1st Edition
Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger
By Joanne Rochester
Copyright 2010
182 Pages
by
Routledge
182 Pages
by
Routledge
182 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
The playwrights composing for the London stage between 1580 and 1642 repeatedly staged plays-within and other metatheatrical inserts. Such works present fictionalized spectators as well as performers, providing images of the audience-stage interaction within the theatre. They are as much enactments of the interpretive work of a spectator as of acting, and as such they are a potential source of... Read more
Contents: Introduction; 'What do wee acte to day?': plays within the play: The Roman Actor; 'For your sport / You shall see a masterpiece': masques-within in The Picture, The Guardian and The City Madam; 'Speculations / On cheating pictures': visual art as dramatic inset: The Picture; Conclusion: 'Make your howse the stage on which weel act / Our comick sceane': trials and paradramatic scenes; Bibliography; Index.
Biography
Joanne Rochester, Assistant Professor of English, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
'... a valuable work. Rochester has read widely in studies both of the period and of the plays, and she supplements her analyses of Massinger's works with useful and interesting discussions of - for example - the significance of the masque, or of paintings and other kinds of visual art, in Caroline culture.' Review of English Studies ’... hugely engaging [...] and advances welcome new ideas about Massinger’s embeddedness within Caroline cultural practices.’ Comparative Drama 'This [is a] well-researched book... [Rochester] meets her objective with elegance and eloquence, and has done her subject good service. Each of her chapters treats a distinct form of inset art, while her conclusion offers an assessment of the variations in Massinger’s embedded, inserted, or attached playlets, paradramas, and trial scenes.' Renaissance Quarterly 'This is a stimulating book...' Notes and Queries
