Shakespeare's Theatres and the Effects of Performance

by Karim Cooper, Farah; Stern, Tiffany

• ISBN13: 9781472558596
• ISBN10: 1472558596
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-12-18
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare

Summary

How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays?

Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.

Author Biography

Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Research at Shakespeare's Globe, London and the author of several critical studies focussing on performance. Tiffany Stern is Beaverbrook and Bouverie Fellow and Tutor in English, University College, Oxford. She is a General Editor of the New Mermaids series and the author of several critical studies.

Contributors include: Andrew Gurr, Gwilym Jones (Queen Mary, University of London), Nathalie Rivere de Carles (University of Toulouse), Lucy Munro (University of Keele), Andrea Stevens (University of Illinois), Bridget Escolme (Queen Mary, University of London), Paul Menzer (Mary Baldwin College), Bruce Smith (University of Southern California), Holly Dugan (George Washington University), Evelyn Tribble (University of Otago)

Table of Contents

Preface
Andrew Gurr

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors

Introduction
Farah-Karim Cooper and Tiffany Stern

Part One: The Fabric of Early Modern Theatres
1. ‘This Wide and Universal Theatre’: the Theatre as Prop in Shakespeare’s Metadrama
Tiffany Stern
2. Storm effects in Shakespeare
Gwilym Jones
3. Performing Materiality: Curtains on the Early Modern Stage
Nathalie Rivere de Carles
Part Two: Technologies of the Body
4. ‘They eat each others’ arms’: Stage Blood and Body Parts
Lucy Munro
5. Cosmetic Transformations
Andrea Stevens
6. Costume, Disguise and Self-Display
Bridget Escolme
7. Character Acting
Paul Menzer
Part 3: The Sensory Stage
8. Within , Without, Withinwards: The Circulation of Sound in Shakespeare’s Theatre
Bruce R. Smith
9. ‘As Dirty as Smithfield and As Stinking Every Whit’: The Smell of the Hope Theatre
Holly Dugan
10. Touch and Taste in Shakespeare’s Theatres
Farah Karim-Cooper
11. ‘Sight and Spectacle’
12. Evelyn Tribble
Notes
Index