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Anecdotal Shakespeare : a new performance history / Paul Menzer.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Shakespeare, William, Works ; Publisher: London : Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015Description: 1 online resourceContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9781472576187
  • 1472576187
  • 9781472576170
  • 1472576179
  • 1472576195
  • 9781472576194
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: No title; No titleDDC classification:
  • 792.95 822.33 23
LOC classification:
  • PR3091
Online resources:
Contents:
Introduction: Anecdotal Shakespeare -- Tarlton's head -- Guildenstern's bassoon -- Shylock's son -- Richard's will -- 1 Hamlet: Skulls are good to think with -- Yorick's skulls -- Skull caps -- Like father, like son -- Ghost walkers -- 2 Othello: The smudge -- Pillow talk -- Desdemona's beard -- Another man -- The impossible fix -- One moor -- 3 Romeo and Juliet: Central casting -- Be some other name -- Old Montague -- Young Capulet -- Something old, something new ... -- Romeo must die -- Unromantic altitudes -- Duck! -- 4 Richard III: Oedipus text -- Olivier's Dick -- Richard's whose self again? -- Heart-throbs and hamstrings -- Booth's trunk -- 5 Macbeth: An embarrassment of witches -- The unfortunate comedy -- Of curses and kilts -- Tangible properties -- Crude mechanicals -- Stage frights -- Exeunt, cursing.
Summary: Shakespeare's four-hundred-year performance history is full of anecdotes ribald, trivial, frequently funny, sometimes disturbing, and always but loosely allegiant to fact. Such anecdotes are nevertheless a vital index to the ways that Shakespeare's plays have generated meaning across varied times and in varied places. Furthermore, particular plays have produced particular anecdotes stories of a real skull in Hamlet, superstitions about the name Macbeth, toga troubles in Julius Caesar and therefore express something embedded in the plays they attend. Anecdotes constitute then not just a vital component of a play's performance history but a form of vernacular criticism by the personnel most intimately involved in their production: actors. These anecdotes are therefore every bit as responsive to and expressive of a play's meanings across time as the equally rich history of Shakespearean criticism or indeed the very performances these anecdotes treat. Anecdotal Shakespeare provides a history of post-Renaissance Shakespeare and performance, one not based in fact but no less full of truth.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
eBook eBook e-Library EBSCO Drama Available
Total holds: 0

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Ebsco, viewed June 24, 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Anecdotal Shakespeare -- Tarlton's head -- Guildenstern's bassoon -- Shylock's son -- Richard's will -- 1 Hamlet: Skulls are good to think with -- Yorick's skulls -- Skull caps -- Like father, like son -- Ghost walkers -- 2 Othello: The smudge -- Pillow talk -- Desdemona's beard -- Another man -- The impossible fix -- One moor -- 3 Romeo and Juliet: Central casting -- Be some other name -- Old Montague -- Young Capulet -- Something old, something new ... -- Romeo must die -- Unromantic altitudes -- Duck! -- 4 Richard III: Oedipus text -- Olivier's Dick -- Richard's whose self again? -- Heart-throbs and hamstrings -- Booth's trunk -- 5 Macbeth: An embarrassment of witches -- The unfortunate comedy -- Of curses and kilts -- Tangible properties -- Crude mechanicals -- Stage frights -- Exeunt, cursing.

Shakespeare's four-hundred-year performance history is full of anecdotes ribald, trivial, frequently funny, sometimes disturbing, and always but loosely allegiant to fact. Such anecdotes are nevertheless a vital index to the ways that Shakespeare's plays have generated meaning across varied times and in varied places. Furthermore, particular plays have produced particular anecdotes stories of a real skull in Hamlet, superstitions about the name Macbeth, toga troubles in Julius Caesar and therefore express something embedded in the plays they attend. Anecdotes constitute then not just a vital component of a play's performance history but a form of vernacular criticism by the personnel most intimately involved in their production: actors. These anecdotes are therefore every bit as responsive to and expressive of a play's meanings across time as the equally rich history of Shakespearean criticism or indeed the very performances these anecdotes treat. Anecdotal Shakespeare provides a history of post-Renaissance Shakespeare and performance, one not based in fact but no less full of truth.

English.

Added to collection customer.56279.3

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