Edith Hall
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199232536
- eISBN:
- 9780191716003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232536.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In a broad contextualization of ancient pantomime within cultural history, the reasons for the importance of research into ancient pantomime are explored: it represents a lost aesthetic of profound ...
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In a broad contextualization of ancient pantomime within cultural history, the reasons for the importance of research into ancient pantomime are explored: it represents a lost aesthetic of profound and widespread influence in ancient imperial culture; it played, quantitatively speaking, a more important role in educating the majority of inhabitants of the Roman empire in mythology than, for example, recitations of poetry; it was the main medium in which the prestigious tradition of classical tragedy was kept alive in the theatres of the Roman empire; it played a seminal role in the emergence of classical ballet, and subsequently, in the twentieth century, of avant‐garde Tanztheater (dance theatre). The theatrical spaces and the musical accompaniments (provided by the chorus and the hydraulis), of pantomime are given detailed attention. The hostile response that aspects of the perfomance: the dancer, his mask and the music, evoked from the Church Fathers and the place of pantomime in their rhetoric of anti‐theatricalism is also briefly explored.Less
In a broad contextualization of ancient pantomime within cultural history, the reasons for the importance of research into ancient pantomime are explored: it represents a lost aesthetic of profound and widespread influence in ancient imperial culture; it played, quantitatively speaking, a more important role in educating the majority of inhabitants of the Roman empire in mythology than, for example, recitations of poetry; it was the main medium in which the prestigious tradition of classical tragedy was kept alive in the theatres of the Roman empire; it played a seminal role in the emergence of classical ballet, and subsequently, in the twentieth century, of avant‐garde Tanztheater (dance theatre). The theatrical spaces and the musical accompaniments (provided by the chorus and the hydraulis), of pantomime are given detailed attention. The hostile response that aspects of the perfomance: the dancer, his mask and the music, evoked from the Church Fathers and the place of pantomime in their rhetoric of anti‐theatricalism is also briefly explored.
Julie Stone Peters
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199262168
- eISBN:
- 9780191698811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262168.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This chapter looks at the renewal of anti-theatricalism in response to the extra-spectacular 19th-century theatre, the aversion to the cumbersome palpability of stage bodies and the turn towards the ...
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This chapter looks at the renewal of anti-theatricalism in response to the extra-spectacular 19th-century theatre, the aversion to the cumbersome palpability of stage bodies and the turn towards the closet, and also at the simultaneous recognition of the inherent powers of the theatrical and the resulting articulation of an idealist aesthetics married to a theatricalism that could be key to the spectator's transcendent imagination.Less
This chapter looks at the renewal of anti-theatricalism in response to the extra-spectacular 19th-century theatre, the aversion to the cumbersome palpability of stage bodies and the turn towards the closet, and also at the simultaneous recognition of the inherent powers of the theatrical and the resulting articulation of an idealist aesthetics married to a theatricalism that could be key to the spectator's transcendent imagination.
Gavin Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198734321
- eISBN:
- 9780191799167
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198734321.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Drama
This book examines why early modern drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of ...
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This book examines why early modern drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration: no play is set in the Americas; few plays treat colonization as central to the plot; and a handful feature Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise). However, advocates of colonialism in the seventeenth century denounced playing companies as enemies on a par with the Pope and the Devil. Instead of writing off these accusers as paranoid cranks, this book takes as its starting point the possibility that they were astute playgoers. By so doing we can begin to see the emergence of a “picture of America,” and of the Virginia colony in particular, across a number of plays performed for London audiences: Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, and his collaboration with Marston and Chapman, Eastward Ho!; Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso; Massinger’s The City Madam; Massinger and Fletcher’s The Sea Voyage; Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl; Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Fletcher and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. We can glean the significance of this picture, not only for the troubled Virginia Company, but also for London theater audiences. And we can see that the picture that was beginning to form was, as the anti-theatricalists surmised, often slanderous, condemnatory, and, as it were, anti-American.Less
This book examines why early modern drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration: no play is set in the Americas; few plays treat colonization as central to the plot; and a handful feature Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise). However, advocates of colonialism in the seventeenth century denounced playing companies as enemies on a par with the Pope and the Devil. Instead of writing off these accusers as paranoid cranks, this book takes as its starting point the possibility that they were astute playgoers. By so doing we can begin to see the emergence of a “picture of America,” and of the Virginia colony in particular, across a number of plays performed for London audiences: Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, and his collaboration with Marston and Chapman, Eastward Ho!; Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso; Massinger’s The City Madam; Massinger and Fletcher’s The Sea Voyage; Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl; Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Fletcher and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. We can glean the significance of this picture, not only for the troubled Virginia Company, but also for London theater audiences. And we can see that the picture that was beginning to form was, as the anti-theatricalists surmised, often slanderous, condemnatory, and, as it were, anti-American.
Gavin Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198734321
- eISBN:
- 9780191799167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198734321.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Drama
This chapter analyzes the Virginia Company’s accusations that the players were the enemy of Virginia. The Company’s insistence on the players being diabolical, papist, and idle takes on renewed ...
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This chapter analyzes the Virginia Company’s accusations that the players were the enemy of Virginia. The Company’s insistence on the players being diabolical, papist, and idle takes on renewed significance in the context of Virginia, precisely because the image of the adventurer as craven bankrupt chimed with two other types that were invested in New World exploration: the Spanish and the players themselves. While the Virginia Company distinguished between the ideal adventurer and the unholy trinity of devil, papist, and player, plays collapsed the adventurer, devil, papist, and player into one another. Through analyses of both Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614), which unfavorably compares Virginia adventuring and the experience of playgoing, and of the promotion and ubiquity of tobacco in playhouse drama, we might begin to think of the playing companies as constructing and even celebrating a vision of the New World as anti-Virginian, albeit not anti-colonial.Less
This chapter analyzes the Virginia Company’s accusations that the players were the enemy of Virginia. The Company’s insistence on the players being diabolical, papist, and idle takes on renewed significance in the context of Virginia, precisely because the image of the adventurer as craven bankrupt chimed with two other types that were invested in New World exploration: the Spanish and the players themselves. While the Virginia Company distinguished between the ideal adventurer and the unholy trinity of devil, papist, and player, plays collapsed the adventurer, devil, papist, and player into one another. Through analyses of both Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614), which unfavorably compares Virginia adventuring and the experience of playgoing, and of the promotion and ubiquity of tobacco in playhouse drama, we might begin to think of the playing companies as constructing and even celebrating a vision of the New World as anti-Virginian, albeit not anti-colonial.
George Oppitz-Trotman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474441711
- eISBN:
- 9781474465069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474441711.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Bridging from the dialectic of action explored in the previous chapters to the dialectic of figuration and appearance considered in those which follow, this chapter sketches a triangular historical ...
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Bridging from the dialectic of action explored in the previous chapters to the dialectic of figuration and appearance considered in those which follow, this chapter sketches a triangular historical relationship between plays of revenge, the professionalisation of theatre, and the figure known as the ‘Vice’. The common player became the Vice when that figure disappeared from English plays in the 1570s and 1580s. Those were the years in which the professional actor emerged and theatre became an object of greater suspicion. In this way the appearance of the actor and his agency within the fictional scene acquired a specific and complex moral value. For revenge tragedy this was significant because the Vice had been the origin and impetus of the revenge narrative since English playwrights had first shown interest in the theme of extra-judicial vengeance, in translations of Seneca in the 1560s. To ask whether revenge was a moral deviation or devilish concoction, as did more famous plays of later decades, was to question the agency of the player and his interest in producing dubious illusions.Less
Bridging from the dialectic of action explored in the previous chapters to the dialectic of figuration and appearance considered in those which follow, this chapter sketches a triangular historical relationship between plays of revenge, the professionalisation of theatre, and the figure known as the ‘Vice’. The common player became the Vice when that figure disappeared from English plays in the 1570s and 1580s. Those were the years in which the professional actor emerged and theatre became an object of greater suspicion. In this way the appearance of the actor and his agency within the fictional scene acquired a specific and complex moral value. For revenge tragedy this was significant because the Vice had been the origin and impetus of the revenge narrative since English playwrights had first shown interest in the theme of extra-judicial vengeance, in translations of Seneca in the 1560s. To ask whether revenge was a moral deviation or devilish concoction, as did more famous plays of later decades, was to question the agency of the player and his interest in producing dubious illusions.
