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Interviews | June 19, 2009

All posts by Dave Jim Lynch Makes Landscape Art... Out of Text

3 comments By Dave

If Carl Hiaasen set one of his novels on a residential stretch of boundary line between British Columbia and Washington, or if Richard Russo's characters had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, the result might be something like Jim Lynch's Border Songs. Continue »

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    Border Songs

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Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary

by Alan C. Dessen

Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Alan Dessen draws on stage directions from hundreds of plays (from 1425 to 1642) to investigate what a playgoer may actually have seen when watching the original production of Hamlet or Macbeth. He argues for the presence of a shared vocabulary among playwrights, players and playgoers geared to a sense of theater that is easily obscured or eclipsed today. Chapters are devoted to such things as early entrances, the sick chair, vanish effects, tomb scenes, and to the staging of places such as a forest, a shop, a study or a house.

Synopsis:

Dessen investigates what a playgoer actually saw on stage at the first performance of, for example, Hamlet or Macbeth.

Synopsis:

In this rigorous investigation of the staging of Shakespeare's plays, Alan Dessen wrestlers with three linked questions: (1) what did a playgoer at the original production actually see? (2) how can we tell today? and (3) so what? His emphasis is upon images and onstage effects (e.g. the sick-chair, early entrances, tomb scenes) easily obscured or eclipsed today. The basis of his analysis is his survey of the stage directions in the approximately 600 English professional plays performed before 1642. From such widely scattered bits of evidence emerges a vocabulary of the theatre shared by Shakespeare, his theatrical colleagues, and his playgoers, in which the terms (e.g. vanish, as in ..., as from ..., "Romeo opens the tomb") often do not admit of neat dictionary definitions but can be glossed in terms of options and potential meanings. To explore such terms, along with various costumes and properties (keys, trees, coffins, books), is to challenge unexamined assumptions that underlie how Shakespeare is read, edited, and staged today.

Synopsis:

Dessen investigates what a playgoer actually saw on stage at the first performance of, for example, Hamlet or Macbeth.

Description:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-268) and index.
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Table of Contents

Preface; Note on texts and old spelling; 1. The problem, the evidence, and the language barrier; 2. Lost in translation; 3. Interpreting without a dictionary; 4. Juxtapositions; 5. Theatrical italics; 6. Sick chairs and sick thrones; 7. Much virtue in as; 8. The vocabulary of ‘place’; 9. ‘Romeo opens the tomb’; 10. Vanish and vanishing; Conclusion: so what?; Notes; Plays and editions cited; Index.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780521470803
Author:
Dessen, Alan C.
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Location:
Cambridge ;
Subject:
Shakespeare
Subject:
English language
Subject:
Theater - General
Subject:
Theater
Subject:
Drama
Subject:
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Subject:
British & Irish
Subject:
English language -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Semantics.
Subject:
Stage directions.
Subject:
Stage directions -- History.
Subject:
Theater -- Production and direction -- England -- Terminology.
Subject:
Drama -- Technique -- Terminology.
Subject:
Shakespeare, William, --1564-1616--Dramatic p
Subject:
Shakespeare, William,--1564-1616--Dramatic production
Subject:
Shakespeare - William - Dramatic production
Subject:
English language -- Early modern, 1500-1700.
Publication Date:
March 1995
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
Professional and scholarly
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
300
Dimensions:
8.82x5.73x1.02 in. 1.00 lbs.
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