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COPYRIGHT 1993 University of Illinois Press
By Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S. Hallett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xii + 230. $39.50.
The goal of performance criticism, as I understand the genre, is to enhance the ways that playscripts are interpreted in the theater. I had always doubted whether actors actually read any of this criticism until I heard Patrick Stewart (a.k.a. Commander Jean-Luc Picard) say that while preparing to play Shylock, he had spent a great deal of time pouring over Alan Dessen's work on Shakespeare. Stewart is very conscientious, Dessen very readable. At least one branch of performance' criticism, its high-flying theoretical, semiotic branch, is less likely to have a direct impact on particular performances than is the stage history of productions or the overnight review written from the journalistic trenches. Somewhere between these extremes hovers the academic book that propounds a particular theatrical scheme or methodology for actors and audiences wishing to approach particular dramatic text. The writer offers a practical kind of criticism. Both books under consideration here are of this latter variety of performance criticism. The first is a good deal narrower in its methodology and more contentious in its claims than the second. Both are well written and well worth reading.
Charles and Elaine Hallett's Analyzing Shakespeare's Action is written with obvious dedication to the craft of the theater. The Halletts's first order of business is to establish the basic unit of dramatic structure in a play. Their announced intention is to replace the imprecise term "scene" (continuous action set...
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