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 4
... figure , himself both an actor and a perfect actor's medium , who takes over the last of the early history plays . Most commentators , including some within the play itself , have identified Richard as a player in Elizabethan terms ...
... figure , himself both an actor and a perfect actor's medium , who takes over the last of the early history plays . Most commentators , including some within the play itself , have identified Richard as a player in Elizabethan terms ...
Page 6
... figures considered at the end of chapter 5 are not literally players or directors , nor , I believe , are they intended as figures for actors . They are , however , caught in moments and exchanges of the sort which actors experience ...
... figures considered at the end of chapter 5 are not literally players or directors , nor , I believe , are they intended as figures for actors . They are , however , caught in moments and exchanges of the sort which actors experience ...
Page 7
... figure to ground , peripheral yet central to the sonnets ' concerns . Much of this argument elaborates on the ways in which the player is not only someone who plays roles but someone exquisitely aware of his audi- ence and his relation ...
... figure to ground , peripheral yet central to the sonnets ' concerns . Much of this argument elaborates on the ways in which the player is not only someone who plays roles but someone exquisitely aware of his audi- ence and his relation ...
Page 26
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Page 27
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Common terms and phrases
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