Who Hears in Shakespeare?

Laury Magnus is professor of humanities at the US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, New York. Her books include Lexical and Syntactic Repetition in Modern Poetry and her New Kittredge Editions of Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, and Measure for Measure. Her essays and reviews appear in The Shakespeare Newsletter, Literature and Film Quarterly, Connotations, Assays, and College Literature. Her chapter on ¿Shakespeare on Film and Television¿ appears in The Oxford Handbook to Shakespeare.Walter W. Cannon is professor of English at Central College in Pella, Iowa, where he teaches early modern literature, including Shakespeare and his contemporaries. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Upstart Crow, Theatre History Studies, and Cahiers Élisabéthains. His chapter ¿The Poetics of Indoor Spaces¿ appears in Inside Shakespeare: Essays on the Blackfriars Stage.

This volume examines the ways in which Shakespeare's plays are designed for hearers as well as spectators and shows how Shakespeare's stagecraft, actualized both on stage and screen, revolves around various hearing conventions such as soliloquies, asides, eavesdropping, overhearing, and stage whispers. In short, Who Hears in Shakespeare? enunciates Shakespeare's nuanced, powerful stagecraft of hearing.

Introduction by Laury Magnus and Walter W. CannonPart I. The Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern StageChapter 1: Why Was the Globe Round? by Andrew GurrChapter 2: Guarded, Unguarded, and Unguardable Speech in late Renaissance Drama by James Chapter 3: Hearing Complexity: Speech, Reticence, and the Construction of Character by Walter . CannonChapter 4: ¿if this be worth your hearing¿: Theorizing Gossip on Shakespeare¿s Stage by Jennifer HollPart II. Metahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and OffChapter 5: Mimetic Hearing and Meta-hearing in Hamlet by Laury MagnusChapter 6: Hearing and Overhearing in The Tempest by David BevingtonChapter 7: Asides and Multiple Audiences in The Merchant of Venice by Anthony BurtonChapter 8: ¿And Now Behold the Meaning¿: Audience, Interpretation, and Translation in All¿s Well That Ends Well and Henry V by Kathleen Kalpin SmithChapter 9: Hearing Power in Measure for Measure by Bernice W. KlimanChapter 10: ¿Hark, a word in your ear¿: Whispers, Asides, and Interpretation in Troilus and Cressida by Nova MyhillPart III. Transhearing:  Hearing, Overhearing, Whispering, and Eavesdropping in Film and Other MediaChapter 11: ¿Mutes or Audience to this Act¿: Eavesdroppers in Branagh¿s Shakespeare Films by Philippa SheppardChapter 12: Overhearing Malvolio for Pleasure or Pity: The Letter Scene and the Dark House Scene in Twelfth Night on Stage and Screen by Gayle GaskiChapter 13: ¿But Mark His Gesture¿: Hearing and Seeing in Othellös Eavesdropping Scene by Erin MinearAfterword: Who Doesn¿t Listen in Shakespeare? by Stephen Booth