Perspectives on Shakespeare in Performance articles

Recent articles from Perspectives on Shakespeare in Performance

The basis for performance criticism.(Introduction)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2000... The Play Circuit The production of a play is an historical event and the focus must first be on its complete experience at a particular place and a particular time. Moreover, drama has its own discipline, one which is not an extension of...

Understanding Shakespeare in performance.(Chapter 1)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2000... My title practices a little to deceive, but it allows me to touch on some of the bad ways of the past before it introduces what has been called "the new orthodoxy" in Shakespeare studies: stage-centered criticism. Shakespeare's Changing...

Shakespeare's use of his stage.(Chapter 2)
January 1, 2000... A Playhouse for Extraordinary Variety Shakespeare can be realistic in any kind of detail--when Cressida is awaiting her lover Troilus, she fetches her breath "as short as a new ta'en sparrow" (Troilus and Cressida, 3.2.32); when King...

In search of the real Shakespeare.(Chapter 3)
January 1, 2000... Shows and Shadows at the Globe It is helpful to return to fundamentals and remind ourselves what the study of the Globe stage is all about: the better understanding and enjoyment of Shakespeare's plays in performance. The present section...

Changeable taffeta: Shakespeare's characters in performance.(Chapter 4)
January 1, 2000... The Inevitability of Characterization For some years now the critics have been trying hot to talk about Shakespeare's characters, as if they were eccentric old aunts whose manners were not to be trusted in public. However, the characters...

Stage space and the Shakespeare experience.(Chapter 5)
January 1, 2000... The Empty Space A target for performance criticism must be the re-creation of the authentic qualities present in the play performed, those that recapture its special spirit, its best style, its own mode of working on an audience. This is...

Sight and space: Shakespeare on stage and screen.(Chapter 6)
January 1, 2000... Visual Elements on Stage and Screen "The play" is what an audience perceives, whether it is on the stage or on the screen. Not only is the printed text merely the score, the roughest of blueprints (to use the current cliche) for the...

Quince's questions: reason in madness.(Chapter 7)
January 1, 2000... The Mystery of the Theatre: A Semioclastic Approach When Oedipus proposed marriage to Jocasta, a woman many years older than himself, why did he not suspect that she might be his mother? When in The Winter's Tale Shakespeare commands,...

Shakespeare's fusion of the arts.(Chapter 8)
January 1, 2000... The Empty Stage and Sensory Experience Our first premise is that Shakespeare was a Renaissance man, with all the magic connotations of that term, and that he was therefore familiar with most of the arts. Our second and equally important...

Reflections on Hamlet in performance.(Chapter 9)
January 1, 2000... Hamlet the Melting Pot "Performance criticism" is not the same thing as the criticism of a production and production history: the two serve quite different purposes. The first part of this chapter is therefore offered as a way of...

The opening of All's Well That Ends Well: a performance approach.(Chapter 10)
January 1, 2000... This is an attempt at "performance criticism." Since it explores the opening of a play, it tries to show the way the play manages its exposition and introduces its characters, aims to anticipate themes and crucial matters to come, and above...