Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in Performance

Edward J. Esche

The creation of the new Globe Theatre in London has heightened interest in Shakespeare performance studies in recent years. The essays in this volume testify to this burgeoning research into issues surrounding contemporary performances of plays by Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists, as well as modern trends and developments in stage and media presentations of these works.

Contents: Introduction: Shakespeare and cultural tourism, Dennis Kennedy; Shakespeare on Film: The recent films, H.R. Coursen; (En)gendering desire in performance: King Lear, Akira Kurosawa's Ran and Tadashi Suzuki's The Tale of Lear, Yoko Takakuwa; Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Contexts: Touring in Asia: the Miln Company's Shakespearean productions in Japan, Kaori Kobayashi; Interculturalism or indigenization: modes of exchange, Shakespeare east and west, Poonam Trivedi; Berlin-Zÿrich-Dÿsseldorf: Aspects of German theatre during the Nazi period and after, Wilhelm Hortmann; Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore: Hamlet in performance at Kronborg castle, Elsinore, Neils B. Hansen; Culture clustering, gender crossing: Hamlet meets globalization in Robert Lepage's Elsinore, Nigel Wheale; The 'homestead of history': Shakespearean medievalism on the mid-Victorian stage, Richard W. Schoch; Renaissance Contexts: Falstaff's page as early modern youth at risk, Mark H. Lawhorn; Fashion, nation and theatre in late-sixteenth-century London, Janette Dillon; The Italian job: the poetics of graced performance in the Commedia dell'Arte and in Jonson's humour plays, Rocco Coronato; The true physiognomy of a man: Richard Tarlton and his legend, Peter Thomson; ''Tis a pageant/To keep us in false gaze': Othello, virtual history, and the Jacobean audience's Turkish expectations, Mark Hutchings; From Text to Performance: Don Pedro, Don John and Don...who? - Noting a stranger in Much Adoodle-do, Pamela Mason; 'The Silent Griefs Which Cut the Heart Strings': John Ford's The Broken Heart in performance, Kristin Crouch; Cunning with pistols: observations on Gale Edwards's 1996-7 RSC production of John Webster's The White Devil, Nick Tippler; The 19th-century productions of A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), Barry Gaines; The Magnetick Lady: is the unperformed performable? Peter Happé;Female Roles: 'A Woman's generall: what should we feare?': Queen Ma