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Inspired by the verbal exuberance and richness of all that can be
heard by audiences both on and off Shakespeare's stages,
Shakespeare's Auditory Worlds examines such special listening
situations as overhearing, eavesdropping, and asides. It breaks new
ground by exploring the complex relationships between sound and
sight, dialogue and blocking, dialects and other languages,
re-voicings, and, finally, nonverbal or metaverbal relationships
inherent in noise, sounds, and music, staging interstices that have
been largely overlooked in the critical literature on aurality in
Shakespeare. Its contributors include David Bevington, Ralph Alan
Cohen, Steve Urkowitz, and Leslie Dunn, and, in a concluding
"Virtual Roundtable" section, six seasoned repertory actors of the
American Shakespeare Center as well, who discuss their nuanced
hearing experiences on stage. Their "hearing" invites us to
understand the multiple dimensions of Shakespeare's auditory world
from the vantage point of actors who are listening "in the round"
to what they hear from their onstage interlocutors, from offstage
and backstage cues, from the musicians' galleries, and often most
interestingly, from their audiences.
Inspired by the verbal exuberance and richness of all that can be
heard by audiences both on and off Shakespeare's stages,
Shakespeare's Auditory Worlds examines such special listening
situations as overhearing, eavesdropping, and asides, It breaks new
ground by exploring the complex relationships between sound and
sight, dialogue and blocking, dialects and other languages,
re-voicings, and, finally, non-verbal or meta-verbal relationships
inherent in noise, sounds, and music, staging interstices that have
been largely overlooked in the critical literature on aurality in
Shakespeare. Its contributors include David Bevington, Ralph Alan
Cohen, Steve Urkowitz, and Leslie Dunn, and, in a concluding
"Virtual Roundtable" section, six seasoned repertory actors of the
American Shakespeare Center as well, who discuss their nuanced
hearing experiences "on stage." Their "hearing" invites us to
understand the multiple dimensions of Shakespeare's auditory world
from the vantage point of actors who are listening "in the round"
to what they hear from their onstage interlocutors, from offstage
and backstage cues, from the musicians' galleries, and often most
interestingly, from their audiences.
Originally published in 1986. This volume points to the rich
variety of critical responses to the Henry IV plays and their
complexity. It includes selections from characteristic thought of
the neoclassical age, character criticism in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, historical and new criticism, theatrical
interpretation and other pieces by the likes of Samuel Johnson and
W. H. Auden. The editor's introduction explains the collection's
relevance and puts the pieces in context. Several chapters look at
the character of Falstaff and the changing response and critique
through time. Organised chronologically, the collection then ends
with two pieces of theatrical criticism.
The purpose of this book is to honor the scholarly legacy of
Charles R. Forker with a series of essays that address the problem
of literary influence in original ways and from a variety of
perspectives. The emphasis throughout is on the sort of careful,
exhaustive, evidence-based scholarship to which Forker dedicated
his entire professional life. Although wide-ranging and various by
design, the essays in this book never lose sight of three discrete
yet overlapping areas of literary inquiry that create a unity of
perspective amid the diversity of approaches: 1) the formation of
play texts, textual analysis, and editorial practice; 2)
performance history and the material playing conditions from
Shakespeare's time to the present, including film as well as stage
representations; and 3) the world, both cultural and literary, in
which Shakespeare and his contemporaries worked and to which they
bequeathed an artistic legacy that continues to be re-interpreted
and re-defined by a whole new set of cultural and literary
pressures. Eschewing any single, predetermined ideological
perspective, the essays in this book call our attention to how the
simplest questions or observations can open up provocative and
unexpected scholarly vistas. In so doing, they invite us into a
subtly re-configured world of literary influence that draws us into
new, often unexpected, ways of seeing and understanding the
familiar.
This volume offers the most comprehensive and critically up-to-date
edition of Troilus and Cressida available today. Bevingtonas
learned and engaging introduction discusses the ambivalent status
and genre of the play, variously presented in its early printing as
a comedy, a history and a tragedy. He examines and assimilates the
wide variety of critical responses the play has elicited, and
argues its importance in todayas culture as an experimental and
open-ended work. He also, however, suggests that this
experimentalism may have contributed to its lack of immediate stage
success, and goes on to place the work in its late Elizabethan
context of political instability and theatrical rivalry. A thorough
performance history focuses chiefly on recent productions. The
complex text situation is re-examined and the differing textual
readings carefully explicated. 'Bevington's edition is so clearly
the best now available that it will no doubt quickly become
standard practice for all study of this remarkable play to begin
with this remarkable edition.' Eric Rasmussen, University of Nevada
at Reno, Shakespeare Survey
This volume, examining the ways in which Shakespeare's plays are
designed for hearers as well as spectators, has been prompted by
recent explorations of the auditory dimension of early modern drama
by such scholars as Andrew Gurr, Bruce Smith, and James Hirsh. To
look at the dynamics of hearing in Shakespeare's plays involves a
paradigm shift that changes how we understand virtually everything
about them, from the architecture of the buildings, to playing
spaces, to blocking, and to larger interpretative issues, including
our understanding of character based on players' responses to what
they hear, mishear, or refuse to hear. Who Hears in Shakespeare?
Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen is comprised of three sections
on Shakespeare's texts and performance history: "The Poetics of
Hearing and the Early Modern Stage"; "Metahearing: Hearing,
Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off"; and "Transhearing:
Hearing, Whispering, Overhearing, and Eavesdropping in Film and
Other Media." Chapters by noted scholars explore the complex
reactions and interactions of onstage and offstage audiences and
show how Shakespearean stagecraft, actualized on stage and adapted
on screen, revolves around various situations and conventions of
hearing-soliloquies,, asides, avesdropping, overhearing, and stage
whispers. In short, Who Hears in Shakespeare? enunciates
Shakespeare's nuanced, powerful stagecraft of hearing. The volume
ends with Stephen Booth's afterword, his inspiring meditation on
hearing that considers Shakespearean "audiences" and their
responses to what they hear-or don't hear-in Shakespeare's plays.
This 1998 book takes an alternative look at the courtly masque in
early seventeenth-century England. For a generation, the masque has
been a favourite topic of New Historicism, because it has been seen
as part of the process by which artistic works interact with
politics, both shaping and reflecting the political life of a
nation. These exciting essays move importantly beyond a monolithic
view of culture and power in the production of masques, to one in
which rival factions at the courts of James I and of Charles I
represent their clash of viewpoints through dancing and spectacle.
All aspects of the masque are considered, from written text and
political context to music, stage picture and dance. The essays,
written by distinguished scholars from around the world, present an
interdisciplinary approach, with experts on dance, music, visual
spectacle and politics all addressing the masque from the point of
view of their speciality.
Originally published in 1986. This volume points to the rich
variety of critical responses to the Henry IV plays and their
complexity. It includes selections from characteristic thought of
the neoclassical age, character criticism in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, historical and new criticism, theatrical
interpretation and other pieces by the likes of Samuel Johnson and
W. H. Auden. The editor's introduction explains the collection's
relevance and puts the pieces in context. Several chapters look at
the character of Falstaff and the changing response and critique
through time. Organised chronologically, the collection then ends
with two pieces of theatrical criticism.
The most extenisve new collection in this field published in more than three decades, English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology surveys the astonishing, and astonishingly varied, dramatic works written and performed in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Popular in their own time, the 27 plays included here—by Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, among many others—reveal why these playwrights' achievements, like Shakespeare's, deserve reading, teaching, and performing afresh in our time. Edited by a team of exceptional scholars and teachers, this anthology opens an extraordinary tradition in drama to new readers and audiences.
What is it about Hamlet that has made it such a compelling and
vital work? Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages is an account
of Shakespeare's great play from its sources in Scandinavian epic
lore to the way it was performed and understood in his own day, and
then how the play has fared down to the present: performances on
stage, television, and in film, critical evaluations, publishing
history, spinoffs, spoofs, musical adaptations, the play's growing
reputation, its influence on writers and thinkers, and the ways in
which it has shaped the very language we speak. The staging,
criticism, and editing of Hamlet , David Bevington argues, go hand
in hand over the centuries, to such a remarkable extent that the
history of Hamlet can be seen as a kind of paradigm for the
cultural history of the English-speaking world.
As Henry's throne is threatened by rebel forces, England is
divided. The characters reflect these oppositions, with Hal and
Hotspur vying for position, and Falstaff leading Hal away from his
father and towards excess. During Shakespeare's lifetime Henry IV,
Part I was his most reprinted play, and it remains enormously
popular with theatregoers and readers. Falstaff still towers among
Shakespeare's comic inventions as he did in the late 1590s. David
Bevington's introduction discusses the play in both performance and
criticism from Shakespeare's time to our own, illustrating the
variety of interpretations of which the text is capable. He
analyses the play's richly textured language in a detailed
commentary on individual words and phrases and clearly explains its
historical background.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a man of extreme passions and a playwright of immense talent, is the most important of Shakespeare's contemporaries. This edition offers his five major plays, which show the radicalism and vitality of his writing in the few years before his violent death.
A revised edition of this intriguing and complex play, updated to
cover recent critical thinking and stage history. Troilus and
Cressida is a tragedy often labelled a "problem" play because of
its apparent blend of genres and its difficult themes. Set in the
Trojan Wars it tells a story of doomed love and honour, offering a
debased view of human nature in war-time and a stage peopled by
generally unsympathetic characters. The revised edition makes an
ideal text for study at undergraduate level and above.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a man of extreme passions and a
playwright of immense talent, is the most important of
Shakespeare's contemporaries. This edition offers his five major
plays, which show the radicalism and vitality of his writing in the
few years before his violent death.
Tamburlaine Part One and Part Two deal with the rise to world
prominence of the great Scythian shepherd-robber; The Jew of Malta
is a drama of villainy and revenge; Edward II was to influence
Shakespeare's Richard II. Doctor Faustus, perhaps the first drama
taken from the medieval legend of a man who sells his soul to the
devil, is here in both its A- and its B- text, showing the enormous
and fascinating differences between the two.
Under the General Editorship of Dr. Michael Cordner of the
University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited
and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In
addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailed
annotation.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of
other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its
up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series
features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays
and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of
new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second
edition of Antony and Cleopatra, David Bevington has included in
his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent
critical and stage interpretations, demonstrating how the
theatrical design and imagination of this play make it one of
Shakespeare's most remarkable tragedies. The edition is attentive
throughout to the play as theatre: a detailed, illustrated account
of the stage history is followed, in the commentary, by discussion
of staging options offered by the text. The commentary is
especially full and helpful, untangling many obscure words and
phrases, illuminating sexual puns, and alerting the reader to
Shakespeare's shaping of his source material in Plutarch's Lives.
David Bevington's volume on George Peele looks at the literary
achievement of that dramatist and author, who was born in London
some time around 1556-8, was educated at Oxford, and returned to
London to become a prolific writer until his death in 1596. He died
at the age of forty, in poverty, and was never far from the threat
of debtors' prison throughout his adult life. Peele, like Greene
and Marlowe, was caricatured in his immediate afterlife as the
embodiment of a popular and thriving literary culture in London of
the late sixteenth century: a world that was competitive and
relentlessly unforgiving in its economic pressures, but also
colourful, adventuresome, and vital. This volume collects together
for the first time the best contemporary published work on Peele by
a group of renowned scholars. They discuss Peele's Lord Mayor's
Pageants, Court Entertainments, occasional poems, and his plays The
Arraignment of Paris, The Old Wives Tale, The Battle of Alcazar,
Edward I, David and Bathsheba, and Titus Andronicus. The essays are
accompanied by David Bevington's substantial introduction which
discusses Peele's life and works, particularly in the context of
the other five University Wits.
This reprint (with updated 'Suggestions for Further Reading') of
the Houghton Mifflin edition makes David Bevington's classic
anthology of medieval drama available again at an affordable price.
A revised edition of this intriguing and complex play, updated to
cover recent critical thinking and stage history. Troilus and
Cressida is a tragedy often labelled a "problem" play because of
its apparent blend of genres and its difficult themes. Set in the
Trojan Wars it tells a story of doomed love and honour, offering a
debased view of human nature in war-time and a stage peopled by
generally unsympathetic characters. The revised edition makes an
ideal text for study at undergraduate level and above.
For generations, most readers have first encountered Shakespeare's
plays in books, rather than onstage. In schools, his works are
primarily taught by professors of English, many of whom know little
about the theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of
the stage. So what is lost when we leave Shakespeare the dramatist
behind, and what can we learn by taking his plays seriously as
dramas to be performed?
David Bevington answers these questions with "This Wide and
Universal Theater," which explores productions of Shakespeare both
in his own time and in the succeeding centuries. Making use of
contemporary documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington
brings Shakespeare's original staging to life. He explains how the
Elizabethan playhouse, lacking scenery, conveyed a sense of place,
from the Forest of Arden in "As You Like It" to the tavern in
"Henry IV, Part I," And through close attention to Shakespeare's
texts, he reveals the surprising ways that early production
decisions continue to affect our understanding of the plays: for
example, the word "balcony," despite its indelible association with
"Romeo and Juliet," appears nowhere in the play itself. Moving
beyond Shakespeare's lifetime, Bevington shows the prodigious
lengths to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century companies went
to produce spectacular effects, from flying witches in "Macbeth" to
terrifying storms punctuating "King Lear," Considerations of recent
productions on both stage and screen bring the book into the
present, when character and language have taken precedence over
spectacle.
Bringing a lifetime of study to bear on a remarkably
underappreciated aspect of Shakespeare's art, DavidBevington has
crafted a book that will entertain and illuminate anyone who has
thrilled to the Bard on page or in performance.
OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and
Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and
teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare
criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in
its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion
of its subject. Shakespeare and Biography is not a new biography of
Shakespeare. Instead, it is a study of what biographers have said
about Shakespeare, from the first formal biography in the early
18th century by Nicholas Rowe to Stephen Greenblatt, James Shapiro,
Jonathan Bate, Germaine Greer, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Park Honan,
Rene Weis, and others who have written recent biographical accounts
of England's greatest writer. The emphasis is on what sort of
issues these biographers have found especially interesting in
relation to sex and gender, politics, religion, pessimism,
misanthropy, jealousy, aging, family relationships, the end of a
career, the end of life. How has Shakespeare's contemplation of
these issues changed and grown, and in what ways do those changes
reflect new cultural developments in our world as it continues to
reinterpret Shakespeare?
This 1998 book takes an alternative look at the courtly masque in
early seventeenth-century England. For a generation, the masque has
been a favourite topic of New Historicism, because it has been seen
as part of the process by which artistic works interact with
politics, both shaping and reflecting the political life of a
nation. These exciting essays move importantly beyond a monolithic
view of culture and power in the production of masques, to one in
which rival factions at the courts of James I and of Charles I
represent their clash of viewpoints through dancing and spectacle.
All aspects of the masque are considered, from written text and
political context to music, stage picture and dance. The essays,
written by distinguished scholars from around the world, present an
interdisciplinary approach, with experts on dance, music, visual
spectacle and politics all addressing the masque from the point of
view of their speciality.
The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its
up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series
features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays
and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of
new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second
edition of Antony and Cleopatra, David Bevington has included in
his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent
critical and stage interpretations, demonstrating how the
theatrical design and imagination of this play make it one of
Shakespeare's most remarkable tragedies. The edition is attentive
throughout to the play as theatre: a detailed, illustrated account
of the stage history is followed, in the commentary, by discussion
of staging options offered by the text. The commentary is
especially full and helpful, untangling many obscure words and
phrases, illuminating sexual puns, and alerting the reader to
Shakespeare's shaping of his source material in Plutarch's Lives.
This collection of essays adopts an interdisciplinary approach to a diverse group of texts--historical accounts, political documents and polemical works--composed in London during the Renaissance. Eight literary scholars and eight historians have been paired to write companion essays to each text, offering insights that could elude members of either discipline working in isolation. "Theatrical" is taken to be a very flexible term, and is applied to civic rituals and public spectacles of the capitol as well as to the elite and popular theater.
For generations, most readers have first encountered Shakespeare's
plays in books, rather than onstage. In schools, his works are
primarily taught by professors of English, many of whom know little
about the theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of
the stage. So what is lost when we leave Shakespeare the dramatist
behind, and what can we learn by taking his plays seriously as
dramas to be performed?
David Bevington answers these questions with "This Wide and
Universal Theater," which explores productions of Shakespeare both
in his own time and in the succeeding centuries. Making use of
contemporary documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington
brings Shakespeare's original staging to life. He explains how the
Elizabethan playhouse, lacking scenery, conveyed a sense of place,
from the Forest of Arden in "As You Like It" to the tavern in
"Henry IV, Part I," And through close attention to Shakespeare's
texts, he reveals the surprising ways that early production
decisions continue to affect our understanding of the plays: for
example, the word "balcony," despite its indelible association with
"Romeo and Juliet," appears nowhere in the play itself. Moving
beyond Shakespeare's lifetime, Bevington shows the prodigious
lengths to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century companies went
to produce spectacular effects, from flying witches in "Macbeth" to
terrifying storms punctuating "King Lear," Considerations of recent
productions on both stage and screen bring the book into the
present, when character and language have taken precedence over
spectacle.
Bringing a lifetime of study to bear on a remarkably
underappreciated aspect of Shakespeare's art, DavidBevington has
crafted a book that will entertain and illuminate anyone who has
thrilled to the Bard on page or in performance.
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