"This is a study of the dramatic use, treatment, and staging of performed 'discoveries' - actions which the theatre is uniquely able to exploit visually and explore verbally. The motif of discovery - in the now almost obsolete sense of uncovering or disclosing - is prominent in the language and action of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline plays. Visual discoveries are used repeatedly through the period by virtually every playwright, regardless of company or venue. These discoveries are of two different but related kinds: the disguise discovery - the removal of a disguise to uncover identity; and the discovery scene - the opening of curtains or doors to reveal a place or the removal of a lid or cover to effect a disclosure. This is the first analysis of staged discoveries as such; in it I show how and why these actions are essential to the way a play dramatizes and explores such interrelated matters as deception, privacy, secrecy, and truth; knowledge, justice, and renewal"--

This volume investigates the early modern understanding of twinship through new readings of plays, informed by discussions of twins appearing in such literature as anatomy tracts, midwifery manuals, monstrous birth broadsides, and chapbooks. The book contextualizes such dramatic representations of twinship, investigating contemporary discussions about twins in medical and popular literature and how such dialogues resonate with the twin characters appearing on the early modern stage. Garofalo demonstrates that, in this period, twin births were viewed as biologically aberrant and, because of this classification, authors frequently attempt to explain the phenomenon in ways which call into question the moral and constitutional standing of both the parents and the twins themselves. In line with current critical studies on pregnancy and the female body, discussions of twin births reveal a distrust of the mother and the processes surrounding twin conception; however, a corresponding suspicion of twins also emerges, which monstrous birth pamphlets exemplify. This book analyzes the representation of twins in early modern drama in light of this information, moving from tragedies through to comedies. This progression demonstrates how the dramatic potential inherent in the early modern understanding of twinship is capitalized on by playwrights, as negative ideas about twins can be seen transitioning into tragic and tragicomic depictions of twinship. However, by building toward a positive, comic representation of twins, the work additionally suggests an alternate interpretation of twinship in this period, which appreciates and celebrates twins because of their difference. The volume will be of interest to those studying Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in relation to the History of Emotions, the Body, and the Medical Humanities.

Early Modern Theatricality brings together some of the most innovative critics in the field to examine the many conventions that characterized early modern theatricality. It generates fresh possibilities for criticism, combining historical, formal, and philosophical questions, in order to provoke our rediscovery of early modern drama.

The way that characters in early modern theatrical performance think through their surroundings is important in our understanding of perception, memory, and other forms of embodied affective thought. This book explores this concept in dramatic works by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Jonson.

Recent performances of early modern plays are analysed in essays by practitioners and academics, featuring critical, pedagogical and practical approaches.

Analyzing Elizabethan and Jacobean playtexts for their spatial implications, this innovative study discloses the extent to which the resources and constraints of public playhouse buildings affected the construction of the fictional worlds of early modern plays. The study argues that playwrights were writing with foresight, inscribing the constraints and resources of the stages into their texts. It goes further, to posit that Shakespeare and his playwright-contemporaries adhered to a set of generic conventions, rather than specific local company practices, about how space and place were to be related in performance: the playwrights constituted thus an overarching virtual 'company' producing playtexts that shared features across the acting companies and playhouses. By clarifying a sixteenth- to seventeenth-century conception of theatrical place, Tim Fitzpatrick adds a new layer of meaning to our understanding of the plays. His approach adds a new dimension to these particular documents which–though many of them are considered of great literary worth–were not originally generated for any other reason than to be performed within a specific performance context. The fact that the playwrights were aware of the features of this performance tradition makes their texts a potential mine of performance information, and casts light back on the texts themselves: if some of their meanings are 'spatial', these will have been missed by purely literary tools of analysis.

Analyzing Elizabethan and Jacobean playtexts for their spatial implications, this innovative study discloses the extent to which the resources and constraints of public playhouse buildings affected the construction of the fictional worlds of early modern plays. The study argues that playwrights were writing with foresight, inscribing the constraints and resources of the stages into their texts. It goes further, to posit that Shakespeare and his playwright-contemporaries adhered to a set of generic conventions, rather than specific local company practices, about how space and place were to be related in performance: the playwrights constituted thus an overarching virtual 'company' producing playtexts that shared features across the acting companies and playhouses. By clarifying a sixteenth- to seventeenth-century conception of theatrical place, Tim Fitzpatrick adds a new layer of meaning to our understanding of the plays. His approach adds a new dimension to these particular documents which-though many of them are considered of great literary worth-were not originally generated for any other reason than to be performed within a specific performance context. The fact that the playwrights were aware of the features of this performance tradition makes their texts a potential mine of performance information, and casts light back on the texts themselves: if some of their meanings are 'spatial', these will have been missed by purely literary tools of analysis.

This volume considers Italy's history and examines how Italians became fascinated with the New World in the early modern period.

This dictionary, the first of its kind, defines and explains over 900 terms found in the stage directions of plays for the professional stage written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The authors draw on a database of over 22,000 stage directions drawn from around 500 plays. Each entry defines a term, gives examples of how it is used, cites additional instances, and gives cross-references to other relevant entries. This will be an indispensable work of reference for scholars, historians, directors and actors.

This study explores maternity in the 'disciplines' of early modern England. Placing the reproductive female body centre-stage in Shakespeare's theatre, Laoutaris ranges beyond the domestic sphere in order to recuperate the wider intellectual, epistemological, and archaeological significance of maternity to the Renaissance imagination. Focusing on 'anatomy' in Hamlet, 'natural history' in The Tempest, 'demonology' in Macbeth, and 'heraldry' in Antony and Cleopatra, this book reveals the ways in which the maternal body was figured in, and in turn contributed towards the re-conceptualisation of, bodies of knowledge. Laoutaris argues that Shakespeare resists a monolithic concept of motherhood, presenting instead a range of contested 'maternities' which challenge the distinctive 'ways of knowing' these early disciplines worked to impose on the order of created nature.