1st Edition

Prologues to Shakespeare's Theatre Performance and Liminality in Early Modern Drama

By Douglas Bruster, Robert Weimann Copyright 2004
208 Pages
by Routledge

206 Pages
by Routledge

208 Pages
by Routledge

This eye-opening study draws attention to the largely neglected form of the early modern prologue. Reading the prologue in performed as well as printed contexts, Douglas Bruster and Robert Weimann take us beyond concepts of stability and autonomy in dramatic beginnings to reveal the crucial cultural functions performed by the prologue in Elizabethan England. While its most basic task is to seize... Read more
Chapter 1 The Elizabethan prologue; Chapter 2 Prologue as threshold and usher; Chapter 3 Authority and authorization in the pre-Shakespearean prologue; Chapter 4 3 Frivolous jestures versus matter of worth, Christopher Marlowe; Chapter 5 Kingly harp and iron pen in the playhouse, George Peele; Chapter 6 From hodge-podge to scene individable, John Lyly; Chapter 7 Henry V and the signs of power, William Shakespeare; Afterword; Notes; Index;

Biography

Douglas Bruster, Robert Weimann