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138,701 entries in:

Title:
"Remember the Porter: Knock-Knock Jokes, Tragedy, and Other Unfunny Things"
Author:
Barret, Chris.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Examines Macbeth 2.3.1-20 as an instance of the "first knock-knock joke in English" and "of genetic hybridity." Concludes that "the joke is not an interlude or a relief or an indulgence. Rather it is an unforgiving mirror" directed at the audience and thus resolving the tension between tragedy and the knock-knock joke.

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Title:
"Ghost in the Machine: Shakespeare, Stanislavski, and Original Practices"
Author:
Kanelos, Peter.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Interrogates the "subtext beneath the claim that there is no subtext in Shakespeare" by examining performance practices and theories of Stanislavski. Argues that "the quest for 'authenticity' or 'originality' in Shakespearean performance is itself a postmodern enterprise."

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Title:
"'Speake[ing] the speech[es]': Reassessing the Playability of the Earliest Printings of Hamlet"
Author:
Vadnais, Matthew.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Investigates Hamlet in Q1, Q2, and F in relation to early modern performance texts and practices. Argues that "all three printings of Hamlet were written to accommodate performance practices unique to the early modern stage."

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Title:
"A 'Ha' in Shakespeare: The Soliloquy as Excuse and Challenge to the Audience"
Author:
Gelber, Bill.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Analyzes the use of "ha" in Shakespeare's plays, suggesting that the word is used in both dialogue and soliloquies as a means to invite response from another character or the audience.

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Title:
"A Knave to Know a Knock: Exploring Character Function in Scenic Structure"
Author:
Preston, Symmonie.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Introduces a classroom exercise where students assign and perform a character type (clown, fool, and straight-man) to characters in a Shakespearean scene like Comedy of Errors 3.1 or Macbeth 2.3.

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Title:
"Behind Closed Doors: Perspective and Painterly Technique on the Early Modern Stage"
Author:
Low, Jennifer A..
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Uses Hamlet and Tempest to "investigate the nature of early modern spectatorship by considering parallels between the theater audience's experience of discovery scenes in early modern English dramas and the viewer's experience of Dutch perspects and other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings that represent enclosed vistas." Suggests that techniques used in Dutch paintings were "recognized, used, and acknowledged by professionals in the theater."

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Title:
"Shticky Shakespeare: Exploring Action as Eloquence"
Author:
Ray, Sid.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Uses examples from performances of Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Richard III, Winter's Tale and As You Like It to examine the "efficacy of Shakespearean 'stage business'" and when it becomes "shtick." Concludes "that a little bit of stage business can intensify the meaning of the text and the affect of the moment" while going too far can ruin the effect.

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Title:
"Character Acting"
Author:
Menzer, Paul.
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Draws on Shakespeare to challenge the modern characterization of early modern actors working from printed scripts, arguing that "the master tropes of print potentially occlude rather than clarify our thinking about early modern acting, since print privileges qualities quite alien to performance: standardization, reproducibility and, above all, uniformity."

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Title:
"Seeing Ghosts: Hamlet and Modern Original Practices"
Author:
Harris-Ramsby, Fiona; McPherson, Kathryn R..
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Proposes staging ideas for the Ghost in Hamlet by using the blocking from a staging session at the 2011 Blackfriars conference (q.v.). Concludes that "contrasting modes of imagination [early modern and twenty-first century] are precisely why an invisible ghost works in staging Hamlet using original practices today."

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Title:
"'Remembrances of Yours': Properties, Performance, and memory in Shakespeare's Hamlet 3.1"
Author:
Moncrief, Kathryn M..
Type:
Book Chapter
Year:
2013
Annotation:

Discusses early modern "love tokens" and speculates what "remembrances" Ophelia might be returning to Hamlet in Hamlet 3.1 and how that prop or props impact the humor of scene and describe Hamlet and Ophelia's relationship.

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