Laughter, Pain, and Wonder: Shakespeare's Comedies and the Audience in the TheaterThis work's chief aim is to restore to readers, performers, and audiences the richness and vitality of Shakespeare's comedies. Richman explores the way in which a reader's relations to Shakespeare's literary texts differ from those of the relations between performers of Shakespeare's works and their audiences. Richman also examines the forms of humor and empathy that Shakespeare's comedies elicit. |
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Page 18
... scene , and that different audiences may respond differently to the same production . A line or a bit of business that gets a laugh and an ovation one night may fall flat the next afternoon . Even so , it is necessary that directors ...
... scene , and that different audiences may respond differently to the same production . A line or a bit of business that gets a laugh and an ovation one night may fall flat the next afternoon . Even so , it is necessary that directors ...
Page 23
... scene with her retainers suggests an essential generos- ity of spirit beneath the affectation . In praising Lisa Harrow's perfor- mance in John Barton's 1969 R.S. C. production , Robert Speaight warns that if you push Olivia too far in ...
... scene with her retainers suggests an essential generos- ity of spirit beneath the affectation . In praising Lisa Harrow's perfor- mance in John Barton's 1969 R.S. C. production , Robert Speaight warns that if you push Olivia too far in ...
Page 25
... scene may be most effective in performance if it is played with enormous , unflagging energy , conjur- ing the ... scenes may be lost . The actor playing Sir Andrew may best serve the pace and spirit of these scenes if he finds ways to ...
... scene may be most effective in performance if it is played with enormous , unflagging energy , conjur- ing the ... scenes may be lost . The actor playing Sir Andrew may best serve the pace and spirit of these scenes if he finds ways to ...
Page 27
... scene provides a model for the cumulative power of laughter to breed itself out of itself . Malvolio's language , from the hesitant but hopeful " let me see , let me see , let me see " ( 2.5.102 ) to the more assured prose rhythms of ...
... scene provides a model for the cumulative power of laughter to breed itself out of itself . Malvolio's language , from the hesitant but hopeful " let me see , let me see , let me see " ( 2.5.102 ) to the more assured prose rhythms of ...
Page 28
... scenes of scornful laughter . The eavesdroppers in the letter scene intend to laugh , but they are instead driven to rage by Malvolio's presumption . Until this moment the playgoers and the tricksters have been in complete accord . Now ...
... scenes of scornful laughter . The eavesdroppers in the letter scene intend to laugh , but they are instead driven to rage by Malvolio's presumption . Until this moment the playgoers and the tricksters have been in complete accord . Now ...
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Common terms and phrases
action actor allowed appearance attention audience audience's Beatrice become beginning Benedick Bertram bring calls cause characters Claudio comedies comes comic Compare complete continues create critics death describes directors dramatist draws Dream duke duke's early effects Elizabethan emotional experience expressed farcical feelings Festival figure final follows force give given grows Helena human imagination important king laugh laughter lines London lords lovers Malvolio means Measure mind miracle mood move nature never Night notes observes pain passion performance Pericles physical play play's playgoers playwright possible present Press problem production Prospero reaction reason response restoration revealed Rosalind scene seems sense Shake Shakespeare Quarterly Shakespeare's comedies share Shylock speak spectators speech stage Stratford Studies suffering suggest surprise sympathy Tale theater thing tion tragedy Twelfth understanding University Press verse wonder York
Popular passages
Page 98 - Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound : And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter : hoary-headed frosts in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, And on old Hiems...
Page 131 - Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night ; for good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp, was drowned, and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was — Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies ; men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
Page 104 - They say miracles are past ; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors ; ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.
Page 35 - By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters: was it for me to kill the heir-apparent ? should I turn upon the true prince?
Page 64 - And so I was, which plainly signified That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog. Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it. I have no brother, I am like no brother; And this word 'love,' which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another, And not in me!
Page 94 - ... the real state of sublunary nature which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination, and expressing the course of the world...
Page 70 - I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear ! Would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin!
Page 118 - Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt...