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Emotional Excess on the Shakespearean Stage: Passion's Slaves
Contributor(s): Escolme, Bridget (Author)
ISBN: 1408179660     ISBN-13: 9781408179666
Publisher: Arden Shakespeare
OUR PRICE:   $148.50  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: January 2014
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Drama | Shakespeare
- Drama | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Literary Criticism | Shakespeare
Dewey: 822.3
LCCN: 2013020882
Series: Arden Shakespeare
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.1" W x 7.9" (1 lbs) 344 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Emotional Excess on the Shakespearean Stage demonstrates the links made between excess of emotion and madness in the early modern period. It argues that the ways in which today's popular and theatrical cultures judge how much is too much can distort our understanding of early modern drama and theatre. It argues that permitting the excesses of the early modern drama onto the contemporary stage might free actors and audiences alike from assumptions that in order to engage with the drama of the past, its characters must be just like us.

The book deals with characters in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries who are sad for too long, or angry to the point of irrationality; people who laugh when they shouldn't or make their audiences do so; people whose selfhood has broken down into an excess of fragmentary extremes and who are labelled mad. It is about moments in the theatre when excessive emotion is rewarded and applauded - and about moments when the expression of emotion is in excess of what is socially acceptable: embarrassing, shameful, unsettling or insane. The book explores the broader cultures of emotion that produce these theatrical moments, and the theatre's role in regulating and extending the acceptable expression of emotion. It is concerned with the acting of excessive emotion and with acting emotion excessively. And it asks how these excesses are produced or erased, give pleasure or pain, in versions of early modern drama in theatre, film and television today.

Plays discussed include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Spanish Tragedy, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, and Coriolanus.


Contributor Bio(s): Escolme, Bridget: - Bridget Escolme is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. She researches and teaches historical theatre and its contemporary production, particuarly early modern drama and the ways in which original and current staging practices produce space and subjectivity. She is a member of the International Shakespeare Association and is on the Architectural Advisory Committee of Shakespeare's Globe, London. She is founder member of the Shakespeare in Performance network, an international seminar of Shakespeare performance critics.