Shakespeare's Sense of Character: On the Page and From the Stage

by Michael W. Shurgot, Yu Jin Ko (Editor)

Overview

Making a unique intervention in an incipient but powerful resurgence of academic interest in character-based approaches to Shakespeare, this book brings scholars and theatre practitioners together to rethink why and how character continues to matter. Contributors seek in particular to expand our notions of what Shakespearean character is, and to extend the range of critical vocabularies in which character criticism can work. The return to character thus involves incorporating as well as contesting postmodern ideas that have radically revised our conceptions of subjectivity and selfhood. At the same time, by engaging theatre practitioners, this book promotes the kind of comprehensive dialogue that is necessary for the common endeavor of sustaining the vitality of Shakespeare's characters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138261730
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Series:	Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Yu Jin Ko, is Professor of English at Wellesley College, USA. Michael W. Shurgot is Professor of Humanities at South Puget Sound Community College, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Yu Jin Ko; Part 1 Shakespearean Persons; Chapter 1 How Dark Was It in That Room? Performing a Scene Shakespeare Never Wrote, Michael Bristol; Chapter 2 Shakespearean Characters and Early Modern Subjectivity: The Case of King Lear, Bruce W. Young; Chapter 3 What Makes Someone a Character in Shakespeare?, William Flesch; Chapter 4 Wopsle’s Revenge, or, Reading Hamlet as Character in Great Expectations 1 Special thanks to Mark Bayer and Gretchen Minton, the directors of the 2006 Shakespeare Association of America seminar on “Shakespeare’s Literary Afterlives” for providing an occasion for the original draft of this essay and for their subsequent suggestions. Thanks also to Yu Jin Ko, Edward Tayler, and Martha Woodruff for offering encouragement and suggestions., James E. Berg; Part 2 Character in Action; Chapter 5 Historicizing Spontaneity: The Illusion of the First Time of “The Illusion of the First Time”, Cary M. Mazer; Chapter 6 (Re:)Historicizing Spontaneity: Original Practices, Stanislavski, and Characterization, Tiffany Stern; Chapter 7 Retracing Antonio: In Search of the Merchant of Venice, Diego Arciniegas; Chapter 8 Letting Unpleasantness Lie: Counter-Intuition and Character in The Merchant of Venice, Brett Gamboa; Chapter 9 Iago: In Following Him I Follow But Myself, Dan Donohue; Chapter 10 “I lay with Cassio lately”: Iago’s Fantasy, the Actor and Audience Response to Othello in 3.3, Shurgot Michael W.; Part 3 Beyond Naturalism: Then and Now; Chapter 11 Just Do It: Theory and Practice in Acting, Eunice Roberts; Chapter 12 Playing Sodomites: Gender and Protean Character in As You Like It, Lina Perkins Wilder; Chapter 13 “Stops” in the Name of Love: Playing Typological Iago, Travis Curtright; Chapter 14 Henry V ’s Character Conflict, James Wells;