Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary

by Alan C. Dessen

Overview

Alan Dessen draws on stage directions from hundreds of plays (from 1425 to 1642) to investigate what a playgoer may actually have seen when watching the original production of Hamlet or Macbeth. He argues for the presence of a shared vocabulary among playwrights, players and playgoers geared to a sense of theater that is easily obscured or eclipsed today. Chapters are devoted to such things as early entrances, the sick chair, vanish effects, tomb scenes, and to the staging of places such as a forest, a shop, a study or a house.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521470803
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/23/1995
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Note on texts and old spelling; 1. The problem, the evidence, and the language barrier; 2. Lost in translation; 3. Interpreting without a dictionary; 4. Juxtapositions; 5. Theatrical italics; 6. Sick chairs and sick thrones; 7. Much virtue in as; 8. The vocabulary of 'place'; 9. 'Romeo opens the tomb'; 10. Vanish and vanishing; Conclusion: so what?; Notes; Plays and editions cited; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Editors and directors (especially those about to re-create the conditions of Shakespeare's plays at the New Globe on Bankside) will ignore this book at their peril." SEL

"More valuable than definitive conclusions is the range of staging possibilities he offers for readers and directors of Shakespeare, for he thus opens up new ways to think about stage action and provides sound reasons to think in those ways." Grace Tiffany, Comparative Drama

"Certainly his book [Dessen] is a major resource for correcting the astigmatism, myopia, and presbyopia that are bound to afflict texts thata re four hundred or so years old." David Bevington, Modern Philology

"Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary is a very strong book...." Philip C. McGuire, Shakespeare Quarterly

From the Publisher