English Renaissance Scenes

Alessandro Serpieri

ISBN 10: 3039110799 / ISBN 13: 9783039110797

Published by Verlag Peter Lang, CH, 2008

About this Item

This book throws new light on the complexity and variety of practices which may be defined as 'theatrical' in a broad sense in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama. The volume deals first with the mainstream of dramatic production, starting from the anti-theatrical debate which characterized the whole period and increased in intensity as it went on. Here Shakespeare and Ben Jonson come on stage with their rejoinders to this issue. At the same time, while the universities were offering a kind of theatre workshop importing Latin and Italian models, popular performances were being staged in non-theatrical spaces. Tournaments, and their aristocratic codes, are explored as well as more popular and 'marginal' spectacles - such as those of conny-catching improvisers, jugglers, gypsy dancers and fortune-tellers, clowns and prophetesses.

Seller Inventory # LU-9783039110797

Bibliographic Details

• Title: English Renaissance Scenes
• Publisher: Verlag Peter Lang, CH
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3039110799
• ISBN 13: 9783039110797
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 540 grams

About this title

Synopsis

This book throws new light on the complexity and variety of practices which may be defined as ‘theatrical’ in a broad sense in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English drama. The volume deals first with the mainstream of dramatic production, starting from the anti-theatrical debate which characterized the whole period and increased in intensity as it went on. Here Shakespeare and Ben Jonson come on stage with their rejoinders to this issue. At the same time, while the universities were offering a kind of theatre workshop importing Latin and Italian models, popular performances were being staged in non-theatrical spaces. Tournaments, and their aristocratic codes, are explored as well as more popular and ‘marginal’ spectacles – such as those of conny-catching improvisers, jugglers, gypsy dancers and fortune-tellers, clowns and prophetesses.

About the Author

The Editors: Paola Pugliatti is full professor of English at the University of Florence. Her interests are in the theory of literary genres, the mechanics of literary communication, the poetics of modernism, and the genetics of literary texts. Her latest book (Beggary and Theatre in Early Modern England, 2003) shows her interest in marginal forms of performance.
Alessandro Serpieri is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Florence. His main fields of interest are theory of drama, translation studies, Romantic and modern poetry. He has translated and edited many Shakespearean plays, which have been staged in the major Italian theatres, and has provided a rich commentary to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1991).