‘By indirections find directions out’: Unpicking Early Modern Stage Directions

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Stage Directions

Et Cetera/Etcetera/&c; or, the Aposiopetic Page

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-170
Author(s):  
Laurie Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Punctuation Mark ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Physical Functions ◽  
Rhetorical Figure ◽  
Stage Directions

Chapter 2 looks at the etcetera, a mark which today functions solely as an abbreviation, indicating the continuation of properties in a list. But in the early modern period that was only one of its several meanings. As a noun and a verb, early modern etcetera represents the body and bawdy (sexual parts and activities, or physical functions such as urination or defecation). As a punctuation mark, it is a forerunner of the punctuation mark which indicates silence or interruption—the em-dash. As a rhetorical term, it represents silence or the form of breaking off known rhetorically as aposiopesis. As an abbreviation at the ends of lists in stage directions, or lines in actors’ parts, it represents stage action, inviting continuation of dialogue or listed props. These four categories are linked in that etcetera directs the eye to a vacancy. We can see why it might be associated with aposiopesis, a rhetorical figure that is paradoxically about silence.

scholarly journals From directions to descriptions: Reading the theatrical Nebentext in Ben Jonson’s Workes as an authorial outlet

Sederi ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
David J. Amelang
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Miguel De Cervantes ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
The Way

This article explores how certain dramatists in early modern England and in Spain, specifically Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervantes (with much more emphasis on the former), pursued authority over texts by claiming as their own a new realm which had not been available—or, more accurately, as prominently available—to playwrights before: the stage directions in printed plays. The way both these playwrights and/or their publishers dealt with the transcription of stage directions provides perhaps the clearest example of a theatrical convention translated into the realm of readership.

“The Heaven’s True Figure” or an “Introit to All Kind of Lewdness”?

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-48
Author(s):  
Emily Winerock
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Conduct Manuals ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
Mixed Messages ◽  
Customary Practices

There are no extant English dancing manuals from the Shakespearean period, but there are abundant printed and manuscript sources that mention dancing. However, these sources convey mixed messages. The theoretical conceptions articulated by dance’s opponents and proponents in the “debate on dance” do not always correspond well with the evidence of customary practices. While early modern religious treatises decry dancing for encouraging illicit sexual liaisons, court records reveal a greater concern with irreverence and disorder than with wantonness. This chapter utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine a variety of primary sources—from conduct manuals and anti-dance treatises to consistory court depositions. Aggregating archival evidence elucidates general trends that can help scholars assess and contextualize isolated dance references, specific moments of dancing, and the dance scenes and stage directions of Shakespeare’s plays and those of his contemporaries.

The Asterisk; or, the Gnomic Page

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-236
Author(s):  
Laurie Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Strong Emotion ◽  
Stage Directions

Like the blank and the etcetera, the asterisk is a typographical sign that draws attention to what it professes to conceal. But although the asterisk represents absence it also does the opposite: it is the thing it represents—a star. Part I of this chapter looks at this paradox in representation. It shows the asterisk as a stand-in for consciousness, for sexual terms, for strong emotion and for swearing, as well as for its look-alikes: stars and flowers. However, where early modern readers most often encountered the asterisk was in the margin and so Part II looks at early modern systems of navigating books, the material around the text (notes and indexes and stage directions), in all of which the asterisk has a role to play.

“Red silence”: Ben Jonson and the Breath of Sound

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Laura Jayne Wright
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Early Readers ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
The Voice

In the prologue to Every Man in His Humour, Ben Jonson dismissed sound effects in favour of the spoken word; yet, throughout his work, Jonson uses sound to shocking and even violent effect. By examining the acoustics of Jonson's poem, A Panegyre on the Happy Entrance of James… to His First High Session of Parliament (1604), this article demonstrates that Jonson developed a distinct theory of sound, drawn from and often disagreeing with the work of Aristotle and Horace. It considers Jonson's pencil annotations on a copy of Thomas More's Carmen Gratulatorium (1509), to which his own poem is greatly indebted, and shows that these annotations are often made beside lines concerned with noise. Jonson's acoustic theory – which is dependent on an early modern understanding of the voice and of breath – is then traced throughout three of his comedies (Volpone, The Alchemist, and Epicoene). The article finally considers the responses of early readers of Jonson's dramatic work and their engagement with his sonic stage directions in Epicoene. It concludes that Jonson equivocates about the importance of sound, dismissing such “noise” only to discuss it at length in the next breath.

scholarly journals Beds on the Early Modern Stage

Early Theatre ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
Early Modern London

<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><p>Bed scenes remind us how little we know about staging practices in early modern London playhouses. Stage directions often say that a bed was 'discovered' but not where or how. And if it had curtains, were they on the bed or over an opening in the tiring house wall? Was the bed a four-poster, even though such a structure would have blocked sightlines and been cumbersome? Given the extra staging demands bed scenes entailed, why did playwrights include them? This study focuses on these and related matters with reference to all bed scenes in plays written between 1580 and 1642.</p></td></tr></tbody></table>

scholarly journals La edición de variantes didascálicas en el teatro inglés de la época de Shakespeare

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Tronch Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
The 19Th Century

This essay describes how variants in stage directions and speech prefixes of early modern plays (between 1585 and 1642), have been treated in modern editions from the 19th century to the present. The analysed variants derive both from different (usually printed) witnesses and from a single manuscript witness when the stage directions and speech prefixes are altered by a hand different from the main manuscript hand. Prior to this description, the essay offers an overview of the editorial treatment of stage directions in general in English plays of the period.

scholarly journals Database-oriented annotation of early modern plays: a proposal

Sederi ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 129-156
Author(s):  
Jesus Tronch
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Modern Drama ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Electronic Texts ◽  
Related Data ◽  
Stage Directions ◽  
Verse Form

This essay proposes that the electronic texts of plays constituting a database-collection (in this case early modern drama) should be “annotated” by marking up not only its structural components but also the editorial annotations about a given feature or aspect of the play (usually included in the commentary notes of print editions), and that these annotations should be conceived having in mind the functionalities of a database. By marking up both the text's structural components and editor's information they constitute related data to be processed by the computer for searches and statistical analysis. This implies that texts should not be annotated individually and independently from the other anthologized works, but rather as part of an organized collection of data that, adequately encoded, will allow users to make queries into the whole database. A second section of the essay discusses three encoding mechanisms, based on the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative, necessary to mark up these “annotations,” and possible ad hoc extensions of the TEI schema in order to represent the annotated features. Finally, a third section comments on practical examples showing how to encode a set of features: scene location, image, theme, allusion, proverb, wordplay, grammar, swearing expression, address form, as well as features covered by the TEI Guidelines such as roles, stage directions, names and place-names, verse form and textual issues.

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