Documents of Performance in Early Modern England
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 9/17/2009
EAN 9780521842372, ISBN10: 0521842379
Hardcover, 378 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
As well as 'play-makers' and 'poets', playwrights of the early modern period were known as 'play-patchers' because their texts were made from separate documents. This book is the first to consider all the papers created by authors and theatres by the time of the opening performance, recovering types of script not previously known to have existed. With chapters on plot-scenarios, arguments, playbills, prologues and epilogues, songs, staged scrolls, backstage-plots and parts, it shows how textually distinct production was from any single unified book. And, as performance documents were easily lost, relegated or reused, the story of a play's patchy creation also becomes the story of its co-authorship, cuts, revisions and additions. Using a large body of fresh evidence, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England brings a wholly new reading to printed and manuscript playbooks of the Shakespearean period, redefining what a play, and what a playwright, actually is.
Introduction
playwrights as play-patchers
1. Plot-scenarios
2. Playbills and title-pages
3. 'Arguments' in playhouse and book
4. Prologues, epilogues, interim entertainments
5. Songs and masques
6. Scrolls
7. Backstage plots
8 and 9. The approved 'book' and actors' parts
Conclusion
repatching the play.
'This revelatory work of original scholarship will have a seminal impact on the study of early modern drama, on the editing of plays, and on studies of dramatic authorship.' Stanley Wells