Shakespeare’s storms

Jones, Gwilym

doi:10.7765/9781526111852

Cited by 9 publications

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“…Early modern theatre studies have made some important gestures towards the way in which poetic and verbal effects are linked with the practical theatrical work of the playhouse. Gwilym Jones's recent study of storms has shown that staged effects affect Shakespeare's language, arguing that “Shakespeare seriously considered the impact of the special effects of thunder and lightning when writing staged storms” (153). Shakespeare's Theatres and the Effects of Performance (2013), edited by Farah Karim‐Cooper and Tiffany Stern, presents the work of theatre historians and literary critics who view “theatrical effects as an extension of textuality” and insists that there is “no binary between the materiality of theatre and the emotional, metaphorical and poetic registers of the plays themselves” (Karim‐Cooper and Stern 3).…”

Section: Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing Speech as Spectacle inThe White Devil

Davies

2016

Literature Compass

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This article argues that, in the early seventeenth century, rhetorical devices and stage devices overlap. There has been much critical interest in the materiality of theatres like the Blackfriars, the Globe, and the Red Bull. Recent work in early modern theatre studies has made some broad gestures to the way in which poetic and verbal effects are linked with the practical theatrical work of the playhouse. Rhetoric and rhetorical styles have also been subject to renewed scholarly interest, with some suggesting the imminence of an "aesthetic turn" or "New Formalism." Yet these two critical approaches often remain distinct. Attention to the interaction between speech and spectacle can unite ostensibly different angles of literary analysis and deliver further attention to the visual, philosophical, and intellectual complexity of seventeenth-century playhouse spectacle.I begin by exploring some important terms in early modern English that point to rhetoric's participation in the material world and that suggest these two approaches, when considered from an historical perspective, are complementary. I then attend to the dumb shows and to light and darkness in John Webster's The White Devil (1612) to argue for a critical approach to early modern theatre studies that combines historically minded close reading with recent revisionist considerations of spectacle and that sees rhetorical style as part of the visual and material world of the playhouse. ArticleSee, here he comes ---Francisco, The White Devil (1.2.45)There has been much recent critical interest in the materiality of theatres like the Blackfriars, the Globe, and the Red Bull (Gurr and Karim-Cooper; Griffith; Karim-Cooper and Stern; Harris; Harris and Korda; Sofer). At the same time, from a different approach, early modern rhetoric and rhetorical styles-the art of using language effectively to particular ends-have been subject to renewed scholarly focus (Mack; McDonald; Skinner). This interest in formal close reading is tangentially connected to a move in the last decade, suggested by Richard Meek, towards an "aesthetic turn" or "New Formalism" (7; see also Christopher Pye and Mark Robson). Marrying these two recent approaches can illuminate complex moments of stage display-particularly in the uncertain, spectacular playworlds of early seventeenth-century tragedies and tragicomedies and in Shakespeare's "late/last plays." In this article, I explore some important terms in early modern English that point to rhetoric's participation in the material world and that suggest these two approaches, when considered from an historical perspective, are complementary. I go on to address aspects of John Webster's The White Devil (1612) where speech and spectacle are intertwined.Early modern theatre studies have made some important gestures towards the way in which poetic and verbal effects are linked with the practical theatrical work of the playhouse. Gwilym Jones's recent study of storms has shown that staged effects affect Shakespeare's language, arguing that "Shakespeare ...

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Section: Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing Speech as Spectacle inThe White Devil

Davies

2016

Literature Compass

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“…For a work that discusses environmental theatre history and makes an explicit case for historicist ecocriticism, albeit without open advocacy, see my Shakespeare's Storms (). For a more overtly ecocritical reading of Shakespeare's storms, focusing on King Lear , see Mentz ‘Strange’.…”

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Environmental Renaissance Studies

Jones

2017

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Recent developments in renaissance and early modern ecocriticism, since surveys by Karen Raber and Sharon O'Dair, have made the field discursive. Some critics maintain that ecocriticism, ecostudies or environmental studies must be self‐consciously activist and presentist. Others practise a more historicist approach, which is only implicitly activist, if at all. This article considers the recent environmental criticism of renaissance literature and Shakespeare – in its place on the spectrum of presentism and historicism – and argues that the field's discursiveness is a positive development, which will lead to a growth of ecocritical work in the period. Recent relevant work in environmental history is introduced and a case made for a greater engagement with it in literary ecocriticism.

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Theatre Revivals for the Anthropocene

Lonergan

2023

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This Element argues that the climate emergency requires a new approach to the study of theatre history – a suggestion that is developed through an analysis of the practice of theatrical revival during the Anthropocene era. Staging old plays in new ways can make visible ecological or environmental features that might have previously gone unnoticed: features which, in some cases, might not have been consciously included by the original authors or makers of a work, but which will be detectable to audiences nevertheless. These links are explored through case studies from the contemporary Irish theatre – including revivals of plays by Shakespeare, Lady Gregory, and Samuel Beckett, as performed by such major Irish companies as Rough Magic, Druid Theatre, and Company SJ. The Element ultimately shows how theatre can contribute to debates about the Anthropocene, and offers new pathways for theatre practice and criticism.

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Shakespeare’s storms

Cited by 9 publications

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Seeing Speech as Spectacle inThe White Devil

Seeing Speech as Spectacle inThe White Devil

Environmental Renaissance Studies

Theatre Revivals for the Anthropocene

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