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Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre: Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies book cover

1st Edition

Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies

Edited By Peter Harrop, Philip Butterworth Copyright 2022
360 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

360 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

360 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
In this selection of research articles Butterworth focuses on investigation of the practical and technical means by which early English theatre, from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, was performed. Matters of staging for both 'pageant vehicle' and 'theatre-in-the-round' are described and analysed to consider their impact on playing by players, expositors, narrators and prompters.... Read more

Part 1: Staging and Staging Conventions

1. 'The York Mercers' Pageant Vehicle, 1433-1467: Wheels, Steering, and Control', Medieval English Theatre, 1:2 (1979), 72-81

2. 'Hugh Platte’s Collapsible Wagon', Medieval English Theatre, 15 (1995 [for 1993]), 129-39

3. 'Pageant Carriage Maintenance at Chester', Medieval English Theatre, 39 (2018 for 2017), 5-34

4. 'Jetties, Pentices, Purprestures and Ordure: Obstacles to Pageants and Processions in London', Medieval English Theatre, 41 (2020), 166-190

5. (with Michael Spence), 'The work of William Parnell, supplier of staging and ingenious devices, and his role in the visit of Elizabeth Woodville to Norwich in 1469', Medieval English Theatre, 40 (2019), 7-65

Part 2: Playing Conventions

6. 'The York Crucifixion: Actor/Audience Relationship', Medieval English Theatre, 14 (1994), 67-76

7. ''Jean Fouquet's 'The Martyrdom of St Apollonia' and 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' as Iconographical Evidence of Medieval Theatre Practice', Essays in Honour of Peter Meredith, Leeds Studies in English, 29 (1998), 55-67

8. 'Richard Carew's Ordinary: the First English Director' in The Narrator, the Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre, ed. by Philip Butterworth, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2007), 329-345

9. 'Prompting in Full View of the Audience: The Groningen Experiment', Medieval English Theatre, 23 (2002 [for 2001]), 122-71

Part 3: Pyrotechnics

10. 'Hellfire: Flame as Special Effect' in The Iconography of Hell, ed. by Clifford Davidson and Thomas H. Seiler, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, 17 (Western Michigan University: Medieval Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1992), 67-101

11. 'The Light of Heaven: Flame as Special Effect' in The Iconography of Heaven, ed. by Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, 21 (Western Michigan University: Medieval Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1994), 128-45

12. The Providers of Pyrotechnics in Plays and Celebrations' in Material Culture and Early Drama, ed. by Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series (Western Michigan University: Medieval Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1999), 59-74

Part 4: Magic

13. 'Juggling and Staging Tricks in Early Theatre' in ‘Mainte belle œuvre faicte’, Études sur le théâtre médiéval offertes à professeur Graham A. Runnalls (Orléans: Paradigme, 2005), 39-63

14. 'Brandon, Feats and Hocus Pocus: Jugglers Three', Theatre Notebook, 57:2 (2003), 89-106

15. 'Hocus Pocus Junior: Further Confirmation of its Author', Theatre Notebook, 68:3 (2014), 130-135

Postlude

16. 'Is there any Further Value to be Gained from Re-Staging Medieval Theatre?', Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 43 (2004), 1-11

Biography

Philip Butterworth is a leading historian of early English theatre. He has written over 40 articles and book chapters, three critically acclaimed monographs, and edited or co-edited [with Katie Normington] three further significant volumes. His careful reading of primary sources is informed by his having directed a wide range of medieval theatre texts that both pioneered and exemplified practice-as-research. He is currently working on a fourth monograph, Functions of Medieval English Stage Directions: Analysis and Catalogue. This is also to be published by Routledge.

Peter Harrop is Professor Emeritus at the University of Chester. His most recent publications are Mummers’ Plays Revisited, (2020) and The Routledge Companion to English Folk Performance [with Steve Roud], (2021). He also has a longstanding interest in the practices of early modern theatre and performance, particularly in their customary aspects.

Philip Butterworth’s illuminating … collection of essays … casts an attentive eye to the handmade technologies supporting a crucial aspect of medieval English culture: the vivid strain of artistic and social performances—annual religious cycle pageants, civic and royal spectacles—animating city life – Technology and Culture, January 2024, Vol. 65.

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