How did Renaissance theatre create its powerful effects with so few resources? In The Shakespearean Stage Space, Mariko Ichikawa explores the original staging of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to build a new picture of the artistry of the Renaissance stage. Dealing with problematic scenes and stage directions, Ichikawa closely examines the playing conditions in early modern playhouses to reveal the ways in which the structure of the stage was used to ensure the audibility of offstage sounds, to control the visibility of characters, to convey fictional locales, to create specific moods and atmospheres and to maintain a frequently shifting balance between fictional and theatrical realities. She argues that basic theatrical terms were used in a much broader and more flexible way than we usually assume and demonstrates that, rather than imposing limitations, the bare stage of the Shakespearean theatre offered dramatists and actors a variety of imaginative possibilities.
• Demonstrates how early modern playwrights and players used the stage space and facilities. Readers will learn how to read the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in their theatrical contexts • Reconsiders the meanings of fundamental stage directions such as 'enter', 'within' and 'above' and will enhance readers' knowledge of important theatrical terms • Offers new interpretations of much-discussed speeches and stage directions in Shakespearean plays to give readers a better understanding of the plays themselves
Contents
1. Playhouses, play texts and the theatrical language; 2. 'Maluolio within'; 3. 'Music within' and 'Music above'; 4. Were the doors open or closed?; 5. 'Enter Brutus in his Orchard'; 6. What to do with onstage corpses?; Conclusion: the Shakespearean stage space and stage directions.
Review
'To say that the book reaches no firm conclusions is not to disparage it: rather this uncertainty is a measure of the integrity of Ichikawa's exploration of the slippery world of early modern drama.' Times Literary Supplement
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