Elizabethan stage conventions and modern interpreters
"Alan Dessen samples about four hundred play texts from the age of Shakespeare in order to recover the conventions of staging they reveal. in studying the stage settings, movements and emblems implicit in recurrent phrases and stage directions, he concludes that the Elizabethan audience, much less concerned with realism than many later generations have been, were used to receiving a kind of theatrical shorthand transmitted by the actors from the playwright. Professor Dessen draws attention to the implications of his findings for modern interpreters, addressing not only critics and teachers but also editors, actors and directors. He demonstrates that in many situations the 'logic' of the modern interpreter, for example, in his expectations of consistent characterisation, is in some way at odds with the original 'logic' of presentation, for example, in its acceptance of allegory and synecdoche. The rediscovery of the original logic illuminates for modern interpreters some of the most puzzling and awkward parts of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries." --Publisher description
Print Book, English, 1984
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [Cambridgeshire], 1984
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 190 pages ; 22 cm
9780521259125, 9780521311618, 0521259126, 0521311616
10146010
Preface
Note on texts and old spelling
The arrow in Nessus: Elizabethan clues and modern detectives
Interpreting stage directions
The logic of this on the open stage
Elizabethan darkness and modern lighting
The logic of place and locale
The logic of stage violence
Theatrical metaphor: seeing and not-seeing
Conclusion: Elizabethan playscripts and modern interpreters
Notes
List of plays and editions
Index