Further to Andy’s post on story, this post asks questions about the nature and necessity of coherent “story”—and of audiences following “plot”—in early modern commercial dramatic performance. It does so by putting literary and archival material into conversation with archaeological discoveries, and as such I'm thankful to Heather Knight of MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) … Continue reading Losing the Plot: Audiences, Scraps of Performance, and Selective Participation
scraps
‘barren of all interpretative comment’
Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. (Pause.) Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. […] I love order. It’s my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the … Continue reading ‘barren of all interpretative comment’
Shakespeare in Scraps: Halliwell-Phillipps and Theatre History
This is the first of two posts thinking about theatre history through particular theatre historians. Lucy Munro's blog on the Wallaces follows as a companion piece. *** James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps was among the most prominent book collectors and Shakespearean scholars of Victorian England. Halliwell-Phillipps’s (HP’s) biography of Shakespeare, initially published in 1848 and revised throughout his … Continue reading Shakespeare in Scraps: Halliwell-Phillipps and Theatre History
Before Shakespeare 