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List of contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. People Forgetting
‘My memory is tired’
‘I have forgot his name’
‘What was I about to say?’
2. Forgiving and Forgetting / Forgetting Oneself
3. Forgetting Forgetting
Forgetting about forgetting
Remembering forgetting
Not forgetting
Remembering and forgetting
Early Modern forgetting
4. Forgetting and Genre
5. Forgetting People
6. Forgetting Performance
Needing forgetfulness
Forgetting in performance
Forgetting the plot
Resisting performance as loss
Not-quite-forgetting performance
7.Shakespeare Forgetting / Forgetting Shakespeare
Shakespeare forgetting
Forgetting Shakespeare
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Peter Holland holds the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre and is Associate Dean for the Arts at the University of Notre Dame. He was formerly Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and is editor of Shakespeare Survey and co-general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series.
Peter Holland is McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA.
Peter Holland is the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies and the Associate Dean for the Arts at the University of Notre Dame, USA.
Summary
What does it signify when a Shakespearean character forgets something or when Hamlet determines to 'wipe away all trivial fond records'? How might forgetting be an act to be performed, or be linked to forgiveness, such as when in The Winter's Tale Cleomenes encourages Leontes to 'forget your evil. / With them, forgive yourself'? And what do we as readers and audiences forget of Shakespeare's works and of the performances we watch?
This is the first book devoted to a broad consideration of how Shakespeare explores the concept of forgetting and how forgetting functions in performance. A wide-ranging study of how Shakespeare dramatizes forgetting, it offers close readings of Shakespeare's plays, considering what Shakespeare forgot and what we forget about Shakespeare. The book touches on an equally broad range of forgetting theory from antiquity through to the present day, of forgetting in recent novels and films, and of creative ways of making sense of how our world constructs the cultural meaning of and anxiety about forgetting. Drawing on dozens of productions across the history of Shakespeare on stage and film, the book explores Shakespeare’s dramaturgy, from characters who forget what they were about to say, to characters who leave the stage never to return, from real forgetting to performed forgetting, from the mad to the powerful, from playgoers to Shakespeare himself.
Foreword
The first-ever book devoted to a consideration of how Shakespeare explores the concept of forgetting and how forgetting functions in performance. It combines close reading, theory and performance criticism to pave the way for future studies.
