Unfixable Forms

Unfixable Forms PDF Author: Katherine Schaap Williams
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501753517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Unfixable Forms explores how theatrical form remakes—and is in turn remade by—early modern disability. Figures described as "deformed," "lame," "crippled," "ugly," "sick," and "monstrous" crowd the stage in English drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In each case, such a description distills cultural expectations about how a body should look and what a body should do—yet, crucially, demands the actor's embodied performance. In the early modern theater, concepts of disability collide with the deforming, vulnerable body of the actor. Reading dramatic texts alongside a diverse array of sources, ranging from physic manuals to philosophical essays to monster pamphlets, Katherine Schaap Williams excavates an archive of formal innovation to argue that disability is at the heart of the early modern theater's exploration of what it means to put the body of an actor on the stage. Offering new interpretations of canonical works by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and William Rowley, and close readings of little-known plays such as The Fair Maid of the Exchange and A Larum For London, Williams demonstrates how disability cuts across foundational distinctions between nature and art, form and matter, and being and seeming. Situated at the intersections of early modern drama, disability studies, and performance theory, Unfixable Forms locates disability on the early modern stage as both a product of cultural constraints and a spark for performance's unsettling demands and electrifying eventfulness.

Unfixable Forms

Unfixable Forms PDF Author: Katherine Schaap Williams
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501753517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Unfixable Forms explores how theatrical form remakes—and is in turn remade by—early modern disability. Figures described as "deformed," "lame," "crippled," "ugly," "sick," and "monstrous" crowd the stage in English drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In each case, such a description distills cultural expectations about how a body should look and what a body should do—yet, crucially, demands the actor's embodied performance. In the early modern theater, concepts of disability collide with the deforming, vulnerable body of the actor. Reading dramatic texts alongside a diverse array of sources, ranging from physic manuals to philosophical essays to monster pamphlets, Katherine Schaap Williams excavates an archive of formal innovation to argue that disability is at the heart of the early modern theater's exploration of what it means to put the body of an actor on the stage. Offering new interpretations of canonical works by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and William Rowley, and close readings of little-known plays such as The Fair Maid of the Exchange and A Larum For London, Williams demonstrates how disability cuts across foundational distinctions between nature and art, form and matter, and being and seeming. Situated at the intersections of early modern drama, disability studies, and performance theory, Unfixable Forms locates disability on the early modern stage as both a product of cultural constraints and a spark for performance's unsettling demands and electrifying eventfulness.

English Theatre in Transition 1881-1914

English Theatre in Transition 1881-1914 PDF Author: James Woodfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317389433
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Originally published in 1984. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a time of considerable change in the English theatre. Victorian attitudes were shocked or shattered by the new drama of Ibsen; the major figure of George Bernard Shaw dominated the period; theatre censorship was the subject of a long and furious contest; and staging conventions changed from the spectacular stylings of Irving and Beerbohm Tree to the masking and statuesque styles of Isadora Duncan and the inner realism of Stanislavsky. This book traces the activities of the leading figures in the English theatre, notably William Archer who introduced Ibsen to this country and who became one of the main promoters of the idea of a National Theatre. Other personalities discussed include Harley Granville Barker, particularly his association with Shaw at the Court Theatre and his part in campaigns against censorship and for changes in the staging of Shakespeare, and Edward Gordon Craig, whose rebellion against the Victorian theatre took and anti-realist direction. This is a stimulating account of the background to the modern English theatre which can only increase appreciation of its standard and variety.

Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880

Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880 PDF Author: Julie Stone Peters
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199262168
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
This volume explores the impact of printing on the European theatre in the period 1480-1880 and shows that the printing press played a major part in the birth of modern theatre.

Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance

Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance PDF Author: Katharine Eisaman Maus
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226511238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This text explores the perceived discrepancy between outward appearance and inward disposition which, it argues, influenced the work of many English Renaissance dramatists and poets. The author examines various connections between religious, legal, sexual and theatrical ideas of inward truth.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre PDF Author: Richard Beadle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139827928
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The book emphasises regional diversity in the period and engages with the literary and particularly the theatrical values of the plays. Existing chapters have been revised and updated where necessary, and there are three entirely new chapters, including one on the cultural significance of early drama. A thoroughly revised reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an enlarged classified bibliography and a chronological table.

Gaming the Stage

Gaming the Stage PDF Author: Gina Bloom
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472053817
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Illuminates the fascinating, intertwined histories of games and the Early Modern theater

Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre

Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre PDF Author: Philip Butterworth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107015480
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Examines staging conventions in the medieval English theatre and ways in which they conditioned the reactions of the audience.

John Lowin and the English Theatre, 1603–1647

John Lowin and the English Theatre, 1603–1647 PDF Author: Barbara Wooding
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131711065X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Even for scholars who have devoted their careers to the early modern theatre, the name John Lowin may not instantly evoke recognition-until now, the actor's life and contribution to the theatre of the period has never been the subject of a full-length publication. In this study, Barbara Wooding provides a comprehensive overview of the life and times of Lowin, a leader of the King's Men's Company and one of the greatest actors of the seventeenth century. She examines his involvement in the Jacobean/Caroline world as performer, citizen and company manager, and contextualizes his life and career within the socio-economic and political framework of the period. Although references to him in the archives are patchy and sporadic, information about his activities within the King's Men's Company is well documented. In the course of analysing less familiar plays of the period and the characters Lowin played in them, Wooding supplements critical understanding of the scope and range of Caroline drama. Because Lowin's career burgeoned after Shakespeare's and Burbage's death, his life in Southwark and his career with the same company furnishes the opportunity for an examination of the changing status of actors, and the exercising of their skills within the drama of the later playhouse period.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre PDF Author: Richard Beadle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521459167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
A comprehensive, illustrated companion to the perennially popular drama of the English Middle Ages.

English Drama

English Drama PDF Author: Richard W. Bevis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317870921
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
What were the causes of Restoration drama's licentiousness? How did the elegantly-turned comedy of Congreve become the pointed satire of Fielding? And how did Sheridan and Goldsmith reshape the materials they inherited? In the first account of the entire period for more than a decade, Richard Bevis argues that none of these questions can be answered without an understanding of Augustan and Georgian history. The years between 1660 and 1789 saw considerable political and social upheaval, which is reflected in the eclectic array of dramatic forms that is Georgian theatre's essential characteristic.