Early Modern Stage Research Articles

Biblical Stories on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage: A Transnational Approach

Abstract This contribution offers a survey of the field of biblical drama research and of several approaches. It makes a plea for a transnational approach of studying early modern drama, especially biblical drama. Such a transnational approach is a continuation of many of these earlier approaches, makes use of some and breaks with others. The contribution also shows that it is important to include Neo-Latin drama in the study of early modern drama at the cost of losing sight on a crucial constituent part of the development of this drama and this theatre. Neo-Latin drama contributed to the knowledge and reception of the Bible among the elites and among the ordinary people who attended performances of these plays or of one of the many translations and adapations.

Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage: Theatres of the Air, 1576–1609

Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage: Theatres of the Air, 1576–1609

Contextualizing Extant Music for Song-texts in Selected Plays by Lope de Vega

Abstract: In recent years, there has been an expanded effort to identify, rescue, and transcribe Iberian early-modern theatrical music scattered in Cancioneros––period anthologies of secular music and song-texts attributed to a range of named and anonymous composers. Some of these songbooks are the primary sources of songs that appear in composer Jesús Bal y Gay’s (1905–1993) Treinta canciones de Lope de Vega. Although the scores’ song-texts derive from various lyric, prose, and dramatic works, in honor of Donald R. Larson, this article will focus on the latter. The extant music in Treinta canciones cries out for analysis, particularly from a contextualized theatrical and performance perspective within the fabric of the plays. Therefore, centering on extant music whose song-texts are linked to some of Lope de Vega’s plays, this article will contextualize the relevant transcriptions as well as highlight potential performative aspects to demonstrate not only the overall significance of music on the early modern stage but also the songs’ possible contribution to how the musical component can enhance modern productions and maximize the genre’s structural and ideological significance for today’s audiences.

:Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage: Theatres of the Air, 1576–1609

:<i>Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage: Theatres of the Air, 1576–1609</i>

‘A Voice Amidst Mine Ears’: Silent Angels on the Early Modern Stage

AbstractUnlike the carts that crawled with angels in the medieval pageant plays, angels of the early modern stage were a rare breed. Eventually they disappeared from the stage altogether; they did not, however, disappear all at once in a puff of celestial smoke. This article reveals a pattern of suppression in the representation of angels on the English stage, ranging from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus in 1592 until 1645, three years after the closure of the theatres in England. This study examines plays that present angels as characters who contribute to the play's action and denouement; however, by noting plays that include allegorical and decorative angels too, it comprises the most comprehensive survey of angels within plays from the period to date. Angels do not appear in many plays performed at the commercial playhouses of Elizabethan and Jacobean England; but when they do, it becomes clear that early modern playwrights gradually developed more calculated ways of staging these controversial creatures. As stage angels assume more silent roles, but before angels leave the stage entirely, human characters begin to communicate with these celestial figures differently and encounters with angels become a far more intimate experience.

Sound Effects: Hearing the Early Modern Stage by Laura Jayne Wright (review)

Sound Effects: Hearing the Early Modern Stage by Laura Jayne Wright (review)

Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage

Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage

Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain by Todd Andrew Borlik, and: Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage by Chloe Kathleen Preedy (review)

Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain by Todd Andrew Borlik, and: Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage by Chloe Kathleen Preedy (review)

Historiografi Islam

In pre-Islamic times, the Arab people did not record the historical events they experienced; instead, they relied on memorization and oral traditions to preserve information related to their history. As time progressed, Islamic historiography emerged in the writing of Islamic history. Based on what has been stated, the author tends to write about Islamic historiography. This research is a type of library research. The analysis is conducted by collecting, exploring, and focusing on the substance of Islamic historical data related to the development of Islamic historiography. In its development, Islamic historiography consists of several stages or periods, namely the early stage, middle stage, early modern stage, and modern stage. Each stage has its own prominent figures. Moreover, in the writing of Islamic history, various polemics exist, including those related to the credibility of sources, differences in perspectives and interpretations, and the use of history for political purposes. Through Islamic historiography, historians are able to identify important events in Islamic history that have influenced the development of political and social culture, the effects of which can still be felt today.&#x0D; Keyword: Historiography, Islam, History

‘Two Armies flye in…’: Battle scenes in English Renaissance theatre

AbstractOne of the most spectacular characteristics of English Renaissance theatre is the propensity for battle scenes. Between 1576 and 1616, battle scenes appear in a third of all surviving plays and, judging from the titles, the frequency may have been even higher in the lost plays. The popularity of battle scenes is indicative both of early modern fascination with history as spectacle and of the imminence of contemporary warfare, especially in the final decades of the reign of Elizabeth I. Based on quantitative studies, this paper offers a survey of the evolution and proliferation of battle scenes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and I will critically assess the general assumption that battle scenes eventually waned from the early modern stage as a consequence of the ascent to the throne of the peace‐seeking James I. For reasons to be discussed, it is quite unlikely that James's doctrine on foreign politics had any significant effect on the staging of war in theatre.

:Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage.

:<i>Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage.</i>

Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage by Jennifer Eun-Jung Row (review)

Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage by Jennifer Eun-Jung Row (review)

The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata. By Pamela Allen Brown Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre. By Harry R. Mc Carthy

What accounts for the dazzling virtuosity of roles played by boys on the early modern stage? We have new insight into this question thanks to two compelling monographs by Pamela Allen Brown and Harry R. McCarthy. Both are grounded in close attention to the embodied movement of actors, and both build on recent studies of players’ skill and collaborative action by scholars including Evelyn Tribble. But Brown and McCarthy see the magnetic appeal of the English “boy actress” (as Brown puts it, 153) as emergent from very different locales, and the field will need further work to bring their insights together. The Diva’s Gift takes us through the manifold ways in which the Italian professional theater, particularly its prima donna innamorata or “first woman” playing opposite her lover, influenced and animated English drama. Brown authoritatively puts to rest (we might hope) stubbornly persistent misapprehensions that women and girls were absent from the English commercial stage, showing how divas, including the wildly successful Isabella Andreini, made their presence known. Chapter 1 offers an account of the Italian comici and their travels, including the tour of Drusiano Martinelli’s mixed company to England in 1577–78, with the goal of showing how English playwrights, players, and playgoers encountered them. Fashionable in Elizabeth I’s court and renowned for their skill at improvisation, the Italian players worked less from complete, scripted plays than from “theatergrams,” or recyclable role and plot elements.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Horatio in Pieces: Or, How to Deal with Ghosts

ABSTRACT From the early moments in Hamlet when he offers a ‘piece’ (1.1.18) of himself to his readiness to consider a range of folkloric narratives, Horatio’s approach to the supernatural is one marked by fragmentation. Rather than critiquing the disparate pieces of Horatio and his philosophy, I explore how his spiritual discernment intersects with the early modern discourse on belief as dispositional and open to revision. In tracing Horatio’s different pieces, which I argue can never be collected into an integrated whole, I interrogate the notion of belief itself as one marked by extremes. Of course, these extremes have captured our critical attention, from Hamlet’s staging of The Murder of Gonzago to the intense passions that almost all the other figures in the play express when confronted with the inexplicable or the uncanny. Instead, I argue that Horatio offers us a way to read discernment on the early modern stage as a viable method, in which one’s belief relies not only on ‘your philosophy’ (1.4.166) or religious doctrine, but combines an array of ‘pieces’ for encountering the potentially demonic figure of the Ghost of Hamlet.

“Circle Worcke”: Atmospheres on the Early Modern Stage

At the beginning of “The Body and Its Passions,” Gail Kern Paster observes that “passions operated upon the body very much as strong movements of wind or water operate upon the natural world.”1 To Shigehisa Kuriyama’s claim that the “history of the body is ultimately a history of ways of inhabiting the world,” Paster adds “the chiastic corollary that this history is also about how the world inhabits the body.”2 Early modern actors were experts in forms of bodily inhabitation, aware of the permeability of their bodies, yet also adept at managing the flow of spirits between body and world. Joseph Roach has argued that the actor’s skill allows him to manipulate rather than be overwhelmed by external and internal forces: “A passion, once unleashed, cannot be suppressed, but it can be shaped into outwardly expressive forms. An oratorical gesture, a prescribed pattern of action, serves as a pre-existing mold into which this molten passion can be poured.”3 Passions are powerful forces, but actors are trained to manage, control, and unleash them; this training is not simply an individual undertaking but also involves the creation and manipulation of what we might call the theatrical atmosphere.

:The Pursuit of Style in Early Modern Drama: Forms of Talk on the London Stage

:<i>The Pursuit of Style in Early Modern Drama: Forms of Talk on the London Stage</i>

Notes on Contributors

Previous article FreeNotes on ContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreCharles Cathcart is an honorary associate in English with the Open University. He has published—often as an independent scholar—since 1999. He is intrigued by the processes through which multiple writing contributions may cohere within a single early modern text. His recent subjects have included the publication history of John Marston’s writings in the years after he ceased drafting plays, the stationer Leonard Becket and his publications, and the canon of Thomas Heywood.Jeffrey S. Doty is an associate professor of English at the University of North Texas and the author of Shakespeare, Popularity and the Public Sphere (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His essays on Shakespeare and ethics can be found in Shakespeare Quarterly and Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and his work on Shakespeare, social class, and popular politics in Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners: Digesting the New Social History (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Literature Compass. His essays coauthored with Musa Gurnis on the early modern London “theater scene” and its interactive public have appeared in the journal Shakespeare and in Publicity and the Early Modern Stage: People Made Public (Palgrave, 2021). He is currently preparing a critical edition of Coriolanus for Cambridge University Press.Margo Kolenda-Mason is a visiting assistant professor of English-Literary Studies at Hendrix College. Her first book project, Fruitless Labor in Early Modern English Literature, explores rhetorics and representations of subverted, thwarted, and frustrated labor in poetry and drama. She is also contributing a chapter on “Work, Play, and Solitude” in A Cultural History of Solitude in the Early Modern Age, forthcoming from Bloomsbury’s Cultural History series.Scott Maisano is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous venues, including The Tempest: A Critical Guide (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare), Early Modern Theatricality (Oxford University Press), Configurations, Extrapolation, Shakespeare Studies, and Shakespeare Quarterly. His current book project—“Labouring with Shakespeare—is both a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s lost comedy, Love’s Labour’s Won, and a critical engagement with academe, race, and speculation in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 51, Number 1Spring 2023 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/726061 © 2023 Northwestern University. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Nose Plays: Nasiform Negotiations at Newington Butts

ABSTRACT Shakespeare’s Shylock, Marlowe’s Barabas, and other Jewish characters are often thought to have been portrayed on early modern stages with a large false nose. This essay will explain how this commonplace view began as a falsified proposition by John Payne Collier in 1836, which subsequent scholarship has failed to properly dispel, instead projecting a post-Enlightenment stereotype onto early modern culture. I argue that by studying the use of the false nose in recycled fashion across contiguous plays in repertory it becomes possible to recognise that this stage property called on its audiences to negotiate its meanings from a range of possible sources, including the other plays in the same sequence. Using the repertory of the Lord Admiral’s Men and Lord Chamberlain’s Men at Newington Butts in 1594, I discuss some of the ways in which the stage nose represented villainy, risibility, and ribaldry without necessarily signifying Jewishness at this time. That Barabas could signify all of these things and also be a Jew may nevertheless have contributed to later generations identifying the nose as one of the stereotypical features of the early modern depictions of Jews on stage.

Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage by Jennifer Eun-Jung Row (review)

Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage by Jennifer Eun-Jung Row (review)