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Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History
Four hundred years ago, Hamlet urged his players, "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue." But in expressing the passions of the play, he advised, "Let discretion be your guide." Ever since, the tensions between faithfulness to the text on one hand, and expressive freedom on the other, have kept Shakespeare productions in a state of constant flux. From the radical alterations and "improvements" of the late seventeenth century, to the startling dislocations in setting, dress, and political context of the twentieth, from the extravagant sets of the Victorians to the stark minimalism of London's 1970s fringe theatre, Shakespeare's plays have lent themselves to an astonishing variety of incarnations.
Written by a team of distinguished scholars, under the editorship of Jonathan Bate and Russell Jackson, Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History offers an elegantly designed and compellingly readable account of four centuries of Shakepearean productions. The book is consistently illuminating. Of the theatre of Shakespeare's own day, for instance, we learn not only what the plays would have looked like but also how changing conditions affected their composition--how, in 1604, the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, which forbid the utterance of Christian oaths on stage, drove Shakespeare to set his plays in antiquity for the next five years. Likewise, when the King's Men moved indoors from the Globe to the Blackfriars theatre for the winter season, Shakespeare was forced to compose his plays in five distinct acts, separated by musical intervals, because the candles lighting the stage would burn down and need to be replaced. We also learn of the vehement Puritan antipathy to the theatre, an antipathy so great that at the outset of the civil war, in 1642, Parliament passed the Stephens Act, outlawing all stage performances--to avoid the "high provocation of God's wrath"--and formally declaring players to be "rogues," subject to public whippings and even the death penalty. Though the theatre has never since been considered quite so dangerous, the contributors clearly show how politically powerful Shakespeare performances have remained, and how variable, with both the establishment and the opposition enlisting the Bard in their causes. The book is equally engaging on the great actors, from eighteenth-century giant David Garrick to modern figures such as Ralph Fiennes, John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, and Peter Brook (the book includes a fascinating piece by actress Judi Dench that provides a performer's view of Shakespeare).
What emerges most significantly from the book is a vivid sense of the enormous malleability of Shakespeare's work, responsive not only to changing political, economic, and social conditions, but also to the widest range of imaginative impulses in staging, direction, and interpretation. An invaluable and delightful book for anyone interested in Shakespeare or the stage, this superb volume gives readers a much clearer knowledge of the forces that have shaped Shakespeare productions. Indeed, they will feel as if they've been given backstage passes to the best performances of the past four centuries.
Contents:
Shakespeare's Elizabethan stages by R.A. Foakes
The king's men and after by Martin Wiggins
Improving on the original : actresses and adaptations by Michael Dobson
The age of Garrick by Peter Holland
The Romantic stage by Jonathan Bate
Actor-managers and the spectacular by Russell Jackson
European cross-currents : Ibsen and Brecht by Inga-Stina Ewbank
From the Old Vic to Gielgud and Olivier by Anthony Davies
Shakespeare and the public purse by Peter Thomson
Director's Shakespeare by Robert Smallwood
A career in Shakespeare by Judi Dench
Shakespeare in opposition : from the 1950s to the 1990s by Russell Jackson
Written by a team of distinguished scholars, under the editorship of Jonathan Bate and Russell Jackson, Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History offers an elegantly designed and compellingly readable account of four centuries of Shakepearean productions. The book is consistently illuminating. Of the theatre of Shakespeare's own day, for instance, we learn not only what the plays would have looked like but also how changing conditions affected their composition--how, in 1604, the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, which forbid the utterance of Christian oaths on stage, drove Shakespeare to set his plays in antiquity for the next five years. Likewise, when the King's Men moved indoors from the Globe to the Blackfriars theatre for the winter season, Shakespeare was forced to compose his plays in five distinct acts, separated by musical intervals, because the candles lighting the stage would burn down and need to be replaced. We also learn of the vehement Puritan antipathy to the theatre, an antipathy so great that at the outset of the civil war, in 1642, Parliament passed the Stephens Act, outlawing all stage performances--to avoid the "high provocation of God's wrath"--and formally declaring players to be "rogues," subject to public whippings and even the death penalty. Though the theatre has never since been considered quite so dangerous, the contributors clearly show how politically powerful Shakespeare performances have remained, and how variable, with both the establishment and the opposition enlisting the Bard in their causes. The book is equally engaging on the great actors, from eighteenth-century giant David Garrick to modern figures such as Ralph Fiennes, John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, and Peter Brook (the book includes a fascinating piece by actress Judi Dench that provides a performer's view of Shakespeare).
What emerges most significantly from the book is a vivid sense of the enormous malleability of Shakespeare's work, responsive not only to changing political, economic, and social conditions, but also to the widest range of imaginative impulses in staging, direction, and interpretation. An invaluable and delightful book for anyone interested in Shakespeare or the stage, this superb volume gives readers a much clearer knowledge of the forces that have shaped Shakespeare productions. Indeed, they will feel as if they've been given backstage passes to the best performances of the past four centuries.
Contents:
Shakespeare's Elizabethan stages by R.A. Foakes
The king's men and after by Martin Wiggins
Improving on the original : actresses and adaptations by Michael Dobson
The age of Garrick by Peter Holland
The Romantic stage by Jonathan Bate
Actor-managers and the spectacular by Russell Jackson
European cross-currents : Ibsen and Brecht by Inga-Stina Ewbank
From the Old Vic to Gielgud and Olivier by Anthony Davies
Shakespeare and the public purse by Peter Thomson
Director's Shakespeare by Robert Smallwood
A career in Shakespeare by Judi Dench
Shakespeare in opposition : from the 1950s to the 1990s by Russell Jackson
266 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 1996
21 people want to read
About the author
R.A. Foakes
45 books2 followersReginald A. Foakes was an English author and Shakespeare scholar. He has published works on Shakespeare and the Romantic poets and edited many of Shakespeare's plays in the Arden and New Cambridge editions.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 4, 2015
The topic is better discussed elsewhere (Stanley Wells' guide to Shakespeare's afterlife does a good job) but this is a lovely, dedicated work that will appeal to fans of theatre and theatre history.
Displaying 1 of 1 review