Shakespeare's Dramatic TransactionsShakespeare’s Dramatic Transactions uses conventions of performance criticism—staging and theatrical presentation—to analyze seven major Shakespearean tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard II, and Richard III. As scholars and readers increasingly question the theoretical models used to describe the concepts of “mimesis” and “representation,” this book describes how the actor’s stage presentation affects the actor’s representational role and the ways in which viewers experience Shakespearean tragedy. Michael Mooney draws on the work of East German critic Robert Weimann and his concept of figurenposition—the correlation between an actor’s stage location and the speech, action, and stylization associated with that position—to understand the actor/stage location relationship in Shakespeare’s plays. In his examination of the original staging of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Mooney looks at the traditional interplay between a downstage “place” and upstage “location” to describe the difference between non-illusionistic action (often staged near the audience) and the illusionistic, localized action that characterizes mimetic art. The innovative and insightful approach of Shakespeare’s Dramatic Transactions brings together the techniques of performance criticism and the traditional literary study of Shakespearean tragedy. In showing how the distinctions of stage location illuminate the interaction among language, representation, Mooney’s compelling argument enhances our understanding of Shakespeare and the theater. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 89
Page xii
... play and the more that the play is drawn into the real world , the more the essence of the play is brought out in the course of performance . The relationship between actor and audience is , therefore , not only a constituent element of ...
... play and the more that the play is drawn into the real world , the more the essence of the play is brought out in the course of performance . The relationship between actor and audience is , therefore , not only a constituent element of ...
Page xiii
... play and even more in sug- gesting how it might have responded . Shakespeare's audiences and critics have responded in so many different ways in the last four hundred years that response cannot be the product of a definitive ...
... play and even more in sug- gesting how it might have responded . Shakespeare's audiences and critics have responded in so many different ways in the last four hundred years that response cannot be the product of a definitive ...
Page 2
... played upon the knowledge that their own lives were as full of provisional identities and imaginary posturings as those ... play . We may have lost the ability to understand the nature of this transac- tion by learning too much about its ...
... played upon the knowledge that their own lives were as full of provisional identities and imaginary posturings as those ... play . We may have lost the ability to understand the nature of this transac- tion by learning too much about its ...
Page 3
... play's meaning depends upon the dramatic context . This analytical approach was less inappropriate for the drama of ... play as an entity in itself . 5 But if the plays of Ibsen might be fathomed from a reading of the text , the drama of ...
... play's meaning depends upon the dramatic context . This analytical approach was less inappropriate for the drama of ... play as an entity in itself . 5 But if the plays of Ibsen might be fathomed from a reading of the text , the drama of ...
Page 6
... play created in the spectators or the playwright's and the cast's intention , we would be mired in subjectivity , less close to approximating the truth about a play's meaning than if we stayed at home and simply studied the language ...
... play created in the spectators or the playwright's and the cast's intention , we would be mired in subjectivity , less close to approximating the truth about a play's meaning than if we stayed at home and simply studied the language ...
Contents
1 | |
Figurenposition in Richard III | 23 |
III Engagement and Detachment in Richard II | 51 |
IV Representation and Privileged Knowledge in Hamlet | 77 |
V Location and Idiom in Othello | 104 |
VI Multiconsciousness in King Lear | 129 |
VII Voice and Multiple Awareness in Macbeth | 150 |
VIII Directing Sympathy in Antony and Cleopatra | 170 |
Notes | 193 |
Index | 217 |
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Common terms and phrases
action actor antic Antony and Cleopatra Antony's audience audience's awareness Banquo Bolingbroke Caesar Cambridge Cassio character choric Claudius Claudius's Clown critical death Desdemona dialogue downstage dramaturgy Edgar effect Elizabethan Enobarbus Enobarbus's eyes feel figure Figurenposition Figurenpositionen final Fulgens and Lucrece Gloucester Gloucester's Gorboduc grief Hamlet hand hath heart Iago Iago's idiom illusion illusionistic images King Lear lago language Lear's locus London lord lovers Macbeth Macduff Mack meaning ment mind mock moral murder nonillusionistic Ophelia Othello performance persona perspective platea play play's Polonius present privileged knowledge psychological Queen readers realistic Renaissance Renaissance drama representational response reveals rhetorical Richard Richard III role Romeo and Juliet Rossiter says scene sense Shake Shakespeare Shakespeare Survey Shakespearean Tragedy shifts soliloquy speaks speare's spectators speech stage suggests symbolic tators tells thanes theater theatrical thou thoughts throne Tillyard tion Tragedy Vice villain voice Weimann wordplay words York