Synopses & Reviews
The experience of powerful emotion has always been central to dramatic presentation and audience response. In this study, T. G. Bishop examines ways in which wonder has been used by playwrights as an integral part of theater in classical and medieval drama and explores wonder in Shakespeare's work through extended readings of The Comedy of Errors, Pericles and The Winter's Tale. By focusing on how characters feel, and how the story of these feelings is told and evaluated, this study offers a new approach to understanding plays.
Synopsis
Playwrights through history have used the emotion of wonder to explore the relation between feeling and knowing in the theatre. In Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder, T. G. Bishop argues that wonder provides a turbulent space, rich at once in emotion and self-consciousness, where the nature and value of knowing is brought into question. Bishop compares the treatment of wonder in classical philosophy and drama, and goes on to examine English cycle-plays, charting wonder's ambivalent relation to dogma and sacrament in the medieval religious theatre. Through extended readings of three of Shakespeare's plays - The Comedy of Errors, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale - Bishop argues that Shakespeare uses wonder as a key component of his dialectic between affirmation and critique. Wonder is shown as vital to the characteristic self-consciousness of Shakespeare's plays as acts of narrative inquiry and renovation.
Synopsis
The experience of powerful emotion is central to dramatic presentation and audience response. T. G. Bishop examines ways in which wonder has been used by playwrights as an integral part of theatre, both in classical and medieval drama and in the plays of Shakespeare. His study offers a new approach to understanding plays.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-218) and index.