Community-making in early Stuart theatres : stage and audience / edited by Roger D. Sell, Anthony W. Johnson, and Helen Wilcox.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sell, Roger D., editor.

Johnson, A. W. (Anthony W.), editor.

Wilcox, Helen, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater audiences--England--History--17th century.

Theater audiences.

Theater--Political aspects.

History.

Theater and society.

England.

Theater and society--England--History--17th century.

Theater--England--History--17th century.

Theater.

Theater--Political aspects--England--History--17th century.

English drama--17th century--History and criticism.

English drama.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xviii, 431 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Summary:

Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volume to explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent did playwrights represent dramatis personae in their entertainments as forming, or failing to form, communal groupings? How far were theatrical productions likely to weld, or separate, different communal groupings within their target audiences? And how might such bondings or oppositions among spectators have tallied with the community-making or -breaking on stage? Chapters in Part One respond to one or more of these questions by reassessing general period trends in censorship, theatre attendance, forms of patronage, playwrights' professional and linguistic networks, their use of music, and their handling of ethical controversies. In Part Two, responses arise from detailed re-examinations of particular plays by Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Cary, Webster, Middleton, Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. Both Parts cover a full range of early-Stuart theatre settings, from the public and popular to the more private circumstances of hall playhouses, court masques, women's drama, country-house theatricals, and school plays. And one overall finding is that, although playwrights frequently staged or alluded to communal conflict, they seldom exacerbated such divisiveness within their audience. Rather, they tended toward more tactful modes of address (sometimes even acknowledging their own ideological uncertainties) so that, at least for the duration of a play, their audiences could be a community within which internal rifts were openly brought into dialogue. Book jacket.

Contents:

Period trends

Dramatic censorship: social cohesion and division / Richard Dutton

What is an audience? / Stephen Orgel

Lower-class theatre communities under the early Stuarts / Andrew Gurr

The professional and linguistic communities of early modern dramatists / Anupam Basu, Jonathan Hope, and Michael Witmore

Collaborative playwrights and community-making / Suzanne Gossett

For love not money: community-making in non-commercial drama / Alison Findlay

Disgust and delight: Apollo Shroving, The Roaring Girl, and community theatre / Ros King

Musical community in early modern theatre / David Lindley

Honour dishonoured: the communicational workings of early Stuart tragedy and tragicomedy / Roger D. Sell

Invidiual playwrights

Community and Shakespearean metonymy: Antony and Cleopatra / Ann Thompson and John O. Thompson

The communities of George Chapman's All Fools / Tom Rutter

Ben Jonson: madness and community / Richard Harp

Plotting, ambiguity, and community in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher / Lucy Munro

Cary, community, and audience / Ramona Wray

Rotting together? the quest for community in Webster's tragedies / Helen Wilcox

'Cut my heart in sums': community-making and -breaking in the prodigal drama of Thomas Middleton / Andrew Hiscock

Massinger's divided communities / Martin Butler

Antisocial Ford / Martin Wiggins

Contingencies of time and place: A Contention for Honour and Riches, James Shirley, and the school community / Anthony W. Johnson.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 393-421) and index.

ISBN:

9781409427018

1409427013

OCLC:

962353195

Publisher Number:

99969788536