1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910512003303321

Autore

Love Genevieve

Titolo

Early modern theatre and the figure of disability / / Genevieve Love

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; ; New York : , : The Arden Shakespeare/Bloomsbury Academic, , 2018

ISBN

1-350-01723-X

1-350-01721-3

1-350-01722-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (225 pages)

Collana

Arden studies in early modern drama

Disciplina

822/.3093561

Soggetti

English drama - Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 - History and criticism

Human body in literature

People with disabilities and the performing arts

People with disabilities in literature

Theater - Great Britain - History

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages 194-207) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: disability and/as theatricality -- The work of standing and of standing-for: disability, movement, theatrical personation in The fair maid of the exchange -- The sound of prosthetic movement: transnational and temporal analogy in A larum for London -- "Faustus has his legge again": truncation and prosthesis, theatricality and bibliography in Doctor Faustus -- Richard's "giddy footing": degree of difference and cyclical movement in Shakespeare's Richard III.

Sommario/riassunto

"What work did physically disabled characters do for the early modern theatre? Through a consideration of a range of plays, including Doctor Faustus and Richard III, Genevieve Love argues that the figure of the physically disabled prosthetic body in early modern English theatre mediates a set of related 'likeness problems' that structure the theatrical, textual, and critical lives of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The figure of disability stands for the relationship between actor and character: prosthetic disabled characters with names



such as Cripple and Stump capture the simultaneous presence of the fictional and the material, embodied world of the theatre. When the figure of the disabled body exits the stage, it also mediates a second problem of likeness, between plays in their performed and textual forms. While supposedly imperfect textual versions of plays have been characterized as 'lame', the dynamic movement of prosthetic disabled characters in the theatre expands the figural role which disability performs in the relationship between plays on the stage and on the page. Early Modern Theatre and the Figure of Disability reveals how attention to physical disability enriches our understanding of early modern ideas about how theatre works, while illuminating in turn how theatre offers a reframing of disability as metaphor."--Bloomsbury Publishing.