Synopses & Reviews
Robert Weimann redefines the relationship between writing and performance, or "playing," in Shakespeare's theater. Through close reading and careful analysis Weimann offers a reconsideration and redefinition of Elizabethan performance and production practices. The study reviews the most recent methodologies of textual scholarship, the new history of the Elizabethan theater, performance theory, and film and video interpretation, and offers a new approach to understanding Shakespeare. Weimann examines a range of plays as well as other contemporary works. A major part of the study explores the duality between playing and writing.
Review
"Weimann provides a learned and complex historicized explanation of Elizabethan stage practices...Weimann's historical argument is bolstered by rich and suggestive readings..." Studies in English Literature
Review
"Utterly engaging and important..." Renaissance Quarterly"Weimann provides a learned and complex historicized explanation of Elizabethan stage practices...Weimann's historical argument is bolstered by rich and suggestive readings..." Studies in English Literature"...his contributions are deft, insightful, and exhilarating." National Communication Association"The subtlety of the argument is exemplary and the subject fascinating." New Theatre Quarterly
Synopsis
Redefines the relationship between writing and performance in Shakespeare's theatre.
Table of Contents
Preface; Introduction: Conjunctures and concepts; 1. Performance and authority in Hamlet (1603); 2. A new agenda for authority; 3. Pen and voice: versions of doubleness; 4. Playing with a difference; 5. Histories in Elizabethan performance; 6. Hamlet and the purposes of playing; 7. Space (in)dividable: Locus and Platea revisited; 8. Shakespeare's endings: commodious thresholds; Afterword: thresholds forever after; Notes; Index.