Time for Shakespeare::Hourglasses, sundials, clocks, and early modern theatre

Like a number of other prologues of the early modern period, the prologue to Romeo and Juliet is clear about the length of time its play will take in performance. Two hours. But how literal is that claim? This article will question whether plays ever habitually took two hours to perform. It will look at the lengths of playtexts and will ask when and why the 'two hours' assertion was made. But it will also investigate what 'two hours' meant in the early modern period. Exploring, in succession, hourglasses, sundials and mechanical clocks, it will consider which chronological gauges were visible or audible in the early modern playhouse, and what hours, minutes and seconds might have meant to an early modern playwright who lacked trustworthy access to any of them. What, it will ask, was time, literally and figuratively, for Shakespeare - and how did chronographia, the rhetorical art of describing time (rather than any real timepiece), shape his writing

Performing Genre: Tragic Curtains, Tragic Walking and Tragic Speaking

Tragedy is a category of play. But was it, in Shakespeare’s time, a method of acting too? This article explores tragic “black” curtains; the tragic walk (stalking, jetting, strutting, striding) and its accompanying footwear; and tragic speech. It argues that tragedy was often conveyed beyond, beside or without words, and shows how crucial staging was to a play’s genre – and hence its meaning.La tragédie est une catégorie de pièces, mais était-ce aussi, au temps de Shakespeare, une manière de jouer ? Cet article s’intéresse aux rideaux « noirs » tragiques ; à la manière tragique de marcher (d’un air arrogant, pompeux, important, à grandes enjambées) et d’être chaussé, et à la manière tragique de parler. Il montre que le tragique se transmet par-delà les mots, par rapport à eux ou sans eux et que la mise en scène est d’une importance cruciale pour le genre – et donc pour le sens – de la pièce

Antes do início; depois do final: onde as peças de teatro iniciavam e terminavam?

Este ensaio explora os eventos encenatórios que aconteciam antes que a performance da peça iniciava bem como os eventos de cena que aconteciam depois do final da peça teatral. Indaga se tais elementos, que Gerard Genette chama de ‘epitextos’, são importantes o bastante para a encenação, o texto a edição e/ou sentido como partes constituintes do drama enquanto tal. Concentrando-se sobre o toque de trombeta que anunciava o ‘início’ de uma peça, sobre a oração, a música e o clowning, assim como sobre o anúncio que se seguia ao final da ‘peça’, concebida de modo amplo. Deveriam tais elementos ser adicionados aos textos das peças (playtexts)? O que é, em última instância, uma ‘peça teatral’, e quando de fato ela inicia e quando ela termina

Indulgent representation: theatricality and sectarian metaphor in The Tempest

At the end of The Tempest, Prospero (or, perhaps, the actor playing him) urges the audience, ‘As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free’ (5.1.337-8). The lines are a plea for applause, for the audience to conclude the drama happily. As the play-world dissolves into the real world, at the threshold between fiction and reality, Prospero appeals to be set free from representation. He strikes an ethical bargain in the mode of the Lord's Prayer (‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’). But, in speaking of ‘pardon’ and ‘indulgence’, he also alludes to a much maligned Catholic practice of purchased remission of sins. Thus, the audience's decision over whether or not to applaud the drama is playfully implicated in trying out a confessional attitude. Even so, the status of these ‘Catholic’ terms as wordplay means that they only flirt with sectarian resonance, rather than declaring a theological message. Taking the play's self-conscious theatricality as a starting point, this essay explores the ambiguity of this epilogue. It questions what it means for a post-Reformation audience to ‘indulge’ in metaphorically ‘Catholic’ behaviour, and how a play that stages forgiveness as a form of revenge negotiates difference ethically. These themes are part of a broader theatrical dynamic in which representation is constantly destabilised. The essay offers a case-study of the significance of equivocally Catholic material in post-Reformation drama, suggesting that as much attention needs to be paid to dramaturgy as to theology