What can the printed texts of plays from Shakespeare's time say about performance? How have printed plays been read and interpreted? This collection of essays considers the evidence of early modern printed plays and their histories of production and reception, examining a wide variety of cases, from early performance to the psychology of Hamlet.

'In this timely volume, a dozen essays illuminate a dozen perspectives on how print culture impinges on the actor's interpretation as much as the critic's. The contributors eclipse the polemic of drama versus theatre - and its two-way bias of literary text versus enlivened social act - to explore the use of texts as scripts, objects, national icons, and records of erasure, all manifestations of issues debated by editors, artists, and readers from the Renaissance to our own time. Challenging the status of a playtext within the history of the book, these essays delve into the idea of texts' corruptibility or completeness in print and performance by identifying how to attend to their materiality, commercial viability, trans-cultural mutability, and epochal interpretive history in the playhouse, bookshop, library, and classroom.' - Tracy C. Davis, Barber Professor of Performing Arts, Northwestern University, USA

'From Performance to Print is a remarkably important book, not only in its reassessment of the historiography of British theatre history, but also as a glimpse into the future of performance-based Shakespearean studies...consists of a dozen engaging, informative, and refreshing essays written by established practitioners of Shakespeare's work. Such is the quality of the contributions that they are all worth praising...' - Natalie Aldred, SHARP News

Autorentext
ANSTON BOSMAN Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College, UK A. R. BRAUNMULLER Professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA MARGRETA DE GRAZIA is the Joseph B. Glossberg Term Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, USA GABRIEL EGAN Senior Lecturer in English at Loughborough University, UK LYNN ENTERLINE Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, USA JOHN JOWETT Reader in Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upn-Avon, UK GORDAN MCMULLAN Reader in English at King's College London, UK JEFFREY MASTEN Associate Professor of English at Northwestern University, USA RICHARD PREISS Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah, USA GARY TAYLOR Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama, USA WENDY WALL Professor of English at Northwestern University, USA

Inhalt
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Series Introduction: Redefining British Theatre History; P.Holland Introduction: Printing Performance; P.Holland PART I: PERFORMING THE BOOK The Book of the Play; S.Orgel Making Meaning Marketing Shakespeare 1623; G.Taylor From Print to Performance: Seeing the Masque in Timon of Athens; J.Jowett 'As It Was, Is, or Will be Played: Title-pages and the Theatre Industry to 1610'; G.Egan PART II: EDITING AND PERFORMING Editing Boys: The Performance of Genders in Print; J.Masten On Not Looking Back - Sight and Sound and Text; A.R.Braunmuller De-Generation: Editions, Offspring, and Romeo and Juliet ; W.Wall PART III: LIVING THEATRE Rhetoric, Discipline, and the Theatricality of Everyday Life in Elizabethan Grammar Schools; L.Enterline History Between Theatres; A.Bosman Robert Armin Do the Police in Different Voices; R.Preiss PART IV: SHAKESPEARE RECONSTRUCTED Hamlet's Smile; M.de Grazia 'The Technique of it is Mature': Inventing the Late Plays in Print and in Performance; G.McMullan Index