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This volume presents a winning selection of the very best essays from the long and distinguished career of Stanley Wells, one of the most well-known and respected Shakespeare scholars in the world. Wells's accomplishments include editing the entire canon of Shakespeare plays for the ground-breaking Oxford Shakespeare, and over his lifetime he has made significant contributions to debates over literary criticism of the works, genre study, textual theory, Shakespeare's afterlife in the theatre, and contemporary performance. The volume is introduced by Peter Holland, and its thirty chapters are divided into themed sections: 'Shakespearian Influences', 'Essays on Particular Works', 'Shakespeare in the Theatre', and 'Shakespeare's Text'. An afterword by Margreta de Grazia concludes the volume.
This book reconsiders the evidence for what we know (or think we know) about early modern performance conditions. This study encourages a new recognition and treatment of certain aspects of the plays as evidence – and demonstrates the significance of the implications of that new information. This book is also an assessment of the competing narratives about the processes involved in early modern performance: about the status of manuscript playbooks, about the parts that players memorized, about the functions of the bookkeeper, about casting, about prompting, and about rehearsal practices. Leslie Thomson investigates the bases for the interdependent beliefs that an early modern player relied only on his part to prepare for a performance, that rehearsal was minimal, and that a bookkeeper compensated for these circumstances by prompting any player who was "out of his part." By focusing on often ignored (or downplayed) requirements and challenges of early modern play texts, Thomson provides evidence for answers that will foster a more nuanced and thorough understanding of original performance practices. That will, in turn, influence how we read, study, and edit the plays. This exploration will be of great interest to theatre and performance researchers, graduate students, teachers of early modern drama at the undergraduate and graduate levels, performers, directors, editors.
The deaths of husbands radically changed women’s lives in the early modern period. While losing male protection, widows acquired rare opportunities for social and economic independence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theatre, arousing both male desire and anxiety. Now how did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh and incisive examination of the theatrical representation of widows by discussing the material conditions of the early modern stage. It is also the only comprehensive study of this topic covering all three phases of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline drama.