Theater of a City

Theater of a City PDF Author: Jean E. Howard
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202309
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Arguing that the commercial stage depended on the unprecedented demographic growth and commercial vibrancy of London to fuel its own development, Jean E. Howard posits a particular synergy between the early modern stage and the city in which it flourished. In London comedy, place functions as the material arena in which social relations are regulated, urban problems negotiated, and city space rendered socially intelligible. Rather than simply describing London, the stage participated in interpreting it and giving it social meaning. Each chapter of this book focuses on a particular place within the city—the Royal Exchange, the Counters, London's whorehouses, and its academies of manners—and examines the theater's role in creating distinctive narratives about each. In these stories, specific locations are transformed into venues defined by particular kinds of interactions, whether between citizen and alien, debtor and creditor, prostitute and client, or dancing master and country gentleman. Collectively, they suggest how city space could be used and by whom, and they make place the arena for addressing pressing urban problems: demographic change and the influx of foreigners and strangers into the city; new ways of making money and losing it; changing gender roles within the metropolis; and the rise of a distinctive "town culture" in the West End. Drawing on a wide range of familiar and little-studied plays from four decades of a defining era of theater history, Theater of a City shows how the stage imaginatively shaped and responded to the changing face of early modern London.

Theater of a City

Theater of a City PDF Author: Jean E. Howard
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202309
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
Arguing that the commercial stage depended on the unprecedented demographic growth and commercial vibrancy of London to fuel its own development, Jean E. Howard posits a particular synergy between the early modern stage and the city in which it flourished. In London comedy, place functions as the material arena in which social relations are regulated, urban problems negotiated, and city space rendered socially intelligible. Rather than simply describing London, the stage participated in interpreting it and giving it social meaning. Each chapter of this book focuses on a particular place within the city—the Royal Exchange, the Counters, London's whorehouses, and its academies of manners—and examines the theater's role in creating distinctive narratives about each. In these stories, specific locations are transformed into venues defined by particular kinds of interactions, whether between citizen and alien, debtor and creditor, prostitute and client, or dancing master and country gentleman. Collectively, they suggest how city space could be used and by whom, and they make place the arena for addressing pressing urban problems: demographic change and the influx of foreigners and strangers into the city; new ways of making money and losing it; changing gender roles within the metropolis; and the rise of a distinctive "town culture" in the West End. Drawing on a wide range of familiar and little-studied plays from four decades of a defining era of theater history, Theater of a City shows how the stage imaginatively shaped and responded to the changing face of early modern London.

The Business of English Restoration Theatre, 1660–1700

The Business of English Restoration Theatre, 1660–1700 PDF Author: Deborah C. Payne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009398210
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Deborah C. Payne explores how the duopoly of 1660 impacted company practices, stagecraft, the box office, and actors and writers.

Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613

Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613 PDF Author: Andrew J. Power
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107016193
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613, leading international Shakespeare scholars provide a contextually informed approach to Shakespeare's last seven plays.

Green Shakespeare

Green Shakespeare PDF Author: Gabriel Egan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134351232
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Pushing ecocriticism beyond the typical boundaries of ‘nature’ writing, this interdisciplinary account introduces one of the most lively areas of Shakespeare studies and presents a convincing case for his continuing relevance to contemporary theory.

Ben Jonson in Context

Ben Jonson in Context PDF Author: Julie Sanders
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521895715
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
This collection highlights exciting new areas of research related to Ben Jonson, including book history, social history and cultural geography.

An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558-1914

An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558-1914 PDF Author: Geoffrey G. Hiller
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030056090
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This book is an anthology of extracts of literary writing (in prose, verse and drama) about London and its diverse inhabitants, taken from the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The 143 extracts, divided into four periods (1558-1659, 1660-1780, 1781-1870 and 1871-1914), range from about 250 words to 2,500. Each of the four periods has an introduction that deals with relevant social, geographical and historical developments, and each extract is introduced with a contextualizing headnote and furnished with explanatory footnotes. In addition, the general introduction to the anthology addresses some of the literary questions that arise in writing about London, and the book ends with many suggestions for further reading. It should appeal not only to the general reader interested in London and its representation, but also to students of literature in courses about ‘reading the city’.

City/Stage/Globe

City/Stage/Globe PDF Author: D.J. Hopkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135869065
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary study theorizes the interaction of individual performance and social space. Examining three categories of space – the urban, the theatrical, and the cartographic – this volume considers the role of performance in the production and operation of these spaces during a period in London’s history defined roughly by the life of Shakespeare. City/Stage/Globe not only organizes a selection of plays, pageants, maps, and masques in the historical and cultural contexts in which they emerged, but also uses performance theory to locate the ways in which these seemingly ephemeral events contributed to lasting change in the spatial concepts and physical topograpy of early modern London.

Producing Early Modern London

Producing Early Modern London PDF Author: Kelly J. Stage
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496201817
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
"Producing Early Modern London analyzes theater's use of city spaces and places, showing how the satirical comedies of the early seventeenth century came to embody the city as the city embodied the plays"--

Practicing the City

Practicing the City PDF Author: Nina Levine
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823267881
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In late-sixteenth-century London, the commercial theaters undertook a novel experiment, fueling a fashion for plays that trafficked in the contemporary urban scene. But beyond the stage’s representing the everyday activities of the expanding metropolis, its unprecedented urban turn introduced a new dimension into theatrical experience, opening up a reflexive space within which an increasingly diverse population might begin to “practice” the city. In this, the London stage began to operate as a medium as well as a model for urban understanding. Practicing the City traces a range of local engagements, onstage and off, in which the city’s population came to practice new forms of urban sociability and belonging. With this practice, Levine suggests, city residents became more self-conscious about their place within the expanding metropolis and, in the process, began to experiment in new forms of collective association. Reading an array of materials, from Shakespeare and Middleton to plague bills and French-language manuals, Levine explores urban practices that push against the exclusions of civic tradition and look instead to the more fluid relations playing out in the disruptive encounters of urban plurality.

The Routledge History of Literature in English

The Routledge History of Literature in English PDF Author: Ronald Carter
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415243179
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.