Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T05:35:52.873Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Recreating the Eye of the Beholder: Dancing and Spectacular Display in Early Modern English Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2012

Erika T. Lin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Shakespeare and his contemporaries regularly staged plays that exhibited feats of physical prowess, such as dancing, acrobatics, and combat. Spectacles of this sort existed in a kind of double space: even as they operated within a play's fictional narrative, they also served as legitimate entertainments in their own right. Jean Alter refers to these complementary aspects of theatre as its “referential” and “performant” functions: theatre as semiotic system, employing both mimetic and nonmimetic forms of representation, and theatre as spectacular show, akin to sports or the circus. My paper analyzes the interplay between these two performance modes in displays of bodily skill in the early modern English theatres. Drawing on a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents concerning foreign travel, sensory perception, physical talent, and popular festivity, I explore the cultural valences of what contemporaries referred to as “feats of activity” that refreshed, or “recreated,” the eye. I pay particular attention to onstage dances. These episodes, I contend, suggest an alternative to post-Benjamin, post-Brecht notions of spectacle as that which dazzles passive viewers. Juxtaposing extratheatrical primary sources with brief snapshots from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, I reconstruct the historically specific affective experiences generated by early modern displays of physical spectacle. Nonverbal practices, such as dance, were not merely depicted in drama but integrated into the performance medium itself. I argue that the resulting dynamics between representation and presentation situated spectators as active participants in the performance event. In this way, onstage dances reinforced communal identity and contributed to the construction and dissemination of broader cultural discourses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 2011 , Spring 2011 , pp. 10 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Erika T. Lin 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Acosta, José de. 1604. The naturall and morall historie of the East and West Indies Intreating of the remarkable things of heaven, of the elements, mettalls, plants and beasts which are proper to that country: together with the manners, ceremonies, lawes, governments, and warres of the Indians. Translated by Grimeston, Edward. London.Google Scholar
Adrichem, Christiaan van. 1595. A briefe description of Hierusalem and of the suburbs therof, as it florished in the time of Christ Whereto is annexed a short commentarie concerning those places which were made famous by the Passion of Christ, and by the actes of holye men, confirmed by certeine principall histories of antiquity. Verie profitable for Christians to read, for the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures and Iosephus his Historie. Hereunto also is appertaining a liuely and beawtifull mappe of Hierusalem, with arithmeticall directions, correspondent to the numbers of this booke. Translated by Tymme, Thomas. London.Google Scholar
Alter, Jean. 1990. A Sociosemiotic Theory of Theatre. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banister, John. 1578. The historie of man sucked from the sappe of the most approued anathomistes, in this present age, compiled in most compendious fourme, and now published in English, for the vtilitie of all godly chirurgians, within this realme. London.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “The Work of Art in an Era of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, translated by Zohn, Harry, edited by Zohn, Harry, 217–51. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 2003. Understanding Brecht. Translated by Bostock, Anna. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Bevington, David, and Rasmussen, Eric, eds. 1993. Doctor Faustus A- and B-texts (1604, 1616): Christopher Marlowe and His Collaborator and Revisers. The Revels Plays. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Brecht, Bertolt. 1977. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Translated by Willett, John. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 1989. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 1992. “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered.” October 62: 3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterworth, Philip. 2005. Magic on the Early English Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cook, David, and Wilson, F. P., eds. 1961 (1962). Malone Society Collections VI. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crary, Jonathan. 1989. “Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory.” October 50: 96–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crooke, Helkiah. 1615. Mikrokosmographia a description of the body of man. Together vvith the controuersies thereto belonging. Collected and translated out of all the best authors of anatomy, especially out of Gasper Bauhinus and Andreas Laurentius. London.Google Scholar
Debord, Guy. (1967) 1977. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red.Google Scholar
Dessen, Alan C., and Thomson, Leslie. 1999. A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Florio, John. 1578. Florio his firste fruites which yeelde familiar speech, merie prouerbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings. Also a perfect induction to the Italian, and English tongues, as in the table appeareth. The like heretofore, neuer by any man published. London.Google Scholar
Floyd-Wilson, Mary, and Sullivan, Garrett A., eds. 2007. Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gent, Lucy. 1995. “‘The Rash Gazer’: Economies of Vision in Britain, 1550–1660.” In Albion's Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550–1660, edited by Gent, Lucy, 377–93. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gosson, Stephen. 1598. The trumpet of vvarre A sermon preached at Paules Crosse the seuenth of Maie 1598. London.Google Scholar
Jones, Ann Rosalind, and Stallybrass, Peter. 2000. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Leo Africanus, Johannes. 1600. A geographical historie of Africa, written in Arabicke and Italian by Iohn Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought vp in Barbarie. Wherein he hath at large described, not onely the qualities, situations, and true distances of the regions, cities, townes, mountaines, riuers, and other places throughout all the north and principall partes of Africa; but also the descents and families of their kings . . . gathered partly out of his owne diligent obseruations, and partly out of the ancient records and chronicles of the Arabians and Mores. Before which, out of the best ancient and moderne writers, is prefixed a generall description of Africa, and also a particular treatise of all the maine lands and isles vndescribed by Iohn Leo. Translated by Pory, John. London.Google Scholar
Lin, Erika T. 2011. “Popular Worship and Visual Paradigms in Love's Labor's Lost.” In Religion and Drama in Early Modern England: The Performance of Religion on the Renaissance Stage, edited by Degenhardt, Jane Hwang and Williamson, Elizabeth. 89–113. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Lindberg, David C. 1976. Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Linschoten, Jan Huygen van. 1598. Iohn Huighen van Linschoten. his discours of voyages into ye Easte & West Indies Deuided into foure bookes. Translated by Phillip, William. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lunn, Eugene. 1982. Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marlowe, Christopher. 1604. The tragicall history of D. Faustus As it hath bene acted by the right honorable the Earle of Nottingham his seruants. London.Google Scholar
Marlowe, Christopher. 1616. The tragicall history of the life and death of Doctor Faustus. London.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert S. 2000. “Descartes' Cow and Other Domestications of the Visual.” In Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, edited by Nelson, Robert S., 1–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Northbrooke, John. 1579. Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. A treatise wherein dicing, dau[n]cing, vaine plaies or enterludes with other idle pastimes, &c. commonly vsed on the Sabboth day, are reprooued, by the authoritie of the worde of God and auncient vvriters. London.Google Scholar
Park, Katharine. 1998. “Impressed Images: Reproducing Wonders.” In Picturing Science, Producing Art, edited by Jones, Caroline A. and Galison, Peter, 254–71. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Paster, Gail Kern. 2004. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paster, Gail Kern, Rowe, Katherine, and Floyd-Wilson, Mary, eds. 2004. Introduction to Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, 1–20. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Purchas, Samuel. 1625. Purchas his pilgrimes In fiue bookes. The first, contayning the voyages and peregrinations made by ancient kings, patriarkes, apostles, philosophers, and others, to and thorow the remoter parts of the knowne world: enquiries also of languages and religions, especially of the moderne diuersified professions of Christianitie. The second, a description of all the circum-nauigations of the globe. The third, nauigations and voyages of English-men, alongst the coasts of Africa . . . The fourth, English voyages beyond the East Indies, to the ilands of Iapan, China, Cauchinchina, the Philippinae with others . . . The fifth, nauigations, voyages, traffiques, discoueries, of the English nation in the easterne parts of the world . . .. 4 vols. London.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce R. 1999. The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce R. 2000. “Premodern Sexualities.” PMLA 115: 318–29.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce R. 2009. The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce R. 2010. Phenomenal Shakespeare. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Catherine. 1995. The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar