The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642

Gurr, Andrew

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511819520

Cited by 94 publications

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“…The need for profit compelled an astounding level of theatrical production. Andrew Gurr (1997) offers an impressive estimate of the performance schedule of these repertory theater groups:…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Is All Our Company Here?”: Shakespeare Festivals as Fields of Cultural Production

Kulmala

2015

ELLS

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I have traveled to and enjoyed the productions at seven Shakespeare festivals in the following states: Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. And over these years I have concluded that we miss something valuable in our understanding of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by investing our academic, scholarly interest in performances by the elite theater groups rather than considering the totality of Shakespeare's material influence and cache. Whether culturally inculcated or universally absolute or a multifaceted mixture of both of these factors, Shakespeare as a material good enjoys the remarkable status of high art while also circulating within both large-scale and restricted cultural investment. Simply, as a marketing tool, Shakespeare is entrepreneurially ubiquitous. And as I traveled to these Shakespeare festivals, I found myself wrestling with this question about these productions: Is this "small-time" Shakespeare less than the "big-time" Shakespeare of London, Toronto and New York? In general, we have good reason to maintain a hierarchy of power for dramatic performances. How do we justify our critical approaches to theatrical performance, and how do we justify "star quality," the establishment of elite theater status, and economic investment if we include "small-time" Shakespeare as fodder for critical engagement and academic interest? Durant, Oklahoma or London, England? Predictably, if one were to plan a trip to see Shakespeare anywhere in the world, that person would probably NOT look to Nebraska or Oklahoma as the vacationing hub of Shakespearean live drama. I intend, though, to have readers rethink such decisions.

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“…The need for profit compelled an astounding level of theatrical production. Andrew Gurr (1997) offers an impressive estimate of the performance schedule of these repertory theater groups:…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Is All Our Company Here?”: Shakespeare Festivals as Fields of Cultural Production

Kulmala

2015

ELLS

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“…(15)(16)(17)(18) In the end of this scene, Hecate also reveals an important aspect about Macbeth's destiny, namely that he believes that he is untouchable, a conviction which ultimately leads to his downfall:…”

Section: Meet Me I'th'morning Theither He Will Come To Know His Desmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Almachildies agreed to murder Alboinus but the plan was not successful and finally he fled to Longinus at Ravenna. 15 Diane Purkiss argues that the story of Frances Howard can be found in The Witch in the scene with the cunning woman, Anne Turner, the woman whom Howard allegedly consulted with about keeping her husband impotent, in relation to Middleton's Hecate. Sir Thomas Overbury was a very close associate and advisor to Robert Carr, however Carr quarrelled with him, believing him to have had an illicit relationship with his wife Lady Frances.…”

Section: The Witch: An Introduction To the Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flight on the Jacobean Stage

Ahmed¹

2014

IJLA

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Abstract:This study is concerned with the historical and theatrical aspects of Middleton's The Witch. Among the questions it will address are which sources Middleton drew on for this play, and to what extent his witches differ from those in Shakespeare's Macbeth. This chapter (paper) also considers the question of whether the treatment of witchcraft in Middleton's The Witch belongs to the English or the Continental tradition. While the historical circumstances of witchcraft ideas are important for an understanding of this play, this paper will demonstrate that questions of genre and visual spectacle are equally important; especially it will argue that the play's comedy and its visual aspects are mutually dependent. In raising the issue of why the play is categorized as tragicomedy, I examine how comedy and technology come together in this play. Finally, this study explores how the play would have worked on stage, and especially how the witchcraft scenes would have been staged to create a theatrical spectacle: what props, or other staging devices were needed, and how these were adapted during the Renaissance period. The question is also raised here as to when the machinery for staging flying witches came into existence, and whether the stage directions of the supernatural scenes in The Witch and some of Shakespeare's later plays, Cymbeline and The Tempest, were originally written by the actual authors or scrivener. This paper also examines differences in stage directions for supernatural characters between early modern and contemporary editions of the above plays.

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“…Knowledge of early modern literary culture and "the Shakespearean stage" (Gurr 2009a) has also profited from the work of theater historians, archaeologists, actors and directors who have tried to reconstruct historical performance practices. Parts of the Rose, the Globe and most recently the Curtain theaters have been excavated from 1989 onward.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…It is one of the best places to study the modern desire for restoring and re-presenting what has been lost, and for providing immediate (physical) access to the past. In fact, the Globe was neither exclusively Shakespeare's, nor was it the Chamberlain's/King's Men's only location for staging plays; at least after 1610, the preferred location appears to have been the smaller indoor playhouse, the Blackfriars, which yielded more profit than the public amphitheater (see Gurr 2009a and2009b). The reconstructed Globe, despite its practical merits or degree of authenticity, is thus less a phenomenon of historicism than a symptom of the present popular yearning for authenticity.…”

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confidence: 99%

Shakespeare and Media Ecology: Beyond Historicism and Presentism

Berensmeyer¹

2014

Poetics Today

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This article proposes media ecology -a combination of media studies and performance studies with literary and cultural history -as a research perspective for Shakespeare studies.In contrast to a hermeneutics of renewal -as evinced both in the New Historicism and in what has been called Presentism -, which tries to turn Shakespeare into "our contemporary" (Jan Kott), media ecology combines a sense of historical alterity with an awareness of the continuing transformations of 'Shakespeare' in changing media settings: from manuscripts and printed texts to theatrical performances, music, opera, cinema, and televised media events.Moving beyond the currently dominant strands of Renaissance studies (the historicist and the presentist bias), this article challenges scholarly ideas of historicity (as opposed to timelessness, universality or contemporaneity) on the one hand and concepts of presentism (as opposed to historic specificity or singularity) on the other hand. How, if at all, can we reconcile the urge to make Shakespeare contemporary (and, by extension, keep his work relevant) and the conflicting desire for a historically accurate interpretation?As an example, the article focuses on the masque in The Tempest, which poses obvious difficulties for a hermeneutics of renewal and is often cut from performance or adapted beyond recognition. Later productions and adaptations frequently extend the spectacular qualities of the masque to The Tempest as a whole and ignore the skepticism about theatrical illusion that is voiced by Prospero in the play. In the case of The Tempest, cultural productions, ranging from dramatic performances to the closing ceremony of the London Olympics of 2012, are difficult to conceptualize in the framework of adaptation studies (which relies on the precedence of an original over its derivations). I argue that media ecology can help scholars to map out such connections and differences between performances and cultural phenomena relating to Shakespeare as cannot be fully grasped either in a historicist or presentist perspective.

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The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642

Cited by 94 publications

References 0 publications

“Is All Our Company Here?”: Shakespeare Festivals as Fields of Cultural Production

“Is All Our Company Here?”: Shakespeare Festivals as Fields of Cultural Production

Flight on the Jacobean Stage

Shakespeare and Media Ecology: Beyond Historicism and Presentism

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