Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages GAMING THE STAGE Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages THEATER: THEORY/TEXT/PERFORMANCE Series Editors: David Krasner, Rebecca Schneider, and Harvey Young Founding Editor: Enoch Brater Recent Titles: Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater by Gina Bloom Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance by Natalie Alvarez Performing the Intercultural City by Ric Knowles Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time by John H. Muse Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia by Christian DuComb Long Suffering: American Endurance Art as Prophetic Witness by Karen Gonzalez Rice Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945–91 by Branislav Jakovljević After Live: Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance by Daniel Sack Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance by Faedra Chatard Carpenter The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North by Douglas A. Jones, Jr. Acts: Theater, Philosophy, and the Performing Self by Tzachi Zamir Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning by Scott Magelssen Dark Matter: Invisibility in Drama, Theater, and Performance by Andrew Sofer Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love by Nicholas Ridout Paul Robeson and the Cold War Performance Complex: Race, Madness, Activism by Tony Perucci The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice by Judith Pascoe The Problem of the Color[blind]: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance by Brandi Wilkins Catanese Artaud and His Doubles by Kimberly Jannarone Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages Gaming the Stage PLAYABLE MEDIA AND THE RISE OF ENGLISH COMMERCIAL THEATER Gina Bloom UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Ann Arbor Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages Copyright © 2018 by Gina Bloom Some rights reserved This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Note to users: A Creative Commons license is only valid when it is applied by the person or entity that holds rights to the licensed work. Works may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations) to which the rights holder in the work cannot apply the license. It is ultimately your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc- nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid- free paper A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data has been applied for. ISBN 978- 0- 472- 07381- 8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 472- 05381- 0 (paper: alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12391- 9 (e- book) ISBN 978- 0- 472- 90108- 1 (Open Access ebook edition) http://dx.doi.org//10.3998/mpub.9831118 Digital materials related to this title can be found on www.fulcrum.org at doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118 Publication of this open monograph was the result of the participation of the University of California, Davis, in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. TOME aims to expand the reach of long-form humanities and social science scholarship including digital scholarship. Additionally, the program looks to ensure the sustainability of university press monograph publishing by supporting the highest quality scholarship and promoting a new ecology of scholarly publishing in which authors’ institutions bear the publication costs. Funding from University of California, Davis, made it possible to open this publication to the world. www.openmonographs.org Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages For Max Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction | Gaming the Stage 1 ONE | Gaming History 23 Material Objects and Practices of Play 25 Attitudes toward Gameplay 28 The Politics of Gameplay 43 Spectatorship, Performance, and History 49 TWO | Cards: Imperfect Information and Male Friendship 63 Imperfect Information in Gammer Gurton’s Needle 66 Cards, Theater, and Male Friendship at Cambridge University 77 Imperfect Friendship in A Woman Killed with Kindness 81 Wagering on Theater 95 THREE | Backgammon: Space and Scopic Dominance 99 Theater Space and Scopic Dominance 101 Navigating Space and Place in Arden of Faversham 106 The Two Angry Women of Abington and Blind Play 116 Theatergoers on the Boards and Vicarious Play 134 FOUR | Chess: Performative History and Dynastic Marriage 143 The Temporality of Chess in Benjamin and The Tempest 147 A Game at Chess and Polytemporal History 155 Performative Histories 168 Recursive Temporality, Political Agency, and Embodied Skill 172 EPILOGUE | Participatory Spectators and the Theatricality of Kinect 177 Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages viii CONTENTS Notes 193 Works Cited 245 Index 267 Illustrations following page 22 Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages Acknowledgments In game development and in the theater, collaboration is invaluable. Noth- ing gets made without a team. That is true of this book as well. Although it has my name on the cover, it is the product of many minds, hands, and hearts. I am pleased to share the credit with those who have worked and played alongside me as this book came to fruition. This project in its current form began at the University of California, Davis, where I have been lucky to find incredible colleagues in both early modern studies and game studies. Fran Dolan has been an especially atten- tive mentor and friend, supporting my scholarship and my career in too many ways to count. I am indebted to her and to Margie Ferguson for their feedback on earlier versions of many of my chapters, as well as to other writing group members over the years: Seeta Chaganti, Stephanie Elsky, Ari Friedlander, Noah Guynn, and Claire Waters. My thanks also to Molly McCarthy, whose feedback on grant proposals also pushed the project in useful directions, and to Lee Emrich, who provided superb editorial assis- tance on several article versions of my chapters. Sarah McCullough orga- nized an early writing group on games, where I received excellent feedback from her, Joe Dumit, Susan Kaiser, and Colin Milburn. Colin has been a vital interlocutor for me throughout the book’s development, and I cannot thank him enough for helping me articulate my contribution to game and media studies and for generously reading the entire manuscript to offer feedback at crucial junctures. Many of my ideas about games were shaped by my engagement with the ModLab Colin founded and particularly through conversations with Stephanie Boluk, Patrick LeMieux, Tim Lenoir, Michael Neff, and Amanda Phillips; graduate students Evan Lauteria, Joseph Nguyen, and Emma Waldron; and dozens of undergraduate interns who work on Play the Knave. I would highlight especially my fruitful col- laboration with graduate students Evan Buswell and Nick Toothman, the architects of Play the Knave, and Sawyer Kemp, whose observations about vicarious spectatorship at installations of the game helped me figure out how to situate Play the Knave in relation to my book’s larger argument Bloom, Gina. Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9831118. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS about gaming and spectatorship. The influence of this collaboration is most evident in my book’s Epilogue, which draws on the article the four of us cowrote, “‘A Whole Theatre of Others’: Amateur Acting and Immersive Spectatorship in the Digital Shakespeare Game Play the Knave.” Shakespeare Quarterly, special issue on “#Bard,” ed.