Staging the Renaissance

by David Scott Kastan (Editor)

The essays in Staging the Renaissance show the theatre to be the site of a rich confluence of cultural forces, the place where social meanings are both formed and transformed. The volume unites some of the most challenging issues in contemporary Renaissance studies and some of our best-known critics, including Stephen Orgel, Margaret Ferguson, Catherine Belsey, Jonathan Goldberg, Marjorie Garber, Lisa Jardine, and Jonathan Dollimore-- demonstrating the variety and vitality not only of contemporary criticism, but of Renaissance drama itself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Shakespeare, Drama, Literary Criticism, Renaissance, Theatre, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 1991

About the author

David Scott Kastan, the George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale University, is one of the general editors of the Arden Shakespeare.

George M. Bodman Professor Emeritus of English

David Kastan

Ph.D., University of Chicago
B.A., Princeton University

Although I teach broadly across the field of Renaissance literature, my primary academic concern has been with the relations of literature and history in early modern England, considered from a variety of perspectives. This interest has in large part focused on the production, transmission, and reception of texts (a focus that I like to think of as “the new boredom”). I am one of the general editors of the Arden Shakespeare, for which I edited 1 Henry IV, and I edited both Milton’s Paradise Lost and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus for other publishers. I was the co-editor of the Bantam Shakespeare and the series editor for the Barnes and Noble Shakespeare. In addition, I edited The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, and also (with John Cox), A New History of Early English Drama and (with Peter Stallybrass) Staging the Renaissance. Among my scholarly publications are Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, Shakespeare after Theory, Shakespeare and the Book, and A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion. Recently I have begun writing about the visual arts, including of number of essays written for art museum catalogues. My most recent book, entitled On Color, written with the painter Stephen Farthing, was published by Yale University Press in 2018. I am now working on a book tentatively entitled In Search of Rembrandt, as well as a book (perhaps) to be called The Problem of Beauty.

Reviews

[M.L. Rio · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit scattershot, but an interesting exploration of the socio-political conditions which inform our readings of early modern dramatic texts. Would've been four stars if not for the essay by Random Cloud, who should (1) stop with the absurd pseudonyms because nobody finds them clever, and (2) find a better way to make his argument about the variance of early modern dramatic texts than resorting to the gimmick of imitating their irregular orthography and generally writing like a bad slam poet.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good, helps students understand the context and staging of plays, it's not literature its theatre!