Anecdotal Shakespeare - A New Performance History

Shakespeare''s four-hundred-year performance history is full of anecdotes - ribald, trivial, frequently funny, sometimes disturbing, and always but loosely allegiant to fact. Such anecdotes are nevertheless a vital index to the ways that Shakespeare''s plays have generated meaning across varied times and in varied places. Furthermore, particular plays have produced particular anecdotes - stories of a real skull in Hamlet , superstitions about the name Macbeth , toga troubles in Julius Caesar - and therefore express something embedded in the plays they attend. Anecdotes constitute then not just a vital component of a play''s performance history but a form of vernacular criticism by the personnel most intimately involved in their production: actors. These anecdotes are therefore every bit as responsive to and expressive of a play''s meanings across time as the equally rich history of Shakespearean criticism or indeed the very performances these anecdotes treat. Anecdotal Shakespeare provides a history of post-Renaissance Shakespeare and performance, one not based in fact but no less full of truth.>

List of contents

Preface: Curtain Raiser; Introduction: Anecdotal Shakespeare; 1. Hamlet: Skulls are good to think with; 2. Othello: The Smudge; 3. Romeo and Juliet: Central Casting; 4, Richard III: Oedipus Text; 5. Macbeth: An Embarrassment of Witches; Coda: Archives and Anecdotes; Index

About the author

Paul Menzer is Professor and Director of the Mary Baldwin College Shakespeare and Performance programme, Mary Baldwin College, USA

Report

[Menzer] has carried out considerable research to present detailed analysis of anecdotes surrounding five of Shakespeare's most high-profile plays ... Quirky ... [and] enjoyable. British Theatre Guide 20160107

Product details

• Authors: Paul Menzer, Paul (Mary Baldwin College Menzer, Menzer Paul
• Publisher: Arden shakespeare
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.10.2015
• EAN: 9781472576156
• ISBN: 978-1-4725-7615-6
• No. of pages: 280
• Series: The Arden Shakespeare; Arden Shakespeare
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Non-fiction book > Music, film, theatre; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Shakespeare Studies & Criticism, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean