Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of PlayingFor the Renaissance, all the world may have been a stage and all its people players, but Shakespeare was also an actor on the literal stage. Meredith Anne Skura asks what it meant to be an actor in Shakespeare's England and shows why a knowledge of actual theatrical practices is essential for understanding both Shakespeare's plays and the theatricality of everyday life in early modern England. Despite the obvious differences between our theater and Shakespeare's, sixteenth-century testimony suggests that the experience of acting has not changed much over the centuries. Beginning with a psychoanalytically informed account of acting today, Skura shows how this intense and ambivalent experience appears not only in literal references to acting in Shakespearean drama but also in recurring narrative concerns, details of language, and dramatic strategies used to engage the audience. Looking at the plays in the context of both public and private worlds outside the theater, Skura rereads the canon to identify new configurations in the plays and new ways of understanding theatrical self-consciousness in Renaissance England. Rich in theatrical, psychoanalytic, biographical, and historical insight, this book will be invaluable to students of Shakespeare and instructive to all readers interested in the dynamics of performance. |
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Meredith Anne Skura. Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing The Bear Gardne Meredith Anne Skura The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The Globe Meredith Anne Skura is professor of English at Rice University.
Meredith Anne Skura. Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing The Bear Gardne Meredith Anne Skura The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The Globe Meredith Anne Skura is professor of English at Rice University.
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Meredith Anne Skura. Meredith Anne Skura is professor of English at Rice University . She is the author of The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process ( 1981 ) and has contributed frequently to Daedalus , New Literary History , and ...
Meredith Anne Skura. Meredith Anne Skura is professor of English at Rice University . She is the author of The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process ( 1981 ) and has contributed frequently to Daedalus , New Literary History , and ...
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... English Drama and Stage , 259-65 . Arden of Faversham , ed . Martin White . The New Mermaids . London : Ernest Benn ; New York : W. W. Norton , 1982 . Barry , Lording . Ram - Alley ; or , Merry Tricks . In Hazlitt , Old English Plays ...
... English Drama and Stage , 259-65 . Arden of Faversham , ed . Martin White . The New Mermaids . London : Ernest Benn ; New York : W. W. Norton , 1982 . Barry , Lording . Ram - Alley ; or , Merry Tricks . In Hazlitt , Old English Plays ...
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... English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes 1543-1664 . London : Wittingham and Wilkins ; Chiswick Press ( The Roxburghe Library ) , 1869 . A Select Collection of Old English Plays . 4th ed . London : Reeves and Turner ...
... English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes 1543-1664 . London : Wittingham and Wilkins ; Chiswick Press ( The Roxburghe Library ) , 1869 . A Select Collection of Old English Plays . 4th ed . London : Reeves and Turner ...
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... English Plays , 6 : 503-91 . Kyd , Thomas . The Spanish Tragedy . In The Works of Thomas Kyd , ed . Fred- erick Boas , 1-99 . Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1901 . * Lyly , John . The Complete Works of John Lyly , ed . R. Warwick Bond ...
... English Plays , 6 : 503-91 . Kyd , Thomas . The Spanish Tragedy . In The Works of Thomas Kyd , ed . Fred- erick Boas , 1-99 . Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1901 . * Lyly , John . The Complete Works of John Lyly , ed . R. Warwick Bond ...
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Common terms and phrases
Actaeon acting Anne Antony Arden Armado attack audience audience's baiting Barber and Wheeler bearbaiting beggar Bottom Brutus Caesar called Callow chapter character child cited in Chambers clown Comedy Coriolanus crowd crown death deer describes Drama dream Elizabethan Stage English Epilogue Fairy Falstaff fantasies father fawning fear flattering fool Hal's Hamlet Henriad Henry Henry IV Henry VI Histriomastix histrionic hunt identified inner plays italics added John John Marston Jonson King King Lear kneel Launce Lear literally London Lord Love's Labour's Lost male Midsummer Night's Dream mirror mother murder narcissistic offstage onstage performance play's players poet Queen Renaissance Richard Richard III role says scene Shake Shakespeare shame Shrew Sly's social sonnet speare's stage fright story suggests Tarlton tells theater theatrical thee Thomas thou Timon Timon of Athens Titus Titus Andronicus University Press Wives wounds York