Shakespeare's Theater of Presence: Language, Spectacle, and the Audience

by Sidney Homan

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253 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1986

Reviews

[Candy Wood]

Though Sidney Homan insists that his method in this book adds “more practical performance criticism” to the “more theoretical metadramatic approach” of his earlier When the Theater Turns to Itself, his focus is firmly on the language of the plays. The only specific performance of a Shakespeare play even mentioned is Kozintsev’s film of King Lear, and he doesn’t explore how performance influences the audience’s response to any play. Still, the discussions of eleven plays offer many insights into language and the role of interpretation both onstage and off, and Homan engages with many previous commentators, as documented in forty pages of endnotes. His own language is mostly free of theoretical jargon, and anyone interested in thinking about the plays could enjoy the book.