Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage

Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage is the first major work to explore and analyse the popular ''extra-theatrical'' performances in late medieval and Renaissance England. This wider heterogeneous category of early modern performance included puppetry, fireworks shows, rope dancing, minstrelsy, performing animals, games, civic drama, court masques, university drama, morris dances, and ceremonial rituals, all taking place in a variety of venues.The volume reveals how these extra-theatrical productions shaped urban and rural life and conveyed a sense of spectacular excess, of exceeding traditional genres, conventional modes of performance and the typical bounds of theatrical space. The spaces where medieval and early modern drama flourished include pageant carts, convents, private homes, universities, waterways, and the streets of both urban and rural communities. Much like public theatres, these performance spaces also played a pivotal role in articulating individual, communal, and national aspirations. Spanning the medieval period to the late 17th century, this volume engages with questions of spatiality, gender, religion, transcontinental exchanges, and colonialism, presenting the latest research from scholars across the globe.>

Préface
The first major work to explore and analyse the popular 'extra-theatrical' performances which occurred in late medieval and Renaissance England.

Auteur
Amrita Sen is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calcutta, India. She is co-editor of Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (2020), and a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on Alternative Histories of the East India Company (2017). Jennifer Linhart Wood is the author of Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel: Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive (2019), winner of the 2021 MRDS David Bevington Award for Best New Book.

Texte du rabat
Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage is the first major work to explore and analyse the popular 'extra-theatrical' performances in late medieval and Renaissance England. This wider heterogeneous category of early modern performance included puppetry, fireworks shows, rope dancing, minstrelsy, performing animals, games, civic drama, court masques, university drama, morris dances, and ceremonial rituals, all taking place in a variety of venues. The volume reveals how these extra-theatrical productions shaped urban and rural life and conveyed a sense of spectacular excess, of exceeding traditional genres, conventional modes of performance and the typical bounds of theatrical space. The spaces where medieval and early modern drama flourished include pageant carts, convents, private homes, universities, waterways, and the streets of both urban and rural communities. Much like public theatres, these performance spaces also played a pivotal role in articulating individual, communal, and national aspirations. Spanning the medieval period to the late 17th century, this volume engages with questions of spatiality, gender, religion, transcontinental exchanges, and colonialism, presenting the latest research from scholars across the globe.

Contenu
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Amrita Sen and Jennifer Linhart Wood, 'All the World's A Stage': Extra-Theatrical Performances and Dramatic Spaces Beyond the Public Theatres I. Documents of Performance 1. Philip Butterworth (University of Leeds, UK), 'Stage Directions in the Medieval English Theatre: Function and Transition' 2. Daniel Yabut (French National Centre for Scientific Research, France), 'Acting a Part: What Can the University Actors' Manuscript Roles Tell Us about Early Modern Performance?' 3. Natalia Pikli (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary), 'Oxford and the Morris Dance: University and Communal Performances' 4. Emma Poltrack (Folger Shakespeare Library, USA), 'Edward Dering's Amateur Theatricals' II. Devotional Performances 5. Liv Robinson (University of Birmingham, UK), 'Recreation, Pleasure and Performance in the Medieval Convent' 6. Chelsea McKelvey (Auburn University, USA), 'Closet Catholicism, Private Entertainments, and Shakespeare in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire' 7. Samantha Arten (Washington University in St. Louis, USA) and Anne Heminger (University of Tampa, USA), 'Performing Religious Reform in the Tudor Parish Church' III. Musical Performances 8. Csilla Virag (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary), 'Local Community and Performativity: The Tutbury Minstrel Court' 9. Murat Ögütcü (Munzur University, Turkey), 'Tuning Shakespeare's As You Like It for Court Performance' 10. Sarah Williams (University of South Carolina, USA), 'Memory, Music, and Forgotten Entertainments in Early Modern London' IV. Political Entertainments 11. Siobhan Keenan (De Montfort University, UK), 'The King's Men and London's Civic Drama: The example of Richard Burbage and London's Love to the Royal Prince Henry (1610)' 12. Gabriel Lonsberry (Purdue University, USA), 'Prince Henry's Investiture and the Splintering of the Stuart Court Stage' 13. Effie Botonaki (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), 'The Masques of Charles I and Henrietta Maria: Re-Visioning Patriarchal Rule' 14. Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University, USA), 'Entertaining Encounters: Indian-Settler Performances in Seventeenth-Century British North America' V. Materialities of Performance 15. Emma Kraus (Mary Baldwin University, USA), 'Under Pretence of Rope Dancing: Headlining Performances at the Interregnum Red Bull' 16. Nicole Sheriko (Christ's College, University of Cambridge, UK), 'Pageant Puppetry and the Aesthetics of Englishness' 17. Souvik Mukherjee (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, India), 'Performing Play: Chess, Performance, and Spectacle in Early Modern England' VI. Spectacular Performances 18. Teresa Simone (Florida State University, USA), 'Performing Monkeys in Rococo France and England' 19. Maria Shmygol (University of Leeds, UK), 'Firework Drama: Pyrotechnic Performance in Jacobean London' 20. Abbie Weinberg (Folger Shakespeare Library, USA), 'Early Modern Performative Failures' Notes Select Bibliography Index