Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage

by B. Reynolds (Editor), W. West (Editor)

Overview

To 'rematerialize' in the sense of Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage is not to recover a lost material infrastructure, as Marx spoke of, nor is it to restore to some material existence its priority over the imaginary. Indeed, this collection of work by some of the most highly-regarded critics in Shakespeare studies does not offer a single theoretical stance on any of the various forms of critical materialism (Marxism, cultural materialism, new historicism, transversal poetics, gender studies, or performance criticism), but rather demonstrates that the materiality of Shakespeare is multidimensional and consists of the imagination, the intended, and the desired. Nothing returns in this rematerialization, unless it is a return in the sense of the repressed, which, when it comes back, comes back as something else. An all-star line-up of contributors includes Kate McLuskie, Terence Hawkes, Catherine Belsey and Doug Bruster.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349542642
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2005
Edition description:	1st ed. 2005
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

CATHERINE BELSEY University of Cardiff, UK DOUGLAS BRUSTER University of Texas, Austin, USA HUSTON DIEHL University of Iowa, USA JOHN DRAKAKIS University of Stirling, UK JONATHAN GIL HARRIS George Washington University, USA TERENCE HAWKES Cardiff University, UK DAVID HILLMAN Cambridge University, UK D.J. HOPKINS Washington University, USA ANTHONY KUBIAK University of California, Irvine KATE MCLUSKIE University of Southampton, UK.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Shakespearean Emergences: Back from Materialisms to Transversalisms and Beyond; B.Reynolds & W.N.West PART I: THE FORM AND PRESSURE OF THE TIME: POPULAR AND UNPOPULAR TRADITIONS 'Strike All That Look Upon With Marvel': Theatrical and Theological Wonder in The Winter's Tale ; H.Diehl Performance and Urban Space in Shakespeare's Rome, or, 'S.P.Q.L'; D.J.Hopkins Shakespeare's Little Boys: Theatrical Apprenticeship and the Construction of Childhood; C.Belsey PART II: WHAT'S THE MATTER? REVISIONS AND REVERSIONS IN PEN AND VOICE Rematerializing Shakespeare's Intertheatricality: The Occidental/Oriental Halimpsest; J.Gil Harris The Politics of Shakespeare's Prose; D.Bruster Mercutio's Bad Language; W.N.West Nanti Everything; T.Hawkes Authority and Early Modern Theater: Representing Robert Weimann; J.Drakakis PART III: CREATURES SITTING AT A PLAY: THE AUTHORITY AND REPRESENTATION OF AUDIENCES Homo Clausus at the Theater; D.Hillman Figuring the Consumer: the Cultural Production of Early Modern Theatre; K.McLuskie The Delusion of Critique: Subjunctive Space, Transversality, and the Conceit of Deceit in Hamlet ; A.Kubiak & B.Reynolds Index

Editorial Reviews

'Robert Weimann is a pre-eminent scholar of the Elizabethan theatre and early modern performance culture, whose brilliant critical work on Shakespeare and his contemporaries has been profoundly influential. Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern Stage is both a worthy tribute to Weimann's seminal work and an impressive demonstration of the variety and fruitfulness of its influence. Reimagining Shakespeare is a stimulating collaborative contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the dramatic art and the cultural work of the Shakespearean theatre.' - Professor Louis Montrose, University of California, San Diego, USA

'Dedicated to Robert Weimann, Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern Stage at once extends Weimann's materialist critique of the practices of early modern authorship, acting, and theatricality, and explores his celebrated bifold articulation of authority and representation. Reimagining Shakespeare provocatively rematerializes the original impact that Shakespeare - and Weimann - have had on contemporary critical culture.' - W. B. Worthen, University of California, Berkeley, USA

'This energetic and highly original collection of essays reveals the continuing power of Robert Weimann's thought for contemporary studies of the early modern stage. Incisively building on Weimann's attention to the multiple sources of authority that energize the production of Shakespeare on the page and the stage, the critics assembled in this volume focus on the local conditions that allow his works to be continually remade in the theater, on the printed page, and even in the popular parodies of BBC radio comedy. This is a magnificent volume and a fitting tribute to one of the most important Shakespeare critics of the twentieth-century.' - Professor Jean Howard, University of Columbia, USA

'Rematerializing Shakespeare is a superb collection of essays by twelve distinguished scholars exploring the rich materiality of Shakespeare' plays. Provoked by, engaged with, and dedicated to Robert Weimann, the essays offer compelling testimony to Weimann's profound impact upon the

study of Early Modern English Drama and, in their own terms, reveal often unexpected sources of value and coherence in Shakespeare's plays, even as they offer an implicit challenge to many of the assumptions of the discipline of literary studies as it exists today.' - David Scott Kastan, Columbia University, USA

From the Publisher