Renaissance Drama, an annual and interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional canons of drama, the significance of performance (broadly construed) to early modern culture, and the impact of new forms of interpretation on the study of Renaissance plays, theatre, and performance. This issue of Renaissance Drama, devoted to the topic of "Media, Technology, and Performance" is co-edited by W.B. Worthen, Wendy Wall, and Jeffrey Masten. The various articles displayed here address the interface between drama and its various modes of production over the past four centuries. This volume explores the relationship of drama to other forms of early modern spectacle (pageantry, masques), to the specificities of typography and the economics of the book industry, to the intersection of drama with film and DVD production, and to the way that stage technologies and theatrical economies of the 16th, 17th and 20th centuries define plays and playing. Rather than thinking of the early modern text as something simply reconstituted in its different incarnations, these essays make clear that different media force a rethinking of the terms that we use to envision, conceptualize, and even to see the work of drama.

This book offers a survey of how female and male characters in English Renaissance theatre participated and interacted in musical activities, both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum. Wong’s analysis broadens our understanding of the general theatrical representation of music, or musical dramaturgy, and complicates the current discussion of musical portrayal and construction of gender during this period. Wong discusses dramaturgical meanings of music and its association with gender, love, and erotomania in Renaissance plays. The negotiation between the dichotomous qualities of the heavenly and the demonic finds extensive application in recent studies of music in early modern English plays. However, while ideological dualities identified in music in traditional Renaissance thinking may seem unequivocal, various musical representations of characters and situations in early modern drama would prove otherwise. Wong, building upon the conventional model of binarism, explores how playwrights created their musical characters and scenarios according to the received cultural use and perception of music, and, at the same time, experimented with the multivalent meanings and significance embodied in theatrical music.

Introduces the conclusions of recent scholarship and research into theatrical conditions, conventions and concepts in the time of Shakespeare. The book begins with a discussion of the origins of early modern English drama and of the theatres that were built for it. Attitudes to theatre and to players, and what audiences expected of both, are explored in the contexts of the constraints of the acting space and the political culture. The book then looks at the structure and dynamics of the theatrical companies before concluding with a discussion of the genres of plays and the expectations of them that people (including writers) held. Appendices list brief details of the major dramatists of the time, and summarise the main historical and dramatic events.

This is an annual publication devoted to understanding the drama as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The interdisciplinary essays explore the relationship of Renaissance dramatic traditions to their precursors and successors, and examine the impact of different forms of interpretation.

Reflecting a variety of scholarly interests, this volume includes articles that range addressing Africans in Elizabeth London to chapel stagings, to the theory and practice of domestic tragedy. It also includes essays on the historical and theoretical issues relating to the evolution of dramatic texts and women at the theater.