Monstrous!: Actors, Audiences, Inmates, and the Politics of Reading Shakespeare

This essay considers the use of Shakespeare as marker of authenticity and as a therapeutic space for performers and audiences across a number of genres, from professional actors in training literature to prison inmates in radio and film documentaries. It argues that in the wake of recent academic trends—the critique of Shakespeare as an author figure; the privileging of the text as a source of multiple, potentially conflicting readings—Shakespeare\u27s function as cultural capital has shifted sites, from Shakespeare to the playtexts themselves

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

George Lyman Kittredge\u27s insightful editions of Shakespeare have endured in part because of his eclecticism, his diversity of interests, and his wide-ranging accomplishments—all of which are reflected in the valuable notes in each volume. The plays in the New Kittredge Shakespeare series retain the original Kittredge notes and introductions, changed or augmented only when some modernization seems necessary. These new editions also include introductory essays by contemporary editors, notes on the plays as they have been performed on stage and film, and additional student materials. These plays are being made available by Focus with the permission of the Kittredge heirs.https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/faculty_books/1018/thumbnail.jp

Taking Liberties

The 'place' scholars have assigned to the stage in early modern London is as much a reflection of the procedures of contemporary literary criticism as a reflection of the cultural function of popular drama in the early modern period. Modern critics are often not engaged in re-examining available data, preferring instead to rest on a conjectural paradigm or heuristic that has hardened, over the past couple of decades, into a New Historicist version of 'fact'. Critics have collapsed boundaries and important distinctions in London jurisdiction and geography in the interest of a unified critical narrative that characterizes the theatre as a culturally marginal phenomenon. This article questions the 'marginal' model of popular theatre by revising the current critical notion of the term 'liberties' and by re-examining jurisdiction and city authority in early modern London

Thunder at a Playhouse: Essaying Shakespeare and the Early Modern Stage

What happens when scholarship on the early modern stage is presented on a recreation of an early modern stage? This question, which at its heart is the question of the relationship between scholarship and performance, animates Thunder at a Playhouse: Essaying Shakespeare and the Early Modern Stage. The essays in this collection all began as papers given at the Blackfriars Conference, a biennial gathering that stages scholarship by asking presenters to use the space of the stage, the playhouse, the audience, and even actors to test out suppositions and hypotheses about early English theater. Recognizing the slipperiness of putting theory into practice and of having practice inform theory, the editors, Peter Kanelos and Matt Kozusko, committed to the root concept of the essay as attempt, asked the volume\u27s contributors to develop their positions as fully and as presently possible. The result is a collection of work by both distinguished and emerging scholars that engages critical issues of early modern performance in fresh and vital ways.The construction of early modern playhouses, such as the Blackfriars in Virginia and Shakespeare\u27s Globe in London, and the increasing interest in exploring original practices on the early modern stage, have provoked reflection, deliberation, and debate. What might we understand empirically about early modern theater, and what is the value of speculative reconstruction/speculation? How might this sort of knowledge be employed on the modern stage? And, critically, what are the purposes of such pursuits for scholars and theater practitioners? Intending to acknowledge the array of lively approaches to early modern theater and to encourage conversation and collaboration between scholars, the editors have compiled a wide-ranging selection of essays. Featuring new work by David Bevington, Roslyn Knutson, Lars Engle, Peter Hyland, Lois Potter and others, Thunder at a Playhouse offers insight into such varied topics as Hamlet\u27s highbrow conception of drama, the portrayal of barbers, babies, and angels on the early modern stage, the timing of quick changes in Jonson\u27s The Alchemist, Shakespeare\u27s reading of Marlowe, and James Burbage\u27s intentions in purchasing the Blackfriars.Thunder at a Playhouse will be of interest to anyone concerned with theatrical performance, the history of the stage, or early modern literary culture. This collection is particularly timely, speaking to and directly addressing the convergence of theory and practice in the study of early modern drama.https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/faculty_books/1019/thumbnail.jp