Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre

Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 299
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781107782990
ISBN-13 : 1107782996
Rating : 4/5 (90 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre by : Richard Preiss

Download or read book Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre written by Richard Preiss and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To early modern audiences, the 'clown' was much more than a minor play character. A celebrity performer, he was a one-man sideshow whose interactive entertainments - face-pulling, farce interludes, jigs, rhyming contests with the crowd - were the main event. Clowning epitomized a theatre that was heterogeneous, improvised, participatory, and irreducible to dramatic texts. How, then, did those texts emerge? Why did playgoers buy books that deleted not only the clown, but them as well? Challenging the narrative that clowns were 'banished' by playwrights like Shakespeare and Jonson, Richard Preiss argues that clowns such as Richard Tarlton, Will Kemp, and Robert Armin actually made playwrights possible - bridging, through the publication of their routines, the experience of 'live' and scripted performance. Clowning and Authorship tells the story of how, as the clown's presence decayed into print, he bequeathed the new categories around which theatre would organize: the author, and the actor.


Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre Related Books

Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre
Language: en
Pages: 299
Authors: Richard Preiss
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-03-06 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

To early modern audiences, the 'clown' was much more than a minor play character. A celebrity performer, he was a one-man sideshow whose interactive entertainme
Interruptions in Early Modern English Drama
Language: en
Pages: 297
Authors: Michael M. Wagoner
Categories: Drama
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-09-22 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

To interrupt, both on stage and off, is to wrest power. From the Ghost's appearance in Hamlet to Celia's frightful speech in Volpone, interruptions are an overl
Community-Making in Early Stuart Theatres
Language: en
Pages: 447
Authors: Anthony W. Johnson
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-10-14 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volume to explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent did playw
Money and Magic in Early Modern Drama
Language: en
Pages: 265
Authors: David Hawkes
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-12-01 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Money, magic and the theatre were powerful forces in early modern England. Money was acquiring an independent, efficacious agency, as the growth of usury allowe
Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
Language: en
Pages: 269
Authors: Lauren Robertson
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-12-31 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Lauren Robertson's original study shows that the theater of Shakespeare and his contemporaries responded to the crises of knowledge that roiled through early mo