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Chapter 4 - Space

from Part II - Playhouse Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2023

Lauren Robertson
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

By the Caroline era, London’s broader theatergoing public contained within it the smaller subset of a theatrical community – those playgoers collectively invested in the cultivation of their dramatic knowledge and interpretive acuity. Chapter 4 offers a phenomenological prehistory of this community, locating its activation in the moment of performance itself. The chapter traces the formation of this theatrical community alongside the dramatic trope of impersonation, which constructed the unknown depths and vicissitudes of individual identity as a function of the bifurcated structure of the playhouse. Through readings of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors, the anonymous Look About You, John Fletcher’s Love’s Cure, and Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl, this chapter argues that the formation of spatially relational identities in impersonation plots extended from the stage to the amphitheater: constituted as a series of mirror images only partially revealed, London’s theatrical community was produced by spectators’ mutual recognition of their uncertainty about one another.

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Chapter
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Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
Stage Spectacle and Audience Response
, pp. 148 - 182
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Space
  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225137.007
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  • Space
  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225137.007
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.

  • Space
  • Lauren Robertson, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009225137.007
Available formats
×