Theatre and Reformation

Theatre and Reformation

Author: Paul Whitfield White

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9780521418171

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Paul Whitfield White argues that, contrary to received wisdom, England's earliest Protestants were involved in drama as patrons, playwrights, performers and spectators. Extending rather than ending the traditional union of religion with dramatic representation, Tudor Protestant leaders in civil and church government recognised drama as a morally sound and profitable pastime and promoted stage playing as a means of winning popular consent for religious reform. From the 1530s, playwrights and players contributed to the formation of a Protestant culture in England. Professor Whitfield White offers detailed readings of plays which are often overlooked, in particular those of John Bale, along with a useful survey of the institutional aspects of theatre: personnel, company structures, patronage, modes of presentation and conditions of performance. This is an interdisciplinary study, of particular value to those studying mediaeval and Renaissance drama and social history.


Book Synopsis Theatre and Reformation by : Paul Whitfield White

Download or read book Theatre and Reformation written by Paul Whitfield White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Whitfield White argues that, contrary to received wisdom, England's earliest Protestants were involved in drama as patrons, playwrights, performers and spectators. Extending rather than ending the traditional union of religion with dramatic representation, Tudor Protestant leaders in civil and church government recognised drama as a morally sound and profitable pastime and promoted stage playing as a means of winning popular consent for religious reform. From the 1530s, playwrights and players contributed to the formation of a Protestant culture in England. Professor Whitfield White offers detailed readings of plays which are often overlooked, in particular those of John Bale, along with a useful survey of the institutional aspects of theatre: personnel, company structures, patronage, modes of presentation and conditions of performance. This is an interdisciplinary study, of particular value to those studying mediaeval and Renaissance drama and social history.


Theatre and Reformation

Theatre and Reformation

Author: Paul Whitfield White

Publisher:

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780521418171

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Argues that England's earliest Protestants were involved in drama as patrons, playwrights, performers and spectators.


Book Synopsis Theatre and Reformation by : Paul Whitfield White

Download or read book Theatre and Reformation written by Paul Whitfield White and published by . This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that England's earliest Protestants were involved in drama as patrons, playwrights, performers and spectators.


Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage

Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage

Author: Huston Diehl

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-06-07

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1501734083

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Huston Diehl sees Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as both a product of the Protestant Reformation—a reformed drama—and a producer of Protestant habits of thought—a reforming drama. According to Diehl, the popular London theater, which flourished in the years after Elizabeth reestablished Protestantism in England, rehearsed the religious crises that disrupted, divided, energized, and in many respects revolutionized English society. Drawing on the insights of symbolic anthropologists, Diehl explores the relationship between the suppression of late medieval religious cultures, with their rituals, symbols, plays, processions, and devotional practices, and the emergence of a popular theater under the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth and James. Questioning long-held assumptions that the reformed religion was inherently antitheatrical, she shows how the reformers invented new forms of theater, even as they condemned a Roman Catholic theatricality they associated with magic, sensuality, and duplicity. Using as her central texts the tragedies of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, Diehl maintains that plays of the period reflexively explore their own power to dazzle, seduce, and deceive. Employing a reformed rhetoric that is both powerful and profoundly disturbing, they disrupt their own stunning spectacles. Out of this creative tension between theatricality and antitheatricality emerges a distinctly Protestant aesthetic.


Book Synopsis Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage by : Huston Diehl

Download or read book Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage written by Huston Diehl and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huston Diehl sees Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as both a product of the Protestant Reformation—a reformed drama—and a producer of Protestant habits of thought—a reforming drama. According to Diehl, the popular London theater, which flourished in the years after Elizabeth reestablished Protestantism in England, rehearsed the religious crises that disrupted, divided, energized, and in many respects revolutionized English society. Drawing on the insights of symbolic anthropologists, Diehl explores the relationship between the suppression of late medieval religious cultures, with their rituals, symbols, plays, processions, and devotional practices, and the emergence of a popular theater under the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth and James. Questioning long-held assumptions that the reformed religion was inherently antitheatrical, she shows how the reformers invented new forms of theater, even as they condemned a Roman Catholic theatricality they associated with magic, sensuality, and duplicity. Using as her central texts the tragedies of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, Diehl maintains that plays of the period reflexively explore their own power to dazzle, seduce, and deceive. Employing a reformed rhetoric that is both powerful and profoundly disturbing, they disrupt their own stunning spectacles. Out of this creative tension between theatricality and antitheatricality emerges a distinctly Protestant aesthetic.


Spectacles of Reform

Spectacles of Reform

Author: Amy E. Hughes

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2012-12-17

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0472118625

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In the nineteenth century, long before film and television brought us explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was America's theaters that thrilled audiences, with “sensation scenes” of speeding trains, burning buildings, and endangered bodies, often in melodramas extolling the virtues of temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage. Amy E. Hughes scrutinizes these peculiar intersections of spectacle and reform, revealing the crucial role that spectacle has played in American activism and how it has remained central to the dramaturgy of reform. Hughes traces the cultural history of three famous sensation scenes—the drunkard with the delirium tremens, the fugitive slave escaping over a river, and the victim tied to the railroad tracks—assessing how these scenes conveyed, allayed, and denied concerns about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These images also appeared in printed propaganda, suggesting that the coup de théâtre was an essential part of American reform culture. Additionally, Hughes argues that today’s producers and advertisers continue to exploit the affective dynamism of spectacle, reaching an even broader audience through film, television, and the Internet. To be attuned to the dynamics of spectacle, Hughes argues, is to understand how we see. Her book will interest not only theater historians, but also scholars and students of political, literary, and visual culture who are curious about how U.S. citizens saw themselves and their world during a pivotal period in American history.


Book Synopsis Spectacles of Reform by : Amy E. Hughes

Download or read book Spectacles of Reform written by Amy E. Hughes and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century, long before film and television brought us explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was America's theaters that thrilled audiences, with “sensation scenes” of speeding trains, burning buildings, and endangered bodies, often in melodramas extolling the virtues of temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage. Amy E. Hughes scrutinizes these peculiar intersections of spectacle and reform, revealing the crucial role that spectacle has played in American activism and how it has remained central to the dramaturgy of reform. Hughes traces the cultural history of three famous sensation scenes—the drunkard with the delirium tremens, the fugitive slave escaping over a river, and the victim tied to the railroad tracks—assessing how these scenes conveyed, allayed, and denied concerns about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These images also appeared in printed propaganda, suggesting that the coup de théâtre was an essential part of American reform culture. Additionally, Hughes argues that today’s producers and advertisers continue to exploit the affective dynamism of spectacle, reaching an even broader audience through film, television, and the Internet. To be attuned to the dynamics of spectacle, Hughes argues, is to understand how we see. Her book will interest not only theater historians, but also scholars and students of political, literary, and visual culture who are curious about how U.S. citizens saw themselves and their world during a pivotal period in American history.


Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform

Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform

Author: Xiaomei Chen

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 047207475X

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The profound political, economic, and social changes in China in the second half of the twentieth century have produced a wealth of scholarship; less studied however is how cultural events, and theater reforms in particular, contributed to the dynamic landscape of contemporary Chinese society. Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform fills this gap by investigating the theories and practice of socialist theater and their effects on a diverse range of genres, including Western-style spoken drama, Chinese folk opera, dance drama, Shanghai opera, Beijing opera, and rural theater. Focusing on the 1950s and ’60s, when theater art occupied a prominent political and cultural role in Maoist China, this book examines the efforts to remake theater in a socialist image. It explores the unique dynamics between official discourse, local politics, performance practice, and audience reception that emerged under the pressures of highly politicized cultural reform as well as the off-stage, lived impact of rapid policy change on individuals and troupes obscured by the public record. This multidisciplinary collection by leading scholars covers a wide range of perspectives, geographical locations, specific research methods, genres of performance, and individual knowledge and experience. The richly diverse approach leads readers through a nuanced and complex cultural landscape as it contributes significantly to our understanding of a crucial period in the development of modern Chinese theater and performance.


Book Synopsis Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform by : Xiaomei Chen

Download or read book Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform written by Xiaomei Chen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The profound political, economic, and social changes in China in the second half of the twentieth century have produced a wealth of scholarship; less studied however is how cultural events, and theater reforms in particular, contributed to the dynamic landscape of contemporary Chinese society. Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform fills this gap by investigating the theories and practice of socialist theater and their effects on a diverse range of genres, including Western-style spoken drama, Chinese folk opera, dance drama, Shanghai opera, Beijing opera, and rural theater. Focusing on the 1950s and ’60s, when theater art occupied a prominent political and cultural role in Maoist China, this book examines the efforts to remake theater in a socialist image. It explores the unique dynamics between official discourse, local politics, performance practice, and audience reception that emerged under the pressures of highly politicized cultural reform as well as the off-stage, lived impact of rapid policy change on individuals and troupes obscured by the public record. This multidisciplinary collection by leading scholars covers a wide range of perspectives, geographical locations, specific research methods, genres of performance, and individual knowledge and experience. The richly diverse approach leads readers through a nuanced and complex cultural landscape as it contributes significantly to our understanding of a crucial period in the development of modern Chinese theater and performance.


Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution

Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution

Author: Katrin Beushausen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-04-05

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1107181453

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The first study to systematically trace the impact of theatre on the emerging public of the early modern period.


Book Synopsis Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution by : Katrin Beushausen

Download or read book Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution written by Katrin Beushausen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study to systematically trace the impact of theatre on the emerging public of the early modern period.


Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England

Author: Paul Whitfield White

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-12-14

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780521034302

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During the past quarter of a century, the study of patronage-theatre relations in early modern England has developed considerably. This, however, is an extensive, wide-ranging and representative 2002 study of patronage as it relates to Shakespeare and the theatrical culture of his time. Twelve distinguished theatre historians address such questions as: What important functions did patronage have for the theatre during this period? How, in turn, did the theatre impact and represent patronage? Where do paying spectators and purchasers of printed drama fit into the discussion of patronage? The authors also show how patronage practices changed and developed from the early Tudor period to the years in which Shakespeare was the English theatre's leading artist. This important book will appeal to scholars of Renaissance social history as well as those who focus on Shakespeare and his playwriting contemporaries.


Book Synopsis Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England by : Paul Whitfield White

Download or read book Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England written by Paul Whitfield White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-14 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past quarter of a century, the study of patronage-theatre relations in early modern England has developed considerably. This, however, is an extensive, wide-ranging and representative 2002 study of patronage as it relates to Shakespeare and the theatrical culture of his time. Twelve distinguished theatre historians address such questions as: What important functions did patronage have for the theatre during this period? How, in turn, did the theatre impact and represent patronage? Where do paying spectators and purchasers of printed drama fit into the discussion of patronage? The authors also show how patronage practices changed and developed from the early Tudor period to the years in which Shakespeare was the English theatre's leading artist. This important book will appeal to scholars of Renaissance social history as well as those who focus on Shakespeare and his playwriting contemporaries.


Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution

Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution

Author: Katrin Beushausen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-04-05

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1316856739

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This book presents new and overarching perspectives on the relationship between theatre and public from the Henrician Reformation through the interregnum to the Restoration, combining vivid case studies with discussion of theatre's continued importance in shaping the early modern public. Considered from the vantage point of theatre, the early modern public becomes visible as an unruly agent of political change, a force that authorities both feared and appealed to, and one that proved ultimately beyond control. It was through theatrical strategies that rulers and their opposition addressed the early modern public, and in turn it was theatre's public potential that shaped the development of the stage during the revolutionary years of the seventeenth century. In this volume, Katrin Beushausen examines sources including irreverent satirical pamphlets, regal spectacles, anti-theatrical polemic and visions of state theatres, casting new light on the development of the early modern public and theatre.


Book Synopsis Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution by : Katrin Beushausen

Download or read book Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution written by Katrin Beushausen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new and overarching perspectives on the relationship between theatre and public from the Henrician Reformation through the interregnum to the Restoration, combining vivid case studies with discussion of theatre's continued importance in shaping the early modern public. Considered from the vantage point of theatre, the early modern public becomes visible as an unruly agent of political change, a force that authorities both feared and appealed to, and one that proved ultimately beyond control. It was through theatrical strategies that rulers and their opposition addressed the early modern public, and in turn it was theatre's public potential that shaped the development of the stage during the revolutionary years of the seventeenth century. In this volume, Katrin Beushausen examines sources including irreverent satirical pamphlets, regal spectacles, anti-theatrical polemic and visions of state theatres, casting new light on the development of the early modern public and theatre.


The Drama of Reform

The Drama of Reform

Author: Tamara Atkin

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782503546513

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The chapters in this book include: 'Spectacle and Sacrilege: The Croxton'; 'Performance and Polemic'; 'Staging Iconoclasm: Lewis Wager's 'Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene' and Cranmer's Laws Against Images'; and much more.


Book Synopsis The Drama of Reform by : Tamara Atkin

Download or read book The Drama of Reform written by Tamara Atkin and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this book include: 'Spectacle and Sacrilege: The Croxton'; 'Performance and Polemic'; 'Staging Iconoclasm: Lewis Wager's 'Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene' and Cranmer's Laws Against Images'; and much more.


The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama

The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama

Author: Elizabeth Williamson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1317024427

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The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama is the first book to present a detailed examination of early modern theatrical properties informed by the complexity of post-Reformation religious practice. Although English Protestant reformers set out to destroy all vestiges of Catholic idolatry, public theater companies frequently used stage properties to draw attention to the remnants of traditional religion as well as the persistent materiality of post-Reformation worship. The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama explores the relationship between popular culture and theatrical performance by considering the social history and dramatic function of these properties, addressing their role as objects of devotion, idolatry, and remembrance on the professional stage. Rather than being aligned with identifiably Catholic or Protestant values, the author reveals how religious stage properties functioned as fulcrums around which more subtle debates about the status of Christian worship played out. Given the relative lack of existing documentation on stage properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama employs a wide range of source materials-including inventories published in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes-to account for the material presence of these objects on the public stage. By combining historical research on popular religion with detailed readings of the scripts themselves, the book fills a gap in our knowledge about the physical qualities of the stage properties used in early modern productions. Tracing the theater's appropriation of highly charged religious properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama provides a new framework for understanding the canonization of early modern plays, especially those of Shakespeare.


Book Synopsis The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama by : Elizabeth Williamson

Download or read book The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama written by Elizabeth Williamson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama is the first book to present a detailed examination of early modern theatrical properties informed by the complexity of post-Reformation religious practice. Although English Protestant reformers set out to destroy all vestiges of Catholic idolatry, public theater companies frequently used stage properties to draw attention to the remnants of traditional religion as well as the persistent materiality of post-Reformation worship. The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama explores the relationship between popular culture and theatrical performance by considering the social history and dramatic function of these properties, addressing their role as objects of devotion, idolatry, and remembrance on the professional stage. Rather than being aligned with identifiably Catholic or Protestant values, the author reveals how religious stage properties functioned as fulcrums around which more subtle debates about the status of Christian worship played out. Given the relative lack of existing documentation on stage properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama employs a wide range of source materials-including inventories published in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes-to account for the material presence of these objects on the public stage. By combining historical research on popular religion with detailed readings of the scripts themselves, the book fills a gap in our knowledge about the physical qualities of the stage properties used in early modern productions. Tracing the theater's appropriation of highly charged religious properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama provides a new framework for understanding the canonization of early modern plays, especially those of Shakespeare.