17th Century
The Value of Practical Work and of Theatregoing in the Study of Seventeenth- Century Drama (1600–1640)
By , Royal Holloway, University of London (November 2003)
Sections: 17th Century
Subject: Literature.
Periods: 1000 - 1999, 1600-1699.
Key Topics: acting and performance, drama, theater, Renaissance, The, audience.
Abstract
This essay examines ways in which, as the title suggests, practice-based research and theatregoing may fruitfully aid advanced research in the study of early seventeenth-century plays. Scenes from four plays by Shakespeare (Macbeth), Jonson (The New Inn and Volpone) and Middleton (Women Beware Women) are analysed to illustrate a variety of ways in which insights into early seventeenth-century stage practice may be developed through attention to details such as spatial relations of actors within the playing space; costuming; the absence of certain aspects of the playtext within a particular production which engages with a director's personal concept; pacing and ensemble work within a company of actors. The limitations of such modes of research are also explored, though the chief emphasis is on the advantages of deploying what till recently may have been viewed as unorthodox research tools.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00037.x
This article abstract has been viewed 4731 times.
Top 5 related articles
-
Does Performance Studies Speak to Restoration Theatre?
By , American University
(Vol. 6, March 2009)
Literature Compass -
Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Found: The New Milton Criticism
By , San Diego State University
(Vol. 2, December 2005)
Literature Compass -
Women and English Renaissance Drama: Making and Unmaking ‘The All-Male Stage’
By , Roehampton University
(Vol. 4, April 2007)
Literature Compass -
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama: New Directions in the Field
By , University of Maryland
(Vol. 5, January 2008)
Literature Compass -
Cross-Channel Connections: Early Modern English Noblewomen's Familiarity with Continental Women's Literary and Performance Practices
By , Eastern Illinois University
(Vol. 4, April 2007)
Literature Compass
Top 5 Related Blackwell Reference Chapters
“The Actors are Come Hither”: Traveling Companies
In 1572 the Earl of Leicester's Men asked their patron for a license that would identify them as “your ...
By Peter H. Greenfield
Imagined Audiences: The Novelist and the Stage
Two of the most widely read Victorian novels, both written in 1847, likened fiction to theatrical performance. ...
By Renata Kobetts Miller
Reconstructing Love: King Lear and Theatre Architecture
Open to the sky, enveloped by wooden arms, the new Globe theatre emerges from London's Bankside like ...
By Peggy Phelan
Restoration Dramatic Theory and Criticism
In the introduction to his still-useful edition of John Dryden's critical essays, George Watson warns ...
By Paul D. Cannan
Staging the Binary: Asian American Theatre in the Late Twentieth Century
The success of playwright David Henry Hwang's (b. 1957) M. Butterfly on Broadway in 1989 appears to have ...
By Daphne Lei