Bøger i Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama serien

This book lays bare the dialogue between Shakespeare and critics of the stage, and positions it as part of an ongoing cultural, ethical, and psychological debate about the effects of performance on actors and on spectators.

This book focuses on the influence of classical authors on Ben Jonson's dramaturgy, with particular emphasis on the Greek and Roman playwrights and satirists.

Considering a variety of questions centering on magic and, or in, performance, this volume furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. Collectively the essays show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects and subjects of magic.

Tropes of monstrosity, madness, venereal disease, incest and atheism define a group of macabre plays which burst onto the London stage in the 1670s. Dubbed the 'horror' or the 'blood and torture villain tragedies' by modern critics, these deeply unsettling plays fascinated contemporary audiences.

James Shirley was the last great dramatist of the English Renaissance, shining out among other luminaries such as John Ford, Ben Jonson, or Richard Brome. This collection considers Shirley within the culture of his time and highlights his contribution to seventeenth-century English literature as poet and playwright. Individual essays explore Shirle

Features essays that share a common concern with exploring maternity's cultural representation, performative aspects and practical consequences in the period from 1540-1690. This work includes essays that interrogate how early modern texts depict fertility, conception, delivery, and gendered constructions of maternity.

Looking at the plays of Shakespeare, Kyd, and Webster, this book presents a different perspective on early modern drama grounded upon three original interrelated points. It explores how the motif of the mourning woman on the early modern stage embodies the cultural trauma of the Reformation in England.

The essays in this volume, written by friends, colleagues and former students of Brian Gibbons, explore further the concept of Jacobean city comedy established in Gibbons' seminal study 'Jacobean City Comedy: a Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton', originally published in 1968.

In the early seventeenth century, the London stage often portrayed a ruler covertly spying on his subjects. Commonly dated to the arrival of James I, these plays are typically viewed as synchronic commentaries on the Jacobean regime. This title demonstrates that the disguised ruler motif actually evolved in the 1580s.

Focusing on Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Webster and John Milton, Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England argues that the English tragedians reflected a crisis within their society over acts of religious violence.

Using the interactions of a range of English Renaissance plays with ancient and Renaissance rhetorics, this study analyzes the conflicted uses of emulation in the period. The author also reassesses and nuances our understanding of the roles and significance of emulation in the Renaissance.

Offers fresh interpretations of Shakespeare's works in the context of two major contemporary notions of collectivity: the crowd and rumour. This plays illustrates that rumour and crowd are mutually dependent; they also betray a fascination with the fact that crowd and rumour make individuality disappear.

Drawing upon the scholarship in Renaissance studies regarding notions of the body, political, physical and social, this study examines how the satiric tragedians of the English Renaissance employ the languages of sex - including sexual slander, titillation, insinuation and obscenity - in the service of satiric aggression.

Through fresh and unconventional approaches, including critical/historical, printing/publishing and performance studies, this study mines Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to produce insights into the early modern family, the individual, and society in the context of early modern capitalism. It also includes a CD-ROM.

Emphasizing a performative and stage-centered approach, this book considers early modern European theater as an international phenomenon. It studies various modalities of exchange, including the material and causal influence of one theater upon another, as in the case of actors traveling beyond their own regional boundaries.

Focuses on the implications of the archival research which has profoundly changed our view of the continuation of performances of Chester's civic biblical play cycle into the reign of Elizabeth I. This volume includes essays that focus on the performance of 1572 which took place despite the objections of the bishop of Chester.

Some characters in some medieval English mysteries wore masks. Why should this have been and what did it contribute to the plays and their performance? This study seeks to historicize and contextualize the moments and patters of mask-wearing in the Middle Ages.

Disguise devices figure in many early modern English plays, and an examination of them clearly affords an important reflection on the growth of early theatre as well as on important aspects of the developing nation. In this study, the author considers a range of practical issues related to the performance of disguise.