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 ix
... Shake- speare's early experience or unconscious fantasies . It attempts to locate a middle ground between large social forces and private fantasies , that is , to describe the way outer and inner reality interact to produce the personal ...
... Shake- speare's early experience or unconscious fantasies . It attempts to locate a middle ground between large social forces and private fantasies , that is , to describe the way outer and inner reality interact to produce the personal ...
Page x
... Shake- speare and the Idea of the Play , which begins at the other end of the same topos , with the stage rather than the world , and studies its implications for Shakespeare's attitude toward plays . Metadramatic studies like those of ...
... Shake- speare and the Idea of the Play , which begins at the other end of the same topos , with the stage rather than the world , and studies its implications for Shakespeare's attitude toward plays . Metadramatic studies like those of ...
Page xi
... Shake- speare studies , this criticism emerged first from studies of Elizabethan the- ater as a social process shaped by popular ritual ( S. L. Bethell , C. L. Barber , Robert Weimann , Michael Bristol ) and has been influenced by more ...
... Shake- speare studies , this criticism emerged first from studies of Elizabethan the- ater as a social process shaped by popular ritual ( S. L. Bethell , C. L. Barber , Robert Weimann , Michael Bristol ) and has been influenced by more ...
Page xii
... Shake- speare Association of America , the City University of New York , and Boston University ; the material on Julius Caesar was presented at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute , the Freud Symposium , and the International Con ...
... Shake- speare Association of America , the City University of New York , and Boston University ; the material on Julius Caesar was presented at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute , the Freud Symposium , and the International Con ...
Page 1
... Shake- speare's sonnets . Trying to feel his way into the poems , Callow found himself identifying more and more deeply with the poet as lover because he himself was then in love with a fair young man . This helped , but the real ...
... Shake- speare's sonnets . Trying to feel his way into the poems , Callow found himself identifying more and more deeply with the poet as lover because he himself was then in love with a fair young man . This helped , but the real ...
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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