About the Book
.cs6FE56D2{text-align:left;text-indent:0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 36pt} .cs5EFED22F{color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:normal; } .csA62DFD6A{color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:italic; } This volume, examining the ways in which Shakespeare's plays are designed for hearers as well as spectators, has been prompted by recent explorations of the auditory dimension of early modern drama by scholars such as Andrew Gurr, Bruce Smith, and James Hirsh. To look at the acoustic world of the plays involves a real paradigm shift that changes how we understand virtually everything about Shakespeare's plays: from the architecture of the buildings, to playing spaces, to blocking, and to larger interpretative issues, including our understanding of character based on players' responses to what they hear, mishear, or refuse to hear. Who Hears in Shakespeare?
Essays on Shakespeare's Auditory World, Stage and Screen is comprised of three sections on Shakespeare's texts and performance history: "The Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern Stage"; "Metahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off"; and a final section entitled "Transhearing: Hearing, Whispering, Overhearing, and Eavesdropping in Film and other Media." Chapters by noted scholars explore the complex reactions and interactions of onstage and offstage audiences and show how Shakespearean stagecraft, actualized both on stage and/ or adapted on screen, revolves around various situations and conventions of hearing, such as soliloquies, asides, eavesdropping, overhearing, and stage whispers. In short, Who Hears in Shakespeare? enunciates Shakespeare's nuanced, powerful stagecraft of hearing. The volume ends with Stephen Booth's Afterword, a meditation on hearing in Shakespeare that returns us to consider Shakespearean "audiences" and their responses to what they hear--or don't hear--in Shakespeare's plays.
Table of Contents:
.cs7CED571B{text-align:left;text-indent:0pt;padding:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt} .cs5EFED22F{color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:normal; } Introduction by Laury Magnus and Walter W. Cannon Part I. The Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern Stage Chapter 1: Why Was the Globe Round? by Andrew Gurr Chapter 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 . Cannon Chapter 4: "if this be worth your hearing": Theorizing Gossip on Shakespeare's Stage by Jennifer Holl Part II. Metahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off Chapter 5: Mimetic Hearing and Meta-hearing in Hamlet by Laury Magnus Chapter 6: Hearing and Overhearing in The Tempest by David Bevington Chapter 7: Asides and Multiple Audiences in The Merchant of Venice by Anthony Burton Chapter 8: "And Now Behold the Meaning": Audience, Interpretation, and Translation in All's Well That Ends Well and Henry V by Kathleen Kalpin Smith Chapter 9: Hearing Power in Measure for Measure by Bernice W. Kliman, Chapter 10: "Hark, a word in your ear": Whispers, Asides, and Interpretation in Troilus and Cressida by Nova Myhill Part III. Transhearing: Hearing, Overhearing, Whispering, and Eavesdropping in Film and Other Media Chapter 11: "Mutes or Audience to this Act": Eavesdroppers in Branagh's Shakespeare Films by Philippa Sheppard Chapter 12: Overhearing Malvolio for Pleasure or Pity: The Letter Scene and the Dark House Scene in Twelfth Night on Stage and Screen by Gayle Gaski Chapter 13: "But Mark His Gesture": Hearing and Seeing in Othello's Eavesdropping Scene by Erin Minear Afterword: Who Doesn't Listen in Shakespeare? by Stephen Booth
About the Author :
.csFEEEEB43{text-align:left;text-indent:0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;line-height:1.15} .csB86C8CFE{color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:bold; font-style:normal; } .cs5EFED22F{color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:normal; } .csA62DFD6A{color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:italic; } .cs24D2F86B{color:#1F497D;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:italic; } .cs1D27C982{color:#1F497D;background-color:transparent;font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight:normal; font-style:normal; } Laury Magnus is Professor of Humanities at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY. Her books include Lexical and Syntactic Repetition in Modern Poetry (AMS Press) 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 Elisabethains. His chapter, "The Poetics of Indoor Spaces" appears in Inside Shakespeare: Essays on the Blackfriar's Stage.
Review :
Who Hears in Shakespeare presents a varied and engaging collection on the generalized area of hearing, mishearing, and overhearing in Shakespeare as performed by both the on-stage and the theatrical audiences. The capaciousness of the subject allows for a great variety of approaches, as the contributions of the two editors demonstrate. The late and very much lamented Bernice Kliman explores the multiplicity of choices presented by Measure for Measure, both in terms of the text and the staging. The intelligence, learning, and wise evaluation of this article are what we had learned to expect from Bernice.
-- "The Shakespeare Newsletter"
