Description
As well as 'play-makers' and 'poets', playwrights of the early modern period were known as 'play-patchers' because their texts were made from separate documents. This book is the first to consider all the papers created by authors and theatres by the time of the opening performance, recovering types of script not previously known to have existed. With chapters on plot-scenarios, arguments, playbills, prologues and epilogues, songs, staged scrolls, backstage-plots and parts, it shows how textually distinct production was from any single unified book. And, as performance documents were easily lost, relegated or reused, the story of a play's patchy creation also becomes the story of its co-authorship, cuts, revisions and additions. Using a large body of fresh evidence, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England brings a wholly new reading to printed and manuscript playbooks of the Shakespearean period, redefining what a play, and what a playwright, actually is. Review: '... outstrips the magisterial E. K. Chambers.' Katherine Duncan-Jones, The Times Literary Supplement 'The most important new book I have read in a few years ... remarkable and game-changing. [Stern] makes us rethink everything we thought we knew about playscripts ... The book has so many new facts about the ways in which plays were staged and printed [it] is the first substantial addition to what we know from, say, Chambers ... her accumulated theatrical history forces a new way of understanding the very activity of playmaking in the period.' Shakespeare Newsletter Review of the hardback: 'Very occasionally a book comes along which should have a significant revisionary effect across a number of academic areas of study. Documents of Performance [in Early Modern England] is such a book ... Tiffany Stern calls into question many of the assumptions behind current early modern scholarship on authorship attribution, editing theory and practice, paratextual materials, playhouse performance, and play interpretation ... Stern's important arguments on the patchiness of plays ... all early modern theater scholars will now have to take into account.' Renaissance Quarterly Review of the hardback: '... essential reading for theatre historians, critics and editors alike ...' Ros King, The Times Literary Supplement Review of the hardback: '... a major contribution to our understanding of early modern theatre practice ... required reading.' Alan Dressen, Shakespeare Studies Review of the hardback: '... a wealth of intriguing insights ... teaches us more about [documents'] use and importance than we thought could be known.' Lukas Erne, Around the Globe Review of the hardback: '... an important and fascinating book ... challenges many misconceptions and sheds new light on the personnel and practices of early modern theaters and on the fragmentary character of the texts they required, produced, used ... Documents of Performance [in Early Modern England] is ... constantly enlightening ... lively ... impressive ...' C. E. McGee, Shakespeare Quarterly 'Stern's work delights ... with the high-resolution, multipixel visions she offers of the early modern theatrical world, not just in the playhouse, but also in the streets of London ... Superb.' Studies in English Literature Review of the hardback: 'The work that Documents of Performance [in Early Modern England] carries out in terms of reading into the components of the playbook, and analysing what is on the page - as well as what is not - provides the practical basis for a deconstruction of every early modern playtext, and a textual methodology rooted in the performance origins of drama ... Stern's work is useful to every editor and informative for every student and researcher and is quick to elaborate on areas of possible further research and its implications for the remainder of the field.' Cahiers Elisabethains Review of the hardback: 'This revelatory work of original scholarship will have a seminal impact on the study of early modern drama, on the editing of plays, and on studies of dramatic authorship.' Stanley Wells '..
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