Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson. A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580-1642.

Publication: Comparative Drama

Publication Date: 22-JUN-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 www.wmich.edu/compdr

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 289. $69.95 cloth. $24.95 paper.

In the third chapter of Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary (1995), Alan Dessen imagines "a dictionary or handbook comparable to the OED that would define both stock terms and less familiar usages so as to facilitate interpretation" (42). A dictionary of words and phrases employed in stage directions would be extremely useful, Dessen contends, but the relative lack of documentary evidence and the difficulty of interpreting the existing data would make the compilation of such a handbook a prohibitively arduous task. At the end of his chapter, Dessen concludes, "if the evidence were more plentiful and the problems fewer, a series of dictionary entries would be an excellent way to set forth the theatrical vocabulary of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Such, however, is not the case" (63).

Since the expression of these doubts, Dessen has teamed with Leslie Thomson to conquer his misgivings about the feasibility of such a project. The result is A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580-1642, which deserves a prominent place among the essential reference works on the English Renaissance stage. Thomson brings to the task a database of more than 22,000 stage directions taken from approximately 500 plays extending from 1581 (the date of the first...

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