Shakespeare And Character: Theory, History, Performance And

Description:
'Character' is a word with enormous resonance in theatrical practice, performance criticism, and literary and historical scholarship. It is also a word in need of concerted, interdisciplinary re-articulation. Shakespeare and Character provides a theoretically, historically, theatrically and critically substantial account of character. One of the questions that the authors ask is, 'What is character?' To answer this central question - and to begin to provide a new critical vocabulary for character study - they examine the theory, history, formal properties, and the literary and performance possibilities of Shakespearean character as we;; as the bearing that 'theatrical persons' might have on the situation of actual people. They also emphasize the interrelationship between theory and the particular by connecting theories and histories of the idea of character to concrete, detailed accounts of particular characters as they emerge in the text and on the stage.

Table of Contents:
Contents Preface Notes on Contributors Introduction; P.Yachnin and J.Slights PART I: THEORY Confusing Shakespeare's Characters with Real People: Reflections on Reading in Four Questions; M.Bristol The Reality of Fictive Cinematic Characters; T.Ponech Character as Dynamic Identity: From Fictional Interaction Script to Performance; W.Dodd PART II: HISTORY Personnage: History, Philology, Performance; A.G.Bourassa The Properties of Character in King Lear; J.Berg Embodied Intersubjectivity and the Creation of Early Modern Character; L.Lieblein PART III: PERFORMANCE Metatheater and the Performance of Character in The Winter's Tale; P.Yachnin and M.W.Selkirk Character, Agency and the Familiar Actor; A.J.Hartley The Actor-Character in 'Secretly Open' Action: Doubly Encoded Personation on Shakespeare's Stage; R.Weimann PART IV: THEATRICAL PERSONS Is Timon a Character?; A.Dawson When is a bastard not a bastard? Character in King John; C.Slights Arming Cordelia: Character and Performance; S.Werner Bibliography Index

Author Biography:
PAUL YACHNIN is Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Chair of the English Department at McGill University, Canada, and Director of the Shakespeare and Performance Research Team and the Making Publics Project. His books are Stage-Wrights (1997); The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare's England (2001, with Anthony Dawson); and Shakespeare and the Cultures of Performance (2008, with Patricia Badir). He is an editor of Oxford Complete Works of Thomas Middleton. Work-in-progress includes an edition of Richard II and a book-length study, Shakespeare and the Social Thing: Making Publics in the Renaissance Theatre. JESSICA SLIGHTS is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of English at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has published on and lectured about various aspects of early modern literature and culture, and her work has appeared in English Studies in Canada, Studies in Philology and Studies in English Literature. She is currently preparing an edition of Othello for ISE/Broadview Press.