This Distracted Globe: Attending to Distraction in Shakespeare's Theatre

Jennifer J. Edwards

doi:10.1017/9781108979986

Series: Elements in Shakespeare Performance

This Distracted Globe

Attending to Distraction in Shakespeare's Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2023

Jennifer J. Edwards

Show author details

Jennifer J. Edwards: Affiliation:
The Queen's College, Oxford

Summary

This Element attends to attention drawn away. That the Globe is a 'distracted' space is a sentiment common to both Hamlet's original audience and attendees at the reconstructed theatre on London's Bankside. But what role does distraction play in this modern performance space? What do attitudes to 'distraction' reveal about how this theatre space asks and invites us to pay attention? Drawing on scholarly research, artist experience, and audience behaviour, This Distracted Globe considers the disruptive, affective, phenomenological, and generative potential of distraction in contemporary performance at the Globe.

Element contents

Summary
References

Get access

Keywords

attention distraction Shakespeare performance theatre affect

Information

Type: Element
Information: Series: Elements in Shakespeare Performance

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979986 [Opens in a new window]

Online ISBN: 9781108979986

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication: 25 May 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Element purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). ‘Press Release: Shakespeare Still Has Power to Shock – RSC Titus Andronicus Audience Research Project Results’. 26 October 2017. www.rsc.org.uk/press/releases/shakespeare-still-has-power-to-shock---rsc-titus-andronicus-audience-research-project-results.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe. ‘Announcing Summer 2021 at the Globe’. Blog. 24 March 2021. www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2021/03/24/announcing-summer-2021-at-the-globe/.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Shakespeare’s Globe in Lockdown: One Year Later’. Blog. 18 March 2021. www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2021/03/18/shakespeares-globe-in-lockdown-one-year-later/.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Press Release: Globe Announces New Digital Content, Free Films, Mark Rylance’s Shakespeare Walks, and Online Support for Students’. 30 March 2020. https://cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/2020/03/Press-Release-SGT-Digital-Content-for-Isolation-FINAL.pdf.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Press Release: Shakespeare’s Globe Announces the Return of Standing Tickets’. 19 July 2021. https://cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/2021/07/Press-Release-Shakespeares-Globe-Announces-the-Return-of-Standing-Tickets.pdf.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Thought of the Week: Remember Thee!’. Blog. 13 June 2020. www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2020/06/13/thought-of-the-week-remember-thee/.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Thought of the Week: The Power of the Mind’. Blog. 17 April 2020. www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2020/04/17/thought-of-the-week-the-power-of-the-mind/.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Thought of the Week: The Readiness Is All’. Blog. 29 May 2020. www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2020/05/29/thought-of-the-week-the-readiness-is-all/.Google Scholar

Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Twelfth Night: Visual Story’. 2021. https://cdn.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/2021/09/Visual-Story-Twelfth-Night-2021.pdf.Google Scholar

Adorno, Theodor. ‘The Essay as Form’. New German Critique, Spring–Summer, no. 32, 1984: 151–71.Google Scholar

Aebischer, Pascale. Viral Shakespeare: Performance in the Time of Pandemic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.Google Scholar

Aebischer, Pascale, and Nicholas, Rachael. Digital Theatre Transformation: A Case Study and Digital Toolkit. Oxford: Creation Theatre, 2020.Google Scholar

Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.Google Scholar

À Kempis, Thomas. Of the Imitation of Christ, trans. Thomas Rogers. London: printed by Henry Denham, 1580.Google Scholar

Alford, Lucy. Forms of Poetic Attention. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.Google Scholar

Allred, Gemma Kate, Broadribb, Benjamin, and Sullivan, Erin, eds. Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2022.Google Scholar

Banks, Fiona, ed. Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.Google Scholar

Bar, Moshe. Mindwandering: How It Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.Google Scholar

Barthes, Roland. The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collège de France, 1977–1978, trans. Rosalind E. Krauss and Dennis Hollier. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

Bell, Julia. Radical Attention. London: Peninsula Press, 2020.Google Scholar

Bevis, Matthew. ‘In Search of Distraction’. Poetry, vol. 211, no. 2, 2017: 171–94.Google Scholar

Billington, Michael. ‘To Hear or Not to Hear’. The Guardian, 15 June 2000.Google Scholar

Blesser, Barry, and Salter, Linda-Ruth. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Böhme, Gernot. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces, trans. A.-Chr. Engles-Schwarzpaul. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.Google Scholar

Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

Brown, Mark. ‘Shakespeare’s Globe to Reopen in May Staging Plays with No Intervals’. The Guardian, 24 March 2021.Google Scholar

Burrows, Ian. Shakespeare for Snowflakes: On Slapstick and Sympathy. Winchester: Zero Books, 2020.Google Scholar

Carson, Christie, and Karim-Cooper, Farah, eds. Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar

Clark, Nick. ‘Globe Theatre Takes Out 100 Audience Members with Its Gory Titus Andronicus’. The Independent, 22 July 2014.Google Scholar

Conkie, Rob. ‘The Archive: Show Reporting Shakespeare’, in The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance. Kirwan, Peter and Prince, Kathryn, eds. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2021, pp. 25–37.Google Scholar

Cook, Amy. ‘Cognitive Interplay: How Blending Theory and Cognitive Science Reread Shakespeare’, in Stylistics and Shakespeare’s Language: Transdisciplinary Approaches. Culpeper, Jonathan and Ravassat, Mireille, eds. London: Bloomsbury, 2011, pp. 246–68.Google Scholar

Cotterill, Anne. Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

Dawson, Anthony B. ‘The Distracted Globe’, in The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate. Dawson, Anthony B. and Yachnin, Paul, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 88–107.Google Scholar

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense, trans. Boundas, Constantin V., Lester, Mark, and Stivale, Charles J.. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.Google Scholar

Derrida, Jacques. On the Name, trans. Thomas Dutoit. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

Downame, John. A Guide to Godlynesse. London: printed by Felix Kingstone, 1622.Google Scholar

Dryden, John, trans. Plutarch’s Lives. London: printed by T. Hodgkin, 1683.Google Scholar

Dugan, Holly. ‘“As Dirty as Smithfield and as Stinking Every Whit”: The Smell of the Hope Theatre’, in Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance. Karim-Cooper, Farah and Stern, Tiffany, eds. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2014, pp. 195–213.Google Scholar

Dustagheer, Sarah. ‘Original Practices: Old Ways and New Directions’, in The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance. Kirwan, Peter and Prince, Kathryn, eds. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2021, pp. 65–81.Google Scholar

Escolme, Bridget. Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self. London: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar

Escolme, Bridget ‘Being Good: Actors’ Testimonies as Archive and the Cultural Construction of Success in Performance’. Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 28, no. 1, 2010: 77–91.Google Scholar

Eyal, Nir. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.Google Scholar

Freedman, Barbara. Staging the Gaze: Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, and Shakespearean Comedy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Gardner, Lyn. ‘Titus Andronicus Review’. The Guardian, 11 May 2014.Google Scholar

Goldberg, Jonathan. The Seeds of Things: Theorizing Sexuality and Materiality in Renaissance Representation. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Granada, Luis de. Of Prayer and Meditation, trans. Richard Hopkins. Paris: printed by Thomas Brumeau, 1582.Google Scholar

Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.Google Scholar

Greenblatt, Stephen The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.Google Scholar

Griffero, Tonino. Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces, trans. Sarah de Sanctis. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.Google Scholar

Griffero, Tonino Quasi-Things: The Paradigm of Atmospheres, trans. Sarah de Sanctis. New York: State University of New York Press, 2017.Google Scholar

Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.Google Scholar

Heim, Caroline. Audience as Performer: The Changing Role of Theatre Audiences in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge, 2015.Google Scholar

Hemming, Sarah. ‘Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s Globe, London – Review’. Financial Times, 2 May 2014.Google Scholar

Hodgdon, Barbara. ‘Shopping in the Archives: Material Memories’, in Shakespeare, Memory and Performance. Holland, Peter, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 135–67.Google Scholar

Johns, Dani. ‘It’s No Joke – Since Lockdown, Live Audiences Have Forgotten How to Behave’. The Guardian, 21 April 2022.Google Scholar

Johnson, Ryan J. The Deleuze-Lucretius Encounter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.Google Scholar

Karim-Cooper, Farah. ‘Shakespeare’s War on Terror: Critical Review of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (Directed by Lucy Bailey) at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, 2006)’. Shakespeare, vol 4, no. 1 (2008): 63–71.Google Scholar

Karremann, Isabel. The Drama of Memory in Shakespeare’s History Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar

Kenny, Amy. ‘“I Hope ’Twill Make You Laugh”: Audience Laughter at the Globe Theatre’. Research International, vol. 40, no. 1, 2015: 37–49.Google Scholar

Kiernan, Pauline. Staging Shakespeare at the New Globe. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.Google Scholar

Kirwan, Peter. ‘Titus Andronicus @ Shakespeare’s Globe’. The Bardathon, 4 July 2014.Google Scholar

Kirwan, Peter, and Sullivan, Erin. ‘Shakespeare in Lockdown (Review)’. Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 38, no. 3, 2020: 489–93.Google Scholar

Korducki, Kelli María. ‘I Have “Pandemic Brain”. Will I Ever Be Able to Concentrate Again?’. The Guardian, 24 June 2021.Google Scholar

Langley, Eric. Shakespeare’s Contagious Sympathies: Ill Communications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar

Langley, Eric ‘The Path to Which Wild Error Leads: A Lucretian Comedy of Errors’. Textual Practice, vol. 28, no. 2, 2014: 161–87.Google Scholar

Lennox, Gabrielle, and Mason, Hannah. ‘Virtual Dream Reality Check: A Case of Interactive Digital Theatre from the Royal Shakespeare Company’. Body, Space & Technology, vol. 22, no. 1, 2022: 1–9.Google Scholar

Leo, John. A Geographical Historie of Africa. London: printed by George Bishop, 1600.Google Scholar

Lewis, Rhodri. Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020.Google Scholar

Loftis, Sonia Freedman. Shakespeare and Disability Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.Google Scholar

Lucretius. The Nature of Things, trans. A. E. Stallings. London: Penguin, 2007.Google Scholar

Lyne, Raphael. ‘Shakespeare and the Wandering Mind’. Journal of the British Academy, vol. 8, 2020: 1–27.Google Scholar

Mason, Robert. Reasons Academie. London: printed by Thomas Creede, 1605.Google Scholar

McConachie, Bruce. Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.CrossRef Google Scholar

Miller, Gemma. ‘Review of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and As You Like It (directed by Federay Holmes and Elle While for the Globe Ensembles) at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, 29 April and 30 May 2018’. Shakespeare, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019: 69–72.Google Scholar

Michel de, Montaigne. Essais, trans. John Florio. London: printed by Valentine Simmes, 1603.Google Scholar

Neely, Carol Thomas. Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.CrossRef Google Scholar

North, Paul. The Problem of Distraction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar

O’Malley, Evelyn. Weathering Shakespeare: Audiences and Open-Air Performance. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.Google Scholar

Orman, Steve. ‘Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s Globe)’. Blogging Shakespeare, 31 May 2014.Google Scholar

Pangallo, Matteo, and Kirwan, Peter, eds. Shakespeare’s Audiences. London: Routledge, 2021.Google Scholar

Petrarch. Phisicke against Fortune, aswell Prosperous, as Aduerse Conteyned in Two Bookes, trans. Thomas Twyne. London: printed by Thomas Dawson, 1579.Google Scholar

Phillips, Adam. Attention Seeking. London: Penguin, 2019.Google Scholar

Purcell, Stephen. ‘Performing the Public at Shakespeare’s Globe’. Shakespeare, vol. 14, no. 1, 2018: 51–63.CrossRef Google Scholar

Purcell, Stephen Shakespeare and Audience in Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.Google Scholar

Renel, William. ‘Sonic Accessibility: Increasing Social Equity through the Inclusive Design of Sound in Museums and Heritage Sites’. Curator: The Museum Journal, vol. 62, no. 3, 2019: 377–402.Google Scholar

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Sartre on Theatre, trans. Frank Jellinek. Contat, Michel and Rybalka, Michel, eds. New York: Pantheon, 1976.Google Scholar

Sedgman, Kirsty. The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, and the Live Performance Experience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.Google Scholar

Serres, Michel. The Birth of Physics, trans. David Webb and William Ross. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018.Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, rev. ed. Thompson, Ann and Taylor, Neil, eds. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016.Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William The Norton Shakespeare, 3rd ed. Greenblatt, Stephen, Cohen, Walter, Gossett, Suzanne et al., eds. New York: W. W. Norton, 2017.Google Scholar

Shaughnessy, Robert. ‘Connecting the Globe: Actors, Audiences and Entrainment’. Shakespeare Survey, vol. 68, 2015: 294–305.Google Scholar

Shirilan, Stephanie. ‘Respiratory Sympathy and Pneumatic Community in Shakespeare’, in Shakespeare’s Audiences. Pangallo, Matteo and Kirwan, Peter, eds. London: Routledge, 2021, pp. 27–44.Google Scholar

Smith, Bruce. The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999.Google Scholar

Snapes, Laura. ‘Musicians Want Us to Pay Closer Attention at Gigs. Let’s Do Them the Courtesy’. The Guardian, 21 April 2022.Google Scholar

Stillman, Anne. ‘Distraction Fits’. Thinking Verse, II, 2012: 27–69.Google Scholar

Sullivan, Erin. ‘Live to Your Living Room: Streamed Theatre, Audience Experience, and the Globe’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Participants: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2020: 92–119.Google Scholar

Sullivan, Erin ‘Immersion in a Time of Deep Distraction’, in Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance. Allred, Gemma Kate, Broadribb, Benjamin, and Sullivan, Erin, eds. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2022, pp. 107–26.Google Scholar

Tosh, Will. Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2018.Google Scholar

Tribble, Evelyn B. Cognition in the Globe: Attention and Memory in Shakespeare’s Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.Google Scholar

Tribble, Evelyn B. ‘Dropping Like flies: Skilled Coordination and Front-of-House at Shakespeare’s Globe’, in Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill. Bicknell, Kath and Sutton, John, eds. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2022, pp. 21–34.Google Scholar

Tripney, Natasha. ‘Lucy Bailey: “It Takes a Wild Approach to Release a Play’s Energy”’. The Stage, 20 November 2015.Google Scholar

Warner, Marina. ‘There’s Method in Theatre’s Blood and Gore’. The Guardian, 12 May 2014.Google Scholar

Webster, John. ‘An Excellent Actor’, in Sir Thomas Overbury his Wife. London: printed by Edward Griffin, 1616, M2r-M3r.Google Scholar

West, William N. Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion: Playhouses and Playgoers in Elizabethan England. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2021.Google Scholar

Widley, George. The Doctrine of the Sabbath. London: printed by Felix Kingstone, 1604.Google Scholar

Williams, David. ‘Weather’. Performance Research, vol. 11, no. 3, 2006: 142–4.Google Scholar

Williams, Holly. ‘Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s Globe, Theatre Review’. The Independent, 2 May 2014.Google Scholar

Wood, Michael. ‘Distraction Theory: How to Read While Thinking of Something Else’. Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. XLVIII, no. 4, 2009: 577–88.Google Scholar

Woodall, James. ‘10 Questions for Director Lucy Bailey’. The Arts Desk, 26 October 2016.Google Scholar

Woods, Penelope. ‘Audiences at the Old Globe and the New’, in The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, Vol. 2 The World’s Shakespeare, 1660–Present. Smith, Bruce R. and Rowe, Katherine, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 1538–44.Google Scholar

Woods, Penelope ‘Globe Audiences: Spectatorship and Reconstruction at Shakespeare’s Globe’, PhD Thesis. Queen Mary University of London and Shakespeare’s Globe, 2012.Google Scholar

Worthen, W. B. Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar

Worthen, W. B. ‘Interactive, Immersive and Original Shakespeare’. Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 35, no. 3, 2017: 407–24.Google Scholar

Zhao, Sijia, Shibata, Kengo, Hellyer, Peter J. et al. ‘Rapid Vigilance and Episodic Memory Decrements in COVID-19 Survivors’. Brain Communications, vol. 4, no. 1, 2022: fcab295.CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this element is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.