Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama
About the Book Series
This series presents original research on theatre histories and performance histories; the time period covered is from about 1500 to the early 18th century. Studies in which women's activities are a central feature of discussion are especially of interest; this may include women as financial or technical support (patrons, musicians, dancers, seamstresses, wig-makers) or house support staff (e.g., gatherers), rather than performance per se. We also welcome critiques of early modern drama that take into account the production values of the plays and rely on period records of performance.
Dance Lexicon in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: A Corpus Based Approach
1st Edition
By Fabio Ciambella
January 09, 2023
This book provides a thorough analysis of terpsichorean lexis in Renaissance drama. Besides considering not only the Shakespearean canon but also the Bard’s contemporaries (e.g., dramatists as John Marston and Ben Jonson among the most refined Renaissance dance aficionados), the originality of this ...
The Self-Centred Art: Ben Jonson's Parts in Performance
1st Edition
By Jakub Boguszak
January 09, 2023
The Self-Centred Art is a study of the plays of Ben Jonson and the actors who first performed in them. Jakub Boguszak shows how the idiosyncrasies of Jonson’s comic characters were thrown into relief in actors’ part-scripts—scrolls containing a single actor’s lines and cues—some five hundred of ...
Playgrounds: Urban Theatrical Culture in Shakespeare’s England and Golden Age Spain
1st Edition
By David J. Amelang
December 30, 2022
This book compares the theatrical cultures of early modern England and Spain and explores the causes and consequences not just of the remarkable similarities but also of the visible differences between them. An exercise in multi-focal theatre history research, it deploys a wide range of ...
Strangeness in Jacobean Drama
1st Edition
By Callan Davies
May 06, 2022
Callan Davies presents “strangeness” as a fresh critical paradigm for understanding the construction and performance of Jacobean drama—one that would have been deeply familiar to its playwrights and early audiences. This study brings together cultural analysis, philosophical enquiry, and the ...
Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London
1st Edition
Edited
By J. Caitlin Finlayson, Amrita Sen
September 30, 2021
Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London brings together a group of essays from across multiple fields of study that examine the socio-cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of pageantry in sixteenth and seventeenth-century London.This collection ...
Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity
1st Edition
By Eleanor Rycroft
September 30, 2021
Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity is the first full-length critical study to analyse the importance of beards in terms of the theatrical performance of masculinity.According to medical, cultural, and literary discourses of early modern era in England, facial hair marked ...
Unruly Audiences and the Theater of Control in Early Modern London
1st Edition
By Eric Dunnum
September 30, 2021
Unruly Audiences and the Theater of Control in Early Modern London explores the effects of audience riots on the dramaturgy of early modern playwrights, arguing that playwrights from Marlowe to Brome often used their plays to control the physical reactions of their audience.This study analyses how,...
Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage
1st Edition
By Lisa Hopkins, Helen Ostovich
June 30, 2021
Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic ...
Teachers in Early Modern English Drama: Pedagogy and Authority
1st Edition
By Jean Lambert
June 30, 2021
Starting from the early modern presumption of the incorporation of role with authority, Jean Lambert explores male teachers as representing and engaging with types of authority in English plays and dramatic entertainments by Shakespeare and his contemporaries from the late sixteenth to the early ...
The Horror Plays of the English Restoration
1st Edition
By Anne Hermanson
June 30, 2021
A decade after the Restoration of Charles II, a disturbing group of tragedies, dubbed by modern critics the horror or the blood-and-torture villain tragedies, burst onto the London stage. Ten years later they were gone - absorbed into the partisan frenzy which enveloped the theatre at the height of...
Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare's England
1st Edition
By Stephannie Gearhart
December 18, 2020
Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare’s England examines the intersection between art and culture and explains how ideas about age circulated in early modern England. Stephannie Gearhart illustrates how a variety of texts – including drama by Shakespeare, Jonson, and ...
James Shirley and Early Modern Theatre: New Critical Perspectives
1st Edition
Edited
By Barbara Ravelhofer
December 18, 2020
James Shirley was the last great dramatist of the English Renaissance, shining out among other luminaries such as John Ford, Ben Jonson, or Richard Brome. This collection considers Shirley within the culture of his time, and highlights his contribution to seventeenth-century English literature as ...