This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance, Then and Now

by David Bevington

Many readers first encounter Shakespeare’s plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So what do we lose when we leave Shakespeare the practitioner behind, and what do we learn when we think about his plays as dramas to be performed?             David Bevington answers these questions with This Wide and Universal Theater , which explores how Shakespeare’s plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. Making use of historical documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington brings Shakespeare’s original stagings to life. He explains how the Elizabethan playhouse conveyed a sense of place using minimal scenery, from the Forest of Arden in As You Like It to the tavern in Henry IV, Part I . Moving beyond Shakespeare’s lifetime, Bevington shows the prodigious lengths to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century companies went to produce spectacular effects, from flying witches in Macbeth to terrifying storms punctuating King Lear. To bring the book into the present, Bevington considers recent productions on both stage and screen, when character and language have taken precedence over spectacle. This volume brings a lifetime of study to bear on a remarkably underappreciated aspect of Shakespeare’s art. “An eminent Shakespeare scholar and author, Bevington offers a concise, lucid, and unique overview of the history of Shakespeare in various modes of performance, from stage to film to television.”— Choice “Even veteran Shakespeareans will profit from the varied reminders of how important performance and staging have always been to the interpretation of the plays.”— Renaissance Quarterly  

Genres: Shakespeare

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2007

About the author

David Bevington was an American literary scholar.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening chapters show promise as Bevington digs into the physical spaces that Shakespeare originally performed in, and how his writing was specifically designed for his company and his stage. It loses steam as we move from practical stagecraft into discussions that primarily discuss metatheatricality instead of stagecraft. His overview of particular performances can be worthwhile, but too much time is spent in each chapter repeating the same general arc of Shakespearean staging in the 19th and 20th centuries - from opulence to minimalism.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introductory material in the Arden plays is often very good with respect to the performance history of each play, as well as some original stagecraft notes. The problem (if there is one) is that the sheer volume of material can be overwhelming. This volume is a nice alternative in that it’s relatively slim, but hits on many of the salient points that are made elsewhere in exhausting detail. Unfortunately, it reads like something written by a professor for his undergraduates; as such, it doesn’t really “jump off the page.” After a few chapters my enthusiasm began to flag. The template used for each section became repetitive and lacked surprises. In any event, it was good to have another take on the plays… but I was hoping for a more original take on the ever-evolving manifestations of Shakespeare’s stagecraft.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the performance of Shakespeare's plays might seem like a dry or arcane subject, but actually it allows Shakespeare scholar and master lecturer Bevington to give a capsule overview of how nearly every individual play works in the theater and the inventive ways Shakespeare used and played with how theater works. In particular it's fascinating how many of his plays have a writer character, managing and controlling everything that goes on (or at least attempting to). Everyone notices Prospero, or Hamlet doing this, but it's far more common than that (Iago, Edmund, and many more).