Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on texts and old spelling
- 1 The arrow in Nessus: Elizabethan clues and modern detectives
- 2 Interpreting stage directions
- 3 The logic of ‘this’ on the open stage
- 4 Elizabethan darkness and modern lighting
- 5 The logic of ‘place’ and locale
- 6 The logic of stage violence
- 7 Theatrical metaphor: seeing and not-seeing
- 8 Conclusion: Elizabethan playscripts and modern interpreters
- Notes
- List of plays and editions
- Index
8 - Conclusion: Elizabethan playscripts and modern interpreters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on texts and old spelling
- 1 The arrow in Nessus: Elizabethan clues and modern detectives
- 2 Interpreting stage directions
- 3 The logic of ‘this’ on the open stage
- 4 Elizabethan darkness and modern lighting
- 5 The logic of ‘place’ and locale
- 6 The logic of stage violence
- 7 Theatrical metaphor: seeing and not-seeing
- 8 Conclusion: Elizabethan playscripts and modern interpreters
- Notes
- List of plays and editions
- Index
Summary
What's past is prologue
(The Tempest, ii. i. 247)To focus upon ‘seeing’ and ‘not-seeing’ is then to return to the questions raised in my earlier chapters about today's criticism, editing, production, and stage history. Admittedly, the myriad approaches to how we ‘see’ Shakespeare (on the page, on the stage, on television, in the classroom) defy any tidy categories, but, in the broadest sense, the most basic divisions fall between the ‘historians’ and the ‘modernists,’ those committed to ‘Shakespeare the Elizabethan’ and those primarily interested in ‘Shakespeare our contemporary.’ This study falls squarely in the ‘historical’ camp, not only because of the many references to Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline plays but also because of my advocacy of the assets in recovering the original ‘logic’ of presentation (as opposed to the emphasis much in evidence today upon the decoding of texts by the contemporary reader).
But even the reader with some ‘historical’ sympathies will note many omissions in this study. Thus, no claims are advanced here for new insights into Shakespeare's links to the intellectual climate of his age or into his relations with other writers. Despite all my theatrical evidence, moreover, I have offered no new proposals about theatrical architecture, the shape of the stage, the number of stage doors, the presence of ‘flying’ machinery, or other issues that continue to bedevil the stage historian.
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- Information
- Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters , pp. 156 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984