Shakespeare's Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance

Description

This timely study looks at the violation of bodies in Shakespeare's tragedies, especially as revealed (or concealed) in performance on stage and screen. Pascale Aebischer discusses stage and screen performances of Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear with a view to showing how bodies which are virtually absent from both playtexts and critical discourse (due to silence, disability, marginalisation, racial otherness or death) can be prominent in performance, where their representation reflects the cultural and political climate of the production. Aebischer focuses on post-1980 Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre productions but also covers film adaptations and landmark productions from the nineteenth century onwards. Her book will interest scholars and students of Shakespeare, gender, performance and cultural studies.

Pascale Aebischer is Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the Department of English, University of Leicester.

'... an extremely useful resource to scholars of Shakespeare on both stage and screen.' Theatre Notebook 'Methodologically... highly innovative, boldly fusing two critical schools usually seen as incompatible: textual and performance criticism. Aebischer demonstrates that the study of Shakespeare in performance cannot replace the close attention to the play texts, but may potentially enrich our understanding of them.' Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band