Shakespeare and the Making of Theatre

by Bridget Escolme (Editor), Paul Edmondson (Editor)

A highly engaging text that approaches Shakespeare as a maker of theatre, as well as a writer of literature. Leading performance critics dismantle Shakespeare's texts, identifying theatrical cues in ways which develop understanding of the underlying theatricality of Shakespeare's plays and stimulate further performances.

Genres: Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2012

Reviews

[Candy Wood]

This is a nicely unified collection of essays focusing on Shakespeare in performance. Each contributor treats a particular topic with surprisingly little overlap, and examples are provided from many plays: I didn’t keep track, but the list of plays in the bibliography confirms that only a few of Shakespeare’s plays are not mentioned. I especially enjoyed Peter Holland on Openings and Paul Prescott on Endings; Bridget Escolme and Farah Karim-Cooper encourage thought about costumes and props, how they function in our time as well as evoking the past; and Carol Chillington Rutter has a wonderful time surveying “Talking Heads,” as well as the rhetorical connection between heads and hands in Titus Andronicus. There’s an extensive bibliography covering the whole book, and an index as well. What I read was the electronic edition accessible only on terminals in the British Library reading rooms--I have not seen the actual hardcover book.