Full Description
This book lays bare the dialogue between Shakespeare and critics of the stage and positions it as part of an ongoing cultural, ethical, and psychological debate about the effects of performance on actors and on spectators. In so doing, the book makes a substantial contribution both to the study of representations of theatre in Shakespeare's plays and to the understanding of ethical concerns about acting and spectating—then, and now.
The book opens with a comprehensive and coherent analysis of the main early modern English anxieties about theater and its power. These are read against twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of acting, interviews with actors, and research into the effects of media representation on spectator behaviour, all of which demonstrate the lingering relevance of antitheatrical claims and the personal and philosophical implications of acting and spectating. The main part of the book reveals Shakespeare's responses to major antitheatrical claims about the powerful effects of poetry, music, playacting, and playgoing. It also demonstrates the evolution of Shakespeare's view of these claims over the course of his career: from light-hearted parody in A Midsummer Night's Dream, through systematic contemplation in Hamlet, to acceptance and dramatization in The Tempest.
This study will be of great interest to scholars and students of theater, English literature, history, and culture.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Theater Controversies in Early Modern England
Playhouse, Prayer-house, Profit, and Plague
Actors and Audience
Chapter 2 True Performing and Verses of Feigning Love: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Early Modern English Antitheatricality
"Verses of Feigning Love"—Poetry in A Midsummer Night's Dream
"True Performing"—Theater in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Conclusion: Poets and Players
Chapter 3 Hamlet as Shakespeare's Defense of Theater
Ethical and Ontological Concerns about Theater
The Laughter of the Barren Spectators
Conclusion
Chapter 4 "In My Power": The Tempest as Shakespeare's Antitheatrical Vision
Theater and Spectacle in The Tempest and in the Antitheatrical Discourse
Music in The Tempest
In Your Power: Shakespeare's Defense of Music and Drama
Afterword Poets, Pipers, and Players
Index
