Who Hears in Shakespeare? Shakespeare’s Auditory World, Stage and Screen

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9781611474749
• ISBN10: 1611474744
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-30
• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Summary

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 scholars such as Andrew Gurr, Bruce Smith, and James Hirsh. To look at the acoustic world of the plays involves a real paradigm shift that changes how we understand virtually everything about Shakespeare'¬"s plays: 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? Essays on Shakespeare'¬"s Auditory World, Stage and Screen is comprised of three sections on Shakespeare'¬"s texts and performance history: '¬SThe Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern Stage'¬; '¬SMetahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off'¬; and a final section entitled '¬STranshearing: Hearing, Whispering, Overhearing, and Eavesdropping in Film and other Media.'¬Â  Chapters by noted scholars explore the complex reactions and interactions of onstage and offstage audiences and show how Shakespearean stagecraft, actualized both on stage and/ or adapted on screen,  revolves around various situations and conventions of hearing, such as soliloquies, asides, eavesdropping, 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, a meditation on hearing in Shakespeare that returns us to consider Shakespearean '¬Saudiences'¬ and their responses to what they hear'¬ ;or don'¬"t hear'¬ ;in Shakespeare'¬"s plays.

Author Biography

Laury Magnus is professor of humanities at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. Her books include Lexical and Syntactic Repetition in Modern Poetry and her New Kittredge Editions of Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, and Measure for Measure Her essays and reviews appear in The Shakespeare Newsletter, Literature and Film Quarterly, Connotations; Assays, and College Literature Her chapter on "Shakespeare on Film and Television" appears in The Oxford Handbook to Shakespeare Walter W. Cannon is professor of English at Central College in Pella, Iowa, where he teaches early modern literature including Shakespeare and his contemporaries His essays and reviews have appeared in The Upstart Crow, Theatre History Studies, and Cahiers Elisabethains. His chapter "The Poetics of Indoor Spaces" appears in Inside Shakespeare: Essays on the Blackfriar's Stage.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction Laury Magnus and Walter W. Cannon, Shakespeare's Auditory World: Text, Stage, and Screen	p. xi
The poetics of hearing and the early modern stage
Andrew Gurr, Why Was the Globe Round?	p. 3
James Hirsh, Guarded, Unguarded, and Unguardable Speech in Late Renaissance Drama	p. 17
Walter W. Cannon, Hearing Complexity: Speech, Reticence, and the Construction of Character	p. 41
Jennifer Holl, "If This Be Worth Your Hearing": Theorizing Gossip on Shakespeare's Stage	p. 61
Metahearing: hearing, knowing, and audiences, onstage and off
Laury Magnus, Mimetic Hearing and Meta-Hearing in Hamlet	p. 83
David Bevington, Hearing and Overhearing in The Tempest	p. 101
J. Anthony Burton, Asides and Multiple Audiences in The Merchant of Venice	p. 113
Kathleen Kalpin Smith, Negotiating Audiences: Speech and Reception in All's Well That Ends Well and Henry V	p. 131
Beraice W. Kliman, Hearing Power in Measure for Measure	p. 145
Nova Myhill, "Hark, a Word in Your Ear": Whispers, Asides, and Interpretation in Troilus and Cressida	p. 163
Transhearing: hearing, overhearing, whispering, and eavesdropping in film and other media
Philippa Sheppard, "Mutes or Audience to This Act": Eavesdroppers in Branagh's Shakespeare Films	p. 181
Gayle Gaskill, Overhearing Malvolio for Pleasure or Pity: The Letter Scene and the Dark House Scene in Twelfth Night on Stage and Screen	p. 199
Erin Minear, "But Mark His Gesture": Hearing and Seeing in Othello's Eavesdropping Scene	p. 219
Afterword Stephen Booth, Who Doesn't Listen in Shakespeare?	p. 235
Index	p. 241
Contributors Biographies	p. 247
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