The Actor in History: A Study in Shakespearean Stage PoetryIn this book an eminent scholar considers the relation which Shakespeare establishes between the values of the supreme world of Elizabethan and Jacobean reality, that of the kings and soldiers at the top of the tree, and his own domain, the poetry of the theater. Ostensibly, that poetry emphasizes straightforwardly the values of the plot of the play --by his poetry, the king or soldier becomes more visible to us. The rhythms of his voice, the verbal images and innuendos, reinforce the man's kingship or soldiership. But at other times, what takes place is different. Starting from a shadowy identification of the character with his position in the play, the poetry begins to substitute its independent or nearly independent values--its power to charm and to threaten and expand the "meaning" of the actor vis-à-vis his role. The character we watch on the stage escapes into an area where the sensations with which his acting affects us come also directly from his histrionic relation to us. He becomes an actor as such and less an actor of Brutus or Antony or Coriolanus. We are all the more moved because we know that the histrionic is a representation of the reality of emotion, as definite and valid as impressionism is of the visual truth of the external world. In certain plays Shakespeare puts at variance our sense of the histrionic against the more usual values which we set upon political and military achievement. The fantasy of Richard II, for example, is his escape from the harshness of the historical circumstances that belittle his capacity; clothed in poetry and growing into the actual presentation of the actor who rendered the part, it dominates us to the devaluing of the winner in the plot's competition. |
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... poetic reality of the pair been diminished , and their poetic greatness similarly impaired . The greatest moments of the revelation are perhaps Cleopatra's , and perhaps the greatest of these is the " I am fire and air " speech . But ...
... poetic fabric . For Richard it is the real facts of revolt , desertion , and his own imminent deposition and death which stimulate him . But they stimulate him not to counter - action but to a form of counter - creation in images and ...
... poetic expression of which guarantees its value a unilateral moral interpretation which belongs to , but does not exhaust , the meaning of the play " ( p . 191 ) . 8. So Philip Edwards , in a phrase characteristically brief and apt ...
Contents
The Triumph of Fantasy | 13 |
The Actor in History | 37 |
Competitive Worlds | 61 |
Copyright | |
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References to this book
Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession P. E. Easterling,Edith Hall Limited preview - 2002 |
Shakespeare’s Imagined Persons: The Psychology of Role-Playing and Acting P. Murray No preview available - 1996 |