What do you think?
Rate this book
Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play
Chapter headings Mysteries and The Audience as Actor; The Period of Classical Comedy and the Hybrid Plays; The World and the Stage; The Play Image in the Early Work of Shakespeare; The Player King; The Power of Illusion; The Cheapening of the and From Resemblance to The Final Plays.
- GenresNonfictionShakespeare
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 1977
23 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 16, 2024
While a bit dated in places (fair enough, it was written 50 years ago), this book puts the theatrical references in Shakespeare into an interesting argument and makes you look afresh at what Shakespeare is doing with that language.
The really useful bit is the first quarter, where it's looking at pre-Shakespearean English drama, in a way that summarises, points out and illuminates, and also includes stuff that I had never heard of.
The really useful bit is the first quarter, where it's looking at pre-Shakespearean English drama, in a way that summarises, points out and illuminates, and also includes stuff that I had never heard of.
July 13, 2008
In spite of any number of things (my pitiful personal knowledge of drama and Shakespeare's work, my internet-ravaged attention span...) I rather enjoyed this book.
Particularly interesting to me was the account of the alterations that drama underwent in the lead-up to the Shakespearean period, from the Mystery Cycles to the Morality Plays, and the struggle that dramatists faced in trying to work out where the audience should place in the worlds they created.
For this the chapter entitled "the tyrrany of the audience" makes particularly interesting reading - I did not realise how conflicted these writers were in attempting to find some pretext to explain why the scenes they'd devised might include a hundred spectators.
The first half of the book traces the development of the audience role in english drama prior to the Elizebethans, with the second half discussing how the idea of the play was presented by Shakespeare himself.
The contributing influences of medieval traditions, classical dramatists such as Plautine and Terence, and the incoming Morality writers are brought together skilfully by Righter, who makes sense of them and explains in a way even this layman can understand! Ultimately this gives us the prerequisite understanding of how Elizabethan audiences were treated and interacted with, before we tackle the work of The Bard himself.
While the details of how Shakespeare's characters reflected on the ideas of actors and their own myriad deceptions and 'counterfeits' are no doubt interesting, I flagged somewhat, as these would be better suited to someone with more knowledge of Shakespeare than myself. However, Righter has enthusiasm for her subject, and it does make me want to read these plays she's referring to.
Even as it gets more specific this half does continue to sum up the changes in Shakespeare's writing as it goes, raising interesting questions - for example, why does Shakespeare's attitude towards theatre and acting alter so radically following Hamlet?
While this book will doubtless be of more interest to people who know more than myself about Shakespeare's plays, nevertheless I felt that it provided an interesting general insight into the 'Idea of the Play' in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a good place to start a further investigation into Shakespeare.
Particularly interesting to me was the account of the alterations that drama underwent in the lead-up to the Shakespearean period, from the Mystery Cycles to the Morality Plays, and the struggle that dramatists faced in trying to work out where the audience should place in the worlds they created.
For this the chapter entitled "the tyrrany of the audience" makes particularly interesting reading - I did not realise how conflicted these writers were in attempting to find some pretext to explain why the scenes they'd devised might include a hundred spectators.
The first half of the book traces the development of the audience role in english drama prior to the Elizebethans, with the second half discussing how the idea of the play was presented by Shakespeare himself.
The contributing influences of medieval traditions, classical dramatists such as Plautine and Terence, and the incoming Morality writers are brought together skilfully by Righter, who makes sense of them and explains in a way even this layman can understand! Ultimately this gives us the prerequisite understanding of how Elizabethan audiences were treated and interacted with, before we tackle the work of The Bard himself.
While the details of how Shakespeare's characters reflected on the ideas of actors and their own myriad deceptions and 'counterfeits' are no doubt interesting, I flagged somewhat, as these would be better suited to someone with more knowledge of Shakespeare than myself. However, Righter has enthusiasm for her subject, and it does make me want to read these plays she's referring to.
Even as it gets more specific this half does continue to sum up the changes in Shakespeare's writing as it goes, raising interesting questions - for example, why does Shakespeare's attitude towards theatre and acting alter so radically following Hamlet?
While this book will doubtless be of more interest to people who know more than myself about Shakespeare's plays, nevertheless I felt that it provided an interesting general insight into the 'Idea of the Play' in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a good place to start a further investigation into Shakespeare.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews