The players' advice to Hamlet : the rhetorical acting method from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment / David Wiles.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wiles, David, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Acting.

Acting--History.

Rhetoric--Europe--History.

Rhetoric.

Rhetoric, Ancient--Influence.

Rhetoric, Ancient.

Renaissance.

Enlightenment--Europe.

Enlightenment.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 370 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Summary:

Hamlet is a characteristic intellectual more inclined to lecture actors about their craft than listen to them, and is a precursor of Enlightenment figures like Diderot and Lessing. This book is a quest for the voice of early professional actors, drawing on English, French and other European sources to distinguish the methods of professionals from the theories of intellectual amateurs. David Wiles challenges the orthodoxy that all serious discussion of acting began with Stanislavski, and outlines the comprehensive but fluid classical system of acting which was for some three hundred years its predecessor. He reveals premodern acting as a branch of rhetoric, which took from antiquity a vocabulary for conversations about the relationship of mind and body, inside and outside, voice and movement. Wiles demonstrates that Roman rhetoric provided the bones of both a resilient theatrical system and a physical art that retains its relevance for the post-Stanislavskian performer.

Contents:

Hamlet's advice to the players

Rhetorical performance in antiquity

Acting, preaching and oratory in the sixteenth century

Baroque acting

Actors and intellectuals in the Enlightenment era

Emotion

Declamation

Gesture

Training.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Jan 2020).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-58520-5

1-108-59910-9

1-108-68950-7