Shakespeare's Dramatic Transactions

Front Cover
Duke University Press, 1990 - Drama - 226 pages
Shakespeare’s Dramatic Transactions uses conventions of performance criticism—staging and theatrical presentation—to analyze seven major Shakespearean tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard II, and Richard III. As scholars and readers increasingly question the theoretical models used to describe the concepts of “mimesis” and “representation,” this book describes how the actor’s stage presentation affects the actor’s representational role and the ways in which viewers experience Shakespearean tragedy.
Michael Mooney draws on the work of East German critic Robert Weimann and his concept of figurenposition—the correlation between an actor’s stage location and the speech, action, and stylization associated with that position—to understand the actor/stage location relationship in Shakespeare’s plays. In his examination of the original staging of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Mooney looks at the traditional interplay between a downstage “place” and upstage “location” to describe the difference between non-illusionistic action (often staged near the audience) and the illusionistic, localized action that characterizes mimetic art.
The innovative and insightful approach of Shakespeare’s Dramatic Transactions brings together the techniques of performance criticism and the traditional literary study of Shakespearean tragedy. In showing how the distinctions of stage location illuminate the interaction among language, representation, Mooney’s compelling argument enhances our understanding of Shakespeare and the theater.

From inside the book

Selected pages

Contents

Integrating Actor and Audience
1
Language Staging and Affect Figurenposition in Richard III
23
Engagement and Detachment in Richard II
51
Representation and Privileged Knowledge in Hamlet
77
Location and Idiom in Othello
104
Multiconsciousness in King Lear
129
Voice and Multiple Awareness in Macbeth
150
Directing Sympathy in Antony and Cleopatra
170
Notes
193
Index
217

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information