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10 - Staging Shakespeare’s Wars in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

David Loewenstein
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Paul Stevens
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

This chapter analyzes traditions of staging the plays from the beginning of the twentieth century, spanning a period from the Boer Wars until the postcolonial wars of the present. It considers not only ways of depicting fighting and battles, but also perspectives on the morality of war created by Shakespeare and his directors. During this period, post-Victorian pictorial realism and historical “accuracy” survived in cinema, but in the theater they gave way to non-illusionistic and unlocalized sets as companies turned their attention from “history” to politics. This did not mean that spectacle diminished: shocking savagery and violence could be graphically represented, but pageants of royal and aristocratic grandeur along with appeals to patriotism sustained by providence were set against vignettes of common life – no longer “comic relief” but ironic touchstones that detected processes of chauvinism, huffing rhetoric, and heroic posturing as families, factions, and nations tore themselves apart.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Alexander, Catherine M. S.Shakespeare and War,” Use of English, 65 (2014), pp. 621.Google Scholar
Barker, Simon. “Shakespeare, Stratford, and the Second World War,” in Makaryk, Irena R. and McHugh, Marissa (eds.), Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012, pp. 199217.Google Scholar
Brown, Karin, and Sewell, Jan. “Henry V in Performance: The RSC and Beyond,” in Bate, Jonathan and Rasmussen, Eric (eds.), Henry V, The RSC Shakespeare, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2010, pp. 146201.Google Scholar
Dickson, Lisa. “The Blazon and the Theater of War: The Wars of the Roses and The Plantagenets,” in Uman, Deborah and Morrison, Sara (eds.), Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theater, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013, pp. 137–47.Google Scholar
Fernie, Ewan. “Action! Henry V,” in Grady, Hugh and Hawkes, Terence (eds.), Presentist Shakespeares, London, Routledge, 2007, pp. 96120.Google Scholar
Fraser, R. Scott. “Henry V and the Performance of War,” in King, Ros and Franssen, Paul J. C. M. (eds.), Shakespeare and War, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 7183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heijes, Coen. “‘Strike up the Drum’: The Use of Music in the Boyd History Cycle,” Shakespeare Bulletin, 27 (2009), pp. 223–48.Google Scholar
Hiscock, Andrew. “‘More Warlike than Politique’: Shakespeare and the Theatre of War – A Critical Survey,” Shakespeare (British Shakespeare Association), 7 (2011), pp. 221–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoenselaars, Ton (ed.). Shakespeare’s History Plays: Performance, Translation, and Adaptation in Britain and Abroad, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Dennis. Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar

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