A truly groundbreaking collaboration of original theatre history with exciting literary criticism, Shakespeare in Parts is the first book fully to explore the original form in which Shakespeare's drama overwhelmingly circulated. This was not the full play-text; it was not the public performance. It was the actor's part, consisting of the bare cues and speeches of each individual role. With group rehearsals rare or non-existent, the cued part alone had to furnish the actor with his character. But each such part-text was riddled with gaps and uncertainties. The actor knew what he was going to...
A truly groundbreaking collaboration of original theatre history with exciting literary criticism, Shakespeare in Parts is the first book fully to exp...
A thoroughly revised edition of the successful student text Doing Shakespeare, first published in 2005. The book's success lies in the close readings of speeches and scenes it gives students, demystifying the language of the plays and critical approaches to them.
This new edition introduces a new way of approaching Shakespeare's text, through ideas of performance and the actor's role and restructures the content to make it easier to navigate, with clear signposting throughout, guiding students to the content most useful to them.
Simon Palfrey takes a direct approach to...
A thoroughly revised edition of the successful student text Doing Shakespeare, first published in 2005. The book's success lies in the clos...
New methods are needed to do justice to Shakespeare. His work exceeds conventional models, past and present, for understanding playworlds. In this book, Simon Palfrey goes right to the heart of early modern popular drama, revealing both how it works and why it matters. Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare gives independent life to all his instruments, and to every fraction and fragment of the plays. Palfrey terms these particles 'formactions' - theatre-specific forms that move with their own action and passion. Palfrey's book is critically daring in both substance and format. Its unique mix...
New methods are needed to do justice to Shakespeare. His work exceeds conventional models, past and present, for understanding playworlds. In this boo...