Shakespeare's Double Plays: Dramatic Economy on the Early Modern Stage
Cambridge University Press, 5/3/2018
EAN 9781108417433, ISBN10: 1108417434
Hardcover, 300 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
In the first comprehensive study of how Shakespeare designed his plays to suit his playing company, Brett Gamboa demonstrates how Shakespeare turned his limitations to creative advantage, and how doubling roles suited his unique sense of the dramatic. By attending closely to their dramaturgical structures, Gamboa analyses casting requirements for the plays Shakespeare wrote for the company between 1594 and 1610, and describes how using the embedded casting patterns can enhance their thematic and theatrical potential. Drawing on historical records, dramatic theory, and contemporary performance this innovative work questions received ideas about early modern staging and provides scholars and contemporary theatre practitioners with a valuable guide to understanding how casting can help facilitate audience engagement. Supported by an appendix of speculative doubling charts for plays, illustrations, and online resources, this is a major contribution to the understanding of Shakespeare's dramatic craft.
Introduction
1. 'Improbable fictions'
Shakespeare's plays without the plays
2. Versatility and verisimilitude on sixteenth-century stages
3. Doubling in The Winter's Tale
4. Dramaturgical directives and Shakespeare's cast size
5. Doubling in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet
6. 'What, are they children?'
Reconsidering Shakespeare's boy actors
7. Doubling in Twelfth Night and Othello
Epilogue
ragozine and Shakespearean substitution
Appendix
doubling roles in Shakespeare's plays.