Child characters feature more numerously and prominently in the Shakespearean canon than in that of any other early modern playwright. Focusing on stage and film productions from the past four decades, this study addresses how Shakespeare's child characters are reflected, refracted and reinterpreted in performance. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates close reading, semiotics, childhood studies, queer theory and performance studies, Gemma Miller explores how a close analysis of Shakespeare's child characters, both in the text and in performance, can reveal often uncomfortable truths about contemporary ideas of childhood, as well as offer fresh insights into the plays. Among the works and productions analysed are stage productions of Richard III by Sean Holmes and Thomas Ostermeier; Jamie Lloyd's and Michael Boyd's stage productions of Macbeth and the films of Roman Polanski and Justin Kurzel; Deborah Warner's stage production of Titus Andronicus and filmed adaptations by Jane Howell and Julie Taymor; and stage productions of The Winter's Tale by Nicholas Hytner, and by Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford, and the ballet adaptation by Christopher Wheeldon.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and performance studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on the key methods and questions surrounding the performance event, the audience, and the archive – the primary sources on which performance studies draws. It identifies the recurring trends and fruitful lines of inquiry that are generating the most urgent work in the field, but also contextualises these within the histories and methods on which researchers build. A central section of research-focused essays offers case studies of present areas of enquiry, from new approaches to space, bodies and language to work on the technologies of remediation and original practices, from consideration of fandoms and the cultural capital invested in Shakespeare and his contemporaries to political and ethical interventions in performance practice. A distinctive feature of the volume is a curated section focusing on practitioners, in which leading directors, writers, actors, producers, and other theatre professionals comment on Shakespeare in performance and what they see as the key areas, challenges and provocations for researchers to explore. In addition, the Handbook contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, and an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and performance.

This book investigates how the Children of Paul's (1599-1606) and the Children of the Queen's Revels (1600-13) defined their players as children and, via an analysis of their plays and theatrical practices, it examines early modern theatre as a site in which children have the opportunity to articulate their emerging selfhoods.

Shakespeare wrote more than fifty parts for children, amounting to the first comprehensive portrait of childhood in the English theatre. Focusing mostly on boys, he put sons against fathers, servants against masters, innocence against experience, testing the notion of masculinity, manners, morals, and the limits of patriarchal power. He explored the nature of relationships and ideas about parenting in terms of nature and nurture, permissiveness and discipline, innocence and evil. He wrote about education, adolescent rebellion, delinquency, fostering, and child-killing, as well as the idea of the redemptive child who ‘cures’ diseased adult imaginations. ‘Childness’ – the essential nature of being a child – remains a vital critical issue for us today. In Shakespeare and Child’s-Play Carol Rutter shows how recent performances on stage and film have used the range of Shakespeare’s insights in order to re-examine and re-think these issues in terms of today’s society and culture.

Shakespeare, Trauma and Contemporary Performance examines how contemporary performances of Shakespeare’s texts on stage and screen engage with violent events and histories. The book attempts to account for – but not to rationalize – the ongoing and pernicious effects of various forms of violence as they have emerged in selected contemporary performances of Shakespeare’s texts, especially as that violence relates to apartheid, colonization, racism, homophobia and war. Through a series of wide-ranging case studies, which are informed by debates in Shakespeare, trauma and performance studies and developed from extensive archival research, the book examines how performances and their documentary traces work variously to memorialize, remember and witness violent events and histories. In the process, Silverstone considers the ethical and political implications of attempts to represent trauma in performance, especially in relation to performing, spectatorship and community formation. Ranging from the mainstream to the fringe, key performances discussed include Gregory Doran’s Titus Andronicus (1995) for Johannesburg’s Market Theatre; Don C. Selwyn’s New Zealand-made film, The Maori Merchant of Venice (2001); Philip Osment’s appropriation of The Tempest in This Island’s Mine for London’s Gay Sweatshop (1988); and Nicholas Hytner’s Henry V (2003) for the National Theatre in London.

The Oxford Handbooks to Shakespeare are designed to record past and present investigations and renewed and revised judgments by both familiar and younger Shakespeare specialists. Each of these volumes is edited by one or more internationally distinguished Shakespeareans; together, they comprehensively survey the entire field. Shakespearean performance criticism has firmly established itself as a discipline accessible to scholars and general readers alike. And just as performances of the plays expand audiences' understanding of how Shakespeare speaks to them, so performance criticism is continually shifting the contours of the discipline. The 36 contributions in this volume represent the most current approaches to Shakespeare in performance. They are divided into four parts. Part I explores how experimental modes of performance ensure Shakespeare's contemporaneity. Part II tackles the burgeoning field of reception: how and why audiences respond to performances as they do. Part III addresses the ways in which technology has revolutionized our access to Shakespeare, both through the mediums of film and sound recording and through digitalization. Part IV grapples with 'global' Shakespeare, considering matters of cultural appropriation in productions played for international audiences. Together, these ground-breaking essays attest to the richness and diversity of Shakespearean performance criticism as it is practiced today

This volume analyzes early modern cultural representations of children and childhood through the literature and drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Contributors include leading international scholars of the English Renaissance whose essays consider asexuals and sodomites, roaring girls and schoolboys, precocious princes and raucous tomboys, boy actors and female apprentices, while discussing a broad array of topics, from animal studies to performance theory, from queer time to queer fat, from teaching strategies to casting choices, and from metamorphic sex changes to rape and cannibalism. The collection interrogates the cultural and historical contingencies of childhood in an effort to expose, theorize, historicize, and explicate the spectacular queerness of early modern dramatic depictions of children.

Next I pick up the theme of the child as emblem of futurity and analyse how three productions of Titus Andronicus have attempted to account for the two children and their indeterminate futures, revealing a more general shift in attitudes towards childhood. In the final chapter I address the question of what childhood scholars call 'the disappearance of childhood' through an analysis of three productions of The Winter's Tale. I look in particular at Mamillius and the ways in which directors account for his absence in the final scene of reconciliation and redemption. The representation of Mamillius in these productions is, I argue, symptomatic of a wider societal problem and one which recurs throughout this thesis: the elision of the boundary between adulthood and childhood and the prospect of a childhood that is disappearing altogether.

Shakespeare wrote for a theater in which the audience was understood to be, and at times invited to be, active and participatory. How have Shakespeare’s audiences, from the sixteenth century to the present, responded to that invitation? In what ways have consumers across different cultural contexts, periods, and platforms engaged with the performance of Shakespeare’s plays? What are some of the different approaches taken by scholars today in thinking about the role of Shakespeare's audiences and their relationship to performance? The chapters in this collection use a variety of methods and approaches to explore the global history of audience experience of Shakespearean performance in theater, film, radio, and digital media. The approaches that these contributors take look at Shakespeare’s audiences through a variety of lenses, including theater history, dramaturgy, film studies, fan studies, popular culture, and performance. Together, they provide both close studies of particular moments in the history of Shakespeare’s audiences and a broader understanding of the various, often complex, connections between and among those audiences across the long history of Shakespearean performance.

The Shakespearean World takes a global view of Shakespeare and his works, especially their afterlives. Constantly changing, the Shakespeare central to this volume has acquired an array of meanings over the past four centuries. "Shakespeare" signifies the historical person, as well as the plays and verse attributed to him. It also signifies the attitudes towards both author and works determined by their receptions. Throughout the book, specialists aim to situate Shakespeare’s world and what the world is because of him. In adopting a global perspective, the volume arranges thirty-six chapters in five parts: Shakespeare on stage internationally since the late seventeenth century; Shakespeare on film throughout the world; Shakespeare in the arts beyond drama and performance; Shakespeare in everyday life; Shakespeare and critical practice. Through its coverage, The Shakespearean World offers a comprehensive transhistorical and international view of the ways this Shakespeare has not only influenced but has also been influenced by diverse cultures during 400 years of performance, adaptation, criticism, and citation. While each chapter is a freshly conceived introduction to a significant topic, all of the chapters move beyond the level of survey, suggesting new directions in Shakespeare studies – such as ecology, tourism, and new media – and making substantial contributions to the field. This volume is an essential resource for all those studying Shakespeare, from beginners to advanced specialists.