Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of PlayingUniversity of Chicago Press, 1993 - 325 pages For the Renaissance, all the world may have been a stage and all its people players, but Shakespeare was also an actor on the literal stage. Meredith Anne Skura asks what it meant to be an actor in Shakespeare's England and shows why a knowledge of actual theatrical practices is essential for understanding both Shakespeare's plays and the theatricality of everyday life in early modern England. Despite the obvious differences between our theater and Shakespeare's, sixteenth-century testimony suggests that the experience of acting has not changed much over the centuries. Beginning with a psychoanalytically informed account of acting today, Skura shows how this intense and ambivalent experience appears not only in literal references to acting in Shakespearean drama but also in recurring narrative concerns, details of language, and dramatic strategies used to engage the audience. Looking at the plays in the context of both public and private worlds outside the theater, Skura rereads the canon to identify new configurations in the plays and new ways of understanding theatrical self-consciousness in Renaissance England. Rich in theatrical, psychoanalytic, biographical, and historical insight, this book will be invaluable to students of Shakespeare and instructive to all readers interested in the dynamics of performance. |
From inside the book
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Page x
... dream , man as role - playing animal . While not directly relevant to the study of a practicing actor , it is nonetheless important because Elizabethan actors were both the source of and affected by the period's historically determined ...
... dream , man as role - playing animal . While not directly relevant to the study of a practicing actor , it is nonetheless important because Elizabethan actors were both the source of and affected by the period's historically determined ...
Page xvi
... Dream , ed . Harold F. Brooks , 1979 ; Much Ado About Nothing , ed . A. R. Humphreys , 1981 ; Othello , ed . M. R. Ridley , 1958 ; Richard 11 , ed . Peter Ure , 1956 ; Richard III , ed . Antony Hammond , 1981 ; The Taming of the Shrew ...
... Dream , ed . Harold F. Brooks , 1979 ; Much Ado About Nothing , ed . A. R. Humphreys , 1981 ; Othello , ed . M. R. Ridley , 1958 ; Richard 11 , ed . Peter Ure , 1956 ; Richard III , ed . Antony Hammond , 1981 ; The Taming of the Shrew ...
Page 5
... Dream , and Hamlet ) as well as some notably histrionic hangers - on , like Falstaff ( in Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor ) , whose profession entails , at least in part , playing with and for a great man and singing for his ...
... Dream , and Hamlet ) as well as some notably histrionic hangers - on , like Falstaff ( in Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor ) , whose profession entails , at least in part , playing with and for a great man and singing for his ...
Page 6
... dream of greatness maintained by the flattering ministrations of unreliable followers , both the intimate friends who begin by serving them and the public which begins by cheering them . But intimates and public both betray them ...
... dream of greatness maintained by the flattering ministrations of unreliable followers , both the intimate friends who begin by serving them and the public which begins by cheering them . But intimates and public both betray them ...
Page 18
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Actaeon acting Anne Antony Arden Armado attack audience audience's baiting Barber and Wheeler bearbaiting beggar Bottom Brutus Caesar called Callow chapter character child cited in Chambers clown Comedy Coriolanus crowd crown death deer describes Drama dream Elizabethan Stage English Epilogue Fairy Falstaff fantasies father fawning fear flattering fool Hal's Hamlet Henriad Henry Henry IV Henry VI Histriomastix histrionic hunt identified inner plays italics added John John Marston Jonson King King Lear kneel Launce Lear literally London Lord Love's Labour's Lost male Midsummer Night's Dream mirror mother murder narcissistic offstage onstage performance play's players poet Queen Renaissance Richard Richard III role says scene Shake Shakespeare shame Shrew Sly's social sonnet speare's stage fright story suggests Tarlton tells theater theatrical thee Thomas thou Timon Timon of Athens Titus Titus Andronicus University Press Wives wounds York