Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of his Stage Context

Description

Shakespeare's Theatre consolidates the author's forty years of experience in studying and staging Shakespeare's plays. Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts, the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins. Coverage includes the practices of Elizabethan actors and script writers: methods of characterization; gesture, blocking and choreography, including music, dance and fighting; actors' rhetorical interaction with audiences; and use of costumes, stage props, and make-up. The author makes use of scripts and scholarship about original stagings of Shakespeare and suggests how those productions related to modern staging. Much of this material has developed as a result of the recent increased interest in the significance of performance for interpreting Shakespeare, including the recovery of the archaeological evidence about the original Rose and Globe Theaters. The book contains current bibliographies for each topic and consolidates these in an overall bibliography for Shakespeare and his theaters.

Hugh Macrae Richmond is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of Education at the Shakespeare Globe Centre in the USA. He has written and edited numerous books on Shakespeare including Shakespeare's Political Plays and Shakespeare's Sexual Comedy. His Shakespeare Program at the University of California, Berkeley, has staged Shakespeare and related plays for thirty years.