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  3. Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      22 September 2009
      14 June 1984
      ISBN:
      9780511554179
      9780521311618
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554179
      Dimensions:
      Weight & Pages:
      Dimensions:
      (216 x 138 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.265kg, 204 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Literature, British Theatre, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature, Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies
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    Subjects:
    Literature, British Theatre, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature, Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies
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    Book description

    Alan Dessen samples about four hundred manuscripts and printed plays to record the original staging conventions of the age of Shakespeare. After studying the stage properties, movements and configurations implicit in recurrent phrases and stage directions, he concludes that Elizabethan spectators, less concerned with realism than later generations, were used to receiving a kind of theatrical shorthand transmitted by the actors from the playwright. Professor Dessen both describes this shorthand (e.g. the use of nightgowns, boots and dishevelled hair) and draws attention to the implications of his findings for modern interpreters, addressing not only critics and teachers but also editors, actors and directors.

    Reviews

    'The work makes a useful contribution to both theatre history and dramatic criticism … Dessen's kind of analysis offers an escape from the straitjacket of character criticism in particular for it will encourage the study of scenic form and thereby make students aware of all that is not 'personality'.'

    Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

    ' … presented with vigorous clarity, his experience of modern productions demonstrates his concern with the continuing stage life of the plays he discusses.'

    Source: The Times Literary Supplement

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