEN BooTH SUSAN SNYDER (University of California, Berkeley) (Swarthmore College) MARCH 28-30, 1974 HuNTINGTON-SHERATON HoTEL, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA ANNUAL LECTURER, RoBERT B. HEILMAN (University of Washington) THELMA GREENFIELD R. W. VAN FossEN (Unit•ersity of Oregon) (University of Toronto) MARCH 20-22, 1975 SHERATON PARK PLAZA HoTEL, NEw HAVEN, CoNNECTICUT ANNUAL LECTURER, HALLETT D. SMITH (Huntington Library) LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS *APRIL 19-25, 1976 STATLER HILTON HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D.C. THOMAS CLAYTON (Unit•ersity of Minnesota) ANNUAL LECTURER, KENNETH MuiR (University of Liverpool) WITH THE ASS ISTANCE OF MARSHA L. RIEBE, ExEcuTivE AssiSTANT, AcADEMIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA APRIL 7-9, 1977 FAIRMONT HoTEL, NEw ORLEANS, LouiSIANA ANNUAL LECTURER, EuGENE W AITH (Yale University) WELCOMING COMMITTEE APRIL 13-15, 1978 HYATT REGENCY HoTEL, ToRONTO, ONTARIO AGNES MARIE FLECK (College of St. Scholastica) ANNUAL LECTURER, VIRGIL WHITAKER (Stanford University) SHIRLEY NELSON GARNER (Unit•ersity of Minnesota) MADELON GoHLKE (University of Minnesota) APRIL 12-14, 1979 SIR FRANCIS DRAKE HoTEL, SAN FRANCISCo, CALIFORNIA LowELL E. JoHNSON (St. Olaf College) ANNUAL LECTURER, G. -
The First Quarto of King Henry V Edited by Andrew Gurr Frontmatter More Information
Cambridge University Press 0521623367 - The First Quarto of King Henry V Edited by Andrew Gurr Frontmatter More information THE NEW CAMBRIDGE SHAKESPEARE general editor: Brian Gibbons associate editor: A. R. Braunmuller From the publication of the first volumes in 1984 the General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare was Philip Brockbank and the Associate General Editors were Brian Gibbons and Robin Hood. From 1990 to 1994 the General Editor was Brian Gibbons and the Associate Editors were A. R. Braunmuller and Robin Hood. THE FIRST QUARTO OF KING HENRY V The quarto text of Henry V is of unique importance. It has the authority of being transcribed by actors in Shakespeare’s own company as a record of their original staging of the play at the Globe in 1599. In this new edition Andrew Gurr argues that the Henry V quarto is probably the best surviving example of a Shakespeare playscript as it was actually performed. The speed with which it came to press only a year after its first staging marks its status as an official version of the play first seen by Elizabethan audiences. As a practical staging text it therefore does much to shed new light on what happened to scripts that the Shakespeare company bought from their resident playwright. The Henry V quarto is radically different from the 1623 First Folio version used in all other editions of the play. It is only half as long, eliminating entire scenes, transposing others, shortening long speeches and streamlining the text into something that could easily be put on as a two-hour performance. -
Who Heard the Rhymes, and How: Shakespeare’S Dramaturgical Signals
Oral Tradition, 11/2 (1996): 190-221 Who Heard the Rhymes, and How: Shakespeare’s Dramaturgical Signals Burton Raffel The Audience “The many-headed multitude” was how, in 1601, a contemporary referred to the Shakespearian audience (Salgado 1975:22). “Amazed I stood,” wondered an anonymous versifier in 1609, “to see a crowd/ Of civil throats stretched out so lowd;/ (As at a new play) all the rooms/ Did swarm with gentles mix’d with grooms.”1 This wide-ranging appeal considerably antedated Shakespeare’s plays: though he very significantly shaped its later course, he profited from rather than created the solidly popular status of the Elizabethan and, above all, the London stage, for “London was where the players could perform in their own custom-built playhouses, week after week and year after year. In London there were regular venues, regular audiences, regular incomes.”2 The first playhouses had been built in 1576; at least two professional “playhouses were flourishing in 1577.”3 (Shakespeare was then a country lad of thirteen.) The urgency of clerical denunciations, then as now, provides particularly revealing evidence of the theater’s already well- established place in many Londoners’ hearts.4 1 Idem:29. Festivity was of course a far more important aspect of Elizabethan life. “The popular culture of Elizabethan England . is characterized first and foremost by its general commitment to a world of merriment” (Laroque 1991:33). 2 Gurr 1992:6. And, just as today, those who wielded political power took most seriously the ancillary economic benefits produced by London’s professional theaters. See Harrison 1956:112-14, for the authorities’ immensely positive reaction, when appealed to by the watermen who ferried playgoers back and forth across the Thames, and whose profitable employment was being interfered with. -
Selected Contemporary Allusions
Appendix A Selected Contemporary Allusions 1. Robert Greene, Groats- Worth of Witte ( 1592). Quoted and discussed above, pp. 1-6, 53-4. See also Appendix B. 2. Henry Chettle, Kind-Harts Dreame (1592; SR 8 Dec. 1592), from the Epistle, 'To the Gentlemen Readers'. Discussed pp. 7, 21. he that offendes being forst, is more excusable than the wilfull faultie ... lie shew reason for my present writing, and after proceed to sue for pardon. About three moneths since died M. Robert Greene, leauing many papers in sundry Booke sellers hands, among other his Groats worth of wit, in which a letter written to diuers play-makers, is offensiuely by one or two of them taken, and because on the dead they cannot be auenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a liuing Author: and after tossing it two and fro, no remedy, but it must light on me. How I haue all the time of my conuersing in printing hindred the bitter inueying against schollers, it hath been very well knowne, and how in that I dealt I can sufficiently prooue. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I neuer be: The other (i.e. Shakespeare], whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I haue moderated the heate of liuing writers, and might haue vsde my owne discretion (especially in such a case) the Author beeing dead, that I did not, I am as sory, as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because my selfe haue seene his demeanor no !esse ciuill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes: Besides, diuers of worship haue reported, his vprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting, that aprooues his Art. -
Further Reading
Further reading Which edition if Shakespeare should I buy? This is not usually a problem as most often you will be told which par ticular edition of an individual play you should use. If you are free to choose your edition, you will obviously want to ensure that it is both reliable and as helpful as possible. The following series all have good notes, sound critical introductions, and are fully annotated: the Arden Shakespeare (a new, revised series will start appearing in 1995), the New Cambridge Shakespeare, the New O'fford Shakespeare (being published in paperback by World's Classics), and the New Penguin Shakespeare. In addition, you will find it useful to have a copy of Shakespeare's com plete works both for further reading and for reference. The standard Complete Works is that edited by Peter Alexander for Collins (we have taken our quotations from this); the Oxford edition of the Complete Works edited by Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells has many non-standard features; the Riverside Shakespeare (edited by G.B. Evans) has useful intro ductions to the plays. What critical books should I read? If you have read the play you have been set to study, but cannot see what it is about, what you need is a book that gives you an idea of the significance of the play. An introductory volume in this respect is Mar guerite Alexander's An Introduction to Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (1979). Similarly Philip Edwards's Shakespeare: A Writer's Progress (1986) will provide some starting-points, as will Richard Dutton's William Sha kespeare: A Literary Lifo (1989). -
Introduction
Notes Introduction 1. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 191. 2. For further discussion of the myth of the bare stage see Chapter 1 of this book; Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda, ‘Introduction: Towards a Materialist Account of Stage Properties’, in Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda (eds.), Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 2–7. 3. Aristotle Poetics (trans. Stephen Halliwell) (London: Harvard University Press, 1995), VII.16–20, p. 55. 4. Glynne Wickham, ‘Heavens, Machinery, and Pillars in the Early Theatre and Other Early Playhouse’, in Herbert Berry (ed.), The First Public Playhouse: The Theatre in Shoreditch, 1576–1598 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979), p. 6. 5. Thomas H. Dickinson (ed.), Robert Greene (London: Fisher Unwin, 1911), pp. lix–lxi. 6. Kenneth Muir, ‘Robert Greene as Dramatist’, in Richard Hosley (ed.), Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 48; Charles W. Crupi, Robert Greene (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986), p. 115; Charles Mills Gayley, Representative English Comedies (London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 419. 7. Bernard Beckerman, Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599–1609 (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Gerald Eades Bentley, The Professions of Dramatist and Player in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); T. J. King, Shakespearean Staging, 1599–1642 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); S. P. Cerasano, ‘Editing the Theatre, Translating the Stage’, Analytic and Enumerative Bibliography, 4 (1990), pp. -
Romeo at the Rose in 1598
Issues in Review 149 66 Beeston is one of six men at the Red Bull named in an order for repair of the high- ways by the theatre, dated 3 October 1622; see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1.169 n.2. As he had managed Queen Anne’s Men there, and returned there with them after the 1617 riot, it appears that he owned, and continued to own, the theatre. 67 For ‘bifold appeal’ see discussion in Rutter, Work and Play, 110. 68 Exceptions include the Red Bull Revels’ Two Merry Milkmaids, at court in 1619/20, and Gramercy Wit in 1621; see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1.173. Romeo at the Rose in 1598 In two plays of the Lord Admiral’s Men — Englishmen for My Money and The Two Angry Women of Abingdon — echoes of Romeo and Juliet appear.1 The first performances of Englishmen took place at the Rose in 1598. Two Angry Women is likely to have played at the same venue in the same year. What may these echoes tell us about the ethos and practices of the Lord Admiral’s Men, about the dramatists who wrote for them, and about the company’s place in the literary and dramatic milieu of the time? I want to argue that the presence of these echoes reveals a degree of inte- gration into urban literary fashion. And I will also suggest that some of the company’s playwrights exhibit the kind of knowing playfulness that was soon to characterize the repertory of the children’s companies and which was already shaping the satires and epigrams to reach print publication at this time. -
Sir John Oldcastle and the Construction of Shakespeare's
SEL38 (1998) ISSN 0039-3657 SirJohn Oldcastle and the Construction of Shakespeare's Authorship DOUGLAS A. BROOKS Let vs returne vnto the Bench againe, And there examine further of this fray. -SirJohn Oldcastle, I.i.124-5 A decade ago the editors of the Oxford William Shakespeare: The CompleteWorks replaced the name of the character called Falstaff in Henry IVPart Iwith a hypothetically earlier version of the character's name, Sir John Oldcastle. The restoration of Oldcastle to the Oxford edition makes it the first authoritative text to undo an alteration which, as scholars have long suspected, Shakespeare himself must have made sometime between a non-extant 1596 performance text and the 1598 quarto of the play. The resulting scholarly debate over this editorial decision has touched on a number of significant issues linked to the authority and authenticity of "Shakespearean" texts, and it has raised important questions about how these texts were shaped by the material, religious, and political conditions in which they were produced.l In the case of HenryIVPart I, crit- ics have struggled to reconstruct how an early version of the text with Oldcastle as the protagonist of the unworthy knight plot might have placed the play and its author in a complicated Douglas A. Brooks recently completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University, and is assistant professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at Texas A&M University. He is currently working on a book about early modern dramatic authorship and print. 334 SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE position between an individual's reputation and a nation's. -
Before We Sleep: Macbeth and the Curtain Lecture
Before we sleep: Macbeth and the curtain lecture Neil Rhodes Date of deposit 23 01 2020 Document version Author’s accepted manuscript Access rights Copyright © 2020 Cambridge University Press. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. Citation for Rhodes, N 2020, 'Before we sleep: Macbeth and the curtain published version lecture', Shakespeare Survey, vol. 73. In press. Link to published https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we- version publish/collections/shakespeare-survey Full metadata for this item is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Before We Sleep: Macbeth and the Curtain Lecture Macbeth has been described as Shakespeare’s most topical play, engaging with recent events such as the Gunpowder Plot and reflecting upon issues close to King James himself, the official patron of Shakespeare’s playing company.1 This is to give the play a very public dimension, highlighting its historical and political concerns, and suiting it too to the large arena theatre in which it was first performed. Yet there are many aspects of Macbeth that work in a quite opposite way. Acted in daylight, it is nevertheless a play dominated by darkness and by the liminal territory between day and night. Though it was staged in the broad, open playing space of the Globe, some of its most memorable scenes take place in intensely private locations.