The Elizabethan Player: Contemporary Stage Representation

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Routledge, 2017 M03 27 - 290 pages

In this book, first published in 1991, David Mann argues for more attention to the performer in the study of Elizabethan plays and less concern for their supposed meanings and morals. He concentrates on a collection of extracts from plays which show the Elizabethan actor as a character onstage. He draws from the texts a range of issues concerning performance practice: the nature of iterance; doubling and its implications for presentational acting; the importance of clowning and improvisation; and the effects of audience and venue on the dynamics of performance.

The author suggests that the stage representation of players is in part a nostalgic farewell to the passing of an impure but perhaps more vital theatre, and in part an acknowledgement of the threat the adult theatre’s growing sophistication offered to its institutional and adolescent rivals. This title will be of interest to students of Drama and Performance.

 

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Contents

Preface
The itinerant player and Sir Thomas More
Evidence of players in Hamlet
Kemp clowns and improvisation
The Mayor of Queenborough
Attacks on the common player
University drama and The Return from Parnassus
Histriomastix and the Inns of Court
Apprentice drama and The Hog Hath Lost his Pearl
Ambiguities
Conclusion
The Cradle of Security
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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About the author (2017)

David Albert Mann

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