Journal articles on the topic 'Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre'

The continental expansion of the Elizabethan-Jacobean Theatre and the transnational influence of its drama attracted historical interest in the long 19th century, but the topic was then largely neglected for several decades in German-speaking areas for some decades, as a consequence of the war. The standstill in research, visible in the mass of out-dated standard literature, established the creation of numerous legends. A prime example which is examined here in close detail is the persistence of fictional biographical narratives relating to the English theatre director John Spencer. The trigger was a false Brandenburgish prince. An extensive concealed and interlinked control mechanism steered the “choreography of traveling people”* in the opening up of the continental theatre business: clientelism.

Recent feminist criticism has led to a reassessment of women's roles in the Elizabethan drama, especially in such ‘difficult’ plays asThe Taming of the Shrewor Shakespeare's problem comedies. Yet this has often been with an implicit belief in the appropriateness of ‘psychological’ or ‘interpretive’ approaches to character and gender quite alien to the period in which the plays were first performed. In the following article. Kathleen McLuskie. who teaches in the Department of Theatre at the University of Kent, looks at the different, often conflicting approaches to the sexuality of performance in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, at how these were reflected both in theatrical conventions and in contemporary attitudes to the plays and the ‘boy actresses’ – and at some possible implications for modern productions.

Sexuality resides in much more than what is spoken or even enacted, and its stage representation will often work best when the minds of the spectators are collaboratively engaged in completing the desired response. John Russell Brown, founding Head of Drama at the University of Birmingham and a former Associate Director of the National Theatre, here explores Shakespeare's arts of sexual obliquity, whether in silence, prevarication, or kindled imagination, and their relationship both with more direct forms of allusion and with an audience's response. John Russell Brown, currently Professor of Theatre at the University of Michigan, is author of numerous books on Shakespeare and modern drama, and editor of many Elizabethan and Jacobean texts – most recently a new edition of Shakespeare for Applause Books, New York.

The co-editors of New Theatre Quarterly take time out here to reflect on the milestone of the journal reaching its hundredth consecutive issue, in succession to the forty of the original Theatre Quarterly. Simon Trussler was one of the founding editors of the ‘old’ Theatre Quarterly in 1971. He is the author of numerous books on drama and theatre, including New Theatre Voices of the Seventies (1981), Shakespearean Concepts (1989), the award-winning Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre (1993), The Faber Guide to Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (2006), and Will's Will (2007). Formerly Reader in Drama in the University of London, he is now Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College. Maria Shevtsova, who has been co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly since 2003, is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts and Director of Graduate Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of more than one hundred articles and chapters in collected volumes, her books include Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004), Fifty Key Theatre Directors (co-edited with Shomit Mitter, 2005), Robert Wilson (2007), Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre (with Christopher Innes, 2009), and Sociology of Theatre and Performance (2009).

In the first part of this three-part series. Maria Shevtsova discussed the misconceptions and misplacement of emphases which have pervaded sociological approaches to theatre, and proposed her own methodology of study. Here, she examines in fuller detail two aspects of her taxonomy which have an existing sociological literature – looking first at dramatic theory, as perceived by its sociological interpreters from Duvignaud onwards and (perhaps more pertinently) backwards, to Gramsci and Brecht. She then considers approaches to dramatic texts and genres, especially as exemplified in the explication of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy. Finally, she explores the implications and assumptions of the relatively new discipline of ‘theatrical anthropology’, in which theatre is taken to be the prototype of society. Now teaching in the Department of French Studies at the University of Sydney, Maria Shevtsova trained in Paris before spending three years at the University of Connecticut. She has previously contributed to Modern Drama, Theatre International, and Theatre Papers, as well as to the original Theatre Quarterly and other journals.

A decade ago the analysis of the structure of the plays performed by the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline professional theatre companies, in order to discover patterns of doubling of the roles, seemed to hold considerable promise for further inquiry. D. M. Bevington's pioneering From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe and W. A. Ringler's article ‘The Number of Actors in Shakespeare's Early Plays’ offered direct evidence and tools for structural analysis, and were followed by important studies by Scott McMillin, Irwin Smith, and others. Nevertheless, since then interest in this area – and particularly in doubling on the seventeenth-century stage – seems to have declined. The assumption made explicitly by Bevington and implied by most other commentators has been that as the professional acting companies expanded their resources, found patrons, and increased the number of their liveried personnel, the frenetic doubling of the Tudor era became unnecessary. Apart from some unhurried doubling of very minor characters and extras, they believe this practice virtually disappeared from the Jacobean stage, rendering further investigation unnecessary. The small amount of direct evidence to the contrary, first noted by W. J. Lawrence in 1927, has been analysed as an interesting but aberrant phenomenon; occasional atavistic survivals in a more opulent and refined age whose taste was turning towards ‘realism’ in acting and production methods.

As the two articles following this amplify, whatever one's views of its intrinsic merits, J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan is open to a multiplicity of readings, and (notably since the RSC broke the mould in 1982) of stage interpretations – not to mention its co-option into Walt Disney's cartoon canon. Simon Trussler takes the play for a spin in such unaccustomed company as Romeo and Juliet and the almost contemporaneous ‘tragedy of childhood’ by Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening, exploring the theme it sustains of betrayed childhoods, surrogate parenting, and changing attitudes towards grown men sleeping with small boys – a magical experience for Barrie, but much less comfortable for the singer Michael Jackson in his ranch called…Neverland. Simon Trussler is Co-Editor of New Theatre Quarterly and presently Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College. His numerous books on drama and theatre include Shakespearean Concepts (Methuen, 1989), the award-winning Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre (1993), The Faber Pocket Guide to Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (2006), and Will's Will: the Lives and Last Wishes of William Shakespeare (National Archives, 2007).

Has the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford become an expensive irrelevance – actually hindering what should be the real work of the parent company, which has to expend so much of its cash and its energy in running it? Certainly, some were tempted to suggest so when the RSC's most exciting Shakespeare productions of the ‘seventies seemed to be emerging from the spartan environment of The Other Place. Now, Graham Holderness, through a detailed comparison of last season's main-house revival of The Taming of the Shrew and the Swan production of Titus Andronicus, argues that the creation of the Swan – a theatre space specifically but not ‘archeologically’ designed for Elizabethan and Jacobean plays – heightens the sense of a ‘contradictory relationship’ between the RSC's two ‘classical’ houses in Stratford. Graham Holderness, author of several studies in the fields of Renaissance drama and the modern novel, is presently Head of Drama at Roehampton Institute.

Abstract This study is principally concerned with the staging of Aristophanes’ Peace. John Dee (1527-1609) was the first person to design a clever stage-effect for Greek drama, Aristophanes’ Peace, and made a giant beetle that could move from the air down to the stage. The nature and status of stage directions in this play will also be investigated, paying particular attention to the status of stage directions in printed text, and whether these stage directions were originally written by the playwright himself or were revised or supplied by editors, scriveners or members of the theatre companies. The paper will also evaluate how the technology of the Elizabethan playhouse facilitated the appearance of dung-beetle on stage. There was a great demand in the Elizabethan era for plays about spectacular tricks. People at that time were delighted in the dexterity of the supernatural mysteriousness of the magician and witches, and moreover there was a popular appetite for spectacles within such a play. One of the most widespread themes in legend and Elizabethan stage is the flying of supernatural entities. Dragons and dung-beetles are physically manifested differently on Elizabethan stage compared to Medieval and Jacobean stages. Flying of dragons and beetles had a remarkable fiery effect in theatre to create a new genre of spectacle in presenting princely power and martial values to the audience. The special effect of John Dee’s flying scarab for a Cambridge performance of Aristophanes’ Peace also prompted ‘great wondering and many vain reports spread abroad of the means how that was effected’ (Jefferies, 2011). In Aristophanes’ Peace, Trygaeus rides on the back of a giant dung beetle to the heaven in order to arrange peace for the Greeks. The flight scene offers an element of slapstick comedy to the play and makes a comical history out of the flight of the giant beetle. John Dee’s stage directions in Aristophanes’ Peace are very elaborate and clear which help the reader imagine how the play was staged (Hall & Wrigley, 2007). The findings of this study would be beneficial for the researchers, the students of English department and theatre companies.

Just as politics can be analysed as a cultural and symbolic enterprise (that is, as theatre in the broadest sense), so too can theatre or opera (in a narrower sense) be analysed as political. Jonathan Dollimore identifies various conflicting processes at work in Renaissance English theatre: the ‘consolidation’ of power by a dominant order; the ‘subversion of that order’ and the ‘containment of ostensibly subversive pressures’. We need not accept Dollimore's essentially Marxist analysis of these processes in order to recognise the validity of his assertion that ‘the theatre [is] a prime location for the representation and legitimation of power’. But the way such power is consolidated, subverted or contained depends on the political and social systems in which the theatre operates. The issues are complex enough when one focuses on plays produced in Elizabethan or Jacobean London. They become even more difficult to sort out when single works or groups of related works are performed over a period of time in various locations, each with its own societal configuration, as in the different political entities that comprised the Italian peninsula during the first half of the nineteenth century (to which might be added the other European and even American audiences to which they were played). Under such circumstances, how can we measure the political implications of these works? Where does their meaning reside? How does that meaning change as a function of time or geography?

In the many discussions of the different shapes and capacities of the playhouses of Elizabethan and Jacobean London, insufficient attention has been paid to the impact of differing theatre forms upon the spectators. In this article, Andrew Gurr points out that the first Globe on Bankside, built from the timbers of the Theatre in Shoreditch, and the Fortune, erected for Henslowe's company on the other side of the river, just to the north of the City, were both the work of the same builder, Peter Street. He discusses the differences the shapes of the two playhouses – the Globe polygonal, the Fortune square – had on their construction and the spectators’ reception. Because the audience capacity had to be similar, this meant that spectators at the Fortune, especially latecomers, would need to squeeze into corners of the building, with their ability to see and hear what was happening on stage much restricted. In addition to his many books, among them the now classic study, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 (1992), Andrew Gurr was chief academic advisor in the ‘rebuilding’ of Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Reading.

Over the past twenty years or so, performance-based efforts to recreate the staging conditions and production modes of Elizabethan/Jacobean playhouses through “original practices” (OP) have developed at a considerable rate. One has only to note the popular appeal of theatre companies working from Early Modern architectural replicas (like London's Bankside Globe or Virginia's Blackfriars) to recognize the pervasive influence of the “reconstructive Shakespeare” movement on our understanding and interpretation of Renaissance drama. Yet, as the name would suggest, the movement is too often grounded in a performance aesthetic predicated solely on Shakespeare's playtexts (indeed, for many, the 1623 Folio is followed with a near religious fervor). But truth be told, other playwright/practitioners of the era have far more to say on the matter of staging verse drama than Shakespeare, and made a point of publishing their thoughts directly through prefatory material, commendatory verses, pamphlets, etc. Fletcher and Heywood immediately come to mind, but this paper will focus on the most prolific critic of the period, Ben Jonson. Not to be overshadowed by the numerous commemorations of Shakespeare's death, 2016 also marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of Jonson's landmark First Folio, and a brief review of his 1616 Workes should provide ample occasion to challenge several of the “original practices” championed by bardocentric theatre companies and their educational auxiliaries.

This article examines the ramifications of the hypothesis that encoded in the dialogue of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre texts are precise indications for the actors as to then-entrance and exit points, and that such indications constitute a stage management system, a dramaturgical system and a system of spatial semiotics which might invest these movement patterns with thematic or semiotic significance. Such a suggestion, that we may be able to access a range of ‘spatial’ meanings from an understanding of original performance conditions, is likely to be viewed with some scepticism by Shakespearian scholars of a literary orientation, so strong is the word-based tradition of analysis and interpretation. Yet this is the suggestion that underlies this work: that, complementing the verbal signification of the texts there may also be a verbally inscribed spatial semiotic which provides an additional range of meanings—and that such possible semiotic functions ride upon pragmatic stage management patterns which governed entrances and exits and the rhythms of the original performance context. It is argued that when the texts are interrogated in this light they reveal precise, consistent and coherent traces of such systematic indications in regard to the onstage-offstage spatial relationships operating in performance.

For Shakespearean scholars, the subject of scent in his work has remained relatively lukewarm to discussion. Shakespeare’s use of smell is not only equal to that of his other senses, but smell’s uniquely historical record both on and off the stage illuminate his works in more ways than currently perceived. Shakespeare’s usage of smell is found throughout his works, and their importance on the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean stage present a playwright-director that was exceptionally in-tune with his audiences on the page and in person. Positioned at this culturally significant point in Shakespeare’s career, one work’s utilization of scent textually and theatrically fully explicates the importance of odor in a societal, racial, and domestic capacity: Othello. This article explores and establishes the importance of smell in relation to textual Othello, his “dyed in mummy” handkerchief, and Desdemona in the written tragedy. Additionally, it studies the heighted focus of smell in Othello on a metatheatric level for Shakespeare on his early modern stage, calling attention to the myriad of odors contained in and around his Renaissance theatre and the result effect this awareness would have had on his contemporary audiences in their experience of Othello as a uniquely smell-oriented show.

Ants Oras’s contribution to the study of early modern English dramatic verse is of enduring value. In 1956 his article on extra monosyllables in Henry VIII gave much needed support to the view that both this play of the Shakespeare First Folio (1623) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (first published in a quarto of 1634) were works in which Shakespeare had collaborated with John Fletcher. Oras’s Pause Patterns in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1960), with its huge amount of quantitative data and readily intelligible graphs, greatly enhanced understanding of how blank verse developed from the 1580s to the closing of the London theatres in 1642. Moreover, use of Oras’s techniques of analysis has continued to throw light on questions of chronology and authorship surrounding Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights. Among plays illuminated in this way have been The Revenger’s Tragedy, Pericles, Thomas of Woodstock, Sir Thomas More, and Arden of Faversham.

This article explores the Duel Scene (Scene 9, 99-277 (II.iii)) in Thomas Middleton's play The Phoenix (1607) in light of cognitive metephor theory. In reading this scene alongside the cultural and social changes in Elizabethan and Jacobean legal discourse, the mutual exchange of influence to both legal and political language and to drama and the theatre. The specific use of metaphoric blended spaces opens up for a combined linguistic and historical analysis.

To re-imagine can, at one extreme, be a casual thought (what if I moved all the furniture in the living room?) and, at the other, re-imagining can be a complex process (what if I adapt a classic text into a major film?). There is a long history of working with the ideas of others and of re-working our own ideas. Of taking a concept and re-imagining it into something that is similar to the original and yet offers something new. Such re-imaginations are all around us; from the various interpretations of the Sherlock Holmes stories to the adjustments made, often over generations, to family recipes. Some of these efforts are the result of a creative drive to experiment and push boundaries, some efforts are inspired by changes in society or technology, yet others will be born of a sense of 'this can be done better' or 'done differently'. Essentially, to re-imagine is to ask questions, to interrogate that which is often taken for granted. This issue of M/C Journal seeks to explore the 'why' and the 'how' of re-imagining both the everyday and the extraordinary. In a reflection of the scale and scope of the potential to re-imagine all that is around us, this issue is particularly diverse. The contributions offer explorations into varied disciplines, use a range of methodological lenses, and deploy different writing styles. To this end we present a range of articles—some of which contain quite challenging content—that cover copyright, crime fiction, the stage, the literary brand and film, horror and children’s film, television, military-inspired fashion, and a piece that focuses on events leading up to September 11, 2001. We then present three, quite different, works that explore various aspects of Australian Indigenous culture and history. We begin with our feature article: “‘They’re creepy and they’re kooky’ and They’re Copyrighted: How Copyright Is Used to Dampen the (Re-)Imagination”. In this work Steve Collins explores important issues of copyright in the re-imagining and re-purposing of content. In particular, this article unpacks—using examples from the United States—how copyright legislation can restrict the activities of creative practitioners, across varied fields, and so adds to the debate on copyright reform. In our lead article “The Re-imagining Inherent in Crime Fiction Translation”, by Alistair Rolls, ideas of re-imagination, language, and the world’s most popular genre—crime fiction—are critically appraised. Rolls looks at a suite of issues around imagining original and re-imagining, through translation, crime fiction texts. These two forms of creativity are essential to the genre's development for, as Rolls notes, this type of fiction was born, “simultaneously in France and America but also in the translation zone between the two.” Amy Antonio re-imagines the femme fatale. Antonio acknowledges the centrality of the femme fatale to the noir tradition and re-imagines this iconic figure by positioning her on the Renaissance stage, explaining how the historical factors that precipitated the emergence of the noir femme fatale in the years following World War II, similarly existed in the sixteenth century and, as a result, the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. The articles in this issue turn from fiction, to theatre, and then to film with Leonie Rutherford embarking on a “Re-imagining the Brand” exercise. Through two, very informative, case studies—Adventures of Tin Tin and Silver, Return to Treasure Island—Rutherford engages with issues of re-imagining classic literary texts as big-screen blockbusters. This article addresses some of the complexities associated with the updating “of classic texts [that] require interpretation and the negotiation of subtle changes in values that have occurred since the creation of the ‘original’.” Erin Hawley also looks at film, through a lens of horror, in “Re-imagining the Horror Genre in Children’s Animated Film”. Hawley explores how animated films have always been an ambiguous space “in terms of age, pleasure, and viewership.” Hawley goes on to challenge common assumptions that “animation itself is often a signifier of safety, fun, nostalgia, and childishness; it is a means of addressing families and young audiences” and outlines how animation complements horror where, “the fantastic and transformative aspects of animation can be powerful tools for telling stories that are dark, surprising, or somehow subversive.” Issues of the small screen, and social media, are reviewed by Karin van Es, Daniela van Geenen, and Thomas Boeschoten in their work of “Re-imagining Television Audience Research on Twitter”. In particular, this work highlights issues with how audience research is undertaken and argues for new ways forward that adapt to the changing viewing landscape: one that features social media as an increasingly important tool for people to engage with more traditional types of entertainment. Fashion, too, features within this special issue with the work Emerald L. King and Denise N. Rall, “Re-imagining the Empire of Japan through Japanese Schoolboy Uniforms”. King and Rall present their research into the significant re-imagining of Japanese cultural and national identities, which are explored in this work through the cataclysmic impact of Western ideologies on Japanese cultural traditions. The idea of re-imagining is challenged by Meg Stalcup through her article “What If? Re-imagined Scenarios and the Re-virtualisation of History” which looks at several events that took place in the lead up to September 11, 2001. Several of the men who would become 9/11 hijackers were stopped for minor traffic violations. Police officers in the United States replayed these incidents of contact, yet their questioning “what if?” asked not only if those moments could have revealed the plot of that traumatic day, but also places alternate scenarios into play. John C. Ryan, Danielle Brady, and Christopher Kueh guide us through a geographical re-imagining of one of Australia’s capital cities in “Where Fanny Balbuk Walked: Re-imagining Perth’s Wetlands through Digital Modelling”. This re-imagining of a major city’s natural environment calls “attention to past indiscretions while invigorating future possibilities.” Moreover, this work highlights the value of re-imagining a city anew as well as re-imagining the original after a process of considerable change. Rachel Franks traces the history of an effort to communicate the concept of equality under the law, to the Indigenous peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), in “A True Crime Tale: Re-imagining Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Board for the Tasmanian Aborigines”. This article provides an overview of some of the various re-imaginings of this Board—including the re-imagining of the Board’s history—and also offers a new re-imagination of this curious, colonial object; positing that the Board serves as an early “pamphlet” on justice and punishment. Brooke Collins-Gearing, Vivien Cadungog, Sophie Camilleri, Erin Comensoli, Elissa Duncan, Leitesha Green, Adam Phillips, and Rebecca Stone take a very different, and rather creative, approach to re-imagining with “Listenin’ Up: Re-Imagining Ourselves through Stories of and from Country” a work that explores Western discourses of education; and looks at ways to engage with Aboriginal knowledge through the pedagogical and personal act of listening. These authors attempt to re-imagine “the institutionalised space of our classroom through a dialogic pedagogy.” These articles are, necessarily, brief. Yet, each work does provide insight into various aspects of the re-imagining process while offering new perspectives on how re-imagining takes place—in material culture, learning practices, or in all important media re-interpretations of the world around us. We extend our thanks to our contributors. We thank, too, all those who engaged in the blind peer review process. We sincerely appreciate the efforts of those who offered their expertise and their time as well as offering valuable comments on a wide range of contributions. Rachel Franks, Simon Dwyer, and Denise N. RallEditors