Festivity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika T. Lin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Economic Exchanges ◽  
Complex Project ◽  
Cultural Functions ◽  
Modern Perspective

This chapter locates festivity within the early modern theatre. Through an analysis of Thomas Dekker’sThe Shoemaker’s Holiday, it considers how holidays functioned not as communal rituals but as commodified entertainments; how one-off experiences tied to the cyclical rhythms of the seasons came to be understood as performances that could be enacted year-round—that is, rendered intelligible as theatre within linear models of historical time; and how playing came to be imagined not only as a mode of sociality but also as a vendible commodity. The chapter shows how the commercialization of theatre altered the economic exchanges at the heart of traditional festivity and argues that the professional stage was engaged in a complex project to situate its own performances in relation to existing festive practices. By focusing on early modern contexts, it highlights the ways in which theatricality serves and produces multiple—and, from a modern perspective, often unexpected—cultural functions and effects.

Spectacular Science, Technology and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Science And Literature ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Modern Perspective

Back in the late 1950s, C.P. Snow famously defined science negatively by separating it from what it was not, namely literature. Such polarization, however, creates more problems than it solves. By contrast, the two co-editors of the book have adopted a dialectical approach to the subject, and to the numerous readers who keep asking themselves “what is science?”, we provide an answer from an early modern perspective, whereby “science” actually includes such various intellectual pursuits as history, poetry, occultism, or philosophy. Each essay illustrates one particular aspect of Shakespeare’s works and links science with the promise of the spectacular. This volume aims at bridging the gap between Renaissance literature and early modern science, focusing as it does on a complex intellectual territory, situated at the point of juncture between humanism, natural magic and craftsmanship. We assume that science and literature constantly interacted with one another, making clear the fact that what we now call “literature” and what we choose to see as “science” were not clearly separated in Shakespeare’s days but rather part of a common intellectual territory.

Staging Romance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Publicover
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Spatial Grammar ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter explores the mostly overlooked history of romance on the early modern stage. Analysing the geographies of two little-known plays, Clyomon and Clamydes (1580s?) and Guy of Warwick (early 1590s?), it argues that, in its imaginative openness and its flexible staging of space, the early modern theatre was the ideal environment in which to stage romance’s extravagant spatial and ethnographical imaginings. Further, the chapter demonstrates how a theatrical tradition of clowning enabled these late-Elizabethan dramas to contest the values of the very romance-worlds they had established. It closes with a fresh reading of Francis Beaumont’s parody of romance, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, arguing that the play satirizes dramatic romance’s spatial grammar as well as its narrative strategies.

Ekphrasis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Altman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Usual Sense ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Word Painting ◽  
English Stage ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Flexible Capacity

This chapter examines the use of ekphrasis in early modern theatre, with particular emphasis on its effect on the stage and the relationship of ekphrastic speech to the ongoing action in which it is enunciated. It maps the parameters of ekphrasis on the early modern English stage by considering a few examples of the ways in which ekphrasis instantiates early modern theatricality. It also discusses the expressive potential of ekphrastic speech and its transmission to the listener as well as the ironic uses of ekphrasis as a mode of persuasion, whether directed to oneself, an on-stage auditor, off-stage auditors, or all three. It argues that ekphrasis creates nothing less than what it calls ‘the psyche of the play’ and explains how the unusually flexible capacity of the staged word allows it to be used for a wide range of theatrical techniques, including the usual sense of ‘word-painting’. Finally, it looks at William Shakespeare’s deployment of ekphrasis in his work such asHamlet.

Dumb show

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Popular Audience

This chapter examines the theatrical experience provided by early modern dumb shows and the critical tradition that has emerged around them. It argues that dumb shows are a threshold between drama and theatricality, and that they vividly represent not only the contest between text and performance for authority over theatrical meaning, but also the tendency of each to displace this authority onto the other. In the canon of early modern theatre and in the modern critical tradition, dumb shows are often a sign of a derivative theatricality directed at a merely popular audience. In the dumb show, there is an especially complex and self-conscious encounter between word and action, diegesis and mimesis, presentational vehicles and represented fiction. As a moment of extraordinary semiotic density and redundancy, the dumb show was at once too readerly for the stage and too spectacular for the printed book. The chapter also considers ‘Hamlet’s advice to the players’ and its implications for approaches and responses to the dumb show.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-260
Author(s):  
Oliver Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the implications the turn-taking approach for our understanding of early modern performance practices. On the one hand, Shakespearean dialogue is full of subtle effects of timing and sequence that would seem to call for careful rehearsal and a detailed knowledge of the script. On the other hand, everything we know about early modern theatre suggests it was performed with minimal rehearsal by actors who did not necessarily know when, or from where, their next cue would arrive. This apparent mismatch I call ‘the performability gap’. The question is how it can be bridged. The explanation provided by Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern—that Shakespeare’s plays are designed to make artistic capital from their own under-rehearsal—does not entirely solve the problem. The second half of the chapter speculates about how else we might account for the gap.

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