Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare's Theatre

H?fele, Andreas

ISBN 10: 0199567646 / ISBN 13: 9780199567645

Published by OUP Oxford, 2011

About this Item

In Shakespeare's London, the stage of the playhouse, the stake of the bear baiting arena, and the scaffold of public execution constituted an ensemble of related spectacles that shared the same audiences. Andreas Hofele argues that this generated a powerful exchange of images and a spill-over of animal features into Shakespeare's characters. Num Pages: 336 pages, 11 black-and-white halftones. BIC Classification: DSBD; DSGS; HBLH; JHMC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 238 x 158 x 30. Weight in Grams: 650. . 2011. Illustrated. hardcover. . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780199567645

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare's Theatre
• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199567646
• ISBN 13: 9780199567645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The powerful exchanges between stage, stake, and scaffold - the theatre, the bear garden and the spectacle of public execution - crucially informed Shakespeare's explorations into the construction and workings of 'the human'. The theatre's family resemblance to animal baiting and the spectacle of punishment, its sharing of the same basic type of performance space - a theatre-in-the-round, a scaffold, stake or platform surrounded by spectators - bred an ever-ready potential for a transfer of images and meanings. The staging of one of these kinds of performance is always framed by an awareness of the other two, whose presence is never quite erased and often, indeed, emphatically foregrounded. Situating Shakespearean drama within its material environment, Andreas Hofele explores how this spill-over affects the way Shakespeare models his human characters and his understanding of 'human character' in general. His dramatis personae are infused with a degree of animality that a later, more specifically Cartesian, anthropology would categorically efface. Readings based on such an anthropology tend to reduce Shakespeare's teeming multitude of animal references to a stable marker of moral, social, and ontological difference, 'beast' being everything 'man' is not or ought not to be. In contrast, Hofele argues that Shakespearean notions of humanity rely just as much on inclusion as on exclusion of the animal. Humans and animals face each other across the species divide, but the divide proves highly permeable.

About the Author

Andreas Hofele is Professor of English at Munich University. His publications include books on Shakespeare's stagecraft, late 19th-century parody and on Malcolm Lowry, as well as numerous articles on Renaissance and 20th-century themes and six novels. He is a member of the Heidelberg and of the Bavarian Academies of Science and President of the German Shakespeare Society.