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. |
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Page iii
... Anne Skura The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The Globe Meredith Anne Skura is professor of English at Rice University.
... Anne Skura The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The Globe Meredith Anne Skura is professor of English at Rice University.
Page xii
Meredith Anne Skura. I have looked for varied effects of playing : not only in Shakespeare's way of representing players , but in his way of representing all the world as a one- time player might have seen it . More specific debts are ...
Meredith Anne Skura. I have looked for varied effects of playing : not only in Shakespeare's way of representing players , but in his way of representing all the world as a one- time player might have seen it . More specific debts are ...
Page xiii
Meredith Anne Skura. Sources for Texts Quoted The following editions have been used for sixteenth- and seventeenth- century texts cited . Unless otherwise noted , dates for all plays are taken from Yoshiko Kawachi , Calendar of English ...
Meredith Anne Skura. Sources for Texts Quoted The following editions have been used for sixteenth- and seventeenth- century texts cited . Unless otherwise noted , dates for all plays are taken from Yoshiko Kawachi , Calendar of English ...
Page xiv
Meredith Anne Skura. * Erasmus , Desiderius . The Praise of Folly , trans . Clarence H. Miller . New Haven and London : Yale University Press , 1979 . * Earle , J. Micro - Cosmography , or A Piece of the World Discovered in Essayes and ...
Meredith Anne Skura. * Erasmus , Desiderius . The Praise of Folly , trans . Clarence H. Miller . New Haven and London : Yale University Press , 1979 . * Earle , J. Micro - Cosmography , or A Piece of the World Discovered in Essayes and ...
Page 6
Meredith Anne Skura. plays , where Shakespeare's attention turns from the beggarly player to the lord who finances and directs the play . Some of the figures considered at the end of chapter 5 are not literally players or directors , nor ...
Meredith Anne Skura. plays , where Shakespeare's attention turns from the beggarly player to the lord who finances and directs the play . Some of the figures considered at the end of chapter 5 are not literally players or directors , nor ...
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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