Stage Directions And Shakespearean Theatre

What do 'stage directions' do in early modern drama? Who or what are they directing: action on the stage, or imagination via the page? Is the label 'stage direction' helpful or misleading? Do these 'directions' provide evidence of Renaissance playhouse practice? What happens when we put them at the centre of literary close readings of early modern plays? Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre investigates these problems through innovative research by a range of international experts. This collection of essays examines the creative possibilities of stage directions and and their implications for actors and audiences, readers and editors, historians and contemporary critics. Looking at the different ways stage directions make meaning, this volume provides new insights into a range of Renaissance plays.

The Shakespearean Stage Space explores the original staging of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries in Renaissance playhouses.

The Stage Directions Guide to Shakespeare offers sane, sensible advice on reasons to do (or not to do) Shakespeare, assessing your theatre group abilities, selecting a play, casting, making costume and set decisions, the special demands of directing and playing Shakespeare and publicity.

The subject of stage directions in 'Hamlet', those brief semiotic codes that are embellished by historical, theatrical, and cultural considerations, produces a rigorous examination in the fifteen essays contained in this collection. This volume encompasses essays that are guardedly inductive in their critical approaches, as well as those that critique modern productions that attempt to achieve Shakespearean effect through a modern aesthetic. The volume also includes essays that enunciate the production of stage business as a cultural interplay between productions and social agencies outside the theater.

What do 'stage directions' do in early modern drama? Who or what are they directing: action on the stage, or imagination via the page? Is the label 'stage direction' helpful or misleading? Do these 'directions' provide evidence of Renaissance playhouse practice? What happens when we put them at the centre of literary close readings of early modern plays? Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre investigates these problems through innovative research by a range of international experts. This collection of essays examines the creative possibilities of stage directions and and their implications for actors and audiences, readers and editors, historians and contemporary critics. Looking at the different ways stage directions make meaning, this volume provides new insights into a range of Renaissance plays.

(Book). Shakespeare was a man of the theatre to his core, so it is no surprise that he repeatedly contemplated the nuts and bolts of his craft in his plays and poems. Shakespeare scholar Nick de Somogyi here draws together all the cherishable set pieces including "All the world's a stage," Hamlet's encounters with the Players, and Bottom's amateur theatricals along with many other oblique but no less revealing glances, and further insights into theatre practice by Shakespeare's contemporaries and rivals. De Somogyi's commentary takes us through the entire process of Shakespeare's theatrical production, from its casting and auditions, via rehearsals, costumes, and props, to its premiere and audience reception. Shakespeare on Theatre eavesdrops on the urgently whispered noises-off in the "tiring-house" and inhales the heady aroma of the Globe's first audiences.

Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts, the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins>

Reviews of the First Edition `...valuable and enjoyable reading for all studying Shakespeare's plays.' Following in the patternestablished by John Russell Brown for the excellent series (Theatre and Production Studies), he provides first an account of Shakespeare's company, then a study of three individual plays Twelfth Night, Hamlet and Macbeth as performed by the company. Peter Thomson writes in a crisp, sharp, enlivening style.' TLS '`...the best analysis yet of Elizabethan acting practices, excavated form the texts themselves rather than reconstructed on basis of one monolithic theory, and an essay on Hamlet that is a model of Critical intelligence and theatrical invention.' Yearbook of English Studies `Synthesizes the important facts and summarizes projects with a vigorous prose style, and expertly applies his experience in both practical drama and academic teaching to his discussion.' Review of English Studies

How did Renaissance theatre create its powerful effects with so few resources? In The Shakespearean Stage Space, Mariko Ichikawa explores the original staging of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to build a new picture of the artistry of the Renaissance stage. Dealing with problematic scenes and stage directions, Ichikawa closely examines the playing conditions in early modern playhouses to reveal the ways in which the structure of the stage was used to ensure the audibility of offstage sounds, to control the visibility of characters, to convey fictional locales, to create specific moods and atmospheres and to maintain a frequently shifting balance between fictional and theatrical realities. She argues that basic theatrical terms were used in a much broader and more flexible way than we usually assume and demonstrates that, rather than imposing limitations, the bare stage of the Shakespearean theatre offered dramatists and actors a variety of imaginative possibilities.

Here is a book to hearten playgoers, stimulate young actors, lead theatrical executives to reconsider methods of management, and encourage benefactors to open their wallets. In this new book (containing the Alexander Lectures for 1954-55), Mr. Harbage, distinguished critic and scholar, advocates a movement to give Shakespeare back to the audiences. He complains that, in greater or less degree, Shakespearean audiences are in constant danger of being bored, or more precisely of being "reverently unreceptive," of being gratified that they have come to the play and gratified that they then may go. In his opinion there is no theatre in the world today that can present Shakespeare with full adequacy. Mr. Harbage feels that Shakespearean production is at present lacking in a sense of direction, and needs some form of exemplary leadership. Counsels of perfection are required. There should be at least one company to set a standard, one not dependent upon immediate financial success, and one committed only to realizing artistic ideals worthy of the plays. The wholesome tendency to return to the original methods of production for guidance would be more effectual if a distinction were made between what is still applicable in those original methods and what is not. The author's argument is provocative and amusing throughout; it begins with detailed complaints and ends with detailed remedies. A generous amount of information about Elizabethan precedents and traditions is included. Alfred Harbage has published numerous books which have become cornerstones in Shakespearean scholarship: Annals of English Drama, 975-1700; Shakespeare's Audience; As They Liked It; and Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions. He has prepared new editions of The Tempest and As You Like it, is General Editor of the American Pelican Shakespeare, had published articles in learned journals, and has held editorial and advisory posts.