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Introduction

Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2023

Lauren Robertson
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

The introduction sets out the two key techniques by which the early modern theater entwined its spectators in uncertainty, ultimately offering a new model of this theater’s process of performance – one that encouraged its spectators’ imaginative participation by, paradoxically, frustrating it. The practitioners of this highly experimental theater regularly drew attention to the technologies of stagecraft, inviting spectators’ uncertainty about the stage’s fictional representations by calling attention to them as performances. The introduction also pushes back against the established account of a Jacobean and Caroline theater that catered to the increasingly sophisticated theatrical acuity of its spectators, arguing that practitioners’ eagerness to exploit familiar conventions into the seventeenth century regularly upended even knowing playgoers’ dramatic expectations. Finally, the introduction argues that these moments of interpretive unsettling should be considered a fundamental, even primary, element of the early modern theatrical experience.

Type
Chapter
Information
Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
Stage Spectacle and Audience Response
, pp. 1 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Introduction
  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225137.001
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  • Introduction
  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225137.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225137.001
Available formats
×