How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays? Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.

How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays? Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.

(Book). Shakespeare was a man of the theatre to his core, so it is no surprise that he repeatedly contemplated the nuts and bolts of his craft in his plays and poems. Shakespeare scholar Nick de Somogyi here draws together all the cherishable set pieces including "All the world's a stage," Hamlet's encounters with the Players, and Bottom's amateur theatricals along with many other oblique but no less revealing glances, and further insights into theatre practice by Shakespeare's contemporaries and rivals. De Somogyi's commentary takes us through the entire process of Shakespeare's theatrical production, from its casting and auditions, via rehearsals, costumes, and props, to its premiere and audience reception. Shakespeare on Theatre eavesdrops on the urgently whispered noises-off in the "tiring-house" and inhales the heady aroma of the Globe's first audiences.

Using the tools of theatre history in their investigation into the phenomenology of the performance experience, the essays here also consider the social, ideological and institutional contingencies that determine the production and reception of the living spectacle. The contributors strive to bring better understanding to Shakespeare's imaginative investment in the relationship between theatrical production and the emotional, intellectual and cultural effects of performance broadly defined in social terms.

This study examines how Shakespeare's plays have been transformed for the stage by the demands of theatrical spaces and staging conventions.

An absorbing and original addition to Shakespeareana, this handbook of production is for all lovers of Shakespeare whether producer, player, scholar or spectator. In four sections, Staging, Actors and Acting, Costume, Music and Dance, it traces Shakespearean production from Elizabethan times to the 1950s when the book was originally published. This book suggests that Shakespeare should be performed today on the type of stage for which his plays were written. It analyses the development of the Elizabethan stage, from crude inn-yard performances to the building and use of the famous Globe. Since the Globe saw the enactment of some of the Bard’s greatest dramas, its construction, properties, stage devices, and sound effects are reviewed in detail with suggestions on how a producer can create the same effects on a modern or reconstructed Elizabethan stage. Shakespeare’s plays were written to fit particular groups of actors. The book gives descriptions of the men who formed the acting companies of Elizabethan London and of the actors of Shakespeare’s own company, giving insights into the training and acting that Shakespeare advocated. With full descriptions and pages of reproductions, the costume section shows the types of dress necessary for each play, along with accessories and trimmings. A table of Elizabethan fabrics and colours is included. The final section explores the little-known and interesting story of the integral part of music and dance in Shakespeare’s works. Scene by scene the section discusses appropriate music or song for each play and supplies substitute ideas for Elizabethan instruments. Various dances are described – among them the pavan, gailliard, canary and courante. This book is an invaluable wealth of research, with extensive bibliographies and extra information.

A history of the reception of Shakespeare on the English stage focusing on the vocal dimensions of theatrical performance.