Book contents
- Shakespeare and Emotion
- Shakespeare and Emotion
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Text
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Chapter 1 Rhetoric
- Chapter 2 Medicine
- Chapter 3 Religion
- Chapter 4 Character
- Chapter 5 Inheritance and Innovation
- Chapter 6 Communities
- Chapter 7 Audiences
- Chapter 8 Acting
- Chapter 9 Bollywood
- Chapter 10 Language
- Chapter 11 Emotional Labour
- Chapter 12 Passionate Shakespeare
- Part II Emotions
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - Audiences
Much Ado about Nothing, Measure for Measure
from Part I - Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
- Shakespeare and Emotion
- Shakespeare and Emotion
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Text
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Chapter 1 Rhetoric
- Chapter 2 Medicine
- Chapter 3 Religion
- Chapter 4 Character
- Chapter 5 Inheritance and Innovation
- Chapter 6 Communities
- Chapter 7 Audiences
- Chapter 8 Acting
- Chapter 9 Bollywood
- Chapter 10 Language
- Chapter 11 Emotional Labour
- Chapter 12 Passionate Shakespeare
- Part II Emotions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
What do audience members feel when they go to playhouses, and how and why do they feel it? This essay explores responses to performances within plays as models for imagining the circulation of emotions in theatres. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio watches other men play-act versions of himself courting Hero, while Beatrice and Benedick fall in love by eavesdropping on staged stories of each other’s feelings. In Measure for Measure, a deputy representing Duke Vincentio responds unpredictably to watching Isabella’s commissioned performance of pleading on her brother’s behalf. Like playgoers, these characters experience emotions by participating vicariously in deliberately orchestrated dramas. In particular, identifying with surrogates who act on their behalf offers them otherwise risky forms of affective licence. In his depictions of these responses to performances, Shakespeare explores the uneasy status of the artificially induced emotions experienced in playhouses, and the thorny question of who or what is responsible for generating them.
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- Shakespeare and Emotion , pp. 109 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020