Shakespeare’s Auditory Worlds: Hearing and Staging Practices, Then and Now

Inspired by the verbal exuberance and richness of all that can be heard by audiences both on and off Shakespeare’s stages, Shakespeare's Auditory Worlds examines such special listening situations as overhearing, eavesdropping, and asides, It breaks new ground by exploring the complex relationships between sound and sight, dialogue and blocking, dialects and other languages, re-voicings, and, finally, non-verbal or meta-verbal relationships inherent in noise, sounds, and music, staging interstices that have been largely overlooked in the critical literature on aurality in Shakespeare. Its contributors include David Bevington, Ralph Alan Cohen, Steve Urkowitz, and Leslie Dunn, and, in a concluding “Virtual Roundtable” section, six seasoned repertory actors of the American Shakespeare Center as well, who discuss their nuanced hearing experiences “on stage.” Their “hearing” invites us to understand the multiple dimensions of Shakespeare’s auditory world from the vantage point of actors who are listening “in the round” to what they hear from their onstage interlocutors, from offstage and backstage cues, from the musicians’ galleries, and often most interestingly, from their audiences.

Table of Contents:
IntroductionListening to Shakespeare’s Worlds of Sound Walter W. Cannon and Laury Magnus Part I: Sensory Apprehension: Speaking, Hearing, and Seeing on Shakespeare’s Stages “Report me and my cause aright”: Hearing the Language of Exhortation in Hamlet and King Lear David Bevington Sound and Sight, Sound vs. Sight in Hamlet Laury Magnus Hearing and Interfering: Solving Puzzles in Theater Productions of Measure for Measure Gayle Gaskill Part II: Hearing Gone Awry: Mishearing, Not Hearing, and Silence Silence, Mishearing, and Indirection in Much Ado Caroline Latta Writing Letters, Hearing Voices: Epistolary Error in Twelfth Night Walter W. Cannon Staging “Skimble-skamble stuff”: 1 Henry IV and the Welsh Voice Megan Lloyd and Elizabeth Brown Part III: Hearing Beyond Words: Shakespeare’s Noise, Sounds, and Music Soundscape for an Offstage Beheading: Shakespeare’s Revision of 2 Henry VI 4.1 Stephen Urkowitz “Fearful and confused cries”: Birdsong, Sympathy, and the Fear of Sound in Titus Andronicus Clio Doyle “They say it will penetrate”: Music as Aural Violation in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Cymbeline R. W. Jones 10Hearing Cues in Shakespeare: Instrumental Music and Sound Effects in the Later Plays Jennifer Linhart Wood Restructuring Audience at Shakespeare’s Globe Leslie C. Dunn Part IV: Voices from the Blackfriars Stage Voices from the Blackfriars Stage: A Virtual Roundtable Discussion from Actors at the American Shakespeare Center: Benjamin Curns, Sarah Fallon, Allison Glenzer, John Harrell, James Keegan, Patrick Midgley Hearing on the Blackfriars Stage: A Coda Ralph Alan Cohen

About the Author :
Walter W. Cannon is professor emeritus at Central College. Laury Magnus is professor of English at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.