Moving Shakespeare Indoors: Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse

by Andrew Gurr (Editor), Farah Karim-Cooper (Editor)

Overview

Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, played at the Globe, and also in an indoor theatre, the Blackfriars. The year 2014 witnessed the opening of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, based on seventeenth-century designs of an indoor London theatre and built within the precincts of the current Globe on Bankside. This volume, edited by Andrew Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper, asks what prompted the move to indoor theatres, and considers the effects that more intimate staging, lighting and music had on performance and repertory. It discusses what knowledge is required when attempting to build an archetype of such a theatre, and looks at the effects of the theatre on audience behaviour and reception. Exploring the ways in which indoor theatre shaped the writing of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the late Jacobean and early Caroline periods, this book will find a substantial readership among scholars of Shakespeare and Jacobean theatre history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107040632
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/06/2014
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Andrew Gurr has taught at universities in New Zealand, England, Kenya and the USA. He spent twenty years as Director of Research at the Shakespeare Globe Centre, London. His academic books include Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (Cambridge, 1987), The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 (Cambridge, 1992), The Shakespearian Playing Companies (1996), The Shakespeare Company 1594–1642 (2004), and Shakespeare's Opposites (Cambridge, 2009).

Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Higher Education and Research at Shakespeare's Globe and Visiting Research Fellow of King's College London. At the Globe, she is leading the research into the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the new indoor Jacobean theatre. She is the author of Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (2006), Shakespeare's Globe: A Theatrical Experiment (co-edited with Christie Carson, Cambridge, 2008), Shakespeare's Theatres and the Effects of Performance (co-edited with Tiffany Stern, 2013); and The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage (2016).

Table of Contents

Introduction Andrew Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper; Part I. The Context of Hard Evidence: 1. Why the theatres changed John H. Astington; 2. Practical evidence for a re-imagined indoor Jacobean theatre Jon Greenfield and Peter McCurdy; 3. Documentary evidence for an indoor Jacobean theatre Oliver Jones; 4. Continuities and innovations in staging Mariko Ichikawa; Part II. Materiality Indoors: 5. 'A ruinous monastery': the Second Blackfriars playhouse as a place of nostalgia Tiffany Stern; 6. 'When torchlight made an artificial noon': light and darkness in the indoor Jacobean theatre Martin White; 7. Acoustic and visual practices indoors Sarah Dustagheer; 8. The audience of the indoor theatre Penelope Woods; 9. In the event of fire Paul Menzer; 10. To glisten in a playhouse: cosmetic beauty indoors Farah Karim-Cooper; Part III. The New Fashions for Indoors: 11. The new fashion for indoor plays Andrew Gurr; 12. Changing fashions: tragicomedy, romance and heroic women in the 1630s hall-playhouses Eleanor Collins; 13. Reviving the legacy of indoor performance Bart van Es; Appendix: list of plays performed at indoor playhouses, 1575–1642 Sarah Dustagheer.

Editorial Reviews

"Definitely a must-read for anyone studying theatre history or working on Jacobean drama."
Susan Elkin, The Stage

"… a comprehensive and nuanced study of the Blackfriars. … this elegant collection of essays sheds new light on how the material conditions of the Blackfriars may have influenced the ways in which plays were performed there …"
Joel Benabu, Comparative Drama

From the Publisher